Friday Challenge

Marian at "Imaginary Garden with Real Toads" seeks poems inspired by music, asking "How can we use music as a prompt for poetry anyway." Readily, It seems to me. This poem, one of the first I ever wrote way back, has little in common with the quoted song "She's an Angel." - although I was once accused at a poetry evening of "being drunk when I wrote it."

Serenade For Tuba


Come up and greet my jolly, golden solace.

Through here! She voices best in gurgling bathrooms.

Stroke - she won't bite - her close coiled, shining cloisters . . .

A gin-crazed plumber, in to fix the ball-cock

swooned when his gaze rolled round those crotcheted pipings . .

Your smile leers massive, from burnished haunch reflected.

Fondle her foghorn face. I think she likes you.

Sit! Sit! I'll clasp her close and get her going.

I fell for her, my hippo, in a junk-shop.

She squatted, three-pound-ten, a chubby bargain.

A friendly welder patched one tattered buttock.

Ignore choleric thumps from upstairs neighbours.

My rondos resonating with their windows

enrage her cat which claws his potted cacti.

Ex-R.A.F., his tracer drills my ceiling.

Give him his way, he'd melt her down for bullets.

Have suitors, faint as simpering glockenspiels

stitched frills to hot-eyed love with lace flutes needling,

entombed their caverned lusts in lowing cellos,

or scraped and sidled with seductive fiddles?

I, triple-tongued and three crooked fingers pumping,

lip firm with lung in heartfelt syncopation

will plight a fat-cheeked troth that shakes the sternum.

Our mammoth blasts bring hearts' defences tumbling.

Lips purse. Trial puffs fan distant, dripping cellars.

Stirred echoes faintly wander spiralled sewers . . .

(This melancholy mastodon of music

fair uses up the Brasso, I can tell you.)

Now eggs of sorrow in her tin bowels hatching

trundle her ghostly, subterranean gloamings'
soar to the flaring spaces of her belfry.

And OOMPAH roars its challenge to despair.

Imaginary Garden WIth Real Toads.28th. September

Ella, in the Imaginary Garden set the poetic challenge which suggested this poem. 


In Alnwick's Bookshop


There on the shelves of dross a gleam of gold.
A first edition "Tree of Idleness"
unsigned, but then, we can't have everything.
Why should his verses swim before my eyes,
most of these lines I've known so many years -
bringing me now to all-but-public tears?
Is it his 'single pining mandolin' that
'scratches on silence like a pet locked in'?
Or images of distance, cloud, hills, rain,
his 'lack of someone spreading like a stain.'
Yes, perhaps that. These found poems find me now
sundered from home, from sleep, from all I love,
from 'where brown fingers in the darkness move'
To find this book, this small excuse for weeping.

Lawrence Durrell, author of the stupendous "Alexandria Quartet", is now all but forgotten as a poet. A pity, for his lyric poetry is moving, tender and always musical. "The Tree of Idleness" (1955, Faber & Faber) was his fourth 'slim volume'.  All the quotes are from the title poem.

Alnwick, a small market-town in the county of Northumberland, UK, boasts the biggest second-hand bookshop in the country - some say in Europe, in the town's disused railway station. It really is a knock-out and very well worth a visit if you happen to be touring or staying there. But you won't find a first ed. "Tree of Idleness" - 'cos I've got it!

Magpie Tales#82

Revenants


There'll come a day some day when you'll be there
again. Your eyes the same, the same small hands,
your brushed hair lifted by the night wind, laid
onto your shoulder bare. And you will say
"Now it is time, dear. We have waited long,
each in our place and time. And what was strong
between us we'll replay. Come now, come away."

And I? Lost between "You!" and "How?" and "Why?"
will half believe that you are no more ghost
than I, then, hesitating, know that we
both are ghosts now, and this, Eternity.


(Suggested by Tess Kincaid's picture-prompt for Magpie#82, and by another poem, "Revenant," remembered from my schooldays.)

Beach

The children wearing careless laughter come

to the beach. And we? With dry socks, Sunbloc,

ice cream and careful praise, we watch and pray

no waves of life wash their castles all away.


Jinksy's "In Tandem" picture by Margaret Bednar suggested this poem. 
Click the link to see others

Poetry Jam, 9th. May

Watercats offers "Birthday" for Poetry Jam's first ever prompt.

