For £7.50 pence you can buy a cardboard box containing 24 bottles of “Continental” beer. I figured this was a good way to spend my lifetime’s royalties as a poet – although I did have to add a heavy subsidy from my real wages.

As I waited at the checkout I fretted that the rather taciturn female at the scanner would scowl at me for being an alcoholic/anorexic. I was prepared with a witty biblical repost about loaves, fishes, water and wine. I recognised her as being the matriarch who had once rejected my basket of cold cure powder and ibuprofen tablets as being excessive medication and against Ministry of Sickness health guidelines.

As I lifted the beer onto the conveyor, the universe intervened with the perfect diversionary tactic. The bottom of the box collapsed and about a dozen bottles shot out, hitting the floor, the bar code barracuda and the conveyor.  Why do big swallowing cracks in the ground only happen in disaster movies? I stood there shrugging and smiling in my sweet/pervy old man deaf mute way as broken glass, beer and foam coursed around my ankles. I became someone else – perhaps a wandering poet uninvolved in a mob of screeching mop carriers. I considered trying to explain. No one seemed interested. Not surprising really.

Poet’s cave

I have been giving myself away on KDP. When they told me about this, I thought it was something to do with peanuts but I suppose it has when you think about it. Last time I offered myself I had few takers. This time I shifted about 90 copies and for a few moments was the world’s Numero Uno poet, even getting ahead of the dead ones – and that is tough. And that, of course, brings me on to the French Foreign Legion.

In the novel “Beau Geste” the brave legionnaires prop up dead comrades to fool the enemy into thinking they are facing an army. In my Kreative Blogger post I set out 10 “facts” one of which was not true. Yes – I never actually applied to join the French Foreign Legion. I got married and never sent off the forms. It was one of the biggest military set-backs  my mother in law ever suffered.

Dear oh dear – back to the cave.

February 14th 2012. Yes – it is St Valentine’s day – although seemingly no one knows who he was, what he did or why he is associated with love. You know – it is rather British of me to see a sombre side to all the red velvet hearts and roses. My guess is that for each loved and delighted recipient there is a disappointed and lonely figure making the best of it somewhere. There are those who love the wrong person or who found the right one too late. There are those who love the shallow and the cruel and are trapped in their suffering. There are those who cannot love because they were never loved. There are those too wounded to love again and those who wounded cruelly, grown old now and surveying the withered loveless crop they sowed, those bereaved and those abandoned. Today will bear as many tears as kisses. As a poet, I have never written a proper love poem. I did write one about the crime of love. I used legal and criminal terms to reflect the sense in which love can often be seen as wrong and how the ruthless words of law freeze dry its passion.. Here it is:

Offender

No choking by chocolate
No cruel cut of flowers
For these would be treason
Against our State.
With counterfeit notes
Demanding honey with menaces
Loitering with intent to adore -
These be my petty love crimes.

A great favourite poet of mine is Robert Graves. In his poem “Man In The Mirror” he surveys himself and reflects upon his quest for the female. I checked him out on you tube and was amazed to find him performing this poem with video. Just catch that clipped British accent!

I can never let Valentine’s day go by without thinking of poor old farmer Boldwood who was so deranged with love for Bathsheba Everdene in Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd”.  When she teased him with a Valentine’s card she set in a motion events that would lead to his destruction.

I am very loved in my own life. I reflect upon this sometimes remembering Ovid’s poem “Remedia Amoris” (the cure for love). He advises catching the horse while you can before it gets into a gallop. Then treat (the disease) early and fill your time with war or law. If all that sounds a bit active there is always the advice in Wendy Cope’s poem:

Two cures for love
1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2 The easy way: get to know him better.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1022230/Love–Poems-straight-heart-Wendy-Cope.html#ixzz1mNE5qzTz

What a miserable old git I am! I hope you are having a love filled day. If not – I hope my little dose of cynicism cheers you up. You are not alone.

If you fancy a few more dances around the bonfires of traditions check out  ” I Threw A Stone” which is my current collection available on Amazon Kindle. You will find learned masterpieces dealing with Erectile Dysfunction and love in the  ”bargain bin consume today” department at Walmart. It has an MP3 audio download (which also plays on the Kindle) and tomorrow on the 15th IT IS FREE on Amazon, worldwide.

