New Buttons

Yo, I've made the additions of these little 'reaction' buttons on here, so we can just go through everything and if we haven't got loads of time to write lengthy comments straight away, then we can just indicate to each other if we think something is great or needs a little or more than a little reworking. Major criticism can be substantiated at a later date - but I think this is a good plan for the moment.

LENBEN

Possibly Iambic definitely Pentameter

Pictures on the wall
Snap-Shots of our life,
A Smile or grimace
Stolen Forever.

Trace the dotted lines
Join the numbers up.
Where X marks the spot,
A sweet tale to tell?

You Already Know;
Prepared for the lies
Well listen herein
I have a surprise.

Luna

Look at me, I'm Wonderful

Please don’t hurt me with your cut-backs,
You’re cut-up and I’m fed-up with your emotions
- feelings just don’t appeal.

You’re the one who stands aloof,
An effigy of everything you think I want,
Suggesting I faint at your beauty.

I fell in love with a mirror first,
No one has quite since met my standards.
I don’t need to be rescued.

Look at me. I'm wonderful

LENBEN

The Picture

He stares at me all the time I’m there,
Never stops to blink,
But what is the expression on his face?
The answer to that plagues us both.

Perhaps the bitter beer he holds reflects his mood,
Or maybe the subtle way his lips are parted
Just about to say, to tell me something.

At times I see him change.
I remember the widening of his eyes
(Reminds me of popcorn)
Whilst I undress.

The smile that fades when I leave
And creeps to the corners of his face on return.
Still slightly brooding, but always content
A fraction of a second captured, mine forever.

LENBEN

Next

Placid, waxen skin, shrivelling and yellow.
Sunken eyes that do not see,
Pale and glazed as ice on a pond.
Or the icing on a burnt cake.
Lips that cannot smile;
Dry, cracking and wrinkled,
From distant days spent laughing.
Hollow bones holding out.
Those sleepless nights spent sleeping.
Gnarled fingers clenched in pain,
Like cracking open walnut with walnut.

The mast is raised.
Sails are flying.
A faint breeze grows
And it’s time to go

I will soar once more; my shackles broken.
I breathe easy; so young, so strong.
The sun warms me through, hair shining, eyes glinting.
A new bud blossoming, a seed shooting through.
I am spring.
In death so alive.

LENBEN

Life Goes On

They couldn't see through the fog
above them neither could their star,
waiting by the phone sat the boy
next to him was the man
standing by the door
looking for a glimpse of light

with the dawn comes day light
which temporarily disperses fog
as the letters come through the door
the dark has gone, but not their star
silent tears blossom from the man
he finds comfort from his boy

who smiles, but the boy
can see a faint light
and helps the man
to blow away the acid fog
so together they can see their star
and stop waiting for the opening of the door

the world is locked out, they barred the door
plunged into darkness a helpless boy
slicing his heart, where is his star?
rotting away, out with the light
choking his smile was the smothering fog
The boy needed the man

for shoulder to cry on, but the man
continued to mourn by the door
He couldn't see for the fog
as it blocked out his boy
crushing out his light
The death of an old star

gleaming ahead is a new star
for a young man
who has found a light
His past a closed door
he is no longer a boy
his spirits lift, as does the fog

The star will always throb above their door
watching as the boy becomes a man
With the illuminating light from within, there is no more fog.

LENBEN

untitled

It ebbs at the edge of my memory
on the tip of my tongue,
lurking just out of sight

It's my carrot


My wires coil ever tighter
because my screw is not loose
and I haven't lost lost my marbles

(just everything else)

LENBEN

Soul

Cradling my soul in my hands I move forward with trepidation, petrified I might trip and send it skidding across the unrelenting floor. In my hands something precious. A part rarely seen out of body. Soul in hands, heart in mouth I move forward, wishing I could embrace the fear that shudders through my being.

My soul an underdeveloped child wrapped in the warm embrace of my shaky fingers’ steepled roof. A scant protection from the elements but all I can do in this panicked state.

JC

What am I going to do with you?

What am I going to do with you?
Fill up the kettle and make us a brew,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Sit down beside you and wait for your cue,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Listen to you carefully as I know you are few,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Stand up above you and wonder the view,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Touch your skin gently and wipe off the dew,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Study your skin tone and worry the hue,
that’s what I am going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Listen to your day with Support Worker Sue,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Lift up your cow mask and laugh at your moo,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Encourage you promptly to go to the loo,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Pinch my nose tightly and say ‘smelly poo’,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Feel my frustration and call you a Jew,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Feed you to lions for a good chew,
that’s what I’m going to do with you

What am I going to do with you?
Slice you in half so you become two,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Slice you up neatly and cook you,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Put your pieces in some beef and ale stew,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Melt you down quickly and box up the goo,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

What am I going to do with you?
Mix it all up and start you anew,
that’s what I’m going to do with you.

