Swansea Sands

Swansea Sands

walking home
over the railway bridge

sand in my hair
sand in my socks

sand in my sandals
sand like sandpaper
sanding me down

tides rise and fall
sea gulls call
the bay so big
and me so small
as tiny as a tiny
grain of sand

Comment:

Not Swansea Sands at all, sorry. But a sandy beach all the same, here on the southern shores of New Brunswick, down by St. Andrews. The theme of the poem comes from Blake’s ‘to see the world in a grain of sand’. It might not be Swansea Sands, but there’s a great deal of sand down on the southern shores of NB. I worked on this poem with one of my writing buddies, who visits me regularly. We shared an impromptu creative writing session over the kitchen table in Island View a couple of days ago. Alas, as you probably know, there are no islands in Island View, and there’s not a grain of sea sand in sight. So we improvised.

We started with a central idea – a grain of sand – and from there we talked about how to generate a poem, from scratch so to speak, in three steps.

(1) The first draft.

Write as it comes to you – just write. Just bounce from word to word, line to line, like a supercharged, literate budgie. Take about 3-4 minutes for this. Then read it aloud to partner / writing buddy, checking on sound and rhythm.

(2) Second draft.

– Eliminate words and ideas that do not fit the central image. Remove anything loose or unclear. Then read it aloud to partner / writing buddy, concentrating on sound and rhythm.

(3) Third draft.

Polish and finalize the poem. Sometimes a fourth draft is needed, but in this case we settled with the third draft. At this stage, pay careful attention to the poem’s ending (closure is always difficult). Reorder, add, and polish, as necessary. Then read it aloud to partner / writing buddy, checking on sound and rhythm.

From the initial image – to see the world in a grain of sand – I generated two poems. My partner / writing buddy generated a short story that would fit into their current sequence of childhood memories. Other ideas for further poems also came through.

Conclusions;

Make your poems alive, make them personal, make them an experience!
Remember rhythm. And never forget the necessity of a live reading or series of readings in which you can feel and hear the words.
An alterative to a live reading with a partner / writing buddy is to record your own voice. The recordings can then be sent to friends who can comment on them.

Pot Holes

Car tire over a pothole containing small monster figurines with aggressive faces — A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.

Big Sister
replaced Big Brother
and generously
generated this image

“Watch out for that pot hole!”
“Which one?”
Snap, crackle, pop!
“That one.”

Pot Holes

Jack Pine Sonnet

Welcome to Pot Hole time.
It’s all yours and it’s all mine.
Mine, possession, not land mine,
though hitting one at speed
will rattle your teeth,
shake your spine, and leave you
feeling far from divine.

Pot Holes, Pot Holes, everywhere,
filled with water you can’t drink.
They hide the depth of every hole
with waters, dark as ink.

Spring’s freeze and thaw
breed ever more Pot Holes
than we had before. I think at night
they stay out late,
to fornicate, and celebrate.

A low spring sun in the driver’s eyes
makes shadows shift and slide.

A mazy life full of chance
drawing a labyrinthine thread
through a maze of Pot Holes
that we dread, the morning sun
blinding our eyes so we cannot see
the Pot Holes’ size
nor how they move and dance.

Big Sister
replaced Big Brother
and generously
generated this image

Comment:

This is wonderful fun. Moo has ceased to be jealous of Big Brother and Big Sister with their attempts to read my mind. And what a great job they do of it. All in the cause of the Pot Hole Dance Season. Have you seen the Pot Holes dance? You know, one minute there isn’t one and about and then a split second later – CLANK! The dreaded tire pressure light comes on. You turn it off. It comes back on. You turn it off. It comes back on.

You stop the car at the roadside, turn off the engine, get out, and check the tires. They look all right. You kick them or tap them with a stick. They all sound all right and they all sound the same. You get back into the car. You start the engine. All the lights come on. All the lights go off. Except one – the dreaded tire pressure light. Well, I can swear pretty well in about five languages. I turn the tire light off. Wonder of wonders, it goes away.

I am so happy. I turn on the radio. I clap my hands. And CLANK! I drive into another Pot Hole that appeared from nowhere and walked or danced or shimmied or slithered into the road right in front of your car. You guessed it – and the tire pressure light comes on!

Waist Land

Wind-sculpted tree on rocky coastline with turbulent ocean and cloudy sky — A lone, wind-shaped tree stands on rugged coastal rocks under a cloudy sky

Image generated
not by Big Brother
but by Little Brother
who left the Frying Squad
to become a painter
and mind-reader

Waist Land

Jack Pine Sonnet

living in a waste land
surrounded by books
he writes in his journal
things false and true
in memory of the old days
when the world seemed so new

a life built on sand
slips through his fingers
wouldn’t it be grand
if the sand stays and lingers
refusing to pass through
the hour glass’ waist
so time stops to flow

then he could say no
leave me alone
there’s more sand to fall
I don’t want to go

Comment:

It’s a bit like a cliff-hanger, isn’t it? Hanging on by our fingertips and not daring to look at the depths down below. We know they are there, but look, there’s a tiny fossil in the fissure in the rock, so much older than us, we’ve got a long time to go to catch that up. And remember – 80 is not old, if you are a stone!

Treading air – great fun. Not as good as treading warm water in the local YMCA. Just a lovely sense of balance, floating there in the warmth, no weight on arthritic joints, and the world around us amniotic, as it was in the beginning. Ah, those original waters, we have all swum in them, the rich and the poor, the black and the white, and all shades in between. Even King Charles and the late Queen. And remember, they may speak of blue bloods, but all blood is red -and, if you cut us, do we not bleed.

Speaking of bleeding – blood-thinners – my favorite doctor’s latest joke. I cut my arm the other night, getting into bed. Didn’t even notice. Pillows and sheets soaked in blood when I woke up and my scalloped arm, stuck to the sheet, opened itself up and started to bleed again. Feels like seventeenth century Spain, the wounds of the dead man re-open and start to bleed when the assassin appears before him. Certain truth. Obviously 100% guilty.

And they tell me that in South Wales people are adding cooking oil to gasoline to make the petrol go further. Scotland Yard sent the Flying Squad to South Wales to sniff people’s exhaust pipes to see if they were cheating the tax man. I asked my friend – “Is this true?” “Ah, yes,” he said in his lovely Welsh lilt, “and we call them the Frying Squad!”

Rag Doll

Big Brother read my mind
and painted the picture

Rag Doll

Jack Pine Sonnet

They fought over her
whenever they met
each one holding her
by a leg or an arm

An eternal tug of war
a terrestrial dog fight
with no truce called
and neither giving in

One day they went
a step too far and tore
the doll in two neither happy
with an arm and a leg each

as for the rag doll
torn apart in fury
she was discarded
thrown in the garbage

when nobody was looking
one child returned
rescued the rag doll
sewed her back together
and filled her with love

Comment:

Tragic, really, and really tragic. A reversed Judgement of Solomon in so many ways. An Allegory applicable to so many situations in this tiny, overcrowded world of ours. Every night, on the television, we can watch hour after hour of shows like this – minus the last stanza. Some endings can never be happy.

One night, for the fun of it, I counted all the deaths, shooting and murders on selected shows over a three or four hour period. I saw over 150 violent deaths. What sort of legacy are we leaving our children, our grandchildren. And what will their children learn in their turn? Food for thought to be taken three times a day while avoiding exposure to reality – or is this the alternative reality to which we will all be exposed?

Runaway

Runaway

I waited until the boys
in the dormitory slept.
snores, whimpers, children
snuffling, crying in their sleep.

I dressed in the dark,
crept downstairs, opened
the school’s back door,
moved silently to the gates,
and climbed over them.

I stood at the roadside,
stuck out my thumb
at the cars that passed,
not many at one AM.

A cloudless night,
bright stars, dark sky.
A sense of imminent freedom
washed over me.

