NaPo 11: 8 April - Snowdrop 4.4: False Dawn

(A day late ... so sue me!)

Snowdrop 4.4: False Dawn

She runs like the dogs, digging her hands
deep within tussocks as she tugs herself forward.

"I am not mad, and this is not a dream.
The world's not right tonight, no doubt of that,
but I cannot - will not - accept the facts
my eyes report: lies! Lies and schemes
to make me think I've gone insane. Stop, words!"

She runs like the stag, each step a bound
surging her up to the summit line.

"I know these chalks and flints, my soils - they must
hug the Marshlands, my home is there ... so trust
what you know, not what you've seen, or felt, or heard."

She runs like a woman wounded, exhausted,
the limp of her limbs lurching her higher.

"I am not mad, and this is not a dream.
Look! Just a few more steps and then I'll hit
the top; I'll see the marsh, the sun half-sliced
by the sea and Dungeness and this will seem -"

She runs ... and then she runs no more.
A shaft of light shatters on her face

"- a nightmare terror, soon forgotten. Grit
your teeth and push, push, push for your life!"

the coronal hues of a christmas dawn
and she falls, fractures, fissions, dissolves

and sinks into the soil - a silhouette, a shadow,
a space, a moment, a memory ... gone.

Rik's 5-step plan for becoming a poet.

Following on from the inane advice offered by Maria Shriver on how to become a poet, and served up here in addition to the much more vital and pertinent advice on the same supplied by Jim Behrle, please find below Rik's patented, guaranteed five step program on how to become a poet.

1. Learn to listen. Honestly, this rule isn't just the first step towards becoming a poet. It is in fact one of those basic, fundamental rules of life, like teaching yourself to like people (however self-centred and mean they might be) and making an effort to give people hugs - even when they smell like they've peed their knickers and forgotten to change them for five straight days. And it's not just about what people say: it's how they say it, and why they say it, that's important. Equally important is learning to listen to the silences between the talky bits. It's language, see, and without language you ain't got no poetry ... because poetry's more than just a bunch of words.
    
2. (This rule is the most important rule of all. Read it many times before going on to the next rule, 'kay?) Learn to enjoy reading poems. Because, when it comes down to it, if you don't enjoy reading poems, then why the fuck would you want to write one?
    
3. Learn to enjoy writing poems. This is the bit where you get to join in with other people and have a go at writing stuff, sharing stuff, tearing the shit out of each other's stuff, taking the time to learn - together - what works as poetry, and how to get your words to work as a poem. It's also the time to learn (on your own, without the influence of friends, mentors and peers) what sort of poetry doesn't work for you. Learning that you don't need to enjoy every poem ever written, and you don't have to like the same poems as your friends and heroes, is a really, really important lesson to learn.
    
4. Learn to walk away from poetry. There will come a day when you wake up and sit down to write something in your notepaddy journal thingy and ... no words appear. The thought of writing a verse or two fills you with - annoyance, displeasure; hatred. And you may look out of the window and see that it's raining heavily outside, with added gales, and the idea of going for a long walk seems a lot more fun than squeezing out your daily wordcount. Do it! Put your coat on, and your boots, and walk out of the door. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE take your notepad with you. Leave it. Bin it! Enjoy the release from the drudgery of writing ... and do not feel any shame, for this is not failure. It is success: you've taken the first step on a journey that ends in doing fun stuff that you enjoy doing. Poetry can wait; it will wait. You are the master of your muse, you are the owner of your voice. And you can dictate when it is time to write a poem, and when it is time to do something else.
    
5. Success. Acclaim. The warm respect of your mentors and peers. Prizes. Chapbooks with your name on the front cover. The clapping audience. The rapt attention of ranked students. Yeah, right. Learn to be honest to yourself. If you crave any of the above, then write a novel; become a journalist. Heck, join a garage band or your local Glee club or (whisper it) the Scientologists. Because until you come to accept poetry as its own reward, you ain't never gonna be a poet. Innit!
    

This service announcement has been brought to your screens by Rik Roots. Who is a poet.

NaPo 11: 7 April - Snowdrop 4.3: The Glamour in the Depths

(I know this must be boring the shit out of folks, but 'Snowdrop' has been hanging around my neck, albatross-wide, for a decade now and I want rid of it. And the only way to be rid of it is to finish the bastard thing.)

Snowdrop 4.3: The Glamour in the Depths

Look at the mist: it curls around
a steepled church, its fingers pick
at mortars, at stones - its aim to break down,
dismember, detach and disolve each brick.
Look at the mist as it slowly slicks
the chapel in beadings and moistures unwound
from its essence, its echo heart: it drowns
the lands around in brine so quick
that even to stare is to perish. See
the magical mist, so thick.

