I'm a gonna wander through Wikipedia's list of genres. & write something. anything. Quality is no longer the issue. Quantity is the issue. To Hell with how good or bad or ugly it is. It needs to be. It needs to ... is. Blah. I turn away from the implications of this paragraph with eyebrowraised disgust.
Drama -
stories composed in verse or prose, usually for theatrical performance,
where conflicts and emotion are expressed through dialogue and action
Conflicts & emotion. That's it, is it, Wikipedia? Hohum - I think I can work with that (rather narrow) definition.
No Drama - A One Act Play
Scene One
A savanna. Night. From somewhere, unseen, owls (or things that sound like owls) hoot. Two women stand in the midst of it, wearing nothing.
Woman One: It is curious, is it not, that it is we who are presented, as though we had torn our ways through paper bags, like half-dead cats, out of all possible people in all possible worlds...
Woman Two: This is the only possible world. I haven't seen another one. Have you?
Woman One: Only when I have slept. & then I seem to have remembered...
Woman Two: I don't remember. Anything. At all.
Woman One: That is because you are stupid. Besides - you do, or you wouldn't remember what not remembering was. That is why you are stupid.
Woman Two: I hate you.
Woman One: I know.
Out of the darkness, a winged chameleon flaps incongruously feathery wings & hovers before Woman One.
Woman One, prostrating herself: O! Lord of the lamplight! Lady of the shade!
Woman Two, cowering: Why? Do you come hither & make us afraid?
Winged Chameleon, flapping: How else is life to live upon The Earth?
Woman Two, laughing maniacally: This?!? This?!? The Earth?!? Don't make me laugh, serpent!
Woman One, spreading her legs: Come reproduce yourself within my cunt.
Woman Two, covering her face with her hands: Not this again! O God! O God! Not this!
Winged Chameleon: Go fuck yourself.
Winged Chameleon hovers before Woman One's ... cunt ... & flaps furiously, while she writhes & moans in simultaneously disturbing & comic orgasmic paroxysms. It then flies away, painfully slowly, while the Women stand in awkward silence.
Woman Two: & when will you give, well, birth, to the beast?
Woman One: You needn't talk in iambic pentameter anymore. The Winged Chameleon has gone.
Woman Two: Gone where, though?
Woman One: I don't know. How should I know?
They stand in silence for a full thirty seconds, shifting awkwardly about as though they wished there were something they could do to occupy themselves, but there was not.
Woman Two: Do you think it possible that you are mad & that I am conjured up by your madness & -
Woman One: Don't be ridiculous. You can't be solipsistic that way round.
Scene Two
All is darkness, except for a spotlight, which falls upon the Winged Chameleon, which flaps slowly throughout, as though hovering.
Winged Chameleon: It might as well be thus. It might as well. This world's a heaven. It's also a hell.
Disembodied Voice: This world's a hell. It's also a heaven. Studying history, & Nye Bevin?
Winged Chameleon: I do not study. I impregnate.
There is a pause, in which the rush of a mighty stormy gale is heard.
Winged Chameleon: But only those two. Why only those two?
Disembodied Voice, laughing with impossible eeriness: You are not the only Winged Chameleon.
Winged Chameleon: Yes, I know, but-
Disembodied Voice: Silence!
Scene Three
A savanna. Night. From somewhere, unseen, owls (or things that sound
like owls) hoot. One woman stands in the midst of it, wearing nothing but a polo necked jumper.
Woman Two: Why is it thus? But it was ever thus./As long as my memory will serve me./Who next? Not me. It's never me. Who next?/Split open to slake the thirst of the ground.
Tuesday 30 April 2013
Wednesday 24 April 2013
A Night to Remember: Word Book Night at Southampton Central Library
I turned up 20 minutes early, walked about, loitered, dragged my feet, & slipped through the apperture of the library about 10 minutes early, into the pre-event bustle of chair-locating & relocating & camera setting-up & the sort of chatter that only happens before events, like a sort of dawn chorus: How are you? I'm alright. Light your shoes! Isn't it hot?!
Being the first to sign up to the open mic, I settled into one of the comfier chairs & awaited lift-off. Which came unswiftly but surely as event lift-offs always come, bar rain or acts of God (which probably include rain).
Then there was wine.
Then there was more wine.
The uber-able compare-ing of Robert Sean Casey oiled our noctural way/s (for were we composite or disparate or both, grammatically speaking?) through one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long while.
It was St George's Day, & I was (re)introduced to a poem about Englishness, by Daniel Defoe (who, synchronously enough, I happen to be studying). Share & share alike, & all that, thus:
(Did he read that then, or later? I forget.)
