Communicating with words

From an interesting graffiti site

Having a go at sonnets

Bird Cage Music

On the lines of a page the composer
transposes the collected melody.
Revenants sounded together from daily life.
Horizontal bars track on, right across
the white, peppered with black bodied birds,
sitting tight on the wires. When they take flight
from the hands of the musician, his breath
shapes their timbre and shadow. He wreathes
sunlight, wind and rain within their soaring,
beyond that shielding white.

And at the close,
those sleek bodies alight again, gripping
to the lines, in their twig-like claws, eye beads
shining within the confines of the page.
Roosting with the breves until the next time.

This has been hanging around for a while. Rob Mac and C.E. Chaffin regularly do Sonnet Sundays and I had thought of giving it a go, but I'm crap at working out whether these lines are making a potential sonnet or not and not very good at sustaining anything for a long time these days!

I can hear it oh so well when it comes to Shakespeare or any other's work for that matter but I can't see it in my own! Try, try and try again, I guess, and keep on trying until it comes without trying was the advice I remember from PFFA, once upon a time. To me it always feels as though I'm trying to fit the words to the form, instead of the form fitting the words. Or have I that arse about face too?

C.E. Chaffin has moved onto villanelles now, which I'm quite interested in. I like the way the repetitiveness piles up an extra meaning within the form, adding another layer to the whole.

But time, time, time, is the problem and when was there ever enough?

Chicken at the Dentist

I am the greatest coward when it comes to going to the Dentist. Three weeks ago, since the nagging pain I had was really getting on my nerves, I plucked up courage to go along to a new Dentist and get the nagging pain seen to.

Filling out the form in the waiting room, I thought it best to mention that I tend to faint after the injections for fillings or extractions.

'Hmm,' said the Dentist, 'Is that because you are a bit scared of the process. 'Hmm,' I said, 'It could well be.'

So the Lady Dentist proceeded to x-ray and count the teeth, in that lovely acronymic manner that they have, and I lay on the chair trying not to squirm too much.

'Hmm,' she said again, 'I think you could do with a good clean here, it's been a while hasn't it?'

So my teeth got the clean of their life and I was dead chuffed with the result, I could feel again the little gaps between them at the bottom.

'What about the nagging pain,' I said.

'Oh, that'll likely settle down now,' she replied, 'Give it a week or so.'

Three weeks later and I'm chewing painkillers like smarties. I had a chance last week to go in and get it looked out, but the old coward that I am, I chickened out. I rang again today, to be told that it's going to be next week before they'll see me. In the meantime, anything hard in the eating line is off the menu and I just have to hope that I stop waking myself up at night with the tooth-grinding, which isn't helping.

I just know it's going to be another extraction. They say that you lose one for every child you bear. Some price to pay for having six kids, eh?

And don't mention oil of cloves!

Halloween Reflection

You were an old flame guttering,
sputtering with the lie of life.
Closer to extinction you lived,
armchair convictions condensed to
badge the sleeve of your hair shirt.

You imagined me a mirror
fit for moulding to your image.
But I proved more enigmatic
than Leonardo's lady, my length
cramping, hampered by your frame.

What saw you last when the rattle
stuck fast, final, in your black craw
and then fluttered from your mute mouth?
A gilded moth trapped, flickering
in swirling wake of summer skirt.

I was good and angry when I wrote this one - it's about an ex who has died, and I suppose a bit of me being angry for the person that he used to be.

Don't get me wrong, I was very sorry to hear when he died, and am sure that he had changed into someone else as we all do as we grow older. This is more of a revisiting of the time before, when I knew him and an outpouring of all things I wanted to say but hadn't the wit for at the time.

Who'd be 21 again? *sigh*

Twelve Things you may not know...

...about sex!

1. Always entails a fight over whose side of the bed you're meant to be on - this ensures a raising of blood pressure which is essential for later on.

2. It's also a good idea to empty your bladder beforehand (in the bathroom!) - there's nothing more annoying than having to get up in the cold and run for the bathroom. But at least he keeps the bed warm for you!

3. Squelching sounds should be completely inaudible - if you can hear them, you're not breathing loudly enough.

4. If he asks if it's big enough - lie. Imagination is a wonderful thing.

5. If he has to ask if you're enjoying it, something has gone wrong!

6. A bed with a good stiff footboard gives him something to brace/push off against.

7. Small children can and will march into your room and ask for biscuits/drink/toys/stories. Try to anticipate these needs beforehand, and if you haven't got a lock for the bedroom door, try a chair wedged under the handle!

