Travel Shorts

If I'm to believe everything I read on the internet, I haven't blogged yet this year. I'm hoping that can't mean that during this same 2 and a half month period I haven't written anything of interest at all... Although the majority of my words currently tend to focus on 'eliciting vocabulary', 'assessing knowledge' and 'engaging' young minds. Or engaging tutors and teachers alike in academic, middle class language that somehow justifies what I'm doing in the classroom. Yes, rather than spend my time conserving energy, reading and writing and practising what I preach, I am encouraged to document every interaction I have with every pupil, parent, teacher carer and pet snail in order to evidence that I am a good teacher. The fact that I haven't had time to blog, am getting good results and producing creative resources isn't enough, and it's only going to get tougher.

Still, for the purposes of writing to model good writing to my students, I'm still finding some time to be creative albeit turning a Heaney poem into a short story or redrafting old travel vignettes. This is a WIP - Duplicity.


Duplicity

There goes another one; faster than the one before. Monochrome faces pass me by; their expressions a blur. The coarse shriek of the warning bell forces them into high definition and I snap back into focus. “It’s English first, ain’t it?” asked Joe. “Yeah! I think we’re doing creative writing today ‘n all.” We walked to room 31, past the old library, bursting with books and infinite possible combinations of words. I’m always on the lookout for new words. Only yesterday I’d discovered duplicitous: two-faced, dishonest, double crossing. I hope to find a way to use it today...
It was probably near lunchtime when all the heads turned towards the door in un-choreographed synchronicity. Who was it that had granted us reprieve by interrupting our maths class? Mrs. Reeves, the school secretary, whispered quietly to Mr. Glen, as fifty-eight eyes tried to lip-read. Twenty-eight heads turned my way, as I recognised my own name and slowly gathered up my things. I tried to push the uneasiness away by twisting my hands inwards in claws of bitter nausea.
The air was stuffy and disinfectant choked at the back of my throat as I sat in the sick bay. I was waiting for our neighbours to collect me. Apparently. I nervously excavated the ledges around the window frame – graveyards to the tiny bodies of flies, buried and suffocated under dust. I watched the playground from the window. Outside, there was nothing remarkable about today. In here; I sat counting bells to try and measure time.
The car smelled of fags and mould as smoke snaked its tendrils up into the roofing. Mr. O’Leary chain-smoked, desperately, whilst his wife fiddled nervously with the radio controls. Nobody told me why this pair came to pick me up or what was going on, and the silence taunted me with its duplicitous emptiness filled with possibility. Mile upon mile passed by in a blur of images, like watching a film on fast forward, but with no sound.
Arriving back home brought temporary relief in its familiarity. But then I saw them. Ma catatonic on the sofa and Pa crying. I’d never seen Pa cry before. I’d barely seen him display any emotion at all, apart from when they brought Stephen home from the...
And then I understood.
Stephen. Something had happened to Stephen. My eyes scanned the room for answers. Pa strolled over and put his arm round my shoulder. It was one of the only times that man of iron had showed me tenderness, and I warmed to it like molten lead. “It was a car. He just wasn’t looking. It...”
I turned my head to look into eyes like a wild Irish Sea. Jim Evans patted my shoulder, trying to force a smile which added new topography to his face. A face you could climb up. He was so close; I could smell the faint stench of ale upon his breath and feel his threatening shoulders looming in on me as he whispered “It’s a hard blow, son... A hard blow.” I walked over to my Ma, her arm outstretched, but she couldn’t find the words to say. Our hands entwined as roots of an austere tree. Like the sounds of a seagull rummaging through the refuse on rubbish day, I heard mutters and whispers from the faces that stared sympathetically. ‘That’s her eldest boy. The poor lad, the poor wee lad.’ I didn’t know how to act, as another old man, with teeth like tombstones, shook my hand to pass on his condolences. I wanted somebody to hold me and tell me everything was going to be OK, but they wanted me to be grown up about it: be a man.
I looked out into the night; its nothingness mimicking the emptiness of the room, of my heart. Somewhere in the distance I heard the approach of sirens. One thing about boarding school is the way your whole life seems to be driven by a series of bells. I shuddered back to the room, hearing the intrusive gurgles of my youngest broth... My only brother, now; Frankie. He just wasn’t looking became a new mantra in my head. And I fought back the tears that begged “Why?”
The ambulance got louder as it approached our road. In came the corpse; bandaged and hidden. The vultures that stood to the side bowed their heads as they muttered more condolences and finally pushed out into the night. Ballyfermotters feast on a funeral, I mused, and imagined the takings in Fibber McGee’s exceeding most week nights as the procession drink to their good health next to the stinking cemetery of the Liffey.

My new idea for pushing my poetry into different directions is to make collage poetry sprinboarded from the news I've read and tweeted. This is an arrangement of words telling the news as I see it!

Sunday Collage

flightless fly
defined by transfinite recursion
wanders in
representations of cardinality
and fractured fissure.

Suture of silences
anguish languish in language
and mocking my clattering ejectives.

delphic aleph emphasises
phatic legacy;
prophetic epiphany
connotes rainbow.

Words are like snow. Duplicitous. Empty and uncarved, so, paradoxically full of possibility. Arbitrary and laden with meaning. He sees me as nothing more than a scrambled dictionary. An assemblage of words; lacking coherence, not harnessing verbs. I'd think about arranging myself linearly or in an alphabetical order if I thought i'd make more sense. But maybe I just am who I am. A woman made from words. They've become my identity, my ice barrier, even my shibboleth.

