Purple
I write poems
in green ink,
but I prefer
purple.
Bruised clouds
on an evening sky,
dark depths
of a rainbow glow,
Northern Lights
singing at the deep
end of their scale …
or just a desire
to be different …
slightly different ..
as if that one thing,
the color of my ink,
might tip the scales
and turn me
from mediocrity
to celebrity
with a wave
of a violet wand.
or the click
of a pair
of ink-stained
fingers.
The Curse of Cursive
Wednesday Workshop
8 August 2018
It appears we will no longer teach cursive writing in our schools. Instead, we will teach our children to print. I will not pass judgement on this decision. Quite simply, my handwriting has always been bad. Very bad. I have never worked out why, but I suspect that it is because I think very quickly and my hand tries to keep up with my brain, and the result is the scrawl that I call my handwriting.
I type with two fingers, too, and stare at the keyboard as I am doing so. I tried to follow a typing course one year. I worked at it for two months. At the end of that time, I tried my touch typing examination and managed a rate of 78 words a minute with an accuracy of 82%. I did the same test with my trusted two fingers: 114 words a minute accuracy rate 98%. Oh dear. I still type with two fingers and I still write badly and no, my thoughts have not slowed down.
Just glance through the above photograph, taken from the journal I keep everyday. “Almas de Violeta,” it reads, “an early poetry book by Juan Ramón Jiménez, the Nobel winning poet, was first published in violet ink. I have a copy of his complete works, Obras completas, in which these early poems still appear in purple, or violet rather, to match the color of the title. He published in green ink too, but personally I prefer the purple. Bruised clouds on an evening sky, dark depths of a rainbow glow, Northern Lights singing at the deep end of their scale … or just a desire to be different … slightly different, as if that one thing, the color of my ink, might tip the scales and turn me from mediocre to celebrity with a wave of a violet wand or the click of a pair of ink-stained fingers.”
Now, wasn’t that easy! And there’s so much personality in tone and color, ebb and flow, the link of a poet to the words on his page.
Once, in a faraway library in a distant, magical land, I was studying an autograph manuscript, written by Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645). The hand-writing began very steadily. Then I noticed a red dot or two on the page. Then a larger stain. Our poet was a notorious drinker. The letters grew large and loopy. The paragraphs sprawled. Punctuation marks and accents, slashed and splashed, and missed their targets. By the end of his evening, with his bottle surely empty and gone, I could just about make out what the good man had written.
When I turned the manuscript folio, from recto to verso, it was a new day and the original handwriting was back, small and neat. I have noticed the same phenomenon when I write late at night. Unreadable words, occasional wine splutters, spelling and grammar mistakes, disjointed readability … but the thoughts and the ideas are still there, still clear. Sure, I need a bit of hard work to interpret some things, but that’s the curse of the cursive, I guess.
Miners
What has become of the caged
canary who lit up my life?
I hear the pit pines creaking.
Now nobody dares strike a match.
Birds descending in an iron cage,
our lungs blackened and scarred,
scared, we sing dark hymns
knowing we are doomed.
On hands and knees, we crawl
to the coal-black altars of our gods.
Blind from birth, pit ponies
trust us in their solitudes.
Don’t they know that when
the canary falls from its perch,
we’ll abandon them and claw
our way, anywhere, to safety?
Within the chalk tomb-tunnels
of my calcined skull,
a lone thought searches
an abandoned mine for a memory
it can no longer find.
Book Burning
A sharp-edged double sword,
this down-sizing,
this clearing out of odds and ends.
Library shelves emptying.
books disappearing, one by one.
So many memories
trapped between each page,
covers, dust-bound now,
dust to dust and books to ashes.
Sorrowful, not sweet, each parting,
multiple losses, characters
never to be met again,
except in dreams.
Heroes, thinkers, philosophers, poets,
their life work condemned to conflagration.
Alpha: such love at their beginnings.
Omega: such despair,
with Guy Fawkes celebrations
the means to their ends.
Word-fires:
the means of forging
those book worlds that surrounded us.
Bonfires:
the means to end them.
Steadfast, the book-fires,
flames fast devouring
all but an occasional volume
snatched, burnt fingers,
from the flames.
