I'm Back for a Brand New Attack (or something)

It's been ages since I posted anything, so here's a few tidbits.

This is a poem about waiting for your phone to vibrate, waiting for a message from your special person.


Waiting For the Buzz

Waiting for the buzz
that’s coming,
Wearing wings
or fins
(or something).
Who am I against this woman?

She is rather bold
(as brass),
Timid, kind,
Strong and funny.
A great petite tiger,
With the purr of a Persian cat,
Sat
on a steam train
that’s trailing off honey.
The windows are
maple leaves
and outside
it’s sunny.

Yet, in my chest
it is brass monkeys.
As cold as gold
bricks
shining, shimmering,
A trembling hand
that’s won
big winnings.

Who am I without this woman?
Waiting for a buzz
(that’s coming).

A villain
or a fiend
(or somone).
She can change my heart
from black,
Back to red
and back intact.
With her
I feel like
a comic book hero
on a tandem to Happiness
with Helen Shapiro.

Ramblings, randomly
assembled thusly.

Here’s the buzz.
From her?
It must be!

This is a new folk band from England called Dry the River. This video shows an interesting poster campaign they did with tin cans that played their song.

Lastly, is Clive Anderson's BBC Radio 4 show Loose Ends. Amongst the guests in this episode is the punk poet John Cooper Clarke. It'll expire sometime, but the show's good to look up anyway, whoever's on it. It's a big mix of things every week.

Loose Ends (with John Cooper Clarke guesting)

Hope you like it!

In Paris With You by James Fenton

I came across this and really liked it. I actually heard Stephen Fry talking about James Fenton, so this is the first poem that I found.


In Paris With You


Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy

Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with... all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.

James Fenton

The Rain Stick by Seamus Heaney

I heard this great poem on 'Poetry Please' on Radio 4. It's by Seamus Heaney.

  The Rain Stick   

Up-end the stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known

To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

The glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, and thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again

A haiku style poem by Francis Howell and a TuNe by LCD Soundsystem

Not at all related, but juxtaposition is the spice of life.

LCD Soundsystem - Yr City's a Sucker (London Session)

Cloud maps shift across

a windy sky, as unknown

countries ebb and flow.

By Francis Howell

It reminds me of looking through an aeroplane window. My favourite place to be - above the clouds!

Richard Wilbur - Mind

MIND

Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest of intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

– Richard Wilbur

I don't know if I fully understand the last verse, but it paints an amazing image.

ee cummings - why must itself up every of a park

I just read this and it blew me away. I want to read more poetry and I think this was a good start. It's the beginning of a poem.

why must itself up every of a park
anus stick some quote statue unquote to
prove that a hero equals any jerk
who was afraid to dare to answer "no"?






I take it to question what is a hero. Sometimes I think it's strange too, when someone's elevated above other people because they got shot.

Go Litel Bok by Mark Haddon

The book of poems this was taken from (and the ony one I've ever read front to back) was panned in a review I read from The Observer. I was a bit upset because some of it's brilliant. Some seems like nonsense but the good stuff is amazing. This poem takes me me into a different world and every time I read it I get something new or understand a different part of it. I just read, on his website, that when he was writing it he tried (and succeeded) to keep each line to 12 syllables. I didn't know people did things like that and I'm not sure why, but I'm impressed anyway. 

Go, Litel Bok

Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the jury.
Those of my trade, we are like the badger or the mole.
We work alone in darkness, guided by tiny
candles which we do not share, sweating to give birth
to replacement planets where things happen which don't.
And sometimes the hard jigsaw becomes a picture
and not a car accident. More rarely we place
our fingers adroitly on the frets or keyboard
and multitudes plummet through the small white trapdoor
which bears our hieroglyphs. Then we are taken up
into the blaze and shout of the conurbations
to make words in the air and strike the strange pose
from the clothing catalogue. But sometimes we see
a swallow in wintertime. And the talking horse
and the sad girl and the village under the sea
descend like stars into a land of long evenings
and radically different vegetables
and a flex is run from our hearts into the hearts
of those who do not know the meaning of the words
cardigan or sleet. And there is no finer pudding.
Now I am like that cow in the nursery rhyme.
The fire I have felt beneath your shirts. These cloisters.
Red mullet with honey. This surprisingly large
slab of Perspex. Your hands are on me. But this man
is another man. The clock chimes, my pumpkin waits
and the frog drums his gloved fingers on the dashboard.
May the god whose thoughts are like a tent of white light
above the laundry and the pigeons of this town
walk always by your side. My burrow calls. Good night.