< insert poem here >

On First Reading Larkin

2007-05-13T14:33:00.000+01:00

It seems my promised first piece on other poets is rather resistant to the idea of being published here on my poetry blog. So until I sort out the technical problems, you can read it here instead.

Change of Tack

2007-05-10T14:39:00.000+01:00

I'm going to change the tack of the blog for a while, and start a series of posts about other poets.

The reason?

Blogger and 'attempting poem-maker' Katy Murr's brief comment about Philip Larkin's minor poem 'Days' got me thinking - and frankly I rather enjoyed the process. More of that in a moment. First, here is Larkin's poem - and underneath Katy's point:

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin

---

The first stanza seems stronger: I don't like the 'Ah,' which niggles at the rest of that stanza for me. But, arguably the images of the second stanza are needed to ground the poem, give the reader some tether?

My reponse was that I rather like the "Ah," my reasoning as follows.

By simplistically raising the notion of 'happy days', the first stanza is a whimsical, abstract, pleasant line of thought about the nature of life. So it's a question, a puzzle. The "Ah" is a more concrete moment from that life, a more real expression, a sort little moment of little realisation that we all experience each day. But crucially here, a falsely comforting one, because it ushers in the realisation of impending death. This operates to destroy the previous stanza's limited daydream, by actually being a concrete part of the life the first stanza supposes to summarize. This change of tone and focus is also reflected rhythmically: it's the first line with a pause after the first syllable. (In some ways this rhythmical device is not atypical of Larkin, as he often wedges incidental words - typically images too - in amongst his poems to make them scan; a very simple but effective technique.)

If that's a bit much for you, I can put it another way. Try reading the poem with the "Ah," omitted: you'll find it much colder I think. The emphasis then rests more on "Solving that question" - an abstracted thing to do - rather than on the answer to the question itself.

Well, if you liked this little preamble, I'll post up over the next couple of days more on Larkin. And if you didn't, well, the comments are still open to you as well.

Ceratioid Anglerfish

2007-02-15T01:23:00.001Z

Miles under the ocean live the Angler Fish.

Inflated to the size of a balloon, the female gropes across the dark of the sea floor. Desperate daily to feed herself and her eggs - she lives her whole life searching, groping, grabbing; desperate her whole life amid that empty, perpetual night.

A tenth the size, barely the size of your little finger, the male is born dumb, blind, weak and indifferent. But, he is blessed with one wish.

To find a female. Then, he bites into her flesh - and his mouth dissolves into her veins. And when he is fully fused, feeding automatically from her blood, he atrophies all of his parts.

Except, one.

And so: embedded in her, tighter than a thin ring around a fat finger, he spends his life doing nothing. Nothing, but ejaculate.

He needs no pornography, nor innuendo of invititation, nor carress. No seductive subtle undress. That moment when you shut your eyes, and oh - that is his life, all of the time. So very happy, there in the freezing black. He does not even care when her body, attached to his, is being eaten alive by other fish.

Admist those abyssal depths of dark, he is nothing but a creature of perfect, pure pleasure. So much so, he does not even know the word hedonist.

Mile End

2007-01-31T16:31:00.000Z

When trudging through exit after emergency exit
through carriage after dirty empty carriage
through the litter and white light of a whole tube train
through the black of the earth in the black of a tunnel
hundreds of metres under the city of London

wondering what changed world awaits you at the platform
wondering what war has started, which lives lost,
where the blood is spilt, what buildings are gone,
what poisons swim in the air, what will the survivors do
how will the survivors be different, how will you -

and then find the platform functioning as normal
(it was just a problem with the signals)
then it is time for a quick confession:
you were not afraid. Just curious.

A little note . . .

2007-01-11T22:24:00.000Z

This is a housekeeping post, with a few necessaries.

1. Applies through out:

2. The posts on this blog used to be published under the pseudonym 'Antony M'. That was short for 'Antonym of Poet'. However, something changed in Blogger and now they all appear as Tom Chivers, linked to the other blogs I currently write at. Great news for stalkers, less good for me trying to be clever.

