Where are the days of our young passion Where are the parts participated In more than some or other fashion In fact, in lovemaking delighted Where are the springs in our eager steps Crossing the threshold of our new doorstep Painting our very special bedroom Yet there it was came the cloud of doom From early, unknown trauma, came down To settle like blight on our good life Occasional sunbeams and some strife Now forty years and more gone around Where are the lovers are they still there Still searching for sunbeams, loving pair?
This is a carving I made for my late sister and brother-in-law for their wedding present – it is based on a drawing by Eric Gill.
Title your poem with the question – where are the/they… Use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical Employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia Suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore; Employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet
I wake in “my” bedroom also my dressing room and study to my right, from a huge shelf hang my unenclosed clothes a subdued rainbow – a male palette with chests of drawers beneath for more clothes and craft materials
Two bookcases bracket the bed their shelves double stacked with precious books and on a pile of storage containers my to-be-read are perilously perched next to my desk – the space beneath full four ukuleles lean against a bookcase yearning to be played one shelf above them loaded with music
The ceiling is high since horses once resided here and through the window our cobbled yard is packed with plants and trees in containers their aspirations to growth also kept contained Mock Orange, Olive and Winter Jasmine now struggling with alternating Yorkshire rain extended and sun and wind induced drought
Rising I go to the spacious though windowless bathroom also given grandeur by the high ceilings where I had to lower the light for effective illumination and after some time checking emails and doomscrolling on the throne I shave and brush my teeth before breakfast as per the latest thinking…
I look in on my partner asleep at last, in the other large bedroom where I began the night falling asleep as she listens to her talking book and enjoys moments of snuggling up to my back safe now the day is over cut off from the world by an evil disenchantment forced to lie in bed like Brian Wilson she may be asleep now but she knows I am here and will feel safer for it…
I climb the winding stair to the living area once the hayloft where two doors into open air allowed the rapid transfer of horses’ hay at harvest-time Now made safe with Juliet Balconies from which we can survey the backstreet below or the strange sight of our garden yard seen from above at night all a-twinkle with sun-powered magic
The landing at the top of the stairs is a library where recipe books compete for space with novels and therapy books and all open-plan blends seamlessly into dining table kitchen and sitting room all traversed by a great King-post beam in the centre of a roof rising to twelve feet above me I breakfast to the awful news from Al Jazeera garnered from around the world and enough to make me as depressed as my partner if I were not able to take action in polemic poems…
And so I descend to my study and open the computer and work at what the day provides en route I note the cobwebs and dust on the stairs and when they get too bad I will sweep them away but not today our house is upside down in more ways than one…
My first time here on Ten Things of Thankful – introduced by Misky to this space…
One. My partner is in a deep depression which has closed off many of the things we used to do but on Saturday we managed to set out for Whitby which used to be a regular excursion. We stopped halfway at Helmsby and after having lunch, decided Whitby was too far, too busy, so we spent a liitle time in the excellent bookshop before meandering home on the smallest roads I could find…
One. My partner’s friendship bracelets taken as we had coffee in Helmsley…
Two. The book on Friendship from Helmsley Bookshop…
An alternative to buying a card – a ten poem chapbook from Candlestick Press
Three. Given that I spent 20 odd years as a hand-painted Signwriter, I am always delighted to see good examples of the craft which I am sorry to say are few and far between in the UK these days…
Four. One of the landscapes on our meandering route… I sometimes take pictures with a view to later making paintings.
Five. We also stopped in Risplith at G & T’s Ice Creams (they genuinely do make a Gin and Tonic ice cream) and whilst eating our cones in the car, I photographed this weathered paint which may one day come in useful for a background in some graphic work…
Six. For the last two months I have been taking part in the Postcard Poetry Festival challenge which is a project run by Cascadia Poetics in Seattle, Washington. The idea is to write an Epistolary style poem to 31 poets whose address list you are also on – to write about the picture on the card and to relate it to the person who you are writing to, who is of course, a complete stranger. This develops quick improvisation. This year I decided to make postcard-sized paintings and at a rate of 4-6 per weekend I have finished all but four this weekend two of which are below.
Two paintings from photographs taken in Crete during lockdown in 2020.
Seven. I still work 2.5 days a week for which I am thankful both because I need the money and because it keeps me abreast of things I would otherwise slip away from…
I love to photograph repeated items… There is nothing to give the scale of these San Sebastian Cheesecake (otherwise known as Burnt Basque Cheesecakes) but they are full-size cakes awaiting cutting before packing in our factory.
