Universal Haiku

Dark, old universe,
It cannot contain itself,
A laugh bursts all bounds

MA Creative Writing, Exeter University Creating a Poem…live…part one

This is an invitation to join me in a 4-stage writing process to give birth to a poem.

Nine of us were assembled in a small seminar room waiting for kick-off to get the Writing Poetry module underway.

Anticipation, a little conversation, but we don’t know each other, so it’s muted.

In walked a poet…and a teacher. I won’t name him; description is more important. Maybe early 50s, torn jeans, old jacket, various rings on a variety of fingers, earrings, an impressive head of hair, and peering eyes. Every inch a poet. And with a rich vocal delivery.

And the content of lecture 1 was formational, rather than a download of information; an introduction to his way of detecting the ‘sweet spot’ in a poem as a combination of imagery, musicality, and shape (form, direction, and energy).

So, this blog post is to invite you into the process of writing a poem.

Stage 1. Read and reflect on
Stage 2. Write a similar poem. A list. On an object close to hand. I chose the fountain pen I was holding to take notes as a starting point
Stage 3. Pinch one line from the poem and build from there
Stage 4. Submit the poem to the group and lecturer for critical appraisal….next week. Yikes.

Stage 1 George Szirtes poem, Some Sayings about a Snake

Loved this poem. It enters by the ear and exits through the navel. Come on! Whatever he had in mind that rocks my boat.

Stage 2. My ‘List poem’ on a fountain pen…written during the lecture, no time for edits

Some Sayings About A Fountain Pen

I don’t know, it’s a handful high
Spending time twitching to and fro
Weighing less with each hint of movement
A clock of sorts in indigo
Disturbing, that so much darkness
Lies at the core
A column of unformed words
It draughts Constitutions
Annoys restless Monarchs
The slender curve of the nib
Calms the writer
Fools the writer
Disappoints the writer if
It scratches or flows like glue
A pen should not be hard work
It lasts until it fades
The outer outlasting the inner
Unlike the writer

So…not quite a strict list. I found it impossible to constrict an image to a sentence. Maybe with time, I could have pared it down to essentials? But the task was to extract a line or a phrase, a key idea from the poem and re-work it. The last two lines, for me, were the message in the bottle.

Stage 3. Reworked poem (you may recognise this as Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner Post)

Unlike the writer

Don’t be duped
Nothing escapes
The onward march to
I don’t know where

Swan Spring quills
Sleek-black biros
Grass-green rollerballs
SmartScreen scribblers, but

Who designed us
To chance upon
A charcoal brew of dyes
To daub, to draw, to draft?

Attached one end, and
Conceived in mystery
Words, hidden in ink,
Flood onto the page

And to mediate?
A handheld instrument,
Twitching to and fro
Emptying its gifts

Until the ink fades,
Nib-scratching the paper,
It’s outer outlasting the inner
Unlike the writer

Stage 4. Next week. Seatbelt on. I can see the editors’ sharp knives, glinting in the eyes of my fellow students and my every inch the poet, lecturer, AB.

Unlike the writer

Don’t be duped
Nothing escapes
The onward march to
I don’t know where

Swan Spring quills
Sleek-black biros
Grass-green rollerballs
SmartScreen scribblers, but

Who designed us
To chance upon
A charcoal brew of dyes
To daub, to draw, to draft?