But, so be it.

3. However. Please note, if currently if you search for 'Tom Chivers' you get a London-based poet at the top of the lists - but he is *not* me. I do not have anything to do with 'penned in the margins,' 'Keystone,' 'confluence,' or 'Cherwell'. I have had various poems published in various magazines, and the like - but none are on the web, outside of this blog, that I know.

Magic in November

2006-11-21T00:58:00.000Z

There - among the yellow-green of the leaves, he levitates.

Five floors up in open air: right and left he strolls, roaming at will through London trees. This way and that, fearless and free - wrapped up, in a dance with the breeze.

A miracle sight, this one floating human!

But through the window, take a closer look. There's the metal bones of the scaffold. There the slate, hammer, work; the nails by the fistful. How we should like to be creatures made of wonder - not digging in for rain, for winter.

Jewel of Jerusalem

2006-11-01T19:44:00.000Z

A curled fist formed of a thousand fingers, each the parched colour of cracked mud.

Most ugly of plants, albeit arch-survivor.

They say a drought could last a century - but just one shower, and you spring back to bud.

Drifting, tumble-weed thing - then so quick to unfurl, fan out flat, a palm of green tips.

So, like no person ever has or shall, you live only when it's simple and good.

The rest - the loves and rapes, heroes and whores, the days and the nights, the winters and springs, this London lounge you are now paused in; human civilisation, and its fall - you bluntly shrug off and ignore. Just when water ends, you die as you should.

Sun and earth, rain that rains, winds that blow: you die, live, die, live among the elements. Silent, pure, unfussy faith: your lesson? Then mad, lurching mankind shall never know.

Rain, Everywhere

2006-10-25T13:09:00.000+01:00

Tap-water, grimy and dank, maintains the posing flowers like a pretty corpse, on the dead wood of the table-top. Domestic life, under the fizz of electric light. Envious all of the outside: where blankets of rain make sculpture, make symphony, of the dark, London night.

Who can compete with that plash and pulse? Tell me vase, tell me lamp. Tell me hung clothes, usual but damp. Tiny moutains rise and fall every moment on each lake, whilst valleys race from centre to shore. A gust of wind, and they rove back once more. The umbrella of St Paul's has never hosted such a choir; no pottering Priest ever heard such a prayer. No smart banker ever summed your worth, that the city of trees, soaking, always knew. The man in the moon has the best view: a vast sky of aloof cloud-faces, crying cold features, right across our places; without hope or home here, but back down to earth.

Rain, you're ascribed heights and times in the Weather Office. An audit of anorak sales offers another record. As does this. And it is gone now, your gift. But you will return - to eyes, to ears, and to flesh, always uncaught by the written word.

Strays, Athens

2006-10-22T23:07:00.000+01:00

They look almost dead, flat out on Cathedral steps.

Or limping down side streets. Unable to muster the breath to bark or to beg.

Noon. Summer heat. A solace of scraps in shadows?

Perhaps. Dogs without Owner, dogs without Master, become dusty, drifting ghosts of their species. Foreign to their cousins who fight.

Night. The sky above the city grows dark, the Acropolis lights up upon the hill, crowds sprawl from café to street, friends from restaurants spill - and, then, awaiting lovers, dances, dangle dainty feet from balconies.

And into the indifferent humans of these late pleasures, the howls of the stray dogs call: From the magnet of monuments, past the swirl of the central square, to the rubble and rubbish of fringe estates, howls more honest than any poem, howls as simple as a child's prayer. Howls of one hope. That in the millions, there must exist one who loves them, somewhere.

I am . . .

2006-10-19T22:43:00.000+01:00

. . . tired, tired, tired. Limbs hung low like loose autumn leaves - then complaining like elderly slaves - all as if there was nothing left to seek - except, the drop down into endless sleep. Tired, tired, tired. Such terms surround me like a tomb.

