Free, Gratis And Without Charge

It’s not often I offer anything for free on this blog.

Not unless you discount the blood, sweat and tears of my life’s experiences, the sage and inscrutable advice I weekly throw your way and the frequent proposals for sexual healing that I am, from time to time, wont to make.

Aside from those I am not very forthcoming in the gratis department.

I don’t do bogof deals or coupons or clubcard points or voucher codes. I do, on occasion, succumb to bribery but, hey, who isn’t building up their CV for a potential career in politics?

Other than that, I have not offered you one iota of anything at all worthwhile for the joyous and soul enriching amount of £0.00.

Today that is about to change.

My poetry collection, Pitch Mandible Stone, is available on Kindle. It's not expensive. Given the superlative quality of the writing I’ve literally slit my wrists for the Kindle book buying public but does anybody appreciate it? Do they eff.

But that’s by the by. I have finally twigged that, actually, what would be more useful than the monthly pittance from the occasional sale of one of my books would be a tranche of 5 star reviews that would make it look like my book has actually been downloaded by somebody somewhere and is in demand. Even a 1 star review would be something (it would be a 1 star review).

But to leave a review one has to have bought the book. I can see that’s a big ask. Give me your money and your time and effort composing a love poem in honour of my product. It’s too much.

Although I must point out here that one of you – yes, one – did precisely that: buy one of my books and leave a review. I love this person. They know who they are.

But I now want to offer some love to the rest of you and hope that you will offer me some love in return.

From today (Sunday 19th January 2014), for the next 5 days only my poetry book will be available to download for free. That’s free, gratis and without charge. The magical price of £0.00.

For those of you that don’t have a Kindle, apparently you can download a free app for your PC that will enable you to download and read Kindle books to your heart’s content. Any Kindle book not just mine.

So. Please feel free to help yourself to a free book written by me.

All I ask is that you leave a review. It doesn’t have to be an essay. A couple of lines, hell, even one word would do. “Brilliant” is a great word for example. You can even suggest that I have blackmailed you into doing it. I don’t care. Just please leave something. A book for sale without a review or a star just looks lonely, orphaned and unloved.

Worse than that it looks unlovable.

So let’s you and me get into some free love over the next 7 days.

Thank you kindly (Kindle-y?) in advance.

P.S. I am still available for sexual healing every third Tuesday in the month.

P.P.S. My collection of humourous writings, Please Sir, Kindly Take Receipt Of This $9 Million Dollars, is also available for the unbelievably cheap price of 'one pahnd'. For some reason Amazon will not let me offer if for £0.00 no matter how much I bodge the on-line form. But, you know, if someone already has or would like to buy it, if they could then leave a review for it... that would be really great. Ta.

Pitch

In response to absolutely no customer demand whatsoever I have decided to take the commercially unviable step of republishing my poetry collection – Pitch Mandible Stone (previously only available on Kindle) – as a bona fide, 100% real, printed and bound book that you, my prospective customers, can purchase via Amazon from almost anywhere in the world, safe in the knowledge that your hard earned money won’t see hide nor hair of a UK tax man whilst your eyes gorge themselves silly on my gloriously glib alliteration and marvellous metaphor-making.

Pitch Mandible Stone is available at the stonkingly reasonable (but possibly optimistic) price of £5.99 from Amazon.co.uk and at a comparable price dependent on exchange rates, etc, from other Amazonian outlets. Just click on the image above to facilitate your purchase.

If that doesn’t sell it to you enough, here’s another free poem from the collection. Enjoy. Or rather, enjoy and then purchase the book and then enjoy some more.


The Final Frontier

Very close to it now
And I cannot remember my mother’s arms.

The soft lake of her tongue escapes me.
My hands are dissembled roots

Shot through with silent films of water
That nothing touches.

