Earlier this week I took a photo of a door that entertained me:
Photo taken by BeadedQuill (C)
I liked how the list of commands added up to make a story about the fire door that ought to be kept shut. As a final coda (a whisper perhaps between the sign-maker and us) there is the assertion that whatever is behind that door is private. A funny, little joke, I thought.
Knowing it was time for a new blog post I started playing with caution as a starting point, thinking about things that were dangerous and ought to be kept enclosed or not broached. It was too obvious to go for the apple of Eden, so instead I turned to mythology and literature (although I am certain there are mythological bargains that would work, too). Those old tales suggest that some doors ought to be kept closed and yet there are those who dare otherwise.
For your enjoyment, here are additional poems inspired by mythology and symbolism:
From the waters of the lake, It skims the heavens.
—
A friend sent a beautiful card for my birthday (in July). The photograph was originally selected for the National Wildlife Photographer of the Year (2012). Please admire the original image by Adam Gibbs here. Alongside the photo he gives us an insight into his thoughts on seeing the scene at Fairy Lake, “To me, the little tree looked as though it had been nurtured by a bonsai master.”
Struck both by the image and Adam’s description, I thought about a possible poem a good few weeks ago. Two versions of this poem, that included more rhyme, I lost. They came to me while I was walking and then I didn’t write them down in time. Maybe those versions will come back to me.
This last week I have been reading a novel about the last Dowager Empress of China, hence the influence of heavens.
I was told there were regrets, sadness over the things gone sour.
Still to this day it’s never been confirmed to my face by you, the one concerned.
I am determined to maintain it will always be a little too late.
As it is, your stupid goodbye gift – I’ve thrown it well away.
—
It might be pre-birthday angst, hormones or summer-fuelled heat, but when I sat down to write this month’s blog poem there was annoyance in the pen. I had been toying with a poem about the cost-of-living crisis (“levelling up with price matches”) or being left with an empty bed and sheets needing washing (“changing sheets again”) or being confronted by time’s speedy passing (“left too late”). (Interesting that in their descriptions both a laundry chore and the passing of time become states of being in my sentence.)
My mother has a philosophy that if she hears from someone a relay of something said about her by someone else, and especially if the something is criticism, it counts for nothing. If you want to say something to her, you ought to do so to her face. It’s a view I’ve inherited. And let me share, it isn’t always shined on as a response to managers in the workplace: “Whatever the Head of the Unit has to say about me, he can say it to me himself, otherwise I’m not considering it relevant.” I’ve learned with time to react differently, but in the realm of poems it means nothing unless you say it directly, to my face.
In this poem the matter is a pseudo-apology from one party to another expressed to an intermediary. Forget such nonsense! Say it to my face.
But it may be a little too late.
I looked for poems with a similar tone. It seems my poetic pen has a knack for diluting negatives into whimsy. Here is a selection of poems that have a darker undertone:
Seen from the poet’s loft: Red London bus, double-decker, then a postal van. Grassy yards where in the beds Tulips, bluebells, wilder forget-me-nots Now show.
A man in puffy jacket, fluorescent against ground grey far away. A neighbour shakes a sheet up to the washing-line.
Photo: (c) poet’s own taken at the secret beach, Mauritius, Feb. 2022
When we’re not there Or if we are the waves draw up resolve
To putter out on shore.
Great energy, momentum Dissolves in frothy white. The rest draws back to charge on blue
To roll a course infinite.
—
After two years of serious COVID-anxiety, I flew to Mauritius. In the two weeks there I planned to write, read and exercise. I’d packed leggings and trainers to go running. In 30C heat and 85% humidity my willpower wilted. In the mornings, a cooler and more sensible time to run, I instead pottered around making breakfast porridge and then drinking vanilla tea on the balcony until finding my resolve. At that point I’d focus on what one should do on a beach holiday: go to the beach.
