Let's Go Play In The Dictionary

Start each day with a poo and a poem and you won't go far wrong.

As a general Rule For Living I suppose that ranks alongside my 'Always live east of where you work.'
Half a century of learning from my own dumb mistakes has given me my own set of rules. As for those two: living east of where I work saves me getting blinded by sun-glare off wet roads on my way to and from the office and starting each day with a poo and a poem clears both body and mind ready for whatever horrors the day might throw at me.

Not groundbreaking, I know, but an accumulation of such nuggets helps me stumble along without bumping into too many sharp things.

This morning's poem (I'll spare you this morning's poo) turned out to be Mandrakes For Supper, by James K. Baxter (am I alone in ascribing ludicrous names to people who insert intrusive initials in their signatures? James Baxter has this morning been variously called Kleptomania, Kniphofia, Kimberley and Knickers and it's his own fault).

Anyhoo … His poem:

Mandrakes For Supper

Memory feeds us on a prison diet
Of bits and scraps. 'Remember Mr. X-,
That simple solemn man, so deathly quiet;

'And Sally Z-, compounded of raw sex
And circumstance' - 'Ah yes, her corn-gold hair …'
A land where roams Tyrannosaurus Rex,

The giant lizard, calloused by despair -
In Nowhere I received my education
(If memory can be trusted) mooching there

Like Dante's ghost, among a faceless nation.
The white antarctic Gorgon was my mentor:
Her cloudy arms, her eyes of desolation

Sisterly gazing from the whirlwind's centre,
Received, embraced my naked intuition.
The town of Nilburg too I shrank to enter

(If memory serves me right) and wept contrition
For indistinct all-but-committed crimes
In gelding-rooms and caves of parturition.

Yet undeniably I laughed at times
With those who shared my headless hullaballoo:
Fogeaters, Dwarfs, Green Quims and Paradigms.

Cellars of Nilburg! how I hated you,
Your Ixion wheels, hot frogs and icy toads,
Your existential climate where I grew

Into an adult Mandrake. (Memory loads
My plate with mushrooms.) But I woke at length
And left you, travelling light by mountain roads
To elsewhere; drank at desert wells; gained strength.


I don't know why I like that quite as much as I do. Perhaps the quirky rhyming rhythm, perhaps the freewheeling imagery or the playfully obsessive gallimaufry of punctuation, but more likely my childish word-glee, born of a love for Anglo-Saxon poetry that revels in such words as 'Fogeaters' and capers with the joy of 'hot frogs and icy toads.'
I do love to play with words and this poem set me up rather nicely for the day.

For the year, in fact as I am (according to my calendar and birth certificate) fifty-two today.
Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Or perhaps that should be: 'Oh, bugger! I've wasted another smegging year.'

Either way, I'm off for a swim in the River Lexicon with Fogeaters, hot frogs and icy toads.
Care to join me?

Happy November

I've run out of WTF Monday photos, dammit.
They will probably be back, but I'll have to build up a stash of them first.

In the meantime, in (dis)honour of the US mid-term erections, here's a poem by the splendid Roger Mc.Gough, whose poems guided me (and made me giggle) throughout my childhood and teenage years.

The Leader

I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee, I'm the leader
I'm the leader

OK what shall we do?



Happy November, people, and always remember:
Those who desire power are by definition those least fit to wield it.
That's where modern democracy falls down.

Use your votes wisely.

Bathroom Break

Since giving my beloved Edward Gorey collection a rest from bathroom duty (they are currently vacationing on the landing bookshelves and may send a postcard later) their place has been taken by a ragbag of old poetry books.
For those sedentary moments there is nothing quite like a good poem to inspire both mind and … er … the lower functions.

Anyhoo … while I have nothing blogworthy in my head I thought I might as well share with you an occasional moment from another part of my body: the part that I sit upon and that most people assume - probably correctly - does my thinking.

So here - in defiance of all copyright laws - is what I enjoyed during today's bathroom break: an evocative poem by the wonderful, very Canadian (and sadly departed) Earle Birney.