Cat H Randle kicked off the open-mic-ing with confidently & engagingly presented poems about swallows & postmen & being a Bright Old Thing - bagging my vote (for there was voting, for book vouchers & gigging). I really can't stress enough how much of a difference people's styles/modes/ways of performing make to how the audience experiences their words. If I can ever perform so ... enjoyably ... as Cat H Randle, I shall be a happy poet indeed.
Then (& this is where my memory shall start to fail me) there was another poet. Let's say Jen Hart came next. She probably didn't, but she came SOMEWHERE, & "does time matter?" What strikes me about Jen's performances - consistently - is the fine modulation of her delivery. In terms of rhythm & cadence, it is exquisitely done. It helps that I also like her poems - but, frankly, she could read out a shopping list (an ASDA shopping list, even) and it would sound scintillating.
Now, at this point, you may be thinking: She's being awfully nice about EVERYBODY. Can she really mean it? Is she just being polite? The thing is, though, I'm not just being polite. I was genuinely impressed by lots & lots of people's performances. It was a particularly good night for the standard of performances (&, though I am a bit of a purist about these things, about the standard of the POETRY, the WORDS THEMSELVES, as well).
ASIDE
IMAGINED YOU: Isn't poetry MORE than just the words? Isn't it the performance, too?
ME: No.
IMAGINED YOU: What?!? Really?!?
Me: Really. I mean, a poem is a collection of WORDS, dear. WORDS and PUNCTUATION MARKS. DATA. I'm sorry, but, much as performance may ADD TO and EMPHASISE the qualities, qualia, of a poem, IT ISN'T A POEM.
IMAGINE YOU: *shrugs*
POST-ASIDE
Who then?
Well, there was Antosh Wojcik (yes, I had to make recourse the the event's facebookian guest list to spell that one), who performed poems about his birthday party (& won the vote of the crowd - a pleasant postparty present, no doubt).
Then there was me. Ta dah! (Actually, I think the quality of both my poetry & my performance has plateaued, of late. I no longer find what I do ... exciting. But - "what to do?!?" she said, plaintively.)
&, finally, there was Mark Badbelly Lang - whose voice is unto me a sort of trance-maker. Again - he could say anything. I really don't mind what he says. So long as he says it as dithyrambically as he says his poems. Which I have a sneaking suspicion may have started out life as songs (at least some of them). They have an ineffable quality that poems-that-have-been-songs have, which I am at present underqualified to elaborate on. His presentation of them is speallbinding, actually. I can quite imagine him at some sort of Viking feast, regaling warriors with Illiadish things.
Then there was a break. & more wine.
Then Antosh Wojcik's victory was announced.
Then there was Angela Chicken, who performed quite possibly the most BEAUTIFUL set I've ever set ears on. Really, she writes beautiful poems & performs them beautifully. Treatish for aesthetes. (Such as my self.) Her poem about the inventories of the Titanic struck me as particularly fine - I won't spoil it for you by explaining why. Go seek it out for yourselves, if you haven't already heard it.
Then there was a stonking set by Stewart Taylor, who ... well, are there even words for it?!? ... ranged about like a sort of epic-telling king of the comedic, making me laugh so much I dislodged my coat from the back of the chair on which I was sitting. He really is impressive enough for anywhere, now, & should be booked AT ONCE like a sort of human hot cake.
Then there was Bohdan Piasecki, who I had seen before (POSSIBLY at Freeway at The Winchester in Bourtnemouth, POSSIBLY OTHERWHERE). Apart from being interrupted by the eruptive noise of my camera going off during his first poem, his set was accompanied by a peculiar hush. He was Important. Everybody knew he was Important. That seemed to be the gist of it. He did a wondrous poem about (about?) language learning dialogues (which I had very much hoped he would, having heard it before & thought it a splendid thing).
& then there were free books.
& then there was the walk home, amidst the unbookladen undergrads, armying along the roads with little thought about the temperature - me clutching a coat & a copy of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Being the first to sign up to the open mic, I settled into one of the comfier chairs & awaited lift-off. Which came unswiftly but surely as event lift-offs always come, bar rain or acts of God (which probably include rain).
Then there was wine.
Then there was more wine.
The uber-able compare-ing of Robert Sean Casey oiled our noctural way/s (for were we composite or disparate or both, grammatically speaking?) through one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long while.
It was St George's Day, & I was (re)introduced to a poem about Englishness, by Daniel Defoe (who, synchronously enough, I happen to be studying). Share & share alike, & all that, thus:
The True Born Englishman
Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus’d betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.