Attached one end, and
Conceived in mystery
Words, hidden in ink,
Flood onto the page

And to mediate?
A handheld instrument,
Twitching to and fro
Emptying its gifts

Until the ink fades
Nib-scratching the paper,
It’s outer outlasting the inner
Unlike the writer

Sunrise amongst acorns

Lumpy and thick white
A surprising layer of ice
Clung to the windscreen
The clouds long since
Had slithered away
Accidentally like a
Duvet discarded
During the night

Ferreting, I find my
Woolly hat and gloves
Hidden away
While the acorns grew
And the horse chestnut
Spiky capsules
Fallen now, the summer sun
Has dried out the twigs

It is this blue-sky snap
That chills the bone and
Hunches the shoulders
A hope drilled in
Splitting the sheath
Rending the cage
Death running backwards
Life following on

Above the car park
Rises a hill and a trig point,
A freezing vantage point
Where water is arrested
And the wind howls
There are no trees here to witness
The broiling globe
Cast its first light

And fail to retrieve
The summer cauldron
And yet, zero degrees and less
Does its work, cracking
Open the seeds
The hidden hopes
And dared-for dreams…
…maybe this autumn?

He Took Me There

At my age, I’ll shed this skin
By Christmas
Honestly, when you look at me
Over the bread sauce
I’ll not be the man I used to be
A strange twist of newness
The replacement looking
Older by the day

Some parts are famously temporary
Wobbly teeth hanging by death threads
Nails, already not really us
Our breath, a sojourner at best
But the real you and me,
Living amalgams of all that has passed
Organic unions with our brokenness,
Our crimes, our guilt, our shame
Jealousies, pride, lust
Ambition, our hurt lockers
Can these death notes
Be peeled away like the teeth
To leave us new again?

Sunday by Sunday
The priests intone
O Lamb of God
Who takest away the sin of the world
Have mercy on us
Did the Lamb of God excise
Our sufferings and put them in
A divine supermarket trolley?
Removing our grief and sorrows
Far away, leaving us innocent?

Hauntingly we sing
Were you there
When they crucified my Lord?
Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble
No more so than now
When I can offer the only answer
Looking out at His mother
At Magdalene, at the soldiers
At those gathered, and beyond
Through His eyes
Yes, I was there
He took me there

Not just my sufferings
Separated from me, no,
The Suffering One,
He took me there

It is finished, I am finished
Now, at Christmas
When I look at you
I’ll be peering from inside
The resurrection and the life
Ah, don’t you worry about my aging skin
It’s the oldest trick in the book
Just you wait

Adam 2025

4099

Phone numbers from a different land

The feel of a finger pressing into the circle

Of metal, a dial shone

By decades of callers

And turned clockwise

‘Til the gently curved barrier

Puts a stop to all that

3752

It’s 7pm, maybe 8

My heart is pounding

I’ve glanced at the phone box

Red, passive aggressive,

Silent and terribly still

Daring me to risk all

I pull the heavy door

Inhaling a familiar odour

The dialling tone ceases

And I listen to her father’s inquisition

I’m out of depth

01392

Gone are the telephonists

The plug and socket exchanges

People replaced by machines

SDT the Acronym Age has begun

Metal holes replaced by plastic

Plastic holes by buttons

Romance and risk by automation

Reverse charges

A good trick if your pocket

Is devoid of a 10p

Occasional victories from a phone box

And one hollers and fist pumps

As if the Crown Jewels are yours

How sweet it is to outflank the system

Truth is, no one fist-pumped until

The new millennium

Mobliles, Cell Phones, Smart watches, Implants, Ear buds

Flat black screens

Sensitive to the touch of a finger

Have we arrived at where we began?

Eve. What did you feel, when you

Held the fruit, so appealing to the eyes?

Eyes, yes, of course

But how did it feel?

Soft, hard, hairy, smooth

Did it smell of a telephone box?

Or petrol, or the earth?

