Today's poet

[freckle]

Evening all...good to hear from you Hes an so impressed by your Ben Nevis trip in the cold sounds fab....nice MacCaig choice X Runner...

Palimpsest
Meghan O"Rourke

So the days go by, and the singing at night continues.
The summer passes like horses.
Wisdom arrives on a piece of paper, blown
through wide glass windows:
"This page intentionally left blank."
I talk to my friends more than I used to.
I sleep less. This is the point of life:
you really care. The tendons slacken,
the fat honeycombs beneath the skin,
a fox paces in the town courtyard,
until, passing a mirror, on the phone,
laughing, you see yourself again
as you are, as you are not.
The snow creaks underfoot.
Touch me, I am still here,
like the humming bee, like the mayrope
wrapped around the tree.
The song was never mine to sing.
It lives beneath the skin.
It speaks in every bone.

[Mossdog]

Evening all...good to hear from you Hes an so impressed by your Ben Nevis trip in the cold sounds fab....nice MacCaig choice X Runner...

Palimpsest
Meghan O"Rourke

So the days go by, and the singing at night continues.
The summer passes like horses.
Wisdom arrives on a piece of paper, blown
through wide glass windows:
"This page intentionally left blank."
I talk to my friends more than I used to.
I sleep less. This is the point of life:
you really care. The tendons slacken,
the fat honeycombs beneath the skin,
a fox paces in the town courtyard,
until, passing a mirror, on the phone,
laughing, you see yourself again
as you are, as you are not.
The snow creaks underfoot.
Touch me, I am still here,
like the humming bee, like the mayrope
wrapped around the tree.
The song was never mine to sing.
It lives beneath the skin.
It speaks in every bone.

Hey I really like that, and now I know what a 'palimpsest' is too!!!

SPELL

At school, I listened carefully all day
for novel words that I could say
when I got home. I liked to surprise my mother
with precarious, ravishing, or zephyr.
I felt the syllables fill my small
body. If I let them, the words did all
the work. I didn’t need to know their meanings,
only their sounds. Soon she would be leaning
toward me over the counter, or better yet,
pulling me to her as if we couldn’t get
close enough. We’d spoon together on the couch
while I recited, delighted in her touch,
her laughter and her fingers in my hair
as I tried to find more words to keep her there.

Gwen Hart

[Harry H Howgill]

I've still got the following books I've either got duplicates of or no longer want, so if anyone wants any of them, then drop me a pm. Otherwise they'll be heading towards Oxfam.

Simon Armitage - Xanadu
Simon Armitage - Zoom
Hamish Ironside - Our sweet little time (a year in haiku)
John Barlow & Matthew Paul - Wing Beats (British birds in haiku)
Richard Asquith - Feet in the clouds

[Old Whippet]

I've still got the following books I've either got duplicates of or no longer want, so if anyone wants any of them, then drop me a pm. Otherwise they'll be heading towards Oxfam.

Simon Armitage - Xanadu
Simon Armitage - Zoom
Hamish Ironside - Our sweet little time (a year in haiku)
John Barlow & Matthew Paul - Wing Beats (British birds in haiku)
Richard Asquith - Feet in the clouds

Hi Harry
I'll have the haiku / birds one please, but only handed over in person at some Fell Poets event or race!

Happy New Year to all.
A huge addition to my music library of dodgy origin has put me back in touch with Linton Kwesi Johnson's work. Something tells me that Derby T will be familiar with this stuff.
This took me back years...to the last serious recession.

much better listened to than read, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckTCac8LAI8

Sonny's Lettah
From Brixton Prison, Jebb Avenue London S.W. 2 Inglan
Dear mama
Good day
I hope that when these few lines reach you they may
Find you in the best of health
I doun know how to tell ya dis
For I did mek a solemn promise
To tek care a lickle Jim
An try mi bes fi look out fi him

Mama, I really did try mi bes
But none a di less
Sorry fi tell ya seh, poor lickle Jim get arres
It was de miggle a di rush hour
Hevrybody jus a hustle and a bustle
To go home fi dem evenin shower
Mi an Jim stan up waitin pon a bus
Not causin no fuss

When all of a sudden a police van pull up
Out jump tree policemen
De whole a dem carryin baton
Dem walk straight up to me and Jim
One a dem hold on to Jim
Seh dem tekin him in
Jim tell him fi leggo a him
For him nah do nutt'n
And 'im nah t'ief, not even a but'n
Jim start to wriggle
De police start to giggle

Mama, mek I tell you wa dem do to Jim?
Mek I tell you wa dem do to 'im?