Amazon USA link
Amazon UK link
Amazon Germany link
Amazon France link

My favourite parent poem is by the English poet Philip Larkin. No one could ever have viewed him as cheerful. I think many Brits of my own generation will still be very aware of him, but poetry still had some kind of main stream potency in those days, a bit like an express steam train. Here is his poem “This Be the Verse“.

I’m sure that cheered you all up. Looking back I think that my awareness of this pessimistic poem while I was bringing up my own kids, at least made me aware that I was getting it wrong. Judging by the tracks in the sand, they should be competent turtles.

And talking of sand, I have been walking on it. Living near the coast, I’m sure I take for granted my opportunities to see the ocean. I managed to scramble under a pier and took the featured photo. There is something darkly sinister about pillars and dark water.

Comrade poets – unite with me and enjoy a poem by the American poet Jo VonBargen entitled “The Garden”. If nothing else check out the last 6 lines. Her style in this poem is rich and sensual and will inject some complex passionate irony back into your veins. At once Pre Raphaelite images  flooded my mind. Pure overdose my dears.

I love kites. Just saying the word has made me want to write a poem about kites – not about the fabric but about their embodiment of hope and possibility, about the vision lost in the blinding sun, the futility of fighting Nature on a windless day, the paradox of a thing set free, yet to fly only because it is tethered. So many philosophical  thoughts arise in contemplation of the kite that it is hardly necessary to bother standing in the park, often with a bored child in attendance, running running running and running to launch a dream into the air of nonchalant breeze-less afternoon.

I do go on – but it’s the poet in me. The actual tethered end of the above ethereal paragraph is the subject of my FREE week-end on KDP select. As regular readers will know, I am not very computerate. Also I know nothing about building platforms, operating audio equipment, kite flying and e-pub/marketing. The more I read, the less I know. Writers selflessly give of themselves to help other writers. This aspect of the “community” is almost an antithesis of many aspects of our modern lives. Because I just cannot do all the left right click, hash pipe, salt delete I am grateful to a small outfit who keep me a little bit free to write, THINK and make some money by working. So it was that this morning I went for coffee with Rosina from Gallo-Romano and of course dear old Emma who is to blame for coercing me into this whole new world.

This is what has been happening. Over the past weekend both of us put our books out for free on all the Amazon platforms. Everything was pulled off other sites since Amazon is more or less the whole deal anyway. Emma will do her own take tomorrow for the Insecure Writers but she is happy for me to give her stats. OK – the situation was that we were putting out a collection of poems, a serious short story and a “supermarket” style romance novel. Even for a non worldly duffer poet, this seemed like an intriguing experiment. These are the raw download stats.

Supermarket Romance Novel: 7,600

Literary Short Story(With MP3 audio): 328

Poetry Collection (with MP3 audio): 121

All items were equally tweeted, splashed and splattered, battered and finally tattered. Downloads ran at about one per minute I think. Since the free deal ended, actual sales have continued at one per hour but only for the Romance. On a recent blog line I noted a comment by Jack Durish about so many questions in this whole business and I’m sure Rosina will be looking into her marketing ball. However, the quick snap shot suggests that these figures are in line with tree book shop sales. Although the poetry fared worst, it still reached the highest “chart” position for a living poet. What does that tell you about poetry sales in general and probably the acceptance by the e-reading public of this form? Rosina has a working hypothesis that the current e-read top up is like putting fuel in the tank of your car. You consume it. You do not  periodically take off the cap and sniff its essence. But – it’s all early days as these platforms evolve. I think the adaptation and media consciousness of writers will decide the future as much as the technology.

I will not grind on with analysis, but one odd stat. Emma’s “Sub Prime” was selling equally with the Romance when it was not free. Obviously it’s about the audience demographic…you can tell I’ve been mixing with buzzy bizzy folks can’t you.

Oh – yes  the kite. Somewhere above you there are currents of air. Can you run fast enough and long enough to tow it up to catch them? As you let go more line, the friction and weight of the string create more drag and you have to run faster. Oh – sod it, I’m off to the poet’s cave to write a kite poem.