I’d take a secret route (over rocks and a hotel’s wall) to a secret beach. I can’t tell you where it is, or its name, but locals and long-time insiders know of it. It is beautifully scenic, with little shoals of fish that dart in pockets of the shallows. In the garden of one of the houses on the beach they keep chickens and a rooster. The rooster spent much time cock-a-doodle-dooing. For me, this was an unfamiliar accompaniment to waves breaking. I’m more accustomed to seagulls.
After the cyclone, I spied a dead crab spread out over one of the rocks. He did not smell too good, but by the next day all of him was gone. Coming and going seems to be a way of the shoreline.
On the beach and in the day-to-day I did so much staring. Yes, like an activity. I stared at the waves pulling up their energy and dissolving it on the shore; at the seemingly still far horizon; at tossing palm fronds; at a bamboo-framed mirror on my bedroom wall that resembled a sun with rays; at my feet and legs; at the sand; at the beige cushions on the sofa in my rental apartment. Sometimes you have to charge, it seems. Or dissolve.
Talk with trees
You won’t find the poet
at the desk;
it’s out of office time.
On vacation, sabbatical,
gardening leave,
AWOL.
Out of the cubicle of mind;
in, instead, in long walks,
lie-ins, in time with trees.
I asked today if one
could carry me.
Find BQ’s books for sale via Blurb, including Jangle between Jangle, a collection of verse written while jangling to-and-fro during the London commute.
Necessary Work
Types of Necessary Work:
Getting up.
Going to work.
Eating breakfast; taking meds.
Watching for my eye to mend.
Watching as the candle burns.
Letting go to say goodbye.
Waiting. Letting a breeze
into the room.
More Types of Necessary Work:
Devising shapes with pens and
Filling lines. New fonts
embossed on diary covers,
new years, new times.
Necessary work finds a rhythm:
It’s necessary work to rest
So as to carry on
The necessary beat,
The necessary song
The necessary commute
The necessary job. The necessary
tasks to pay the necessary bills.
The necessary ways that take
the necessary tills,
and toils.
The necessary hurts and the
necessary pains, to be lived,
maybe lived again.
(For you, I hope not.)
It’s that day of the year when, as a yoga teacher I once had might say, many of us are already in the plane. We are thinking about the promises of the New Year, skipping through the motions of today, while perhaps looking forward to an early night or a celebration. For many of us, the thought is “Can it just be 2022, already?”
Despite the 2020, too/ two/ part II jokes, an abiding hope is that all in all the year to come will be a better one for all, in all manner of ways. My go-to message for birthday and Christmas cards is often along these lines, “May the year ahead be filled with all good things.” Of course, realistically, we know it is unlikely for a whole year – especially a whole decade – to be without trials and even tragedies. But celebratory card greetings are not the socially acceptable place to reflect on the width and breadth of life. Like the classic happily ever after ending in a candyfloss fairy tale (or contemporary K-drama) such greetings are a fictional parallel universe where we can indulge in all is good, all is well. Even the end of this poem, unlike What is it even all for?, ends with a fairy tale ending for you, dear reader: the poet’s wish is that you will not have to (re)live life’s necessary tilling, toiling, hurts and pains.
Such a candyfloss life or marshmallow world doesn’t make sense, of course. The sentiment is what counts. I wish for you that things will be good, better, best. As I wish for all of us that 2022 will be good, better, best. May it be a year of happily ever after for humanity and for the planet.
—
This poem is in Necessary Work, an unreleased collection that BeadedQuill still has in the wings and has no steam to typeset. In the meantime have a look at Jangle between Jangle, a collection of verse written in 2018 while jangling to-and-fro during the London commute.
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a poem to be paired with With
And, another word –
verboten in excess,
the Creative Writing Rules
would warn.
And then another thing
And, and, And, and.
Dandy and,
Like but, not to be
ushered in at sentence starts.
And so for years, and
carefully was placed or
erased.
But now the rules are weaker.
Butands, andbuts
Buttons, and boîtes,
All found in these small words.