For Her Birthday

I found them one by one.

Cut glass, a chiming bell,

October's smoky days,

Mists shuffling in the sun,

Old wood with lavender,

Laughter where children run,

and hoarded them,

unmatched, unlit.

In time you came,

the thread to string them on.

Gay Cannon at One Stop Poetry ask for poems this week, in iambic pentameters - blank verse.  This effort is reasonably blank, if not exactly pentametric

I'll be a fly-by-night who, poised
where gravity forbids a single step
interrogates the breeze, then ventures.
There's a lurch than churns the entrails, till
blind trust in the wing thats vectors
earth and air arrests the chasm plunge
and lifts me, harnessed to the wind's trapeze.
Night is as indigo as dreams.
I might be manta, bat or privateer
with all seven stars to plunder,
a scaly dactyl rattling down the thermals,
spars like grating talons clamped
on a nightmare Icarus.  I swoop
where small lights blink,  where pines conspire
with the wind's edge, indistinct.
I shift my emphasis.
My laugh drifts from the ridge.
A farm dog curls into his own fretful whine.
Perhaps the goodwife, spine chilled, gaze upthrown,
will glimpse my witchcraft split the risen moon.

Animal Magic For The Poetry Bus, April 4th.

Titus the Dog is selling tickets for the Poetry Bus this week, and the destination is the zoo. This Wise Old Bird is not on her list, and will be quite happy riding on the roof-rack . .

It was me he hunted,

wheeling over fields and trees,
to invade the backwaters of dreams,
invade the very eaves,

trailing the screech

that plucked me, quaking,

from my sleep.

It was me he wanted.

He was no wise old friend.

I pulled the sheets of dread

about my ears. I probed

my room's four corners

for his white shape, aghast

at bonecrack talons

in my rafters, white wings draped,

lunar eyes fixed on my head,

steel beak agape. Would he impale

a mere child in his bed?

It was me he haunted.

The whole house lay asleep.

He knew my fears and I

his place. Could he not keep 

to that bleak steeple where he blinked

among rusty bells, ropes, bones,

murmurs of the dead,

and let me keep

such terrors for my dreams?

I must not shriek.

I must not shriek.

Theme Thursday 10th.March 2011

Megan at Theme Thursday offers "Space" as the prompt this week.


Daughter, Five


Her eyes grew wide when stars
blinked against indigo.
"From Earth they seem like globes.
But through telescopes on platforms
built for watchers in the gloom
you'll see five spokes. Like stars in school."
What child's afraid to scheme gavottes for angels,
tally their balance on cosmic pinnacles,
or juggle the moon's Copernicussed polka
if it suits her daydream? No room
for logic here, or lecturing -
she'd drop me in my quacks; wisdom
rarely keeps its feet in Wonderland.
I risked - "Stars like yours were common -
years ago." Half truth? Perhaps.
But it hurts to know when magic fails,
my small stargazer all too soon
must leap for her life's one choice -
let worlds spin as they will, eclipsed in bigotry,
or toil to unpick her Universe
with five frail senses aimed
out across the vastnesses,
true on some tiny star.




(I have posted this poem for The Poetry Bus on a previous occasion)

Magpie Tales#54

In the week when a 6.3 Richter Scale earthquake struck South Island, New Zealand, Willow offers poets and writers this picture prompt. 

 Random

You ever see a big man really cry?

Even a man you’d think had seen it all?

Big Benny, captain of a Rescue Squad

that shifted slabs of brickwork, dug toward

the tap-tap-taps, the cries for help, the child.

What did they find, crushed in the bloody tomb

the shaking earth had fashioned? Benny said

“We were too late. Maybe five she’d be. Or six.

Her Ma had tried to shield her. She’d gone, too.”

He looked up, helpless, held out helpless hands.

“Their whole house had come down. The ceiling joists

had pinned them. Smashed them. But next door – next door

hardly a tile shook loose. Her puzzle neither.”

“Puzzle, Benny?”

                            “They’d made the kid’s jig-saw.

One with big lunky pieces for young kids.

She’d laid it on the floor, finished, all but for

the last piece she still held in her wee hand,

her wee mouth shaping ‘There’ – how,

I ask you, how could the house come down

and not shake out one piece, not one, yet kill.”