Fire Storm
Yesterday, it was difficult to breathe.
We inhaled dust and ashes as smoke
from forest fires scuttled towards us,
carried piggy-back on a strong west wind.
Today, the wind herds clouds into aerial castles,
pinnacles and pyramids piled upwards,
tall ships’ canvases painted dark, thundery,
raised by fierce wedges thrust beneath them,
lofting them into darkening skies.
Beyond a certain height, water becomes ice.
Particles group together. Hail stones form,
small at first, growing ever larger
until the very air can no longer bear
their weight. Golf ball big, they tumble down
the sky’s steep ladder and fall to earth.
The dry drum roll of distant thunder rumbles.
A scissor-slash of light shreds black skies.
An executioner’s hay wain rolls towards us,
a runaway train destined to tear our lives
apart. It leaves us helpless, clamoring for safety,
our world torn apart, our earth sore wounded.
Death scythes away downing rich and poor alike.
Who now knows which way thrown dice will fall?
The dye’s sharp edge, once cast, cuts like a blade.
Hailstones clatter, battering us down.
Love
… sometimes comes at first sight
A teenage apprentice with a little plastic badge
bearing her name asked me to reveal my birthdate.
This apparently confirmed that I knew who I was,
so she bound my arm with a thick rubber thong.
My veins swelled up, long thin leeches, slowly fattening.
She told me to make a fist and pouted as she probed
with slender fingers, feeling in vain for a fresh vein
from which to extract, then bottle the necessary blood.
I watched my body’s sap pumping out in tiny, sad spurts
driven by that tired flesh-and-blood machine known as
my heart. Drip by febrile drip my blood accumulated.
The young girl smiled with youth’s perfect lips and teeth.
My heart was a time-bomb ticking beneath her fingers.
I dreamed for an instant of walking upright and free,
a stranger in the paradise of a long-promised land.
Then she handed me my gifts: a throw-away plastic potty,
three disposable spatulas, and an air-dry sample card,
with written instructions, date stamped, bearing my name.
Daybreak
… early morning sunshine
creepy-crawly spider leg rays
climbing over window and wall
my bed-nest alive to light
not night’s star twinkle
but the sun’s egg breaking
its golden yolk
gilding sheet and pillow
billowing day dreams
through my still sleepy head …
… the word feast festering
gathering its inner glimpses
interior life of wind and wave
the elements laid out before me
my banquet of festivities
white the table cloth
golden the woodwork’s glow
mind and matter polished
and the sun show shimmering
its morning glory …
Tangled Garden
Onions push through
a pride of trumpeting
daffodils.
They were all
just bulbs
when my mother
planted them.
Forget-me-nots twine
intricate designs,
a fantasy in blue
between red and green
runner beans.
Every night,
I pull them apart
with clumsy fingers,
yet they knot again,
like tangles,
fresh each day,
in my daughter’s hair.
Losing Weight
First, you must study Nature.
It will make you aware
that trees lose weight
by shedding in the fall
their useless leaves.
Do they ever grieve
you wonder, when winter
winds strip twig and branch?
That dog who owns your heart,
he sheds his coat and shakes
away both water and fleas.
Dogs can lose weight
whenever they please.
Don’t bother to diet.
Step fully clothed
on the bathroom scales,
then shed your leaves,
twigs, branch, and fleas.
You’ll lose a pound or two.
Believe me … and try it.
Comment: This turned up on my Facebook page this morning, a one year ago today item. I don’t even remember writing it. It’s quite fun, though. So: forget those fancy and expensive diets: there’s more than one way to lose weight.
Scratch Pen
This old fashioned
scratch pen,
post office pen
with its pointed nib:
a mindless spider
weaving its web
of fine-spun words.
I dip the pen
into emerald ink
and my fingers
turn green with envy
as the nib sails on,
its pea-green boat
laden with meanings
that will never
arrive on shore.
Lost in life’s
traffic jam
of things to do,
I miss the mystery:
star-crossed words,
an empty ocean,
this one dip pen
scratching on,
while I dither
like a mother hen
checking her chicks.
rogermoorepoet 