tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25085639236343927032012-02-12T21:02:30.706ZDave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.comBlogger11181100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-7514860885024705542012-02-12T04:27:00.000Z2012-02-12T12:07:52.096Z

Take a philosophy, however broadly defined, and write a poem on it. This is one of this week's invitations from dVerse Poets. It is the one I have chosen. I wanted to know why we die I wanted to know why we die and if it was true what I'd heard, that over the bones the wisdom of ages is written on pages of stone. So burial grounds were me, from cemeteries to tumuli. I'd visit frequently,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-31603530966545331312012-02-11T04:50:00.009Z2012-02-11T12:20:05.764Z

I'm driving to school was driving to school hopefully soon will be driving to school paused for a while as some way ahead is a man who lies bleeding possibly dying blocking the road. Not far from him is a doctor I know. Good God in Heaven he's not getting out! (Much later he'll say the threat of a law suit - should the man die - had prevented him caring, left him penned in the car.) (The victim

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44751017316238694882012-02-10T05:00:00.002Z2012-02-10T05:00:05.153Z

He worshipped her - but never said. Photographed her - secretly. Had them ranged beside his bed. Three times life size her torsos stood, lolled, twisted into shapes he'd fantasized. Marshmallow flesh, her favourite sweet. Pure white or pink but stalked the way a fungus is. Half life size soft focus limbs swallowed by a background haze. Smaller still the tiny heads - sponge again puffballs he

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-79240188675156822242012-02-09T05:04:00.003Z2012-02-09T05:04:00.287Z

It grew where few eyes witnessed it, a bloodstained hand upon the land, a rosebud in the wilderness. Alone and conscious of itself, it stood with little to recommend it save its beauty. Less still to worship it. And nothing to which it could turn and say: There stands a plant like me! Only a lonely man saw in the bloodstained hand his spirit twin, his next of kin. He was its saviour. It was

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-39919942367433781532012-02-08T05:51:00.012Z2012-02-08T05:51:00.093Z

My thanks to Magpie Tales for the above prompt. It's the prism that she's holding on to, not the flowers. What good are flowers to the sainted dead? A prism may have unsuspected powers. Who knows what truths and myths they might reflect or analyse, the way they prise the colours out of light? Strange how the hands maintain their contact here. The rest of her is lost to those like us, but

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-2339365879054411422012-02-07T04:59:00.101Z2012-02-07T04:59:00.351Z

The angel lay flat on her back staring up at a pale blue sky. I couldn't get over the shock - nine feet she'd stood on her stockinged toes. Her wings lay broken. So many bits. Like headstones for dolls. Just stuck in the grass. The Churchyard Guardian gone - good as! And a short way off, the House of the Dead. Now a pile of old rubble. The wolf had been round and he'd huffed and he'd puffed

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-1059062318729268332012-02-06T05:00:00.002Z2012-02-06T08:47:21.916Z

Squatting on the churchyard wall, drawing board at arms length, clenched in left hand, resting on my knees, water colour blocks and water on the wall. Pens and inks and brushes there in generous supply. I'm drawing the great yew and the magnificent West Front in broad and simple strokes to emphasise the church's permanence, its solidity of form, against the frail longevity of yew, when I become

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-56888728859597202502012-02-05T09:09:00.003Z2012-02-05T09:49:25.286Z

The way it craves the river is well known. Here though, on waterless terrain persistence in its search for moisture leads to form, the shape and feel of water - there from the beginning in its name. I look at it sometimes, imagining I'm looking at its age-old fantasy (obsession does make doubles of us all)- a redefining of the term wet dream. The dream is written clear in movements of its

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-48213330005812784212012-02-04T09:18:00.003Z2012-02-04T09:57:54.485Z

Yes, yea, amen, assent, agree not on your life, get out of here! With reservations, it's not clear, maybe, perhaps, not half, no fear! What part of no...? or probably... Compared to these, a simple "yes!" slips off the tongue so easily... Why do we not say "Yes!" to life, to all of it, no holding back? I thought I did, I thought I had, though now I do - I think - although it's taken most of

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-86744136085970985112012-02-03T09:26:00.002Z2012-02-04T09:56:26.504Z

Another aspect of their culture seen today: they have the same small flat and shiny stone communicators - about the size of Earthling hands - that we employ for summoning our space craft or de-materialising for a journey in near space. They take them everywhere, but seem to have no space craft of their own - for I've seen none. And furthermore, the Earthlings, it appears, are made of

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-23309919349443806132012-02-02T05:00:00.027Z2012-02-02T11:54:17.760Z

Where yesterday the empty grey of paving stones, today two dead geckos and an iron lung. Newly chalked, a river flows uphill - to run along the elevated section by the shops, and tumble down a flight of stone cold concrete steps then plunge into a tortuous meander round the square. It finds its end in its beginning - a chalk-drawn boating lake. A ship of flowers descends the cataract. Within

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-26632831997270561362012-02-01T05:00:00.032Z2012-02-01T05:00:09.051Z

Yesterday The Art Show came to town and I was there, you may be sure, first in through those rotating doors. Abstract Expressionists. A few by Jackson Pollock, one or two from Rothko's brush - and quite a rush from Wassily Kandinsky. He it was who set these thoughts in train. His over-riding aim, to free the canvas of all vestiges, all images, connecting it to our external world - except, he had

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-25949913531674751332012-01-31T05:15:00.002Z2012-01-31T14:18:30.351Z

