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Sat 4 Sep, 2004 11:36 am
Hello, everyone.
I hate to start up a thread of my own work, but I have to reformat my hard drive, and-- as I have no satisfactory way of preserving these poems-- I thought that I should post a few of the ones that deserve some sort of saving in one place.
Most of this work is either spontaneous or slightly worked-on versions of things that I had posted in Edgar's thread.
Here goes...
Here's what I suspect would happen if the Adam and Eve story happened to-day:
1.
Our boat, a needle in the vast Electric--
In some wild, dawn-misted trance--
Sped and thread through tired, engulfing blue
Whilst waves wove deep silence:
Rising and crackling like harsh static,
Guilessly prancing to old Loss's tune.
Gather me in a pale moonlit gown, and I shall collect the dust, strewn by my night and your wondering.
You slouch like uncoiled flax under the sun,
Or like trickling wax which no hand or touch
Could stop from falling.
You'd paled your hands by choice; you'd nudged the gun
Timidly to your forehead, as to show
An indecision breaking through your brain.
__________
Don't be light
We watched the putrid, shadow branded world
Pass us right by;
The burnished nights reflected opal souls;
Brief colours fought each other through the days
I arrived in Paris at about five pm to-day. I had had to return to England to give a eulogy at a funeral of someone barely connected to me. I had the whole of Paris to choose from.
Naturally, I decided to go somewhere random. Amidst a few casual Parisians standing slack in the heat, and plenty of tourists chattering off syllable after syllable in harsh tongues, I went out from the dreaming yellow splendour of the Gare d'Austre, with its boggling murals splashed about on the Métro.
I let my finger dash gently over the grand carte de Paris that I had just got, stopping on Issy de Seine station. I sat back patiently in the relative uncomfort of the Métro chair, making out the art deco wallscapes and clambering adverts that brightened each stop.
By the time we had got to Issy, most had already gone. The station's in sharp contrast with the clashing colours that one sees whenever the Paris Metro is shown. One comes to an impressing green hut and a few walls, grafittied with laments about this and that.
By the side of the track, I saw an African saxophone player stooped in his own projected shadow. He held the instrument clumsily, but expertly, up to the bone-white sky and his lips blew out melancholy softly. I stopped for a minute, putting down my six bags near to my feet, and I looked toward him discreetly. He stopped playing. 'Desirez-vous boire quelquechose?', I asked. He reluctantly agreed, so I got overpriced orange juice and passed it into his deep hands. 'You're really quite good. Have you played the sax for long?', I queried. 'My uncle taught me some, I've had to rely on it; I'm over here to get some money to send back.' I looked nonchalantly; I had known lots about scams during my time abroad and at home. 'I play this all day, sometimes build if I'm lucky out by Bicetre, and then I do work in a service station out; but I get paid s___t.' He seemed sincere. He took an unsightly, but reasonable, gulp at the orange juice. 'Nothing to do back there but die. Nothing.' He saw a train coming the way again, and started playing. I adjusted my dress, gave money into his old hat, and walked towards the Gare's inside itself. I heard his music drift differently.
As I walked into the much-needed shade and towards adventure, his notes fell as loose poiniards onto the dusty ground, and each stall he made was a trip of the family he lost along the way.
Re: A few poems
'Teenage Kicks'
She forwarded your stories to me:
They were your escapism, your breakout--
To me, they were your tunnelling down
Through some predictable ground,
Closing your eyes when dreaming.
They had all the trimmings
Of a 'happily ever after' story
That your mother never read to you.
I've no doubt you saw them on video.
It was the TV that bred you
Through long, afternoon-dull hours.
You take some boy
Who lies, and pretends to sing,
And in him you place everything,
As though he were some modern God that you
Lusted to serve. You moulded this boy to
The hollow of your yearnings: he'd be sweet,
And so would want to marry you, have children;
While the prime of his life away with you--
And no other screaming fan who contradicted you--;
And he would want to f__k you all the time--
Although you hardly know what that word means--;
And he would affirm, in his 'bold' manliness
That time and disabled toilets wait for no man.
I took some half-amusement
In knowing that your dream and you'd consider
Your 'tasks' in there more important than those
Of some crippled man, desperately holding on, querying your sounds.
But that was where my laughter stopped. I thought
Each total ignorance to be a gunshot;
Your knowledge weak as small card-pyramids
Your father made from ennui. Each line rang
Like a child forced to write pornography:
Because that's what you were; you were a child.
And everything had told you to grow up,
Grow breasts and flaunt them; grow children
Like potted plants in that sexed boy's small shed.
And when I think of that, all laughter's trapped
Inside the snare of my closed throat. I saw
You crave to be taken advantage of,
And someone would, and you would never see
The difference between that and love. Meanwhile, your
Folks would do nothing, but watch more T.V.
Quote:I arrived in Paris at about five pm to-day. I had had to return to England to give a eulogy at a funeral of someone barely connected to me. I had the whole of Paris to choose from.
I remember the original of this, Drom. you certainly are good at drawing a picture with words!
Insomniac
It's a beautiful fate--
The moon spread wide inside my veins,
Revolving restlessly around my mind
As night rolled on, a waxen metal ball.
These days hold nothing for me; with the stars
I look on land's broad shoulder through this night.
dròm_et_rêve wrote:Gather me in a pale moonlit gown, and I shall collect the dust, strewn by my night and your wondering.
I really, really love this.... That first poem is funny and that last prose-poem is fantastic, I remember it from another thread. Thanks for sharing your work and vivid images.
Preserve 'em forever, Drom. They are wonderful.
Ooh, I like that insomniac one.
'Famous for fifteen seconds'
In a field of cameras and prosthetic light
Outside a room, would-bes are carrying
On thinking who they could be, what they might
Do if the blinded world could see
What they deserve, their true potential. They
See all their lives pass by them in that hall:
----Singing as Toad in last year's musical
----Wind in the Willows, which showed twice in May.
(Everyone loved it, even Uncle John,
The one who's hard to please.) If this were not
A certain sign of destined stardom, pray
What counts as one? They knew they would be hot
Business; their efforts would pay off--
Their skiving school for three days whilst they looked
Around for tiny skirts and tarty tops,
Which left no pride at all. And they'd be booked
To sing at all the top awards; be seen
In clubs, on billboards, everywhere you go;
Be laughing wildly at what they'd once been.
And so, they're called up one by one to show
The hasty judges what they've truly 'got.'
They warble, are rejected, and are shown
The worthlessness of promises that say
They'll give, to all, the talent they have not.
Under the Birches
We were shot with our own joy, under the birches:
The days passing like watercolour pictures;
The torrid summer's air cautiously lurking;
The tamed animals intently watching.
There was an old string, which a winter rusted:
You sat on it; I blithely thrusted
You towards the branches overhead.
Your dangling body merged with miles of jade,
Painting us in an everlasting sight
Of nothing more but you, me, and the light.
She only danced
When snow had graced
each pavement:
when the whole thing
was an absolute whitewash:
She did ballet purely
As if spinning to some target
or urge,--
As if it were impossible to stop
The ice-downed bone cold
Formed her stiff tutu,
Spinning everywhere and nowhere
at the same time--.
Her strict pirouettes,
Or whatever they were,
Seemed like a code
Amongst the ordinary hooves and feet.
But they dissolved away
with a raw morning's echo.
.
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