His hard-hat laid aside, his head laid down

onto his arms. His shoulders shook. Someone

said “He’s got kids too. Get the lad some tea.”

Outside. a thin rain falls damping the dust.

Folk jabber on cellphones, their day in chaos,

or sit, stare, ask how can they help, mothers,

old men, firecrews, paramedics, schoolboys,

those running they know not where to flee their fear,

even the petty thieves, pushers and crooks

today in these torn streets are worth his tears 

Poetry Bus 21st February

120 Socks is driving the Bus this week and offers the single word "AMBER" for the prompt.

Pillage, 1941

Russia’s forebodings come too late.

Or invasion comes too soon?



Under a baleful moon


thugs in grey uniform come

to Petersburg, to Russia’s Amber Room.


No need to be discreet. No need

to whisper. No need for look-outs.

They have raped all Europe.

Consummate in all Destructive Arts,


they shall be victors. And
 victors

get the spoils.
These treasures are German now. 



No marble, no carved wood or silverwork.

Each wall seems spun from sunsets' glow,

this gold-brown chamber laced with gems –

testament to skill, pride, craftsmanship.

But men weaned on drivel cannot comprehend

such splendour. So every panel and divan


each casket, chandelier, mirror – every trace

is dumped into boxes and is hauled away.



There is no backward glance, and no-one lingers,

and more, yet more cold blood drips from their fingers.

The story of Germany’s appropriation of Catherine the Great’s Amber Room during Operation Barbarossa can be read HERE and HERE.

. 

Magpie Tales. First Birthday.

The 52nd picture-prompt from Willow -

All Houses

keep their dear alloted ghosts. Sometimes

a vagueness caught out of

the corner of your eye. Or,

hearing a stair-tread creak, you

listen for someone who will not be there.

Evenings bring them out. They

ease doors open, slowly.

No. It could not be. Don’t look. Don't dare.

Mornings are safer.  Morning ghosts

are bats or birds shut in. These are real,

rattling through hallways bare of all but fear,

You’re safe from daylight ghosts, yet . . .

wings brush your arm the way she – till through

eaves or open window they get free.

Sometimes, glancing up, you’re sure

to turn some play of light through trees into -

white dress striped green and golden – throw

open, throw wide the door. It must be, now must be -

Only the expected garden, silent,

desolate, a ghost your company.

Magpie#48

Willow's picture prompt this week encourages musical responses.

A Piano Lesson on “La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin”

(Prelude. Claude Debussy, 1910)

G flat or E flat minor?  Should we care?

She’s trapped in five-barred prisons of black dots.

Our task? To set her free.  Forget “Rigeur”

Play her as Debussy must have seen her.

Or play like Renoir, had he but painted songs

of Provence swathed in purples, gold and blue,

drowsing in the long, long summer’s ground-bass 

where field and Alp and this short Prelude

greet her, twelve tones deep in lavender.

Play that first note to tell her that you’re there!

Pause till she lifts the latch, opens the door,

steps out in her little shoes - such dainty shoes!

Let her pace these down-and-up arpeggios, wearing -

straw hat, long skirts - white muslin stitched with blue

over ruched pantaloons, her bodice trim,

a lacy shawl, and ribbons, ribbons, ribbons

on her breast and hat and hair, a wicker trug

for rose-hips by her way. She turns, squints in the sun

whose beams fall stepwise to the garden gate,

pointing the path to where her sweetheart waits.

Think of her fingers busy with wild flowers

to help you through those four-part fugal bars, then

let the next rising measures sound as though

she’s pondering. Should she dare to jump the stream?

(Petite cherie! Look to the stepping-stones!)

Now make Degas look over Renoir’s shoulder,

as the forte triplets, presaging grande jete

send her hat skimming. She leaps  - unladylike,

but no Maman to scold – lands safe,

picks up her hat, laughs at her fun . . . So why

these gloomy chords like clouds (with pedal) laid

between her sixteen summers and the sun?

No matter!  Here’s where she sings the first motif,

(coaxed dolce from the treble - lift the mood . . . )

Someone close by is calling out her name.

She does not need to ask “Who’s there?”

as the last spread chord drifts slowly, like

a sweetheart’s fingers through her flaxen hair.


Note.  This poem written at an earlier date, i.e. not specifically a response to the prompt.