Which medly canton’d in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintain’d eternal wars,
And still the ladies lov’d the conquerors.
The western Angles all the rest subdu’d;
A bloody nation, barbarous and rude:
Who by the tenure of the sword possest
One part of Britain, and subdu’d the rest
And as great things denominate the small,
The conqu’ring part gave title to the whole.
The Scot, Pict, Britain, Roman, Dane, submit,
And with the English-Saxon all unite:
And these the mixture have so close pursu’d,
The very name and memory’s subdu’d:
No Roman now, no Britain does remain;
Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain:
The silent nations undistinguish’d fall,
And Englishman’s the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e’er they were they’re true-born English now.
The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation,
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe.
For as the Scots, as learned men ha’ said,
Throughout the world their wand’ring seed ha’ spread;
So open-handed England, ’tis believ’d,
Has all the gleanings of the world receiv’d.
Some think of England ’twas our Saviour meant,
The Gospel should to all the world be sent:
Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach,
They to all nations might be said to preach.
’Tis well that virtue gives nobility,
How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply?
Since scarce one family is left alive,
Which does not from some foreigner derive.
(Did he read that then, or later? I forget.)
Cat H Randle kicked off the open-mic-ing with confidently & engagingly presented poems about swallows & postmen & being a Bright Old Thing - bagging my vote (for there was voting, for book vouchers & gigging). I really can't stress enough how much of a difference people's styles/modes/ways of performing make to how the audience experiences their words. If I can ever perform so ... enjoyably ... as Cat H Randle, I shall be a happy poet indeed.
Then (& this is where my memory shall start to fail me) there was another poet. Let's say Jen Hart came next. She probably didn't, but she came SOMEWHERE, & "does time matter?" What strikes me about Jen's performances - consistently - is the fine modulation of her delivery. In terms of rhythm & cadence, it is exquisitely done. It helps that I also like her poems - but, frankly, she could read out a shopping list (an ASDA shopping list, even) and it would sound scintillating.
Now, at this point, you may be thinking: She's being awfully nice about EVERYBODY. Can she really mean it? Is she just being polite? The thing is, though, I'm not just being polite. I was genuinely impressed by lots & lots of people's performances. It was a particularly good night for the standard of performances (&, though I am a bit of a purist about these things, about the standard of the POETRY, the WORDS THEMSELVES, as well).
ASIDE
IMAGINED YOU: Isn't poetry MORE than just the words? Isn't it the performance, too?
ME: No.
IMAGINED YOU: What?!? Really?!?
Me: Really. I mean, a poem is a collection of WORDS, dear. WORDS and PUNCTUATION MARKS. DATA. I'm sorry, but, much as performance may ADD TO and EMPHASISE the qualities, qualia, of a poem, IT ISN'T A POEM.
IMAGINE YOU: *shrugs*
POST-ASIDE
Who then?
Well, there was Antosh Wojcik (yes, I had to make recourse the the event's facebookian guest list to spell that one), who performed poems about his birthday party (& won the vote of the crowd - a pleasant postparty present, no doubt).
Then there was me. Ta dah! (Actually, I think the quality of both my poetry & my performance has plateaued, of late. I no longer find what I do ... exciting. But - "what to do?!?" she said, plaintively.)
&, finally, there was Mark Badbelly Lang - whose voice is unto me a sort of trance-maker. Again - he could say anything. I really don't mind what he says. So long as he says it as dithyrambically as he says his poems. Which I have a sneaking suspicion may have started out life as songs (at least some of them). They have an ineffable quality that poems-that-have-been-songs have, which I am at present underqualified to elaborate on. His presentation of them is speallbinding, actually. I can quite imagine him at some sort of Viking feast, regaling warriors with Illiadish things.
Then there was a break. & more wine.
Then Antosh Wojcik's victory was announced.
Then there was Angela Chicken, who performed quite possibly the most BEAUTIFUL set I've ever set ears on. Really, she writes beautiful poems & performs them beautifully. Treatish for aesthetes. (Such as my self.) Her poem about the inventories of the Titanic struck me as particularly fine - I won't spoil it for you by explaining why. Go seek it out for yourselves, if you haven't already heard it.
Then there was a stonking set by Stewart Taylor, who ... well, are there even words for it?!? ... ranged about like a sort of epic-telling king of the comedic, making me laugh so much I dislodged my coat from the back of the chair on which I was sitting. He really is impressive enough for anywhere, now, & should be booked AT ONCE like a sort of human hot cake.
