Poet's Needs

This week's offfering  for Magpie Tales.

Poet's Needs

I live to write

I write till I sleep

I sleep to wake

I wake to work

I work to live

I live to write

Cait O'Connor

Apartment to Let

 Another poem for Magpie Tales.  Better late than never. 

 

Moving

South facing, bricks glowing, rather like me its

aspect was open but with emptiness inside;

a blank canvas whose origins are unknown.

Shabby but not chic, high in the air but

in no way haughty, it overlooked the park.

The apartment was small, (the agent’s word was

bijou, mine was womblike  which suited my intention).

I moved in with cat, books and an optimistic frame.

I aired the place for days and days, gathered salt

and water, swept and scrubbed, hung up bunting, filled

each room with violets, pinks and roses, flooding

them with light. I lit candles and sweet incense,

scented sandalwood and sage

I scattered salt in corners,beat drums in rhythm, 
laughed, clapped, danced and played

rock music way up to the roof. I threw out

blinds and curtains for I really love to see

the skies and count the stars and look out nightly

at the moon.  The escape route, though an eyesore,

was a comfort just in case my candles ever

tipped and quickly spread their flames and

secretly I  felt a little stranded up so high.

After rent is paid, the choice is often  heat

or eat but when the days are bright, I open

windows wide, survey the view, admire the park

and watch the sunlit shadows as they dance

upon those warming, ancient redbrick walls.

Cait O’Connor

I Won!

Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.

But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

Terry Pratchett, Mort


I never win anything; well I am lying a bit as on thinking back I  remembered that I have won things and twice in my life, (well three if you count winning £10 once on the National Lottery). I won a bottle of whisky in a raffle once at a Dobermann Club dog show many moons ago and I did win £1000 in our local Air Ambulance lottery a few years back - that was a big one (!) and I wanted to donate the prize back to the Air Ambulance as they have ferried me on two occasions and I owe them a very great deal. But they absolutely refused to allow me to do that so I accepted it - my bank balance was dwindling at that time so it was quickly swallowed up and I never did treat myself.  And now I have won two sets of notecards in an online draw by a Devon artist and blogger .  Do go and visit a fine photographer and wildlife artist living on Dartmoor whose blog is always on my list as one not to miss.

She has an Etsy shop too.

I hope you have good luck too in the near future.

Bye for now,

Go mbeannai dia duit,

Cait.

The Copenhagen Giraffe

I do hope the poet Richard Bonfield will forgive me for reposting his poem.

The Copenhagen Giraffe

Marius the 18-month-old Copenhagen giraffe was recently shot with a bolt gun

and his dismembered remains fed to Copenhagen lions.

The director of the zoo deemed him an exotic waste product surplus to the zoos requirements and untenable as his genes were too similar to those of other European giraffes

Despite offers of accommodation from many other facilities and a worldwide petition the cull went ahead as planned.

“Yes - in answer to your question

We shot Marius for his own good

He was an exotic waste product

Surplus to Copenhagen requirements

In any case he wouldn’t have liked

Longleat – Whipsnade  or any other facility for that matter

He loved Copenhagen -  the little mermaid girl

And was familiar with all of Hans Christen Anderson’s back catalogue

Could we have sent him to Africa?

Well no

He was a Copenhagen giraffe

And was actually

Too culturally advanced for the Masai Mara

In any case he would have had awful problems

Incorporating his porcelain sensibilities

Into a post colonial framework

He was familiar with the works of Franz Fanon

And was aware of the economic and ecological distortions

Imposed by the former colonial oppressors

But how could we keep him in Copenhagen?

We have too many culturally advanced giraffes already

Our city is awash with sophisticated long necked quadrupeds

And they are so well integrated into the urban ecology

That - to the people of Copenhagen

They are almost a civic emblem!