This the score for his new symphony, latest opus of his visual music. Not Chopin, mind, nor Beethoven. More Schoenberg's Second String Quartet. Harsher than before the war, the lyricism gone that had been there. Shrill, discordant, bursts of non-material expressions from within. Colour and line a shorthand for the inexpressible. Lifting geometric shape into the spirit realms. Hard

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-45622436678808140002012-01-30T12:12:00.000Z2012-01-30T12:12:27.745Z

A soldier to his fingertips, not once had he considered some other role in life. He'd done it all in various arenas round the world: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf; had even been a prisoner of war in some foul jail. Now here he is on guard outside a country house! Life is on the downturn. Gone too tame. O.K., the house is something special, but even so, not his idea of soldiering - looking after

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-81229725733280248902012-01-29T06:00:00.029Z2012-01-29T06:00:02.636Z

Elevenses. Today as every day he takes the apple from his briefcase, places it upon his desk and waits for it to levitate. It never does, but still he knows it might. One day it could surprise the world. He'll sit transfixed before it for a while and peering in will see a wilderness of spinning shadow forms, motes, specks of no-life, bits left over from the Big Bang - if there ever was one -

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-77748517544075828482012-01-28T05:00:00.072Z2012-01-28T05:00:04.730Z

- and just now realising exactly what I've been missing for the last 15! Amazing what you can forget - and what can bring the memory back. And what a memory restored can make you realise again. Suddenly, I'm remembering again three houses like Goldilocks's three bowls of porridge: a grandfather house, a grandmother house and a teeny-weeny little baby house - and not a roof between them. I

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-83168259491640352992012-01-27T12:40:00.000Z2012-01-27T12:40:05.139Z

Every evening he passes shoulders hunched, catching the orange lamplight in tiny slivers that might be koi carp drowning in the air, the steel studs of long outmoded boots striking bright sparks from the stones. His head hangs slightly down and slightly angled, gives the sense of a head not properly in place. Even so, he hums or whistles tunes that speak of happiness - and even joy. And no one

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-29826942504668492972012-01-26T20:33:00.001Z2012-01-26T22:29:22.957Z

The challenge from Jingle Poetry at The Gooseberry Garden was to write a poem on an article in The New York Times. I initially wrote this down as a found poem, but then made additions and changes, so it is no longer that. In Muir Woods deep in the redwood shade stands Druid Heights height and hub a while ago of a lost counter culture crumbling now but imperceptibly towards the forest floor.

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-78652556036373128142012-01-26T05:37:00.014Z2012-01-26T05:37:00.243Z

What are the summer pansies doing surviving the new year, summer and winter blooming side by side? the magnolia in budding long before the spring? And even the grape hyacinth unwraps itself and challenges the elements in a show of sheer bravado, as the whole of nature now breaks out of what has always been its given sequence. Dismantling the old created order, following the lead of man - who

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-39627697248579332922012-01-25T05:07:00.003Z2012-01-25T05:07:00.658Z

Words like movements in the air are vibrant or with dead sound hang like air turned sour and poets who would move the heart put pen to paper to create the softest of all breezes a wind a gale a tempest made of words. Today - tonight more truly - we salute a gale-maker supreme one Robbie Burns. For him flames burn with words burns run or trickle scramble over rocks or overflow with words and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44450399253505789692012-01-24T05:00:00.002Z2012-01-24T09:28:41.362Z

I'll say one thing for my forbears: they always knew their destinations. Take Great Aunt Min now - she who thrilled us with her parakeet a day or two ago. She underwent a minor medical procedure - well, that's what we would say today. Quite different then, of course. She woke up on a marble slab, sure as hell that she had gone to heaven: so many beings floating round robed head to toe in white

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-73542217549197274332012-01-23T05:13:00.002Z2012-01-23T11:51:14.806Z

Let me say straight away that I very much enjoyed this book. I found it an excellent read. It was necessary to get that in first lest you, dear reader, should take the wrong impression from what I am about to say, which is that the book begins very slowly. Indeed, for the first twenty pages or so nothing very much happens - and the nothing much happens at something less than walking pace. It is

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-91060405919653245992012-01-22T09:13:00.004Z2012-01-22T09:30:09.665Z

To Jarman the Spoils A poem on Borders for dVerse Poetics There is a border somewhere here somewhere the garden ends. Sea-carved timbers, salt-encrusted ropes become our timbers and our ropes, not his. But he has made them his, he found them like stray puppies on the beach, gave them a home, a focus, made of them a focus in their turn. Now out of reach he is the most important piece of flotsam

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-52726388057830662412012-01-21T05:00:00.009Z2012-01-21T11:12:09.272Z

I sang "Onward Christian Soldiers"; he sang "La Marseillaise". I don't know now which one of us was winding up the other, except we did it all the time, it was our usual mode of converse. Whatever either did would aggravate the other. He led me three miles just to see a twite's nest in a hedgerow, then he blew an egg. Much later, after tea, I filled it with my balsa wood cement. I was staying

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-17284011294419392872012-01-20T08:58:00.001Z2012-01-20T09:40:06.910Z

Yesterday's dVerse Poets challenge was to write an Imagist poem. Methinks this needs image present to inspire, but as luck would have it I did see one yesterday which much impresed, so here goes... Two derricks frame the limits to my field of view. A child has put them there, has ruled their chalk lines on this blackboard of a stormy sky. Tower and boom fine as spider silk and straight as light

