Batgirl, Borrowers and 'Sticky Books': it's National Libraries Day

Is my jumper too loud for the Reference Library?

I've been absent from here for a bit but I must blog today as it's National Libraries Day!

Since starting as a library assistant, I've found libraries a great source of ideas: I've written poems and short stories on everything from Batgirl's day job to the time the man who hangs around in History came in without his hat! Libraries (and there are some fab ones HERE) lend themselves to the imagination: they contain so much information, invention and passion - the sum of human experience. Their users, too - the 'Borrowers' - have their own passions and predilections. Then there's the library staff: the cliche of the skittish, be-cardiganned librarian, disappointed in love, too tempting to ignore, too tempting not to subvert...

Today I'll be performing some of my library poems along with some by the likes of Emily Dickinson and Charles Simic. My favourite is For St Jerome by Paul Farley. This will all be in Wallasey Central Library at 2.30pm and include two new pieces including this one:

Sticky Books

Here come the sticky books:
puppy books, freshly chewed, gluey
‘How to...’s and kiddies pop-ups, aromatic
from the nappy bag, slim volumes of bitter
poetry smeared with conciliatory chocolate,
novels fluffed from under settees, used, coasterwise
for beer cans, cat books itching with fleas.

Here come the sticky books: fumbled
from crumb-filled carrier bags after nights
at pensioners’ bedsides next to teeth and tinctures.
Gummy on the counter top, a reptile book
reluctantly returned by a man with filthy talons,
along with soiled allotment manuals, and well-thumbed
sex encyclopaedia, tacky to the touch,

Here come the sticky books: fished from
the flotsam of handbags, powdered and perfumed,
travel guides sandblasted, bleached and smelling
suspiciously of coconut, cookery books
dusted with flour, butterfingered, garnished,
eggs on their faces, pages with glazed crusts.

Here come the sticky books:
the coffee-cupped, hair-sprayed, bubble-bathed
and baked beaned books. The snotted on,
sneezed at hard backs, the wept over romances
with their rim of salt. The nautical adventures
and Haynes manuals, all well oiled
with perfect fingerprints for forensics later.

Here come the sticky books:
wanting a buffing with dusters and spirit.
Never lick your fingers in a library. I wouldn’t
like to test for substances between these sheets
– shit and semen, coffee, stamens, condiments
ash and ear wax, cat hair, gum, and dough
blood, sweat and tears - or is that just Bordeaux?

© Clare Kirwan

Don't worry - we do clean them up or chuck em if they come back nasty. And we get fresh new books every week - why not pop into your 'local' today and get the latest titles... but look after them nicely, won't you?

New windows

No, not THAT Windows.  I'm being double-glazed this week.

NO - not ME, you fools!  The windows.

I live in my friend's house, so she's in charge and has timed it nicely to mostly be happening while I'm at work, but coming home tonight reminded me of a poem I wrote a few years ago (new kitchen) which was published in the Ragged Raven Anthology 'Writing on the Water' :


Workmen in the house of women

Day one

All day we heard
their low rumble of laughter,
saw through upstairs nets
an overall, blue, moving,
felt the house resisting,
creaking it’s complaints
as they wrenched nails from wood
like pulling teeth.
All afternoon there was percussion,
voices, tools and feet,
and, in the evening,
we tiptoed to the kitchen
violated: brickwork exposed,
huge fingerprints like bruises,
boot-patterned dust,
and no milk.

Day two

Drilling like prospectors,
there’s a whine of protest.
Their voices separate into
the one who laughs the most, the one
who lies all day into his mobile phone.
Their sleight of hand is like magicians, surgeons.
They talk ‘top-coating,’ ‘bleeding.’
They are as tall as gods.
We bring them steaming offerings
and blush at banter,
imperfections laughed away
– echoing off the raw walls.

Day Seven

And they leave quickly
as though to urgent appointments,
abandoning unfinished business:
superficial sweepings,
surfaces still wet,
a scent that lingers –
putty, plaster, paint –
and it takes time to adjust
to the sudden freedom
and silence,
the hardening and tightening
as fresh wounds turn into scars.

