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ODE TO A DEAD HAMSTER So short a life, Andy Morley February 14th 2008 |
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ODE TO A DEAD HAMSTER
So short a life,
But sweet enough,
Devoid of strife -
No hint of rough
And tumbled stress,
Or undue pain,
No unkindness,
Nor harsh distain
From Fate - protected,
That's for sure,
From Nature red,
In tooth and claw,
But only love,
Though gone away,
More than enough,
Those happy days.Andy Morley February 14th 2008
ON A NEW BICYCLE
This poem celebrates a great occasion,
A lifetime-marking moment if you like,
Certainly a subject fit to dwell on -
The first-time riding out on your new bike.It tried to hide the sky through Ross-on-Wye,
The glist of morning mist we caught at first,
To smoke away the wisps from up on high,
That Fat old Sun was coming through in bursts...Tintern-Parva, how's yer father darlin'?
There's nowhere I would rather be than here,
Swooping like a flock of two-wheeled starlings,
And ready for a bigger shift of gear...Almost as good as when you get your oats,
Get ready for us now you John O'Groats...
Andy Morley January 10th 2008
I am looking for sponsorship on the John O'Groats to Lands End cycle ride in July this year.
Unlike the others, who are seeking sponsorship on the basis of miles ridden, I intend to
write one poem per day, and would like to be sponsored at so much per poem.
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Me and Mrs very Jones, Andy Morley February 5th 2008 |
Link to Photo by J Dranae Jones |
Facts are not Black
And Facts are not White -
We'd like them to be -
Long for light, and clear-cut cases,
Wrong or right -
But facts are seldom black-and-white.
You may laugh and you may scoff :
"That lamp is either on or off -
No flickering, no middle ground,
No half-way houses that we've found!"But I would ask you:
What's it for?
What's it for this lamp of yours?
Is it for reading, or for chores?
And something else you can't ignore -
This shining light, what does it mean?
What's the message when it's seen?
Lights on, you're in; lights off; you're out?
So when a burglar's round about -
Does he even have to try
At guessing, or can he rely,
On this sure Fact you were so kind
To leave so he'd know what he'd find?You'll tell me "well this knife is true" -
Then I would ask what will it do?
Is it a weapon or a tool?
Choose only one - I'd call you fool;
And you might stab me in the eye,
But then the only thing to die,
Would be my body through your act,
For truth can't die, and that's a fact.Andy Morley February 5th 2008
Re: Fwd: Obama and Black People (PLEASE READ!!!)
> We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
> And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people
> permission to do the same. That's all the brotha is trying to do. So vote
> for him, drop the excuses, and support the first viable Black Candidate.
> Our ancestors demand that we do so.Hey Jade, this really ain't my fight,
Nor yet my country - still I might
Well ask you, now I've read your screed,
How you would feel if you should read,
Some message on the Internet,
Someone like you who's out to get,
The voters to express their choice,
And shouting in an angry voice:
'Vote for Clinton, 'cos she's white!'
So Jade, would you say that was right?
And never mind the person who,
Lives in that skin, nor what they'd do,
If such ideas should have their hour,
Would you like them to come to power?Andy Morley February 4th 2008
You were perplexed
When I pulled out the photograph.
You didn't know the time or place,
The faces were well-known,
But only the old sleeping bag,
Gave some sense of context.You held a leg,
Vice-like in triumph,
Submission achieved,
In gales of laughter,
But I thought the moment,
Deserved its immortality,
Evidently...Andy Morley January 28th 2008
Footnote:
I usually hate poems written in this style and consider them to embody all that is worst in current poetic fashions. However I thought that I'd make the attempt to write in this way, and I'm inviting feedback. Is current poetry really as bad as I tend to make out. This is what I had to say on the subject at the end of last year.