Look at the soldiers, tattered and torn,
hidden in a space that will soon disappear.
They scratch at the earth to harvest corn
and some beans in their pods, seeds of the seer.
Look at the soldiers: so thin and folorn,
lost between time, their loss so severe
it drives them past fear to madness - hear
them pray to a god all dressed in thorns
and soot and the peels of paint. See
the soldiers, their tatters unshorn.

Look at the woman: she kneels on a bench.
Her mustard hair sweeps down in locks,
her golden eyes stare up to entrench
the stars in her mind, unwinding clock.
Look at the woman catch at her frock -
her fingers whiten: her head is wrenched
back to expose her neck. Then shock
as blood cascades from veins to drench
her spotless cotton dress. See
the woman collapse from the block.

NaPo 11: 6 April - Magpies

... to celebrate the 20% mark, a rest from Snowdrop. I do love freeverse:

Magpies

It's the way they eye you,
those two-tone bloods
perched in their manor
tree, or dance-formation
spread across the field.

You have it, and they
want it, know, head
cocked, jet-eye wide
and unblinked - and what
they want, they get.

You can't nursery rhyme
these feathers; the asbo
can only handle seven
- secrets never told -
I count eight, ten, twelve.

'We like the cut of you,
and your suit.' They caw
some chuckles as you cross
the road: 'we'll check
your window later, mate!'

NaPo 11: 5 April - Snowdrop 4.2: The Peggy

Snowdrop 4.2: The Peggy

A sash of moss musters around
a cobble of rock. Cables of ivy
and briers clamber about the chalk,
hounding the stream to its hidden source.
Hazels and beeches branch overhead
where a harvest of ribbons and ripened shoes
hang, silently siphoning dampness
from the air. She sits and stares at the pool.
She regards nothing while noticing shapes
between the leaves layering the base
of the pond: a brooch; a pin - a bone?
The halfshapes of offerings hidden in the ooze.

The water slumbers in a slump in the hill:
Old Peggy's Pool. Paintstrokes of salmon
cirrus announce the night's farewell,
arousing the Peggy, who rattles its fingers
across the reeds. It captures a grub
with a snap of its tongue. Something touches
its viscous roof; the red of an eye
appears in its welkin. The Peggy startles,
starts dancing a defence: a dart past the rock;
some arcs in the muds; an etch of patterns
that eddy and whirl. As the waters foul
its form disappears ... the Peggy is gone.

NaPo 11: 4 April - Snowdrop 3.6: Cold Rage

Snowdrop 3.6: Cold Rage

The stone that strikes the spiteful child
is sharp, a flint that flies from her hand
to cut his crown. From the crease of the wound
a bead of sap swells and congeals
then ruptures its sphere; rivulets gel
across his forehead. His cry is harsh
and sudden: a splinter, a snap of bough
trapped and twisted and torn from its stock.

The wealth of wails weakens her fear.
She turns her back on the baffling tableau:
ignore the man and his mock philosophies;
ignore the boy with his bloodless cuts.
Her steps move her from the spitting meats,
the foggy broths in their ferrous cauldrons.
She limps towards the line of the wood,
to the hug of brackens that hide her from bedlam.

NaPo 11: 3 April - Snowdrop 3.4: Below the Meadow

Snowdrop 3.4: Below the Meadow

Her shoulders sag as she shambles behind
the besuited man, her step as heavy
as her dazed thoughts - a thicket of words
and clauses chained into a chant for her loss.

He leads her across the cup of the glade
and down towards a denser patch
of gorse and bracken gathered between
a swatch of leafless silhouette trees.

"I once believed that after death we must
return to God: slough off our skins and lift
our souls to bask in love - and all was good,
just like the diver rising up to breach
the waves, to twist apart his copper head
and dump the weights that hold his feet and chest
to breathe the air of Heaven! He is saved!
Was that your plan, my child, to go back home?"

What was once white now withers on the spit,
his bushy antlers broken by the flames -
a spatchcocked king spun on his bar
by weasel-bodied dogs in their wheel.

A brace of cauldrons as big as a feast,
their bases buried in a bank of embers;
the steams from the pots purl together
like a tablecloth hung from the highest twigs.

"This is our prison, child, for we are trapped
within the mists of this foul hill, where time
has stopped. There is no day, just night and chill,
where trees will stretch their limbs but cannot bud.
No flowers come to bloom in these cold lawns,
and all that ever lights our path is that
repulsive moon! It stalks our star-tacked sky -
its circle never wanes, or dims, or fails."