PS For my non UK readers, an old London song carried the refrain “blow out your kite/from  morn til night/on boiled beef and carrots

.

Oh – Glorious moon / with all thy shoon.  Well – we all dread poetry do we not? The opening line is from a remembered radio sketch by a British comedian called Tony Hancock. He played the part of a pretentious poet who held forth with his rhymes in any kind of social situation whether wanted or not. Hancock’s parody reveals a solemn truth about our inner selves. We hate to be embarrassed. All that inner “tosh” is for dreamers and arty types. It sure ain’t for bottom line corporate thrusters or geezers wot just gets on with life. Nah – all that stuff is for them softies wot can’t get a hard on( a stiffie) or sits about  weepin’ at the paradox of beauty set in savagery. If ya ask me they’re all a load of poofs and wierdos. Me – I’d make ‘em all sweep the streets or just lock ‘em up. Nah mate – I can’t be doin’ with any of that fairy shit .I’m a regular kinda guy…..

Now, far greater minds than mine receive money to write about all this, bemoaning attention spans, social media and “uncultured” education in schools. Of course, some of this might be true but there could be other reasons. This is my list:

Visibility. Out of sight is out of mind. In my youth I used to race bicycles. Once a rider gets away and round a bend and disappears it does not matter how hard you try. That thread of awareness has snapped. Once a generation loses contact with an element of culture it has no continuance. Country dancing, croquet, smallpox and the eating of rabbits ( in the UK) have all gone that way.

Now, I hear you say – you promised a nice juicy list. Well, just be grateful that I keep my lists short. VISIBILITY is the entire issue. No one will like every poet. Having rubbed shoulders with some real “up the backside” airy fairy poets I can report that I have not liked many of them. My favourite poet is an Indie like me.  Poetry has machine gunned itself in the feet and both legs with its inaccessible elitism. Dear old Pam Ayres, Benny Hill and popular music composers have kept the comatosed patient alive in the public mind. Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond et al have done more to keep the concept of poetry alive than any poet laureate. We poets must remember that this is a world where in many households either a stereo playing music or a TV playing across 300 channels occupies the whole environment while anyone is awake. It has been a revolution that the “Greats” could not have shouted down. OK Mr Tennyson – your friend died and you wrote a poem – so what? There’s been 4 murders and a car crash since lunch time on channel 18 and no one is writing a soppy poem about that!”

My own view is that poets have still got the guns. They have the ristretto fix in the internet café. The new media of music and video mix is there to be taken. Folks may never again sit under the summer boughs with a book of verse. They will pick up a phrase or an idea if it is delivered to their antennae and we fellow poet citizens of that same world put it there for them.

And the point is…
My poetry collection “I Threw a Stone” is FREE on Amazon this weekend, Sat 28th and Sun 29th January. It is available in Kindle format and has an active table of contents (so you can skip between poems). It also includes a link to a FREE MP3 audiobook – with all the poems read by me.  This can be played on your Kindle too – so you can read or just sit back and listen.  For a sample click here.

Roll up, roll up get your free poetry here……
Amazon USA
Amazon UK

Watch the video trailer for ‘I threw a stone’

Reblogged from Oscar Sparrow:

Just a few times in life you meet someone a bit special. At a party during Christmas I came across a guy who made a real impression on me. He was not a corporate thruster. He was not a “get out of my way” Mister Important. He appeared to have no interest in Maserati executive cars or money. He was a little old guy, wearing a suit and looked up at folk through his eyebrows. I saw several youngsters chat and smile with him. He knew their names. He knew the names of their brothers and sisters. I wrote a poem …

OK, here are my 10 facts… one of them is untrue but can you identify which?

1. I built and operated the first commercial rickshaw in the UK in 1976 and starred on national TV with Eamonn Andrews (famous UK chat show host) as my passenger when I launched my bid to “green up” London.

2. I wrote a novel in the cab of a sewage tanker whilst sucking drains and ships’ bilges.

3. I performed the marketing trials for black cherry flavour yoghurt in the UK and signed the report recommending production and launch.

