Delph's back

[larryrap]

Now We Are Old is beautiful.

[Scrow]

i love the way your portrait enables ageing to be romantic in 'Now we are old'. Your thread hints at stories, characters I would like to meet again. Sometimes the poems read as fragments from a larger whole. Very enticing to read.

Sarah

[delph_ambi]

Thank you so much!

[delph_ambi]

song

she took pencil and paper
sat with fiddle and bow
and the tune flowed

because as she wrote she was thinking of him
far, far away. he had never been close
but now the distance – oh, cruel, the distance

he would never know
he would never hear her play,
she would never hear him say:
‘love, I wish I’d known’

[kristalynn]

Beautiful job with Departure! If I had more time right now, I'd cozy up and read more of your thread. I will treat myself at a later time.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

song

she took pencil and paper
sat with fiddle and bow
and the tune flowed

because as she wrote she was thinking of him
far, far away. he had never been close
but now the distance – oh, cruel, the distance

he would never know
he would never hear her play,
she would never hear him say:
‘love, I wish I’d known’

Beautiful and wistful. The story of far too many hearts.

BrianIs AtYou

[delph_ambi]

Thank you! I was actually writing some violin music when 'song' came to me.

[delph_ambi]

Erosion

He once was a king (or a saint). Now
his face melts, displays different ages,
each smaller and older than the last;
versions of what might have been
if time had run other than arrow straight,
if life had been other than carved in sandstone.

His crown (or mitre) is webbed and uneven,
right eye weathered out of existence,
nose long-narrow and crooked,
upper lip drooping over the lower,
beard rippling like molten cheese –

and that’s when he comes to life,
perks up at the mention of cheese.
Left eye blinks open for a nano-second:
Fromage !
The moment passes through a trickle of light,
right ear slips further down the side of his face,
cheeks sag. He regains his austerity,
returns to his alcove high on the walls
of Rouen Cathedral, goes back to sleep.

[delph_ambi]

Councillor Jenkins

We’ve knocked Jenkins down, must reassemble him
brick by brick, he was the only man not to be bombed
out of existence during the blitz, so they say; the last man
not to have died in the aftershock of the council meeting.

This is why I have decided not to be a poet, because poetry
is ugly, terrifying, it is Councillor Jenkins caught on camera
hurtling down Everest in an avalanche of empty spam tins,
frozen sacs of urine, to the sound of a Welsh harmonium
played off key in Tesco Gwent’s car park. It is not pretty.

Ernest Jenkins, composer of lyric verses, we learn
nothing from your death. There is something rotten
in the state of grace to which you aspired while earwax
appeared on your finger tip, was tasted, discovered
to be acrid and bitter as skips of rotting vegetables.

You chose how to live, you turned the key, breathed deep
with mosquito single-mindedness, you sucked the lifeblood
from Mrs Jenkins, and that is why we are gathered together
to reassemble you, brick you up behind your fireplace that you
may burn, twitch and moan for eternity, and Mrs Jenkins –
Beth – will come to my bed tonight, wearing blue, and smiling.

[delph_ambi]

Yay! Finished! That was fun.

[5th column]

Hi C,

'Song' - the simplicity of the language and the images belies the emotional context many will relate to.

'Erosion' - at first I thought 'statue' but then no! The cheese and the eye and the sag! And then, ah yes, statue again. I enjoyed the little mystery.

Councelor Jenkins - worth reading if only for S2 which is so full of image and imagination. I really enjoyed this.

NaPo 2015 - it's been a blast. Thanks for contributing

[delph_ambi]

Thank you! I've thoroughly enjoyed myself doing this - and one of the poems written this month (the 'Twenty-eight Meditations On Finding A Street Piano') has just been published by The Lake.

[Sorella]

Not surprised, but hey, to be published DURING NaPo -- that must be a first!!

[romac1]

Poor old Councillor Jenkins! No luck, eh? Not that it sounds as if he deserved any. I enjoyed the poem. I really liked your 28 Meditations on a Street Piano and the final line is fabulous.

[Donner]

Thank you! I've thoroughly enjoyed myself doing this - and one of the poems written this month (the 'Twenty-eight Meditations On Finding A Street Piano') has just been published by The Lake.

Congrats, Catherine! And well-deserved.

Departure is a favorite of your thread. It combines the best sensibilities of the writer and the artist in you, shows how the one can compliment the other and is a great example and a perfectly timed tipping point in a poem:

but this afternoon, fired by the memory of a man far away

with kind eyes, I painted a colour that astonished me,
I thought of Rothko, I thought of all the smug idiots, Ikea kitsch,
I decided to leave you. This is me going. This is me picking up

my hat, my coat. This is me kissing the dog one last time.
He smells, I won’t miss him. This is me shifting the furniture,
leaving it just the way I like it. This is me writing Goodbye.

Goodbye, indeed.

Donner