Some children scream as they charge through ferns
and come to a halt at the hem of the pit.
In the skittering light their skins seem painted
in a camouflage swirl: one smiles at her

... and from somewhere inside her she discovers a ghost
of a grin: a movement of muscles across
the slack of her cheek; a charm of hope
that arrives unannounced, nervous and fresh.

NaPo 11: 2 April - Snowdrop 3.3: The Tall Gentleman

Snowdrop 3.3: The Tall Gentleman

"If I may say, you have the look of one
who's newly come to our accurséd realm.
Is this not what you prayed for? No, it seems
you've found confusions, madness - horrors spun
beyond uncharted hells: it will not stop!"

"I cannot breathe, and yet as seconds pass me by
my chest expands and air moves into me
- and out again - my lungs are devotees
of habit: in and out they go, but why?"

"What do you know of ghosts? Your disbelief
is noted, child, and yet that's what we are!
Some say that death is final, we collapse
oblivious at that last lunge for air,
and once we breathe no more there is no more:
a sleep so deep that none can wake again,
an oubliette of bones and rotting flesh
is all that marks our time upon this world -

"if only it were true: such happiness
is not for us unfortunates to know."

"I'm dead. I must be dead: my breath is ice;
I sit on muddied ice and ice encrusts
each stalk of grass ... are you dead too? I trust
nothing. Not ears or nose or fingers. Eyes?"

"How did I die? I choked upon a bean -
a stupid end for one as great as me!
And yes, I know we breathe: the mists exhaled
are part of where we are, and hunger too."

"They lie to me. They tell me I'm outside
barefoot and dressed for bed and yet I know
I'm dead - or knocked out cold by robbers, theives -"

"I've not yet told you where we are! Not Hell,
my child, for devils do not dance around
our roast pit fires with tridents in their hands.
And though I know some folk with tails, they are
not forked, and both their feet have heels and toes -"

"- perhaps I'm mad, not dead. I'm still inside
the house, hallucinating nightmares. So ...
what must I do to break apart these reves?"

NaPo 11: 1 April - Snowdrop 3.2: Buda Tiger

Snowdrop 3.2: Buda Tiger

She sprawls on a paddock of spangle grass
enclosed by a wicker of wind-sculpted trees
that stencil against a grim, pearlescent
spelter of clouds sponging the light
from the chill curve of an enchanted moon.

"Tonight is a time for a story or two,
a song and a dance and a drink - or a few!
There's many a legend that I could relate:
of wreckers and pirates; of lovers and fools
of Owlers and Excisemen keen to debate
the rights and the wrongs of a tax on our wool;
- but rather I'm minded to sing an old yarn
of Buda, the Tiger at Dawn.

A thicket of shanks and thighs surrounds her:
a collision of people in lines and knots
snatching at gossip and snagging glances
as they parade the field. A puddle moats
the dolmen slab where the smuggler chants.

"From chaos she pounced like a stripe of despair,
the pet of Lord Shiva Destroyer I swear.
Her paddock was jungle and mountain and plain;
her jaws were the jangle and rattle of hurt -
for when she went hunting none could restrain
the beast from her progress and none could divert
her claws from their throat: upon tides of slick gore
came Buda, great Tiger of War."

She cannot cry, or call for help:
her throat is as dry as the thistle heads
anchored to their stalks by ice and time
and the loss of light; she lets her tongue
poke at her lip, peeling coldsores.

The story is nonsense to her numbed ears:
she remembers a room dismembered by the roots
and buds and saps and sighs and chants
of an impossible woman woven from bark;
she remembers dogs dragging at her flesh.

"'A saviour we need,' cried the people, 'a leader
of courage and skill beyond measure to speed her
demise. For the Lord has deserted our side:
he rides on her back, a destroyer of life
and love and all hope and desire. We hide
and still she uncovers our havens - this strife
must stop! Will not one of us stand up and kill
old Buda, dire Tiger of ills?'"

A long shape blocks the blur of her sight:
He stands so tall, this summit of a man,
with clothes that talk of class and money
and learning hewn from the halls and greens
of a distant city with dreamy spires.

Wowee

... haven't checked those feed thingies for the handful of blogs I subscribe to for 30 days. 800 posts to read? Heck! Maybe it's time to prune my feedlist.

I'm surprised I managed to last 30 days without checking up on everybody. I know I ought to be nosier more concerned about folks, but I've been busy - planning a new life and stuff. Comming up with whizzo mad ideas for things to sell and promote. That sort of thing.

Starvation: it's the new black, innit!