Today's poet

[Hes]

I enjoyed the Neruda Freckle. Have been rereading some of Anne Michaels poems. I wish she would publish some more, I love her writing.


Night Garden
from Skin Divers, collected in Poems

Your mouth, a hand
against my mouth.
Pressed to earth, we dream
of ocean: heat-soaked, washed
with exhaustion, our mariner's sleep
haunted by smells of garden--fresh rosemary
thirty miles off Spain. Long grasses
sway the bottom of our boat.
We follow a sequence
of scents complex as music,
navigate earth places, sea places, follow
acoustics of mountains,
warbler instinct in the dark--
Siberia, Africa, and back--
phosphor runways guiding us to shore,
moonlight half eaten by the waves.

Across the lawn, a lit window floats.
Welts of lupine. You remember
an open window, Arabian music
through wet beeches. We know we're moving
at tremendous speed, that if it could be seen
the stars would be a smear
of velocity. But all is still,
pinioned. In the night garden,
light is a swallowed cry.
Naked in the middle of the city
the stars grow firm in our mouths.

[Hes]

and another:

Three Weeks

Three weeks longing, water burning
stone. Three weeks leopard blood
pacing under the loud insomnia of stars.
Three weeks voltaic. Weeks of winter
afternoons, darkness half descended.
Howling at distance, ocean
pulling between us, bending time.
Three weeks finding you in me in new places,
luminescent as a tetra in depths,
its neon trail.
Three weeks shipwrecked on this mad island;
twisting aurora of perfumes. Every boundary of body
electrified, every thought hunted down
by memory of touch. Three weeks of open eyes
when you call, your first question,
Did I wake you …

[Hes]

I've posted this poem at least twice but it is one of my all time favourites so if you haven't read Anne Michael's 'The Ice House', you can do here:

http://crookedshore.wordpress.com/20...anne-michaels/

[Stevie]

I saw Simon Armitage at the Hay Festival over the weekend, I happened to be down that way for an orienteering event. He was looking a little less sun burned than on his Pennine Way walk but was on fine form. He opened with The Christening, as he did when I saw him in Mytholmroyd during his walk. Bigger audience this time, I'm guessing about 1000 people in the Oxfam Stage. Sold out for sure.

Maybe you know this poem by heart, or bits of it, but here it is again:

I am a sperm whale. I carry up to 2.5 tonnes of an oil-like
balm in my huge, coffin-shaped head. I have a brain the
size of a basketball, and on that basis alone am entitled to
my opinions. I am a sperm whale. When I breathe in, the
fluid in my head cools to a dense wax and I nosedive into
the depths. My song, available on audiocassette and
compact disc is a comfort to divorcees, astrologists and
those who have 'pitched the quavering canvas tent of their
thoughts on the rim of the dark crater'. The oil in my head
is of huge commercial value and has been used by NASA,
for even in the galactic emptiness of deep space it does not
freeze. I am attracted to the policies of the Green Party on
paper but once inside the voting booth my hand is guided
by an unseen force. Sometimes I vomit large chunks of
ambergris. My brother, Jeff, owns a camping and outdoor
clothing shop in the Lake District and is a recreational user
of cannabis. Customers who bought books about me also
bought Do Whales Have Belly Buttons? By Melvin Berger
and street maps of Cardiff. In many ways I have seen it all.
I keep no pets. Lying motionless on the surface I am said
to be 'logging', and 'lobtailing' when I turn and offer my
great slow fluke to the horizon. Don't be taken in by the
dolphins and their winning smiles, they are the pickpockets
of the ocean, the gypsy children of the open waters and
they are laughing all the way to Atlantis. On the basis of
'finders keepers' I believe the Elgin Marbles should
remain the property of the British Crown. I am my own
God – why shouldn't I be? The first people to open me up
thought my head was full of sperm, but they were men, and
had lived without women for many weeks, and were far
from home. Stuff comes blurting out.


One of the funniest moments outside of the poems was when he was introducing a new poem apparently to do with tractors. Leafing through his folder to find it, makes a comment to the audience "I spend a lot of time thinking about tractors..." some giggles and sniggers from the audience - Simon looks up sharply and says in a sarcastic tone "and you don't!?"

[Mossdog]

Without words

Words used to come
Like the night, with the night
When you were not mine.

Now words vanish
Like the day, with the days
As we fortify.

Unspoken stanza
Lost prose and iambics
quietly reside

In a web of sweet slumber
And inbetween time

Freckle that it so very touching and, somehow, manages to be both so well crafted but spontaneously natural too - very beautiful.

[Mossdog]

One for Stef as she battles her way round the BGR

Determination

Hanging on
A thin bending stem
A little bumblebee
Refuses to fall.

Wind blows stronger,
Ever tighter he clings,
Determined not to lose.

Tenacity is rewarded
As he buries his tiny head
Within the crimson heart
Of a delicate rose
And extracts
The sweetest
Richest, golden nectar.



(author not known)

Alf, that conjures poignant imagery from the start and offers a lesson of hopefulness to those of us who 'do but try' are very best!!!

[Mossdog]

Bloody, punch the air, BRILLIANT Thanks Freckle - what a lady

lovely choice MG, she is one inspiring lady that mrs angelou....i have put this one up a million times but it still gets me every time i watch it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0

[Mossdog]

Ours

in grey swirl of the Hows
you kiss me hold me tight
and skylarks laugh
as we hug our's closely
on the limbs of elephants
we slide to the
deep purple greens
of our love's lamb
and you
I adore and kiss
your smell of love
against the warmth of cheeks
our own world on which
we stand and see
the mountains of our heart's
home around and around
and now we know
to share for us together
meandering meaning
of our love's pattern
to behold - us as our's as one

[freckle]

Ours

in grey swirl of the Hows
you kiss me hold me tight
and skylarks laugh
as we hug our's closely
on the limbs of elephants
we slide to the
deep purple greens
of our love's lamb
and you
I adore and kiss
your smell of love
against the warmth of cheeks
our own world on which
we stand and see
the mountains of our heart's
home around and around
and now we know
to share for us together
meandering meaning
of our love's pattern
to behold - us as our's as one

I returned from work feeling weary and flat tonight...nothing major just the weariness you sometimes get from the hum drum of life...then I read this poem....i really like it perhaps because i don't fully grasp it, so I am mulling over in my mind the different possible meanings, some of which seem so altogether beautiful I wonder and hope I have the right interpretation....I like the rather unconventional way it has been written too...and that last line "to behold-us as our's as one".....well i need to ponder further.. well done mossy you definately caught my imagination in a refreshing way!

Hes and Stevie I really enjoyed your choices, stevie when you described armitage's comments I could almost imagine that sarcastic grin and his accent! i would love to go to the hey festival, there is some lovely running down there too, i ran along the top of hay bluff a couple of months back and the views were spectacular x

[Stevie]

Hes and Stevie I really enjoyed your choices, stevie when you described armitage's comments I could almost imagine that sarcastic grin and his accent! i would love to go to the hey festival, there is some lovely running down there too, i ran along the top of hay bluff a couple of months back and the views were spectacular x

Hi Freckle, I would recommend the Hay Festival if you get a chance to go. There is also plenty of good running around there as you say, not just in the Black Mountains but in the hills of Herefordshire as well. We stayed with friends near Kington and the lower hills on Offa's Dyke path and off towards Ludlow are good for running e.g. Hergest Ridge, Croft Ambrey etc.