M☻g

June 2010

Soul Numbers

I like writing poetry with words
and numbers.
1,
10,
100,
1,000
10,000
100,000
1,000,000

A mountain of numbers each one symbolic in my mind
Ever increasing numbers of my dreams.
One
Ten
One hundred
One thousand
Ten thousand
One hundred thousand
One million.

The same mountain
parallel in words.
But different in my soul
and different in my dreams.

Words in numbers can’t fill my soul
Like digits of numbers fills my dreams.


M☻g

109

109
One hundred and nine
That would have been lovely.

1009
One thousand and nine
Definitely do-able.

10,009
Ten thousand and nine
Scary but a climbable mountain.

109,000
One hundred thousand
With Nine thousand
Odd figures not included
(at this stage).

100k
Just meaningless figures
On a page of
An unknown life
By an unknown man
Who lives with me?

100k
One hundred thousand pounds
Struck heavily, pulverized
Into months and years
of debt that
I don’t know
I never knew
But should have.

100,000
One hundred thousand
Building daily by interest
Accrued by institutions
Who neither know nor care
About me.

23,400
Seconds sitting in crowded waiting
Rooms hopeful for advice
And praying for salvation.
Avoiding others eyes
Wondering.

100,000
times
Are they as bad as us?
Are they fucked too?
Are they as old,
As tired, as desperate,
And probably homeless
As me.

Mog

Blocked

There’s a space in my head that’s aching to be heard
an echoing want that fills my nostrils
with the bitter flavour of ineptitude.

A freezing silence follows when my mind fears to tread,
in a space so personal that my throat constricts my body heaves
and waves of inertia brake off my bow.

I am an open sore oozing my stagnant creativity
over the world, a grotesque monument to my own cowardice.
I slink into the shadows of a mundane existence

hoping like hell the small part that feels like home
will not desert me because of its under-use
and my abhorrence of well earned attention.


This is just a little something right out of my head. Not great I know but it says something about how I feel right now. Any comments would be good.


JC

Poo in my Pants

I have poo in my pants.
It's that brown persistent
skiddy that comes
from ineffective bottom
wiping.

Why does it always
happen when I wear
white underwear?
Or is it just not
noticeable on my black
ones.

Guess the only answer
is the sniff test.

Three Cherries

The Morning After

My craving lasted all of two minutes. As the warm liquid flowed down my throat I knew I had made a mistake. The toxic concoction hit my stomach and it convulsed instantly. My body heaved its contents back up to my throat feeling more sinister than it had on the way down. I made it to the sink just in time to revisit my bad flavour combination on the stainless steel surface, splashing minute droplets up the sides I would have to rinse away later. The sight of my own vomit set off another chain of heaving that retrieved leftover food I did not remember eating.

It was the last time I would let Dave pay his rent in weed.

The kitchen was a blur of light spots on my vision as the convulsions slowed to a stop and I sank to the floor. The cool tiles felt good against my bare legs and I wondered how much better they would feel on my face.

I lay my head to rest gently on the cold hard surface of the tile and momentarily shut my eyes. The smooth surface felt magical against my skin. The hard unyielding surface let my cheek meld to its form its resistance reassuring against my unsteady body. Its strength made me vulnerable, fragile somehow. It felt as though someone could come along and squash me like a bug against its surface and not leave a dent. They could pound my head repeatedly against its unyielding surface until my vision blurred into nothing. Or had that happened already?

JC

The Sphynx Who Fucked the World

Frozen mid-pounce into recumbence
The failed twist of a tongue
Strangulates to cleanse the master race
Spawn of Chimaera told it true
An equinoctial marker of evil,
Not a goddess, but a demon
Paralysed by brilliant rays
of an omnipotent sun.
Waiting for the day the darkness comes,
Sphynx beast will stir awake,
To cross the bright beam threshold
to let shadows strangle fools; laughing.
Her plastic allegiance with man
Ripped forth from the womb of Mother Earth.



Luna

Dysmorphia

">Dysmorphia

Scrutinising in despair

Her naked reflection:

The cellulite that might be

In two, ten or twenty years,

Hair that shines like gold,

That might turn silver... or grey.

The deep furrows that burn into her skin.

Lines that etch her frown and each anxiety;

Cold desert cunt, false teeth smile and prescription lenses,

Scrutinising in despair

Her naked reflection.

Tits too small, yet sinking slowly

To their rendezvous with the navel,

Perhaps those hidden rolls of fat

May concertina over stomach

And ripple down thighs -

A tsunami plague of pies and cake,

A self obsessed depression.

She scrutinises in despair,

Her fated reflection.

Luna

Postcard Fiction Take 2

The Box Room

The clouds hung low and cloying just beyond the window creating a blanket to smother the light from the tiny box room. The lemon yellow walls fought to brighten the gloom highlighting the cavorting bears along the border. Their dance had turned into a sinister war dance provoking the bruised sky into tapping at the window with fresh splodges of rain.