This is the confirmation
And the countdown

To sleep.
In benign synchronicity

The jettison is a Belial of gentleness;
The lift-off a merciful Herod

Relocating the first born.
I am grateful for I am too weak for the stars,

For the meteors:
I sleep dependent on the breath of their dicey charities.

Gravity sucks the blue earth
Away from my feet

And begins the inhalation spaceward.
The dramas shrink to a hoarse molecule,

The Universe to a straw.
I propel through it absolved

Like a freight of grim electrics –
My obedient organs dissolving like cane.

In sodden degrees
I leave the winsomeness of blood and synopsis behind me.

I move on
And become beautiful and shoddy like a gas.

Hence I shall not want.
I shall have no kinship with green pastures.

Beyond them, there shall I lie.
In the morning I will sing to myself a new song –

My rod and my staff fainting like gauges to zero;
My burnt out rockets falling to a carboniferous atmosphere.

The airlock shushes open and it is finished.
There is to be no more of hope and I am relieved:

My heart is uncircled and through the gates of Babylon.

The Porcelain Preservation Society

Many of you (unless you live in a yurt) will have seen the new IKEA television adverts that extol us to do away with boring old traditional garden furniture and splash out on some Swedish decking and a hot tub. And by boring old traditional garden furniture they expressly mean garden gnomes (weirdly no mention is made of conspicuous clumps of pampas grass); those poor, rashly fired clay figurines that clearly classify their owner as being (a) stuck in 1970’s sitcom land and (b) pretending and failing to broadcast to the world that they are actually middle class.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received a number of complaints about the myriad violent ways Mr and Mrs IKEA are shown dispatching the various garden gnomes that infest their gardens. In scenes that have probably made Oliver Stone puke his ring in sheer horror gnomes have been smashed against garden fences, eviscerated with high powered water hoses and skull-fucked with throbbing lengths of garden hoe.

Actually I made that last one up but it illustrates perfectly the 18+ tone of this gore-fest advertisement that glamorises war and extreme violence just to push a few deckchairs onto an unsuspecting public.
The ASA, however, have decided not to uphold the complaints as they feel that the “clearly fanciful and light-hearted” nature of the advert mediates the eye-wrenching, gut churning gratuitousness of the shlock violence.

And I have to agree. The only good garden gnome is a dead garden gnome and that’s all there is to it.

Of course, I am joking.

Garden gnomes cannot be killed. They cannot be killed because (and this may come as a bit of shock to the complainants) THEY ARE NOT ALIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE. They are inanimate objects. They are lumps of fired clay cunningly moulded to look vaguely like humanoid figures. They have about as much sentience as an IKEA barbecue fork. They do not have feelings, cannot feel pain and, I am pretty sure, do not have an aesthetic opinion one way or another as to the state of the garden they find themselves dumped in.

People have merely complained because of the anthropomorphic nature of garden gnomes.

Day in day out, all over Greece and in other parts of Europe, plates and cups are being wantonly smashed during the climax of Greek weddings. These poor plates have never even been eaten off; they have been denied the single, defining purpose for which all plates are made. Instead they have been made for one reason only: to be wedding fodder. They have been created to be destroyed, nothing more.

Where are these people when these innocent plates are being killed? Where is the “no plate born to die” campaign in the national press and on the internet? Wasn’t it Roger McGough who once poetically cried, “Monica, think of the saucers”?!

Why do these people not rush to defend these defenceless items of cheap porcelain?

I’ll tell you why. Because they are just plates. Because they are just manually manipulated bits of clay that have been unlucky enough not to be fashioned into little men with fishing rods and other spurious items of horticultural equipment.

Well, such hypocrisy and inconstancy really gets my goat. It’s time to restore the balance.

It’s time to stand up for teapots, claypipes and ceramic butter dishes everywhere. I am forming The Porcelain Preservation Society and I invite you all to join me in saying no to IKEA and yes to little clay men in galoshes. It’s time to love your mug, savour your gravy-boat and hug your jugs.

