Concerning Mermaids

Hello. Until recently I had forgotten I had a blog. Sorry for neglecting you. I doubt anyone has actually been straining with frustrated anticipation at the lack of updates, but if I am wrong about that I apologise to both of you. This as much as anything else is an archive for my own purposes independent of any misplaceable object or fail-threatening hard drive, so I having remembered it exists I shall start trying to make use of this again. I have written a thing which I thought I'd share with you. It came out of a challenge to write a six-line poem from a given title in under two minutes and then a subsequent free-write. It's called "Concerning Mermaids" and goes thusly:

Concerning Mermaids

There are rules you must follow when playing make believe.

Everything you create has to be internally consistent

So that when the grey men with clipboards come

The world does not collapse

When they start poking at it with fingers like under-ripe raspberries.

The law concerning mermaids, however,  is that they’re as real as you make them.

I bought three when I was little.

I saved up until I had seven pounds

Stacked in sun-coloured coins.

Mum gave me a piece of purple paper

She said I could use

If my treasure hoard proved not quite enough.

I put them in a yellow and green paddling pool we got from Morrisons,

And visited them every day.

They sang me folk songs, fed me tiny pastries,

And told me stories from far ahead in the future

Of when I would save the Elf Queen from disaster.

They knew I could do it when the time came,

Said they could read it in my smile.

I can still see the blue enamelled armour they told me I would wear.

Real life oozes in furtively through the cracks of your mind,

Unnoticed and malignant.

It steals the magic from you

Until you find yourself getting angry at strangers for laughing.

When I was sixteen

I was presented with my own clipboard,

On which I filled in important-looking forms

That no one ever read.

Last year I made a note on it

Saying that the colours of the paddling pool

Had faded,

And it was now so filled with empty beer tins

There was no room for even the tiniest of cream-filled pastries,

Or folk songs,

Or little boys valiantly protecting Elven royalty.

I handed in my clipboard that day.

I no longer wanted to ooze into other people’s heads.

I painted my grey suit a blue like a lazy sky in August,

Found a little piece of enamel

Which I pinned to my lapel,

And polished up my home-made

Dragon-kicking shoes.

I would argue fighting dragons is more noble than fighting each other.

I didn’t find any dragons that afternoon.

I admit, I didn’t look for very long.

Instead I drank orange squash

And read stories in the sunshine.

When I turned the last page I looked up and saw

A yellow and green paddling pool

Brimming with sparkling water,

And dotted here and there

With magnolia petals.

Maybe the mermaids changed the water themselves?

I don’t know if there’s still room for three.

I’d forgotten how much space a good story can take up

I can only hope

They’re still good enough friends

That they don’t mind being squeezed up against each other.

So much time has passed

I’ve forgotten the details,

And now I get to relearn these stories,

Love once more each phrase, image, detail.

I get to play make-believe

And return to thoughts of childhood books;

They’re the reason I say I believe in fairies.

One hopes you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward

The Littlest Badger

Hello. I genuinely that, without irony this is the most deliberately constructed, and truest reflection of the best part of my reality that I have ever written. It's called the littlest badger. And it goes thusly:

BADGERS

Badgers are excellent.

We know this to be true.

They’re far cooler than you’d expect from a stripy-faced weasel.

Especially when you consider

That they look like a throw-pillow from your gran’s sofa

To which someone has applied a pint of Brylcreem,

And two pairs of plimsolls from primary school PE.

The way they move, however,

Is like William Shatner backstage at a Star Trek convention,

They know they’re the centre of this universe,

But don’t feel the need to rub it in your face.

They’re quite happy to smile and wave

En route to their next speaking engagement.

Take, for example, the two in the park by my house:

They are respectable and dignified elder statesbadgers,

Patrolling the park with sobriety and vigilance,

Graciously listening to petitions from the local wildlife

And, when needful, dragging recalcitrant toads

Off to Bedfordshire Constabulary’s speed awareness courses.

All in all, what with their commitment to duty,

With each sternly watching the other

For any hint of corruption or regal ambition,

They are the very model of a certain sort of

Enlightened Constitutional Diarchy.

Then there’s the littlest badger, a creature

Which once had the word ‘dignity’ described to it,

And decided it didn’t want any, thank you very much.

The littlest badger is one whom I once saw

Get so excited at finding a discarded kebab

That it ran in circles for a bit

Then charged headfirst into a dog-poo bin.

Which it then growled at,

As if daring the bin,

Or perhaps the dog poo inside

To even think about laughing.

The littlest badger is the one which scampers

Back and forth behind the older two,

Making excited noises,

And galloping headlong through flowerbeds.

“Bugger you, flowers! Pending data

On the success of regional projects to reintroduce

The wolf and brown bear into Britain,

I’m the largest carnivore on these islands

And I hereby decree that petals are for dorks,

So move your leafy arses!”

It seems to say.

Did you know, in Britain

Badgers are the main predator of metaphors?

As such, many literary charities refuse

To release their rehabilitated metaphors,

Full of life and ready to take on the world,

Into known badger territories.

Wait, no, not metaphors.

Hedgehogs.

Badgers eat Hedgehogs.

Not everything’s a metaphor.

One hopes you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward

If Anything Writing Poetry Has Made Me Less Articulate Than I Was Before

Hello. I've written a thing which I'd like to share. No, I've no idea what it means either. You read it and then you can tell me. It goes thusly:

If Anything Writing Poetry Has Made Me Less Articulate Than I Was Before

Let's get drunk

On a weekday night.

Very slightly drunker than we ought to,

So the world goes shiny at the edges.

Let's listen to poetry,

And pretend we're paying attention,

Instead looking across the room at each other.

And let's pretend we're listening to music,

Because I'm told that would mean we're having fun,

Rather than overthinking things.

Apparently those two terms are not synonymous.

I know, right? It surprised me when I found out.

Let's pretend we're listening to Beethoven,

Because that means we can pretend we're suave and cultured.

Some intelligent people do in fact genuinely listen to Beethoven,

And so we might

Therefore

Be intelligent.

QED.

Intelligent people have good ideas

And know how to explain them to others.

Let's listen to Beethoven's sixth symphony.

Relatively few people know how that goes,

So they'll be too busy

Pretending to be as cultured as you and me

To eavesdrop on our conversation.

Let's listen to the second movement

Of Beethoven's sixth symphony,

Because even fewer people will recognise that one.

Of those,

A percentage

Won't be able to say quite what a movement is..

And then I can grin,

And hope,

Fervently, that no one asks me to explain.

I think the real joy of the second movement of the sixth

Is that, although it's sufficiently andante molto mosso

To give us a pleasant soundtrack,

It's not sufficiently so

To distract us from our purpose here.

Because between googling the music just now

And when I sit down to write this poem

Neither of us will remember

What the phrase actually means.

We'll have done too much by then.

Let's write poems that we have no idea how to finish.

Let's think of things we have no idea how to start,

Rehearse them and perform them

Underground

Somewhere in East London.

Let's make eye contact

Across a room crowded with people still pretending to listen.

Let's

Make

Eye

Contact

With so many people that no one can be really sure if poem is even about anyone in particular.

Let's hope she knows it's about her.

Let's hope she is brave enough to do something braver than this about this.

Let's - 

Sorry, that came out weird.
I had the start of the thought
And forgot where I was going with it.
Forget I said anything.

Hope you're well,

yrs,

ADWoodward