Month: September 2023

Love Is In the Air…

humanist55

Love is in the air
and is intoxicating
as the fumes
of brandy in a glass balloon
it wafts beyond the
happy pairs of lovers
rekindling memories
of a younger age
re-living and reeling
with heady recall

Three grandsons now perhaps
have found their matches
and you know when
talk turns to children
and which football tribe
they should be raised in
that these are keepers

I have never been to a match
and been drunk on shared
passion in a huge crowd
but watching a film
whilst waiting to meet
the latest and last to
join the set, we shared
the intimacy of lovers in
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

A camera takes us
to the heart of an orchestra in concert
with a closeness to each player’s
breath and movement
as they embrace their instruments
to pull on our heartstrings
and film likewise grants us
close-ups of couples
we would never see in real life
our neighbours love lives
hidden in semi-detached suburban rooms
separate, unknowable, ineffable
no matter how openly
the rest of our proximate lives
are lived
was it different in the
warm fug of tribal longhouses
lovemaking couples as close
as the next cocooning hammock?

Children don’t care to imagine
their parents making love
imagining they are beyond all that
however deep the love they daily show
and parents don’t dare to imagine
their children either
the perils of the heart
the baton passed
but when love is in the air
for those lucky enough to have
roots deep in the rich soil
of happy parents
there is the hope of
templating happy families to come

Such open-hearted boys
have not escaped without
venturing up blind alleys
at least two have had
songs of heartbreak
loss and bewilderment
plucked painfully
on their heartstrings
before finding their way
safely to harbour in
calmer but still deep water
after storm-tossed seas

I held those boys as babies
drew or close-up photographed
their sleeping faces
turned their living-room
into a fort, cave, nest
or whatever their imagination
could conjure from the
jumble of throws and giant cushions
taught them the love of the pun
witnessed tantrums and triumphs
watched football from the sidelines,
school and scout uniforms
gowns and mortarboards
how could I not be
drawn along in the
wake of their love lives
dropping away like the pilot boat
waving up to the after-deck
as I slow down
and they gather pace
on their own voyages of love

The calmness and Giaconda smile
of one, the bubbling enthusiasm of another
perfume from Morrocco the first impression
throwing one off the scent
of the depths of a doctor
the brightness and humanity
of all of them
grandsons and girlfriends alike
mingling as a family
dancing in ever closer union
my head spins and
my heartstrings resonate
simply on the fumes
as love is in the air.

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Written unprompted and posted for Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Live, OpenLinkNight over at dVerse Poets Pub

To Be Pretty For You…

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Dear Diary – As a last resort, to be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes – I heard it was a natural eye make-up but since my eyes are now red-rimmed from the gritty foreign bodies I discover I was wrong. Turnsole is a naturopathic remedy for conjunctivitis and in failing to prepare it properly I now look like a rabbit with myxomatosis!

To catch your eye I have tried Kohl – which really is an ancient beauty aide, I replaced my ‎L’Oréal eye shadow with a more expensive brand because I felt attracting you was worth more – today I must go to work with naked eyes till they heal up…

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Dear Diary – Today he looked at me, asked if I had been crying – he couldn’t bear it! Then he asked me out!!!

Today’s piece is a response to Sanaa‘s Prosery Prompt over on dVerse Poets Pub to write a story in any genre using just 144 words and including the line “to be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes”

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 3

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The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Alexandria

My lovely sister
late of last year
was a large woman
though she didn’t like
the word fat. She had
an enormous appetite
for life, battling on
for three years when they
gave her six months.
One experience
that never tempted her
was to get a tattoo.
A woman tattoo artist told me
when asked about the process
“Ideally,
we like jolly, fat girls!”
Missing her most days…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

And below is the card I received from Alexandria…

I am not allowed to show you Alexandria’s poem but I am intrigued to know more about it if she sees this post… Like many of the PoPoFest writers, Alexandria is from Seattle where the Fest originates from.

