Romantic Tales

The second of my 'Fuchsia' poems. I tried my hand at a couple of acrostics too – not a form I had any experience with, and who knows how well they really work here?

There's also a bit of 'creative' experimentation with italics.

ROMANTIC TALES

On and on, romantic tales

Flow from heart to heart

And cause their owners to sing –

She’s singing

Forget the sun

Under the moon

Surrender your boredom

Caught by the tune

Hold your heart high

In the heart of a dove

And give up the ages, then you’ll be loved.

I skip across the page

She skips in inverse sense

Our paths create a rip

A gap in the mortal fence…

And then I see it

Grand towers

Open windows

Red turrets

from afar

Misty mountains

Empty wasteland

Naked rockfalls

from afar

Great is the

Home of the

Ancient songs of

Stones and

Trees that yet survive.

Far and wide

O faraway tide

She’s singing still

And I’ll sing too.

Thanks to: Mervyn Peake for Titus Groan and Queen for Keep Passing The Open Windows.

Belated Future

Around the middle of my second year of uni, I got very into the BBC's 2000 four-part TV adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast. One character I was particularly fascinated by was the doomed Fuchsia,  played by Neve McIntosh. She was a dreamer, I'd begun to view myself more and more as one too...

So parallels were drawn, and in my enthusiasm I rattled off two wistful poems and a short story on the theme of this character, daydreaming in general, and the impossibility of truly relating to a fictional world through face-to-face contact with it – which bothered me quite intensely at the time.

Naturally enough, musical inspiration came largely from a pair of songs that were themselves inspired by the story of Fuchsia's downfall.

BELATED FUTURE

Belated future, here I am

You’ve been put off for far too long

Now from a boy into a man

They cannot say that I’ve been wrong

It’s surely time to face the truth

Avoiding it I’ve tried and failed

Delaying it with hopes of youth

All efforts coming off the rails

But now it changes

Today it fades and floats away…

Into the sun

Into the rain

Into eternal shades of pain.

I’ve come a long way, that is true

Starving, exhausted is my heart

I’ve always known what I’d come to

And now I know it’s time to part

From past illusions I have held

That chance has flown and comes no more

The future sounds its mournful bell

A new life knocks upon my door

So now it changes

Today it drifts into the sky…

Into the gold

Into the dust

My memories betray my trust.

O Lady Fuchsia, I love you

You’re but a story on the page

I see your hurt, I wish you true

I wish your beauty I could save

A tragic princess with your tears

Betrayed and startled by the world

Beauty you had through all those years

As in your fantasy you curled

At last it changes

Today it swirls upon the flood…

Into the storm

Into the calm

In fiction I will find no harm

I loved, but real lives let me down

We drowned confronted by what’s true

Your head’s not suited to that crown

A finer jewel belongs to you

Together we could dance away

Forgetting our unhappy lot

Within each other’s dream we’ll stay

Insane, but that is what we’ve got

Belated future waiting to be told

My Lady Fuchsia never can grow old.

Thanks to: David Bowie for Within You, The Cure for The Drowning Man, and The Strawbs for Lady Fuchsia.

Voyage of the Optimists

This is probably one of my best poems from the particular transitional period between the first and second years of uni. I was glad that a poem about how I perceived the social lives and progress of those surrounding me compared to my own, which could so easily have turned out with quite a bitter tone, didn't.

The rhythm of the poem, as well as the theme of divergent voyages, owes a lot to Philip Larkin's The North Ship, which I remembered from college.

Oh, and for the record, of course I didn't mean to suggest that my friends had it easy. I wasn't stupid! It was all just my perspective.

VOYAGE OF THE OPTIMISTS

We dream of making our escape

Every day, it seems to me

Another situation calls

Another opportunity.

‘‘Live out your life, reach for the stars’’

This wisdom echoes in my ears

I’m not allowed to fear the time

The rapid passing of the years

‘‘Why worry? Over that far hill

Lies money, happiness, and hope’’

I know that, friends, but wait a while

At this pace I can barely cope.

‘‘But life moves on with growing speed

And we must not get left behind

Just one more river to be crossed

There’ll be a treasure we can find.’’

A while ago I stopped to think

About what life might have in store

When I looked up, my friends had gone

Far off upon a distant shore.

I cannot catch up now, because

They tread a path that’s far too steep

No further use in hurrying

At night I find the time to sleep.

I see their shadows now and then

Moving many miles away

A world so changed from years gone by

When as children we would play.

‘‘It won’t be long before we reach

The goal for which we’ve searched and strived

The journey’s end is getting close

And there we’ll rest with happy lives.’’

They’re right, of course, we all must find

The end of our exhausting roads

And when at last we stop to breathe

Eternal rest will lift our loads.

