Dusted down, polished up, still crap

The work on revamping my rather old poem, City of the Damned, is proceeding very slowly indeed. There are several reasons for this. First of all it is, as I said, very long. It also has some severe metrical problems and some issues of logic. There is also the problem that it's a product of a specific time and place, London in about 1981 and it hasn't travelled well. Beyond that it actually is an example of something that is really prose masquerading as poetry. Yes, even I sometimes fall into that trap. I am working on fixing it but it's a slow and difficult job. Therefore I'll switch track temporarily and present a number of revamped short poems. I've selected them purely because they are short and the degree of rewriting required, though variable, is small. This of course does not mean that they are especially good, in fact I'd be pushed to claim any pride in them. Still, they are mine and while pride would be misplaced I can't deny ownership.

Here then are the first three. They date, I believe to the mid-seventies which would put them either just before or just after I left school and went to University. The thought behind them was the way that we see every day people who we will never speak to, never get know, never interact with in any way whatsoever and the single passing glance of an attractive face is the sum total of their existence. A melancholy thought perhaps but at least it's a small variation on the teen angst that most of the poems from the period represent.

Faces
I
I don't know you,
But you're the first today,
A face in the crowd
As I'm on my way,
A sideways glance
As you're moving on;
I twist my neck
But you are gone.

II
Damn! Just missed the bus again.
Turned the corner, saw it go.
I always seem to miss it when
My feet are just a touch too slow
But through the window, scarcely seen
As its speed begins to grow
Another face, calm, serene
That I will never get to know.

III
Clip. Clip. Clip. Clip.
Measured and unfractured tread.
She walks towards me and walks past.
There are words I might have said.
Had the moment not slipped by so fast.

I always used to write myself a birthday poem, and a right set of miserable verses they are too. I'm not sure which particular birthday this one was for but it's fairly typical of them. I really didn't like birthdays much, did I?

No One Sent The Card

No one sent the card
That wasn't really there.
No one wrote the letter
That did not come.
No one came to visit
My castle in the air.
No one spoke a greeting.
There was no one.

No one came to see me
Or noticed me at all.
No one missed my face
If I failed to come.
No one dialled my number.
No one made the call.
No one rang my doorbell
There was no one.

And a second birthday, this one precisely datable because my age is mentioned in it. I was twenty four. Therefore it was 1981. And yes, it is as bad as the others.

Click.
In the closing and opening
Of the shutter
A year has passed.
The camera isolates
The victim in
An empty pose.
Each captured moment
In the series is
Just like the last.
Twenty-four
Portraits of the hero
Are juxtaposed.
Click.

And that's about it for now although before I go I would like to draw your attention to a series of photographs on another blog. Blue Wave is my friend John's blog and he's recently returned from holiday. He's been posting a series of, mainly architectural, photographs, one at a time, on his blog and they are well worth a look with some excellent composition and use of natural light. Go see for yourself.