If nothing else we will do wonders for the Cornish pottery industry.

Now if you’ll excuse me, me and my Toby-jug have a titillating date with a hot tub…

Pitch Mandible Stone

If I have been absent from blogging of late it has been for the best of reasons. I have been busy compiling material for no less than 3 books ready for e-publishing on Kindle.

The first of these is now ready and available for purchase at the un-princely sum of £1.36. I apologize to those of you who are boycotting Amazon for their tax avoidance practises and hope that you won't hold their malpractise against me. I don't think my sales are going to line their pockets overmuch... but you never know.

Pitch Mandible Stone is my first proper collection of poetry. I've had the odd poem published elsewhere over the years - 30 or so in small magazines and various UK small presses - but this is my first anthology that solely comprises all my own work.

Pitch Mandible Stone is made up of 18 poems that are a fair representation of my poetic repertoire. I'm hoping that enough of you good kind people will buy a copy that I might be able to buy myself a pint with the royalties. Even if poetry isn't your bag or you don't have a Kindle to download it to I am hoping you will at least follow the link and hit the "like" button.

It's always difficult to describe a collection of poetry so instead, as a show of good faith, I'm going to offer you a freebie. A free poem taken from the collection. If you like it or find it sufficiently interesting to want to read more, well, you know what you have to do. Thank you in advance.


The First Casualty Of War

They come ferreting through the bindweed
Dropping bobble hats and gloves in the rush;
A line of duffle coated warriors
Slogging over terrain rough as new landfill.

The cemetery erupts with the bold
Lung explosion of shrill voiced mortars
And invisible grenades. Right arms carried
Like automatics judder with school yard kick-back.

What foes there are drop by the thousand
But there are some who do not die easy.

Ranks of guanoed seraphim stand
Against the advance goading the crosshairs
To collect and dog them like midge flies.
One squaddie more astute in his brutality than the rest

Pistol-whips the neck of a submissive angel
With a club of wood. He is saving bullets.
There is a god shattering crack – real not voiced -
And every tongue stops.

What crows there are fester upward
And offer amused catcalls to the air.


Some are too wise to the ways of death.

Red Feathers

The thing about pigeons is, when they get run over by motor vehicles, they tend to pop.

And not a nice dry, party balloon type pop either.

But a horrible, muffled, wet kind of pop.

I know this for a fact because last Thursday I saw it happen up close and personal right in front of me.

I was on my way home after a shitstorm of a day at work and, quite frankly, the last thing I wanted to see was a pigeon playing chicken on the main road that runs through the south part of town. But there he was (I'm assuming he was male, as females tend to have more sense). Strutting his stuff in the middle of the road. Damned stupid when nature had provided him with the means to make an instant airborne means of escape.

But no. He seemed determined to walk his way out of trouble.

I put it to you, my learned friends, that it is nigh on impossible to walk your way out of trouble when a double decker bus is turning 45 degrees and heading right on top of you at 25mph. The first wheel missed and the turn of the bus took the pigeon well underneath the undercarriage. When he emerged again into the light it was plain that the back wheel of the bus had crushed the pigeon's left wing.

The pathetic crawl-flap-crawl-flap commenced.

I felt decidedly green at this point and wanted to rush out and pick the pigeon up. Unfortunately the lights had changed and the through traffic was now starting to come the other way. Not one of them seemed intent on stopping or slowing down. And I confess a little voice in the back of my head was asking what difference any intervention I could possible make would ultimately have. Even if I got him to the vet did I really think they'd waste good money saving one pigeon out of the millions that were already lined up to take his place? The chances are they'd nod sadly and administer a lethal injection as soon as I was out of the door (electric chairs being so costly to run these days) and Mr Pigeon would be off to the incinerator. And all that would cost money too.