I dream of making my escape

Every day, from this journey

But time won’t wait – each fatal breath

Is my lost opportunity.

Thanks to: Coldplay for The Escapist, America for The Border, Philip Larkin for The North Ship, The Police for Synchronicity II, and Queen for Lost Opportunity.

Awakening

Looking back at this period, I've rediscovered a couple of poems that are really just too unsophisticatedly and self-consciously bleak to be worth sharing on this blog. With many others, however, there's enough merit – or at least I hope there is – for me to grit my teeth and post them. This is one of those.

I was quite pleased at the time with my idea of becoming immersed in an idyllic dream followed by a sudden awakening, and I still am really.

AWAKENING

Woke up this morning to find

The sun streaming in through the curtains

The former world had been left behind

With a new feeling of which I felt certain.

Woke up this morning and saw

That a pure kind of happiness reigned

The pain and the worry no more

And the bitterness totally drained.

Woke up this morning and knew

Of a whole, entire world to explore

With white light to go up into

And the hope of a knock on my door.

Out of the city I found peace and calm

When the people all smiled and I loved every one

And I knew that this world would not bring me to harm

Because from this point on there’d be no need to run.

Back in the city I had to be seen

So I summoned my courage and searched for a friend

A special companion to share this fine dream

When I found them I’d know that the dream wouldn’t end.

Yes I found them at last with a loving embrace

My arms round their beauty like sea on the shore

Our hearts full to bursting we lay face to face

Then again I woke up

And of them I found

And of them I saw

And of them I knew

No more.

Thanks to: The Police for Message In A Bottle, Simon & Garfunkel for The Dangling Conversation, Keane for Bedshaped, and Cat Stevens for How Can I Tell You.

Hard to be Happy

Not a great one, perhaps. The rhyme scheme is particularly clunky. Still, it does try to interpret and paint a picture of the repetitive feelings one goes through in periods of uncertainty about the future, especially frustration at one's own inability to magically change outlook all at once.

Oh, and '(To be continued)'? Just a bit of melodrama. I apparently intended to write some sort of 'sequel' to this poem, but if it did materialise, I can't pinpoint what it turned out as!

HARD TO BE HAPPY

Hard to be happy

But time to try

If only I knew where to go

Which way to that feeling?

It isn’t too clear

In the fog there’s no bright lights that glow.

Just a few tiny sparkles

On them I must fix

That’s all that I needed to know

I know they can help me

To a certain extent

Their light is beginning to grow.

Slight noise

Turn round

Look back at the past

So dark that it blinds

As I stare through the blackness

Looking the wrong way for hope.

The terror is here with me

Crushing my tired heart

Face forward you fool

A narrow escape

And back to the light

Is happiness starting to show?

Is it just an illusion?

A complete waste of time?

Please tell me that that isn’t so…

Just one precious step and I’ll know.

(To be continued)

Thanks to: The Magic Numbers for Which Way To Happy, Queen + Paul Rodgers for Through The Night, Brian May for Back To The Light, Roger Taylor for It’s An Illusion, and U2 for One Step Closer.

Everest

This is the first of a kind of 'transitional' period in my poems (maybe a fancy way of saying that for a few poems around here I'm not quite sure whether I wrote them in the first or second year of uni!). Seriously though, around this time I feel what I was writing was starting to mature somewhat...there was less pure unqualified melancholy, and more worthwhile reflection. I was beginning to get more out of the writing experience.

A fairly short and transparent poem, about overcoming life's obstacles. I took the liberty of throwing in a tiny snippet of family history too.

EVEREST

Life can be many things

And sometimes it’s a mountain

To be conquered, to be climbed

In a race against time.

There is danger everywhere

Hunger never far away

No choice but to carry on, and on you go

Fighting through that frost and snow.

In ’77 my father stood with a friend

On a frozen lake at the foot of the Khumbu icefall

Gazing in wonder, their tent unfurled

At the terrible slopes of the Roof of the World.

But I can’t see this roof

Though I feel it weighing down

As I struggle on blindly so far from the top

With a cold, lonely death if I once dare to stop.

I’ve been here far too long, I cannot know

How much longer I’m allowed to stay

And I can’t tell if up there someone’s counting

The footprints that I’ve made upon my mountain.

Thanks to: Miriam Stockley for Perfect Day, Seth Lakeman for The Charmer, and Foreigner for I Want To Know What Love Is.

Who Turned Off the Lights?

I dabbled in environmentalism with this one. It was specifically inspired by seeing the campus sports field floodlights illuminating the sky all night, every night in a weird greenish hue reminiscent of Minas Morgul from 'The Return of the King'. It's visible from Bath to this day if you know where to look.

