A River of Stones #16

On my way home

Thin rain penetrates my jacket;
Stings my hands and face;
But four pints of Blue Monkey ale
Warm me from the inside
And stop me caring.

About time for some more juvenilia

It's well over a year since I dipped into the vaults and showed you just what a lousy poet I was thirty years ago, so it's a long overdue treat.

Maybe "treat" isn't the word most would choose. I've been transferring some of my (slightly) less terrible stuff from the hand-written notebooks to disc and decided to show myself up again. This selection of poems were all written at the same time. I was about nineteen - perhaps a couple of years older. Then, as now, I loathed discos but was persuaded by a couple of friends that we should try visiting clubs for a few weeks instead of just going down the local pub. It was a salutary experience, and one I have steadfastly avoided ever repeating. It did however give me something to write about. They go under the generic title of New Songs For Hollow Faces. The revisions that have been made to them are very slight. A word or two added or removed for metre, a verse dropped because I couldn't work out whatever the hell it was meant to be about and a few spelling corrections.

1. Excursions Into Hell
We visit ever more outrageous worlds,
Searching only for novelty.
We ignore the claws that catch at our skin.
They do not impede our descent.
Bizarre creatures pirouette around us
Beneath the garish lights of Hell.
The fractured sound murders all thought of speech
The heat steals breath from our bodies.
A storm of light breaks apart in our eyes,
Further dissipating sanity.
This is an excursion into Hell.
Following the terrible Maelstrom down
We chase the thrill of the new.
We surface amid mirrored laser beams
And satin seductresses.
We cannot reach into their souls and hearts
For they have none to be reached.
We become the future.
We become ourselves.
We join the revellers.
On excursions into Hell.

2. Faces Without Names
Faces without names
Words without voices
All around me are ghosts.
Sins without shame,
Futures without choices
Unsupported boasts.

3. The Sin Of Solitude
Solitude is silence
And silence is a sin.
Wait in anticipation
For the music to begin.
When they peak in rhyme
And you do not understand,
Ignore the singers words
Feel the rhythm of the band.
Not even in your fantasy
Allow silence to intrude
For silence is a sinful
Vicious interlude.
The interact in mime
Without communication
Together but for ever
Bound by their isolation.
For solitude is silence
And silence is a sin
Wait in anticipation
For the chaos to begin.

4. Part of the Heat

Like suicidal moths
On kamikaze paths into the flame
We plunge through the doorway
And into the heat.
Sweat stains our elegant clothes.
Our eyes hook upon other eyes
As other eyes hook upon us
With passionless fire.

We do not compete.
We will not join the dance.
We will choose no partners.
We will not become part of the heat.
Instead we slake our thirst
On draughts of cynicism.

5. Lies of Consent

Finally the manic mood catches me.
Off guard for a moment, it strikes at me
And pours poison into my mind.

It does not go unnoticed.

Eyes turn. Fingers Point.
My laughter balloons out
Visible but silent amid the furious sound,
Skittering like an animal
Through the mirror ball confusion.
I am lost.
There is no longer safety in unity.
There is no more deceitful truth.
There are only lies of consent
And more, and ever greater pain.

Revisiting old writing

I was searching through my drawers last night looking for a particular piece of writing that I did a few years ago. I didn't find it but I did find a batch of poems and stories that I wrote more than twenty years ago. The poems were almost uniformly dreadful. What surprised me is that they were dated and if they hadn't been I'd have assumed from the whiny, angst-ridden tones that they were much, much earlier. It seems that my teen-angst years lasted well into my twenties. Don't worry, they are far too embarrassingly bad to be reproduced here.
I sorted them into two piles - keep and throw out. The throw out pile grew and the keep pile stayed resolutely empty. It seems that between the ages of eleven and twenty-five-ish every poem I wrote was either sci-fi influenced gibberish or, more likely, about me.

The stories were another matter. Sadly none of them were finished but there was actually some good writing in them. I have kept them and may well revisit them. I might take them away with me next week when I go down for my summer contract. The times when I'm not teaching are often pretty boring so I should get some opportunity to look at them and maybe finish them.

Pity about the poems though.