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Janary 18th 2008. This poetry blog oscillates between the light and frivolous and the dark and gloomy, depending on which current events have prompted what poems. Right now, it's hovering precariously between those two extremes. I've written lots of obituaries over the course of the past 12 months, mostly in the form of pomes. The trouble is, I can't usually share those ones with the general internet public because inevitably, they are too sensitive. Some of these have been for people who have actually died. Some have been for people who have disappeared off the collective radar because of some crisis such as a breakdown or an affair. It's weird how, when you're in your late teens and early 20s, a few people die, usually through recklessness and you count it as the cost of youth. Those who survive learn at the expense of those who die. Their example is usually enough to persuade you that whatever they were doing that killed them wasn't such a good idea. But you form the expectation that the middle years of life won't be like that. How wrong can you be? Aside from working yourself to death and wrecking your life through stupidity or over-ambition, both of which seem to be the hallmark of middle age, there is a third category. People who you've known a long time and who you suddenly discover, you don't know at all. |
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When you've played a key part in someone's formative years, they like to preserve you in aspic. That's all very well while you're prepared to play along with that, but sometimes something really tiny can serve as a trigger, and suddenly, you or they wake up to the fact that you or they are not the same as before. Some people can handle this, some can't. However, there is an inevitable gathering of baggage as you go through life and an equally harsh reality that says that you don't have room for it all. So when that moment comes, do you renew your friendship with them on a completely different basis, or do you move on? BAH HUMBUG - all these serious questions, which produced the next four pomes, became just TOO serious and sombre and so they degenerated into frivolity, as you can see... But it's a frivolity that's still tinged with a flavour of mortality. For those who are interested, Hara Kiri was a satirical magazine of the 1970s. I happened to be clearing out some old stuff(!) and thought that the following bande 'dessinée' made the perfect point about things that we can take a little over-seriously... So what are YOUR priorities in life? |
LES JEUX DE CON DE PROFESSEUR CHORON
Dear Professeur Choron,
I'd like to join your jeux de con,
So if I may, I will move on...To the body of my theme,
You know I face each day with clean,
Underpants to vex the queer,
Doctor who so loves to sneer,
At smudges, traces, hints of spatter,
Reference to faecal matter.When the Omnibus of Life,
Puts an end to toil and strife,
Throws its weight at my resistence,
Terminus of brief existence,
So like plaice or cod or dab,
Lying coldly on the slab,
Will I then be arsed to care,
If I'd put on clean underwear?Andy Morley January 10th 2008
Jeux de Con can be loosely translated as Daft Games and was the title of a spoof series on how to make useful items out of old washing up bottles and sticky-backed plastic. Professor Choron was the leading light behind Hara Kiri.
Picture above - clipped and cloned from Michael Palin's taken to illustrate his book Pole to Pole
Header and footer images adapted from Hara Kiri and with the crotch-shots airbrushed out by me (Merci Adobe Photoshop!)
Archy and Mehitabel,
In the gusts of one fine day,
Tiptoed quietly away,
'Toujours Archy, toujours gai...'
Into a very funny smell,
Onions pared beyond their time,
Immortalised now in this rhyme,
Along with sundry old fish bones,
Vacuum fluff and spat fruit stones,
To tempt a cockroach and a cat,
On an epic journey that,
Would end one night so far away,
Writing of their mortal clay,
'Toujours Archy, toujours gai...'
Andy Morley January 10th 2008
All things have their proper term,
Nine months at least we hope will earn,
A brief, short label to apply,
To the twinkle of an eye,
Caught and wrapped in human form,
Wrinkled up and rudely torn,
From that sense of warm illusion,
To the realm of cold confusion,
That will pin and underlie,
Four score years that quickly fly,
What name for what encapsulates,
Our screaming, kicking, ball of fate?Andy Morley January 10th 2008
When an old friend dies,
As they sometimes do by stealth,
It may come as some surprise,
They might seem in best of health.
And as fleeting lifetime flies,
New importance, rank or wealth,
Means that they don't recognise,
As they take you from the shelf,
In an old and thin disguise,
You no longer see yourself.