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-8269573078609827472012-01-19T05:30:00.019Z2012-01-23T11:41:57.556Z

In Islington did Great Aunt Min keep a pub she called an inn. And there, within, in golden cage a regal bird (then all the rage), a parakeet elective mute. Though quite absurd, no syllable would pass its beak until it heard the magic words: "Time, if you please! Time ladies and good gentlefolk! Ti..i..ime... if you please!" At which the bird would stretch and shake and lift its beak as if to say

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-80579610126621509102012-01-18T08:59:00.000Z2012-01-18T08:59:44.074Z

"Sunshine and Bombs" we called her. My dad it was who coined the name. She kept the corner shop. Early morning, first part of the war Dad coming home from fire watch and she cornered him. About the weather, of all things. Said how she'd rather have the bombs than "all this bloody sunshine". I spread it round the school. "Sunshine and bombs," we sang, "Sunshine and bombs!" Payback time that was,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-55390464129604224322012-01-17T09:05:00.003Z2012-01-17T09:39:28.011Z

What a good idea! An underwater Sculpture Park. But whose idea, to whom the kudos? Surface Earthlings like ourselves, or aliens from Under Earth who've scaled to these enormous heights above their Under Earthland and been inspired by what they've found? Stone comes to life, the statues live and breathe and have their being. Deep beneath the ocean wave an ancient dream is lived again... Or

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-55294059896961277122012-01-16T09:10:00.001Z2012-01-16T09:12:51.198Z

It was, the critics said, the perfect pas de deux. The leaps, the steps, the moves... and more importantly: our perfect empathy; two bodies known as one. That lift, so difficult, I nailed it that one night. We both left high as kites. Let's crown the night, you said. Your place, we thought, the best - the first for us as one. Along the motorway I followed your tail light. That cutting

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-49844160382481808032012-01-15T09:32:00.000Z2012-01-15T09:32:48.550Z

Corpulent figure on all fours, a volcano has been plugged with straw, the bonds and blindfolds will not hold for long, the lava of a human dignity is breaking through. Blakean figure from a modern myth (Nebuchadnezzar springs to mind) one part Urizen penned in rocks one part a nude by Lucien Freud. Botero paints the torments of his mind brush replicates the concrete scrape of chain in belly

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-43991792150547276982012-01-14T11:52:00.003Z2012-01-14T12:05:22.143Z

I was a man on a Merry-Go-Round merrily going round and round when the man who ran the Merry-Go-Round sent it out of control. Then faster went the Merry-Go-Round and faster it went again, round and round with a screeching sound like the death throes of a troll. The ground around the Merry-Go-Round became a continuous blur and the man who'd run the Merry-Go-Round clung to its central pole for

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-24779467569051215052012-01-13T22:16:00.000Z2012-01-13T22:16:31.397Z

Job interview. Going O.K. So far so good. Not great. No worse than I'd expected - seeing how I lack experience and could do with more certificates and paper stuff. And interview experience - well, that's why I am here: another interview next week - that's for the post I really want. Fingers crossed, today might help out there. The final question - I feel it coming in my bones. The chair

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-45935712368339899232012-01-13T09:17:00.001Z2012-01-13T13:50:54.779Z

I watched them at their feeders for a while, saw how the blackbird, magpies, rooks and pigeons were excluding smaller and defenseless birds - a wren, some tits, a chaffinch and a sparrow from the feast. Pitiless, they were, relentless, driving them away. But then, when someone wandered by, quite close to them, it was the larger birds took fright and left the field to those they'd dispossessed -

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-52698060990925810532012-01-12T05:58:00.001Z2012-01-13T12:12:25.571Z

The tree is spirit energy a force of nature channelled to a pinpoint point of view culvert through a needle's eye compelling other spirit energies like thought. River into torrent undermining roots. The current is a different force. Water and the strength of water both are physical are of the order rock and earth yet both provide the format

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-40472658633765144812012-01-11T06:00:00.000Z2012-01-11T06:00:01.794Z

It had looked so inviting from below, a low domed hill, and on its crown a circle of young trees. The climb was undertaken willingly. We found the circle ringed a hollow in the ground - the sort that's not uncommon on these downs. Best bet: a German bomber, homeward bound had dumped the remnants of its load. If so, one bomb had carved a saucer from the chalk. We weren't the first to see it in

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-2210034198706800392012-01-10T06:35:00.012Z2012-01-10T06:35:01.864Z

The streets seem in indecent haste cannot wait to rush together somewhere just above our thoughts where all lines of perspective meet. There buildings will collide as one. A single point. A sonic boom. Illustrious men will turn to stone who never left a stone unturned and strong men will still stand alone. Yule Brynner gazing from his throne finds enchantment in a bird. The King and I

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-4722836171834564842012-01-09T04:55:00.005Z2012-01-09T04:55:00.519Z

Philistines must quantify: how many Euros, pounds or dollars is an opera worth? What makes it worth a dip into the public purse? How will it make life better? (It could hardly make it worse.) What do the voting masses think? (What shade are they of blue or pink?) What shade of which will it empower? Which shades might it not disempower, which bring back from the brink? Did music lose its value

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-5051524498490582012-01-08T09:17:00.001Z2012-01-08T10:29:37.098Z

