March Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are tower blocks,
forehead for sky, nose: a shrouded figure

speeding by, back packed with sketchbooks
and gas masks, jeans patched more times

than he’s matched sticks to spliffs. He is
a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in urban forests;
rappers rough tones riff against bars

just like spray cans hiss against walls,
they birth brilliance, doubled in the dark

before radio crackles, rail guards arrive ///

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I am considering a physical exchange here, a conflict? a back and forth.. dogs maybe? but am fearful it will clutter the boy… nothing has come clear and crisp enough which invites Occam’s razor (also known as Ockham’s razor) the principle that “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”, which really is the golden rule of poetry. But we will see. But I do like the movement to the sprinkled streets. This is close.

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signalling: it’s time to go, he packs bag
and goes - a winged shadow - floats

past yellow lines, glides over railings,
air vents, the clouds cry, a poverty stricken

kitten skips the sprinkled streets.

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Till Friday, Inua.

Recently I’ve been using photographs to develop ideas around writing. Earlier this year, I bought a Nikon D40. Much to the annoyance of my mates, I’ve been taking it everywhere. I’m still in that trigger happy honey moon period.

In April I started to take pictures of friends wearing hoodies. I found the pictures released ideas, questions and inspirations.

This is a picture of my friend Lydia. Not realising how zoomed in I was, I took a close up image of the enormous hoodie she was wearing. And then by total fluke, I got this image of a bus whizzing past as her head was turned to the side.

Again, the image below was an accident and just happened to come out with the foreground out of focus.

This got me thinking about our perceptions of what we see as ‘hoodies’. When we use that word, are we loading it with other understandings of delinquent youth, young people, ASBOs, masking and misbehavior? By ‘zooming’ in on the individuals that we view as disruptive, are we blurring our vision to the societal surroundings that can sometimes create that behaviour.

It’s unlikely that these photos will inspire writing about a girl in a hoodie or a bus passing. What they do give me is colour, concept and movement, foreground and background. All things that I can use when putting pen to paper.

We start from doodles and sketches. And sometimes we make real plans, and sometimes we just start building. Building is at the heart of the experience.
Gever Tully

Like many writers, when starting the first line of a poem, I’m already thinking about what the last line will be. Too often I try to rush to the message, the meaning, the cause of the poem. Sometimes this works, but most times it causes a kind of ‘tear my hair out’ frustration. Luckily, certain ideas make it known very early that you’re in for the long stretch.

Last year, I developed a keen interest (or obsession) for hoodies. The hoodie not only as clothing but as a political term (hug a hoodie), a cultural dress (hip-hop hoods up), but also as a noun and adjective (those damn hoodies stole my phone!).

Slowly my interest has morphed into artistic/ sociological research that will eventually become some kind of ‘piece’. (a lovely ambiguous term). During my time as a guest booker on Open Notebooks, I’ll be sharing my process of building this idea. I’ll also be writing a new poem for the Open Notebooks project.

Big shout out to Karen for starting inviting me to take part!

I apologise, I have had computer trouble of late. Virginia is passing away, in about three months I will have to purchase a new machine, in the mean time.. poetry.

————————————————————-

March Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are tower blocks,
forehead for sky, nose: a shrouded figure

speeding by, back packed with sketchbooks
and gas masks, jeans patched more times

than he’s matched sticks to spliffs. He is
a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in Urban Jungles…

————————————————————-

Too harsh? a Cliche? or too blackpowerish? hmmm… it is true though. Communicating with stuttered sound predated Morse code and existed in Africa in the form of talking drums. The beats were messages themselves. And hip hop possibly stemmed from this - as rappers rhyme within beats, and the aim is to flow effortlessly with it. This is a perfect link to the field hand, the inventor of blues mythologized in this poem.

Next hurdle is simple, I am wondering about “Urban jungle”/”urban forest” ‘Jungle is commonly used to describe inner-city areas, so I am leaning towards forest, but I must research to see where a talking drum might have been used.. forest or jungle.

the next step is to link this to the section beginning “a poverty stricken kitten” where the protagonist is chased or disturbed by security guards.

The monkey that bursts from my torso
burns toast and blisters thumbs.
It swings on bone asymmetric bars,
palms strapped in waxed cotton.

A doll-sized heel kicks in a balloon
bomb of raspberry leaves
while the monkey slides from rib to spine,
fast and strong as a drum,

slips from my grip, rattles
on my ribcage, forces an escape
to an English hillside
grey with rocks and a tupperware sky.

An old soul licks its lips,
swallows salt water, savours the taste
of roasted buffalo
flesh between teeth, wet with juice and blood.

Gulls tannoy traffic, wail
for sea when I wake in the morning,
listening for a heartbeat
under the screech of green lorakeets.

The monkey that bursts from my torso
burns toast and blisters thumbs.
It swings on bone asymmetric bars,
palms strapped in waxed cotton.

A doll-sized heel kicks in a balloon
bomb of raspberry leaves
while the monkey slips from rib to spine,
fast and strong as a drum.

An old soul licks its lips,
swallows salt water, savours the taste
of roasted buffalo
flesh between teeth, wet with juice and blood.

Need to add another stanza from the earlier draft where I wake from the dream but I’m not really in the dream but I’d like to capture the feeling afterwards - FEAR - of something bigger and stronger than you at work over which you have little control.