4. I crashed a police car into Westminster Abbey in London.

5. I was guardian of the Lord Lucan file at Interpol.

6. I knocked a priest and his holy water over the dead body he was blessing.

7. I discussed the plight of South American parrots with Prince Charles.

8. I applied to join the French Foreign Legion.

9. I lived in a lodging house where a flightless crow made itself mobile by sitting on the head of a German shepherd dog.

10. I cycled from the UK to Paris, and back 11 times.

OK – which one is the big Porky Pie?  (London rhyming slang for lie). You can ask questions if you feel motivated and I may answer them, but all will be revealed on the 31st January….

In the mean time here are my nominations for Kreativ Bloggers of 2012:

1. Bert Carson

2. Christina Carson

3. Jo VonBargen

4. Phil Torcivia

5. Ru

6. Jan Morrison

They are an eclectic bunch – some irreverent, some sensible, some passionate, some grounded, some spiritual and some spiky  – I leave you to decide which – but they are all entertaining and work hard at their craft and I always look forward to their posts .  Well done you folks I take my hat off to you Kreativ Bloggers all.   You too may display your badge with pride in your side bar – providing you can work out how to do that (I have such problems on WP) and of course tell us 10 secret facts and nominate 6 more bloggers…  the chain goes on.

Masked Balls

a man is tired he would be well advised to stay out of London in order to preserve his life. The crowds around Big Ben and Westminster bridge were so dense that it was almost impossible to get along the pavement and pedestrians are forced out into the road. The situation was made far worse by seven (7) grubby men dressed as the queen in utterly dilapidated costumes and eleven (11) 3 card trick players with their coterie of stooges. I am not yet a completely miserable old man but if I have to shuffle off the old mortal coil I’d rather it was not by being squashed by a London cab. I believe that the queens will pose for photos with gullible tourists. Venetian carnival it ain’t.

However, my trip was wonderful. Last week I went to a country house and came across a mosaic by Boris Anrep. I learned that he also did the floor in the entrance to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Since London is only a short train trip I found myself looking at this fabulous piece of art that I had walked on so many times, but had never seen. Innocently I decided to take a photo. At once an official advised me that I was not allowed to photograph the works of art. I did point out that people were scuffing and treading all manner of substance onto the floor. He advised me with great courtesy that this was

I love you

acceptable as long as no one photographed the vandalism in progress.

Boris loves Maud

I won’t drone on about the history of the work but here is a link. For me the most interesting aspect is the depiction of his lover and patron Maud Russell as “Folly”. How little we think of what is under our feet. Poets like William Wordsworth and Jo VonBargen have seen infinities in blades of grass and the simplest of flowers. These images from other minds become the torch in the darkness of the self conscious mind. Oh  - poetry, how your tiny voice whispers amongst the tumult of it all. Yes – and in a sense the whole of ART is a tumult with its pantheons of schools, critics, apologists, galleries. libraries, soothsayers and junkies. All of it, verbal and pictorial, reduces to the language with which we speak to ourselves. Inchoate and debased, it is the pornography of  seething crowds and the frustration of intelligence before the dumb shrine of mystery. Only poetry works. Only poetry works.

Dear me – I do go on a bit don’t you think?

PS. The captions under the mosaic photos are by me, not any kind of official title. Looking at the floor, these were my humble vibes about two souls now quiet but speaking still.

                                                            Angela

She had just flown into Heathrow and I was the guy with a name, apparently her only name, held up on a sheet of paper in the Arrivals hall. Typically someone had missed off the flight number but amongst the crowd of crumpled smoke-dried chauffeurs she found me. Briefly our lives would intersect like brain cells in a passing thought. We pushed our way out to where I had parked the big 500 SEL Mercedes – almost new in 1977.

“No luggage?”

“It was just a day trip,” she said.

I could tell that she was friendly but formal and she sat behind in the darkness. To be honest I couldn’t tell you what she wore or the colour of her eyes. The way things turned out a lot of that evening got lost or confused.

I nosed the big Merc’ out of the airport and headed in to London. I loved this car and had risked everything to set up my chauffeur business. I loved this car…the smell of leather, the badge at the horizon end of the bonnet, the effortless Pavarotti push of the tenor V8. In those days you could guzzle without guilt.