© Clare Kirwan

The Shout

Simon Armitage* was the first contemporary poet I took a shine to when I stopped regarding poetry as a secret compulsion and started submitting, performing and reading poems.

His poem 'The Shout' had a powerful impact on me. You could read it HERE now but I worry you'll get distracted and go off surfing and end up looking at a series of knitted body parts on a Czech website! So I've embedded a video of Simon reading it below. (Followed, if you have the patience, by a delightfully quirky poem about whales.)

It's the last line that does it. I like the poem and the story which inspired it, but the thing I LOVE is that I will always remember it: like the man can still hear the boy I can still hear Simon Armitage reading out those lines.

That is the impact of a good poem. It is what I want to achieve when I write. The best thing is when someone quotes one of your own lines back at you years later, and yes, it has happened to me.

* Related post - Out of the Blue, Simon's piece on 9/11

Buy it from here: The Shout: Selected Poems

Cold Calling

Do you get 'cold calls'? People trying to save you energy, sign you up or sell you something? I give them short shrift, ask them to take this number off their list, but they keep coming. Sometimes I just put them on hold until they go away but I feel mean doing this. Mostly I just hang up to save my time and theirs, but here's what I should say:


The other person knows you are waiting

Thank you for calling my home
I value your calls. You are a valued caller.
Please press your hash key now.

Press one if you are calling
to sell me something I don’t want or need,
have never wanted or needed
will never want or need.

Press two if you are calling
to try and convince me to change my mind
when there is nothing wrong with the one I have.

Press three if you are calling
for somebody other than me
no matter how convinced you are
that I am lying
when I say I am not them.

Press four if you are calling
to shame me into a contribution
to a charity that will use that contribution
to pay people like you
to call people like me.

Press five if you are calling
for information about my lifestyle,
income, habits and desires
- which you think I will disclose
in return for your shoddy free gift.

Press six if you are calling
with a completely unintelligible regional accent,
or speaking as fast as you possibly can, to get it over with, tick the box,
then have to repeat everything three times
because I can not understand a word you are saying.

Press seven if you are calling
from a call centre in the third world
because you will work for lower wages
and your employers don’t have to worry
about health and safety, holidays or unions.

Press eight if you are calling
Because you have to, because you can’t get another job
and you hate doing it and you’re on the brink now,
and if you don’t get a sale tonight they’ll sack you
and who will feed the children?

Press nine if you are calling
the last person on your list
at the end of a twelve hour shift
of saying the same line over and over again
and care even less about your product than I do.

If this is a personal call, please hold for an operator.

©  Clare Kirwan

Cautionary Tales

I grew up with The Penguin Book of Comic and Curious Verse, as I've mentioned before - and I loved those Cautionary Tales the best.

Matilda with her dreadful lies, Henry King (pictured left) who chewed string, Jim - who ran away from nurse and was eaten by a lion... the great Hillaire Belloc was the author of many of my favourites which can be found, nicely illustrated by The Baldwin Project which 'brings yesterday's classics to today's children.

It wasn't the horrible fates in themselves that attracted me, it was more the style of writing - faux serious, ridiculous rhymes and romping rhythms - and the escalating series of disasters where one thing led to another.

I attempted to write a cautionary tale this week - on the dangers of giving up blogging. It was addressed to Dave, (who is often first to comment on my blog): Reverend East – who gave up his blog but then realised he had nothing better to do. It sorto of works, but it's not nearly dark enough and while I was writing it he decided to start blogging again, which rather spoiled the ending I'd originally planned.

According to Wikipedia, authors of the cautionary tale were not obliged to abide by the usual rules of etiquette and gruesomeness was positively encouraged because they were meant to horrify a small child into Sensible Behaviour and Right Thinking.

I can't help thinking this sort of thing is probably a bit frowned on these days by those same right-thinking people due to their delight in disaster and uncomfortable overtones of child abuse.

There are no right-thinking people still reading this, are there? No? Then here's one you may never have come across . . .