Andy Morley January 12th 2008(This poem is a placeholder for the original with the same name but written January 10th and that I did not want to share here)
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January 5th 2008 A new year and an old obsession. I'm still fascinated by Evolutionary Psychology and the continuing debate on this subject on the Internet in the Yahoo!Group of that name. And THEIR current and continuing obsession is what they call "The Battle of the Sexes". When I read the debate, I'm struck by a sense of unreality. This forum is composed of emminent academics, scientists and other professionals. Contributions from the female participants include statements such as:
Meanwhile, their male colleagues calculate formulae for men to use to work out if their woman is likely to cheat on them:
Believe it or not, I actually think this formula could be correct, though I would have said the same thing much more poetically. However, I did notice that its inventor was single... Meanwhile a published author on the subject concludes:
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It's surely a really positive thing that the sexes in some way seem to need each other because they can only really properly see themselves through the other Personally, I prefer Tobias Smollet's take on this, as described in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle with the following epitaph for Commander Hawser Trunnion: Foundered in a fathom and a half, The shell Of HAWSER TRUNNION, Esq. Formerly commander of a squadron In his Majesty's service Who broached to, at five p.m. Oct. x In the year of his age Threescore and nineteen. He kept his guns always loaded, And his tackle ready manned, And never showed his poop to the enemy, Except when he took her in tow; But, His shot being expended, His match burnt out, And his upper works decayed, He was sunk By Death's superior weight of metal. Nevertheless, He will be weighed again At the Great Day, His rigging refitted, And his timbers repaired, And, with one broadside, Make his adversary Strike in her turn. Meanwhile, the women I know are nothing like the subjects for discussion in any of these debates, and so I was inspired to write the following poem about some of them... |
Deb and Sue and all the crowd,
All dressed up and very loud,
With St Trinians, they all vowed,
They'd outdo the movie...Dressed up in their schoolgirl clothes,
Stockings, satchels, all that goes...
Grown-up schoolgirls' kinky pose,
Acting wild and groovy...Swish hips, gym slips, smoking fags,
Vodka bottles in their bags,
Not quite a bunch of teenage hags,
Hiding all the bits that sags...Putting on their Santa hats,
Playing games of this and that,
Foxy ladies, sexy kit-cats,
Red hot flesh-pots cocaine smoke pot...In a wayside drinking-den,
Searching out Christmas Wise Men,
Would wise men want girls like them?
Mine Gott, see spots, I should say not...A pub with wise-guys eating fries,
Bulging beer-guts, twice the size,
Singing "Who ate all the pies?",
Hells bells pedals well off they flies...
Back then to reality,
No more schoolgirl fantasy,
Off home to the family,
Soft boiled eggs and toast for tea...But just now and then at least,
Inhibitions are released,
Off they sneak for a midnight feast
And another movie...January 5th 2008
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December 17th 2007. When I set out on this poetry blog, I never thought that I'd end up writing so much prose about it. I started off with an idea for a bit of fun that would showcase some of my less controversial poems in a light-hearted commentary on life in general, my passing doings, current affairs and anything else that caught my attention. However, what with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and the swings and roundabouts of life, I decided that as Yuletide is approaching, I would lapse into prose some more and cogitate about the doings of the past year. After all, if the Queen can do it, so can I. The past 18 months have been 'interesting' on account of both domestic drama and an exciting time at work. It all began the previous May ('06) when one of my bad-boy children decided to risk his life and our sanity by fighting off half a dozen hoods who tried to nick his mate's rucksack as they walked back to town one fine Friday evening. He came home covered in blood and with a tooth loose, but fortunately, he was un-punctured. Then, as he was also showing signs of fluffing his 'A' levels, we pulled him out of 6th form college and sent him to The House of Correction for a year, from which he emerged with an 'A' and two 'B's, so not a bad result. Now, he's recovering from the ordeal by spending a gap year with his Aunty and Cousins in the West Indies, aided and abetted by a couple of mates - old lags from the same penal institution. Meanwhile, my Mum's been continuing her fight with cancer, fortunately not one of the really vicious sorts. However, it triggered a broken arm which is how they discovered it, and after a lifetime of picking my Dad up whenever he fell over, she decided she was no longer equal to the task. So given that me old Dad's legs are a bit unreliable, he's gone to the tender care of a nursing home near Norwich. It was probably all this fuss that prompted the outburst of poetry over the past 12 months, starting November '06 when my Mother fell ill. Before that, I had just written the odd few poems per year. Then in November this year (07) with the autumnal gloom gathering, and more dark family matters arising, I decided to give poetry up. One of my relations tipped over the edge into 'Bipolar Disorder' (the madness formerly know as 'Manic Depression') and I also learned that another relation has had a life overshadowed by the same thing. With something like that so uncomfortably close to home, I really didn't feel like I wanted to be dabbling in the art-form famously associated with the 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' so I decided to quit. Unfortunately, giving up poetry is one thing, but it didn't want to give me up. The tragic and unexpected death of a former colleague from Vodafone caught me unawares and brought about an unplanned poem. It's like trying to give up fags, one slight lapse and before you know where you are, you've started again. The latest crop of poems have all been rather on the dark side, as you might expect from the circumstances, so I've ruthlessly weeded them all out, all bar one which I've included here below. My own personal brand of insanity is paranoia. I recently read various news items about American high-school and college graduates recording their dafter doings in Facebook or Myspace or other places on the internet. Then, a year or two later, they found that prospective employers were rejecting their job applications after having tracked down the same misdemeanors with the help of Google. 