The brown packing box stood in the centre of dismantled furniture and partly packed away toys and mobiles. Neatly folded and placed with care is a pair of dungarees, a small white cardigan with matching booties and tiny hat, lovingly knitted by Grandma. All are deliberately placed with baby grows and blankets smoothed flat with quiet purpose as the rain smeared windows slowly darkened.

JC

The Dumped Duck

This is the result of a 5 minutes exercise that JC and I did today at her local pub. The idea for this was base your postcard fiction in a pub. We both produced 2 pieces of work (see http://curiouslyspeaking.blogspot.com/ and http://moggie711.blogspot.com/ for the other results.

The Dumped Duck

Mike suggested we go out to our local pub, Wetherspoons 'The Dumped Duck' for tea. I was pleasantly surprised as normally Mike thought eating out was frivolous.

He frowned as I chose lasagna and chips as he sensibly selected Cesar salad and presented his twenty percent off discount voucher. Mike was quiet and distracted as I talked about my day at work and an unusual patient who had come in for treatment.

'Are you OK Mike?' I asked.

'Not really Kas, I have something to tell you'.......

Catalogue of Ignorance

I've got a catalogue of ignorance at home.

It sits in the corner and murmurs obscenities

from my mind.

Sometimes I long to read them out loud

whatever the consequences of announcing

my catalogue of ignorance to the world.

At each interview with authority

their questions of diversity demand

that I close my catalogue of ignorance

and open the big book of political

correctness instead.

This page turning blandness

rumbles out of my mouth

to impress and astound.

Yet my catalogue of ignorance

constantly struggles to be heard.

Its pages flickering and turning

like an ever gossiping mouth.

Drawing me into the corners

of my opinions and the reality

of my catalogue of ignorance.

M☻g

The sun hung its head behind the blanket of clouds unable to shake the hours of slumber. A dull grey light filtered through the weakening in the clouds. The trees, usually sun dappled, looked wearied and every bit their age. The ancient boughs had seen many days such as these pass and fade away. They silently watched as the world continued to turn and it inhabitants ambled on to their inevitable demise. They stood, stoic, on the brink of destruction unblinking in the face of suffering. Inside them lay the key to survival, the energy that pulsed through their very fibre from earth to sky an untapped resource wasted by mere burning.

JC

The Final Window

Michael wakes as the early morning light illuminates the room. The corners are very dark but the cogs and spindle that remains of the once working windmill sit silently in the middle of the circular room. The room is cold but relatively dry as this windmill still has a complete roof and apart from gaps in the bricks on the higher floors where the wind whips around upstairs, the building is almost complete.

Michael had walked miles along the marsh country road with out a thought for shelter. His local town was becoming too dangerous particularly with the modern fashion of drunken youngsters beating up street people and filming it on their mobile phones. Michael couldn’t understand their obvious lack of humanity or how amused they appeared by the attacks. It was the most terrible modern voyeurism to which he was just bate.

Michael had been seized by a group of young men and women around the back of his favourite takeaway. The women bating the men to hit harder and in the most painful places and laughing as he fell and moaned at their assault. This was his regular call on a Saturday night as some of the staff would bring out any left over food and a couple of large cups of coffee at the end of the night. These young people seemed to be a different breed from the drunken revellers. Maybe it was because they were working rather than socialising but at least they could see him as a person not just an object to be ignored or abused. The young manager came out to recycle some cardboard and shouted loudly dispersing the baying crowd and probably saving his life. He got the green and white company first aid box and cleaned Michael’s eye and lip before offering some food and a coffee. The hot drink stung as his gulped it down and the greasy food sat in the pit of his stomach churning with his nerves still shattered by the attack.

The young manager thought that perhaps Michael hadn’t better visit them anymore as he would lose his job if they started to get lots of trouble late at night. He voice both apologetic and fearful.

Michael stared at the earnest young man and decided to leave the streets that he knew, the warm corners and the kind benefactors and find a nice place in the country to end his days. He walked north out of the town and headed towards the coast. It was a long day’s walk, one he had done before many years ago and never expected to do again. In the town he was mostly invisible. In the country everyone saw you. In the country there is just not enough people to hide between, too many noisy neighbours and interested bystanders.

He walked all night the first night; it was cold but the sky was clear and the stars beautiful. Michael tried to remember the names of the stars and the constellations. But no details returned. Michael found less and less details returned from his youth. He could just about remember the name and face of his mother but all that remained of his father was an angry face and a thick brown leather belt. His sister left home when he was very young and his sickly younger brother died suddenly causing his mother to cry relentlessly and the family to move home for the final time. His mother was never available to him after that and his father stopped screaming and shouting before leaving he left.