FRANKLIN HYDE

Who caroused in the Dirt and was corrected by His Uncle

His Uncle came on Franklin Hyde Carousing in the Dirt. He Shook him hard from Side to Side And Hit him till it Hurt,

Out of the Blue

I've scheduled this post to be published while I'm away for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I wanted to share this link to: 'Out of the Blue' - a poem/film written by one of my favourite poets Simon Armitage and performed her by the excellent Rufus Sewell as a British office worker in one of the twin towers. It's in four parts on YouTube and about half an hour in total but well worth sitting through, or even just dipping into.

Excerpt from '10'
...
We are making our calls.
They are tightropes, strung

from the end of the phone
to a place called home
so our words can escape,

our voices trapeze
for mile after mile
or in my case traverse

the width of the sea.
My beautiful wife,
sit down in the chair,

put the phone to your ear.
Let me say.
Let me hear.

We are spinning a web.
But such delicate threads,
the links so brittle,

too little, too late.
Not one can save us
or bear our weight.

© Simon Armitage

I was coming home from Greece the day it happened. The taxi driver from the airport was babbling about the end of the world but I thought he was a bit mad or something. I went to a supermarket to get bread and milk and noticed a crowd in the electronics section. I saw the image and thought it must be some new disaster movie. It takes a while to sink in.

Where were you?

Excerpt from '13'

what false alarm can be trusted again?
What case or bag can be left unclaimed?
What flight can be sure to steer its course?
What building can claim to own its form?
...
What future can promise to keep the faith?

Everything changed. Nothing is safe.

© Simon Armitage

Invisible, too

Inspired by the art of Liu Bolan, which I wrote about yesterday, I spent the night with my paints in an attempt to emulate one of his 'Hidden in the City' photographs.

Here I am, hiding in plain site in the library. I think you really will struggle to see me, so good is my camouflage.

Not bad for a first attempt eh?

And here's a bit of a poem about being invisible:

The other day, I became invisible:
stumbled into, trodden on and brushed aside,
pulled out in front of at junctions, roundabouts.
I tried smiles – which were returned unopened.
I raised my hand, but no-one let me speak.
I was stared through – not like I was a window,
but more a grey area or just a feeling
that has to be endured or struggled through.
I went home defeated, was not welcomed,
looked in the mirror. There was no-one there.

© Clare Kirwan

Advice on the Organisation of Arts Festivals

Give it a sensible name.
If it isn’t the biggest, the best, the first,
call it something else – something that fits.
Don’t aspire for international acclaim at the outset;
national accolades will suffice, or even better start
with those thoughts only in your head, unspoken.

Don’t alarm the sponsors with wild gesticulations.
Do not frighten the skittish volunteer
with inflated numbers and aspirations -
she would pull together 50 poets but cannot muster 400
without more time, more help and valium -
nor give the task to the boy who says he can do anything, everything
then doesn’t.

Don’t say too soon we’ll laugh about it later.
Don’t claim to have an army of volunteers
when there are only ten. Don’t leave
most of the publicity to the final week
... and to the boy who says we will do anything, everything
then doesn’t.

Don’t speak in generalisations or hyperbole
to journalists who will print it all as gospel
– they get little enough right as it is,
give them a chance at truth.

Don’t change your mind and say it was ever thus.
Don’t promise a kazoo band and a record-breaking attempt
at the highest number of people to recite Hamlet’s soliloquy in unison,
when you have only your own kazoo, your own voice.

Don’t get carried away with the dream
when no-one else is even sleeping.
But don’t be dissuaded by the nay-sayers, or discouraged by
those who sit resolutely at meetings offering nothing
or the others - who write a list of criticisms
in a poem for a cheap laugh
when they know just how hard this is.
Trust them to help you.

Don’t be crushed by
the silence of the crowd at the call for volunteers.
nor send the pedants packing with a wave of your hand
– you may need them later.

Don’t forget:
You cannot actually paint the town red
(There are rules about that sort of thing)
You cannot hide the musicians.
You cannot hood the artists.
You cannot herd the poets.
You cannot do all of this alone, nobody can,
especially the boy who says he will do anything, everything
then doesn’t.