8. Make sure said small children are not running around the back garden in earshot - it is offputting when they start to argue. Loudly.

9. When it's all over bags the shower first - he really will appreciate you for the few minutes post-coital sleep it affords him.

10. A nice cup of tea never goes amiss afterwards.

11. Likewise a nice argument afterwards - just in case they were taking you for granted.

12. The above gives you a good excuse to do it all over again.

Plath and degrees of Separation...

Picked this one up from Todd Swift's Eyewear blogzine eyewear, about a very early Sylvia Plath poem called 'Ennui'.

There's an introduction to, history and links to the poem itself here in an ezine called Blackbird.

When I read it I thought straight away of T.S. Eliot's 'Portrait of a Lady', from his first collection Prufrock and other Observations, which according to our course work, had some basis in the Henry James' novel of the same name, and a basis in Eliot's former US life.

The intro on Blackbird links the poem to Plath's reading of The Great Gatsby and explains the other allusions as well. What I find quite amazing, is the density of imagistic compression, with flashes of what becomes her later trademark voice.

Not forgetting a heartfelt wish for Minx!

Can't be there tonight, as the necessary evil of work is required :¬(

But I'm thinking of everyone there in Cardiff and the Purple book by the Purple one.

May it be a long remembered launch! Raise a virtual glass to absentees ;¬)

Minx linx

Maxine's Challenge

..yesterday was the six word biography challenge.

A fun way to exercise words and life-writing.

Here's mine:

1. Lives hard, but living is hard.
2. Ran out of gears to change.
3. Road testing an alien's ship instead.

Not quite sure how I got from 1, to 3, like that... but it's for fun, isn't it?

Transports of Delight

Want to see your work getting around?

Then try Litro - a relatively new reading adventure for publicly transported Londoners!

Litro Link

Thanks to Seoman for pointing this up :)

Meme-alonga-meme

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
There is no such thing. I'm quite resigned to degrees of satisfaction.

What is your greatest fear?
That when I pop me clogs, that will be it!

What is your favorite journey?
It used to be from home in Northern Ireland to Rosslare in the very south of Ireland to collect our Mum from her annual journey home to Alencon, in France - but the coast trip from San Francisco to Santa Barbara last year almost tops it.

What do you consider the most over-rated virtue?
All of them!

What virtue do you wish you had more of?
All of them!

On what occasion do you lie?
On a need to lie basis, which given the fact that I have kids is quite a lot. Mostly white ones, though - I swear!

Which words do you most over use?
'Actually', and 'we'll see'

What is your greatest extravagance?
Ever?... bugger... probably having so many children! Think of all the descendents... agh!

What do you dislike about your appearance?
Where do you want me to start? It's a body!

Which living person do you most despise?
I would have had much firmer opinions on this subject when I was younger. Now I'm more uncertain, especially when I look around the world today. It's sad really.

What is your greatest regret?
Having no regrets.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Words.

When and where were you happiest?
When I was a child before the age of six-seven. They were the days, when a day seemed so damn long! Especially in mid-summer.

Which talent would you most like to have?
The ability to fit a lot more into the day.

What is your current state of mind?
I have a state of mind? I thought it was just a mind...!

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
Nothing, really - we are what we are.

If you could die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be?
A key.

What is your most treasured possession?
My brain.

What thing would you like to have, that you do not?
Don't really do 'things'

What do you think is the lowest depth of misery?
Seeing others in depressed states and being unable to help.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Tolerance. In large measure.

What physical quality do you like in a man?
A large cock. There - I've always wanted to say that! ;¬)

What do you most value in friends?
The ability to keep secrets and not to judge.

What quality do you most dislike in a person?
Meanness.

Who are your favorite writers?
William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Patrick Kavanagh, Virgina Woolf, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Eavan Boland, Abdulrazak Gurnah... must I choose...?

Who are your heroes in real life?
A woman who used to be a neighbour of mine. I've never met anyone so original and kind. She performed daily miracles with the liberal application of tea.

What are your favorite names?
Ones that are unusual and aren't heard very often. Or old names that you've not heard in years.

