Travel Shorts

Two of my friends wrote a poignant song last week. They're both musicians I've respected for some time, but this new track did something different. Once I'd heard it I haven't been able to stop listening to it. It inspired me. In the one line 'It took silence to talk you round' I have started a WIP of a whole poem exploring the juxtaposition of my previous relationship. He was born into silence and believes in non-verbal communication. I was born into a thunderstorm ad have always fought to be heard. Words are my everything. Click to listen to silence

Here is the beginning of my Silence

It’s your silence that speaks to me,
Pragmatic necessity.
In all those unsaid words
Lie lessons you made me learn.

But your quiet can’t break me down.

You were inaudible when you were born;
Didn’t speak til you felt worn.
Didn’t need words to be in the room.

In your silence I glean bits,
Understand what you think fits.
In your silence I hear a sound.

It’s your words I never trusted
Artificial sounds
and their message.
It takes more than words
to make me hear.

Diegetic duplicity;
Your spirit lost but your soul free.
You entered earth in a thunderstorm
fought with noise since you were born -

It is silence that creates sound...

I was fortunate enough to be taken on a rare and wonderful date the other night to see Robert Fripp (King Crimson’s guitarist) and Theo Travis (Piper at the gates of...amongst others Porcupine Tree) play soundscapes in a church just around the corner from my new house. It’s uncommon for me to set foot in one of these places, much less enjoy the experience. I was scrawling whilst I was there...

Fingers weave journeys
as tired eyes are hypnotised by angels carved on the eyes.
Mitres point to music’s alphabet;
inscribed in arches.
Ribs of oak are framed by minarets
and I saw shadows waging war
with pirouetting ripples.
Flickering flames, conflate sinister and sane;
chorales decay in rich cascades.
His strings emulate seagulls
as they pick through
the bones of yesterday’s life.

Surfing along your auditory canal I can
bring you notes. Though mine
will always be
more Proust than Strauss.

I hover around your vestibule;
an irritating buzz of feedback
like that old punk club in London.

My heart's beating like a hammer
dipping my quill into your incus,
I then stirrup or stir up with
the mellifluous sounds of metronome
echoing through your cochlea.
Your robust fingers picking out chords
and aurally feeding my oratory.


You create a humming inside my auricle;
it growls into my being and holds me still;
a forced silence.


You are sibilance and music;
a smouldering underground jazz club
somewhere sexy like Paris.


I am the poet's corner of a café
too many awkward chinking
coffee spoons clanking
choking on ejectives.

Woke up; found my love gone.
Left in its place words
falling from the seams.
Many's the night I've walked this
land. I was trying to remember.
It felt like my mind
was being cast
out
to sea. Tiny
bits of brain nibbled
by phosphorescence. Are they
illuminating
the darkness or
is it
permeating
them?
Like the sunken
shell of integrity I
sit and wait.
I rise
with the tide.
This means I have to fall.
There were stains on the carpet where
He'd dropped his consonants.
All achin', shakin' and breakin'.
His hollow cheeks gulping down
apologies. Tired lies
and vinegar flies
carve mermaids on his eyes,
which look to the sky.
He said he knew science;
told me
'how you get pairs
of stars that pull
into orbit
forever unable to touch
or part' *
like how grains of sand
won't just dissolve into water.
Some words I collect
I have stars in my heart.

This is some of the work I am considering putting to music when I do my performance piece. I'm hoping to collaborate with Kath A Bit OF Cello Williams.
* From 'Years Later' by Lavinia Greenlaw

Ein anderes 

feeling the music

Half + 2

Hark the sepulchral organ grinds
out of tune and into the night.
I have this disease that mimics
love. I can recognise it in you.

I tried to record every event
that happened in minor detail
in case I needed them later.
I tried to fix every broken number

but hearts are more your style.