Watch out there's a poet about - Guest Post

As if it's not enough that I peddle my doggerel to captive audiences and the unwary shoppers of Milton Keynes I now swoop onto Gemmak's blog and spill it out here too. Thanks to her for giving me the space.

Two poems; slightly bizarre ones I'm afraid but a lot of what I write seemed inappropriate for this blog.

The first is a bit more accessible and resulted from me thinking about the number of words Eskimos/Inuits etc are supposed to have for snow and then I realised we have just as many for the word "time". Interesting how it features so heavily in our lexicography.

The second is far more obscure and was written when I was playing around with the idea of Jack Kerouac's stream of consciousness style and is really about the representation of deities and how every culture I know of has at least one "god". I know they are both not what you would consider 'poems' in the traditional sense as they are written in free or blank verse - I do write "proper poems" too like villanelles and sonnets but hey, something different is fun too.

If you have a passion to read more of my poems (or even hear my voice - eek) then you can click here.

IanB (a.k.a. Alex Sykie, a.k.a. Punctuation on Wordpress).


Time
----------------------
Time kills.
So we kill time.
Time heals.
Does everything heal with time?
Time is made of some sort of plastic
because Dr Who and Einstein can bend time.
Although it’s quite small since it’s
so easy to lose track of time.
Time can be stolen.
We steal time.
We take a minute,
snatch a second.
Time has wings,
time flies.
Time deceives,
time can play tricks.
Time changes everything.
Everything changes with time.
Time passes and,
once it’s gone
it never comes back.
You can’t own time though,
we never “have” time.
Time is addictive nowadays
because we never seem to have
enough time.
Unless you’re in prison;
then you can’t get rid of it,
you have time on your hands,
you’re doing time,
your own time not anyone
else’s, just yours. The judge
gave you time as your master
and now you serve time.
Until it’s finished with you
or, like money, you’ve spent all your time on nothing,
wasted your time and now you’ve had it,
you’ve run out of…time.

Friend
----------------------
This is the spirit of Kerouac. Chelsea Hotel
spirit, English-style.

I mean it though. To you:

I used to call you friend.

I cried and you listened to my sobbing.
I laughed and the laughter bounced back.

And we lied about understanding.
It was the easy thing to do.
It tussled with my rational side.

You were my morning friend. My good-time
friend. My comfort.

I used to call you friend.

Do you remember the songs?

Happy, clappy songs.
It tussled with my rational side.

We were wreathed in sweet-smelling smoke
and chimes. A childhood duty,
kissing feet, wiping cloth, reading
what we couldn't do and never what we could.

Authorised words. Approved and translated.

Then songs about being happy to die because
there would be something there. A song relying
on trust. A tussle with my rational side.

You were never my rock standing in a sand-filled
desert, filled with emptiness. You were never
the hand that guided the art.

White man. White woman. Nails in the wrong places.

Olive in the skin. Oil on the hair. Painted
by the gentiles.

Words that banned things. Stipulations,
prostrations by action and abstention,
by observance in reverence. Until the difference
between the free and those who still listened
grew greater in my mind.

And the difference between the free and me
became so paper-thin you could rub your
fingers through it and they would touch.

Such a fine gap. It tussled with my
rational side.

Move on move on. More wraiths of smoke.
Breath in for peace, hold and release.
Breath in for solace, for solace, for solace.

Mind walks, takes a run up and jumps into the
dream sky of possibilities.

Made our friendship look very different.
Less rules, more creativity. More of
everything: colours, creeds, good and bad.

I used to call you my friend.

Breathed in, moved to the jungle beat.
Made our friendship look very very very different.
Gave you a new face, a new size.

I danced in the warehouse. I danced in the street.
Everybody was there but I was on my own.

Then I hugged the trees. I squeezed their bark
and ran my hands up and down them; my connectors
to the Earth, a divination of you. Stroking them
with my palms and hugging the hard woody trunk like
a lover come back from a long journey and you don't
want to let them go.

Your face looked so very very different and you
lived everywhere and you were truly beautiful.

It tussled with my rational side.