I know the sound - or part of it - of old: whisssstle-thwoom-pa (pause) whisssstle-thwoom-pa (pause)... But this is more disturbing than I've known. My father's practice swings beside the tee, his driver sending shock waves through the air. whissstle-thwummmm then silence from the follow-through. But this is more persistent, rhythmic, more the sound a scythe might make. A cutting down. Grim

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-12839300298728341242012-01-07T05:33:00.014Z2012-01-07T05:33:00.990Z

I had an exhibition once, a hundred years ago before the advent of the coffee bar in a palace of a place art deco on four floors, a Lyons Corner House. In perfect truth, I shared the exhibition: saw my babies hung between the tables ("among some porcelain", as Eliot might have said) close by the chandeliers between the longer term incumbents: lithographs and reproductions - names I loved and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-14630543126139735272012-01-06T09:23:00.001Z2012-01-06T11:37:47.166Z

Desperately needing Abraham, looking everywhere to no avail. The man next door was clearly not. I asked at the model agency: are Abrahams in short supply? Two they'd had the month before. Nothing since, but a rather fine Ezekiel and a Moses to be proud of. Then walking home from Mitcham Junction late one foggy night crossing Mitcham Common there he was in flesh and blood, Abraham as ever was,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-39810750156682080282012-01-05T05:41:00.003Z2012-01-05T05:41:05.244Z

There was darkness and the darkness that there was was on the face of everything. And there was fire. Cold fire, blue steel fire, semblance of fire, semblance of light, fire without promise or threat. And figures, shadows of figures, semblance of figures figuring hardly at all in a huddle, huddled round flames lacking light. And there was God. Tongue-tied and silent, a murmurless mummer of a

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-45379590641704587772012-01-04T06:16:00.000Z2012-01-04T06:16:00.316Z

Scientists, brain-scanning meditating monks, ran radiation tracers through their parietal lobes. The resulting images of falling blood flows reinforced our sense that sense of time and place is centred there. What better place for God-experience than where He'd set the focus for our sense of time and place? For, just suppose the God-experience is more than blood flows or their lack... is how

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-90708404492908088962012-01-03T05:55:00.002Z2012-01-03T05:55:00.449Z

Children play - conduct their adult business - on a quiet pedestrian square leaving records of their exploits there for us, the world, posterity, in scripts concocted out of artifacts and chalk (posterity in chalk... now there's a thought), echoes of rune and hieroglyph and gypsy sign (and other, stranger, signs, the signs, maybe, of races not yet born), together with some bits of Arabic and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-42662391007963092722012-01-02T08:52:00.004Z2012-01-02T11:10:02.406Z

A central atrium from which five wings like five points of a star. And so the name was born: Star Mall. The oldest wing, The Christmas Gallery (it having been completed late December in the snow) the builders called Phase 1, lies empty and deserted. The leases on its shops expired six months ago - leases which the landlord for reasons of his own (financial, certainly) will not renew. Looking at

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-81059355974425825372012-01-01T10:53:00.001Z2012-01-01T11:10:03.574Z

Stepping from the old year to the new I carry with me seeds to green the view. They're in the wool of jumper, mud of shoe. Past and present root and stem fruit and leaf - cogs in time's machinery. The turning is a season as eloquent as spring, the smallest seedling from the past, an oak in influence. We may forget write-off ignore the year just gone. It will not do the same for us. Our

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-17367330641921747962011-12-31T11:20:00.001Z2011-12-31T15:07:29.518Z

A form of couplet expounded by Denis M Garrison on dVerse Poets among an intriguing collection of couplet forms. Do pop over and have a browse through them. The crystalline, I learn from Denise, was inspired by the haiku, has 17 syllables, combines Japanese clarity with English sound harmony and has a turn between the lines. It also takes a title. I did not find the form easy, but here goes:-

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-64719208116160326682011-12-30T13:11:00.002Z2011-12-30T13:15:26.013Z

Francis Bacon's Portrait of Pope Innocent X from the Wikipedia website. His name was Crimson Lake. Parental joke, maybe... more than enough to drive a lad like him towards a life of crime or drink. It pushed him into art, he found a refuge there and soon declared himself: Bacon was his hero, he planned to be like him. ("A name must have a name or no one gives a damn!") Michael, he'd been

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-73335660485240951142011-12-29T15:02:00.001Z2011-12-29T15:03:54.800Z

He was always at sixes and sevens. "Awkward sod," said his father. "Worse than the cat for getting under yer feet!" - Well, that was his mum. It made me wonder: did anyone bat on his side? "Don't get it from me, that's a fact!" (And that was his Dad.) "I don't have bother with words! Never did have!" All true. They were all lined up at the ready - ready for picking on Sam: "Ham-fisted,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-80373527500568524802011-12-28T12:27:00.000Z2011-12-28T12:27:56.570Z

Early sixties talking to children eight to nine years old. Subject: the newly opened Coventry Cathedral, the blitz, the glass end wall engraved with saints and angels, and beyond, the ruins of the old. The architect, Sir Basil Spence, explains how he'd imagined standing outside looking in and seeing the great works inside through bodies of the saints. But Martin has a different take: thinks

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-47463214893002211672011-12-27T08:58:00.000Z2011-12-27T08:58:07.909Z

I am the moon's dark side, ashamed of what might be if I should face the earth and earth face me. Once known as Satan or the Devil, but now with many an alias, I hide my true self from myself, from each and every one of us. I am the darkness of the moon - not dark as in a lack of light, but unfamiliar and unexplored, where all that's undesirable is stored. I am known only in my

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-80757054560345140262011-12-25T05:25:00.001Z2011-12-25T05:25:00.575Z

No shopping days left. No more opportunities to join the happy crowds! Me, I'm taking a few days off the pooter. Hope to resume normal service Tuesday-ish. So here's wishing the very best of the season's blessings to all who've trod this way!