About time we had some more of my old poetry

This sequence of poems was written back when I used to work for a company that used to subcontract my IT skills to various other companies. One of the consequences of that kind of work is that you never really get to know your fellow employees very well an one of the consequences of that is that you don't know anyone at the Christmas party. Now as I wouldn't normally been seen dead within a hundred miles of a works party this shouldn't be a problem. However on this occasion the party was more or less compulsory.
I went. I had a terrible time.
I sat in the dining room of the hotel the following morning eating breakfast and wrote these poems. They are not very good and a bit self-pitying but that's probably how I felt at the time. I say probably because I wrote them more than twenty years ago and I really can't remember.

Solitary Symphony

Part 1: Before the Ball

Invited for cocktails,
Served in the lounge bar -
Invitation received,
To be read and obeyed.
I knew it would be
A trial and ordeal.
I had to disguise
That I was dismayed.
It started with ten,
Then twenty, then thirty,
Then forty, then fifty.
Then I arrived.
I'd changed into my
New shirt and new jacket
New shoes and new trousers
And even new tie.
Took a drink from a tray
Looked left, then looked right.
Looked up, then looked down.
There was no one I knew.
Tried to join in
This and that conversation,
Felt so conspicuous,
But what could I do.
Saw some faces I'd seen
A few times before.
I'd forgotten their names,
But I didn't care.
The dinner bell rang.
They moved to the ballroom.
The tables were laid.
I followed them there.
I sat at the table.
I could feel them wonder,
"Who is this stranger,
And why is he here."
No one voiced the question
And unless they asked it
It was not information
I could volunteer.

Part 2:Table For Ten

The table is set for ten,
But it's seating only nine.
The chair that's standing empty
Is standing next to mine.

There is a hum of empty chatter,
The chink of knife on plate.
Everyone is happy,
Everyone has a date.

They halt their conversations
To ask me what I think.
To tell the honest truth,
I think I need a drink.

They listen without hearing
As I compose my reply.
Then they talk to each other
But never meet my eye.

I wonder whose embarrassment
Is greater, theirs or mine,
That a table set for ten
Is seating only nine.

When the meal is over
And the music has begun,
Eight people join the dancing
At the table there is one.

The disco lights are starting
To liquefy my brain.
This is supposed to be a pleasure,
So why does it feel like pain.

Someone sees that I'm not dancing
And insists that I should try
But where's the fun in dancing
With someone else's wife.

They forget me in a moment.
I take the chance to slip away.
Will they notice I am gone?
If they do, what will they say?

How can I believe
That things are working fine,
When the table set for ten
Always seats just nine?

Part 3: Breakfast in the Aftermath Ballroom

It's something that has to be said.
It's something that I need to say.
I was not here by choice, you know,
I'd much rather have stayed away.
But I gave in to the pressure.
I could not invent enough lies.
I gave in and came to the party last night
I wish I had come in disguise.
A stranger alone in a strange world -
A world filled with Siamese twins.
What I hoped would have changed, I don't know
Why on Earth did I give in.

Now I'm eating a solitary breakfast
And I know they're still watching me,
Alone in a crowd in the aftermath ballroom.
What are they expecting to see?
Now I'm eating a solitary breakfast -
My last act before I get up and leave.
Without looking at them in the aftermath ballroom
I wipe a tear away on my sleeve.

Part 4: Eternal Coda

"Why were you alone?" she says.
"There was no one with me." I reply.
It isn't strictly honest,
But it can't be called a lie.

I don't want to be alone,
But it seems time after time
That a table set for ten
Is seating only nine.

Silences

Looking through the books of my poetry I discovered a set of four poems on the subject of "silence". They are quite old, dating from around 1980, though I am not sure of exactly when I wrote them. The first one clearly refers to an office that I used to work in, in West Bromwich which puts it at approximately that period.

Silences

Part 1

Silence.
Early-morning, office-furniture,
Filing-cabinet silence.
Empty-chair silence.
The building still sleeps.
Distant disembodied voices -
Sounds without words -
Solitary empty voices
Fragile morning meanings.
Footsteps, Dragged chairs.
Cups rattling, blinds raised.
A rhythm of sound
Emerging
Sound without sight
Beyond obscuring office walls
Blurred by empty spaces.

A telephone screams,
And is silenced.

