On the substitution bench

[Bench]

Julie, Janet, Donner, 5th, thank you all so much for taking the time to read and comment, very much appreciated. The fluffing, while not as incisive as on the fora, really helps when deciding which pieces are worth revisiting to work on. I'm two poems shy- will try and catch -up but life is very hectic, so have defaulted today back to Stanley:


V)

By sunrise, Stanley Richards had retrieved
and diced the hind quarters of a slain horse.
He’d found it still breathing, and this he stopped
by single rifle bullet to its head.

He’d butchered cattle on his farm back home
And set to work expertly with a saw.
He used the meat to bulk the stew he’d made
with his remaining spuds, then adding salt,
some stolen onions and wild garlic leaves.

He had about two hundred mouths to feed,
including twelve men from the Cornish port
where he’d grown up. They rabbled round his stove
and those still with their wits bickered and laughed
as colour percolated the grey dawn.

And then, as Stanley served his smiling brother,
the bomb shed by the Gotha overhead,
fell right in to the cooking pot, and blew
a deadly crater flavoured with Stan’s stew.

[Word Weaver]

Stanley!!! Noooooooooo!

[Bench]

WW: Hahaha. Thanks for reading.


Answered Prayer


I gave you the materials
In the canyons
On the pads of the gecko,
Denticle valleys
On a sharkskin,
The cat’s eye night.
I gave you limitless fuel:
Painted every shade of green
And made it sway.
I gave you the tools
Of upright insight
And thumbnails.
I gave you the blueprints
A billion times over
In every living thing,
So you might build;

Instead you fatten.

The orangutan
Can show you the cure--
Look him up soon.

[Speug]

I really liked ‘Untitled’ - it hints at any number of possible stories; also, the last S of ‘Law Abiding’ made me laugh.

[bop]

Bench, there are some great images in 'Answered Prayer' and the underlying meaning is pretty good too!
bop

[Dunc]

Ben

Law Abiding — Ah, fine work! Nicely unfolded, clever and funny.

Analysing — Great word, 'wobbly' and nice humour.

Stanley V — You're right, those bombs aren't really helpful for the flavour.

Prayer — I like the accumulation of inferences, so I'm annoyed with myself for not seeing what the orangutan can do.

Enjoyed.

Regards / Dunc

[Emily Bronte]

Hi, bench,

I particularly liked "analysing" and "untitled." They pack an emotional punch.

I hope you come back to this.

We have ten days to go!

Cheers,

Mari.

[beeswax]

I liked Analysing a lot. The analysts damp voice and his enjoyment of the word stuck as adjective and then enhanced by -edness to become a noun - is fascinating/funny/true. I got a picture of a family – captive audience in a consulting room with this awful person trotting out inept metaphors.

[Bench]

Speug, Dunc, Bop, Emily, Bees, thanks so much for taking the time to read through.


(Unfinished) -superseded, please see below

I had to drive the long way round to Roche
Because they closed the Truro-Carland road,

As if the miles of regimented cones
That stood passive in verges through the day,

Could only launch their coup d’état on cars
Without a run-in with the school-run mums.

I swept on unfamiliar roads right through
The moon-ghost mountains of terraced clay;

And kaolin eviscerated heaps
That green with time as Gaia’s shabby hands

Somehow reclaim her sterile severed guts.
I peaked a hill and like a velvet nut

A bat, wings spread, slapped on my window screen,
And peeled away in wind like paper skin.

[Bench]

Night-Shift

I had to drive the long way round to Roche
Because they closed the Truro-Carland road,
As if the miles of regimented cones
That glumly stood in verges in the sun,
Could only launch their coup d’état on cars
Without a run-in with the school-run mums.

I swept on unfamiliar roads wound through
The moon-ghost mountains of terraced clay:
White kaolin-eviscerated heaps
That green with time as Gaia’s shabby hands
Somehow reclaim her sterile severed guts.

I peaked a hill and like a velvet nut
A prostrate bat connects with my windscreen,
And peeled away in wind, like paper skin,
And made me wish I’d gone the other way.

I parked in the staff bit behind the store,
Suffused by orange sodium street lights
And barren winds that stole their earthy scent
From hidden swathes of moorland all around.

A boy works hard when given job-and-knock --
When I lock-up the night still seems as old
And just as cold as when I first arrived.

This time I remember the roadworks,
Then make a new mistake: I overshoot
A turn and cannot double-back for miles.

But while I’m still complaining to myself,
And railing at the need for better roads,
A brilliant green light falls from the sky,
Too fast for flares or freaky firework:
It dawns on me I’ve seen a meteorite,
And marvel at this rare and special sight.

These two events, the space-rock and the bat,
Seemed so auspicious, fate would want a third,
To underline some portentous intent
Like in the Final Destination films.

But I’m not scared enough to call in sick,
Since nothing ever happens in my job.

[Bench]

Cheap Date

Crazy winter soul
"I'm walking here, I'm walking"
Dead hands work again.

[Bench]

That meteorite one wasn't meant to end anything like that. Sorry.

[Emilio]

Bench, I enjoyed very much the imagery and story of Stanley Richards, and these strophes in Flora Day,

I visit nowadays to show my teeth
to the white-washed windows of Eddie’s Toys,
graffiti covered sterling-boarded Wooly's,

Trim, the grocer, selling mobile phones
and pubs with fewer punters than they've pumps,
and wonder at the smiles between their jumps.

Best,

[Bench]

Thanks Emilio. I realised I got the bit about Trim being a mobile phone shop wrong the other day. It's a bookies -- same-same. Thanks for reading and your kind words. Here's a little more Stanley:

VI)

They found the cooking pot that afternoon
flattened like a giant black rosette,
and there pressed into mud underneath,
Stan --
unconscious, broken -- but somehow alive.

It was weeks before he was well enough
to hear the ghastly news that he alone
survived the bomb -- he alone would go home.

But word had spread of his ‘lucky’ escape
and because war is political blood,
this little attack made the War Office
perform their apoplectic moustache dance.

They were, however, as impressed with Stan
as the pot was, and asked important things
like “how bloody big must this pot have been?”
“he was cooking what?” and “what time is lunch?”

Once these important questions were addressed,
with rationed fillet steak, they thought it best
to pin more tin to Stanley Richard’s chest.

[Bench]

The Beast of Carnon Downs

The vicar could drop me
so far. The rest I had to walk
cross country
(She could be a bit sanctimonious).

I am of course the prince
of dead reckoning,
and knew the land
of marmite toast and tea
was that-way-ish.

In the dark and flannel wind,
I fought a thousand
troubled brambles,
and spooked
a barnful of beasts.

It took many falls
from gates,
before I saw the light
(bathroom, I think).

After he told me off
for skidding my BMX,
my neighbour said
that old man Collins
has spent three nights
waiting with a gun
for the big cat
that terrorised his herd
last Friday night.