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 2

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Tiny Forests of the Imagination

Dear Jill
You live on a coast
renowned for great trees
and whilst we also have
forests, our trees
are smaller though
no less great.

Sometimes I lie down
on the forest floor
and see towering trees
in the mossy landscape
and carry my imaginings
away in camera
and in mind…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

And below is the card I received from Jill…

The idea of the poems is generally that they should be epistolary, relate to the image on the front of the card, and – if your card has been received already by the sender (not possible with the first few obviously) – then it might relate to your poem too. I am not allowed to show you Jill’s poem but I can say that it was a lovely poem about Seattle…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 1

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Aliens
Are these alien plants
their blue-green colours
against a permanently pink
Mars-like sky?
No, they are standard pallette
for a contemporary Creatan
landscape gardener
planted against a bold
and untraditional pink
on the gable end of a
lockdown vacant let
between the beach
and the capacious cave where
villagers celebrate fiestas
in normal times.
Evading unlikely police
we are the aliens here…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

And below is the card that I received from Alison…

The idea of the poems is generally that they should be epistolary, relate to the image on the front of the card, and – if your card has been received already by the sender (not possible with the first few obviously) – then it might relate to your poem too. I am not allowed to show you Alison’s poem but I can say that she probably had received mine and she does reference “a new palette of colours”.

Time Shelter

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I try to ration myself for prompts, perturbed by the idea that I will be swallowed in an endless cycle of call and response, but one that I will not miss each month, is 6 Degrees of Separation. Starting from a given title, each reader of books – no matter when they read them, summons six links to form a chain that finally links from and back to the beginning book.

I confess I do not make enough time for reading books, words bound between covers on paper as opposed to screens, though I always have one novel and at least one non-fiction on the go – however slow. I confess that the Poets Pub is often the guilty party in keeping me from the books though I do not blame or object because beautiful, moving or informative as books are, the pleasure of company and connection are better still.

I’m afraid my To Be Read list rarely coincides with the 6 Degrees prompt and only sometimes am I moved to purchase the recommendation, but recently I fell hook line and sinker for Time Shelter. The book is a metaphorical creation of memory clinics where sufferers from certain kinds of memory loss may steep themselves – full-immersion – in a room recreating an era from their past and get the backroads to their lost memories cleared of debris. A few weeks or months in which a loved one comes to life again is worth so much to relatives grieving the loss of someone who is still alive…

Dear Readers – I bought the book! I have no regrets and I recommend it even to poets – no! especially to poets so they may dive into a novel length metaphorical fiction that explores memory and loss, health and sickness and if that sounds depressing, I assure you that Time Shelter, by Georgi Gospodinov is most entertainingly told – and now your turn to confess – when is the last time you read a fiction by a Bulgarian?

My Six degrees of Separation chain…

This Prose Poem was written for Laura Bloomsbury‘s prompt for  National Buy a Book day over at dVerse Poets Pub…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Landscapes

humanist55

Landscapes were always my preserve
lying in my third-hand bath each night
the water clouded by soap
opaque as certain seas
I raised my knees to tower over
the fjord of water between my legs
I didn’t have my later geographer’s
vocabulary of fjords, rias and alps
the drowned and the truncated
alps – shoulders bulldozed by the ice
flanked by hanging valleys
pouring high waterfalls into space
but what’s in a name
I conjured the landscape anyway
Trapped in bed, off school for weeks
bronchitis, chronic
my dappled woolen blanket
(whatever became of that favourite)
also stood in for the freedom to explore.
Raising my knees again
from foothills to mountains at will
and sometimes with toys to hand
I marshalled my ill-assorted troops
into commanding positions
directing wars in my lap
with my fevered bed-bound brain
Before there was watercolour
before there was travel
before I could drive or even ride a bike
Landscapes were always my preserve…

Posted for  lillian in Poetics over on dVerse Poets Pub who set the challenge of taking you on a walk – well not exactly a walk but…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023