Sunday, November 30, 2008

Sea Legs



Writing poetry is fun partly because of the way it gets round to what it's "really" about. I'm writing about an empty house but I'm talking about say isolation or exile or what have you. So it lends itself well to insular kinda folks. But it also indulges that insularity, which is not only generally intolerable but leads to shitty poems. Poetry is written primarily for other people.
This poem is part of an exchange with the Edinburgh College of Art, and is based (loosely) on the picture above, by Toby Cook.

Sea Legs

Maybe that’s all that there is.
Maybe he runs through the streets
along roads over bridges on railway
lines that fly over sleeping cathedral
towns lit up blue green like swamp
mushrooms tra-la like coral like Christmas tree
lights like the Forth Road Bridge a frame
over night-bound trawlers young man finding
his sea legs tra-la cutting shadows
in the sky far beneath the feet of a man
on the moon-blackened bridge
regarding all that there is.

Thanks,
Dave.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

It's you! It's me! And there's dancing!




Check this out first:
You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos

So I wrote a little thing about this music video.

‘You! Me! Dancing!’ by Los Campesinos!


I

It barely matters
that our morningwatch
of echoing major chords
will sweep away the ghosts
of thorn-mingled ruins –

our mutual smallness remains.
Sun glares over the mountains,
houses rise like bruises
from the sickly patchwork
of hesitant string-picks.

How can you understand
the sunrise forging warehouses
from the shadows, building
inevitable momentum
from a frenzy of dischords?

II

Draw back from our disco of nuclear beats –
blasting this sphere to a cosmic glitterball –
which reminds me of no earthly thing
more than your eyes under the flashing blue
and violet light.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.