As it was there was no time to act anyway. The fourth car along completed the job the bus had started. I had to turn away before impact but could hear the moment of death plainly enough. When I turned back around there was a mass of mangled feathers and raw spaghetti spread all over the road. I felt sick. And I felt sad. And cross with myself for not leaping into the path of the oncoming traffic to save this poor suicidal pigeon. Ridiculous, I know.

Next day only a few feathers and a stain on the macadam remained. I'd like to say we will not see his like again but it just wouldn't be true.

To end then, I'd like to present you with a poem I wrote in my twenties (back in '92) about just this kind of pigeon centred demise. I no longer think the glib tone of the poem is at all fitting but it is all I have. Enjoy.

PIGEON PIE

Oh blue plumed and portly blown pilot,

A tyre has done for you.

Popped like a paper bag obese with

Breath between a clap sandwich.

Macabre children, passing, coo for

You, enquire after your

Two-dimensional demise, your brave

Unbirdlike stand against a

Post office van.

Stubborn pigeon,

If God had meant you to

Strut the road's white hyphens a gunless

Gunfighter, he would have cursed

You human and alcoholic!

You should have known: the mail

Always gets through. You're a sober sight

Now, a sheriff’s badge on a

Black macadam breast, a toe level

Monument to avian

Derring-do or die.

Chiselled by chance

Yet as if by a maestro.

You're almost symmetrical, arranged

Like a vain martyr. Could

Your corpse have been beautified by hand?

Havoc has no such aesthetics.

For a humble pot of a bird, a

Miscalculation of

Strategy has left you ready made

For the Tate; a model of

Impressionism, a

Dis-assemblage on asphalt.

Pop art.

Would Have Should Have Could Have

Being a sentimental sort of chap whose sentimentality is triggered by feelings of profound frustration with my current circumstances I am often given to bouts of “if only I’d...” and “why didn’t I [fill in the blank] when I had the chance?”

These bouts of bemoaning the clouds in my coffee for not realizing themselves into the life I have always dreamed of seem to increase the older I get. Maybe because I have more to regret or even because, as my knowledge and understanding increase (albeit in small increments), I am perhaps more aware of what I should have done when I look back at my formative years.

Don’t get me wrong. I have much to be thankful for. A loving wife and two healthy rumbustious boys.

But I can’t help feeling that modern living is inimical to my spiritual contentment.

Take my career. Or what I laughingly refer to as my career.

I never aspired to anything.

Well. That’s not strictly true. I have always and still do aspire to write. All I ever wanted to do was write. So as a consequence I never aspired to be anything tangible in the career food-chain. I never wanted to be a bank manager. Or a bus driver. Or an electrician. Something that would have required training or an apprenticeship. Something whose usefulness to modern society (with the exception of bank manager) would never go out of date or popularity.

I was a fool to myself. I would still have strived to write but I would have had a fallback position.

But even this wouldn’t have been smart enough. And I think what I am bemoaning most of all in this post is my naivety and my laziness in not properly contemplating how I would really like to spend my work days back when I had the youth and the non-pressure of living at home with my parents to actually invest some time and sacrifice some wages in order to achieve it.

Because any kind of retraining now is going to cost money and time that I don’t have. And energy beyond my capacity to generate.

*sigh*

You know what I’d most like to do? How I’d ideally like to spend my days and earn my money?
I’d like to work outside.

Forestry commission. Farming. Landscape gardening.

Just something... out there; outside, out of the dull soul-eating cube of the office. Away from the dusty fans of soulless PCs and the subliminal thought-knife of the telephone ringtone.

And years ago I could have done it. I could have still written. I wouldn’t have lost anything because, beyond a few published poems, I was never in danger of hitting the big time.

And right now I’d be coppicing a wood (no euphemism intended) in the sunshine. I’d have my hand up a cow’s arse in the Cotswolds. I’d be digging out the foundations for a ha-ha at Blenheim Palace.

But instead of those things I am beating my brains out against a brick wall of spreadsheets and Health & Safety legislation, wondering where the hell the sunshine has gone.