Part 2

There is noise all around you:
Voices raised in anger,
Traffic hissing through the rain,
The hum of air conditioning,
The rustling of the wind,
An orchestrated score of chaos.

There is noise all around you,
But silence in your head.

There is noise all around you:
Voices raised in laughter,
Telephones shrilly shrieking,
Chairs scraped on wooden floors,
Cash registers singing,
An orchestrated symphony.

There is noise all around you,
But silence in your head.


Part 3

There is silence hidden among the noise.
Do you hear it ?
Between the syllables, it lurks.
Between the cadences and rhythms,
Between the roaring guns it stands,
Between the clapping and the shouting.

There is silence hidden in among the noise:
Do you hear it ?
Just below the machines scream.
It waits below your speeches.
There behind the rampant rhetoric,
Wrapped around your meaning.

There is silence hidden in among the noise:
Do you hear it ?
Behind the party chatter it's smiling.
Behind champagne cork explosions, it's grinning.
Behind the bouncing music, it's laughing.
Silently lending meaning to the sounds.

Part 4

Silence like an open grave,
Silence like an empty room,
Silence like a missing friend,
Spits fear into your face.
Silence is the enemy,
Reeking of solitude and death,
Reeking of resignation,
And the cold hand
Catching at your skin.

An unexpected silence

It is, I think, time for another of my old poems. I have found one which I don't entirely despise but I must confess that it has been slightly rewritten. In the introduction to his book The Carpet People, Terry Pratchett says that it is a book with "two authors, and they were both the same person". He originally published it in 1971 and then published a substantially reworked version in 1992.

Well this is a poem with two authors, and both of them were me.

An Unexpected Silence

All the world’s pain is in a single tear in the night,
A whimpering in the darkness.
All the world’s pain is in a shadow missing from the window,
A footfall that is not heard.

It is not in the deaths of hundreds in disaster.
It is not in the deaths of thousands in catastrophe.
It is not in the deaths of millions in war.
It is not in numbers.

All the world’s pain is in the sudden death of one person,
In an unexpected silence.
All the world’s pain is in a room filled with ghosts
And graveyard dreams.

I'm sure that I could do better than that but I'm reluctant to do much with the early poems as I prefer to let them show where I started because that way there is a chance that some progression in my abilities might be evident. Or it might not.

The palest ink

The palest ink is better than the best memory. (Chinese proverb)

I had intended to preface this with a number of quotes about memory but now that I have found one that is so apposite, I shall forego all the others. The reason for this is that I have spent rather a lot of time this evening looking through old papers and poems to find one to add here in my occasional series reworking my early pieces. I didn't find any that I felt happy enough about to present but what I did find gave me some pause for thought. I found a collection of twenty five numbered ten-line poems that went by the overall title of tributes and attributes. Each of them was originally intended to be about one of my friends. The interesting thing is that when I wrote them I neglected to identify who they were about so that the poems themselves are all that I have to go on. Clearly I thought at the time that I would always be able to remember - and just as clearly I was wrong. Now, while I admit that this was over thirty years ago, I am surprised at how difficult the task of identification has been. Some of them I know; some of them I think I know; some of them I have not the faintest idea about.
The trouble is that they are, at best, cryptic and at worst, gibberish. They are exactly the kind of things that you might expect of a fifteen year old. (Which is a shame as they were written between 1975 and 1977 when I was between eighteen and twenty.) They take a general mish-mash of aspects of peoples characters and personal appearance and then jumble them up with my opinions of them. What they don't do is show any regard for scansion, metre, rhyme or any of the other important elements of decent poetry.

I considered putting one here for analysis but frankly the quality is far too low at the moment, although if I can knock any of them into shape I may do so later. The point of this isn't to show what a rotten poet I was, it's to make a comment on the frailty of memory. The quote at the head of this entry suggests that writing things down is more reliable than just leaving them stored away in your mind, and I suppose it is. After all I can identify most of the subjects. The thing is that the poems themselves are largely meaningless to me. The images and incidents mentioned are gone as surely as if they had never been. I have far from the best memory but in this case the palest ink has also let me down.

Now I shall go away and see if I can manage to write, or rather rewrite, a couple of them. Failing that I could always just pop them into the large black filing cabinet beneath my shredder.

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.