The world is made of glass

In the midst of the rejections, which I've entertained you with before it's nice to get the occasional 'Yes!'

Thanks to the magic of spreadsheets, I can reliably tell you that of 400 poetry submissions I've sent, 57 were published, and of 346 entries to poetry competitions, 17 were placed. It's a slog, and these figures are comparatively good, I'm told. *sigh*

I've just had a poem published in this year's Ragged Raven Anthology: Nothing Left to Burn - the fourth time I've been selected for one their excellent collections. I was especially chuffed that they even named last year's anthology after my poem - which was runner up in their competition: The world is made of glass.

The world is made of glass

each blade of grass
hand-blown and fragile,
as bright as needles.

You order coffee here and stare
into something solid and opaque –
one sugar cube suspended

perfectly. See the craftsman’s skill:
nothing solid exactly, but moving
with the patience of glaciers.

All things, even your lover’s face,
reflect an image of yourself, slightly distorted.
The touch of skin’s as sharp

as those mornings when buildings
look like clouds and birds fly into them,
shatter their skulls and drop like stones.

Rain falls in slivers, lies
like mirrors at your feet. You feel
your way – afraid of fractures,

everything splintering. Beneath
leaded sheets your brittle sweat
rolls and dances like beads

from a broken string, night hardens you
into a sculpture, your arteries a marbling
only visible in certain lights.

© Clare Kirwan

p.s. did you notice I wrote an entire poem about glass without once using the overly-poetic word 'shards'? My A problem shard post explains why.

Constraining your writing: univocal

The Inky Fool back in January told us about 'Gadsby' - a 50,000-word manuscript which romps along without any 'e's at all.

So I thought I'd just touch occasionally in coming posts on fun trials to conduct with your writing.

First up is univocal - writing which shuns all but a particular non-consonant, using, say "a" or "i" to stand in by proxy for its additional four chums.

This is part of a work by C.C. Bombaugh in 1890, using only "o":

No cool monsoons blow soft on Oxford dons,
Orthodox, jog-trot, book-worm Solomons

OK?

I did try it, and this is my stab at it.

(Warning: It's a bit odd, a tad racy and not my usual sort of thing. You can rip it to bits in a bit, BUT I want you to try doing your own first! It's tricky!)

What a drag!

Adam's a bad lad
Fact: bad at maths and can’t stand class
Alas - what plans Adam has!
A zany ad-man? RADA (Batman)?
Rap! A slam champ? A bard?
Start a band - all mad fans and WAGs?

Adam’s dad rants: What plans?
Tarmac gang? Stack cans at Asda?
Adam: Stack cans? That’s banana’s!
Adam asks Dan. Dan’s smart.
Dan says: Always warm at army barracks.

Lads land at camp, what a sham!
All starch and march. Bad days.
Anyway, Adam has an asthma attack.
Back at last, angry, antsy, and has cash!
Blags a flash car, an Astra - fast.
Stamp that gas! Damn blast - a crash.
Arm: small gash, Astra: vast scratch.
Bank says: card back, thanks.
Ta'ra backpack – Agra, Java, all that.

And Dan’s back. Tall, fab tan,
all blah blah blah Baghdad at war:
ranks, tanks, Saddam, bang bang.
Asks Anna – rampant Chav slag –
Fancy a shag? Anna wants an army man.
Jammy bastard: Anna’s chancy, always randy.
Anna’s flat’s all dark and hazy –
mmm...shady lady... mmm hash,
mmm brandy and…mmm? Clannad?...
anyway, hand wanks, spanks, anal pranks,
Dan’s hands at bra and pants…
…Aaaargh! Anna’s a lad in drag!
Man’s drawl: Thanks pal!
Fag ash, tacky damp, bad tang.
Aghast. Dan’s ‘lad’ has pangs.

Always a catch.

© C Kirwan

p.s. If you think this post is in a slightly unusual syntax, it's what's missing that you may pick up on - the scarcity, the drought, the want of ... what? Go to my first words and think about it! The truth is hiding in plain sight!

