I realised today that my attack on Ivor yesterday was not the first instance of such wickedness. I stumbled across another such reported incident of over a year ago, and I publish it again here by way of confession, particularly as I seem to be under fire this morning over matters of questionable morals …. and this is something of a low water mark.
I admire poets. I read a bit of poetry here and there from people who seem to know what they are doing. I can’t claim to understand all of it and it’s hard, sometimes, for me to tell the difference between the poetry which goes way over my head and the poetry that just doesn’t make sense. I was never good at poetry during school. But that goes for a lot of things …. Most of all, though, I admire poets for their bravery. The very best poems come from poets who are willing to hang their emotions out for everyone to see. Now, I don’t really know how to write poetry, but even if I did I just don’t think that I’m capable of such bravery. I prefer to hide my emotions behind a sort of slap-stick carnality. I read a poem from Ivor, here. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with Ivor’s body of work and the deep well of emotion that he draws from. I was inspired by this one sufficiently to create an alternative version – not as any sort of competition but rather to indicate that I keep my own well of emotion tightly sealed, and that’s why, perhaps, I will never be called a poet ….
I was thinking this morning (for reasons undisclosed I have a lot of time for thinking at present) about what role, if any, I serve in this strange digital space that we all share.
I have thus been forced to acknowledge that much of my time sailing upon the high seas of WordPress is in the search for hidden treasure to pilfer and deface. I am a poetry pirate. When the poetry of others comes into my view I tend to leap aboard before stealing all the good ideas and escorting the original owners off the gangplank and undertaking a shameless defacing of their vessel and then setting it adrift as an unrecognisable piece of wreckage.
There have been lots of victims. You know who you are.
Sorry about that.
My latest victim was Ivor, who you may know as a fellow countryman of mine and published poet of some renown (any brief investigation will reveal that I have not published a word myself, and am a multiple university dropout). I want to publicly thank Ivor for accepting the invasion in the spirit that it was intended.
Ivor was relating, via his poetry, his passing thoughts whilst lying in his hospital bed. Recalling all the wonderful drugs that they hand out freely in hospital as a source of inspiration, I immediately leapt into bed with Ivor and set about my work.
With little other than negative thoughts in my mind this morning I decided to take a gentle poke at Kate who wrote a poem about a painting, (an illusion of an illusion). I just wrote a third layer with a hint that only through the act of tearing through the words and the canvas might you find reality, but that you might not like what you see.
I discovered that the artist originally in question was the late Fay Collins who was, without a doubt, a rare talent with brush in hand, as can be further seen (scene) here and I certainly meant no offence to her.
…… I was just fooling around
*
A painting’s such a cruel deceit
No ocean there to wash your feet
No blue sky to sit beneath
No Eiffel Tower, no Scottish Heath
No sun to warm your naked skin
No gentle breeze to sooth within
No wine to taste, no rose to smell
The colours are all chemical
There’s nothing three-dimensional
A magic trick. A lie to sell
Ms Collins! Stand aside, my dear
We’ll fall for no such magic here
Your charming, calming circus acts
Are hiding all the horrid facts
*
And just to give you a further idea of my current state of mind (I don’t produce it as an excuse, because I fear that it may be permanent) I wrote something else yesterday …. it was part of an imaginary conversation between two people. One of those people may have been me.
The scene could be anywhere, but certainly somewhere poorly lit. It’s probably a dingy bar that smells of beer and disappointment. At least one of the participants is smoking a cigarette and watching it slowly rise and disperse itself over the low ceiling. There is a bored female singer in the background, painfully forcing out the last song of the night.
“Micheal. Life is shit and then you die. We all know that, of course, though some of you delusionists would like to pretend otherwise. Everything is fake and even those fake things gets recycled into more fake things. The perfect apple in the fruit bowl is made of plastic. Every colour in the world is cheaply produced in some horrid sweatshop factory by virtual slave labourers who struggle to keep their own children fed, let alone happy, just so that the whole thing can go on and on and on. And if you look at it all from a certain angle you can see right through the cheap veneer and you realise that there’s nothing on the other side. Everything is just a cover up. Life is some sort of surrealist painting hastily slapped on canvas to hide the void. But from the moment you first catch a glimpse through the fading brush strokes you can see it forever. And are forever after tempted to jump.”
His colleague watches the last of the smoke gather around the flickering light above him before crushing the cigarette stub beneath his heel and into the carpet.
“I can see that you’re beginning to cheer up, at last,” he murmurs.
Richmond Road 