Turquoise Monster

It’s a New Year and a New Decade and I am upping the heat on my poetry. Recently I have been reading at The Poetry Cafe and at Earshot both of which happen in Cheltenham. Last year I also started reading at tech events such as the Unconference in Bristol and Tech Adventure (also in Bristol!).

But my poetry thirst is growing and I want to do more readings and the like – the more I consolidate all my work the more this seems achievable – I have an arch-lever file literally full of poetry and I am still typing more up!

I went along to another Cheltenham event recently, one that happens once a month called Buzz Words – these are workshops followed by an open mike session. I was really nervous but read anyway knowing that the key to my nerves is to read the first time or not at all!

I was chuffed to have my name recognised as published as I haven’t sent anything off for about a year 🙂

So basically I am hoping to do more of this sort of thing (hopefully with more invites to events – hint, hint!).

The other thing I came across last year was VisPo (visual poetry) and too my suprise I was already working on the concept myself though I would never have thought to put a name to it. I am currently turning some of my poems into vispo’s for sale on the US market – this has been taking up alot of my poetry time as it were but I believe the imagery and the colour emphasis etc… on the words gives a whole extra depth to the poem.

Also challenges to face this year are World Poetry Writing Month WoPoWriMo) and National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) – the idea being a poem a day! I’m actually really looking forward to these two challenges 🙂

Ok so that’s alot already but am also hoping to sort out one or two little books of poetry – mainly for kids this year – I have the illustrations almost complete and the poems mostly polished.

So I have a busy poetry year ahead of me 🙂

Wish me luck!

Oh and also I might be putting some of my poems to music but this relies on other people so we will have to see!

Just thought I’d mention that I have actually done the drawings for The Little Book of Festive Poetry.

You can see them here and here.

My little girl really loves this ‘book’ even though it is not yet assembled and wont be until next Christmas now!

Merry Christmas Poets and Readers 🙂 See you in the New Year!

In November as part of PiBoIdMo I came up with the idea of A Little Book of Festive Poetry – the idea being simply that I would produce a Christmas version of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry I made for my little girl at Halloween. So I have been ploughing ahead with writing poems I know she will love 🙂

I have set my self the goal of 10 poems 🙂

Here are the links to the poems 🙂

This is…

Snow

Christmas

Mummy’s Socks

Christmas Dinner

Christmas Eve

Santa Don’t Burn Your Bum

Poem Eight – yes this one still needs a title!

Of Christmas and Cats

The Tweleve Days of Christmas

The Echo

I saw the echo scamper ashore

It was wet and cold and so alone

I saw the echo sit and cry

Though no eyes it had the tears still poured

I smelt the echo as vibration

Thrumming and strumming a silent sound

I smelt the echo in pinks and mauves

Lost in sensation of colours blurred

I tasted the echo in sugared tones

Angelica, cinnamon, walnut swirl

I tasted the echo with bitter rind

Enclosed the centre of withered pith

I scensed the echo in the air

Stars glinting, and seething

I scensed the scho climb a board

A craft dark in ghostly lore

I felt the echo as it lay

Broken and fading another shade

I felt the echo as it fought

Life fragile death-sharp like a claw

I heared the echo call my name

Softly, sweetly, within a velvet bow

I heard the echo shout the word

Clashing contrasts cut to the bone

Sound crashing over me

Continuous wave of noise

Distorting intent

Blurring distinctions

People here, people there

Cacophony of voices

Escalating with the day

Hemming my thoughts

No clarification of words

Just thunder booming

Loud undulations

Growing intense

Making me smaller

Retreat in silence

Battle with the bus

A long walk home

Tap, tap, tapping away, Fingers flying, strange graceful dance

Notice not as light fades, consume all energies, forking demons, spawned zombi child

Dance logic, time

Tap tap tapping away, polish finger tips over letters worn

Hunger burns, Sandwitch forgotten, cat licked, stale,

Animalistic, persuing prey, Python here, Chicken there

Tap Tap Tapping, wrist support frayed, mundane treasures, Ruby, Perl

Water sits, bubble strewn, littering your domain

Intently stare, bugs annialated, or so you prey

Tap tap Tapping, spinning ball, shift to corner, back again

3 am, time for sleep, red eye raw

cup of coffee, jar of beans

headaching, back stooped, so much to sort, so much to do

Tap Tap Tapping. between the sheets, misty bruised dawn, comes and creeps

Power low, reserves giving out, drowsy talk, lisp, dialected, scheme

thought process hard, more tests more

Leached knowledge, sleep, dream, Brainfuck, But still keen

This poem originally appeared on my personal blog in response to a news article.

