The intermittent resumption of service

Well, I've been here before.

It is a recurring theme of my writing existence that life gets in the way, to the extent that maybe I could credibly claim that enormous swathes of writing nothing are "integral to my process, actually". Anyone who's kept half an eye on here or Coastalblog over the last (what is it, twenty years now? Blimey), will have heard me sing this song before, long periods of silence followed by penitent blogs about how I need to make more time for writing, this time I mean it, etc etc. But I suppose there comes a point where one has to recognise that no, this isn't a situation which can be easily remedied, this is simply how one is. I'd like to imagine a world where I get up in the morning and make more time for myself to write regularly, start to submit again, maybe publish again, but I think it unrealistic to expect it, based on the evidence of, well, me being me for the last twenty years.

But despite this being a recurring refrain, that doesn't quite mean I'm willing to knock it on the head (another familiar trope of this particular sort of blog post, which I've written so many times now that that it practically qualifies as a sub-genre). To my pleasure, I've recently had the odd fleeting moment where the idea of writing didn't feel impossible, I wasn't immediately required for anything else, I'd done enough housework not to feel guilty, and managed to occasionally get the odd piece done. For the lack of anything better to do with them (for the idea of finding time to research which magazines or websites would be ideal seems far too fanciful right now, baby steps, I'm just pleased I'm writing again) I'll pop them here, as and when, I think. Doing so, even intermittently, is a distant connection to a place I still want to visit more regularly, and for longer periods, some day.

Lacking inspiration, the following were responses to other poems (getting reading again is a whole post by itself), a failsafe standby in times of creative drought. As to their origins, I'll leave it to the reader to guess. Anyway....

Unseen Dance

She moves between instants

then not, before

apparent, insistent, existence

It follows that her movement

is both something of herself and

helping the crowd see 

what it wants

in her steps

are the life histories

of everyone watchings, she

takes them, costumes them

contextualises them

tells them back

when she stops and

theaudience drifts away

thinking about what

they saw in themselves

some elated, some appalled

some disgusted, some afraid

she becomes herself again

her stillness is insistent in

instant the instant ceases 

there is silence

there is a silence

It's like this

i

he said your eyes

are watery, your hair

is seedy and your voice

reminds me of a chorus-line

Guys and Dolls. maybe

(She knew he meant

Like the sea, Flaxen and Musical

so let it slide, he was himself

so seldom, now)

It's good to see, she said

you've not lost touch with your roots

ii

I can't quite get it right

he said, the poem's

out of order

I struggled with the learning

I wanted time

to get my accent back

She said: you're older

than some hills

you've never lost it

a poem's not a puzzle, nor am I

iii

when they came to decipher him

and pick over the bones of his words

there was little left

he'd worked out what he wanted to say

and she'd laughed and said finally

you old fool. I was always here

iv

Love stories are a continuum

start and end points

thoughtless, idiotic, unnecessary punctuation

your eyes are always a part of me

and I have always been here

there's always been the shift of the sun

and what was it I meant to compare you to?

too many poems

he scratched his ear

picked up a pen

started to write