I Can't Believe it's October

It takes a while to get over August in Edinburgh. Not because the Festivity stops – far from it. There was so much going on in September, with studios, galleries and various doors open to the public; art on the beach, in railway tunnels, towering demolitions, half-marathons, salons for literature and scran; poetry slams, book-launches, birthday celebrations. Well, that’s how my September was, which explains why October’s here and I’ve yet to ruminate over August’s Festivity.

As usual, I threw myself into Festival: everything from the International, Book, and Art Festivals, and of course, the Fringe. For the latter, I saw many shows; only a couple that were really mediocre. In my reviews, I gave an unofficial ★★★★★ to one new spoken word performer who I met for the first time, and another official ★★★★ to a piece performed by someone I’ve been lucky to work with. The star (★) system, however, is not the best form of assessment; in fact, it is flawed in many ways.

This year, I saw two pieces of extremely moving theatre, so different they don’t compare and yet, they tackled a similar subject: prison. The first was a straight forward recitation of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The actor, in his introduction, was genuinely appreciative of his small audience and, after explaining the background of the work, recited the poem from memory over an eerie and atmospheric musical backdrop.

His performance (which might have been a slog without the music) was perfectly timed, and emotionally charged. He had a clear view on the injustice of the death penalty, the horrors of prison life, and the disgrace of incarcerating people who are punished in a way that reflects more on the attitudes of society than the crime that has been committed. Although part of the Free Fringe, there was a ‘bucket-collection’ for Amnesty International. I gave generously. If I’d reviewed the show, I would have given a generous ★★★★★ But the star-system – as I say – is flawed.

Another show that was entirely deserving of ★★★★★ – though a totally different piece – was not received with equal merit or enthusiasm. Shame on those reviewers who didn’t ‘get’ it. Key Change was devised by OpenClasp working directly with women prisoners. The resulting play was then re-developed and toured on the women’s behalf by professional actors. In this way, it was not only an accurate representation of “life inside” but also, a moving depiction of the stories behind what had led these people through the revolving door of the criminal justice system.

 

More important, it has been presented in male prisons to men who may have been part of the other side of these women’s stories. For these men, it was an eye-opener to their own behaviour. It was evident that incarcerating (especially) women who had fallen into difficult situations made their life considerably worse, not least because they were ostracised from their families. As the Guardian review pointed out, those on the ‘outside’ are equally punished: ‘they serve their sentence alongside these women; you just can't see the bars.’

Here are some shocking facts from the programme notes:

The UK has one of the highest rates of women’s imprisonment in Western Europe. Over 50% of women in prison report having suffered domestic abuse; 1 in 3 has suffered sexual abuse, and nearly 40% of women leave prison homeless. Key Change builds on highlighting the women as survivors rather than victims.

This play, although packed with humour and drama, should leave the audience feeling angry about a system that further damages people through punishment rather than – as ought to happen – providing opportunity to challenge and change behaviour. There is an argument that prison focuses helping inmates to re-settle into mainstream society. But, if a prisoner’s experience is of an unsettled life, “re-settling” is a misnomer. The experience of incarceration is deeply traumatising. Prison takes in people who in some way are sick, then sends them out sicker.

My own research into this is for a novel I’ve been writing for some years and is, therefore, slightly out of date. But I unearthed some alarming facts that seem to have changed little. First, is the extent to which mental health problems are prevalent among those in custody, as well as other difficulties such as inadequate health-care, which is strongly focused on medication (let’s not even discuss methadone prescription) and many who are on the autistic spectrum, whether diagnosed or not.

Furthermore, the very act of taking away someone’s liberty subverts Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ which poorly-contrived psychological ‘offender management programmes’ may attempt to address.

But imagine the efficacy of a group-work session on, for example, anger-management for inmates who then have to take their newly-honed skills of cognitive reasoning back to the prison wing. There, the tension and adrenalin is hiked so high, the ‘fight or flight’ response is a no-brainer in both senses. There is nowhere to fly. Unless, of course, one partakes of the readily-available illegal substances: hardly the route to Self-Actualisation.