Zombie Wombles and the Keywords of Destiny

Just to COMPLETELY change the subject: Do you ever look up in Blogger stats or Statcounter to see what search keywords brought visitors to your blog?

Zombie Womble. That's what brought someone to mine*.

Now I've posted about Wombles and I've posted about Zombies, but not in the same breath... until today.

Over at Cultural Snow, the erudite Tim Footman was saying just the other day (in this post: Jammy Helen Mirren) how many people stumble across his blog when searching for semi-clad ladies, just because he may have mentioned them in passing. Similarly, Army of Dave is struggling to cope with being associated with a contemptible racist politician following the runaway success of his Nick Griffin Question Time Drinking Game.

It's a sobering lesson in being careful what you post about - these things can come back and bite you... A bit like Tobermory here.

... but on the other hand (and I wonder what Tobe did with the other hand?) it could point the way to a GAP in the market. Maybe, I thought, there ought to be somewhere people can go for a zombie womble if they want one?

By the way - what do you think at my first attempts at image manipulation? It was done with a free programme GIMP 2.6 which I am told has much of the functionality of Photoshop without the price tag.

So, who would like a poem then?..

Zombie Womble

Underground, overground, back from their tomb
The Wombles are Zombies and lurk in the gloom
Munching the brains of the people they find
Great Uncle Bulgaria’s eating mankind!

Underground, overground, up from their graves
Nothing is wasted, everything saved
Matted with black and malodorous mud
Lumbering Wombles are hungry for blood!

And in their foul burrow there’s always a store
Of bits of old bodies all covered in gore
Where Madame Cholet, her apron streaked red
Is cooking up something to feed the Undead

Bumbling, stumbling, Wombling free
They want to recycle the best bits of ME!
Oh no! Orinico is coming to get me!
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common all ATE ME!!

I know it's a cliché but...

I am girding my loins

This year I will really put my shoulder to the wheel, both feet forward and 'my back into it'. I'll slather myself in elbow grease, knuckle down, take the future in both hands, keep my finger on the pulse, my eye on the main chance (and the ball) my ear to the ground, nose to the grindstone, both hands on the wheel (I may need more hands).

No - I'm not taking a course in contortion. I'm simply going to try harder to be a better writer. But there's something about trying harder that brings all the clichés home to roost - and 'better writers' should avoid them like the plague.

Wikipedia - which has clearly become this recumbent Earthling's 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy' - defines cliché as a phrase 'over-used to the point of losing it's original meaning or effect', but I would argue with that. More that it is so over-used it loses its original impact.

When I say 'If it ain't broken, don't fix it' that's exactly what I mean. It's just annoying that - especially as a writer - you're not supposed to reel out the same old tired phrases, but think of new ways of saying what you mean.

The word cliché is from the French printing term for a phrase so regularly-used that it is cast in its entirety rather than composing it from individual letters or words each time it is rolled out. This is also called a stereotype. (I used to think this meant 'typing with both hands'.)

'Cliché' is meant to emulate the sound of the metal being dropped into the matrix - a mold for casting letters or phrases. Oh, sorry - I shouldn't have told you that. I forgot..."no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." Thanks, Morpheus.

Anyway - at the end of the day, when all's said and done...

Cliché Heaven

In cliché heaven
everything’s as right as rain,
they had a good innings,
and we’ll never see their like again.

In cliché heaven
death is not the end
and when you find Jesus,
you’ve found a friend.

In cliché heaven
saints and angels with Percil-white wings
are singing of millions of beautiful things,
and God in his wisdom,
God with his beard,
is moving in ways that are frankly weird,
dear God, his cherubs like elves,
is helping those who help themselves.

In cliché hell
after the candlestick, book and bell
we’ve come in a handcart
we’ve come with our cat
(who’s got no chance, we’re sure of that)
and the devil’s busy making plans
for all those lovely idle hands.

But in cliché heaven,
everything’s all right on the night,
everything’s coming up roses
and all’s well that ends well.