Well, I’ll tell you where it’s bloody gone.

It’s hiding behind the ruddy great clouds in my coffee.

Selection Not Rejection

So another rejection letter this week. Whilst my second novel nears completion (ETA Christmas time) I am still touting the first one round various literary agents.

I’ll put my hands up and say I am being very slapdash and slack about it. I finished the bloody thing two years ago but it’s only been this year that I’ve made a real effort to get it “out there”... and so far I’ve only sent it to 5 agencies. That’s not exactly a full-on production line, is it?

So. Four rejections so far and one coal still in the fire. Of the four I’ve heard back from three were standard and one was very complimentary. I’m not particularly pinning any hopes on the fifth; I think success at this relatively early stage would be too easy. It’s going to be a hard slog and I know it.

What amazes me is I don’t feel particularly down-heartened by the rejections. I mean, I don’t feel great. My self esteem takes a knock. But it’s a small knock. It bothers me for all of two minutes and then it’s forgotten about.

Maybe I’m just hard-headed? Arrogant? Deluded? All of the above?

I suspect though my time writing and submitting poetry all through my late teens and my twenties hardened me up to the “thank you but no thank you” missive. I used to bundle thirty or forty of my poems out at a time and launch then relentlessly (and vaingloriously) at various magazine editors and anthology publishers. Most came back besmirched with the weight of a “no thank you”. About ninety percent in fact. Some did get published, I have to say. About forty – but that was over a period of a ten years. I hardly set the world alight.

But it did vaccinate me against the disease of ‘the rejection blues’.

My poetry rejections were like cow pox. They have protected me against the dreaded small pox of the novel rejection. It doesn’t touch me like it should and I have milkmaid’s hands to boot.

I also try and bear in mind a wonderful piece of advice that one of my rejectees once gave me: “an editor / publisher does not reject; they merely select”.

Reflecting on that has assisted me through many a blue hour.

Now I just shrug my shoulders and go back to my writer’s year book...

...because at the end of the day I’m only up to the D’s and there’s plenty more fish in the sea.

Onwards and upwards.

Umbrella For A Sunny Day

“Umbrella” because the two components of this post are completely disparate but I’m going to lump them together ‘cos today is the day for writing about them both. The first part is a family oriented kiddie post, the second touches on the reading aloud of poetry. Take your pick, dear reader, or read ‘em both.

The eldest boy is celebrating his 8th birthday today. He came downstairs this morning to find the sofa stacked with presents – presents that his dad hastily wrapped last night while his mum suffered beneath the vicious malaise of a horrible cold. Every birthday / Christmas Karen and I always say “this time we’ll be more organized and get the presents wrapped early” and every time we play present wrapping chicken and wrap them at the very last minute.

Not that Ben minded. He’s had a good haul – loads of Lego (naturally), a Nintendo game, the ubiquitous Pokémon cards and a digital camera amongst the new treasures.

Tom’s reaction was very interesting. Last Christmas he still didn’t fully understand this “present opening malarkey” at all though had good fun shredding the discarded paper and cardboard.

Today however was very much a different kettle of fish. He seemed as excited by the presents as Ben was – lots of cooing and ooh-ing and a few attempts to eat the presents whilst still in their wrapping paper...

But once the gifts were unwrapped they were far more intriguing than the paper.

I sense a shift in consciousness here. Gone are the days when we could have palmed him off with an empty box or a bit of glittery paper... now he wants product! He’s joined the consumer race at last.

To help avoid any displays of jealousy or feelings of neglect we bought Tom a little present too. His current love is bus spotting whenever we are out and about in the car. He just loves them. Every time we point a bus out to him we elicit a shout of joy and the phrase: “Dus! Dus!” which is Tom’s pronunciation of the word “bus”.