'What?' I wondered would a prospective client make of me, a self-employed person proposing to charge them indecent amounts of money for my services if they discovered this poetry blog, or even worse, if they came across my full and unadulterated Pomes? (what, you want a link to that from here? You gotta be kidding!) This particular contemplation of madness that led me to quit writing poetry took the form of being haunted by the ghost of Christmas Past in the shape of one P L P Poel, or 'Tad' as his nervous teenage charges used to call him. (but only ever behind his back) Yes, my old Grammar-School head master. What would he make of these scrawlings? I wondered in the cold light of one chilly grey dawn. "You're an arse Morley" he said as he caught me aged 14 as I was poking a lighted joss-stick through the keyhole of the history classroom from which I'd just been ejected for some similar misdeed. Would he say the same about my poetic ramblings? So that was another reason why I decided to quit. But then maybe, I was being unfair to the man. After all, he wasn't exactly narrow-minded or lacking in creativity himself. That's the trouble with ghosts - you can't sit them down and have a nice cosy chat about exactly what it is that's bothering them. They just say 'HOOO!' at you and then leave you to figure it out for yourself what they mean by it. |
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Fortunately, I was rescued from the dilemma by the unlikely person of Jeremy Clarkson. If the respected compère of BBC's Top Gear programme can be filmed driving round a racing circuit in a car emblazoned with the words 'arse biscuits' on one door and 'penis oil' on the other, then I reckon I can get away with this poetry blog, free from the reproaches of long-dead headmasters. Actually, it didn't say that, it said Larsen's Biscuits and Peniston Oils, these being two mythical racing sponsors, but everybody got the message when they opened the car doors. On the subject of work, this year has been interesting like I said. In the Spring, I finished at Vodafone after 28 months. I have to say that they bear their share of culpability for my extended excursion into poetry. It was on a Vodafone public-speaking course that I was 'outed' as a poet and then encouraged by the irrepressible Tony Henderson-Newport and the boundlessly optimistic Phillip Gladwell that I ought to take this further, especially on the performance side. Mad or what? Encouraged in this folly I decided to target media companies for my bread-and-butter living, in order to gain exposure to some more poetic places. As a result, I went to Edinburgh to work for BSkyB during the second half of the year, from where I am but lately returned. Scotland blew my mind - I'd never visited the Lowlands before. I comprehensively 'did' Edinburgh, punctuated by enjoying the fabulous climbing-wall at Ratho and excursions onto the Firth of Forth as you can read below. I also performed my poetry at the world-famed Royal Oak and I discovered the Scottish Poetry Library. It was sad in some ways that the bread-and-butter stuff at Sky came to an end. I guess that with the threat of recession gathering, you can't blame a family as famously canny as the Murdochs from slowing down their capital spending programmes. Having said that, in some ways I'm glad it's all over. It was pretty damn hectic and a typical week would see me up at 4:30 to catch the 7:00 a.m. flight to Edinburgh of a Monday morning, and not back till late Friday. Meanwhile, I'd spend my week living in a caravan on a dairy farm and trying to reduce my carbon footprint by cycling the five miles each way to work and back. It was manic. Still it had the virtue of keeping me fit, supplementing it as I did with evening bike rides with accomplices such as 'cousin' Peter, which you can read about here and by weekends doing some longer rides. Peter wasn't the only person I met up with while I was in Edinburgh. One weekend, trapped up North by the vagaries of flights, I drove to the depths of the Keilder Forrest for a session with Gary Mayhew and Al Bray, formerly of my old Grammar School. Saturday night, I enjoyed one too many Newcastle Brown Ales with them... some things don't change. On the cycling front I should mention that my amazing wife cycled 182 miles in two days earlier this year. She and her friends did Birmingham to North Devon in the storms at the end of May this year. (see the picture below) We both did the Devon coast-to-coast at Easter and she did an extended tour of Wales in August. We finished up touring Devon again at the October half-term. While I was in Scotland, I also met up with Janey Floyd, once of Durham University and now resident in Glasgow to spend an evening checking out Edinburgh in her charming company. And if anyone reading this suffers from a suspicious mind, I should point out that it's one of the benefits of a lifetime spent being madly in love that I'm able to enjoy genuine friendship with the opposite sex, free from the constraints that the Bill Clintons of this world have to be placed under. On which subject I'd also like to mention, blowing my own trumpet a little, that Caroline, my flatmate for two years while I was with Vodafone, has gone back to college following my encouragement, and is steaming ahead so forcefully that she's planning to go to university soon. Not a bad achievement for someone in her thirties whose initial brush with education was a less than happy one, and I'm really pleased to have played some small part in it. So well done Caroline. And on that note, I should say that I'm thinking about doing something similar myself. With the chill of recession building up, I fancy a sabbatical and have a feeling that I might just spend the first half of next year doing a foundation course in a subject I won't mention, to see whether I want to follow on with a conversion course to change my BA in Languages Economics and Politics into a BSc in something a whole lot more scary. But we'll see. Who knows what the new year may bring... Meanwhile, scroll down or click for the one and only pome that made it to get selected out of the recent batch, although even this one is a touch on the dark side. So, if you don't fancy things dark and gloomy, you can skip to some rather more cheerful ones. Merry Christmas '07... Andy Morley
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Teach me the beauty,
Of the darkness,
Teach me to alter,
Help me to know...