There are many strange anomalies. For some, whose lives ‘outside’ are so fragmented, the ordered life within the prison estate – structure, regular meals, some exercise, and authoritarian rule – is a boost to their state of health. Young prisoners, in particular, are sent out ‘fitter’ in some ways, but not in a way that equips them for the chaotic life-style to which they return. The authoritarian hierarchies on which they now rely leave them vulnerable, since they know they are at the bottom of society’s pile. As they come to ‘identify’ (psychologically) with their crime and accept this as a raison d’être, the tendency for recidivism is elevated.

For those whose lives were more stable before things fell apart, there are different but equally difficult problems to overcome when trying to re-integrate into mainstream society. The world is different. ‘White-collar criminals,’ or offenders who come from higher social economic backgrounds, can find themselves estranged from their former communities, friends or families. They may find re-employment hard or impossible and, as a result, may lose their homes (if not re-possessed already) since benefits (eventually) cover no more than the interest payments on a mortgage.

In his novel, A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby voices this paradox through one of the four characters in the book who are each driven to suicidal ideation. The character Martin, a minor celebrity who was sent to prison having ‘fallen from grace,’ points out that…

Criminals serve their time, but with all due respect to my friends on B Wing… I would never serve my time…You see, the other inmates would eventually return to their lives of thieving and drugs-dealing and possibly plumbing or roofing or whatever the hell the it was they did before their careers were interrupted: prison would prove to be no impediment, either socially or professionally.

Like all characters in a novel he is flawed – and I’m not going to condone his (fictitious) offence – but his point is interesting. Once a person has endured incarceration, he or she will have been damaged, not helped, by the criminal justice system that sees separation from a world which has eluded their cognitive reasoning as a fit punishment for their crime. While for some, their life as they knew it is ruined; for others, their position as perceived ‘low-life’ is cemented, yet all people are damaged by prison.

 

Bring back the Death Penalty

This is not something I thought I would say on this blog. I say it, of course, ironically. Recently I read a thread on Facebook discussing an article about a man who was involved in a protest that was intended to highlight the poor conditions in prison. It happened that the protester was a prisoner. So the comments were focussed strongly on his crime, rather than his protest. The person who posted the link pointed out that this man was acting, in a way, magnanimously.

By protesting on behalf of his fellow-prisoners, he jeopardised his chances of parole. ‘But,’ said the comments, ‘he was a murderer: he should rot in jail’ – or something on those lines. Hanging the man was not absent from the reactions. Reading the press articles on his crime, it was clear that there was a complex story behind what led to the man’s target offence. Again, I will not condone what he did, but I am extremely wary of what, and how, the newspapers reported it.

I will elaborate upon my views on The Media another time; for now, to return to my point. If prison psychology was or is doing its job, it would find many more causal links than newspapers are even vaguely capable of discussing or exploring. My research into this for my novel has given me far too much grist for this mill; suffice it to say, the prison service, the Government, and – the bigger evil by far – the media, have a lot to answer for. If only the questions were asked. What is prison for?

Prison is about revenge. It’s as simple as that.

Richard Holloway, in Between the Monster and the Saint, rightly points out ‘There will always be people who have turned so utterly against their own kind that they must be permanently separated from their fellows.’ However, the justice systems in both the US and the UK are so far from exploring the (certainly, complex) idea of restorative justice, with their ‘promiscuous use of prison as punishment,’ and ‘increasingly automatic use of imprisonment,’ as Holloway puts it.

This punishment is all about causing pain, not in the “eye for an eye” sense, but through social exclusion, alienation and demonization.

Dostoevsky says. ‘You can judge a society based on how it treats its prisoners.’ The idea that people “pay their debt” for the crime committed is a lie since neither victim nor offender are able to reach a point of restoration or self-actualisation. The debt is not paid – ever. Hornby’s character, Martin, puts it like this: ‘Prison was humiliating terrifying, mind-numbing, savagely destructive of the soul in a way the expression ‘soul-destroying’ can no longer convey.’ Is this really fiction? I doubt it.