Text me

My number is…

07…

A distinctive odour…like old rain and decaying leather

Time was

Time ain’t so linear, Sir
See the east wind?
Outrunning the sun’s shadow
Time hopping to what was
Plunging us before time
Into what was tomorrow

Cram time into a box
I tell you
Doors and windows will pop open
Put a mind in that room
And watch it pull things up
Barnacled shipwrecks from the seabed
Or talk of things that are not
As if they are

No, Sir, time ain’t so linear
It doesn’t sit neatly on a ruler
Or a clockface
Between the tick and the tock
A sweet dream will carry you
Into a world full of soliloquies
And shadows selling a different hour

Know what I think, Sir?
No, not really
I am.
Ain’t so far out
That’s what I think

I’ll wear your crown

You don’t know me as I know me
I’ve lusted and lied
Died and risen, risen and died
Jon-ah, what’s the difference?
Been swallowed by a fish
I’ve learnt how to hide

Driven roundabouts
Right to left, not left to right
Got away with it
So I thought
But in here
In here, I’m parched, bereft
Thirsting for…mercy
To bask in the light
To swim in righteousness
Eye salve to my hindsight

I’ve lusted and lied
Died and risen; risen and died
Jon-ah, what’s the difference?
Been swallowed by a fish
I learnt how to hide

But through it all,
You waited for me to come
To cry out
‘Enough of dark mirrors’
Scared, with fears laid down
Under a morning shower
Cascading light
Too strong for shadows
No strength to fight

I yield, I’ll wear your crown

Looking Down

‘Like a ton of bricks’
Overstates that dull sense, the
Mild dent of disappointment

No sooner, it seems
I mourned the passing
Of July

Than it’s Friday
The twenty-second
Of August

And I’m walking
Alongside sunrises
And sunsets

The days shortening
The temperature dropping
Crisp leaves turning

Tomorrow has come
It crept in, craftily,
Like a morning mist

Falling golden leaves
Apples beaming red
Soil smelling sweet

There’s a lot
To be said for
Looking down

Rosa Pendulina and me, John

Sat inside now
Listening to a neighbour’s
Mower thrash through the straw
I wonder why?
This is not a summer for grass,
Green belongs to a bygone age

Came in when my flesh
Resembled melted lard
And when the supply
Of dark chocolate slabs
Had run low, the chapter
Abandoned, unfinished

And after I’d felt guilty for
Finger flicking an
Appealing shield bug
From my knee
And after the coffee-swimming
Wasp had stopped its writhing

Despite the mini summer drama
Of the previous fifteen minutes
I could not walk past Rosa
Her red cheeks and green dress
Catapulted me from the Iowa
Of the book to the here and now

The shield bug may not
Even have landed
When time escaped its boundary
And the needs of the day
Were found relegated.
Pendulina had swung me

From the temporal to the eternal
From the imaginary to the image
From my paltry love
To the all-consuming fire
The burning that is judgement
And mercy upon mercy

That found its mark
In a life laid down:
The ‘Nevertheless’ man
The ‘Woman, behold your son’ man
The ‘Son, behold your mother’ man
A man named John

Lesson from a cider orchard

Early morning. Felt like autumn.
August, still revving her engines
But the air was nipping and
Something like frost coated the grass
Between the careless brook
And ripening trees.
The dawn sun rose to contradict
The air. My shoulders wore warm.

Trees held in orchard rows
Unaware of the benevolence
Ruling their lives;
Even their sensation of breezes
Of dark nights, and scorching days
Of thunder, and gentle rain
Of the inner strain,
The compulsion to swell

Twinkling eyes cast
To their neighbours
Luxuriating in the
On-rush of beauty
Green bullets learning to
Blush and sway in the wind
Looking down with
Scorn on the fallen

Grounded in degrees of decay
Telltale brown, soft
With a fermented scent
Rising with the dew-frost.
Here, not up there,
Is rapture, dark seeds
Falling to the ground
To die, to escape

They say

They say a poem should
Spit like fat on a red-hot pan
Etna’s secrets outpoured

They say a poet
Sinks into hell and
Flies with the angels

Is as weighed down
With endless joy
As with sorrow, they say

But they mistake fire
For a hand on the latch
Opening the heart

Unseen moments
When all you can say
Is, ‘The door’s open’

Two Cats, Deux Chats

En franҫais, je m’appelle Bleu, but
In England, I do what only a cat can do
Contort my limbs, forever cleansing
Foreigners to our feline world
Cannot distinguish between the
Beginning and the end of things
I am Blue