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-593782302733748582011-12-23T22:08:00.000Z2011-12-23T22:08:47.625Z

dVerse Poets Meeting the Bar challenge for this week is to write a poem around a pair of opposites. Half in, half out of a bad dream, the moonlight playing tricks, a glimmer here, a shadow there and not a switch in sight when from the darkest corner of the room a figure glides towards him, stands, occupies the moonlit patch where moments back his wife had been. This face he doesn't know: long

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-71299643850214483842011-12-23T06:01:00.001Z2011-12-23T06:01:01.902Z

To help the season along a little, I thought I would recycle this very ancient post devoted to the poets as they might have been had they been not poets but fine wines. What sort of wines would they have been, with what sort of characteristics? A very happy, imaginary Christmas to you all. Seamus Heaney A strong, no-nonsense spirit with a distinctive, peaty flavour. W.B Yeats A somewhat

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-77891023434422497782011-12-22T06:04:00.002Z2011-12-22T06:04:02.938Z

The Virgin Mary lifts her skirt, shows her knickers - to scratch beneath them The cheerful landlord, asked if he has rooms to spare, says: I've loads of them. Come in After class parties wishing them all happy times. Boarding the school bus a small boy turns to whisper I've just now had my Christmas! A wise man grumbles We're following the wrong star - this one says Woolworth! School

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-62228554400544841972011-12-21T05:45:00.010Z2011-12-21T05:45:01.923Z

Words are birds are minibeasts syllables animals amphibians and pollywogs, utterances insects and ophidians. Snakes whispering together in the jungle of my mind. When the trees were juvenile youthful full of vigour new species on a daily basis would appear. The pool of all created things got larger by the hour. Then came the time of mellowness of seasoning and balancing of species from the

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-73902519857078625372011-12-20T06:00:00.000Z2011-12-20T06:00:06.556Z

That's it, the one, the famous one, the photograph. That's dad, of course, though looking more like mum. It set the fashion for while, had everyone cross-dressing. Became for dad life-changing when he took it up for real. Joe Public saw the figure as some sort of cross between a spy and a cross-dresser - and not far wrong, at that! A stunt it was to start with. To advertise his book: Spies,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-3562726551743029322011-12-19T05:58:00.000Z2011-12-19T05:58:00.032Z

Leonardo at his peak pulls out all the stops, commanding light and dark to modulate length, breadth and height while background melts to haze of greeny-blues. Mary melancholic, Anne benevolent, are given slight indefinitions - Mona Lisa smiles. The distance to the hills is measured here in muted tones and subtle hues. The Christ Child holds a lamb - symbol of His suffering. Rocks and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-22105502646753152702011-12-18T08:17:00.001Z2011-12-18T08:20:55.197Z

Submitted to dVersePoets Poetics : Out the sketc boook Trembly as rocker arms were the formerly rock solid rock dwellers, the Rockabillies of Rockall, when their rock-bound, rock-hewn homes took off, rocketing skywards, past a small boy fishing for rock salmon. Fuelled by their heavy rock oil deposits, their rock caves and rococo palaces, together with the rocks containing them, had suddenly

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-47912166647952238792011-12-17T05:59:00.029Z2011-12-17T09:13:31.213Z

There is a tree I know, a favourite tree, beneath which tree I love to lie, and focus on a mountain far away. And as I look I hear the tree creak like my garden gate and I imagine I have walked the so-familiar path and now am opening the gate and passing through, and wonder: where will I end up? where now, my destination? and: does it only creak, this tree of mine, when I am here? and: could it

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-78815051389982274932011-12-16T06:00:00.004Z2011-12-16T06:00:09.038Z

Not in the gospels, Leonardo's bright idea: John the Baptist, playmate for the infant Christ. Raphael endorses it; gives the two of them a plaything cross as augury. Mary's finger holds the place of older prophecy - Isaiah's; yet to be fulfilled. The composition's style again, is Leonardo's. Not the light. Gone, da Vinci's mystery, this light is bright and even. Democratic, even. Mellow

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-50716636178553068702011-12-15T06:00:00.001Z2011-12-15T06:00:11.272Z

The coffin kept changing its colour. In the snug - for the wake - it was a dark mahogany but as the bearers lifted it, I saw it turn to honey. Out in the street, it was more like oak, but winding our way to the chapel gate - the chapel on the hill - I wondered: could this be his ultimate joke? or had he another, perhaps, up his shroud? Well, I'd known, I suppose, the answer to that all along. I

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44396990961257726352011-12-14T05:34:00.001Z2011-12-14T05:34:00.738Z

My thanks to Magpie Tales for the picture-prompt. On navigation charts of any sea or ocean, you will find, an arm's length down from where you always thought it ought to be, the unmarked Isle of Katchmeeiffukhan. It is a tiny island made of sand. Just that. No rocks or other minerals. No vegetation, no inhabitants - No inhabitants, that is, but some strange, elusive, annelida lady worms.