 

The story of Oscar Wilde certainly is not fiction, nor is the basis of his Ballad of Reading Gaol – a man who, when Wilde was is prison, was hanged because he 'had killed the one he loved.’ Wilde’s description of the atmosphere in the gaol that day is similar to what I have heard described about a modern prison when news of an inmate completing suicide percolates through the community. Not only anger and despair at a loss of life, but in acknowledgement of the real truth. Prison fails us all.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison-air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

(The Ballad of Reading Gaol)

 

I will end with something Stephen Fry (whose film portrayal of Oscar Wilde cannot, surely, move us to question Justice) said about this great man.

He was a giant brought down, and it was monstrous, really, how he was treated. When he came out of prison he was a wreck, a ruin, and he said, at the very moment in this Christian society, especially when you should be embraced when you have completed your sentence: that, in Britain, is actually when your sentence begins.

So, giving Stephen Fry the last word, here is a clip of his entertaining, informative and sometimes amusing show, on a subject that left the panellists struggling to find anything funny to say.

 

Quite Interesting? Or disgraceful.

 

Trigger Warnings

For those reading this post who have not seen the earlier ‘episodes’ of the story I am telling, here’s a brief résumé. Just over a year ago, I was in a new relationship. My ‘partner’ was attractive, amusing, intelligent, talented, and – so it turned out – a compulsive and unscrupulous liar. Whether people pity me or despair is neither here nor there. She took me in, and I fell for her lies. Yet in my poetry, it was clear that something was awry.

 

Night-Closure

He comes to her softly in the night

placing his life in her trembling hands
– for what cannot, or can be, or might –               

She opens to her ephemeral delight      

and though her heart at best is contraband        
he comes to her softly in the night.        

Though the moment is passed the demands      

of invisible, inarticulate delight 
for what cannot, or can be, or might      

find their place in the sweet indictment

of stepping stones or sinking sands,
he comes to her softly in the night.        

In the opposite window a woman stands

naked and swifting the curtains tight
for what cannot, or can be, or might;                     

he sees a silhouette of dreamt delight

return to his impassioned form again and
he comes to her softly in the night
for what cannot, or can be, or might…

 

After she cruelly dumped me I began to dig for the truth. I realised there were many things I had chosen to ignore. She wore at first a ring on her wedding finger, allegedly to deter the men in the office where we worked who were, she claimed, aggressively coming on to her. The packet of contraceptive pills she showed me when we had sex in her flat I now know were not what she claimed. Why she told me she was pregnant, I will never know. After we first had sex, she asked if I’d had a vasectomy. It was the strangest question: neither normal nor sensible for someone her age.

There was some truth behind the story of her eating disorder, since there was a newspaper article about her and two other young women who had come close to death through anorexia. This is not publically available online; only the picture and caption can be seen. I had no intention of subscribing to that shitty paper. Instead, I accessed the article through my university library, and discovered something significant.

 

The Facts

Given that papers rarely tell the truth
she told The Sun his age was thirty-six.
Needless to say, they didn’t ask for proof,
nor had an inkling this was one of her tricks.

He was, in fact, over 50. Perhaps she feared,

since his years more-than doubled
hers it might look dodgy or a little weird.
From the start, it seems her heart was troubled.

 

I learned that her eating disorder was all about ‘control’ – she attempted to regulate her body-weight through over-dosing on slimming pills. Despite her recovery, she continued to attempt to control other elements of her life. Frankly, I feel sorry for her – and for her husband, who might now be being strung along for another reason. She once told me that, despite never having craved a relationship, she wanted a child, and longed for a daughter called Olivia. I suspect she chose that name to flatter me after reading my ‘Olivia’ poems. How could I not feel flattered?

 

An Artifice

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways - E. B. Browning

                I' benedico il loco e 'l tempo et l'ora - Petrarch

How can I stop myself from loving you?