Show me the comfort
Of true meaning,
To take by the horns,
Or go with the flow...You are my saviour,
My inspiration,
Leading me through,
This valley of woe,
My sweet genessence,
DNA Program,
Blindly not showing
The way I must go...Andy Morley December 9th 2007
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November
28th
2007. The next poem (SHAKING
THE ANACONDA) was meant to be the last one, when
I stopped writing poems in mid November 2007. It's strange
how fate intervenes in life in one way or another. |
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Equally strange is the contrast that's always there in life with mundane things rubbing shoulders with big and serious things and sombre things giving way to light hearted things. I guess that's the Human Condition for you. |
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November 19th 2007. Poetry takes on a life of its own, and if you try to control it to make it do something, what happens is a bit like using a fireman's hose, connected to a hydrant that's turned on at full volume, to water your garden with. It turns into rearing monster, bucking and twisting about snake-like, kicking up all sorts of stuff all over the place. The following pome
was inspired by an eminent group of scientists who get
together on the Internet in order to debate a subject called
Evolutionary
Psychology. |
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It's a fascinating topic that that deserves a wider audience. Evolutionary Psychology (EP to its friends) is all about applying the principles of Evolution to the understanding of Human Nature. Given the scope and depth that such a subject offers, it's not surprising that the conversation takes on some strange twists and turns. And given the nature of academics, it's equally unsurprising that snotty and uptight people will pitch in and have a moan about it. The Internet was ever thus. This particular Internet fuss prompted a surprisingly long poem. If you don't like long poems, please feel free to skip to the next one. (it's much shorter) |
There was a group of scientists,
Eminent, respectable,
Their logic was debatable,
Pursued with thirst insatiable,
Their humour was discernible,
Though not always reliable,
And tempers somewhat friable,
As conflict sometimes came to call,
So when it did, they had a ball,
And pinned each other to the wall,
In mass-debates 'till one and all,
Would fall,
Exhausted,
Flustered,
Disgusted,
They couldn't cut the mustard,
And so they started once again,
Pitting wits 'gainst foe and friend,
And ever on without an end.Meanwhile I'd watch, try to discern,
Whatever things that I could learn,
Though difficult it was to follow,
Strange, strange language of these scholars,
For an ordinary wallah,
Whose head, though not exactly hollow,
Began,
To ache,
Distraught,
Irate,
Mirroring the sentiments,
Of these scientific gents,
Whose vigour never would relent...And then one strange, unusual day,
A different topic came in play:-
Swedish girls who all divested,
Costumes so they'd swim bare-chested,
Causing a slight consternation,
And, after some hesitation,
The lifeguards ordered them all out,
To see what it was all about;
Then, having thoroughly inspected,
These girls, sent them home dejected,
And of course it hit the news,
Causing much hot air and views,
Not least amongst our scientists,
Who scorning silly feminists,
Decided it would be remiss
To pay attention to a nation,
With the strange preoccupation
That men who stood to face the throne,
Of micturation should sit down,
In solidarity with girls,
Who had to sit to scatter pearls,
Of amber juice they didn't need,
In common parlance - when they wee'd.Then angrily in this debate,
Entered those who spoke their hate,
Of evil men who'd gaily squander,
When they 'shook the anaconda',
Yellow droplets to and fro,
Not caring where they let it go,
Perchance upon the bathroom floor,
Or on the handle of the door,
A notion there to make them squirm,
Considering the horrid germs,
And nasty stuff from other men,
That might lie there in wait for them.And so it raged on back and forth,
East and west and south and north,
Another party cried 'not fair'
To make us sit upon that chair,
When we are just so very neat,
And always wipe the toilet seat,
And with a tissue, apprehend,
Drips and drops upon the end
Of that member strong and brave,
That God or Evolution gave
To men so they don't need to sit,
Unless perchance they need a...Ahem, time for another verse
Before this poem gets much worse,
All I will say - a rift arose,
Creating new and deadly foes,
Of the anaconda grabbers,
Versus dainty tissue dabbers,
In the midst, with puzzled frown,