By an ancient telepathy,
A domesticated feral spirit
I commune with
An inscrutable snow-white
Handful of pure sophistication
Whose role in life - life in the Ardèche -
Is to stretch, yawn, and wait for food

Though separated, we are one.
If mere sons of Adam
Unburden their hearts in words
We self-carers transmit
Do Not Disturb messages
By extending a claw, yawning
Or…slowly…walking away…

English Blue, purring, curls into
A circle of bliss…in a pram
Whilst the French sophisticat,
Commandeering a plot
Under the green bamboo shoots
Of a café planter, laps up
The attention of the midday Sun

Their eyes, if open, speak
Of a wisdom lost to the ages
Of contentment. Of trust.
Or bringing tokens
To remind the world:
Behind their languid exterior
Lies a classy night hunter

Annoyed by a fence

It’s early, dew lies on the grass
My pores are aptly named
Perspiration from a heightened
Post-run euphoria falls freely,
I’m en route to the welcome
Deluge of a fiery shower
And, across the road,
Shouting, I’d say, stands proud
A new featureless fence

Evoking an unexpected
Rage, a vomit of distaste
I am propelled, it seems
In microseconds
Tunnelling in time
Back to the life of a distant tree
Of distinction
Listening to an intermittent
Chainsaw drawing near

The tree’s soul withdrawing
To its roots and the soil
Resigning its fate
Into the hands
Of a woodsman with
Sweet and salty
Sweat on his brow
We are unlikely twins
He and I

And who lives behind this
Perfectly panelled, knotless
Interlocking  
Guantanamo-orange prison?
Dead cells of a former forest
Standing at eternal attention
Upright, yearning for weather
To crease the horror of its
Nailed-in uniformity

Do I hear a low moan?
A prayer pleading to rot
Into the soil? Another
To shatter in a sudden blast
Of Arctic or Atlantic wind?
Or for seeds to germinate
Climbers, or weeds
To grow up and cover the
Dreadful flat nakedness?

I can think of only
One course of action:
Evisceration
Deep calling to deep
But I am tempted
To catalyse its panels’
Slothful return to nature,
And call down lightning
The Guy Fawkes in me smirks

Seeing Voices

One day, perhaps soon
Our blinkers, our cataracts
Will be slid away
And we shall see
The glorious normality

The air trembling
With speech unknown
Audible echoes of
Thoughts unheard
Shudders of spirit

Whispers
Taking the shape
Of Niagara, or Angel Falls
A deluge and thunder
Of Shhhh

Or the weeping
Of the Son of Man
Falling like torrents
Tongues of
Inexpressible sorrow

And as the sky dims,
Dark with purples
And a multitude of the
Heavenly host dissolves
Speech into song

The whole of creation
Quivering
With all its words restrung
Into symphonies
We kneel, undone

Heavy with mist

In the garden
In the cool of the day
The Lord God came
Looking for those who
Struggled to hide

Untruths from the heat
Of the day, exposed
In the twilight, man:
Born in the morning
Undesigned for the night

That long imminent night
Of flaming swords
Of banishment. An exile
Kneading its strange magic:
A longing to return

In King’s Wood
In the cool of after-dawn
Boots on the hillside, up
To the flaking plaster
Triangulation point

I climbed and gazed East
Into the face of the sun
Or would have
But the air was heavy
Blurred with humidity

Birdsong, muffled in
A wall of water hanging
Just above the ground
Clinging to the sky
Saturating the world

Obscuring the sunrise
Until the heavy mist
Burned clear
And I,
With eyes open, saw

What was always there
The grass beneath my feet
A lone mushroom
A startled rabbit
A languid cow

And disinterested sheep
Mowing the hillside
Sung to by skylarks
And ancient warblers.
For a moment

I was no longer here
But home
In the farm tracks
And dry-stone walls
Of Eden

Tragedy in Eden

Thursday.