15/03/2020
Today’s poem is a companion to With. Both poems are about a personal rebellion against recommended creative writing rules. Don’t end sentences with with. And don’t start sentences with and and nor should you use and in excess by using it to tag on extensions and meanders to your primary thoughts. Of course, I have an affection for these two small words. With and. And with.
There is a third word in this list of to be used correctly words and that is but. Like and, it should not be used to start sentences (with). In the poem, you can see how the association with but finds its way into the playful end list:
But now the rules are weaker.
Butands, andbuts
Buttons, and boîtes,
These three little words are little buttons as they attach and close the gaps between meanings and sentences. And they are little presents that add an extra thought (And then this other thing happened…) or swerve the original direction (I had planned to, but…) or bring in the possibility of open adventure and movement (Let’s go with).
Don’t do this in your homework, kids. You may have to wait until you are the final arbiter of your writing style.
—
This poem is in Necessary Work, an unreleased collection that BeadedQuill has in the wings. In the meantime have a look at Jangle between Jangle, a collection of verse written in 2018 while jangling to-and-fro during the London commute.
You can now sign up for rare to precious newsletter-type emails from BQ. Sign up at the bottom of the website homepage.
There is that lull
Where you can’t unhook
from sinkhole hours lost
to nothing with nothing
to show for it.
Having completed no task,
cursory to dos
eating, basics, coffees, two
evening closes in
and mad-desperate panic
of IS THIS ALL YOU LEAVE?
will be your watching gong
of dervish disappointment.
17/05/2020
— With a book token I was gifted for my birthday, I bought Four Thousand Weeks (by Oliver Burkeman). The title comes from the calculation that if one lives eighty years, one lives four thousand weeks. (I find this calculation as terrifying as the estimation one will spend 80,000 to 90,000 hours in the Day Job in one’s lifetime.) Four Thousand Weeks is about how one may, or may not, make best use of this time. In some accounts, it is identified as a time management book for not managing one’s time. What I took from reading the book is, you will do what you will do – and will not do what you will not get around to doing.
Which is an apt start for this Monday morning (25th October 2021). I have a week’s leave ahead of me, during which I intend to accomplish All Manner of Things: 7,000 word output for a study deadline, Korean language homework, exercise, bleaching and washing the white towels and getting a stain out of some linen. There was this post that in my mind I’d prepare for a 10am posting; here we are nearing midday. Usually I join an online writing group for 7am(ish). It was during that slot I was planning to write this post. I slept through and would still happily be resting my aching self under the duvet, only – really – it’s nearing midday.
This poem is very similar to What is it even all for?, which was posted back in March as Airtime will be of little use. Of course, we get things done day-to-day, week-to-week. It astounds me though, that I and so many of us, have this ability to sidestep the big project. The “big, hairy, audacious task” as time management lingo might call it. It’s no surprise that a whole industry, which in turn can morph into procrastination, has ballooned around setting out to conquer your BHAT to do.
The sinkhole in this poem may refer to that moment in a day, or when you’re reviewing your week, when you realise, there is no time left to make significant or minute inroads into your BHAT or SmaTs (smaller tasks). For me, that’s usually 11pm. At 6pm, I convince myself I have another 2 to 3 hours to accomplish a few items. The most dangerous is the mornings, when I’m convinced – at 7am – I’m going to Get Stacks Done with my fresh brain before 9am or 10am. My aching, tired self protests and it takes a lot to overcome this do otherwise.
Yet, as Burkeman suggests, here I am having done the thing I was going to do and having not done the thing I have not done. The October 2021 blog post is complete and 600 words of study writing and a short jog are still on the list. I have resigned to being underprepared for tonight’s Korean lesson and have had my first cup of coffee for the day.
—
This poem is in Necessary Work, an unreleased collection that BeadedQuill has in the wings. In the meantime have a look at Jangle between Jangle, a collection of verse written in 2018 while jangling to-and-fro during the London commute.
You can now sign up for rare to precious newsletter-type emails from BQ. Sign up at the bottom of the website homepage.
Beaded Quill 