I had found that if the client wanted to talk you could respond. Often the social gap was just too huge and I was invisible. Some wanted simple peace or to enjoy a city wildlife safari with air con and leather. Those were the days before mobile phones and all that tip-tap claptrap.

We chatted for a while about this and that. Banality was us.

“You know my name but I don’t know yours,” she said.

Her accent was short cropped with mid Atlantic highlights.

“I’m Joe.”

Her manner was self confident but gentle. You get these types in business – smooth but full of power. Really I was overstepping the conventions and I just spoke to her as if we were equals.

“What do you do in the world?” I asked.

“Oh, management consultancy – fly in, meeting, fly out.”

“What do people consult you about?”

“It’s always decisions and choice.”

“Big decisions?”

“Big decisions are easy because you have to make them. It’s the small ones that are tough” she said.

“How’s that?”

“Did you ever get stuck buying a candy bar? Mars, Twix, Bounty, Boost – you could spend your life in an oscillation of trivial choice, living for ever in a corner store”

“I get a bit tongue tied in McDonald’s,” I said.

The Merc’ purred on towards the City. The lady fell quiet and tried to relax back into the leather. I noticed she was fidgeting as if she were uncomfortable or had a bad back.

“You OK?” I asked

“Fine – it was a tough flight.”

I just loved the night time city, the swirl and bustle of the Marylebone Road, a trace of fried chicken, a jolt of eau de parfum.

“So the big decisions are easy?” I asked.

“Well – tell me – you bought this car OK?”

I nodded.

“Just before you bought it…let’s say the night before – how did you feel?”

“Anxious I guess” I replied, slipping aquatic chameleon style into mid Atlantic.

“But after you had actually bought it – did you feel better?”

“It was a relief” I said.

“Right again!. And when you got it home and looked past the tyre gloss and the wax job you found a few problems I bet…”

“Well there were a few things, but it was the right decision.”

“Exactly – because once you had made the choice everything you did and thought was reinforcing your decision and so it was the right decision.” she said.

I laughed a little. “Can I be a consultant now?”

She laughed a little too.

“Nope – we gotta keep the prices up.”

By this time we had cruised into Aldwych.

“Anywhere here will do fine,” she said.

“Don’t you want the Strand Palace hotel?

“I’ll be OK – I’ll be flying straight out again.”

I pulled over and turned to look at her. This was strange.

“What will you call that little girl?” she asked.

I caught my breath and stared at her. Had I said anything to her about that? I do gabble on. It’s my job.

She didn’t blink and said gently

“I must go now give me one of your hands – either one”

I held out my left hand and she took it in hers. She continued “Sometimes we reach a fork in a road and you think you don’t know which way to go, yet deep down you do know. In my consultancy we would advise you to follow your first instinct. Even in the silence there is a small voice. Your left was your natural choice and that is the way to go.”

“What if I had given you my right hand?” I asked as if all this were the most natural situation in the world.

“Then we would advise to go to the right. You gave me your left. Your instinct will be correct.”

Then she was swept away in the anonymous crowd outside the Strand Theatre. I selected Drive and pulled away. Bloody Hell she was an odd one – probably making millions.

It was true about the baby on the way. I’d only known for two days. Just between you and I the decision was far from certain. We were renting a one bed flat and I had just started the business. Baby? Did I need a baby? You can have a baby any time.

I lived west of London and so I headed out onto the motorway. I was tired and gratefully smoked a cigarette. Traffic was light and I stoked up the Merc’ to about 90.

I spotted a small shunt on the Eastbound and a queue was starting to build. I saw the smoke from the tyres of a 38 ton Leyland locking up to avoid smashing into the tail end. The trailer began to snarl round into the jack knife.

I watched the truck doing 60 slam straight through the barrier and head for me.  I killed some speed and then pulled left. Hey – do you know what I was thinking? “How did that woman know it was a girl?”……….

All this was years ago. I rolled the car but ended up on my wheels on the hard shoulder. The truck ploughed on broadside across three lanes for about 200 yards. By the time I climbed out of the wreck, the ambulance was there. No one died and I spent just a night at the hospital.

My little girl Angela grew up to be a nurse.

Oscar Sparrow.