I'm sitting on a train, and happen to notice an over grown field. Those look like wigs I declare. My three year old gazes at his reflection in the glass, rolls his eyes, and sees a dinosaur.
The Farming Forecast
South southeast, veering wet,
good, Whigfield tufted sheep
craw chewed, styled to taste
last year's chic. Yellow green
sods, wind blown, too big boots,
head swollen, thistled through.
Crow puddled islands, apple
beaked, nasal juice, laps up
the scaled legs. Trips unwary
sea grey, oven ready, mitten
warm, gamboling lamb, good.
The origin of the poem goes back a few days, to the Habanparanoiaera, which aside from being a bit of fun, was a rather useful exercise in rhythm. Left unchecked my internal metronome tends towards the rattling of trains as the drum. In an effort to break this, a three beat waltz was chosen, with a line structure of one syllable two syllable balanced with two syllable one syllable words. It's odd what you think of you think of trying to coax a toddler through the freezing wind to the station.
So I have the meter and the structure in place, and by chance the field rolls past the train window.
Sheep tufted, chewed wig
field styled, thistled through
As my son traced the outline of his nose upon his mirror, the flow of words ran down the page; deliberately hard sounds, terse, made up where necessary, ick, ock, eek, uck, without regard for sense or meaning.
As the train passed through the back gardens of Menston the memory of watching a crow eat apples became useful.
Crow apple, beaked craw
sweet nasal, scaled juice
After the trip to buy birthday presents, and the forlorn NLP to not blurt out the contents of the bag to his brother, replete with chocolate bribery, the task came to rearrange the list, like fridge magnets; without it sounding like cryptic crossword clues. *light bulb* shipping forecast...
Later work-shopping at the Pig Pen in an act of generosity I rearranged the text of someone's poem,
She finds I entombed
in amber, on the shelf among her novels.
I really would like to thank ChristopherSea, as he gave me the image of 'melting snow blue' for Come Leaves Burst, in his advice to someone else on watercolour painting, and my rearrangement of his words - magpie theivery if you will - fridge magnet like, combined with La Chasse, got my hand tapping out the beat, my mind connecting the words, and soon my Biro up on points....
Bossy
She finds I more entrapped
in amber, on her shelf among her novels.
Trophy books of sappy learning,
enforce, preserve, her want of faith.
Smooth to the touch
each spine unbroken
relents it's place
upon her shelf
rests for coffee
upon the table,
unread,
unknown, it listens,
to committee exchanges, reportage,
repartee, lapsang souchong,
agree with me, brittle built
petty needs
Polish them bloody, validate,
menstruate, incorporate, repatriate,
but don't piss take.
The dictionary laughs to learn
that henceforth, clipped speech
shall be known as Clition.
The missus doesn't like the word 'menstruate'. Specific to the poem, not in general.
I'll leave regular readers to spot the V-effect, duality, art of the ordinary little jokes, and maybe the poetry of hate. For myself I shall revel in the visual pun of Clition's peripheral resemblance to Clinton.
Clipperty Clop.
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Cue random picture to Botox the Facebooks....
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