Hence Tom’s present just had to be a big bright yellow Lego Duplo bus complete with passengers and luggage compartment which, if it has been opened and closed once, it has been opened and closed a hundred times already. He loves anything with a hinge does our Tom.

He has refused to let the damn thing go and has taken it into nursery with him. Woe betide the staff if they ever try and separate them...

Anyway the upshot is, I think Tom has decided he quite likes birthdays. Doesn’t matter if it’s his or not. Any birthday will do. Just as long as he acquires a bus.

Let’s hope I’m not having to negotiate with Midland Red when he turns 18...

And now for the poetry...

Janete over at Writer’s Blog has embedded a small movie into her latest post featuring photos she has taken during her travels. The soundtrack is Janete herself reading one of her amazing poems. It’s worth a click and a few minutes of your time savouring the experience.

What struck a chord with me was Janete’s comment about not liking her own voice. I expect most people feel the same way – possibly because we imagine our voices to sound somehow different to how they really are... sort of the same but different. The same but improved. Polished. Authoritative. Silkier. Movie star like.

It’s always depressing when you hear your voice played back to you and you realize you sound like a bin man from Walsall.

Not that Janete does, I hasten to add. I actually think she has a fabulous voice – really lovely – and it suits her poetry perfectly. Go and listen to it if you don’t believe me.

Mine, however, does. Or at least I think it does. About 15 years ago I had the opportunity to read out some of my poetry on a local radio programme broadcast by Coventry & Warwickshire BBC. It was to be pre-recorded and would be broadcast a week later... so, lucky me, I’d be able to listen to myself in the comfort of my own home.

For some reason, even though I’m Midlands born and bred, I had a fancy to sound like Ted Hughes. I loved his poetry and I loved to hear him reciting it. Such a rich, dark voice. And the Yorkshire accent lent his words an expressiveness and earthiness that added yet more depth and richness to a grasp of language that was already immeasurably deep and rich.

Oh to sound like that! I would have turned heads.

Now, don’t think for a minute that, when presented with the microphone, I launched into an awful cod-Yorkshire “ee bah gum it’s cold oop North int it” accent. I wasn’t that stupid. I’m not good at mimicking accents though can manage a passable Scots if I put my mind to it (but as my dad is part Scottish this is only right and proper).

I merely tried to speak clearly and authoritatively. With feeling and passion. With an ear for the words and the music of my poetry.

I swear to God I sounded like a Birmingham fish monger reading William Blake. Not a great mix.

It affected me so badly I didn’t write anything for nearly 12 months and, bar reading a 3rd prize winning poem at Warwick’s 2006 Warwick Words competition, have never read my work aloud again.

Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder but the ear has its part to play also.

Meme-ories Are Made Of This

I haven’t responded to a meme for a long time but today I’m making an exception by answering one sent to me by lovely Lucy Fishwife.

Basically I have to list 6 random things about myself – preferably things that you don’t already know – and then pass the meme on to 6 other lucky-lucky bloggers. While I think about who to infect with the meme disease here are 6 interesting (I hope) but little known facts about yours truly.

1) I’m a “published” poet. Kind of. I’ve had about 30 poems published over the years in various poetry journals and anthologies. Sadly I’ve never had a collection published or won any major poetry competitions which would have blasted my name before the addled sight of the UK literati. Out of the 30 published I was only ever properly paid for one: £10 for a poem called “Love” that was published in top-notch poetry mag The Rialto. I briefly considered framing the cheque but the law of economics took over and I cashed it.

2) I was at school for much of my younger life with fellow blogger Tris and we still maintain regular contact. He is quite simply and quite honestly my oldest friend. An initial acquaintance and then a friendship which dates back approximately 30 years. I’m very proud of this.