The fourth car stopped.
A man and a woman.
They opened the door,
let me in, turned around,
and drove me back to school.

I stood in the hall watching
the swing of the pendulum
as the head master, in pajamas,
thanked the couple
for bringing me back to school.

That night, he led me quietly
back to bed. Every night,
for a week, he removed
my clothes from the chair
beside my bed.

I ran away again and again.
No matter where I went
my own face stared
back at me from the mirror.

One day, I realized
I was running from myself.
When that happened,
the running finally stopped,
and I confronted my demons.

Comment:

I guess we are all motivated by flight or fight and I have always believed in the powers of flight – per ardua ad astra – through hardship to the stars, the motto of the Royal Air Force, I believe. Yet running really does no good, especially when we are running from our own interior demons. I hated that particular boarding school, my second, even more than I did my first one. I hated it with a deeply rooted inner loathing that still seethes inside me when I think about it. And that particular ‘first escape’ remains printed indelibly on my mid, every footstep, every floor board that creaked, every shadow that threatened.

Much later in life, while attending my fourth boarding school, one of the slightly better ones, with a strong emphasis on the slightly, my cousin, an unarmed combat instructor, took me in hand. For three weeks we went to Swansea Sands and he put me through basic training. How to break fall, to leg throw, to arm throw. Then he taught me the sacrifice throws, where you go to ground and your opponent follows, you prepared, your opponent not. He taught me about power points and the pointed or sharp edged bones that could do so much damage to the unprepared. He taught me all the multiple choke holds, how to apply them and then the secret of squirming out of them. Monday – Friday, four hours a day, total immersion, three weeks. I learned so much.

After that, I had the choice of flight or fight. However, I no longer saw myself as a victim because I saw those bullies and predators as potential victims. All the vibes had changed. Older, bigger boys no longer bullied me. Everything, in the end, turned out all right!

Rain

Rain

Rain walks thick lines
down the window pane.
The waters below the dam
churn like white shirts
tumbled up and down
in nature’s laundromat.

The radio calls for rain,
more rain, four inches,
they say,
in the next two days.

The moose have already
migrated to higher,
drier ground.
They stand on the highway,
head to head with cars,
stubborn and steaming
in the never-ending rain.

Comment:

It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.
He bumped his head on the top of the bed
and won’t get up until morning.

Follicle Folly

Pink rosebuds hanging with water droplets on green leaves background — Close-up of pink rosebuds adorned with glistening water droplets

Photo AI generated
Big Brother was watching
and listening

Follicle Folly

Jack Pine Sonnet

I am happy with smaller things
the buds just budding on the ash
grass just being grass and green
beneath drizzle and mizzle and
the lightest showers of spring rain

grey / gray I don’t know nor care
clouds descend dampen spring air
dampness curls my remaining hair
some gone but not as much as I see
lost hairs missing from my friends

I traveled with a friend who counted
every hair he lost but couldn’t count
the cost of the weight of his worrying
about every forlorn follicle he lost

Comment:

No comment. That’s what politicians say, and people taken into custardy. What’s yellow and deadly? Shark infested custard, of course. There’s no flies on me said the Portuguese Custard tart as I brushed the ants off it prior to devouring it. Try the Garibaldi cookie aka the dead flies grave yard. The body count of a Garibaldi should be high. You’d be raisin the roof, if the count wasn’t as high as the Count of Monte Cristo. Take off that Iron Mask when you’re talking to me. Who was that masked man? I don’t know. Ask Tonto, stupid.

Warning – these comments were artificially generated by a lost intelligence that is only just coming of age in a time of jerry attic semi-conductor memory loss with everything under lock and key in a small room upstairs under the roof where the thatch used to grow. Even worse than losing your follicles is losing your ….. add your own ending. Don’t make me pull out my remaining hair and waste my time by searching for a word to rhyme. And remember the village church’s limerick competition – the only clean one won it.