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-41734596091078395202011-12-13T09:05:00.000Z2011-12-13T09:05:25.731Z

"Memories" is one of the prompts offered this week by The Gooseberry Garden Seven or eight and once again in hospital as Christmas comes - but this time round have fingers crossed, hoping to go home tomorrow. Tonight, a savage thunderstorm: it shakes the walls and rattles beds, echoes overlay each other; flash follows flash without a break. So sister comes to calm the ward. We tell her that

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-21263945712255626952011-12-12T06:00:00.000Z2011-12-12T06:00:07.987Z

Adam's job description included oversight of all the animals, but it is said that one by one he forgot the names of all of them, and one by one with each forgetting the forgotten died. He should have been the naturalist par excellence, the model for us all, the archetypal conservationist. Our failure is not his. Ours is much the greater. We have not even seen, much less forgotten, nor even

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-15484882447020702502011-12-11T09:10:00.002Z2011-12-11T09:11:32.526Z

He stood there thinking of the week just past, then slowly closed the blinds. The early frosts had savaged her prize blooms. She now seemed one with them, her waxy skin, so tissue-thin, so like a petal when the sun shines through, it glowed, so full of subtleties of shade and hue. She'd watched it all with hungry eyes: begonias that should have had months more to live, their heads inverted on the

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-72555490006357693622011-12-10T06:01:00.058Z2011-12-10T06:01:00.992Z

This poem is for submission to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads who have set Arrivals and Departures as this week's theme. It is also for submission to Poets' United's Thursday Think Tank #77 whose theme is The City A culture shock: something from my past. Flashbacks from North Africa. The Desert. Something of it snapping in my brain. Compulsions crowding in... For instance, if I'd see a

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-53919704416304473962011-12-09T06:00:00.002Z2011-12-09T06:00:01.328Z

Lynx, panther, jaguar, lion, a bit of each and something else as well; we felt its presence long before the first eyes saw it seconds on the skyline then away among the trees, behind the hillocks and the sheds where are our animals. It haunts, it stalks; we're not right sure which word is nearest to the truth, but all we know: there's something in the way it stretches in mid-leap or -lope

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-15791726215770045352011-12-08T08:00:00.001Z2011-12-08T08:00:03.736Z

Of days before it first was energised: nothing. No memories; no myths of its existence of how or why, by whom? no tales of daring do. Then at its birth its finder, a young boy, fumbled the electrics the spark of life. The "it" became a "him" but several circuits in his brain were blown. Since then: disturbing dreams that he was meant for more. All his active life he's been a toy (that's all

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44798634410092694072011-12-07T09:04:00.000Z2011-12-07T09:04:30.743Z

(The image represents the Magpie Tales prompt for this week.) It's the sameness of the scene that most offends, the chagrin of these units that were men, the tedium of copies cast in monochrome as if a ruler had an army baked in clay (of drudges, skivvies, menials and slaves, the lowly ones of this sort and of that) who now await the pleasure of his death in the claustrophobic confines of his

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-84318651544293083922011-12-06T09:07:00.002Z2011-12-06T14:01:05.428Z

(The title basically represents the challenge put out by The Gooseberry Garden to write something personal about ourselves) It's only when I take a moment to look back I see the land for what it really was and am surprised: the mountains hardly ever seemed that high or at the time were steeper than they look. The land's a patchwork quilt of this and that, a nature that as part of it, too close,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-68300290725937152722011-12-05T09:09:00.004Z2011-12-05T11:46:31.386Z

His first graffito, "Rape" (all will be given names) a modest scene beneath a railway arch: reclining nude morphed to rural idyll. Mammary, the hills vaginal lake and thrusting motor way. Crude. Unambiguous. The last spray not yet dry, a woman comes from nowhere whispers in his ear - before the darkness swallows her once more. He takes a brush - a few sharp hairs - and adds a line, a shape a

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-33787152456175335972011-12-04T09:00:00.001Z2011-12-04T09:41:05.596Z

A fan from his first appearance, smitten by his sheer flamboyance - and his talking pet flamingos, I believed that early issue when he knelt beside an orange tinted Orinoco to play with the electric eels, saw nothing surreal when green flames licked out from hair-line, elbows, knees and heels, accepted that the shocks had changed some unknown organ in his brain, that now for ever he would be a

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-78807237242649570522011-12-03T03:00:00.002Z2011-12-03T03:00:00.818Z

Initial thoughts: steel birds had flown in first before us weaving nests of barbed or razor wire but got them into tangles on the ground before they later lined their Brave New World(ly) homes with soot. All this was bramble once and not so long ago. Where is the spot on which I once proposed? where we became engaged? So difficult to tell. A large oak (just a while ago) is split as though by

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-86336356529839094892011-12-02T09:15:00.004Z2011-12-02T10:29:59.521Z

It is a kind of swimming, walking through these woods. Greens still tinge the oatmeal coloured air, and still there is the feel of floating: moats caught in currents of high spirits dancing where the light's rays bring them into being; seeing which way's up and which is down when gravity stays mum and tells the senses nothing. Beetles scuttle silently away like bottom feeders feeding on the

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-12401711536472809462011-12-01T05:00:00.004Z2011-12-01T12:22:44.380Z

The film is finishing the credits roll I think of bed. A knock. My neighbour from next door. Smartly dressed and hair in place... Apologies. Disturbing me... Her husband has collapsed. I find him slumped, a dead weight in the chair. He's in his dressing gown. Somehow I get him gently to the floor. No sign of life. A mirror to his lips stays clear. I start the drill, hoping I'll remember it, but

