Edinburgh-related kind of ish

Another poem, a day late. Time flies.

Beasties

Put in mind of a rollicking bonfire
we kindled with handfuls of bracken,
and our drowsiness in its quilting light,
I invite you to leave the rumpus and racket
of the city’s summer liturgy of flames,
to leave a legion of groping arms,
to leave behind even your blood-red
body-paint, your coal-black face-paint,
to find the burnt-out spot from last night
and to impress once more with our presence
the home of migrant barnacle geese,
oystercatchers, this perpetual sunrise.

nom nom

The cricket is back on! There's a very slim chance that England could win this one - they need to make a high score (500?) and skittle the aussies (can they get all 10 in two sessions?), but it'll likely be a draw. Still, there's been some decent batting, though they've been making a score then getting out cheaply far too often. On the other hand, a 1-0 lead going into the last two isn't a bad position.

Poem? Poem.

Two Days Later

Don’t offer to store your squeeze’s junk.
Don’t schlep a scanner through town,
the cables are fried, you’ve nothing to scan.
Before you borrow her Rimbaud and Rilke
green-light-it that they’re both translated
and legible. By all means take the wine.
But for the love of Saint Christopher,
don’t unfold the neat green throw that holds
the red-wool plaits from her hair as the air
of her scent expires, packed in a grip with a snap
of her smiling, as grateful are you are to be found.
Don’t be surprised if you wish you’d taken more.

Another tomorrow, then a break. Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Here's a real-life panel from Action Comics #377

Yep, it's time for a whole new month of fresh material. Hand-in date for the final project is the 21st of August, so expect a fair bit of new stuff in the upcoming three weeks, then a good long sabbatical from writing bizniz. For now, here's a completely new poem.

The Night Before

Your hold was as strong on my arm
as mine was round your belly and breasts
when I woke in the night and, still dreaming,
saw a face between your pillow and hair
and made a noise like the heart inhaling
that half-woke you. The roll and rise
of your rest grew shallow, then crept back
like a cat or peaceful breeze. Your hold
was strong on my blood-numb arm.
I held my breath and dozed until dawn.

New poem tomorrow,
Dave.

Face/Off

Check out me and my face at the SPL blog! Also this poem that I made!

Better Words

hear the melody of names
blood-streams incantations
sound them like a spell

shearwater meadow brown
cormorant yellowtail

go topless in saltwater
feel the blaze in the eyes

the breeze tangling your hair
fingers tangled in your hair

palmfuls of horse chestnut
explosions of jackdaws
love and grassy jeans

witch-hazel valerian
ragged robin lady’s bedstraw

god or a thing
for which there is no better
word than god

the word that says there is one life
and we are in it

on your tongue
and spreading like petals
in the palms of your hands

is this dwindling list of flowers
may it be forever autumn

One more tomorrow...
Dave.

Mo Poems Mo Problems

I've moved flat! It is lovely and overlooks the quiet(er) end of the Royal Mile. I have also been busy and I will share with you the products of my business.

Here's an old poem re-written to fit better with modern times.

Solstice

It wasn’t the way the tree lit up
like a blush in the bay window,
or the way its arms spread like a household god,
glowing green and content with his work,

it wasn’t the way it pressed on the glass
that pressed against the darkest nights in winter,
or how at times it was less tree than beacon,

nothing is ever that simple. It wasn’t even the way
that by the solstice, the fairy lights my sister left
flickered like the embers and ashes in the fireplace,

then stopped, or the way my father and I
half-filled the half-lit house with midnight rites
over the burnt offering of the adapter, but
the likeness of the lights that burned on our eyes

then burned a little longer.

More tomorrow? Yes. More tomorrow.
Dave.

POST TITLE HERE

So Quianna made me some cupcakes. They were good. Poem good.

Afters

This is a cupcake, not a muffin,
muffins have no icing – this has enough in

to make a grown man saccharine, or at least
a more excitable beast. This palm-span feast

of heavy cream, shortening, sugar and butter
and eggs and god-knows-what has me shudder-

ing across the line where words begin to falter,
where desire holds sway. The glisteny way the water-

lily-white frosting is bursting with the lush
insistence, here I am, its brush-

stroked largess and malleable lines
looming beyond its papery confines

and stippling, drippling from your skin-bare
wrists, enlarge your curlicue smile as you declare

here you are.