How would you like to die?
Quickly. Very, very quickly.

What is your motto?
How many sugars in that?

Getting ahead of meself!

If You Were Born in 2893...

Your Name Would Be: Vor Kin And You Would Be: A Robot Hunter

If You Were Born in 2893

Thanks to Chief Biscuit for this one - funnily enough I used to look like this (no really, I did) about ten years ago. I hated my hair and went a la Sinead O Connor for about ten years.

Tilting away in the Northern Hemisphere

This is why October is such a beautiful month to me... amongst many other reasons!

October in our house, especially late October is known as the official month of the donning of the school tights.

It's also when I get out my crock pot and start cooking things like Irish stew, and homemade Steak and Kidney pie. Yeeeuuumm!

From here on in I start to turn my head towards the midwinter festival:

The Crumbs of a Prudent Housewife’s Year
After Dylan Thomas

When the thieving hands of time steal back
What the tilt of the seasons has lent,
When the dim twilit hour fades in our hearts
Insistent the chime of Chronos’ song.

When the cook's thought turns to humble pie
And tender stewed meat and barley soups,
Then you know truly that winter is come
All toil of the year is the tale in the broth

When the lacklustre light of dreary days
Calls the blackened kettle to hale good cheer
T’is then all good folk give greeting and say
‘You won’t feel it now, ‘til Christ’s Mass is near.’

A Blog of the Book

I thought it might be handy to blog the book making process so I've started a blog especially for the purpose over here, to keep it separate from here, and as a record.

So, any news about it you'll find there!

Like I don't have enough to be doing with this blog already, huh?

Astonishing News!

I received a telephone call last night at 21:30 from a very nice man in Kerry. Hmm, I thought to myself as the Kerry lilt asked for me by name, I wonder who this is calling at this time of night.

You see, our landline number is one of those that people seem to ring by accident - is that the insurance firm; the radio station; the local newspaper; are all questions that I get asked a lot, so when someone asks for me by name and I don't recognise their voice I am woken out of auto-answer mode.

Imagine my astonishment when this sonorous voice introduced themselves as the editor of a small press publisher in Ireland and went on to tell me that the press' editorial council had selected my manuscript as one of six books to be published next year - contingent on funding!

Finally! After two years of hawking the manuscript around, sometimes with publishers not even able to read it, my work has persuaded a small press to take it on and give it a launching pad.

You know, I do believe that some of Inner Minx and skintwriter's luck is starting to rub off on me!

All Done!

Woo hoo! I shall go off now and get inebriated as students are meant to and will be back to normal by the weekend.

Oh how I shall enjoy doing nothing, without feeling guilty!

For a short while anyway.

Eyes Down...

...for a full house.

Blogging will resume as normal after the 11th October, when the exam is over.

Then, I will swap blind panic stove lids, through which I can see nothing, for my rose tinted spectacles, through which I shall fondly appraise the nineteenth century - until the exam results in December of course!

Looking for Something a Bit Different?

Then pop in here and check out Mairead Byrne's of course - in fact check the whole blog out.

A Song of Myself - Poetry Thursday

Confinement
Triune

I

One morning, you wake
to the rumble of the wardrobe door
as the 8.10am bus bears
your eldest child over the speed ramp,
along the street where you live.

Groggy, you rise, tiptoeing
downstairs to the kitchen, pull
out a saucepan, placing it quietly,
pouring in the white shush of milk
and turn the knob.

A warm breakfast feeds
five other children. You wake them
from their duveted dreams,
place the dishes on a dining table,
with spoons and call on them to eat.

Making lunches of ham, always ham,
and bananas instead of apples, sealed
in plastic boxes – one, two, three, four, five,
and fill their bottles; three pink ones,
two black ones.

In the tumult of their trousers, tights and shirts
you fill their bags and send them, hatted,
scarved and gloved, to school
and listen to a silence frayed
by the distant rumble of a wardrobe door.

As the kettle reaches boiling point,
you turn on your PC and plan a menu for tea.

II

Tuned to the noises of her home –
she rose fairly soft with rosy cheeks.
A house upon a road that ran
from east to west across two countries.

One country of army towers and ramps
of sudden khakied strangers, talking into
radio sets worn on shoulders that carried guns
and the scent of an older menace.

