Ten is Tin

Our 10th anniversary tattoos

Today, Sharon and I celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary, very much still in love.

And if you can't be self indulgent on a blog, where else can you be? Well, facebook and twitter obviously, but, I'm on here just now so...

Here is the first poem I wrote for Sharon not long after we started 'going steady', which I also read out on our wedding day, ten years ago...

All I don't say
Could fill the sky
Scrawled and scribbled
Across the heavens
For only you to see.
All I don't say
You've heard before,
Well meant and whispered
In soft light.
All I don't say,
You already know.

In The Trees

I wrote this as a Christmas poem for Sharon, she stitched it into this wall hanging.

Spoken Word

Here's a wee recording I did of one of my poems for the Stanza Digital Poetry Slam. No wait...



Also, from this week, the Glasgow anthology ClockWorks that I wrote a story for is available on amazon for kindle.

Writing poems, telling stories, taking photos, singing songs...whatever you enjoy...if you're doing something creative in Scotland this year...show folk. Take a picture and upload it to Creative Scotland's blipfoto page as part of the See Us project, celebrating all types and styles of creativity. On ye go.

Two Love Notes

pic by sharon

Locks

Such keys
Open doors
Only we see.
Each twist
And turn
Unlatches
Somewhere new.
Unleashed
We tumble
Together,
Never unlocked.


Haiku 2

That night your card fell
Heavy in my empty house.
All the walls came down.


Two, of many, written for my Sharon over the years. With love.

And if yer feeling all wistful and lovey dovey, you may also enjoy my story "This is the One".

xx

Binary Love Poem

Corporate Comms

Santa's Little Werewolves

Wee bit of festive fun. Just finished it this week.
A Christmas card from me and my wee family.

Merry Christmas!

Snowflake

Foglights

An uneasy mist

Leaks languidly along

The seafront,

Gasping through

The bench slats

And on

Into the town behind.

I sit smiling

In the empty white,

Irregularly illuminated

By your

Lighthouse smile.

Steampunk Love Poem

Rounding off a wee informal month of scifi style postings, I just found this in an old fanzine I used to produce called "refractor"; it was a sort of a conspiracy zine, except I just made up all the conspiracies in it...my favourite was one about the British attempting to use the power of voodoo during the second world war. I stopped doing it when it became clear to me from the disturbing letters and phonecalls I was getting, from the zines readers, that some people really believed what I was saying.

Anyway, a steampunk love poem...

Hearts Without Pistons

That day

The smog hung like a shroud,

Draped grimly

Over the greying decay

Of slowly rusting streets,

And green smoke

From the armament factories

Swirled sickly through gaping chimneys,

Cutting stinking lime streaks

Across the five o’clock sky.

In the park

A circus

Too big for fleas

Entertained the factory children

With clockwork clowns.

“They’ll be thinking for themselves soon.”

“The children?”

“No. The clowns. And the Policemen.

And the Priests.

And all the other tin men

With their wind up hearts.”

The next shift of children arrive

In time to watch the trapeze.

Timing so precise,

No one will ever fall.

At 8pm

A rocket roars upwards,

Gleaming brass and shining copper,

Trailing purple flames.

And inside,

The two lovers

Escaping to somewhere more real.


And if steampunk is yer thing, you may enjoy reading about the adventures of "the robot James Watt built", Tin Jimmy...

National Poetry Day - Dad's Time Machine

To celebrate National Poetry Day, poems across all the blogs...

The theme for National Poetry Day is actually "Games", this poem is one I wrote for my wee boy Connor a few years ago now...just silly.

“Look!” said Dad
“Everyone come and see,
It’s my fantastic, wonderful
Time machine!”

And it had
Wheels that went whoosh,
And springs that went ping,
Ten levers for pulling
And a bell that went bing.
And a big round blue button
That when pressed it, went pop
And right at the top
Going tick tock
A clock.

“We could go back to last Christmas
And meet old Saint Nick
We can fly on to next Thursday
Come on! Let’s go! Quick!"

So we all jumped in and the clock went
BONG!
And dad said “Oh no!
I’ve set the time wrong.
It’s not going to take us
To meet Santa Claus
We’re going right back to see
Dinosaurs!”

The wheels went whoosh.
The springs went ping.
The lights all went out
We could not see a thing.
And we shuddered
And shoogled.
We went in, out and round.
We wibbled
And wobbled
We went up, under and down.

Then..a big BUMP.
We stopped
With a thump.
All the lights came on again
And a roaring made us
Jump.

Out of the trees came
A big T-Rex!
With sharp shiny teeth
Wearing huge purple specs.

Down from the sky came
A pteranadon!
Flapping his wings
Which had pink mittens on.

Over the hill came
A triceratops!
With big pointy horns
And polkadot socks.

And they all stood around
With their horns, wings and teeth
And dad said “Hello!
Would you all like some sweets?”

We counted out sweeties.
One. Two. Three.
There were some for the dinosaurs
And some left for me.

Then we all said goodbye
To our dinosaur friends.
The clock went BONG
We were off again!

National Poetry Day - Star Wars Biscuits

To celebrate National Poetry Day, I've been publishing poems across all the blogs.
This one is a painful childhood memory, exorcised...

Encased

Forever in a Tupperware box

Beneath my bed,

A treasure

Without value.

A Time Capsule

Full of 1983.