Eight. Barbara and I have booked a holiday for two weeks next month down in Cornwall – what the weather will be is anybody’s guess…
Nine. It was cloudy this morning so the watering of containers in our yard (we don’t have a garden) can wait till I get home this afternoon after my half day work – we have a hosepipe ban so it will take about 60 litres by watering can..
Ten. Healthwise, I am going to get a Lung Health MOT and have also been invited to take part in a Diabetes study out of Oxford University all knowledge is great at 70…
Welcome to TToT (Ten Things of Thankful) blog hop! Join bloggers from all over the world as we come together to share those things that we are thankful for. Ten is in the name, but no one is counting; feel free to link up no matter how many (or few) you can list. Make sure to go read and comment on the posts, too. The TToT has always been big on making this a friendly community, and getting to know each other through posts and comments is a huge part of that. We’re thankful for you!
Speaking truth to power can be frightening that’s the whole idea of all those big men in black uniforms all leather and shoulder pads masks and dark glasses and of course scary looking guns… (Where do they find such types you wonder ready to do the dirty work) Imagine if you dare this sorry lot in the changing room at the end of their shift – they will certainly look a lot smaller out of uniform and you will then recognise the usual suspects of High School bullies
And you may feel yourself to be too small a number knowing as you do that the one in power pays no heed to Polls and if he chanced to think of you at all he would imagine a very small number “So very, very small!” But numbers add up and if you can share the secret password – K1ndness# to find like-minded souls with whom you can conjugate – like times tables and become the very thing that fascists fear “We the People!”
Hani Mahmoud is starving his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza on Al Jazeera throughout the conflict but now, shrinking like a prune his face tells its own story
Today he covers the shortage of blood blood is life and however much iron Gazans fortified their souls with there is not enough iron in their blood for it to be usable and besides they are too weak to be able to give blood without fainting
Israel calls a special meeting of the UN Security Council to complain about the starvation – the starvation of hostages and calls it an act of propaganda! No doubt there was a time when hostages were looked after as the bargaining chips they are but now there is not enough food even for the captors whatever sympathy he may feel for the family member who voices the complaint and pleads for the return of his relative, the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes that Israel is starving a whole people
In other news today it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies
So much for the “War to end all wars” and we are come to live in the moral wasteland…
Hani Mahmoud screenshot from a broadcast of Al Jazeera
I had not watched Al Jazeera news for a month or so, partly because the news about Gaza was moving more into the area of political and world people’s awareness and response, but also I confess to emotional overload. Yesterday, also the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, I watched Newshour on the station and was shocked and upset to the point of tears, to see how Hani Mahmood’s face reflects his own malnutrition as well as the ongoing stress of reporting from Gaza for Al Jazeera. The screenshot above is from a while back, but I urge you to view Al Jazeerah news, not only for its coverage of the genocide in Gaza, but for a different perspective (non-American/Eurocentric) – even their weather forecasts cover all areas of the world…
There are songs too sad for me to sing to sing that is, without tearing up and who can wait for the singer to recover and compose themselves sufficiently to continue…
At first there was just one song I couldn’t manage Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” – I could listen but when I tried to sing it -my throat closed and my eyes watered – I could not perform
As years go by more songs are added to the canon of those I cannot get through without weeping and often I cannot listen either – are they songs of mourning, laments, requiems
nothing so formal, but tales of the human condition the mere brevity of which is tragedy enough, or the near impossibility of finishing a shared life at exactly the same moment…
Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colours” might be considered kitsch if it were not true or true enough and I weep to hear the sweetness of her sometime collaborator Linda Ronstadt who has lost her voice to Parkinson’s and sings only within the loving circle of family. The exquisitely sad songs of Charlie Dore – a woman pretending her lover lives on the other side of the world in “Australia” so as not to acknowledge his abandonment – he must be sleeping while she endures the day… The rubato moments when Patsy Cline’s rich voice almost catches, falters, as it lays down the tragic tales of loss, longing and betrayal sung to cheerful melodies that belie the sentiment. Joni Mitchell wishing for a “River” to skate away on surely the saddest Christmas song Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” a lump rises in my throat even as I write and to think of all those who left us too soon their lives driven, and driven down, by the need to perform, entertain, be loved… Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Prince John Lennon, Jim Morrison Ian Dury who sang of “Sweet Gene Vincent” “Young, and old, and gone…” so many more…