I wanted to crawl into your aorta
seek refuge there; sipping on vena cava
whilst gripping my pulmonary vein
which traverses time and distance.

Atrium lilies grow at the side of
ventricle lake.
I once made some out of paper napkins
blotting them with my words
and mopping up your bleeding
head when you fell off the wall.

My bicuspid valve was tied in strings
like the ones I bought for your guitar
when they were the only ones attached
to our relationship.

Now, in my upper chamber
your image is a beat
of butterflies wings
underneath my ribcage.

Our arteries play archery
and I'm close to cardiac arrest.

The sun may have woken me first,
but I'd had a night of fitful gasping.
Operosely orectic I'd been persuing 'O's
and wrestling with wonderous workable 'W's.
So it seemed the dictionary had called me to wake.
I was teetering on the edge of the book;
poised and ready for exploration.
All I had to do was jump
and I could find myself
cleansed under words and their powers.
Sibilant sounds of swishing as I search
the pages for suppletives and suffixes;
their fricatives tiny hooks tugging
on my hair like a little boy in the
playground.
My rubiginous freckles resting on the riparian
banks of 'R's and all their purring glory.
Transpicuous water tumbling over my inept toes
I rise to the surface only to see
that it's cold up there and I bit my
tongue in the arc of conversation.
I dive back in. Rippling through ribbons
of rudimentary 'roonerspisms', which always make
me giggle and deliver a blushing crow.
As I turn fathoms to leagues
my stories are collected;
drawing into me other worlds with their
metonymy and morphology
and showing up through my skin like veins.
Each carrying a tale.

Sending songs

ooh soldier
burnt himself
on the solder
fighting broken
wires
in a battle he can't lose.

Iamb

excited
to see what's next

Swigs

Found Poem: Swarm

They drop
like stones from the sky;
collective intelligence
tantalising a vortex
of information. Caustic
unison shifts shape with
beautiful manoeuvres.
Perfect swarm circles
shadows.

language is power
ranguage is powel
ernguage is powla
werguage is polan
oweruage is plang
powerage is langu
powerge is langua
powere is languag

Ring Ring

Once there was a Will
but he couldn’t find a way.
And then he asked me to marry him.
And I said ‘I dunno’
and felt confused for a few days.
So I called someone for help
but then I answered the telephone.
So I have discussed it
with myself
and I think I might do it,
but I won’t publish it on myspace
and there won’t be an announcement
at the table
and we won’t be exchanging rings.

Learning a new language

500 per mm3
(0.5 x 109 /1)
neutropenia
neutrophil count
lymphocytes
platelets
chemo
radiotherapy



isolation

infected

Half +2: Sonnetalisation

I’ve been dreaming sonnetically again
and waking with sonneticisms.
Sonnetifying language is becoming
a daily contribution to sonnetification.
I have agonised over sonnetalisation
and am expecting to overcome this sonnetophilia
sometime and resume life as sonnetal.
I wouldn’t describe my previous state as sonnetophobic
but perhaps I was a sonnetaramus before.

Half sonnet: Form

conforms
confirms
the forms
four ‘m’s
forums
on form
unfirm
uniform

On the Street

I can see him from the corner of my eye;
my next victim. He’s a smoker
and he pulls hard on a thin cigarette;
exhales and the purple plume unfurls
extending it’s tendrils across the street.
The night here is thankless.
His scrawny body leans against
a tree; the gnarled branches
hanging lifelessly down.
I’m stealthy in my approach;
showing my weapon to my victim;
though I sense his fear – “Salvation army”,
I say, holding my badge – “Come with me”.
I go to bed knowing I saved another life.

No ‘T’ in China

Walking in Spain’s hills
I spoke a word of silence.
Swimming French canals
I heard a crash of rainclouds.
Perusing an Afghan square
I found a discord in number.
Under Iran’s skies
I exposed an unheard lie.
A Russian sea froze my lips
and any speech from sliding.
In China I was hiding a
broken wing below a zephyr.
Reaching Beijing I eluded fire;
my consciousness like an island.

This is based on googlisms, which is a fantastic website for generation of ideas, wherein you can type in your word and find a selection of google definitions for that word! Some people even put their own names in there! I am a shipwreck apparently!! To check out Googlisms Click here


Sonneticisms

sonnet is not easy to follow
sonnet is a mystery
sonnet is over
sonnet is encrypted
sonnet is at poetryrepair shop
sonnet is love

Predictive text (when drunk)

Jess n are
riot led
innit got be
bak soo
brigtiriotertio
seein
what happens
in drunkan
very walk.
Lovean cabb

           x

                      x

ejective sibilance 2

This occurrence of cadence
marks the confluence
of ejective sibilance
an inconsistency of decadence
in language rife with complexities.
Our acceptance of this
mixture of sounds is what
makes English a pleasure to analyse.
The coalescence of opposing
ejectives and sibilance could be described as
succulence of language.
There seems to be a standard
rule in order.
To break it is acidic.

bus to beachy head

Killer day for a journey,
blade of sun on water,
slicing cold desire.
Knuckles white;
holding sweaty palms.
Glances to the
caustic sea.
The bus stops;
a
    few
         steps


and it’s over.