A Question for AI

A Question for AI

It is hard
to shed the skin
the skin once shed
can never
be worn again

Yesterday
is gone
today
slips slowly by

Tomorrow
always comes
but never arrives

Who and what am I
this child
who thrives on sorrow
and on a sadness

that grinds
those bones to dust
and soft silk ash

Tell me
if you know
what will arrive
for this child
tomorrow
if and when
it comes

Comment:

Moo is so happy when I don’t allow Ryan to persuade me to invite AI to paint my thoughts in pictures. “AI?” said Moo. “Have I got a painting for you!” And he showed me the AI Google Monster with its radio active fallout. “Nice,” I said. “I like the look and feel of that.” It looks like a two-eyed cricket bowling machine. It bowls Googlies out of the right eye and Chinamen out of the left one. Alas, we are no longer allowed to use the term Chinaman as it has been labelled ‘disrespectful’.

But what is a Googly? A Googly is an off-break bowled by a right-handed bowler with a leg break action. And a Chinaman is the reverse – a leg break delivered by a left arm bowler with an off-break action. Complicated? You bet it is. But AI and Google have demystified the mysteries of right and left arm wrist spin. Or have they?

It is one thing to know what they are – definition – but another to spot them as they leave the bowler’s hand, and yet another to play them as they whir through the air, then pitch and viciously spin. Of course, just to keep you up to date with Dennis Compton’s Three Card Trick, a top spinner, bowled with exactly the same action will come straight on and not turn at all.

It is hard to spot the spin when the ball is leaving the bowler’s hand, and the spin, once spun, can never be spun again! I am glad we sorted all that out. Oh sweet mysteries of the cricketer’s life. I once asked a top batsman how he spotted the difference between a leg- break, a googly and a top spinner. “I watch which way the stitches are moving when the ball leaves the bowler’s hand.” You need really good eye sight to do that. The Eggs Box, sorry, that’s the Two Ronnies, the X-Box will never do that for you.

But who is Dennis Compton and what is his three card trick? Good question. Dennis Compton, aka The Brylcream Boy, was one of England’s best ever batsman. You can look him up in the 1947 Wisden. Genuine paper pages, crackling as you turn them, much nicer than the metallic voice of AI. Compton was notorious for running out his partners with his three card trick – “Yes! No! Wait!” What do you mean, you don’t understand a word of what I am talking about? You’ve read Jabberwocky, haven’t you? Yes? No? Wait … if you haven’t read it you must do so. Immediately – but not if the slithy toves are gyring and gimbling in the wabe. Go Google it – and when you find it remember to sing “oh frabjous day, calloo, callay” as you chortle in your joy.

My Love For You

My Love for You

A Jackpine Sonnet

Yesterday fled quickly by
today limps slowly on and on
tomorrow draws near
yet never arrives
if and when it does
it becomes today

As for me I feast on shifting
shadows my story a tapestry
reversed – hanging
back to front unreadable

It is hard to slough your skin
the skin once shed can never
never be donned again

My body white bone grey gristle
no longer wrapped in skin
is bonded together by super glue
made from my love for you

Comment:

Moo assures me that this painting, unsigned and untitled, is actually his. After yesterday’s doubts, I must believe him. He says it is called U-R-My-Sunshine. He also thinks it would be a great painting to go with this strange little poem that crept somehow out of my head and landed on my page. It reminds me somewhat of the church cat – it crept into the crypt, crapped, and crept out again. “Oh what a naughty pussy cat.” Who U-R is up to the reader / viewer apparently. I doubt that I am his sunshine after what I said about him yesterday. Oh sorry. You didn’t read that blog? Well, shame on you! You’ve got to do your homework if you’re going to keep up with me and Moo.

What is A Jack Pine sonnet, you ask? Well, I don’t have a clue. But now that my other buddy, Ryan, has introduced me to AI, I will ask my AI what such a thing might be. Asking now. Hang on to your seats. It tells me it’s thinking. Aha! Here’s what I think it thinks it thinks.