These are the singers and musical moments that undo me…
I used to say that I listened to sad music when I was happy and that happy songs could elevate my lower moods but boundaries blur and I see poignancy everywhere and there are songs too sad for me to sing…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to write about music and this is also the theme for next month’s meeting of my “in the real world” local library poetry group…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us – for Laura’s prompts usually offer a challenge in form, if not in subject – to write about “moments in time that stand out from time; they are the momentous days we recall and revisit, year in and year out as holidays, as anniversaries. Formal or informal, they are replayed in memory…” and as to Form – to use Emily Romano’s Memento poetry style:
Poetry Rules: rhyme scheme abc, abc 2 stanzas 6 lines per stanza 2 tercets (2*3 lines) per stanza syllable count per tercet: 8,6,2; 8,6,2
would you like to play with me says one grubby clothed sticky fingered toddler to another – no question of race or status entertained a playmate is a playmate to be shunned only if they won’t share and play fair
playmates with fluffy tails stride statuesquely on stilettos around the Playboy Mansion of one who either likes to play the field or has commitment issues or perhaps just has a thing for bunnies
my mother gave us no pets to play with – carriers of disease she reckoned – except once she did allow a tortoise but you can’t play fetch with a tortoise nor even give them a squeeze
I ache in the places that I used to play sang Leonard Cohen – he was definitely a player play us a song play with your hair wrap it round your fingers like you mean to wrap me too play with your fan and send secret signals play me like a harp with playful fingers plucking at heart strings gently please for I am still bruised from previous playtimes play all night and play all day play chess like a warrior play Monopoly to practise world domination flirt play sport play game play cos-play and don’t come home if you’ve dared to play away
life is not a rehearsal but they don’t tell toddlers that, when you grow up they’re not playing any more but try to make room for playing somehow some day just to keep you supple keep on playing…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in OpenLinkNight invites us to post a poem of our choice. This poem was written to the monthly theme of my local library group – a small group of poets almost none of whom have an online presence. Keighly Library is one of many in the UK which were funded by Andrew Carnegie the Scottish-born (in poverty) US Steel magnate from the Gilded Age, which presents me with an awkward feeling – he was typically, for the times, exploitative of his workers but then donated huge amounts of money to foster literacy in Britain – grey areas, not black and white.
Anyway, I resolved to try and write about subjects other than the current appalling state of the world and so this topic fitted right in…
Is it a crime to sup on a Sleeper Shark Genus: Somniosus microcephalus the solitary fish swimming in the dark waters beneath the Arctic ice so few and far between this shark is seldom seen but in the photographs captured the curves confirm this clearly is a shark but unlike its cousins – sleek Silvertips the Greenland Shark is no beauty it’s skin blotchy and rough…
On an exchange visit to an Icelandic ladies’ choir did I commit that crime? Our own ladies, scandalised at the first stop on our itinerary a swim in the Blue Lagoon – by naked women brazenly European walking around in the changing room were equally horrified in Reykjavik’s covered market to be offered seagull’s eggs and Rotten Shark – kæstur hákarl a national delicacy but foodie as I am I agreed to give it a go… “Best hold your nose” our host’s advice but not before I’d caught a whiff like ammonia I took a small white cube upon a toothpick and ate nose pinched it was not as bad as some wimpy celebrity chefs have claimed…
I was not told that this was Greenland Shark nor that it is now known to be the longest lived vertebrate thought perhaps to live as long as four to five hundred years one hundred and fifty before the poor creature is ready to breed imagine then it’s lonely search for a mate deep in the Arctic dark and the secret of this shark’s longevity – slow living – snail’s pace metabolism which is why, flesh full of bodily toxins the freshly caught Sleeper is poisonous but the peoples of the Arctic are not ones to waste a food opportunity and so they figured out to bury the shark for six to twelve weeks weighted to press out fluids whereby fermentation detoxifies to feed the nation it’s infamous dish at the midwinter festival þorrablót
Now that the Methuselah nature of the Greenland Shark is known it is not legal to hunt or kill this oldest of fish but fishermen’s bycatch provides sufficient specimens to feed the Icelandic appetite for Rotten Shark – so it was no crime to taste this long-lived being whatever my fellow singers said of the smell, but now that I know of what I ate, I carry the thought swimming in my imagination of this patient, slow-living denizen of the dark depths the Greenland Shark…