Then there was Bohdan Piasecki, who I had seen before (POSSIBLY at Freeway at The Winchester in Bourtnemouth, POSSIBLY OTHERWHERE). Apart from being interrupted by the eruptive noise of my camera going off during his first poem, his set was accompanied by a peculiar hush. He was Important. Everybody knew he was Important. That seemed to be the gist of it. He did a wondrous poem about (about?) language learning dialogues (which I had very much hoped he would, having heard it before & thought it a splendid thing).
& then there were free books.
& then there was the walk home, amidst the unbookladen undergrads, armying along the roads with little thought about the temperature - me clutching a coat & a copy of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Saturday 6 April 2013
NaPoWriMoPoem#6
My teeth feel
(they have feelings)
as though fingernails are being scratched down them,
disrupting arcane scribblings
in a small hand -
bacteria have won,
write histories,
upon my teeth,
my breath,
their scent -
I scent
their scent,
& run in for the chase,
The Mouth of Hell,
the crumb-strewn carapace
of my belly, my lungs, my ... INSERT TOILET HUMOUR HERE (I CAN'T/WON'T, I'M A GIRL)
I think of them, sometimes, my teeth, like hair
all stacked together like books on bookshelves,
melded through time -
if I could catch an end
it would come out
slither like porcelain made monsterous
out of its soft bed,
bloodied and unbent,
metamorphosed out of its covenant
to be one thing & not another, like me face,
the night before last, leapt,
from face to face to face, who imprinted
me with their ... memes? my mock-memory
parades them round a gaolyard of hurt
& heartache that adds up to early death
(as though it were so delicate, that, breath
like when, this morning, I was stifled in
the covers, & your laughed - I couldn't breathe -
made noises like a cold rained on cat -
to die, LIKE THAT, to die, to die LIKE THAT!)
(they have feelings)
as though fingernails are being scratched down them,
disrupting arcane scribblings
in a small hand -
bacteria have won,
write histories,
upon my teeth,
my breath,
their scent -
I scent
their scent,
& run in for the chase,
The Mouth of Hell,
the crumb-strewn carapace
of my belly, my lungs, my ... INSERT TOILET HUMOUR HERE (I CAN'T/WON'T, I'M A GIRL)
I think of them, sometimes, my teeth, like hair
all stacked together like books on bookshelves,
melded through time -
if I could catch an end
it would come out
slither like porcelain made monsterous
out of its soft bed,
bloodied and unbent,
metamorphosed out of its covenant
to be one thing & not another, like me face,
the night before last, leapt,
from face to face to face, who imprinted
me with their ... memes? my mock-memory
parades them round a gaolyard of hurt
& heartache that adds up to early death
(as though it were so delicate, that, breath
like when, this morning, I was stifled in
the covers, & your laughed - I couldn't breathe -
made noises like a cold rained on cat -
to die, LIKE THAT, to die, to die LIKE THAT!)
Thursday 4 April 2013
NaPoWriMoPoem#4
It slithers off & stays there
& my heart
is redraw as a blue steak & cut up
into the oil & butter & gas fire
that heads its blackened world that wraps around
it's non-eyes, eyes, yes, everything has eyes
& sees & watches you & watches me
& sees what it sees what everything sees
& nothing says thankyou, or thankme, please
rip down the lace curtains that yellow over time
like chipshop worker's gloves all fished & grimed
like opera in a sea, a sea of slime -
& out damned spot! & out! each little crime
perpetuates itself & syndecates
itself outwards with prizes & tax breaks
& hearts that are driven through, cars & steaks
& stretchmarks where the loves pulled from the hate,
pulled, pulled out, pulled off, out!
there's nothing to see here, to shout about,
a voided stage, a belief half-believed
& burned for, one more crappy little creed...
& my heart
is redraw as a blue steak & cut up
into the oil & butter & gas fire
that heads its blackened world that wraps around
it's non-eyes, eyes, yes, everything has eyes
& sees & watches you & watches me
& sees what it sees what everything sees
& nothing says thankyou, or thankme, please
rip down the lace curtains that yellow over time
like chipshop worker's gloves all fished & grimed
like opera in a sea, a sea of slime -
& out damned spot! & out! each little crime
perpetuates itself & syndecates
itself outwards with prizes & tax breaks
& hearts that are driven through, cars & steaks
& stretchmarks where the loves pulled from the hate,
pulled, pulled out, pulled off, out!
there's nothing to see here, to shout about,
a voided stage, a belief half-believed
& burned for, one more crappy little creed...
