PAUL BROOKES (The Womwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination) was a shop assistant, security guard, postman, admin. assistant, lecturer, poetry performer, with “Rats for Love” and his work included in “Rats for Love: The Book”, Bristol Broadsides, 1990. His first chapbook was “The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley”, Dearne Community Arts, 1993. He has read his work on BBC Radio Bristol and had a creative writing workshop for sixth formers broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live. Recently published in Clear Poetry, Nixes Mate, Live Nude Poems and others.
This spring 2017 Paul’s illustrated chapbook The Spermbot Blues, was published by OpPRESS. Other recent collections include A World Where. Recent magazine publications inclue Clear Poetry, Nixes Mate Mate Review, Live Nude Poems, The Bees Are Dead and others. His work has been featured in The BeZine. Heparticipates regularly in The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. I [Jamie} am currently reading Paul’s upcoming collection, She Needs that Edge and writing a cover blurb. So far so Great! 🙂
Well, here we are: Tuesday! This brings us to this week’s poetic responses to last week’s Wednesday Writing Prompt, Philosopher’s Stone, September 20. The poems that follow give us an intimate and intense view of our regularly participating poets, either from the perspective of family connection, educational inspiration, or perspectives on art and philosophy. Enjoy!
… and do come out and exercise your poetic imagination tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome no matter where in the world you live, no matter your style or your status as a poet: amateur or professional, beginning, emerging or established. These prompts are theme based, not form based. All works shared on theme will be posted in next Tuesday’s collection. You may share your poems – or even prose – or a link to your theme-based work in the comments section below.
how you live in my mind!
genius teacher of boys other than myself
(never in your class) so often floating past me
in your ungainly manner
during those severely wounded years
shortly after the period of reciprocal destruction
known peremptorily as World War Two
you had been caught (I have always imagined)
in a random machine gun volley
down some dark & horrible defile
stinking of blood & death
all in the same old idiot cause
returning after great suffering being pieced together
to Kingston Grammar School to amble disjointedly
along its corridors nick-named perhaps brutally
by previous generations of unkind boys to indicate
that they could hardly understand
a single word of yours whether spoken in fluent
Latin Greek Russian French or German
your command of which survived the wounds
of neck & face as well as arms & legs
and who knows what else now grave secrets
but once I heard you solo speaking loud & clear
in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto playing now
on the gramophone – and it’s not Rostropovich
but Gobbo as it might have been weeping for joy
at his survival in spite of all the suffering
this darkening evening in late autumn
Making up his abode in a distant land
Discerning the blue sea
He pierced beside me
Watery moonbeam playing on his visage
Vehicled abruptly his fervid miraculous fingers
Attiring a necklace of words
A mystic film
A palace of jade
I glowered at him except twinkling of my eyes
Surmising his authentic essence
Of a man a spirit or a god
Relating me his volition
to foozle me in his sea beside his mushy windy casuarina arbors
He left
Hurling his words into the blue bay
But nothing finaled
Albeit I recounter ,counsel
and -grope his lustre
Palping eyes of his verses
Savoring his left pages …
The poet was my father
He read his poems to our family friends
And all were mesmerized by them
How wise, how deep, how entangled but also bold
In a time of dictatorship
The poet was my hero
Till one day when the feeble man crawl from under his own built effigie
Sad day for me
I became deaf to his words
And started writing my own lines
Lines on my own coin
The poet left
Vaporised in some blond vagina
Only then I have found that was his pattern
Sliding slowly from one black hole to the next vortex
Blond haired and with witchy eyes
The poet and me lost track from one another then
I remained with the one instilled by him in the cells of my soul
Later, decades later
The poet have raised again from his pit
He stands besides his trees
The trees that in one of his poems were craving to see a naked woman for they never been in paradise
Here is the collection of responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, he’s a tumble weed, September 13. I’m quite pleased with the efforts of Renee Espiru, Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Iulia Gherghi, Collin Blundell, and Kakali Das Gosh. Bravo, poets! Enjoy the reading, visit their blogs, and strike-up a friendships with other poets.
The next Wednesday Writing Prompt will post tomorrow. All are welcome to come out and play, no matter where in the world you live or where you are in your career, emerging or established.
Rainbow Lace Muses
dreams are like the sweet smell
of ambrosia not like
the bitter of coffee
before her
she sits by the restaurant window
staring at nothing
and seeing everything
perhaps she sees her life
without children running about demanding
time
time she doesn’t have and
does not have to give
for life should chord
space and quiet
life should be filled
with writing muses
laced with rainbows
filled with artist
paper
& tools for both
housed in a place
beneath
trees
sprinkled with star dust
a place with fields of
wild flowers so
she can commune
with nature
with her soul
she is lost in her thoughts
as the restaurant
comes to life
around her
with the laughter of
children
playing
she is reminded that life
hinges on choices
of ambivalence
In my high school years
I was addicted to one pub
Every day around six p.m.