We love seeing them at the opera

And poking their heads through the skylights

Of our downtown loft conversions

But we do have a surfeit or - as the Dutch would say

An embarrassment of riches

And we must cull to ensure the livelihood of all Copenhagen giraffes moving forward

So far better that Marius be fed as ersatz pork to our bacon loving Copenhagen lions

Than wander across the savannah pondering Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

With no other giraffes to share the tale of The Little Match Girl

The Tinder Box- -The Emperor’s new Clothes or even The Ugly Duckling

No -  in answer to your question we could never have turned Marius into a Namibian swan

You can take the giraffe out of Copenhagen

But you cannot take Copenhagen out of the giraffe

Also his public dismemberment was charmingly instructive

For all the Copenhagen schoolchildren

All in all I am pleased with our work

And so pleased that the death of Marius

Was so enriching for all concerned

It is a modern fairy tale that Hans himself would have been proud of

Especially in these times of environmental recycling

Actually we are thinking of having a sculpture of him made

To place beside the little mermaid.

It would be a fitting tribute!

Now you must excuse me whilst I prepare for other urban culls

I am a very busy man.”

                Richard Bonfield February 2014 

Faces of Love, a Valentine for You.

Three men to sing for you and three women, I hope you will enjoy these (differing) aspects of love.

Here for you all on the feast of  Saint Valentine is possibly the greatest love song.

Or try this one:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

The Weather Forecast

The Weather Forecast

I cling to a tree to stay upright, the wind

is cruel, loud and wild, the air so very

much in motion.   I am used to its inclemency,

all the weather’s recent vagaries, be

they hailstorms, snowstorms or blizzards,

tempests, gales or hurricanes.

There really is no need for isobars,

decibars, millibars or screened  sermons

from weather-prophets, safe in warm studios

in their finery; we surely now believe

that climate is a-changing, like the times.

Mother Nature’s  inclinations have always

given indications:  I follow skies,

cloud movements and their colours,  the flow of  

waters, the aching in my bones.  Even the

strains of birdsong sound nervous and their feeding

frantic, just before a storm. The avians and

the beasts are my weather-gauge, my weather- eye.

Undeterred, my snowdrops thrive,

always stoical,  sweet,  ice-white and full of promise,

a sign of brighter days to come.

I cling  to that.

Cait O’Connor

Pourquoi?

 

Pourquoi?

Even the brief attire, the hat, was ill-chosen.

He had the frog’s-eye view and loved to photograph

women as a rule but in his other medium

of words he later wrote:  once you have met Bardot,

the true symbol of sex and liberation then

nothing else will do’, Bardot had allure, such a

sweet, demure beauty with her choucroute hairstyle,

her bikinis, her so-low necks and her gingham.

Taking pictures of this would-be Brigitte,

a cheapskate’s shallow imitation, he wondered

was this to be an unappealing Valentine

for  some young stud or was she forced, coerced

skin and bone, into such an unflattering

pose, this sad young thing who left nothing with

him but an oddly sour taste in his mouth.

Cait O’Connor

Pianissimo

This is another poem, inspired by a picture,  written for Magpie Tales.

 

Pianissimo

Haunted by a slant of light across the lintel,

I am left hanging now, half-heard in the stillness.

Once you were my cradle, my nightly lullaby;

but now, stealthily as a piano, you 

have become far-distant, faint, barely audible.

I had tried to ignore your dark blue undertones,

played pianissimo, which drew out my tears.

I turned every trick in my last-ditch attempts.

I soft-pedalled, I turned somersaults, I tapped

and I kicked, I changed every tune but your own.

Your notes, once sacred to me, are now muted, laced

with a whispered nuance, so I look down and 

await the final, inevitable

and most deadly silence. 

Cait O’Connor

There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

I stumbled upon a poet today by the name of James Kavanaugh. I was searching for a quotation to post with some woodland photos and was sidetracked.  My path through the forests took me to this man.  I was captured by his words.  Sadly he died in 2009, aged 81.

After the pics, I have shared a piece of his prose and a poem.

I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter.

We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.

 James Kavanaugh


And here the poem:

There are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves


There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who prey upon them with IBM eyes
And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.
There are men too gentle for a savage world
Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween
And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws
And murder them for a merchant's profit and gain.
There are men too gentle for a corporate world
Who dream instead of candied apples and ferris wheels
And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who devour them with eager appetite and search
For other men to prey upon and suck their childhood dry.
There are men too gentle for an accountant's world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.
There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove.
Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world,
Unless they have a gentle one to love.



James Kavanaugh