Hopscotch

Here’s some chalk

Now go and play

Hopscotch was fun, in my day

A small child smiles up at his mum

Then runs outside in the sun

And begins to draw

the hopscotch grid

When out pops his friend – Sid

Then there’s Jane, Marther, Mary, and May

They’ve all come outside to play

Throwing stones

to mark their place

the hopscotch moves on a pace

until that is…

sirens rent the sky

And two burly police

come to spy

And tell them that their game’s a fraud

Hopscotch – it turns out

is against the law!

And so with tears

they must scrub away

Chalk with which they should play

Stupidity in huge great measure

Stealing away childhood treasure

Whilst prisons burst at the seams

Police down size crimes – to please…

Those Powers That Be

So that they can get more votes

Seizing the UK securely by the throat

Sweeping troubles under the rug

By proclaiming, a 5 yr old – THUG

And so without childhood games

I predict arson flames

as our youth grows in discontent

Violence shows as angers vent

So please – I beg

Government Sir!

Why not let childhood, naturally unfurl?

And all those games of yester-year

be played in our streets

without fear

The Dead Galaxy

Hung in the Vacuum

A dark remnant

Of a glittering time

A ghostly structure

Where the cogs seized

Where the fire died

Where there was an

end to annihilation

And the star birth

The cycle broken

the whisper of creation

Silenced

It drifted

Dense in blackness

With the Eater of Light

Still beating at its core

The only thing that

breathed motion

a deathly life

An eater of worlds

Super massive galactic

Cannibal forever

Hungry

It is the After Life

And the Gate to Hell

For the Stellar Host

That once shone so brightly

In the beginning there was not the Word

It was late in coming

Before the Word

There was the Picture

An image

A concept

A shape in the Mind

Forming the Landscape of Thought

Rolling indistinct and whole

Spiking into hyper-realms

A quitoxic state

For to show the Picture

To form the Landscape

In another’s mind

Took the Word

And the Word arrived late

In *a* beginning there was the Word

And it was praised

The power of External Thought

And the Image was relegated

The Word made the Picture

In the Mind

Shaped the Landscape

And formed the Concept

But the Word

became the Fence

The Scaffold

And the Chain

Buttresses formed

And armaments armed

The Word was drenched in Convention

Thought began to die

The Word to – fail

In The New Beginning

There was the Word

But the Word was stale – Old

The Image escaped the Word

And wrapped it in protective cortex

Where it grew once more

Driving the formation of the Landscape

The Word *and* the Picture

Became the Shape

Became the Concept

Indistinguishable to drive the Thought

And the Thoughts were whole and distinct

Changing rapidly

Into something new

Until the conveyance of Concept

To Others

Fed back on itself

Shaping the Landscape

Into the realms of Hyper-Thought

Stretching to cover Humanity

In the end

The Thought is the Picture *and * the Word

The Word came late

But that does not matter

A butterfly stirred within in my curious hand

Hesitant to take the offered nectar

Golden, amber, sweet

It’s tongue long and curled appeared

Lapping gently with distraction

I looked up at the sign

Butterflies for sale, $12

Wings translucent in half dream light

Shimmer, golden-blue

It walked on insect legs tickling my finger

The drone of its brethren could be heard

Pressing against crystal cages

Rainbows glittered fleetingly

Dust beaten to the ground – luxuriant in growth

An angry tide: waiting

‘I’ll take this one’ the teller nods

A golden leash of fine spun silk

I decline the offer and pay with jewels

Coloured rock ice – for a little chaos

Outside a red sky over silver sand

I look to Chaos and open my hand

Blue glittered fleetingly

Freedom I whispered

A breeze blew it away