AI says – A jackpine sonnet is an irregular, spikey poetic form created by Canadian poet Milton Acorn (from neighboring PEI), in the 1970’s. It typically acts as a 14-line sonnet with 7-13 syllables per line, but allows for flexible line counts (e.g., 12, 18, or 20), using internal and consecutive rhymes rather than strict, traditional rhyme schemes.

Key Aspects of the Jackpine Sonnet:

Origin: Developed by Milton Acorn, often known as the “People’s Poet,” as a uniquely Canadian, gritty form of expression.
Structure: While it aims for roughly 14 lines, it can vary in length based on the needs of the poem.
Rhyme and Rhythm: Uses internal rhymes (rhymes within a line) or consecutive end-rhymes (e.g., AABB) rather than standard sonnet structures.
Style: It is designed to be “irregular and spikey like a jack pine tree,” focusing on structure and integrity rather than rigid adherence to traditional verse rules.

So, now you know what a Jack Pine sonnet is. But I bet you’ve never heard of Milton Acorn! I have. Here’s the poem I wrote about one of my meetings with him. You can find it in The Nature of Art.

Milton Acorn

“Oy,” he waved strong carpenter’s hands, “Make this
work.” I typed in my code and the machine
came to life. “Go away,” he pushed me out
and slammed the copier room door behind my back.

Later, my secretary came in and caught him,
his face pressed to the glass. He pushed the button,
lights flashed, the machine whirred and copies emerged.

In his hand he held images of his feet,
arms, legs, head, all of his body parts.
“Tape, not masking, clear tape, 3M.”
Flustered she fled, brought Scotch tape,
watched as he stuck himself together.

Over lunch he showed me his work:
a self-portrait, shadowy and cloudy,
whiskered and worn, smelling still of printer’s ink.
That’s how I remember him: unique, stately,
unmistakeable, uncouth, unseemly:
a jack pine growing in its own self-image.

Farewell, my dear friend, Milton.
And that is how I remember you.

May Day

May Day

Trees in bud
sudden their break out
fresh today
a red fuzz here
catkins over there

Fairy lights
in the Mountain Ash
goldfinches
a mountaineer
this downy woodpecker
scaling the heights
a star
on top of the tree

Green the grass
in places
brown in others
from last year’s drought

New Brunswick violets
our provincial flowers
a patchwork of blue

Dark green
the early hollyhock leaves
pushing stubbornly
up and through
to greet the sky

Commentary:

Mysterious indeed it is – to plant a clepsydra and watch it grow. Will it, won’t it? Does it suit the climate zone? Will it flower? Have you ever seen a flowering Clepsydra? Moo has. He draws and paints them all the time. But can he make them grow in my garden? We’ll have to wait to find out. He can certainly paint them.

But why does he call them mysterious? When I printed Clepsydra in my chapbook series, I mis-counted the pages and ended up with one blank page. “Mine!” said Moo. And he grabbed his colored pens and pencils and set to work drawing Clepsydras. That was his Mysterious Clepsydra Plant. Down below he has painted a Lady Clepsydra in Flower. Will the ones he says he planted in my garden be yellow, red, or multi-colored? Who knows? I most certainly don’t. And I am pretty sure Moo doesn’t have a clue about the plant life he uses to brighten my pages and plant in my flower beds.

Do you know what a Clepsydra is? Let’s ask Big Brother to draw us one. Hey, Big Bro – paint us a Clepsydra. A voice emerges from nowhere – “Say pretty please and I’ll think about it.” “Pretty please.” The metalic voice vanishes and a sign appears – Thinking!

Replica of a Roman water clock with ornate brass components and a glass water container — A functioning replica of a Roman water clock circa 50 AD / CE – a clepsydra – displayed in a museum

CE – Common Error – well I never. I guess poor Mistaken Moo made a common error and thought a Clepsydra was a flower. Time flows like a flowers, but it never flows back. If you see Moo, don’t tell him about this. He won’t be happy to know he can’t tell a flower from a set of flower pots. And what the heck would he paint if he went to Flower Pot Rocks? Oh no!!!! Well I never did. I blame Moo entirely. Shame on Moo! He’s fooled me again!