Poetry: A Poem

Hello. I have written a thing which I'd like to share with you. It's quite possibly an exercise in self-indulgent, navel-gazing, masturbatory nonsense because it is a poem about poetry. It's called, fittingly enough, "Poetry: A Poem" and it goes thusly:

Poetry: A Poem

A poem,

Said the dead and ancient Greek

Whom I'd read into life once more,

Is a made thing.

An act of creation.

Life with ink in its veins.

I do not wish to bleed,

But if life and my all too human brain

Do conspire against me

With sharpened, moonlit knives

I will let it scab upon the page.

I will trap it where it can be safely observed.

I will steal laughter and tears from my audience,

And into the silence that's left behind

I will shout my thoughts.

I will scream into this world the maelstrom

Whose nocturnal rages trap me in unwilling consciousness.

I will pray

With every part of my grubby, battered soul

That this time -

Please, O spiteful, capricious deities -

That this one time

Something will echo back at me which I understand.

And then I will have a pint,

Calm myself down, y'know.

Take the edge off, sort of thing.

It's bad enough that I make myself memorise this shit,

And need to recite it to anyone who'll listen,

But it really wouldn't do to pretend that poetry is magic.

And a double gin as well, I think,

With bitter lemon if you have it,

Or lime and soda if not.

I do genuinely love those moments

When two people, separated by time, or distance,

Or the breadth of the darkness behind two sets of eyes,

Meet across a crowded line of verse.

I know, then, that I am not alone,

And nor are you.

Oh, and a bag of pork scratchings, please,

It does you good to treat yourself.

It makes you feel alive.

One hopes you're well,
Yrs,
ADWoodward

Edges

Hello. I've written a thing. I think. I mean I think it's a thing, and - depending on quite how much conscious intent you think is needed before "I" becomes relevant - it might have been written by me. Until its real parents come along, I suppose I'll have to take care of it, anyway. A few days ago I couldn't concentrate, sat at a keyboard for a bit with this as the result, and then went back to whatever it was I was doing. Eating crisps, probably. I've reread it a few times, and have got two things out of the effort. The first is that I need to read it again in a different tone, and the second is that it refuses to be edited. So, fuck it, have a read and see what you think. Until something better suggests itself, I'm calling it "Edges", and it goes thusly:

Edges

Look to the edges. Look to those places where one thing seems to stop and another begins, or continues after a lengthy pause. Look at the spaces. The cracks / The joins. Is that mortar or dust accumulated between the stones? See the red mark on the white sheet. Stain or dye? The one should be smaller, should mar the beauty less. The other should be repeated; haphazard patterns allowed to shift with a moving eye. Make them into pictures with a stranger's imagination. What do you see? Broken fragments or pieces put together? The tumbled pebble gets wedged and refuses to budge. A tile, cut and carefully placed, strains to escape its newly mortared home. Ruined or returned to nature? Restrictions released or order removed? Pause. Continue. Stop. Repeat. Rebuild. Reduce. Reduplicate. Which? All or none? Yes, no, maybe? I'm terribly sorry I've forgotten the question? Was there one? Will there be one soon? Do you mind if I wait and see? I think I might be on the edge of something important here.

One hopes you're well,
yrs,
ADWoodward

End of Series

Hello. I've been on holiday recently. It was lovely, thank you for asking. This meant I spent a week looking at a sunlit sea, occasionally wandering to get another drink. I wrote a few things, the first of which I'd like to share with today. I'll put the others up as and when I get bored with editing them. You see, I also read a fair bit on holiday. One of the things I read was last couple of novel's of Raymond E. Feist's epic fantasy known as The Riftwar Cycle. Magician the first book, was one of the things that made me decide "Oh, I actually do like reading." Finishing it, and leaving the world's of Midkemia and Kelewan behind felt weird. Now, you humans can - I'm told- experience feelings without resorting to scribbling doggerel. I choose not to. So this poem is called "End of Series", and it goes thusly:

End of Series

The last page is turned,

The last chapter finished.

We leave our friends

Whose text-forged lives we've cherished

To continue on without us.

Other victories wait them.

Other loves through which to sing.

Other armies to command.

Other regimes to safeguard 

Against the demon legion.

We've loved our times together,

We cheered them through their darkest hours,

But now the pen is still,

The bardic voices silent,

And now they must carry on

Without their paperbacked cheerleaders.

Thirty years the printed word has praised them,

Ten lifetimes more they'll have my adoration.

But no more the press will know them,

No more will ink on metal sing their tales.

These characters who led me from my adolescence

Through goblin strife and elven grace

Continue on to blissful summers

Without my reading eyes to share their laughter and their tears.

I'll re-read their wins and their losses,

But the first time has been and gone.

A rediscovery is not the same

As the first time you turned that first fantastic page.

One hopes you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward