Poetry Submissions

So, to whoever may be actively following this page of my blog, you will have noticed that I have removed several pieces of my work. This is not because I think they are bad and no longer want you to see them; it is because, in this age of publishing and technology, whoever publishes your work wants to be the first. You can probably see where this is going. 
After a 4-year break from trying to get my poetry published in various UK magazines, I have finally decided to take the leap again, but this comes with the sacrifice of having to take down the pieces of work that I am submitting from my blog so as to make them 'unpublished'. 
In the unfortunate event that they don't get published, I may re-post them but, for the time being, this blog space may have to be even more inactive than it has been. 
Thank you for those who have followed me so far. I shall return and, if I get lucky in the publishing department, you may be the first to know.

Past the Patina - In Memory of Poppy: Wave Installation

It’s a beautiful thing, as it rises, it rises, it rises,

A blood red wave in the shadow of

A wave of blood in the shadow of

A wave of blood to symbolise the names on

The memorial that pierces the sun.

It’s visually stunning the way the poppies reflect

In the puddles,

A sea of red heads made duller

Lost their colour –

Are they dying or have they already…?

No water can nourish these roots already

They are dead heads fallen like shadows of

Biplane fighters in brave flocks

The resurrected phantoms of their names on

The memorial that pierces the sun.

I’m in awe as it rises, it rises, it rises –

We’ll be home by Christmas –

It’s still rising towering narrowing looming reaching…

It’s stopped

Why did it stop?

They can’t stop it’s not over they’re too young there are too many too many

Too many flowers.

They were real people – note the ‘were’ –

Maybe you knew them

Can you pick them out?

Each face is a flower

A life struck out

But a legend no doubt

Of whom without

You could not take picture after picture after picture

Of your son in the shadow of

A graduation in the shadow of

A life made perfect by the shadow of

The memorial that pierces the sun.

I will stand and stare and remember

As it pours forth its floral fountain

A sympathetic tributary flood

A blood tide

To dissipate like a wave at my feet,

To dissipate dissolve disperse decompose

Into Flanders Field exalted in clay

Into Flanders Field exalted

In Flanders Field

They want us to remember

But what am I remembering,

Who must I not forget?

I never met him

You won’t forget him

I never met him

You can’t forget him

I never met him

You shouldn’t forget him

As he crawls through the wire

That tangles protects mangles resurrects

That reaches from the shadow of

Protects the beaches in the shadow of

Beyond our reach in the shadow of

The memorial that pierces the sun.

As daylight fades, the lights come up,

The colours pop, shine like rain-jewelled petals,

Like glacé buds

Like patent blossom,

Like blood-soaked soil -

The only kind fertile enough for such seeds

With such ravenous needs

That six thousand strong must feed the flock

By conceding to bleed to stop the clock.

But still it rises, it rises, it rises

And it can’t be stopped why won’t it stop the names are the same the fight is not is not

It’s not over yet –

We are infected in retrospect,

Cannot forgive out of respect –

So no one surrenders in the shadow of

We keep remembering in the shadow of

A day not just of peace but

A memorial that pierces the sun. 

There is a Light and It Never Goes Out

I am going to be submitting these pieces to a local Plymouth publication called Anthologia on the theme of 'Tradition', this last being another which has followed me from childhood: the Eurovision Song Contest. Even now, I make sure I am always in front of a tv or big screen (as is the case at uni) every year to watch it.

Tonight, we are all winners,

Tonight, Graham Norton is Terry Wogan

(rest in peace)

Tonight is a night I will not miss,

Tonight is my religion.

Like an X-Factor judge, I sit

Notepad in hand, ready to reduce

Every standard-issue diva,

Every Slavic heartthrob,

Every native tongue, kitsch ditty

And excessive use of stage effects

To a clinical note and verdict

Out of ten.

With each entry, I cringe at the weirdness,

Shiver with the frisson

And sigh as the countries lock horns

For a place in my leader board,

Turning iffy eights into certain sevens

While the nines smile with giddy pride

Or flip their hair and smirk.

At zero hour

Those smirks are gone,

Just nervous grins behind a flag

As the world’s eye flies over the Green Room.

I clutch my notepad whispering

The names of my precious number nines,

Groaning with every misplaced point

Delivered with predictable precision,

Until a winner breaks from the pack,

Streaks ahead of the rest

With each country’s haemorrhaging

Of the infernal ‘douze points’.

Midnight strikes and it’s all over,

The trophy awarded,

A tear-stained encore

And the torch passed on for another year –

I sigh and switch off the TV.

A month later, the winning song

Will echo in my head,

Lighting that distant shrine once more.

Too Old for This

I am going to be submitting these pieces to a local Plymouth publication called Anthologia on the theme of 'Tradition', this second being a slightly cynical look back at the beliefs most, if not all of us, had when we were young.

No more gifts beneath the tree

Signed by jolly Santa Claus,

No more jingle as he leaves

His sack beside my bed,

I leave him wine and mince pies –

But end up eating them instead.