Twenty-third Flight

Lo as I pause in the alien vale of the airport
fearing ahead the official ambush
a voice languorous and strange as these winds of Oahu
calleth my name and I turn to be quoited in orchids
and amazed with a kiss perfumed and soft as the lei.
Straight from a travel poster thou steppest,
thy arms like mangoes for smoothness,
o implausible shepherdess for this one ageing sheep,
and leadest me through the righteous paths of the Customs
in a mist of my own wild hopes.
Yea though I walk through the valley of Immigration
I fear no evil, for thou art a vision beside me
and my name is correctly spelled
and I shall dwell in the Hawaiian Village Hotel
where thy kindred prepareth a table before me.
Thou restoreth my baggage, and by limousine leadest me
to where I may lie on coral sands by a stream-lined pool.

Nay but thou stayest not?
Thou anointest not my naked head with oil?
Thou shepherdess of Flight Number Twenty-three only
thou hastenest away on long brown legs to enchant
thy fellow members in Local Five of the Greeters' Union
or that favoured professor of Commerce mayhap
who leadeth thee into higher courses in Hotel Management.
O nubile goddess of the Kaiser Training Program
is it possible that my cup runneth not over
and that I shall sit in the still pastures of the lobby
whilst thou leadest another old ram in garlands past me,
and, bland as papaya, appearest not to remember me?
And that I shall lie by the waters of Waikiki, and want?


I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
More bathroom break poetry another day.

The Death Of Memes Strikes Again

Tremble before me, mere mortals, for I am the Death of Memes.

This time I got tagged by Katherine with:
"twenty-five random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end choose twenty-five people to be tagged. You must tag the person who tagged you."

You know me better than that.
This is where memes come to die. Any tag that stumbles in here doesn't get out alive.
You know the rules:

- If you feel like doing this, do it;
- Don't tag anyone or I'll come round and punch you hard in the head.
- That's it.

So … Twenty-five things.
Normally this would be easy; this is my 927th. post and a frighteningly high proportion of those have been memes or self-confessional ramblings so I could easily do a no-brainer and just re-hash old classics.
But a fellow blogger told me this morning: "Bollocks to that! No way are you getting away with copying and pasting old crap."

Hey ho.
Because I don't want to risk a slap I will comply with her wishes and deprive you of such re-hashed favourites as "the cum-eating episode" and "I'm A Celebrity, Beat The Crap Out Of Me".

Sheesh! Twenty-five things that I've not written before? I can't even think of one!
Hang on …
Okay:
1) My favourite poem at the moment (which will probably change by the time you read this):
My favourite poem as of this Saturday lunchtime is "Blashey-wadder" by the splendid Shetland Islands shop-assistant and appalling mandolin player Jen Hadfield.
This is from her latest collection, "Nigh No-Place" available from Bloodaxe Books (ISBN 978-1-85224-793-5) and is of course copyright so go out and buy the book NOW so I don't get into trouble for copying this out:
Blashey-wadder is Shetland dialect; "wadder" means weather and "blashey" is about as onomatopœic as it gets.

Blashey-wadder.
by Jen Hadfield.

At dusk I walked to the postbox,
and the storm that must've passed you earlier today
skirled long, luminous ropes of hail between my feet
and I crackled in my waterproof
like a roasting rack of lamb.

And across the loch,
the waterfalls blew right up off the cliff
in grand plumes like smoking chimneys.

And on the road,
even the puddles ran uphill.

And across Bracadale,
a gritter, as far as I could tell,
rolled a blinking ball of orange light
ahead of it, like a dungbeetle
that had stolen the sun.

And a circlet of iron was torn from a byre
and bowled across the thrift.

And seven wind-whipped cows
clustered under a bluff.

And in a rockpool,
a punctured football reeled around and around.

And even the dog won't heel since yesterday
when - sniffing North addictedly -
he saw we had it coming -

and I mean more'n wet weak hail
on a bastard wind.

Wonderful!
Now read it again only slowly and out loud.

One down; twenty-four to go.
At least I've not repeated myself yet.
More meme crap tomorrow as I really can't be arsed right now.