How many ways can I deny the pleasure?
Could I delete each note, each beat, each measure
until the rhythm of a lie beats true?
There’s not a single day compares to you,
nor gem, nor jewel, nor glint of hidden treasure;
even a season or a life of leisure
curtails what poetry must fail to do.
If I could emulate his love for Laura
that Petrarch could achieve in fourteen lines,
contain it in a sonnet; see it more
a fantasy for love achieved in rhyme,
would I rejoice that day, or yet deplore
a longing for an encore one more time?

 

This (un-named) women said to me, ‘Do I seem like the sort of person who’s only interested in men for their money?’ On reflection, having found out so many other things about her, my answer now

would be, ‘Yes.’ No wonder she didn’t want to commit to a relationship with a penniless poet with a difficult past. Having shared so much of my personal history with her, I had made myself vulnerable. And this woman, who I thought I had been falling in love with, was about to play her dirtiest hand.

 

 

No Apologies

My book of Cautionary tales, Charlotte & The Charlatan, is for ‘adults only.’ These days we have to molly-coddle people with “trigger-warnings” as if we must first apologise for the fact that art, if it is true to itself, might cause a reaction. So it should. The Tales of Charlotte took a sinister turn as I wrote about the strange experience I’d been through. But one story in particular, although fictional, was based more closely than anything that had come out of my liaison with this perfidious woman.

A few days before she withdrew ‘from our intimate relationship,’ she told me that, while on holiday (on her honeymoon, although I didn’t know it) she had had a miscarriage. On reflection, she didn’t seem too disturbed by this; only saddened that she hadn’t been able to make her own choice about the situation. As time passed, I concluded that the pregnancy was probably another of her fantasies.

But then I discovered the biggest shock of all. She excitedly announced on Facebook, with a picture of her 3-month scan taken a year ago today, that she was ‘going to be a mum next March.’ Though I was blocked from her page, she didn’t consider that a friend might see that post. I wasn’t told about this for a while; around the same time the Royal Pregnancy was announced by Buckingham Palace.

At least one may be sure of that child’s paternity (unusually for that family.) But I had good reasons to believe that this child may be a result of my having (as I now see it) unwittingly impregnated her. Or perhaps I was not the only man who she was screwing around with. She was, after all, a highly proficient adulteress.

When I wrote another of my Cautionary Tales – a fictionalised account of this story – and posted it here on this blog, it didn’t go down well with her and her dolted husband. My claim that all my work is “fiction” may seem flimsy, but I strongly maintain my stance. And I refuse to apologise for my art.

 

In Years to Come

You kept it hidden from me; even so

I sensed it long before you knew.
My chief regret: I never saw you grow,

I never saw when you started to show;

never got to paint the nursery blue.
You kept it hidden from me; even so

you told me. Exactly why, I’ll never know.

Left to my imagination, naturally I grew
my chief regret: I never saw you grow.

My banishment from you, a heavy blow,

yet separated, still I felt a part of you:
you kept it hidden from me; even so

I suspected you would bloom and glow

and so as time ticked on, each day renewed
my chief regret: I never saw you grow

or got to choose a name but, even though

I had no choice, I saw it as a gift to you;
you kept it hidden from me, even so.
My chief regret: I never saw him grow.

 

I know that this woman’s husband reads this blog, and may be reading this story which I now conclude. Not that’s it’s all over. Their reaction to the whole debacle was deeply unpleasant. With all the information they had about me, they proceeded to publicise, through social media, emails, and direct contact with my friends and associates, personal details about me that were misleading, defamatory, and potentially damaging. In doing so, they revealed their guilt and complicity. I also suspect – though cannot prove – that he, or they, did other malicious and unspeakable things too.

This man had been cuckolded and wanted revenge. Claiming, on twitter, to be married to an angel, he was/is clearly in denial, or being as deceived by her as I was. I know what it feels like to find the person you love has been fucking someone else. It hurts. I had done nothing but show her tenderness, unflinching love and utmost respect. By attempting to make my life miserable, he has made himself look foolish and pathetic. She is not the ‘angel’ he thinks he married. She is a ruthless liar.

