Travel Shorts

Lara sad and flat-pack
grasps hand.
Abstract attack ransacks by slap back
at flats. Whack, clack n crack at that;
hack asthma as rhythm,
Lara - a nymph - stands back, aghast.
And as far as far can grabs masala.
Swaps parts, transplants hands as flashy
balls fly.
My hand smacks an almanac.
Lara gasps.
Stacks maps at dawn and
abracadabra!
Has fatal attack...

This poem is made from my tweets, which are fed into the tweet cruncher and spat out into recycled poetry.

My sad picture had a cry
that perpetuates the right.
We're 25 hours in across the cycle of emotions
needn't matter...
is pleased to see a divine set change as a question.
I listened to dusk.
Candles lit,
getting bitter-er...
would still dreams of emotions this time!
Shall we walk with words,
sibilance expression,
discussion!
He deserves his happiness, without dirt,
our psychogeography is hope
after I've bet.
You keep.

Earth Hour came again last night, and due to sharing my living space with other people, I asked politely if everyone minded observing the time, which was met with respectful candles in the kitchen. I like to think of the earth as breathing a little sigh of relief when such things occur and hope that in this case observing the hour also raised awareness of how my housemates could contribute more. I used the time to disconnect from electricity and technology. As a teacher, it's rare that I am able to do this for extended periods of time at the moment. And during the hour I wrote, by hand, about a pebble.

I'd been to the beach early on Friday morning on my way into school and gathered a selection of pebbles and shells to use as my lesson for the afternoon. When I presented each child with a pebble and announced that I wanted them to write for 20 minutes, non-stop, about it, I was met with some brilliant Harry Enfield impressions. "Huh! Miss! As IF you could write about that for 20 minutes." "I could write a novel, just about a pebble..." was my reply, which was, predictably received with sniggers and lots of eyebrow activity.

Needless to say, 20 minutes later, half of the class had written over half a page and wanted to carry on, whilst the other half had had great fun throwing pebbles around, conducting 'research' into onomatopoeia.

A novel I have not yet had time to write, but during the blackout, this WIP is what I have so far on pebbles

Its porous surface contains black holes,
vortexes
filled with secrets seen
over centuries.
On the crest of a ferocious wave
its journey
rivals
that of a monarch butterfly.
For some time the pebble rested,
like the corpse of Atlantis,
leagues beneath sight.
It silently
witnessed
swarming schools weaving
their collective thoughts through
oceanic clefts until they
settled into the fissures;
rewrote topography.
The rhyme of tides echo
into chasms,
which blow out chorales,
spiralling to the shore.
Amid the hieroglyphics
the pebble waited
in turbulence
before committing to the sea
the way a thousand shipwrecks did before it.
The paths etched into its surface;
labyrinthine corridors
of broken dreams,
of messages of love
and stamps
of existence snatched
into the swelling stomach of tsunami.
The stench of seaweed baking in the sun
filters through its crevices
carrying olfactory hallucinations
of days
in times past.
Days when light fragments filter through
its counterparts
casting shadows like the mountains.
Dark days
of lying
in wait underground
like lava tunnels deep
beneath the surface,
fostering evolution.


The Guardian published pictures of the blackout around the world. It's lovely to feel a part of something so big.

I've been walking
new lines
to rewrite psychogeography.
Like the memories carved
in a child's
etch-a-sketch,
the new ones are discombobulated
by déjà vu.

Let's not pace in fissures
gathering salt for our wounds.

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.

Sibilant sea coughed our stories into the chasm.
Its echoes carved out a new path.
Fissures expose the truth about us;
we are archipelago
in need of an isthmus.

The Witch of Words