3) I had a childhood crush on Charlie’s Angels. All of them. But primarily it was Cheryl Ladd who floated my boyhood prepubescent boat. This is odd as she is blonde and with very few exceptions I go for brunettes. I have a wonderful wife (brunette) who thankfully feels unthreatened by this early blonde obsession and bought me the boxed set of Charlie’s Angels for my birthday last year. It’s crass, it’s dated, it’s so unbelievably 1970’s (even though it was filmed in the 80’s) but Cheryl Ladd has still got “it”. Though she has now been usurped in my affections by Keeley Hawes. Gotta move with the times, right? (Yes my search to find something previously unknown and interesting to say about myself is becoming desperate.)

4) One of my most vivid school memories is of the school playing field being covered in daddy-long-legs at the end of September / beginning of October (back when the seasons worked properly). One kid in a year below me made the mistake of charging towards the seething mass screaming out loud. One disoriented daddy-long-legs – evidently its bearings lost or fancying a kamikaze-style last act – promptly flew into the boy’s open mouth. Folks, it really is possible for a human being to turn bright green.

5) I have never in my entire life eaten steak. I don’t know why. I don’t have anything against red meat (though I’d hate to see my own going underneath Gordon Ramsay’s knife). I’ve just never ordered or desired a steak. Does this mean I am not a real man?

6) I used to write stories as a young boy where I was a superhero called Donny Osmond (look, I saw an Osmond cartoon once and it made an impression, OK?) and I had a gang of superhero friends who ranged (unsurprisingly) from the lovely ladies of Charlie’s Angels, the good guys from Star Wars, Logan and Jessica from Logan’s Run and for some weird reason Abba. I still have the stories – all hand written in little exercise books – beneath the bed. One memorable scene features my grandparents flying X-Wing fighters to blow up a humungous enemy star ship piloted by the evil Witchy Woo Hoo. It is my life’s ambition to make it available in all good books shops.


OK. Now for the tagging part. With apologies I’m tagging Tris, Inchy, Kaz, Brother Tobias, Kate and Amanda though please don’t feel you have to.

And lastly – the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Good luck and God speed.

A Poetic Interlude

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted any poetry on this blog but blog buddy Janete has reminded me that actually, getting poetry “out there” into the big wide world is a good thing and to be encouraged.

So, to change the pace somewhat, here is a small offering from my extensive back catalogue of angst and metaphor.


Sheffield, December 2003

In hoar wind trees lag dirty:
white filings pinch northward as iron
but grow grey and blunt
in the furnace slump of the factories.

The air sounds detonated –
the lung aftershock pressing down, pursed
and cursive, a spent
cartridge. The streets are baptized in it and

limed with the sign of the cross.
Trams belch black looking shoppers like grapeshot
but none hit their mark.
Fag ends blow red grit across department store windows,

the displays lost behind
a welding shower of tracer bullets.
The pavements bolt beneath
the rapid cannon fire of pork shops and pound shops

and job shops.

Christmas growls and sprints once from the rubble
to be dourly gunned down by the masses.

Another 15 Minutes Of Fame

Gosh. I’m doing well in terms of getting my name into The Courier this year.

Poring through today’s edition I see I managed to achieve a “highly commended” runner-up position in their recent haiku competition – the subject being “fireworks”.

Here for your edification (and my self-aggrandizement) is the poem:

As a month’s wages
rocket skywards in blue smoke
all the kids explode...

Curse You Courier!

It appears I baited my breath for nothing!

After hotfooting it down to my nearest newsagent there to grab a copy of The Courier hot off the steaming press I was grief struck to discover that the article on Leamington Bloggers has not graced this week's pages!

How can they do this to us, my sweet salivating public?

Don't they care?

Harrumph. To be honest the hack I spoke to did say that it might be an article that they hold over until next week or the week after. I guess the news this week was just full of more interesting and entertaining morsels than me. Hard to believe I know. Oh well. Better cancel the press launch and the TV interview with Philip Schofield and Fern Britton. It seems I won't be appearing in Extras just yet...

