Turquoise Monster

Glittering skin, the sun screen sheen
Bronze torso, firm and trim
Can this be England?

In the summer time
Youth strutting
Well groomed, showing their prim

Parisian cafe sprawl
Across Albion’s pavement
Shoppers in bright colours
Flit from shop to shop

Lazily stroll beneath azure skies
If it wasn’t for those little clouds
And buskers busking out of tune
Would I believe I was home?

My mind is swimming in alphabet soup
Letters clog the synapses
And punctuation tears at my lobes
Syntax is setting down roots between the hemispheres
Hard curved consonants fill the ventricles
Soft airy vowels stuff the cortex
Metric metre measures all the gaps
Structure breaks the blood brain barrier
Shooting me through with toxins
Plot devices prize the axons loose
Verbs block the sodium pumps
Nouns hook the cytoplasm with protein strings
Adjectives pour water on the myogenic pulse
Similes smiles full of teeth at the hypothalamus
Metaphor morphs grey matter
So that I may not think clear distinct thoughts
Now I am drowning in alphabet soup
Now I am the alphabet soup
And now I am eating the alphabet soup
My mind is swimming in alphabet soup

I am hiding safe
In a poisonous jungle
Tentacle petals sway
Pinks and purples
Strong, vibrant
Beautifully deadly

I am hiding safe
In the anemone’s flower
Transparent and small
Who could find me?
Beneath a protective canopy
Ignored, secure

I am hiding safe
As beauty drags
Beauty from the sky
Electric flash of scales
Consumed brutally
To sustain my home

I am hiding safe
From the world
Out there predators wait
But I live within
I just make sure
I am not tasty
Or big
Apathy is my saviour

Here is the video of me singing – I am quiet pregnant in it. There seems to be an issue with it being out of synch – it is not like that on my computer but as soon as the file is uploaded to Youtube it goes funny. So if your the type of person who has difficulty with things being out of synch just close your eyes 😉 and listen!

I once knew a boy
I knew him so well
He had a hurt that was part of him
I asked him to tell
But he bounded it in
Pushed it down deep
Instead of sharing with me
He just shredded his skin
And eyes so bright
They gradually dimmed
Now I’m on my own
With this sorrow in tow
Cos I knew him so well
But not at all
And my heart has a whole
Where he should go
And I knew him so well
And I miss him so
Cos eyes so bright
I shall see no more

He once told me
I was the light that he held
His own special shield
Against a personal hell

Not my boyfriend
Just a friend in need
No more shall I see
Eyes so bright
Smiling at me
And all of these things
I remember of him
Playing guitar
Using his nails for pics
Metallic blue nails
Caressing the strings

But all of those songs that he should sing
Are fading away
Nothing by resonance
Within my own head

He would sit on bed
Writing songs just for me
Shinning guitar
And an impish grin
His hair was a mess
With rose petal lips
Try as I might
I can’t remember his riffs
I pick up guitar to remember him so
But I was never as good
Never as clever as him

And I knew him so well
But not at all
And the words that he sang
Are now lost
Snuggled away to my memory
Hiding and inexcessable
Even to me

But here are those things
I remember of him

Baggy trousers
Looped at the knee
The horror they only reached his shins
Covered in straps and pockets and things
He used to keep all of himself within

And I knew him so well
But not at all
And all of these things are ghosts of him

A metallic chain glinting in the sun
As we sat by our lake having fun
He would play and ask me to sing
But I was too shy to consider such things
And so I would feed the ducks, geese and swans
At what was really a muddy little pond

And I knew him so well
But not at all
I wish he’d spoken to me
Instead of shredding his skin
I should have seen that he had grown so thin
But metallic blue nails
Ran with blood drips
And I failed to see
What he was keeping from me

I once knew a boy
And I shall hold him so dear
twisted inside
By his thoughts and his fears
Metallic blue nails and those blood drips

Echo in kind
As I knew him so well

Childrens’ songs:

1. Splish Splosh Splat (Children’s)
2. My Lovely Babies (Children’s)
3. Lullabye (Childrens and in my Little Book of New Baby Poetry)
4. Icky Sticky Mud (Childrens)
5. Row Your Boat (What Do You See on the Stream) – Childrens
6. Mummy I’ve Got a Grumpy Face (Children’s)
7. Sun is Shining (Children’s – longer version of this)
8. Driving Along (Children’s)
9. I Saw Three Bunnies (childrens)
10. The Getting Ready Song (2 hands 2 feet) – Childrens

Songs:

1. My Bones Are a Battle Field (Adaption from a song I wrote at 15)
2. The Merry Intwined (Adaption of a song I wrote at 17)
3. Hey You! (Adaption of another teen song sorry guys!)
4. Don’t Get in a Jam Honey! (yep another teen song by me)
5. Incomprehensible Me
6. My Reflection
7. Little Ghost
8. A Serpent Feathered White
9. A Love Song of the Gutter
10. Bubble of Bone
11. Strange Little Girl
12. Lost Little Ones (Bleeding Out the Joy)
13. Ivy and Mistletoe
14. Flowing
15. Stung to Numbness
16. I Knew a Boy (already on youtube though there is some out of synchness going on :/)
17. Firey Retribution
18. We Are the Warrior Geeks
19. The Illiad (this one is not complete but then will take years – I started it as a teen and it the whole of the Illiad as a series of songs that meld together)
20. Angry River

I know I’m a week early but I have actually finished the music challenge I set myself – I now have 30 songs (or at least lyrics and tunes!). The tunes are still in my head as I don’t actually know how to read or write music but I am recording me singing some of them roughly and putting them on YouTube so I can get some sort of feed back.

I’ll put the lyrics and videos up on here as and when they are ready – there is still a lot of work to be done on them – I have no idea if they are good or bad songs they are just my songs. I enjoyed making them and I enjoy singing them and therefore I will be inflicting them on people – I would love to work out some harmonies and and backing music as well. One of the songs at least is definately for three voices and they all need something behind the voices really.

Anyway the last five songs are:

1. I Saw Three Bunnies (childrens)
2. We Are the Warrior Geeks
3. The Illiad (this one is not complete but then will take years – I started it as a teen and it the whole of the Illiad as a series of songs that meld together)
4. The Getting Ready Song (2 hands 2 feet) – Childrens
5. Angry River

I haven’t quite managed an hour a day on songs, mainly due to also working on the illustrations for a Little Book of Easter Poetry for my little girl – but excuses are excuses! On the other hand it is all poetry/words/rhyme/rhythm related so I think I can justify it to myself.

I have been working on several songs, several of which have been written this month – I will not make 30 and over half of them are children’s songs as well :/

So far, song wise, I have:

1. Firey Retribution
2. Splish Splosh Splat (Children’s)
3. My Lovely Babies (Children’s)
4. Flowing
5. Stung to Numbness
6. I Knew a Boy (already on youtube though there is some out of synchness going on :/)
7. Incomprehensible Me
8. My Reflection
9. Little Ghost
10. A Serpent Feathered White
11. A Love Song of the Gutter
12. Bubble of Bone
13. Strange Little Girl
14. Lost Little Ones (Bleeding Out the Joy)
15. Ivy and Mistletoe
16. Lullabye (Childrens and in my Little Book of New Baby Poetry)
17. Icky Sticky Mud (Childrens)
18. Row Your Boat (What Do You See on the Stream) – Childrens
19. My Bones Are a Battle Field (Adaption from a song I wrote at 15)
20. The Merry Intwined (Adaption of a song I wrote at 17)
21. Hey You! (Adaption of another teen song sorry guys!)
22. Don’t Get in a Jam Honey! (yep another teen song by me)
23. Mummy I’ve Got a Grumpy Face (Children’s)
24. Sun is Shining (Children’s – longer version of this)
25. Driving Along (Children’s)

Hmm looking at this list I am now thinking I could easily make it to thirty songs!

I suppose if it gets close enough I could just sing the my Science Is Vital Rap :/ (Also on Youtube if you want a laugh)

The weekend saw the first ever Cheltenham Poetry Festival and it was fantastic – it really was. There were some cracking events, photos of some of it below. I saw one of my favorite singers Men Diamler accompanied by the poet Cliff Yates. I saw a haunting performance of prose and poetry by Jonathan Taylor and Adam Horovitz both dealing with the issues of parental illness and death and the emotions there in.

There was children’s poetry by Angela Topping which had my five year old hooked, the duo of AF Harold and Peter Wyton that had us all in hysterics and many more which hopefully I’ll write up things in a bit more depth at some point!

I myself performed my Piaf Poem which was as always over shadowed by the fantastic singing of Eve Loiseau. I also acted in Murder in the Chapel – along side local poets Sonia Hendy-Isaacs and Adam Horovitz. This was a purely brilliant Poetic Who Dunnit by Sara-Jane Arbury.

My whole family including mum, dad, great aunt, small children and husband all enjoyed though we all spent far too much money on books! And we didn’t even make it to the head line acts!

I am going to be doing another poem a day challenge in April – NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). I did this last year focusing on Visual Poetry but this year I’m going to use it to focus on music. I want to have 30 songs by the end of the month – some of these are I confess already written but I will be spending an hour a day min working on them and improving them and maybe making you tube videos of me singing them!

Sadly I don’t think that my guitar skills are up to playing the songs but I’ve got to start somewhere. I have always loved music but started a bit behind with not being able to hear much until an operation when I was four. And then of course I can’t actually read music but never mind. I’ve been in various choirs and has resulted in me doing things like singing on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall.

I love the concept of crossing over genres and to me music and poetry are so very close anyway – plus I have just turned 30 and I promised myself I would do musical things in my 30’s 🙂