Today's poet

[Dr H Tool]

Maybe some poems will help...........

Many of you have offered help for us personally, and we may need to ask at some point, but there is something you can do today and over the next few weeks:

Please send dried and non-perishable food by airmail to feed the mainly old and infirm poor and ex-homeless people in Tokyo that the NPO Moyai support:

Komorebi-so
8-20 Shinogawamachi,
Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo,
162—0814 Japan

Anything will help, but postage is expensive, so please choose food with a high calorific content relative to it’s weight.

I spoke to my friend Inaba-San who runs it, and he says that it is very difficult for anyone to find food in the shops in Tokyo now (there are 30 million people in greater Tokyo) as people have stockpiled. But this is impossible for the old, infirm, and homeless as they don’t have money and are not strong enough to travel about looking for it.

Please send it by airmail initially. It might take two weeks to arrive even so, and flights may be limited, but it will definitely still be needed when it does get there. Larger quantities can go by sea mail, but that takes 4-8 weeks in normal circumstances. My view is that it will take a long time to be normalised because of the scale of the city, and the knock-on effect for the poorest will continue for a long time.

In the unlikely event that things calm down soon the food you send will still be used for Moyai’s fantastic normal work. I can personally vouch for the commitment and reliability of the few staff and many volunteers as I have done projects with them for 11 years and Inaba-san is the most dedicated, organised and self-denying person I know. They are the oldest organisation supporting the poor and ex-homeless in Tokyo.

Enclosing simple personal messages and cards, especially from children will cheer people up too, so feel free to include them. “Gambate kudasai” then your name and location would be nice.

Thanks a lot


Geoff Read

E-mail: [email protected]

Blog: http://livinginaizu.blogspot.com/

Home tel: ++81(0)241 545051

Postal Address:

454 Shimozaike,
Nishitani,
Kaneyamamachi,
Onuma-gun,
Fukushima-ken,
968-0015
Japan

Skype ID: geoffandmitsuko

[Hes]

Thanks for the above Dr H Tool. I'm looking into it now, not sure what food items would make the best use of the postage and be most palatable/useful and so will email Geoff.

[Hes]

Ok...not exactly poetry but you are a creative lot on here. I need some help!

I have to find a title for my exhibition in September. It will be prints inspired by the Vale of York Viking Hoard and exhibited alongsid the treasure in the Mercer Gallery. The hoard is a beautiful engraved cup full of silver coins and jewellery pieces found near the river Nidd just outside Harrogate. The title has to be short and punchy and intriguing (it can have a longer line underneath). I'm a bits stumped. So far I've got 'Impressions of the past', 'The Past Unearthed' (doesn't say much about the prints) 'Profit and Loss' (sounds a bit too mathematical) 'Impressions from the North'....

its a bit tricky! Any help would be gratefully received.

[Mountain Goatess]

Ok...not exactly poetry but you are a creative lot on here. I need some help!

I have to find a title for my exhibition in September. It will be prints inspired by the Vale of York Viking Hoard and exhibited alongsid the treasure in the Mercer Gallery. The hoard is a beautiful engraved cup full of silver coins and jewellery pieces found near the river Nidd just outside Harrogate. The title has to be short and punchy and intriguing (it can have a longer line underneath). I'm a bits stumped. So far I've got 'Impressions of the past', 'The Past Unearthed' (doesn't say much about the prints) 'Profit and Loss' (sounds a bit too mathematical) 'Impressions from the North'....

its a bit tricky! Any help would be gratefully received.

Glints of Light
-a fleeting impression of York's past.

[Nee Bother]

Glints of Light
-a fleeting impression of York's past.

Clever!

[Mountain Goatess]

fleet of foot, like a goat
me mate MG
topper lass n canny poet

That's lovely NB.
I'm really enjoying your poems and Neebotherus! :thumbup:
Especially liked the atmospheric 'This Morning's Fret'! I was out in it and it was cold...it's not often I run in hat and gloves!

What disturbs me, however, is the fact that I am likened to an auld goat, yet Merrygorgeouslegs is described as a beautiful babe!!!! What's gannin on there? :sneaky:

[stevefoster]

What disturbs me, however, is the fact that I am likened to an auld goat, yet Merrygorgeouslegs is described as a beautiful babe!!!! What's gannin on there? :sneaky:

Fret ye not goatlike, your far prettier than i, i have a face only a mother could love, shame she thinks i'm shreklike too!

[Hes]

That's good, thanks MG!

Unfortunately, its always the way, I went back and checked my email and my mentor for the project said I needed a title straight away so she has suggested one and we've gone for that. Its ok but not as inventive as yours.

Glints of Light
-a fleeting impression of York's past.

[Alf]

Lamia (extract)

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries -
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love's sake,
And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,
Like a stoop'd falcon ere he takes his prey.

John Keats

[Alf]

(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space

The milky way she walks around
All feet firmly off the ground
Two worlds collide, two worlds collide
Here comes the future bride
Gimme a lift to the lunar base
I wanna marry a monster from outer space

I fell in love with an alien being
[She had a head as big as a TV screen]
Whose skin was jelly, whose teeth were green
[A glutinous complexion with a day-glow sheen]
She had the big bug eyes and the death-ray glare
Feet like water-wings, purple hair
I was over the moon, I asked her back to my place
And then I married the monster from outer space

The days were numbered, the nights were spent
In a rent-free furnished oxygen tent
Where a cyborg chef served up moonbeams
Done super-rapid on a laser beam
I needed nutrition to keep up the pace
When I married the monster from outer space

But when we went walking tentacle in hand
You could sense that the earthlings would not understand
They'd go nudge nudge when we got on the bus
Saying "It's extra-terrestial, not like us;
And it's bad enough with another race,
But **** me... a monster! from outer space?"

In this kind of atmosphere love went lame
She took a flare to from where she came
I read all the papers, looked up the stars
"Uranus is active and so is Mars"
My horoscope was horrible, told me to my face -
Avoid monsters from outer space

In a cybernetic fit of rage
She pissed off to another age
She lives in 1999
With her new boyfriend, a blob of slime
Each time I see a translucent face
I remember Errrrxxzztt from outer space.

John Cooper Clarke