Commonword Blogs

Magnetic Man were kicking over the speakers as I shut the door. Never really been into them, not because I don't like drum and bass but because... well, because there's other things to do. Number one on the list is fix the laptop Earl dropped off last night. Probably needs a new hard drive. Then we can drive up and down Northmoor Road looking for a buyer. Which in that turns out a fail there's the back up of Cash Converters.
Or Stonk.

the mists were heavy that year and stuck to our clothes as we walked. often we would return having found only one or two of the precious flowers and the mist would still be shimmering around us, a pale unearthly fluorescence. it would take an hour in the tumble dryer before the last willowy strands would disappear. occasionally the mist would call out to us as we trudged over the heath towards the woods. it would call out the names of our mothers and their mothers and their mothers before them, along with the many crimes the mages had accused them.

Touch and Kiss a Stranger
Her eyes are still beautiful, even though they’ve seen everything.

***

Typical. Thursday afternoon, not a cloud in the sky. The coffee had two shots of nicotine. There hadn’t been a cloud this far south for over a year. Yavneh sitting opposite me, floating.
In and out of the dreamstate.
She moans from way off. I relax, let the dream happen: a halo falling from the sky. I don’t know exactly what a halo is, associate with the saints.

Thus oppression justifies itself through oppression: the oppressors produce and maintain by force the evils that render the oppressed, in their eyes, more and more like what they would have to be like to deserve their fate… Terror and exploitation dehumanise, and the exploiter authorises himself with that dehumanisation to carry his exploitation further.

Jean-Paul Sartre, 1957 : in his Introduction to The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi

Something she did to pass the time, between the phone calls and the boredom and the neat stack of bills piled on the floor. She tidied up the nail clippings and switched off the television. The fridge buzzed. The same heavy duty buzz the electric fly trap at the butcher's makes. He said it’s UV, has the same effect as staring at your piss in a nightclub toilet. So the heroin addicts can’t see their veins. She put the nail clippings in an envelope marked tuusday in green felt tip pen. Then she got up to draw the curtains. Standing at the bus stop below her was the handsomest man.

through the kiss | i watched her song in the mirror.
the notes dwelt, arms outstretched : a man with blue,
seeping eyes.

her voice fluttered and hissed while she swayed,
fluttered and hissed like a tape : i recalled
that johannesburg night, the smoke chanted jazz club,
the audience drowsy, wild bees toying with
the idea of love.

and her beautiful. i watched the end of my cigarette,
the smoke twisting as it fell into space, frayed
ends of blond hair.

and her words faded. i turned to the white woman
at the bar next to me - we let the first kiss, her arm static

Thinking about the nature of democracy and democratic institutions, there is an argument that the two most democratic institutions in a ‘developed’ country are the telephone network and the road network. Anyone with 20p has access to the telephone network and it is essentially the same network used by everyone, regardless of wealth and social status. Unless you are housebound everyone has access to the road network, whether by car, bike or foot.

Or just very short poems. Actually I'm interested in at what point something becomes a poem and my way of investigating this is to write poems that if they were any shorter wouldn't be poems. The question are what makes something a poem, and also is it possible to agree that a piece is or isn't a poem? I have a feeling some of what I consider poetry other people wouldn't.

This blog is for everyone on the Hot House Poetry course to share work, ideas, reading suggestions, etc.

as in not mr gordon or those fleeting moments of inspiration that pass through your mind and you never write down but fiction of 1,000 words or less.

the commonly held general 'rules' are :

there must be a story, i.e. something has to happen
character is paramount
there is a setting, i.e. the story takes place somewhere

for the purposes of this blog these precepts can be ignored. the only rule is the 1,000 word limit. post your work, your comments and see what... occurs. that aside a funny thing happened on my way to the zoo.