Wednesday 3 April 2013
NaPoWriMoPoem#3
I am a bird without a brain, I perch
on the dead limbs of dead trees & I look
for living, loving, laughing, & I laugh,
Laugh such a very hollow little laugh.
I'm book & bell & barricade & look
how Dunsinaneish it is where I perch.
If a equals a, is added to a,
Is whisked & beaten fried & baked with a,
There's nothing but a twitching at the start-
-ing line, stop start, stop start, stop start. Stop start.
& a start that remains a start isn't...
& a stop that is just a start isn't...
& so I am in mourning for my life,
& not my youth - no, never just my youth.
I live at the deathbedside of my life.
I live at the deathbedside of my youth.
One & the same - a name to veil a name.
Disparate as neutrons & electrons.
Disparate as if you shouted my name
in a chorus, elected electrons
in neighboring atoms for high office.
The illusions of choice and difference,
When we've being fucked in each orifice.
What's the difference? Is there any difference?
& a stop that is just a start isn't...
& a start that remains a start isn't...
-ing line, stop start, stop start, stop start. Stop start.
There's nothing but a twitching at the start-
Is whisked & beaten fried & baked with a,
If a equals a, is added to a,
how Dunsinaneish it is where I perch.
I'm book & bell & barricade & look
Laugh such a very hollow little laugh.
for living, loving, laughing, & I laugh,
on the dead limbs of dead trees & I look
I am a bird without a brain, I perch
(Image Source: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me8w4bZbvy1rprz3po1_500.jpg)
on the dead limbs of dead trees & I look
for living, loving, laughing, & I laugh,
Laugh such a very hollow little laugh.
I'm book & bell & barricade & look
how Dunsinaneish it is where I perch.
If a equals a, is added to a,
Is whisked & beaten fried & baked with a,
There's nothing but a twitching at the start-
-ing line, stop start, stop start, stop start. Stop start.
& a start that remains a start isn't...
& a stop that is just a start isn't...
& so I am in mourning for my life,
& not my youth - no, never just my youth.
I live at the deathbedside of my life.
I live at the deathbedside of my youth.
One & the same - a name to veil a name.
Disparate as neutrons & electrons.
Disparate as if you shouted my name
in a chorus, elected electrons
in neighboring atoms for high office.
The illusions of choice and difference,
When we've being fucked in each orifice.
What's the difference? Is there any difference?
& a stop that is just a start isn't...
& a start that remains a start isn't...
-ing line, stop start, stop start, stop start. Stop start.
There's nothing but a twitching at the start-
Is whisked & beaten fried & baked with a,
If a equals a, is added to a,
how Dunsinaneish it is where I perch.
I'm book & bell & barricade & look
Laugh such a very hollow little laugh.
for living, loving, laughing, & I laugh,
on the dead limbs of dead trees & I look
I am a bird without a brain, I perch
NaPoWriMoPoem#2
You've been in the sun.
Scorched.
Blinded.
Vulcanised.
These motes of coal replacing "both your eyes"
Like you were Oedipus[s], & "scratched" them "out" -
Swam, seamonsterish, from a molten moat.
(Image Source: http://ghostemmajane.tumblr.com/image/47022657499)
Scorched.
Blinded.
Vulcanised.
These motes of coal replacing "both your eyes"
Like you were Oedipus[s], & "scratched" them "out" -
Swam, seamonsterish, from a molten moat.
NaPoWriMoPoem#1
Do you fuck in a different language?
F.U.C.K.
F.U.K.C.
F.C.K.U.
F.C.U.K.
F.K.U.C.
F.C.C.U.
& so forth?
Your face in a magazine,
Your head elsewhere,
Your body unattended.
Not yours.
Mine.
The light that hit you,
Bounced off of you,
Entered me.
Pornography.
It's having sex with light.
With chat-up-lines like that
You can see why I'm here,
Come-clitorised,
& perplexed re the ethicacy of
Your braless breasts.
(Image Source: http://urbansexbrigade.tumblr.com/image/47021416163)
F.U.C.K.
F.U.K.C.
F.C.K.U.
F.C.U.K.
F.K.U.C.
F.C.C.U.
& so forth?
Your face in a magazine,
Your head elsewhere,
Your body unattended.
Not yours.
Mine.
The light that hit you,
Bounced off of you,
Entered me.
Pornography.
It's having sex with light.
With chat-up-lines like that
You can see why I'm here,
Come-clitorised,
& perplexed re the ethicacy of
Your braless breasts.
NaPoWriMo
So, NaPoWriMo is happening, & I didn't even notice! Well, it's only 3 days in. I can catch up with 3 days. *cogitates*
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