Why must this I suffer this body, asks a thought? But then a rebel rumour goes round the arms - that the hands still know how to dance. That these old legs might still run for more than a bus. Maybe even for a girl, in lust or in love. And that the tired thuddings of the brain - well, that they just sum to naught. So the stereo turns up to fill the room -

- and as the feet come back from their chore (the week's rubbish left outside the door) live flesh gives the finger to dull brain. The illusion of summer's heaven - dancing round an autumn kitchen. The alarm clock, meanwhile, waits in the bedroom's corner. As reliable as ever to pound on the wrong side of seven. As ready as an office to renew morning pain.

Tonight's Something

2006-10-18T22:53:00.000+01:00

Whatever you say about the place - the stoned Australian staff, thirty minutes over each burger; the Primary School dirty wooden floor; as gaudy as an Estate Agent, the bright blue sofa; two suited and booted boys cheering - with barely-secret love - the goal-scorer Drogba; the empty rows of wipe-clean seats; dotting this and that table average bottles of over-priced wine - one old poem at least wasn't true:

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home

Wasn't true tonight, here. Here admist a passing, grand dream of European football. Admidst the neutral air of some random London bar. Where after the whistle blows, everyone just wanders off, bored. Whilst, there - an eternal poem. Or at least another little hyperlink.

(Me, not pretending this time means otherwise. Not < insert poem here >, nor anything.)

Office View -

2006-10-17T23:35:00.000+01:00

- surely no poem could be made out of you? where a fragment of sun seeps down through fat oblongs and jagged diaganols of random stacks of buildings, and not even the skeletal arm of one winter tree can be seen. Always growing and always glowing! a great oaken umbrella of harmonious mankind! - each city was first designed for perfect human life, or its dream.

Now night falls. Random office lights go off, and pubs pour out their poisons. Concrete, stone and steel become sillouhettes, draping the sky with dark curtains, the colour of death.

Here?

2006-10-16T20:59:00.000+01:00

Should I tear down the bricks of this rented pad to hunt you down, impossible poem of the present moment? Rip out the wires, take to the fittings with a sledgehammer? Search for you in the anger of an exploding boiler? Leave on for so long the bathroom heater, that flailing towels ignite as a line of flames? Cook a hob of oil on the highest heat, let the microwave smoke on metal coins? Then stand outside on the street, to seek out a first verse in the wisps of a deadly firework?

Or batter down the door of the rolling washing machine, and maximum all the taps, and lie back and bathe, as the flood spreads down through the flats, transforms anonymous strangers into nightmare neighbours? Then fish out a song from their shouts? Or net a sonnet from the sirens - streaming to here though the city like water snakes?

Or: I could open all the windows, and summon as if a minor god, stood naked and shouting, the blue ice winds of northern winters:

Bitter arctic weather! Pure and clear, come here, and with full whirl make a hurricane of all that is called mine, the CD sleeves and bills, stereo and TV, the books, newspapers and magazines, the lost receipt and stray shopping list, and the shelves of DVDs. Assault, assault this body with all that stuff in a vast swirl, like a fist!

- in the hope the random words of it all will unravel, to write out the story of my soul, or paper my nudity with a profound cloth of language, or print wizardrous words upon my eyes, so tomorrow I see this world as beautiful and true. Heh, if even one word might stick, or just draw blood, or just one little cut, then: Do it, breeze, do.

Impossible poem of the present moment. As closed as a concrete wardrobe. From old jeans the scent of past lovers already is washed. Female fingers no longer lift up jumpers from this old flesh, with that urgent touch. There is a cliché of cobwebs under the stairs. A remark is ready for the office lift; X is gaining in chins what he's losing in hairs. The lipstick on that white shirt is utterly lost. Frozen morning light makes it a grey ghost, collapsed on the bedroom floor. A cold city day yawns awake - and impossible poem of the present moment, even your dream will soon be no more.