No poems tomorrow. I don't know what I'm gunna do.
Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Another Poem For Your Eyes And, Maybe, Your Heart

Time for a quick blog: director's redux of an old old poem.

Oystercatchers

I’d clocked it earlier and not realised,
the chubby stroller on the loch-shore, duck-like
and energetic in flight, was the same oystercatcher
I’d imagined or remembered years before,

for whose thin bill I’d confused a cormorant portrait,
for whose chunky flanks I’d muddled a lanky heron’s
scything lift off. Now it sat, dumpy and peaceful
and bobbing to the ripples that tripped across the loch.

A corridor of hedgerows opens onto the rocks
and sand dusting the spray – so I’d written –
as the oystercatchers loiter in the shallows,
waiting for the water to offer its secrets.

Yeah, right. This one was loath to wet its feet.
As I inched towards the water, it turned
its head, showing its remarkable profile,
or just turning. I froze with a squelch.

It opened its wings like a shrug. “Oystercatcher?” it said.
“Yeah, right.” It sloothered leisurely away.
When I told this story later, no one believed it,
or no one said they believed it.

Thanks for reading, more tomorrow!
Dave.

Tycho Brahe Is Too Hot For TV

Above: the funniest comic book frame of all time?

Three news poems coming up, stay tuned. This one is about a chap called Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer who studied Copernicus and taught Kepler. He lost his nose in a duel and wore a gold one to parties. He was one kickin' rad 16th century noble. There's an old pseudo-Donne love poem I tried to write that incorporated him, but it didn't work. So I handed the stage to Tycho.

How Tycho Brahe Made The Sky

The stars are laid out like a glowing stage
on the papers that litter his workbench.
Tycho is trying to see the whole picture.

He has grown old in observations,
spherical and uncertain and alone tonight.
Tycho places his pen on the workbench.

Outside, the night is quiet as a dead thing.
Mice, maybe. Maybe owls. The wind.
The stars are all laid out

like white specks on a huge black workbench.
This much is true: the stars wander,
Jupiter orbits the sun. But the sun

must orbit the earth, that much
is true. Tycho studies his papers,
tries to see the whole picture.

The stars are laid out like a story,
like a joke by whatever lies
behind them. His apprentice doubts him,

his skill, his work, his world.
But the world is too sluggish, too different
in essence to start working now.

Tycho takes his pen and looks outside.
The stars are laid out like the stars
on the papers that litter his workbench.

He steps to the window, bellows
at mice, maybe. Maybe owls. The wind.
The stars are all laid out.

Tycho tries to see the whole picture.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Better Late

Gosh time certainly flies. I have sent off more copies of my chapbook with special messages inside.

This one didn't really work on blogger because it has some fancy formatting that blogger wasn't happy about. So I'm going to try attaching it as a picture because I am on the BLEEDING EDGE OF TECHNOLOGY.



[click for larger image]

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Dammit Federer

Andy Roddick is my champion.

I promised more poems so here is the fulfilment of that promise. One that has been pretty thoroughly reworked. Thanks to RVW for the first line.

Mutants

We were twins when she took my arm –
diabolists, naked dancers, a rucking swarm

clambered into sundown-spattered air
and I stared at her, my head stirred –

when I was there to see, to be her first kiss
and she was with me at home every Christmas

and her voice was the earth, so was mine,
and her mouth met the earth that was mine

and on her tongue that was every river
and the puddle we tripped over or nearly over

were the motions of every dance,
every dancer, street light and bar light

and in the shifting light of a new year
her tawny eyes, her Indias of spice, cold silver,

looked down at the feet that were not my feet
then the eyes that were only mine, and yet –

even as each door of our twin cells closed
and the sky paled to eye-blue over the clothes

we had discarded – I settled down in my casing
and simmered to the accent I still have trouble placing.

Til tomorrow,
Dave.

Change We Can Blog About

So on Wednesday some folks from creative writing put together a poetry/prose night upstairs in the Meadow Bar. The guys did awesome, particularly Natalia, Struan and Niki, who were all doing a public reading for the first time (whoo!). The crowd was lapping that shit up. Honorable mention for Aiko's mad performance skills. I opened with some old poems and a couple of new(ish) ones, one of which is here.