The other country of cattle, the smell of manure.
A faded cottage in a colour garden,
of lawns and apple trees. Box hedges borderlined
a market garden, kings and cabbages suffocated

by the trees gone over through excess of water
and light. Both sides of the one coin, spent
by two families of the one branch.

But she rises, fairly soft with rosy cheeks,
she is seven, not six, nor eight neither.
She does not know.

III

Before you knew, in the sense of that awareness,
what you held? The song of wood pigeons calling,
answering, in the wood behind your home,
told all – the realm of territory, a few square mile

to fly over, a wood of trees before the disease
killed slowly, choking out the birds, giving less
cover to the games of children; cops and robbers,
cowboys and ‘injuns – heard but never played with.

A solitary breeze blows across a marsh field
your playground; hillocks and mounds preparing
you for the tumble of ancient monuments
and the organised disorder of grass that died.

IV

A square box of a bedsit: a bed, a wardrobe,
a sink and a counter gashed with a white cooker.
A black-and-white TV, a three-in-one stereo.
White counterpane, white walls plastered

with teenage detritus. Posters faded, frayed
matchsticks, butts, sink full of dirty knickers,
a pedal-powered Singer, that served
as dressing table. Nights of ‘Sex Dwarf’

and days of black clothes and maquette faces.
An apprenticeship of make-up, drinks,
appetites for loud, thoughtless remarks;
a remaking of personality within those walls.

V

Breathless with the pulsing, purging pain –
you’ve got to feel your way toward
the end of this. You’re stuck in this panting,
waiting time. It’s four in the morning,

the black outside the frosted window fades
grey. They tell you it will be soon.
You’re waiting on your body too.
You know it’s a big ask, to push 4.2 kilos

up a hill, whilst lying on your back,
but vertical’s out of the question now.
You beg them to cut you, anything to
get it over. The midwife smiles a secret

to herself, knowing you at that point
of baby before body. And so you push,
getting ready for the crinkled blue, basted
with vernix and more hair than ever thought of.

VI

A summer gone by, hearing children’s voices
playing make-believe: doctors and nurses,
houses and schools, their world populated
by your roles and those of imaginary

friends – too sketchy to make
it into this world. Your’s had no image,
just a voice that helped at night, before the
days of siblings, when you needed language

out loud. Their’s have blurs
from Pokemon or Yugioh, cartoonish
colours that hop-scotch with them
around the water-feature and up the garden path.

VII

The side window at the top of the stairs
overlooks next door’s stage of patio doors.
Twin boys of one, orbit their mother,
dark haired, framing her company.

She’s always hanging clothes up,
when I catch her, on an airer inside;
not much drying in this drab winter.
I guess that she sees brighter colours

back home, kept wrapped inside her
head-dress. A colour like orange
or red doesn’t glimmer here under grey.
Better held inside for warmth.

And behind me the crone sleeps
in the morning. She wakes at night.
I hear her voice, alcohol tempered
she drones a life by, without waiting for a reply.

If you made it down this far - thanks very much for reading!

Another Short Story Competition

A short story competition for intelligent short stories for the 12 year old and up

Closing date is a good bit away: 30 January 2007, so that gives plenty of time to write it up and test it out on some of your feckers!

I'm going to give it a go in November/December :¬)

Horrendously Busy!

These last three weeks have been a challenge in many senses, since I seem to have bitten off more than I thought I could chew! First of all, there were the pressing needs of getting the kids back to school, which were compounded by the taking on of a new job.

The job in itself is simply a means to an end - cash - so I won't go on about it.

But the real sticking point was trying to tie up late course essays, which in effect are a form of revision. On the nineteenth century course, the emphasis was on comparing and contrasting an earlyish text with a later nineteenth century text in terms of context and how that could add greater meaning to the text. At least that is how I interpreted the essay choice! I can now say that I have revised Jane Eyre and Dracula to the point of distraction and hope that either of those novels might prove useful in the exaxm.

On the twentieth century course, I am in the process of judging two novels (Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig), for an imagined literary prize and am still working out which one should win. I am notoriously indecisive and keep wavering between one novel over another. The problem is that the more I look at them the more I like them both!

Once this prevaricating is out of the way, it only remains for me to do a lot of revision and the exam for the nineteenth century course on the 11th October. Which brings me up short at the realisation of today's date.