Dem thump him him in him belly and it turn to jelly
Dem lick 'im pon 'im back and 'im rib get pop
Dem thump him pon him head but it tough like lead
Dem kick 'im in 'im seed and it started to bleed

Mama, I jus couldn't stan up deh, nah do nuttin'

So mi jook one in him eye and him started fi cry
Me thump him pon him mout and him started fi shout
Me kick him pon him shin so him started fi spin
Me hit him pon him chin an him drop pon a bin
- an crash, an dead

More policman come dung
Dem beat me to the grung
Dem charge Jim fi sus
Dem charge mi fi murdah

Mama, doan fret
Doan get depress an downhearted
Be of good courage-acap

[Derby Tup]

I love LKJ t'Owd Whippet! Well remember seeing him with John Cooper Clarke on the Old Grey Whistle Test that long ago I still had hair


A belated Happy New Year to all fell poets btw

[Mossdog]

And because Love battles

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

Pablo Neruda

[Derby Tup]

Fab Neruda Mossy

[Derby Tup]

lonely Christmas tree
still decorated but doomed
Twelfth Night beckons soon

[Harry H Howgill]

No probs. Its got your name on it.

Any race plans?

Hi Harry
I'll have the haiku / birds one please, but only handed over in person at some Fell Poets event or race!

Happy New Year to all.
A huge addition to my music library of dodgy origin has put me back in touch with Linton Kwesi Johnson's work. Something tells me that Derby T will be familiar with this stuff.
This took me back years...to the last serious recession.

much better listened to than read, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckTCac8LAI8

Sonny's Lettah
From Brixton Prison, Jebb Avenue London S.W. 2 Inglan
Dear mama
Good day
I hope that when these few lines reach you they may
Find you in the best of health
I doun know how to tell ya dis
For I did mek a solemn promise
To tek care a lickle Jim
An try mi bes fi look out fi him

Mama, I really did try mi bes
But none a di less
Sorry fi tell ya seh, poor lickle Jim get arres
It was de miggle a di rush hour
Hevrybody jus a hustle and a bustle
To go home fi dem evenin shower
Mi an Jim stan up waitin pon a bus
Not causin no fuss

When all of a sudden a police van pull up
Out jump tree policemen
De whole a dem carryin baton
Dem walk straight up to me and Jim
One a dem hold on to Jim
Seh dem tekin him in
Jim tell him fi leggo a him
For him nah do nutt'n
And 'im nah t'ief, not even a but'n
Jim start to wriggle
De police start to giggle

Mama, mek I tell you wa dem do to Jim?
Mek I tell you wa dem do to 'im?

Dem thump him him in him belly and it turn to jelly
Dem lick 'im pon 'im back and 'im rib get pop
Dem thump him pon him head but it tough like lead
Dem kick 'im in 'im seed and it started to bleed

Mama, I jus couldn't stan up deh, nah do nuttin'

So mi jook one in him eye and him started fi cry
Me thump him pon him mout and him started fi shout
Me kick him pon him shin so him started fi spin
Me hit him pon him chin an him drop pon a bin
- an crash, an dead

More policman come dung
Dem beat me to the grung
Dem charge Jim fi sus
Dem charge mi fi murdah

Mama, doan fret
Doan get depress an downhearted
Be of good courage-acap

[Stef F]

lonely Christmas tree
still decorated but doomed
Twelfth Night beckons soon

Special Christmas tree
Proud it stood, broad, bright, fragrant,
Not a needle dropped