A crazy notion,

A recognition of mortality

One hazy summer’s day.

When

Having just been to Coopers

I sealed my feshly purchased

Return of The Jedi Biscuits

In a box

To keep forever.

Star Wars biscuits were nice.

That is,

They actually are Nice, the biscuits,

Sort of coconutty.

But Nice biscuits

Didn’t have pictures of Jabba The Hutt

Drawn on in food colouring.

On the eve of my 21^st Birthday

Perhaps hoping to recapture

A little slice of a childhood summer

Long since gone,

I opened Pandora’s Tupperware Box.

Inside were a few black and blue crumbs,

The crumpled remnants

Of the cheery wrapper

And a note from Stephen,

My childhood friend

Which read

“Ha ha. I have ate your bisckits.”

And for a moment

It was 1983 once more

And I wanted to kill the bastard.

My favourite thing about this poem, was actually the time I got to perform it (and several others) at a Proper Poetry Club on Ashton Lane, accompanied by my good friend Ray Mitchell on both trumpet and bongos. Needless to say, it went down an absolute storm.

I've noticed a lot of folk land on this page looking for actual star wars biscuits. By way of an apology, might I recommend you check out this top notch official star wars recipe for wookie cookies. Nom.

Bombmaking

At the redder end of August

You and I screwing

The tops off bottles,

And filling them with petrol.

I can't forget your giggle

As we siphoned the petrol,

Or the picnic we had

To empty all the bottles.

You lay there

Terrifyingly beautiful;

That smile,

A flash of white light

Tearing a hole in the summer skies.

I almost forgot who I was,

Where I was.

Our glass arsenal

And some ants

Stealing the crumbs from the sandwiches.

“Let's go.”

You said.

A kiss

Before we packed up the picnic.

And the bottles.

We caught the bus into town,

Then spilt the cost of the matches.

Regeneration

Unlike a phoenix
The ashes of our ancestry
Blow wildly
From the new crematorium chimneys
And are scattered carelessly
Across car parks

That dust
From those burned bones
Settles gently
On rows of new houses
And washes into the river
At the first rain.

Beneath
This cut price suburbia
A river runs red.
Ragged rigging
Hangs like a shroud
On the ghosts of old boats
That drift silently downriver
And out to sea.

Below
This uniformity,
The chaos of ages,
The gnarled roots
Of ancient forest
Cling desperately to the rubble and ruin
Of forgotten castles.
Broken stones, casting long shadows.

Beside
Refurb pubs and cashpoints
The old roads
Well trodden
Are paved away.
Confused signposts hang limp,
Pointing to places
That are no longer there.

Are we so hollow
That we would
Turn the stars ancient light
To poor advantage?
To mortgage history
In vain pursuit
Of new bricks for the ghost town?

The engine of change
Grinds and whines,
Hissing furiously.
Round again. Round again.
Endlessly reframed,
Resurrected, repainted,
Our refrain
Is only entropy.
Round again.

Boxes

A stack of half empty boxes

In a half filled room.

I see

An old broken torch,

A torn film poster lies crumpled

Yellowed and well loved.

Books you won’t need again.

What will you leave?

What stays behind when you

Pack the last of your life

Into the boxes and tape them shut?

Is there a box big enough

To fit who you were inside?

Later, all we can think t do

Is to look at what you’ve left, 

To tear open some of your boxes

To try and unpack you back together.

But we can’t.

We see only what’s here

And can tell who you aren’t or

Who you were, but not

Who you are.

That

Is all you took with you.

Bureaucracy Is A Waste of Good Language

Wild
Paper
Goose
Chase

Utopia

See me worn down

See me broken

See my heart and mind decay.

See me empty

See me frozen

See my spirit burned away.

See me losing

See me beaten

See my plans corrode and rust.

See me over

See me ended

See my corpse rot into dust.

I am rebuilt

I am reborn

I will not bow to lies.

I am focussed

I am ready

I will tear down tired skies.

I am stronger

I am truer

I will blaze and flare with love.

I am patient

I am heartfelt

I will see and soar above.

I am Atlantis rising

I am here to be again.

I am sunrise on a morning

That now will never end.

Fuse

Where is that detonation?

That burst and blast

Of the new,

The tempestuous

All consuming

Boom

Cracking and blackening

My skin and

Scorching these hollow bones.

I squint and limp round

All those bombsites

Scrabbling in the rubble

Searching for

The flash of

Broken light across a 

Room full of casualties,

And for you

Standing smiling in the wreckage,

Until, hauled like comets

All across the cold

Empty black we collide.

Twisted, tumbling together

We writhe.

The torn cheek

The gashed heart

Bruised lips,

That beautiful

Isolatory violence.

It is this 

Compulsion to find you, The thrill of the accident

That has me

Standing on landmines

And falling in front of cars.

Still,

Smashed and shattered

As I am

There is nothing yet

That’s destroyed me

Like you will.

Sandstone Sunset

Here are lovers
Burned against
The sinking
Shredded sun,
Their shadows
Cracked as statuettes
And fractured
Into one.
In broken
Whispers words are
Washing
Endlessly ashore,
Their laughter
Echoes emptily
“Forever.”
Then no more.


Hey...how cool is this, a band made up of folk from my work have turned this poem into a song, go check out Ard Amas.

Haiku

Those eyes are autumn
and your kiss is the warm breeze
hastening harvest.


for sharon