But on other matters, my poetry reading at Warwick Castle went well and I met some lovely people. Karen, Ben and myself were made to feel very welcome and it was a fantastic venue in which to find ourselves. I'm glad to say I didn't make too big a fool of myself and got some very positive feedback.

Here as promised is the poem:

The Trolley

We found you in tussock, wheels up
like a shot donkey.

Spiders had grown the metal ribs
of your belly shut. Chrome

gleamed beneath the matted poultice
of gnats and bindweed.

Beautiful.

Brushed off we knew the hill and you
were made for one moment.

Down as birds, eye-cornering, swing
across a fast sky.

Quickly you were not made for two.
I barely made it

passed the brink

and met the fierce angles of this world
headlong in tall grasses.

My mate tobogganed on and drove
your jolting government

hard against the sod, laughs flailing
into a cross wind,

inseparable,

your weights ox-ploughing twin grass-tracks
fast through muck and turf -

a railroad of whoops and curses
billowing clock seed

and thistle leaf - until the rough
jerk of wheel pivot

met hidden stone.

In my mind now he doesn’t stop
but rattles on, flag

in a long wind getting smaller,
his shouts like copper

on the tongue or an empty basket
dropped

over an edge of years

Poetry Corner

Ah luvies, tis time for a bit of culture don’t you know. As my poetry reading debut at Warwick Castle nears (27 hours and counting) I thought it incumbent upon me to offer up to you, the delirious reader, a short poetic aperitif with which to whet your appetites.

Providing I don’t massacre my prize winning poem at the Warwick Words ceremony tomorrow I may well bung it on this ‘ere blog at the end of the week. In the mean time you’ll have to make do with the haiku below. TTFN.


Toothbrush Haiku

Ninety-five. No teeth.
Toothpaste dead. On windowsill
dry toothbrush bristles.

Infamy! Infamy! They’ve Got It In For Me!

Blimey but yesterday was eventful.

It appears I am to be permitted two bites at that overly ripened, rough skinned tavern wench: the tart cherry of fame. And these double barrelled opportunities for distinction come replete with the obligatory attendance of professional flash photography and newspaper column inches focusing on the derring-dos of yours truly.

Star Moment Number One was the revelation that I have come third in the Warwick Words Poetry Competition and will have the chance to strut my poetic stuff in The Great Hall of Warwick Castle (one of Christendom’s finest tourist attractions of immense historic value and Royal patronage, blah blah blah) next Thursday evening at a spectacular prize giving event that will outdo anything that Matthew Kelly could summon up on Stars In Your Eyes.

Star Moment Number Two was a communiqué from the Leamington Spa Courier announcing that they wished to interview me (backed up with the gritty realism of fly-on-the-wall photographs) about my long running “blog” on Pocketropolis. Shock horror. Knock me down with a feather. Come in boat 37 your 15 minutes is about to start.

I feel like a blind fisherman with a snapped line. I’m still reeling.

The Poetry comp news was lovely. Having been plugging away at the old poetry game for years it’s nice to finally receive a bit of recognition at long last and I only hope that my wobbly knees and nervously fluty voice will be up to doing my prize winning poem justice when I come to deliver it to my esteemed peers next week.

The Courier article, I must admit, I feel a little more ambivalent about. A hefty dose of natural paranoia has kicked in and I’ve found myself reviewing all my despotic and curmudgeonly outpourings on Pocketropolis – of which there are loads - though without changing a single word of any of it, it has to said. I guess it’s time to stand by my writing. I’m entitled to my opinions as much as anybody else is and I can only write from my own personal viewpoint.

My one and only hope is that when my work is flinching beneath the unremitting glare of a wider audience it is considered entertaining, humorous and thought provoking – even if nobody else agrees with what I’m saying.

That thought will really warm the cockles of my heart when the lynch mobs come with flaming brands and newly edged pitchforks to drag me from my Slumberland bed and garrotte me over the nearest lamppost...

Pull away, boys, pull away.