The glory of the Lord appeared today
In the form of forked lightning
And thunder
Coconuts fell all morning
Rebounding from the ground
All our creatures hid in places
I have never found

As evening fell, flashes of light
Lit everything up
In purples and white light
Wisdom spoke warning us
Of taking canoes out
On the river
But courage spoke also

It was Havilah that we paddled
To see the gold
Illuminated from inside and out
Soon, bathed in a yellow hue
Absorbing and filling us with strength
Eve scooped up the river water
And drank its light

Friday Morning

Eve returned early from
A morning stroll, eyes wide open
Rain fell, drenching her hair
The clouds, closer than normal
Looked disturbed
In her hand, a red peach
Dripping with juice and rain
I took the second bite

Friday Evening

Everything was familiar and yet
Distorted, the soil dustier
Eve’s forehead creased, and mine
A strange fear knotted
And knit us closer
It wasn’t love, knowing we could
Never re-attach the peach

The glory of the Lord appeared
Not as before, but
With tears and strange words
He walked away
Pulling our wooden canoe
For safe storage ‘Until…’
But we couldn’t hear the words

Not just a walk

Gills and a gaping jaw
Caught in a fishing line
The creature’s freedoms
Consigned to memory

Impaired, struggling to rise
Oxygen-depleted blood
Baptised in despair,
Will, sapped to the core

Suspended between
The depths and the sun
Turning and twisting
On an axis it didn’t choose

And so it was as I trudged
Up Sidcot’s shaded gullies
To the nettle-bound radio mast,
Distractions, undoing and

Dulling the beauty of the
Horizon-wide, sun-soaked
Somerset Levels and St
James’s spire seeking heaven

Half a flock of sheep
For company in the shade
Looking on helpless to
Unthread the tangled line

Later, within a hymn
In a deluge of Spirit
My heart sings songs
Of untethered joy

Now I remember
The moss-covered walls
The poor arthritic ewe
A golden field of barley

And the soothing crunch of
Of gravel underfoot
On the final leg
Home

Outsourced Love?

At each dawn chorus
Lewis Gwyn Knowle’s will stirred
Stiffening muscles and sinews
Grimacing against the strain
Of his unstilled bones.
Lewis, expressionless
Stood under a steaming shower
Devoid of thought
By sheer habit,
To wash the night away

It is always thus: cleansing
The pure emerge, brighter,
Hair and eyes sparkling
And if not so,
Then steady at least
Ready for the day’s toil
Whilst the memories
Of but a day ago are rinsed
Away to another world
Outsourced so we can be clean

In this green and pleasant land
Rid now of satanic mills and
Plumes of foul-smelling smog
A land of coal mines in cold storage
En route to carbon zero,
Environmental eyes sparkle
And if not, conscience quelled,
Guilt is outsourced
To another world
So we can be clean

And if we behave so
Does not God but wilder?
That Will forged in eternity past

That heavenly corporation
A nuclear fire of spirit
Outsourcing the spotless Son
Sluiced somewhere
Outside a city wall
Beyond the satanic mills
Of synagogue and temple
Like some blackened commando
Baptized in our grime
So we can be clean

So, Lewis Gwyn Knowle,
I wonder if imprinted
In some recess of mind
Whether you, imago dei
Whatever satanic foulness
Clings to you, hear a voice
Commanding your eyes
To look upon your clean
Transfigured self,
Made of the sunrise?

If you stumbled

If you stumbled over a diamond
What would you do?

I’d try not to jump up and down
I’d hide it in a shoe

A shoe! I’d sell it, be rich
Uncork the Champagne!

Oh! No! I’d rather keep it
And gaze on its light

Could I see it, my friend?

Only if you bend down
From such a great height

That I could not do
It’s beneath me to kneel

Such a shame, my friend
To the humbled, it’s revealed

Echoes of II Corinthians 4 v6-10