There's a nice slide show of where clichés come from on Life magazine's website

Birdsong Tinnitus

The lovely Christine (aka Inwardly Digesting) mentioned recently that she suffered from tinnitus. This permanent presence of sound must be maddening, and I almost hesitate to append my Birdsong Tinnitus poem here lest it cause offense. Almost.
This was the first poem I ever performed at Liverpool's Dead Good Poets Society back in 2003 (in the days before Twitter - which gives the poem a whole new subtext now). I'm sure the first few words will have alarmed them.
Incidentally, it turns out that recordings of birdsong are supposed to alleviate tinnitus - you can buy devices that play relaxing nature sounds including bird song, ocean waves, brook and summer night from the British Tinnitus Association.

Birdsong Tinnitus
Tweet, tweet, tweet.
All the bloody time.
She was lucky, they said, to have
birdsong tinnitus. It was quite rare.
(Others had bombs and guns –
the artillery kind). So everywhere
was like a summer meadow, her head
rang with twittering which no-one else could hear
- except her cat, which perked a psychic ear
towards that invisible chirping, tweeting, peeping,
keeping two inscrutable eyes on her,
waiting for feathers.
She’d always hated birds – nasty
little heads and beady eyes, always
watching and pecking and crapping.
In all weathers and seasons each dawn
welcomed her with a cheerful chorus
that went on all day and all night
until the next dawn and the next one
repeating an endless anthem of joy and hope,
a fresh and innocent soundtrack to accompany
all the bad things that happened to her.
As her life grew bleak the birds still sang
their dainty cage inside her head,
immune from all her rage
- right up until she pulled the trigger
on some kind of hunting rifle
to silence those damned birds.

(c) Clare Kirwan 2003

First Published in Ragged Raven's 2004 Anthology: Dress of nettles


Added 7 Jan 2011: If you enjoyed this on any level, you would doubtless be delighted by Happiness Concluded from the whacky pen of Will Type for Food... I know I was!

The Silence Museum

Outside it is always noisy
but within these walls, more than a metre thick,
we hold, insulated, the history
and lost examples of silence.
Visitors are ushered, whispering
through padded cubicles, astounded.

Turn off your phones and music,
speak only in whispers.
We Curators live in silence.
It is our vocation – chosen
from the quietest children
we were trained to listen.
It is like a religion.

The first floor is devoted
to the silence before a sound
with perfect specimens of the pregnant pause:
the counted silence between flash and thunder
that measures your distance from a storm,
the animal quiet of the dog that will be first to bite,
the charged stillness of a held breath
between the last tick and the explosion,
and, the prize of our collection,
the last natural recording of a pin about to drop... 

Beautiful isn’t it?

On other floors we preserve
examples of the silence after a sound –
the straining, listening silence after
the bump in the night,
the sullen tongue-holding of the instructed silence,
one minute silences filled with awkward sorrow,
and rare samples from ground zero
those twin silences of shock and awe.

Our interactive exhibit invites you to consider:
the silence of the crowd at the call for volunteers,
the silence of a majority who oppose without speaking
– the silence that is mistaken for complicity,
the silence that is suffered in.

Listen for a moment…

Our researchers are gathering examples
that measure silence – its depth and width
from the silence of mutual understanding
which needs no vocabulary
to the dumb silence of incomprehension,
from an argument seen through triple-glazed windows
to the last wilderness on a windless day.

Many silences are near extinction.
But we can manufacture them
using the exact wavelengths and frequencies
that echo the weighty absence of sound in space,
and we are close to containing
that final silence
when your own music stops,
and your body ceases whispering
its rhythmic commentary.

(c) Clare Kirwan 2005        

First Published in Aberrant Dreams

Picture: Los Angeles new Museum of the Holocaust

Armitage Shanks

I'm cat-sitting for my brother this week in rural Staffordshire. I mean for his cat. My brother isn't a cat. He's a solicitor. (Not the cat. She's a cat.)

The cat is skittish and sixteen - which makes me nervous - and I'm more of a doggy person anyway, but my brother does have an extensive DVD collection and no builders next door.

Anyway, he lives in the little town of Armitage which is famous for one thing only - it is the home of the Armitage Shanks factory (it's name has now changed, but not for the purposes of this post), where all the toilets and wash basins come from.