Some men who usually sat down,
For number one and number two,
Tried to smother this to-do,
In vain - and here, I must now say,
At this point I tiptoed away...Now in conclusion I must tell,
The forum where all this befell,
Was not amongst our silly youth,
With manners rude and airs uncouth,
But as I've said, these scientists
Were quite unable to desist,
From debating hard as able,
Any topic on their table,
Yet the aim of this convention,
Was a topic well worth mention,
One that really fascinates me,
That they refer to as 'EP',
E for Evolutionary,
And P is for Psychology,
And not the P that you would think,
To which their talk one time did sink,
A point which sniffy people made,
Vociferously to upbraid,
The forum, subject of this ditty,
For addressing nitty gritty,
Subjects that offend uptight
People who would keep from sight,
Any topic not quite proper,
Like drops shaken from a whopper,
And would banish to blue yonder,
Subjects like the anaconda...The final point that I would make,
Upon the subject of this snake,
Is science and discovery,
Are topics that should wander free,
Wherever chance or fancy takes 'em,
Snotty people are mistaken,
Trying to constrain, control,
Specific portions of the whole,
And great debates that wander where,
Bold fancy takes them, without care.
Narrow minds should not pin fault,
Of which the only sad result,
Would reduce creativity,
In such forums as EP,
Retention is the only sin,
I'd say 'better out than in'.Andy Morley, November 19th 2007.
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Go Straight to the
Next Poem
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Skip straight
to the next pome... I was passionate about the environment when I was a teenager, for its own sake. Then, I went to college and found organisations like Friends of the Earth where people were passionate because it was cool, it was a way of meeting other people to get laid or whatever. While I had no objection to either of those two things, I didn't see the need to pin them to some cause, so I did not bother to join. In the early '90s, working in offices, people would urge you to recycle office paper because it would 'help save the rain forests'. Anyone who knows anything will know that office paper is not made from wood from rainforests. It comes from softwood plantations in places like northern Europe. That led me to the conclusion that Environmentalists were moronic know-nothings who spent their time crying wolf based on wrong information. That did not stop me from taking environmental problems seriously, but it did stop me from paying attention to other people who stood on an environmental platform. |
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The trouble is - those stupid environmentalists divert energy and attention away from the problem by kidding us that if we all remember to turn lights off and to recycle our plastic bags, we will be helping to solve the problem. Rubbish. That will do as much good as spitting in the ocean would if you were trying to raise sea-levels. The biggest problem is power stations. They only turn about 10% of the energy they use into electricity, and they do it big-time. I know - I spent 9 months working for a power company. You can forget cars and planes - if you sort out power stations, you would stand some chance of saving the planet, and then once you'd done that, you could think about everything else. |
How many years are left until the worst
Of nightmares turn so real we can't deny -
Our generation may well be the first
To watch our offspring choke then gasp and die...Our much-loved children, who we brought to waste,
May one day ask, expecting us to know -
"When Planet Earth is all used up at last,
You must have found some other place to go?"Are warfare, drugs, debauchery, disease,
The heritage we leave our children here?
Their one relief, release, escape or ease,
To cut each-other's throats from ear to ear?We'd better wake ourselves, admit, believe,
We may not have the time to mourn or grieve.Andy Morley November 14th 2007
Byline for Vegas picture opposite:
" Young people in search of excitement have found a novel way to spice up their holidays....It's called "debauchery tourism" and it involves following in the footsteps of celebrities to experience wild parties."Vegas picture and quote from Sky News
http://news.sky.com/skynews/picture_gallery/0,,30400-1292667,00.html
This is pure Restaurant at the End of the Universe stuff
Photo Andy Morley - After what I wrote above, I'd better say that I THINK this is an old Power station in St Johns, Antigua, but I"m not 100% certain that I found the right building.