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-4761951225676644752011-11-30T08:29:00.001Z2011-11-30T08:33:38.280Z

The above image represents this weeks prompt from Magpie Tales He still ere then, us old sofa! I knowed ee would be. Told yer so... Jim's idea - ee under bridge, well out of any rain, he thought. Us bin up the riots, aint we? Comes across ee in they posh shop. Languishing in broken winder - well, gotta say, arf in, arf out. Us take ee inter custody... Well, that's Jim, that is. That's Jim all

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-3003119386982376392011-11-29T04:29:00.001Z2011-11-29T04:29:00.851Z

in a parallel existence He'd made the man from a billycan and the woman out of glass? And if they were not perfect, at least we must suppose they were good enough to pass... and they loved each other - 'course they did: she loved the tin of his manly skin and he her pert little arse. And the Lord gave them a garden of flowers, birds and trees and told them to wander at will, enjoy - and please

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-70252506441888027502011-11-28T04:58:00.009Z2011-11-28T08:45:12.347Z

A rose exploded in the night. It didn't die of drought or blight. It detonated. Blew six others out of sight. Further off, another four were stripped of all their flesh: red, white, white-splashed-with-red and dusky blue, their petals lay in wavy lines across the bed. In contrast to their patterned fall the bomber's body parts were blown across the garden, side to side and end to end in random

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-44958533813916137072011-11-27T09:13:00.001Z2011-11-27T09:14:06.011Z

A walk in response to dVerse Poets' invitation to write on the general theme of Wildness. I cannot do justice to their post, which in my opinion is one of the great posts, a joy to read in its own right. Go see if you agree. Where is the verse that comes from the wild, emotion untrammelled by reason's control? Where is the paint to colour the landscape that rivers of feeling have carved

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-60250228457751671902011-11-26T09:29:00.002Z2011-11-26T14:11:58.507Z

Deep in an autumn night the wind comes, blows the last dreams from the trees. Deep drifts of them the like of which I have not dreamed before pile up against the fences, walls and doors. Some are from my sleep, are from our trees, but most are from the neighbors' gardens. It is not always easy to see which. In one, relaxed, reclining at his ease, and on a hammock: God, beneath two cherry trees

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-1902938046628627482011-11-25T09:05:00.000Z2011-11-25T09:05:53.331Z

Paradise Lost is proposed by Poetry Jam as this week's prompt. Several interpretations are suggested, but it occurred to me that we are re-running the Biblical fall of man in slow motion, over however many generations - and what would Milton have made of it were he alive today? Lush hedgerows, green and bright with berries, dry stone walls, a sweep of corn, its ragged edge against the purple

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-77673887355290017812011-11-24T05:00:00.001Z2011-11-24T05:00:02.113Z

As often happens, youngsters were among the first to see the gross stupidity of rape, destruction of the earth. Now everyone's a guru all can see what they once saw: the foolishness, the suicide of sucking this, our only planet dry, converting it into a fast heat breeder that will cook us all. Now everyone can see it (more or less - a few elective blind aside) and all agree (except the youth,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-38702820008366089862011-11-23T09:06:00.001Z2011-11-23T09:06:53.959Z

The usual problem surfaces: where to begin? The reasons for and why pile up like snowflakes in a drift to bury all that points the other way, the negatives we could not bury, even now, without the snow. (Angels come in many guises, some too chilly for belief.) For all it seems like winter's wonderland, we take it to our hearts, discovering that, snow or not, we have eternal spring. The wonder

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-76284355505918138842011-11-22T09:07:00.001Z2011-11-22T09:17:13.633Z

Intermediary Storm flood and drought the sky forever threatens earth. Man is the one the only one who walks the skyline touching both. Figure in a Landscape wild garlic field of last night's shower sharpens tang of delicious and yet delicate. All other scents of hurry over from the wood like children running out to play. Apart from which the world is soft in all its aspects: early sun its

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-10064698910128705352011-11-21T11:34:00.000Z2011-11-21T11:34:28.796Z

The image is this week's Magpie Tales prompt. Nothing exists in their world but the other. At each point and moment of contact nothing exists but two pairs of lips. His on hers. Hers on his. Self-pictures are reduced to this but in the touch and press of lips awareness of a universe. Only the lips are figured on tactile mappae mundi that their brains delineate their bodies, pure geometry,

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-26528942148347269052011-11-20T13:35:00.000Z2011-11-20T13:35:15.761Z

(This poem is offered in response to the dVerse Poets' challenge to write something on the subject of change.) Eternal things do not survive for long for time does hold them all in flux. The pyramids, the merely permanent, survive. I wrote these lines somewhere between when I was six and ten - the early years of World War II, a time of great upheaval. But not for me. I longed for change.