No more egg-shaped chocolate

Left by little rabbit paws,

No more plastic tub of crème eggs,

No Guylian or Nestle,

I leave them a large carrot –

But step on it the next day.

No more pound beneath my pillow

For the tooth of my young jaws,

No more hideous display

Of pearly gnashers on a page,

This time I can leave nothing –

I foot my own bill at this age.

A Bowl of Shreddies

I am going to be submitting these pieces to a local Plymouth publication called Anthologia on the theme of 'Tradition', this first coming from a childhood tradition of going very early to an air show at the Kentish airport Biggin Hill and eating our breakfast in the car.

It’s 8.30am and I’m sitting in the open boot

Of my family’s white Volvo Estate

Clutching a blue picnic bowl of Shreddies

As I have done every year since I can remember;

My sister’s bowl is white,

She is shorter than me –

How long has it been since then?

We breakfast in Indian seclusion,

A bold patterned throw over the door,

Impatience for the coming day

Crowded in with the cool boxes and fold-up seats.

Soon, I know, the sky will become

The biggest stage I have ever seen –

My dad made sure of that by parking

As far from tall vans as he could,

Allowing for an unbroken swathe of blue

From horizon to zenith.

As I munch through my ever soggier Shreddies,

Memories of last year play out

In my mind’s eye:

A jet moving through the air

In imitation of a begging dog;

Star shapes in red, white, and blue

Fading into purple clouds;

A drawn-out thunderclap

Ripping the sky apart;

Biplanes stalling - falling

From precipitous heights.

Bowl empty, I am already salivating

For chilled chicken drumsticks and pork pies,

Wishing I could eat them on the roof

Closer to the display

In the big open sky.

A Review of 'Beans and Other Poems' by Mark Jones

I was given this quirky little collection of poetry to read by my friend and fellow Plymouth poet, Mark Jones, to whom I promised I would write a review. I hope I can do it justice.

Before even passing the cover, any reader can take a guess at what they're in for: a bizarre blend of poems which refuses to take mundane topics seriously, and having been labelled 'surrealist', it's little wonder why. Perusing through this pick 'n' mix of poetry, you are greeted with something different with every turn of the page, from the comically blunt and witty to the absurdly self-expository. It is, admittedly, a bit hit-and-miss as to whether you get Jones's obscure concepts - 'Love in the form of croquet balls' may be something we'll never quite understand - but his word choices are often some of the most fitting you'll ever encounter. 'Terror at 10:27pm' provides you with 'nasal ambulance calls', while the titular 'Beans' recreates the humble can of beans as erupting with 'volcano juice'. 

He deals with things we, as humble humans, encounter on an almost everyday basis - aside from sultana siblings and robot tomatoes, maybe. Food, if you couldn't already guess by the title, is a notably dominant theme in this volume, presented in often spasmodically rhymed stanzas. This does let down a few of the poems by interrupting the apparently uniform rhyme scheme, while other times a cheeky forced rhyme pushes things back into recognisable form, evident in poems like 'Seagull' and the unexpectedly witty 'Power Danger' ('Ranger Danger' maybe?) 

One thing a reader will soon become aware of, however, is that Mark Jones has instated himself as the King of the deprecatingly terse sentence, reducing the versatile burger to an 'Artery clogging/Weight gainer' and the loathsome seagull to a 'High flying shitter'. He's certainly not messing around. With wit-laced gems like 'Save the Eggs for Later' and 'Spoonsmith', this man's unexpected humour is one to look out for. A little awkward, but full of confidence – and certainly better received than the flatulence one might expect from consuming this volume’s namesake.

To anyone wishing to check out more from Mark Jones, you can follow this link to his Facebook page, Jonesthepoet.

A Timid Tongue in Budapest

Came back from a trip with the University's History department to Budapest on May 27th and wrote this 3 days later in response. The lemonades were possibly the best I'd ever had, the currency is in those ridiculously huge notations, and I am still surprised so many places speak English.

Feels like an ordinary city,
a flight that goes for ninety minutes 
lands you on common ground.
In the darkness,
one street to the next is familiar,
a Tesco glaring its beacon of homely light
in what you must keep telling yourself
is a foreign night.
And soon, buildings rise up,
rustic and molded,
unchanging in the morning sun,
so you come to realise you are in fact
'somewhere else'.
Tables spill out onto pavements,
tongues spill out the language of goulash -
but also more fish and chips than you expected.
There is a clear market for your
hard-earned ridiculous currency
in eating with the locals,
from a menu labeling the Hungarian specialties 
which you never manage to try,
sold by a waiter whose tongue is braver than yours.
There is a clear market for your
hard-earned ridiculous currency
in trinkets, resplendent with gem stones,
unpriced to build up attachment to what translates
to a twenty-quid bracelet -
this wrinkled vendor knows 
your girlfriend's expensive taste better than you.
Pretty soon you must abstain or starve.
Away you go, to the open plazas punctuated by
historical full stops on horseback,
and more Gothic facades than a nineteenth century estate agent.
There is no escaping the past here
in a city occupying a perilous position of reluctant modernity,
such that few buildings dwarf you to any great height
and drivers won't stop for a red light.
You wander in amazement,
knowing these walls didn't survive the war,
the aged lost to a gruesome recollection of the Holocaust
in a monochrome TV set.
Their hand touches your shoulder
as you sip fruit-laced artisan lemonades,
wishing they were this good back home -
even wishing this was home.
But your tongue is not brave enough,
even to catch your bilingual waiter's attention
so he can part you with more cash
and set you free into this isolated colourful war-zone.