Mutant

Taking my arm in the simmering buzz
of the crowd, through the diabolo-spinners
and gyring, half-naked drummers,
she led me under canopies
and curtains that climbed into sundown,
staining the air red and purple, stirred
with the neon bar-lights that awoke hot-
humming, weaving charms in the eyes.

Her mid-Atlantic accent melded
with the calls of rucking bodies,
reflecting soundwaves from London
students and New York sightseers;
she tripped among puddles
and the bedlam of dancers, her skin
highlit and spinning away
from my melding mid-British accent.

Once the band sent the crowd re-singing
the setlist through the streets I found her
hands, found her pallor under the moonlight –
her tawny eyes, cold silver, her Indias of spice –
and exchanged nights, eye-freckled and glowing
in the shifting light of a new year,
til our voices reflected in each other’s ears
and she might have been my twin.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Dang

I was sure I had more material than I actually do. Shucks. Here's a rewrite of my first ever poem.

Giant’s Causeway

Mist crawled upwards from the surface,
the cluttered sky turned grey and we retired
from tectonic sea and gathering smirr
to a pub you knew. Only the birds knew
what the sea had said, what it kept to itself.

Earlier that morning a hundred feet above the basalt,
I caught my breath and followed you
a few steps behind along the machair.
You gave nothing away as you gathered
palm-sized stones from a cairn by the cliff-face.

I named haresfoot, razorbills, chimney-stacks,
causeway-tales. You sent skimmers over
the cliffs as I yammered, disguising
cover-stories in the tide’s howl and skirl.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Greeks

Turns out I'm doing okay! Here's a new one based on the Odyssey. That's Sean Bean in the picture, being a legend.

Anticleia

I

Lacking options, he summons
the weak-necked dead,
hoping for counsel
and direction home
from long-winded Tiresias.

Lacking a spade, Odysseus hollows
out a sump with his sword,
sweetens the soil with honey-wine,
wheat-flour and water.

His mother, Anticleia,
breezes by his elbow
without meeting his eye,
as oblivious to their reunion
as any of the dead.
He reaches out to her
for the first time in years.
His arms pass through her like mist.

Anticleia danders on
among the crowd, still avoiding his gaze
like an embarrassed acquaintance.
With a sacrifice her eyes are opened. Heart
in bloodied mouth, she dithers for words.

II

Her voice barely holds long enough
to tell the whole sorry tale:
Penelope harassed by lechers;
Telemachus herding pigs;
Laertes nothing but skin and bone
in a miserable gardener’s get-up.
She stretches her ghost arms to his flesh
and bones and glides through them like air.

Odysseus gathers his nerves and speaks,
“What evil brought you here?
Some wasting disease? Artemis’ dart?”
“There was no violence about it, son.
I lost heart waiting for you to come home.”

Strong-shouldered Odysseus stumbles
to his knees and reaches for the hems
of his mother’s robe, which vanish like dew.

See you tomorrow,
Dave

Small poems are fun to write

So in two hours' time I'll be going to a supervisor meeting to see how much work these things need before they turn into something awesome. I'm quite fond of a bunch of them, maybe because they remind me of a good time or someone I like. This one does neither of those things, it is about birds, snow, and seeds.

[Rolling back the blind uncovers]

Rolling back the blind uncovers
a courtyard changed by snow

(last night a loft of pigeons
patrolled a continent of seed,

baiting coal tits or blue tits
that hustled round their hindfeathers,

pecking at the scraps), breath melting
in rorschach blots on the cold glass.

Hasta mañana,
Davíd

Do-Over

Today's poem asks what could have happened if things had been different.

Mulligan

She looks at him with a tender kind of sadness.
As she walks backward through the closing door
they grow unfamiliar through similar dreams
of things they may some day do. Fingers pulled
together as if by magnetic opposites
recall the times they will warm ill-heated beds,
crooked inside each other like lightning bolts.

Crosses fade from refurling calendars
that survey a systematic withdrawal
of tokens of affection, habits of speech,
a spreading air of innocence as they sleepwalk
into mutual ignorance.
A night will come
when the last rough edges are filed into smoothness,
as lips lean close, then further (much further) away.

Thanks for reading, more tomorrow!
Dave.

