townx

I do a lot of computer programming, watching DVDs and so forth. But I have a lot of passion for writing. I write a lot of poetry. I know it's not fashionable, but I still do it, whenever the mood takes me. Last year I tried to write for at least 5 minutes every day, with varying success: I eventually stopped doing that, but did carry on writing, sometimes poring over a single poem for two or three weeks while travelling to work on the bus. Occasionally I wrote something good.

This is what I consider one of the best things I wrote last year. I did it on holiday in Wales, sitting in a car park while Nicola and Madeleine were going to the toilet or something. They were away for about 20 minutes, and I put together various bits of imagery from the car park and the rest of the holiday. I then wrote it up a few months later. I like the result. I don't think it's too pretentious (you might disagree), though on reflection it is a bit overwritten; though I think it genuinely has a fair few good lines. Here it is.

Welsh car park 2007-10-28

Queen Mab complains to crows about the gulls;
hobgoblins lunge from mossy limbs
with knotted arms, heads like balls of twine

the brow of the landscape frowns;
pleats of forest shake down the crag's skirt,
a mountain's shoulder shrugs above an elbow lake

as secret waterfalls shudder pebbles;
starlings cascade from the oak like gypsy pegs
round caravan steps; a row of recycling bins -

helmets of buried faery kings,
or giants' trepanned skulls; slapping feet
on the caravan roof, the curved loop of the seagull's call

a smell of dust in a vast car park
tumbles into thin scent of dog roses, stroked flat
by rising wind; a fringe of cloud like an anemone mauls

the peaks; crab skeleton, flesh scooped out;
our skeletons, green with algae, in the estuary flats -
we drive away too fast, and leave these things behind