The artist struggles with the means of expression, and also the content


I thought I’d write fiction, and start with a trilogy

but I didn’t want it to mushroom into a twelve volume Dance

or Remembrance

so I scaled it down to just the one novel

which didn’t flow so well

so I turned it into a novella

but when I hadn’t completed it after the first year or two

an epic poem seemed the obvious way to go

although when the ‘epic’ bit became too troublesome

I decided to make it a song

But I can’t do music or song lyrics, so that was rash, then a notion, through a simple potion, led to the idea of a poem.

And it was going well, the ideas were coming

and I thought maybe a sonnet was a real prospect

or, at least, a tanka – but some of the lines were a bit long?

Still, a haiku remains on the horizon, tantalisingly close (even though one of the lines is a bit heptasyllabic).

If I can just stretch the inspiration to cover another two lines -

well, three, really, because I haven’t quite finished the first one.

Or, in fact, started it -

although I thought of an opening word some time last summer:

now, if I’d had my dictaphone at the time . . .

  The Pod Phod Pot Peg Pet Poet

 

I can do things with words

Make them dance and sing - lift weights so that they become big words - run up and down hills so that they become enduring words

- walk coastal paths (and inland ones), and read good books, so that they become rounded words;

Or have them lie flat on the page, in suitably servile pose

Mumbling and maundering in their unique two-dimensionality:

Downtrodden words.


It may not be fair to flatten words in this way

Because words are people, too

And even if they’re not (trust me, they’re not)

They deserve more than two spatial dimensions.


You’re preaching to the converted, bro’.

Tell me something I don't know.

Or better still, tell me two things.


I sold your crash helmet on ebay. Last week.

And stopped your allowance. Earlier today.


And now you're preaching to the infidel

 

Odyssey


Coming out of Cottage Road cinema she yells Hi there!

Instinctively I begin to say Hello back

turning slightly to greet my still-unknown friend.

She is of course talking into her mobile phone.

This is happening more and more

Even if you’ve got a good memory for faces it can be disconcerting

but if you can’t remember people

despite having met them half a dozen times

it does tend to introduce more uncertainties into life

than are strictly necessary.

I mean, what if one day she's talking to me and not her phone?

 

* * *

As he strolled past the Rose Garden in the sleeting rain he wondered:

Should I have acted according to a prediction with a 30% error rate that was made twenty or more hours ago

or believed the evidence of my senses, and put on a coat?

Ah, the old rationalism/empiricism divide!

With ponderings as dry as these the torrential downpour has no chance.

 

* * *

 

How can you take up so much room?

I’m walking behind you, there’s acres of pavement

but you veer slightly and unpredictably from side to side

in a way that must have taken years to perfect.

And you’re not that big, which makes it even more impressive that you can

occupy so much space that now there are

five or six of us behind you -

not stalking, just trying to overtake

and make it to the Skyrack –

maybe, even, to the world rumoured to lie beyond.