An inverted abecedary snowball...

And the most inconsistent blogger award goes to...

I've got a new poem on the internet. My course this year is pretty much creative writing so I'm going to have to have a few things to show you by the end of it, whether I like it or not. Here's a little something for now, that I'm posting because I can't be bothered to finish off another bit of coursework (that's due in in two and a half hours. I'm just chillin'). Sorry it's so small, not sure how to remedy it quickly without ruining the whole graphology THANG. Hope you enjoy peeps x

Time passed by Jaedla

writing #3 - An Attempt To Be Sexy

Did a new 'thing'. I'm pretty sure it's a short story but some of the sentences in it are really like I was trying to write a poem. Please excuse the late night husky voice and the phone on which the recording was being made vibrating half-way through. Ta.

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AN ATTEMPT TO BE SEXY

“Hold still”
“yeah?”
“Yeah. Okay, I think I got it...”
“Right”
“Yes, yes, okay, got it”
“So can you hear me now?”

I stared through the window, my left cheek squashed against the glass. The once-cooling surface had, within a matter of seconds, become the source of a chill that prevented me from speaking to you.

“Hang on, I’ve lost you again.”

It seemed a shame that it was my jaw, not brain that had frozen over. My breath had by now clouded the pane and blocked any view. Hot air escaping from my nostrils began to thaw my mouth and the same gas waiting to emerge finished the job.

“Better?” I began to reply, until I realised that my body was trying to motion accordingly and the consonants scrambled in my mouth. I found the futility of this act entertaining enough to divulge my attention from attempting to distract you from the reality of the fact that we both preferred it when we had less in common.

As such I found it a blessing that tonight would not suffer the routine roll call of all the people I didn’t like, didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Nor off-the-cuff, semi-relatable (under analysis) remarks about the coincidence of being alive at the same time being vast and quixotic as it is and the subconscious setting of barriers because it always pays to be prepared. No: my mind went blank as you asked me to begin and a mental image of you seared itself on my mind’s worn-out eye.

“Um,” it began, disappointing even myself and starting over, “I manage to remove my socks with minimal fuss”. Politeness is an only half-desirable trait and was unfortunately the one of my few to find itself amplified by the telephone receiver.

“Speak up.”
“Can you hear me now?”
“Shh. Carry on.”

Something about the subtext encouraged me but a mistimed gulp between breaths interrupted my flow and startled, it turned into a belch. Time was, it would have passed with a laugh but the humour was no longer present and though the lack of reaction was in itself unremarkable it hit me with a jolt and I once again started to think. Trying to talk I spluttered outside of my shell and unchecked, half-formed thoughts mixed in the air with the organic waste and my lungs gave way to the great wave of guts.

It didn’t turn you on.


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Writing - poetry #2

Afternoon all, hope you're well. You may remember this post, a month ago, in which I shared an upbeat little ditty about two of the world's oldest professions. Today, something a little more dark.

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Sonnet no.1

Burn each and every member of the flock
Before the black bird swoops and takes his prey

(The most easy of these: those numbed by shock,

The rest blinded or taken in affray).

But he swoops, he dives, he eats my insides

And blood drips as we crow, his beak a key

That opens me. Again, I watch him glide

I’d rather drift, a pyre out at sea.

It seems smoking him out has no effect

So now it is my chest where he resides –

Jailed by ribs, they can take all his pecks

With his tongue I have no need to comply.

Now after so long abusing my pen

All of my words shall become mine again.

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Writing exercises - poetry #1

Evening. Yesterday evening I was working at a Luke Wright and Ross Sutherland gig - two performance poets who I have a real love for, the latter inspiring the former into poetry, who subsequently got me hooked on the medium when I went to Latitude in 2010. In the afternoon before the show, they held a workshop, which I went to. Not only was it really interesting and informative but we had a couple of 10 minute intervals to try out some exercises, which didn't give me the opportunity to procrastinate, my most seductive enemy. In the first, we could either write an alliterative (alliteration being the technique used before rhyme came into popular useage) or univocal (using only one vowel (Y counting as a vowel)) poem. I didn't get very far with my 'E' poem (called Fleet Street), so here's the product of the second exercise, a long one sentence poem which starts with an image, goes off on a tangent, and returns to the image right at the end. I read this out on stage (very badly):



Here's a transcript:

The anchor strained against the rope
Pulling the boat into the sunny cope*
As its crew flexes to catch the eye
Of the assembled gathering of passers-by
Who witness a sight too silly to believe
As the trends have changed no news reached sea
That the ladies of Britain are now hard to impress
With the sight of muscles bulging from a tight white vest
Other than one, Ms Daisy Hook
Whose more-than-a-glance is a noticeable look
That more than a few sailors see
(Most of whom assume she demands no fee)
A brawl breaks out, friends become foes
The Captain shrieks "She's just a cheap hoe"
It seems that little Miss Hook's look
Was the final fray of that crew's rope

Ta-da!

Okay, must dash, off to continue the poetry hype with an evening of being read to be Simon Armitage! Love the theatre I work at. Hope you all enjoyed x


*I'm not sure this is right. Is a cope a thing? You get a cape, and in France you get a cote - is cope in that sense a neologism?