My general frustration at first year not going quite the way I'd hoped got channelled into a piece of righteous indignation at mankind's disregard for nature. And it's a message I still stand by, unlike a few other things I wrote in first year.

WHO TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS?

Bright lights

White nights

For the birds in the hedgerows and trees.

To sing their songs they strive

But they cannot survive

With no sleep.

Blackbirds have spoken

But now they are broken

By cruel, piercing beams.

Turn off the floodlights and then

They can rest in their nests once again

And have peace.

Turn off the city and wait

For the chorus – not early, not late

But beautifully free.

Nature kills all

And mankind will fall

So don’t get too used to this power.

Short-out, blackout, where are you now?

Couldn’t be bothered with Mars or the Plough

The night sky is new and deadly to you.

Lost through exhaustion

And crushed by ignition

Of too many streetlamps.

Dark days

Music plays

To replace all the birdsong

Killed off by laughing

In the face of the night…

Humanity’s arrogance

Turned off the lights.

Thanks to: Frankie Goes To Hollywood for Black Night White Light, Cat Stevens for Morning Has Broken, and Kate & Anna McGarrigle for Mother Mother.

Too Much Information

I've always been an avid collector of trivia of all shapes and sizes. Over the past few years it's all been put towards some constructive end via regular pub quizzes – but back in the first year of uni those days were just beginning, and I still wasn't convinced there was any real value in my own fascination with 'useless information'. I couldn't say for definite whether it was actually standing in the way of my social life (and if so, how)...but I had my doubts.

Of course, come second year, the doubts were largely dispelled by my stint on the 'University Challenge' team...but that's another story. ;)

I think this marks my (admittedly slightly clunky) first attempt at working in some French too, in the form of a couple of lines from Francis Cabrel's excellent Qu'Est-Ce Que Je Viens De Dire?, which also seems to deal with a young man struggling to concentrate on what he finds important in life.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

For once let’s forget the hurt in the heart

And talk about the pain

In the busy scrambling brain

Where to start?

Too much information

Flooding through the corridors of thought

That’s why this guy’s so often overwrought

That and the lack of conversation.

Heading for a mental catastrophe

Et la voix dedans me dit

“Tout va bien, t’as la tête ailleurs”

Head elsewhere, head in the clouds.

Longing to share the top facts and info

With somebody, anybody

If they’ll listen and at least pretend

To be interested they can be his friend.

Friendship’s hard to come by in this way

And as for anything more, well

The ones he likes are all party animals

Like the millions of others all over the world.

Not that much interest

In the day it snowed in the Sahara

Or the Battle of the Atlantic

Or a little-known Queen song.

And as it turns out

The heart can’t be forgotten

More and more these days

It rules the head.

That’s when his whole world starts sinking

A ship in a brainstorm

Capsized by far too much thinking

He does it to keep his heart warm.

Thanks to: Francis Cabrel for Qu’Est-Ce Que Je Viens De Dire?, Elvis Costello & The Attractions for Party Girl, and Brian May for Let Your Heart Rule Your Head.

In My Nature

A typical early poem, this. In the same 'lonely' vein as 'Sweet Dreams', really: the difficulties associated with living away from home for the first time, and more specifically trying to make friends while simultaneously enjoying solitude and the nature I'd grown up with. I was puzzled and frustrated by the contradictions of the two states of affairs, and couldn't work out how to make the most of them...things never seemed to happen at the right moment for me. I was pretty miserable about it!

IN MY NATURE

Welcome to my social life

It’s quiet here

Step out of the door

The silence is deafening.

And there’s no-one around

But from the corner

Of your eye

You see a flash of colour

That’s me I think.

I sit here for hours

Thinking my thoughts

And they aren’t all bad

As long as you shut up

Leave me alone.

Quiet – I like it, it likes me

I think.

No I don’t need you

Your help

Your sympathy

This is my lonely symphony

Conductor and chorus is me.

The sun shines, the animals play

I could spend all day

And frequently do

So I don’t need you.

Stop talking, let me think

And you do stop.

And I’m shocked

By the sudden silence

Now there’s no-one around.

Wait

Don’t go

I didn’t mean it

Talk, you can talk

Oh God talk to me

I’m the only one talking

The only one here.

Talking to thin air

Not just nobody, nothing

There’s nothing here

The sun, the animals

Gone from this nightmare.

There was a dream stream

But that’s gone too

How I’d have longed to

Dip my head under the cool water

For a few minutes too long.

But it’s gone and you’re gone

Where are you?

So back to the real world I crawl

To try and find them all.

Thanks to: Frances Ruffelle for Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free), Queen for It’s A Beautiful Day, and Kate & Anna McGarrigle for Cool River.