Always, Forever, Eternally

I haven't got any updated material from university to add here so I thought I'd just throw an old piece of poetry your way. I cannot remember when or why I wrote this one, but I still like it, even after 2 years. 

Ever and always we find ourselves wanting

What can’t and never will be;

Forever wishing with our religion

What can’t, will be, just for us.

In loneliness we pray death resurrect,

Can’t and refuse to be alone;

In fear we beseech war make peace,

That what destroys can rebuild again.

Ever and always we hide in dark places

Away from what is and now will be;

The scars forever burn in memory

Of what will now always be.

A Clockwork Orange - My A-Level Creative Pieces

By request of a friend, I have my series of Clockwork Orange poetry which I wrote back in 2010 (again). The institution trying to help our dear friend Alex, but these methods aren't what they seem.

Needle

Another needle in

Just like yesterday;

Why do I get the feeling,

The feeling that nothing’s changed -

Except me?

The needle goes in,

It smells the same:

Bitter, sick and sterile;

Slammed right in,

It feels the same:

Painful, cold and vile.

Even the nurse,

She’s the same person

Who punctures and injects me,

But maybe the needle has changed…

I could do with some new friends,

Ones who don’t do pain,

But though the needle changes

The pain stays the same.

Then there’s me.

I see the wasted face

In an imperfect mirror;

Not much left to prove I’m alive,

Except the sting

Of my stinking metal friend and his wife.

Touching the spot he loves,

My hand trembles,

The door opens,

And he’s grinning at me again.

Here, our dear friend Alex has been saved from his suicidal leap, finding himself confused in his hospital bed.

I Shouldn’t Be Here

Did someone say my name?

I’m sure they did, but where from

And for how long,

I cannot comprehend.

I’m not even sure I know my name,

Or if I’ve been acquainted with pain;

There should be something

Telling me I’m broken, and bleeding,

Beyond hope.

But no, here in Bedlam

I realise the doctors are saving me,

Restoring me to a life I remember

Trying to get rid of,

And now there’s a gaping numbness in its place,

No pain, no suffering at all.

Did someone say my name?

I’m sure they did,

Just wish I could see them.

Slowly the eyes ease open

As the gateway to Hell slams in the wind;

The wind blows the smell of death to me,

And Death takes my hand.

“You’re going to be fine, son.”

If I had a hand free I’d let you know

You lie; I’m not dead,

But I bet you wish I was.

These are two of a set of 6 but I don't have too much faith in the worth of the rest so I may have to let them lie for awhile.

"What the Deuce?"

Inspired by the scene in Mr Rochester's bedroom from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Calm and content,

Curled up in my cotton tomb,

Transported back to the womb

Where I dreamt endlessly.

There I smelt my life

Imminent, timid,

But virgin and vivid.

Here it is different

And deadly.

My life reeks of decay

As it burns away;

I taste the ash of my lungs,

Anaesthetised, desensitized,

Stupefied and condemned.

Scorched by conflagration,

Numbed by smoke,

But I do not choke

Just sleep

And keep on dreaming.

My cotton tomb ablaze,

A-kindle and consuming,

Collapses while still fuming,

Swallows me as I slumber

Or so I thought.

My maid she came a-wandering,

A-wondering,

And saw me here a-slumbering

In my cotton tomb of fire.

I felt her drown my death,

Extinguish Hell,

Restore my breath,

And I awoke in a fit of passion,

‘Deuce take me, what has happened?’

The timid creature,

Like newborn life,

Stood trembling, as well as I,

But told the tale

From start to end.

I implored of her

To not say a word;

The events of which have occurred

Are our secret –

Instead I enclosed her in my arms

As rapture seized me in its jaws,

Dragged me back from Death’s door

And threw me at her feet.

I praised her long

My preserver, my protection,

Then let her shivering form go

In the wake of my affection.

Hunger Games

Always fun to observe the seagulls on a school playing field (written 5 years ago and edited twice since)

The seagulls play the field,

moving as one like two-legged sheep

absently pecking the stud-holed turf.

More join the game

winging in circles towards the ground

carried by the wind’s breath

beneath their standard-issue uniforms.

They chase, they dive, they squabble and rush,

The ref is called in –

That was a definite foul.

Then with an unspoken order

the match is disbanded,

each player floating away like paper

in effortless flight through the open.

Now the field lies desolate,

Glimpses of the aerial athletes

appear then disappear overhead.

In the other field the real players

push goals and chase balls

like eager dogs.

One day I think their toy,

kicked skyward,

might not come back down again.