It's about as far as you can get from the coast (nearby Ashby de la Zouche claimed it was, until the Ordnance Survey declared that Church Flats farm up the road in Coton in the Elms claimed that distinction). How far is this? our American friends might ask. A whopping 70 miles. That's right - you can't get further than 70 miles from the sea in England.

But there are many local canals and if you go walking along them you come across the curious sight of rows and rows of ceramic basins ready for delivery, and for the ablutions to come.

It's time for my toilet poem.

Yes, I know - another post involving toilets. But I'm done after this. 

Please note the complete absence of poo in this toilet poem*

I'd be the first to agree this isn't a great poem, but it was recently one of those with a Staffordshire connection commended (out of 700 entries) in the Stafford Poetry Prize. I'll quote the judge, Michael Hulse: "...these poems had real strengths, and stood out by virtue of their clear individuality from Staffordshire poems that merely touted the county as the best (etcetera). This competition is for poems, not for tourist board slogans!"

I sense the organisers liked it less than he did!

Armitage Shanks

This is toilet country, basin land.
There's nowhere else in England
further from the sea.
Outside the canal-side factory 
ceramic stockpiles wait
on the stagnant banks
at Armitage Shanks.

Like mouths of pearly teeth,
swarms of albino beetles,
the Empire’s storm-troopers white helmeted,
shoulder to shoulder, the bowls are
fired up, ready for action
waiting in ranks and ranks
at Armitage Shanks.

A canal slinks past:
sluggish, barely washing
the painted barges stately slow
dribbling, land-locked, nowhere else to go.
Its patient algae clothes
each broken sink that sank
near Armitage Shanks

How lavatories dream on chilly rims
how sinks and bidets yearn
for pedestals and plugs
for running water, urgent and thorough
a rush of liquid traffic
flushing pipes and tanks
from Armitage Shanks. 

Only rain sets cisterns tingling
a gentle benediction
of wet anticipation
maddening the shift-workers inside
with the plink... plink... plink
of their chattering thanks
at Armitage Shanks.

* If, however you want a pee poem - try here

The Liver Birds

No not those The Liver Birds - the 1970'2 sitcom by an up-and-coming Carla Lane.

(Not the Liver Bards, either - a new poetry open floor starting in Liverpool next month. ...I don't think all the poems have to be about liver.

The might even be a folk group in Merseyside called The Liver Beards. Not them either.)

These Liver Birds.

The symbol of the city of Liverpool (also the City Council and a certain football club), the 18 foot copper plate birds face opposite directions - one looking over the city, one over the Mersey estuary - from the top of the Liver Building at the Pier Head.

I live 'over the water' from Liverpool. Not as in New York or Ireland, but just across the river, so it's fantastic to see how well the city is doing since being European Capital of Culture in 2008 - there's a new since of energy and optimism. Swanky new developments like Liverpool One were built just before the credit crunch and are doing well - but those old birds are still keeping an eye on everyone...

Liver birds

We're held up by wires like
threads of giant spiders webs,
look down on cranes and construction sites
the dandruff dust on Pier Head,
the city struggling back to life,

bald headed businessmen,
in Matchbox cars, red stop, green go,
the tide coming and going in great gulps.
We love these new buildings – they are
mirrors where we preen ourselves.

We are gritty and ancient, wings
spread like rumours across the city.
We make a nest in history,
but two beats of a wing and we could fly
on thermals rising up from heated streets.

It's hard to perch so long, so still,
but we have a bird's eye view;
anywhere you see us, we see you –
across the city, the suburbs, the water,
every movement, everything you do.

(c) Clare Kirwan

Excuses, excuses

In my last blog I mentioned the time-honoured (and in this case true) excuse of 'the dog ate it.'

We all come up with excuses for our failures, omissions, bad behaviour, stupidity, delayed action, clumsiness, laziness or sin.

But why admit to anything if we can blame someone or something else, put it down to forces beyond our control or rationalise our way out of it being in any way our fault?  It wasn't me it was the the weather / chemical imbalance / market forces / somebody - anybody - else.  Early Apple Mac's used to come out with a whiny American voice when certain Bad Things happened saying: 'It's not my fault.' Seriously. 

