Addiction

Have I mentioned ‘I am not a silent poet’ webzine? Maybe…..it’s worth checking out…and seeing if some of your poems are a fit…if you are a submitter….or if you like that kind of  writing as a reader. This is one of my poems that went up on the site a few months ago. I’m on with a project…art/writing….so it came up today:

Addiction

Clouds lower, proving the curves of sky in broad strokes.
Sea should soothe, its enviable power override the black dog
bounding towards me. I watch sprite shadows scamper

along sea walls, see him hook twin trout wriggling
on the end of taut lines, reeling them in, hugging
their slippery bodies.  I no longer lust after him;

my addiction to unreality, found at the bottom of wine bottles,
gives me extra layers of skin as he flays them.
We’re angry as gulls squabbling over ham baked by the sun.

Doing My Own Thing….(some would say, shooting myself in the foot)

I’m working towards an exhibition/event. This is one of twenty hand -drawn ink covers…each of which contains a random group of eight of my poems. They will form part of the exhibition. I’m hoping to do some printed versions from the originals….to sell to fund the exhibition. What could go wrong?  Nobody giving a fook I suppose. I don’t have the time or people skills to create a fan base…..

I Will Not Be Silenced

I’m having chats with a printer person….looking through tons of my images….for a few ideas I’ve had. I’m okay with coming up with ideas, but I get distracted by doing the actual ‘work’…the drawings….and am not great at getting them a home. She thinks this one might  make an interesting ‘business card’ (I don’t have a ‘business’ really….but as I can never remember my phone number….it might be useful)

Fast Roar

When I need to ‘have a proper think’ I often take a walk. Today the weather was too hot to take the pooches out after 6am and before 6pm…..so I did the other thing that helps me concentrate my thoughts…I had a doodle. (Not a euphemism…see drawing above.) While doodling I received something in the post that made me realise the way I’m living my life doesn’t need as much revision as I’d been thinking it did. It also gave me the energy and resources to make a couple of practical moves towards something I’m hoping for……

Amy Winehouse’s Bees

A writer friend and I were chatting about Amy in the early hours, and she said if she was a painter she would draw her with actual bees in her beehive, humming the songs, keeping her awake all night long. I loved that idea, especially as it sums up the way thoughts buzz your brain at 4am, and how brilliant it is when you can turn the dark thoughts into a piece of writing, music or art. So I drew this…..

Disintegrate

When I was at art college I got tired of all the white walls that ‘best displayed’ the art we spilled. My tutors weren’t happy when I jazzed up the walls…but I was making installations, so they couldn’t entirely object. I feel the same when I see graveyards….the perpetual white to grey sameness in rows. All those individual lives, spent in a myriad of ways, shapes, colours, textures, flavours….remembered as a grey tablet when they’re gone. I would like this as my tombstone, please.

Too Late

My life has few consistencies, but it has one consistency since I got older: things arrive too late. I’m thinking in particular about opportunities and rewards, which are so tardy in arriving that I’ll have gone past caring by the time they turn up.