h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Ben,

Deeply touched and honoured by your efforts on my behalf.

A morning of walking and jogging ( yes!!!horrors!!!I have started interspersing the walks with short bursts of running....to get the metabolic rate burning....the price of vanity....) was even more productive.

1
Sun-glow cloud curtains
the rain-silked grey horizon:
A very "soft day."

2
One harsh scald-crow rasp
sends the ring-dove fluttering,
clutching her plump skirts.

3
Hungry jealous gulls
eye the diving cormorant
catch wiley mullet.

4
Now, the Sugarloaf*
cuts free from the rain-gold haze,
a scything shark's fin.

*The Sugarloaf mountain in County Wicklow, stands on its own, and seen from the north, looks like a triangular fin.

5
Soft sand-sculpting waves
in time carve even coarse brick
into smooth pebbles.

I find myself wondering what the Sugarloaf was called before they invented sugarloafs.

No-one seems to have noticed the Haiku yet, Chai, but give it time. They are too good not to appear in the UnderGuide at some point.

Ben

I'll see if I can find the original Irish name for the Sugarloaf, Slieve na Something or other, no doubt, or, possibly, Ben something or other. It's too big to be a Cnuc ( or a Knock ).

Interesting, eh, Ben?

C \|/

No advance on the Irish for the Sugarloaf mountain. But here is a single haiku. Today I was cycling, not great for poetry. However this one returned, having surfaced and been forgotten some weeks ago.

Pretty young driver
hunting for a parking space -
fiercely sucks her thumb.

Cheers,

C \|/

Walking again today:

1
Over Sandymount,
rain clouds at street level
paint a passing shower.

2
Brown bladderwrack flames
burst from a round granite rock -
the Grenadiers' badge.

It occurred to me that haiku are the "Fast Show" of poetry, in that most poems have about three lines that really matter, around which the whole thing hangs. Haiku are pared down to just the three lines that matter, no room for spare words.

Back to regular long-distance walking, and the haiku are flowing again.

Here's a few of the latest. Deliberately moving away from poignancy, prettiness, towards humour, ugliness, whatever actually presnets itself to my attention, whatever makes an impact as I walk.

1
After a wet night,
pink dead worms drape the black path
in thin toothpaste curls.

2
Dog-shit shaped like lips –
Not a subtle message, God!
“You can kiss my arse?”

3
Girl with violin?
The runners she’s wearing say:
“No. Tennis rackets.”

4
Flat on its back lies
an exhausted bicycle –
after a hard ride.

5
Snarling bottleneck,
casually bares its fangs
at your naked feet.

6
A spent champagne cork
by a discarded condom.
Parts of one story?

The haiku medium really suits you, Chai, or is it vice versa? Anyway: carry on writing so that I can carry on reading, OK? Thanks.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Dear P'Ch,

Thanks for the encouraging words. Somehow the form has caught my imagination in a way I'd never have anticipated. Almost every day recently, new ways of using it come to mind. This evening, out of the blue, a short series concerning the deaths of my mother and father. I have never written about their deaths before. I won't give biographical details. What comes across from the poems is enough, the rest can be inferred.

1.
Your hand just went cold.
They would not disconnect you,
yet, I knew you’d gone.

2.
Dead, your eyes closed tight,
Your teeth just showed through blue lips.
I feared they’d open.

3.
I recall that shrug,
and a demolishing sniff,
your deflating laugh.

4.
Your blue eyes twinkled,
belying the frowning brows,
and your stern-carved mouth.

5.
Brown eyes measuring –
“I’m an artist,” you explained,
“I can’t help staring.”

6.
Your time came to leave.
After those four voiceless months,
the cold quietness.

I will comment later.

In the meantime, here is the link I promised you, Chai:


http://www.bethcargill.co.uk/katauta.shtml

B

I owe you an email Chai.

In the meantime, I have been working on two versions of one of Larkin's most infamous poems.

I am not sure what I am trying to achieve here - whether it is a record of what happens between the generations when families really are dysfunctional, or whether it is a wry and slightly light-hearted response to Larkin.

As a result we have two very different poems, though they look and sound much the same.

http://www.bethcargill.co.uk/notebook.shtml#spawnedbylarkini

I am curious about peoples' thoughts, responses, reactions, and so on.

B

Hi Ben,

I know we've discussed this briefly on MSN.

My thoughts as a non parent are as follows..



I liked the line 'you'll want them in your twentieth year/regret it when you're twenty two. Purely for the reason that it refers to a specific conversation that we had that spawned this poetry.

The line 'they have the faults your parents had' doens't really ring true to me. Do people get annoyed by their children turning out like their grandparents.

Would 'you'll get the faults your parents had' be too much of a change.

Again personal opinion and nothing worth worrying about in the grand scheme of things.



In II

I felt the language is stronger in this poem which is more in keeping with the orginal poem 'They F**k you up your mum and Dad'.



In general I felt that the first poem brought an imagine in my mind of a young mother who wanted to start a family young and is regreting being at home with toddlers. The second poem brought an imagine of parents frustrated with teenagers who go off the rails and feel let down by it.

Two pictures of regreted parenthood, separated by 10-12 years.

hi ben just popped over think, mixture of two been bit cheeky
They f**k you up, your darling kids,
they may not mean to, but they do,
and at the time they're on the skids
you know there's sod all you can do.
And so it goes from bad to worse
their parents faults ,just as bad
Nothing's learned and that's the curse
of little shades of mum and dad.
Mam hands on misery to man,
You wonder how you got it wrong
and hate the troubles you began,
the day the b******s came along
hope you dont mind

>> Mam hands on misery to man,

Typo or genius, ltp?

Thanks for that!

B

genius of course(honest) the whole lines a contradiction, so i take it you didn.t mind

And so it goes from bad to worse
their parents faults ,chapter and verse.
was the other couplet that flashed but then that would of nessecitated 14 lines insted of 12.

You know I'm hopeless at any kind of critique! But as I ever I do admire your ability to write poetry and enjoyed the new ones.

As most of the horrors of the sons' childhoods have faded away, I find myself looking back thinking they were wonderful kids and are now wonderful young men! Time is a marvelous thing, or is it just my apalling memory?

Ben - I prefer the second one. It very neatly sums up just how I feel about a certain teenager at the moment. In fact I've copied it - hope you don't mind - and will be showing him it later. They 'did' the original Larkin poem at school a few years ago.

Z hit the nail on the head when he said that the two poems are separated by about 10/12 years.

In my experience, when they're little, the parental protective mechanism is very much in force and you put up with a lot of stuff from small children because they simply can't help it.

I've never seen my parents' faults in my children - so that didn't ring true - but I frequently see my own worst qualities in them and that's very hard to take and adds to the feeling of failure that parents of teenagers have.

Hope you can make sense of this, it's a bit jumbly. I'm new to this commenting on poetry stuff.
If you keep writing 'em, I'll maybe get better with practice

Thanks for reading, and thanks for saying you have read!

Teuchter, the second one is about teenagers. Not the Stepson, but a synthesis of a couple of awful situations in two familes close to my heart at the moment.

Yes - please do give it to your son. If he says anything more than "ghgnggh" I'd be interested!

I think that one's response to the two poems depends on whether or not one has or has had teenagers. Younger mums resonate to the first more. Parents of teenagers wince and recoil from the second.

Thanks again.

Any more for any more?

B

Perhaps the stronger language in the second one reflects the stronger emotions that are connected with dealing with teenagers.

There was some fairly strong language chez nous at 4.00am today!