Clouds

Wandering lonely as one? 

Podcast 01

This is the very beginning of a Podcast.

Specifically, this is me reading my poem Missing (A Quintina):

http://ia301535.us.archive.org/3/items/Missing_400/Missing.mp3

As a form, the quintina is - sort of - my own invention, but based on the Sestina. Other poets have devised their own take on the idea of a five line version of the Sestina. The idea here is that it's a Sestina with one word-ending/line removed, thus keeping with the title/theme of 'Missing'.

Here's the text:

Missing (A Quintina)

 

It's nowhere near the end, but a miniature Death,

erasing by increments, chipping at your mind.

You're patronised, even by these words. 'He's not all there,'

as if you're deaf as well. I repeat my name again.

I wonder which of us, if any, you are missing?

 

But it's all been going slightly missing

like a jigaw of ninety-eight pieces. Did Death

forget to call, or call repeatedly, stealing to gain

a little more each time? Do you mind

that you'll never go back there?

 

That you'll never go back there.

I repeat the words; I don't want you missing

my point, the same way you're losing your mind

to the fog. Is that the only cure, then? Death?

Repeat myself over and over again:

 

I'm not sure what's the point, what's to gain.

Is this doing you any good? 'It's in their

best interests,' the doctor said. He's deaf

to any second opinions. What he's missing

is perspective, but I couldn't say he'd really mind

 

one way or the other. So, if you don't mind

we'll try a different tack, lose or gain.

The one thing that never slips: you're missing

her, it doesn't matter that she's not there

and she succumbed long ago to Death.

 

Let's pretend her Death was all just in the mind

as if you and she are there, together once again

and neither of you is missing.

A E Housman

I started reading his Collected Poems in August while on hol and loved A Shropshire Lad (as did Housman himself, tee hee).

It was about time I finished the collection off I thought so I did, today. I was, frankly, rather bored. They are all of the same pattern:

   Ta da da da da da da dah

      Ta diddle-ee-diddle-ee-dee

   Ta da da da da da da dah

      Ta diddle-ee-diddle-ee-dee

He rhymes 'aye' and 'day' a lot, and 'heaven' with 'even'. It's said he called his second collection Last Poems because he felt he'd run out of poetic inspiration. Sadly, I think he was right.

Anyway, here's some more of my own dog-eared, slant-rhymed doggerel:

Exmoor Sheep

They have learned not to fear the cars, which speed

through like missiles from Porlock or Minehead

to Ilfracombe or Combe Martin. Heads

 

might go up, hopefully, but soon return to cropping

grass, chewing and stripping

the blades. Yet approach them, stalking

 

wolf-like through heather and bracken, or over

tumili, and they will scatter. And I wonder:

What makes them think the man with a weapon

 

less fearsome than the man without?

From winner to whiner

Not doggerel

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. 
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. 
In time the curtain-edges will grow light. 
Till then I see what's really always there: 
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, 
Making all thought impossible but how 
And where and when I shall myself die. 
Arid interrogation: yet the dread 
Of dying, and being dead, 
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. 
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse 
- The good not done, the love not given, time 
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because 
An only life can take so long to climb 
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; 
But at the total emptiness for ever, 
The sure extinction that we travel to 
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, 
Not to be anywhere, 
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid 
No trick dispels. Religion used to try, 
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade 
Created to pretend we never die, 
And specious stuff that says No rational being 
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing 
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound, 
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, 
Nothing to love or link with, 
The anasthetic from which none come round. 

And so it stays just on the edge of vision, 
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill 
That slows each impulse down to indecision. 
Most things may never happen: this one will, 
And realisation of it rages out 
In furnace-fear when we are caught without 
People or drink. Courage is no good: 
It means not scaring others. Being brave 
Lets no one off the grave. 
Death is no different whined at than withstood. 

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. 
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, 
Have always known, know that we can't escape, 
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go. 
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring 
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring 
Intricate rented world begins to rouse. 
The sky is white as clay, with no sun. 
Work has to be done. 
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Philip Larkin

Pan

Ovine has evolved into this:

Pan

We saw a sheep, it's proselytizing 

eyes like jeweled eggs

fingering our gaze.

 

Until now.

Now that we recall and forget,

in a simulcast of memory.

 

And for what?

Your soulless weaseling

has alerted this unsteady

tummocking:

 

a tripping from toe to hoof

the cloven trip-trap

of the merely

ovine.

 

You forgot.

But I recall, alone,

what it is to stare

into the abyss

of the barely

human.

it will shortly be sent to the National Poetry Society's competition along with another two I just rattled off.

Endure!

'Ovine' is the best poem ever written

on this computer in the last minute or so.

However, I'm rewriting 'Ovine' as less obviously made up on the spur of the moment, and I'll send it off to some lumpen Poetry mag or comp.

Ovine

We saw a sheep, it's proselytizing 

eyes like jeweled fibres

fingering our gaze.

Until.

Now we recall and forget,

a simulcast of memory.

Your soulless weaseling

has alerted the unsteady

tummocking, of the merely

ovine.