I would take the dog out
The dog was the pretext of course
The pub was across the park, nearby the lake
His owner was like a brother to me
His entire family was my family for awhile
Their harmony, their happiness
Were my refuge
I was safe there in that glass pub
Soon enough I became a student
New places to explore
The pub on the top of the National Theatre
The pub of the University of Architecture, this one was more a club
For playing cards, all sort of games
The pub of the Literature University
Placed underground, with black oiled walls
We divided fairly our time between those three
I would start my day with a coffee in the Literature’ pub
Puff my cigarette while studying faces
The smoke would burn my eyes
But in that quasi darkness no one would notice
Lucky strike, no filters or some Romanian stuff, equally strong
I would always forget my lighter
So asking for a light would start a friendship
Next, at noon
Me and my friends would visit the Architecture’s pub
There the students were taller
Handsomer, intriguing
Here we would take our lunch
Being a far more light full place
And in the evenings, when some money grew in our pockets
We would join the roof crowd
On the top of The National Theatre
Where crème de la crème would meet
One or two pints of beer would grant the effort
When broke or during the exams
The nearby pub will greet us at 3 a.m. in the morning
What else but a beer to fixate your knowledge
Or to provide a blissful sleep
I wasn’t picky
Whatever would come first
Very soon the school was over
Life stuck its teeth on us
Devoured by our duties and responsibilities
We can afford only fast food restaurants now
Just before movie starts
The animation movie, 3D
With its special glasses that cover an
Underground slumber
forgetting for the moment that they
might be looking at us in the same way –
all those behavioural manifestations –
do we not impute to them
a kind of completion settled composure
compounded of what we take to be
definite things – arrangements of thought
intellectual substructure of identity & feeling?
take anybody you imagine you know
however they might be in themselves
do you not see a certain settledness
of body & mind spirit & dalliance
towards the world? look how they move
with dignity or resolve or shuffle their feet
with an uncertainty they might overcome
suddenly with intention direction & purpose
and how do they see you
mirror of themselves hearing about them
arranging a Bruckner symphony
for a hundred recorder-players?
like the man in the roadside café
I’d never met before
and am never likely to meet again
told me he’d just done
O !the rural cafe owner
Let me enjoy the blinding heavenly light
The accompanied whistling winds
I-a tumbleweed has ushered
your cafe
To pleasure an eternal liquor ,beer or wine of love
Let me escape from the crustfallen life
A chain of of diurnal routine
Let me recline at the front porch of your tavern
Enjoying a dirge quiescence
Let me exempt from the bricks and mortar ,chimney bellflower and clamorous clarion
O ! the rural cafe owner
Let me fly away from the anguish intolerable
May it be just for few moments
But I would sip the red wine of the loveable apple
Forever …….
I’m delighted to host Kakali Dos Ghosh, Renee Espiru, Paul Brookes and Sonia Benskin Mesher today. Between them they have almost covered a year in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Portrait in February, September 6. Read . . . enjoy . . . and please join in tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome.
#Autumn’s blaze in September #
Ablaze is my hamlet ,
Sheeny it is with autumn ‘s color in September ,
Bounteous it is along azure blazing firmament
with dotted aerials ;
A ravishing secluded garden it is ,
with border less kash dandelions in skyline ‘s shine ;
A whisper -levitating through ravines and deep gorges ,
An inkling creeping through the cerulean kiss -curls of the deep bay ,
smearing the mysterious realm of twilight and moonbeam ,
casting a gentle kiss to a conch -cell in dormancy ,
on the glittering sand chest fondling a golden rivulet ,
enunciates the inhalant of Devi Durga ;
Ample shiulis loving the hardes ,
The goggle of the stubborn kingfisher in the Eastern hills ,
The red specked butterflies ,
Clink of anklets of a maiden solitary ,
Everything -everything is just to light up ,
Its a durbar to love ,
to kiss ,
to thrill ,
and to worship the Goddess the mother .
the Fall brought her to me warm and soft
with dark brown eyes and tiniest hands
reminding me nine months prior to the
month of December when passion ignited
fervor between cotton sheets and darkness
transforming cold into heated pleasure
where in the aftermath holidays came
filling the kitchen with baking of pies,
sweet sugary cookies warm from the oven
& the promise of love lasting a lifetime
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 