By golly it's that time again

February has been obscenely busy. BUT it means I've backlogged seven brand new poems for y'all to have a look at. Also Ireland beat England and that makes me happy, even if the game was a lousy kick-a-thon. ALSO the new edition of Read This is available all over Edinburgh, and online here. This is a poem about getting it wrong. Or maybe not.

Souvenir

Sitting elegant above the mantle,
simple as silk, a crafted sword,
he fingers the blade, grips the handle

of beaten iron, as woven and tangled
as the history of his fathers, each of whom had sworn
allegiance on what sits above the mantle.

Renouncing roman decadence, their eagles, furs and sandals,
the chieftain keeps his clansmen, who, at the given word,
will finger the blade and grip the handle

to rout imperial menaces, whose angle
of attack appears absurd.
Sitting elegant above the mantle

is the rapine of his armies, every bracelet, every bangle
further proof – if proof were needed – of the prowess of his horde.
He fingers the blade and grips the handle

of the souvenir he bought in Reykjavík which may dimly hold a candle
to the real McCoy, or Thordarsson, or however it occurred.
Sitting elegant, unsullied, in a crook above the mantle,
he fingers the blade and firmly grips the handle.

See you tomorrow,
Dave.

Moooooovin'

Moving house can be stressful, I hear.

Last pome of three, hope it's been a kickass January.

So

A short coffin on wheels
raised to rib-height by spider-wire legs
between the pulpit and the rows
of wooden benches.

Sarcoma
eating
into the books you’d read
your hard-headed sense of devotion
decades
planning holidays to America
decades
watching costume dramas and The West Wing
eating decades
of sacrifice and stiff-arming self-doubt
through decades
spent herding, corralling young minds.

A poet-saint
worth less faith than you offered
has his last say
on this dry winter morning
you might have loved.

Strange men
from the directors come
to wheel you from the church
in the short wooden coffin on retractable legs
we will later burn.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Steelers v Cards: Superbowl XLIII!

As promised! Movin' flat today.

Riddle: What has two thumbs and an awesome flat?
[points to self with thumbs] This guy.

Reception

The CBS broadcasters cut to commercial
as the opening drive goes three-and-out,
and the defense – led by the six-four two-twenty
linebacker in his eighth year out of Syracuse –
mobilizes at midfield, where the hand-poised ball
is torpedoed to the punter whose name
the announcers have yet to fathom,
sent hurtling
end over end
deep into the floodlights
and falling snow – inside the ten, inside the five –
as returning cameras determine
where the next play begins,
where the quarterback sends
his rookie receiver on a fade route
(finding one-on-one coverage wide on the side
the safety wasn’t watching),
the ball arching,
falling across ribbon-white lines, interrupted
by black-gloved hands – complete in open field! –
and carried through an elation of noises,
thousands of voices,
into the snow-drifted
endzone.

A Bientot,
Dave.

Today's Clever Title is Re:Visions

Over the next few days I'm going to be putting up a few workshopped poems, two that have been up already - Crags and Reception (formerly Catch) - and one new one...
Superbowl on Sunday!

Crags

And now I am a jackdaw alighted on a rock
above the city, bunnyhopping toward the cliff face.

I hoke at the wet stone,
shake the fine rain from my feathers,

and already my memories
are dripping off in runnels.

The castle, the highrises, the alleys
grow abstract with each fluttered heartbeat.

The river meets the sea and the wind
pushes me softly, suddenly over the edge

and I open my different mouth
and I open my different arms.

Til tomorrow,
Dave.

Et Finalement

I know it's been more like eight days than a week, but hey! Hope it's been enjoyable. It may be a little while before there's any new material up here, but I'll try and make it sooner rather than later.

Edit: OMIGODOMIGOD I got published by Gloom Cupboard Jesus

Root

Many Sundays ago I was carrying
pot plants from all corners of the house
to the kitchen, covering the sink and each flat surface
till the room was green and the air was thick.

(In a smaller kitchen in the early nineties
my mother measured the fertiliser
in droplets that billowed beneath the surface
in a muddy miniature watering can.

I stood on a stool and tipped the contents
round the roots, recolouring the soil
as water leaked out in dirt-clogged rivulets –
‘That’s enough now, David’)

The ivy creeper from the sill on the landing
had been overlooked in our shiny new home.
As I dropped it beside the compost heap
I wondered how I’d ever figured out
when to stop.

Ciao for niao,
Dave.