With imagination there are plenty of original excuses you can come up with, and the more far-fetched and unlikely-sounding the more believable - with-in reason. 'I couldn't come to your soiree because my grandmother was abducted by aliens' or 'my homework ate the dog' might be pushing it a bit. 

There are some whacky excuses for missing work here including; 'I've been taking ex-Lax and Prozac. I can't get off the john but i feel good about it' and 'The dog ate my car keys. We're going to hitchhike to the vet.'

But for your basic error there are two excellent catch-all excuses:

1. Persian carpet-makers always leave one mistake in their patterns to acknowledge that only Allah may achieve perfection.  I used this extensively during my banking years where it generally fell, to borrow another religious metaphor, on stony ground

2. 'The Cartographer's Folly'  I am indebted, as ever, to the Inkyfool blog for alerting me to an equally catch-all but more prosaic general excuse for error. Map-makers, he tells us, have often put a deliberate error in their work so they can prove whether someone has plagiarised their work. 

"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."    George Washington

For other occasions where you may be looking for an excuse, I have provided a Top 40 Excuses in the form of a poem below, but what's the best (or maddest) excuse you've ever come across?

Excuses, excuses

The dog ate my homework.
All my friends do it.
I left it on the bus.
I forgot.

I'm new.
I'm ill.
I have a headache.
It's in the post.

I didn't get your message.
I thought it was tomorrow. 
It was an administrative error.
This has never happened before.

The voices in my head said to.
It just came off in my hand.
I only took my eyes off him for a second.
She had it coming to her.

It is destiny.
It was inevitable.
It just… happened.
It was the beat of a butterfly's wings

It goes against my principles.
I was under pressure.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
If we don't do it somebody else will.

I only had a pint.
I was only doing 30.
He just came from nowhere.
There was nothing I could do.

All my friends were doing it.
We knew no better.
I wasn't thinking.
I was only obeying orders.

(c) Clare Kirwan

May the 4th be with you!

Yes, it's that time of year again. Happy Star Wars Day everyone!

I have a thing for Darth Vader.

There. I've said it. Lord Vader. It's the combination of the black leather, the power, the cape (more about this another time), the voice and the fact that I was at a difficult and impressionable age when the film first came out. So in honour of Star Wars Day, here's a poem.

Readers of a delicate and cultured sensibility, look away now.

Love song for Darth Vader

O Darth
I know the Jedi and the Sith
are just a movie myth
and in your current apparel you’d be
quite difficult to kith.
But your giant stride,
your pneumatic breathing,
your leather, leather, leather
gets my maiden’s chest heaving.

O Darth
When I hear your voice I know

that only you could be so bold

I am dealing with forces I don’t understand.

Give me a hand to hold.
I don’t mind that you've no hair,

your limbs are made, not grown.

I sort of like the way they stare

and you’ve a theme tune of your own

O Darth
Behind your mask I know,
you’re a bit the worse for wear,
but you can keep your helmet on,
and we’ll take things from there.

I find your lack of face disturbing,
your dark places, cushioned hide,
but cannot curb this dark yearning
to find your fragile underside

O Darth
The awful things you’ve seen
since boyhood thrills on Tattooine –
and… oh… the dark years in between,
toasted and turned to part-machine.
Then you bombed the base in rebel space,
which I really can’t endorse
But can I feel it?... Can I?... Feel it?
Can I feel the Force?

O Darth
You don’t even let George Lucas’
awful scripts demean you.
Be my saving stamps, my premium bonds
– let me redeem you!
But it was George who created you -
forged in the foundry of his mind -
and now he’s told your story,
joined the dots, what’s left behind?

Long dark years, lonely by my hearth,
devoid of Vader, with a dearth of Darth.

P.S.
O Yoda
I am sorry but
you’re far too small and shit,
and look just like my granddad
– which puts me off a bit.

Related post: Men in Capes Favourite Christmas Jokes Dark Side of Christmas