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Skip straight to
the next pome... |
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Photo - Amanda Knox
MEREDITH
There was a girl called Meredith,
An ordinary kind of girl,
As much as anyone can tell,
As much as you can ever tell...
With girls like her, you see them there,
Twenty-something, on TV,
In the papers, reading forecasts,
Interviewing politicians,
Bright and pretty, with long hair.Except...
Some of them are different,
Special in another way -
The love that bore them and sustained,
Their growing lives then has to pay,
The price of love too soon.And there was another girl,
On the surface similar,
Amanda was not the same,
But shared a room with Meredith,
Otherwise, a silly grin,
Call it charming or inane,
Yet behind that grin of hers,
Something else, some knowledge there,
Some foreboding fear of blame.I could see how it might happen,
I've known people branded 'mad',
In joking reference by their friends,
Sometimes said with hinted fear
Or doubt, and so extrapolate,
'Mad' behaviour I have known,
To a point of no return,
Where such thoughts are formed and spoken,
Past the point where lives are broken,
Past THAT point some more again,
To the point of fear and pain,
That sudden look in someone's eyes,
Where the realm of madness lies...You could see how this might happen,
You could even understand,
In some strange way, by what strange process,
Life's experience teaches you...
Nothing people ever do,
Comes entirely as surprise,
To the worldly or the wise,
But never, ever, without end,
Could you ever comprehend,
What convoluted patterns made,
Those obscene thoughts which that day played,
To a conclusion of despair,
In that sad apartment there.This poem here is blunt and crude,
And must not try now to intrude,
On private grief we can't imagine,
Damage done and carnage wrought,
To the love that bore this girl,
Those who loved her awfully caught,
In tormented anguished pain's
Unending grip where all their world,
Flies apart but still remains,
Except for one part slighted, brought,
Before her time reduced to nought.I will not guess or analyse,
But simply pause from time-to-time,
To contemplate a scale of grief,
That goes beyond imagining,
Things completely past belief,
Life one instant there - then gone;
And thinking of these strangers,
Pause and then move on -
It's all that anyone can do,
To give in some small way their due,
Acknowledging domains of woe,
I pray that we will never know...Andy Morley November 8th 2007
AMANDA
The star-crossed lovers took the stand
Her tears were perfect, glances polished
He was stooped, brooding, romantic,
All looked remarkably well planned,
A masterpiece for brave AmandaKissing then before the cameras,
Sequel to her Myspace page,
Posing photo fantasies,
She had a gun, he had a cleaver
Her innocence takes some believing
Two days before, a YouTube threat,
Predicting schoolkid massacres,
Finnish fantasies enacted,
Publicity exacts its debt
A promise made and kept and met.
A video of fighting kids,
Shoplift scam, a provocation,
Cops drawn into aggravation,
"Look there Mabel, on the vid,
Our Charlie" - "Well, I never did..."
All the World's a stage, as ever,
Pretty people strut their stuff,
Ugly people strut theirs too,
No need to be smart or clever
Participation is enough.
Self-portrait - Amanda KnoxPoem - Andy Morley November 9th 2007
Here's Sollecito's self-portrait :
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In addition to that, over the course of my five-year exposure to student life, I shared rooms with a whole range of people. Some of their lives were pretty extreme. One room-mate in particular, who I could have knocked out with one punch himself, brought people back to our room like passing Vietnam Veterens, drug-dealers maybe, guys much older than us who I just knew I could not handle if ever they turned nasty. So I can understand very well the kind of life and the kind of death that Meredith Kercher had. The problem with Poetry, as with any other form of Art is that if you constrain it to fit a Marketing principle, it becomes not Art but Propaganda. So even though I feel that I may have trashed my site by introducing sensationalist subject matter and images, I felt compelled to include this here and have decided to let it stand.
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Links to some previous pomes that I've written on this sort of subject matter.
About someone I shared a room with when we were 19 or 20
I was a student at Grenoble Uni and met an English girl who was teaching for a year at a small town in the Alps
Describes a brush I had with a 'socialised psychopath' - she worked in a large corporation and was my 'customer'
We've all been in situations that could have got out of hand if they'd gone just a little further...