Michael never saw him again. Maybe he was still alive. It would not be impossible. Michael was just 52 so his father would be only in his early 70’s. Michael always wondered if he was in some nice little warden controlled bungalow; with a bossy rounded lady who visited daily to toast his toast, cut his sandwiches and grill his sausages. Michael imagined a kindly lady wearing a bright nylon apron pulled tight across her ample breasts. He imagined his father staring unspeaking at her shape and grunting monosyllabic in reply to her questions. His father determined to show he didn’t care if she called every day or not but really counting the minutes until her arrival.

His mother tried at first to provide them with the basics; meals of fish fingers and chips, packet soups that made pints and pints of thin tasteless broth with unidentifiable hardened lumps that burnt the top of the mouth and soaked up the staling bread to fill his stomach. But in time she could no longer manage these basic tasks and never seemed to have money beyond forty fags and Gordon’s gin. Sometimes she cried in apology to him; cried that she was a bad mother; cried for her lost boy. Other times she'd scream obscenities, blaming him for her lost husband, her lost daughter, her lost son and mostly her lost life.

Michael moved his right leg slightly to try and ease the searing pain in his foot. It burnt inwardly and up towards his swollen knee. One of the girls has kicked this knee with her bright red pointed heels and tottered away laughing hysterically. It hadn’t hurt at the time but as he walked the pain grew. It was too cold to roll up his trousers and examine the injury so Michael just hoped it would subside. Instead his foot began to throb and this final pain forced his need to find shelter for the night.

The windmill had obviously had some restoration but was an uncompleted project. It felt like no one had been there for a while and the door took little force to open. The sails were long gone and the roof a perfect little dome shape that had drawn him towards it in the gloomy dusk.

On the floor in the middle of the room sat a large pile of animal feed sacks. It took Michael little energy to pile these neatly into a bed. There roughness caught on his dry skinned hands but once piled together they created a supportive mattress. Michael unrolled his dirty but familiar sleeping bag. This had been donated by a local charity and had become his most cherished possession. Before his beloved sleeping bag he managed with newspapers and cardboard. It meant constantly searching for bedding during the day and desperately trying to hide them for after dark use.

Michael blinked as the sun shone quickly into through the window. He brought his arm out from within the sleeping bags and wiped his face. This knocked his brown knitted hat from his head onto the rough wooden floor of the mill. With just a small movement of his head Michael stared at the hat on the floor before returning his hand inside the bag. The back of his head and his hair now felt the roughness of the sacks and for a while he wanted to itch. But he concentrated hard to make the impulse go away.

Michael shivered for a moment before closing his eyes and drifting into a dreamless sleep only woken again by the light from the midday sun glaring onto his face. He thought that perhaps by now he should want to pee but he had no such desire. He tried to remember his last drink and realised it was probably the scorching hot coffee he had gulped just after his attack. The sick feeling in his gut returned with the memory.

Michael felt his eye sting against the brightness and blinked to alleviate their dryness. It did not work and instead he forced them shut tightly, scrunching up his face in the process. It felt good. The eye closed darkness giving him comfort.

The pain in his right leg and foot nagged relentlessly and his fingers and toes throbbed in accompaniment. Michael wanted to return to his dreams and memories but they were resistant to him now. He no longer felt the need to open his eyes or move his body, preferring instead the dark and stillness of his current position.

For just a moment he wished he laid on his side, legs curled up and foetal like, yet was unable to move from the stretched out straight, laid on back position that now froze him. He just wanted to make one last move, one last gesture to the world. The thought was strong but the message to move his arms was weak. He shouted in his head to move; he urged his limbs to move; he ordered them.

And inch by inch his right and left arms crept up his inert body. His finger tips felt the roughness of the sacks; the parallel lines of his chunky cords and the dampness of his heavy overcoat. Each move was in slow motion; his fingertips dragging along the alien materials to touch momentarily before crossing over on his chest. And for a moment he felt the beating of his heart. Michael felt the gentle pulse that seemed disconnected to him.

With his arms folded neatly across his chest and gently cupping his bony shoulders Michael listening to the beating. Thump, thump, thump. The regular but slowing rhythm giving him comfort.

Michael thought about sleep; he craved to drift away; to sleep in this safe haven, away from people; in a place built by workers; by people from another time who earned an honest living, supporting each other within family and community to feed themselves from the land. He thought about them grinding wheat inside this building, creating a constant cloud around them, breathed in and swept up and together. He tasted the dust and floor on his lips, licking away the dryness with the tip of his tongue.

Michael heard the sounds of the wheels as they turned the grinding cogs. He heard the wheat crushed into submission. He felt the floor shudder with each rotation of the mechanism and the screaming of the machinery as it forced into work. Each turn pains his bones; each turn warming his soul; each turns slows his heart; each turn raising his spirits.

M☻g