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-36926351526884847632011-11-20T05:00:00.085Z2011-11-20T13:39:17.149Z

The sun deck cleared of passengers and movables: sunbeds, tables, chairs and parasols. A deckhand works his way starboard to port around the bows. Dismantles lamps - those crystal globes enchanting after dark. Slow business. And all the while a chopper, an air ambulance marked eliambulanza hovers waiting patiently for its safe space to land. And now at the precise awaited moment, the

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-46217052454081509942011-11-19T04:10:00.009Z2011-11-19T04:10:00.198Z

You never hear the one that gets you! My dad, returning from his war, told me some things that he'd been sold, among them, this one, very old, left over from an earlier war. It spoke of shells and bombs and bullets. Boy, you never hear the one that bears your name! It's true, of course: the bullet's speed outstrips the sound; you hear it when you're dead. The one you hear arriving has passed by

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-36801024568335938122011-11-18T05:00:00.001Z2011-11-18T05:00:02.671Z

It was her firm belief that dreams are not hallucinations, you are not severed from reality, drawn into a world of fantasy. What happens is: the vital part, of what we call the psyche leaves the body to renew itself in that same spirit life it left to lodge in you. What we call dreams are post cards from a soul on furlough inviting us to share in its renewal. Then she began the bad dreams:

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-16053676676153529132011-11-17T05:45:00.009Z2011-11-17T05:45:00.353Z

A friend of mine, a poet of ability, finds concrete images to represent his poems, imagines favourite and current works as solid objects, and in his mind arranges them like furniture around the house. He pictures then the house engulfed in flames. How many objects will he hope to save, given that the risk to him increases with each one? (And just as interestingly, I would have thought: which

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-10327153429281228132011-11-16T05:15:00.001Z2011-11-16T05:15:00.996Z

First woodwork lesson in my new school. Mr Woodiwiss - apt name! - is asking What would you would like to make? An execution block, I say. (The block is for my Uncle Bill.) Reputation would suggest sir should roar displeasure, vault the bench perhaps, throw something my direction. Instead he does not even take exception, sits talking ways and means with me. A word of explanation: why an

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-73436064270383284452011-11-15T08:34:00.002Z2011-11-15T09:03:48.618Z

The above image was provided as prompt by Magpie Tales She had foretold the world would end, set out the chairs for all her followers. They'd sat there through the night, alert in prayer high on the hill for the best view, the clearest sound. The cataclysm passed them by. Far out in space another planet witnessed it. Earth remained unscathed. The flesh was weak. When morning dawned the

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-4263191515738581252011-11-14T05:24:00.002Z2011-11-14T09:57:03.719Z

1 Imagine a plant something like a sweet pea but much more delicate sending out feelers to grasp at things (all manner of things) to hold on to... His poetry was like that. Intricate. Fragile. And with so many reference points you'd need a machete to loosen its grip. Beyond my understanding, I nevertheless could feel the weight of what I was missing. 2 Our favourite restaurant we've called in

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-30145109844478841692011-11-13T09:00:00.003Z2011-11-13T09:04:30.812Z

Everything happened around I was five everything came to the boil the house like a beehive first I got ill, was hospitalised then a new brother arrived. Big disappointment, me dreaming a sister - not to pull hair, as some thought, but play with her dolls. (Back then a doll was taboo for a boy - well, it was if you lived with your gran.) Then when it had all settled down - a year or two maybe -

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-32504611111713454082011-11-12T09:14:00.000Z2011-11-12T09:14:23.895Z

Who's at fault, who's at fault? Too little money in the vault. It's all a game, but who's to blame? Stack 'em high and sell 'em short. Money goes round and round the till 'till some fat hammer-head makes a kill. That's the perception, that's the deception - now where's the guy whose got the prescription? Come with me, let's hit the street, hit the street and feel the beat, feel the beat and get

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-13632546465398612782011-11-11T09:21:00.001Z2011-11-11T09:25:22.865Z

Best Christmas present ever: deep, deep snow. A whiter white than I had ever seen, but out of reach, beyond the window glass, and not available to feet and hands. I'm five years old and full of wonder: how might it feel against the skin? As fluffy as it looks? As smooth? And how would I react? I see the people come and go with it. I see it piled on shoulders, woolly hats and scarves. I see deep

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-10618258643778056362011-11-10T06:30:00.002Z2011-11-10T06:30:01.844Z

I got the idea watching children play imaginative games, watching as they chalked their scenes across the square. Arranged their artefacts like tokens on a game board... It was the way to start a canvas for my next dystopian view. I stand it on the easel with myself arranged before, the light behind me - where the devil's s'posed to be. My shadow falling on its spotlessness, I wash it in. The

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-73580375173590522052011-11-09T06:10:00.000Z2011-11-09T08:36:52.874Z

Here's a dream to dream sometime when you are looking for a dream to dream. You are a sculptor who sculpts words, then builds them into poems. You're making ready your next book, one hundred pages long. The title poem is the only one. It takes up pages two and three, but fills the book. How does a two-page poem fill a book? Well, that's the sort of poem that you write. Recall: you'll be

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-24493795229545789982011-11-08T08:49:00.000Z2011-11-08T08:49:27.010Z

It was that time of day when shadows are most apt to play their roguish tricks. We took the short cut through the burial ground beside the oratory. Stones took on a new significance. The monuments loomed up at us like stage sets and their ivy drapes looked sinister in that half light. I thought for certain we would hear an owl, but no sound came except for gentle rustles in the wind and

Dave Kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2508563923634392703.post-76838571470685620362011-11-07T06:30:00.001Z2011-11-07T06:30:02.537Z

The oven was hung with icicles, the toaster was singing a song, while a plant and a pie were playing I-Spy. The kitchen was totally mad. Such was the vision of one young man, a runner-up in the 5-8 category. Not a verse from his poem, just four odd lines pulled at random from "Kitchen" - a totally hilarious offering. He sits to thunderous applause. Thoroughly well deserved. Follow that! My

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