I visited a girlfriend who was abroad, the year before I was. We split up. Don't visit your girlfriend abroad.
Next year, I went abroad and went through a similar scenario with another girl who had stayed in England.
The story of a female sexual predator to put all others in the shade...
SCOTLAND IS THE PLACE TO BE...
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To pass
one evening pleasantly, Drove
through Stuart's native turf, Ready and
aboard at last, Winding up
the engine's roar, Sunset
gilds the skies afar, To Ratho
then, next port of call, And when
they rang the curfew bell, Though
home's the place that is the best, Andy Morley October 11th 2007
Scroll on down for more of these poems...
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Here are some more pictures of our trip out on the Firth of Forth that evening in October 2007... |
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This page contains samples of my poems that are carefully chosen not to be too controversial or challenging. I have other websites with a wider variety of poems and pictures. Some of those have content that would not suit everyone's tastes. Please email me if you want to see my other pages and I'll send you a link. The email address I put here gets lots of spam so put something eye-catching in the subject line and don't use words that will get it booted automatically into my spam folder. I don't aim to write 'great' poetry. My intention is often just to capture the present moment through the medium of words and photographs. I call it 'poeto-journalism'. Not all of it is about the here-and-now though - for example, the following poem, which revisits some family history... |
THE PERILOUS PEREGRINATIONS OF...
Great, Great, Grandpa James,
Had amongst his many claims,
To fame and fortune's roll of honour,
That he made and mounted on a
Bicycle of strange construction,
That then caused the sad destruction,
Of his only suit of clothes,
And to this catalogue of woes,
I must add he was en-route,
To see a girl so sweet and cute,
Who never mind this spot of bother,
Would become Great, Great Grandmother.Andy Morley October 3rd 2007
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Sometimes my poems are just whims or flights of fancy. Recently, in one of those spur-of-the-moment conversations, someone challenged me to write a poem about oysters. So I scribbled some words down on a scrap of paper. This is what they turned into : |
I'm not an evil sadist and I'm not consumed with hate,
I LOVE the little oysters as they lie upon my plate,
I don't spray them with vinegar or jelly made of quince,
- Just add a little lemon juice to see if they will wince...And if they do, I'm satisfied, it means they're still alive,
It means I won't be doubled-up or do the toilet dive,
It means that they are wholesome and that nothing there's amiss,
I open wide their little shells and give a tender kiss.And they respond most eagerly, our kiss is deep and long,
They tease me with their juices and they wrap around my tongue,
I kiss and suck so lovingly, caress their flesh and slide,
Their soft seductive bodies until they are safe inside.I'm never fully satisfied when oystering is done,
I always think regretfully I'd like another one,
I sip a subtle chardonnay but not unduly vexed;
The last course is the best course so let's have the last course next.Andy Morley October 17th 2007
Next Poem
And finally, here's a couple of more poems, from my recent 'Edinburgh' period.
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THE STRANGE ARRANGEMENTS AT A BATHGATE HOTEL
As I rode out one summer evening,
Beer and supper on my mind,
With cousin Peter came to Bathgate,
For what victuals we could find.We did not find a common alehouse,
But dined at Kaims Park hotel,
And I thought how life had favoured,
Me that I could eat so well.Supped that night on fine poached salmon,
Eighty shilling ale with this,
Even fine ale fills the bladder,
So I went to take a piss...And as I pointed at fine porcelain,
A printed sign there caught my eye :
"If you wish to be more private,
The public bar's the place to try"And in the corner was a khasi,
In full view of any stare,
Any casual pisser would see,
Defecation grunting there.Once long ago, in Alpine commune,
Lived with hippies, young and poor,
No waste of landing space - the khasi,
Bold as brass without a door...But I thought I'd moved beyond that
Old bohemian carry-on,
Working now in corporations,
All that dodgy stuff long-gone.But Marketing is full of hippies,
Old jeans, T-shirts; such array,
And Kaims Park's prestigious toilets,
Put the crapper on display.As we left that place and mounted,
Jumping on our rusty steeds,
Where was, I asked, my promised Jaguar,
Reward for all life's work and deeds?Everything goes round in circles,
What goes up one day comes down,
Privilege must not be bashful,
When it dines in Bathgate town.Andy Morley 15/9/07