Her mother had not taken her own life – this was just a sick deceit. The email alias she had used when writing to me turned out to be her married name-to-be. I found her vulture picture on someone else’s Facebook – it seems she had plagiarised that, plus the ‘dreamer’ video she made for me, passing it off as her own. She was married in the Church near to where we used to sit and kiss in Princes Street Gardens, although she claimed at the time she’d never been inside. She sent me a picture of flowers for her mother’s funeral: they were in fact her wedding flowers.

The stories about her university, her near-rape when working for a dodgy night-club, the parental abuse she suffered as a child, her brother’s premature death, and a string of other mendacious tales I will never know to be true or not. Her claim to own a sandwich shop in the midlands was inflated: she no more than a night duty-manager at that shop. My hunch is that everything she said was, at best, spurious. The rest, I can put behind me: it is for her (and her deluded husband) to consider whether her invented life is just as much a part of her controlling condition that led her to almost destroy herself with dieting pills.

What I am left with is the knowledge that I will have nothing to do with the child she had towards the end of March this year. It was born within marriage, so legally it belongs to them, whoever the biological father is. There is a poet who, having recently discussed the issue of trigger-warnings in performance poetry, issues an apology before one of her pieces. It is in the style of a letter written from a young person to an anonymous sperm donor. Perhaps, one day, I will receive a similar letter.

 

The Letter-poem

He writes another letter,

but like a poor deluded fool,
it turns into a poem.
With mock poetic sentiment
and dirge he writes
the trite old phrases.
I see you now,
or, I remember you,
or, I imagine you...
And right away, there and then
the love he once thought
true, or pained, or beautiful,
turns into cold emotion,
reminiscence,
or the product of imagination.
It is surely a nonsense,
to make a rhyme, lyric or romance
of something that was only in his head?
He writes it to her,
the long-forgot,
the one who left him,
or the one he never got,
and sated, but not
satisfied by his drivelling words,
he turns to find another in his bed.

 

My fear is that I may make this mistake all over again, like the person in the poem above. Maybe I’m completely mistaken about this strange episode that has taken up five long blog-posts. So be it: I still have my poetry – and a whole lot more. I have many friends who stood by me, and still do.

It could be said this unpleasant story has fuelled my pen, and that the woman who I thought I loved was – though far from amusing – a muse. I have written many unsent-letters, and tales, poems, stories, dramatic sketches and a play based on this upsetting experience. Much of this work has been published, although I will not yet acknowledge where. Despite their campaign to hurt me, this couple (and perhaps their child) have to face the truth. And that will hurt far more. I pity them.

 

Un-titled

It’s not the dying that bothers me

but the death I want to get right.
I don’t want to be hit by a bullet or bus,
or slip peacefully away in the night.
I’d rather be surrounded by friends
and loved ones when it happens,
to cheer my achievements, clap
or commiserate, forgive, make amends.
I want to go gentle into that good night,
not greeted by the kiss of death
but the releasing caress of life laid on mine:
the inquisitive lips of the child I never had;
the intoxicating tongue of unsavoured wine;
the familiar touch of a lover;
palliative hands of a nurse.
I don’t want a frog to wake me into death, or God,
a pope or a judge, a prince, a priest or worse –
I’ll leave all that shit to the living
to haply remember or haply forget.
When it comes, I want to embrace death
as the cherishing earth takes me since that –
and these lines from time to time –
is all that I have, all that I leave
and, in dying, all that I’m giving.

 

As a post-script to this long story, I will post one of the Cautionary Tales that didn’t make it into the final selection for my art-book, Charlotte & The Charlatan.  As Charlotte told the Charlatan: “To your own self be true, and be true to yourself.” For some, however, Truth is a puke-able Feast.

 

 

 

from Charlotte & The Charlatan

              – and other cautionary tales

 

 

Percy the Prowler

 

            “For she was wild and young, and he was old,

              And deemed himself as like to be a cuckold.”

                                                                      The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer.

 

‘He’s on the prowl again,’ the People said.

            Although they gave him all the facts he needed, this information went unheeded by Colin the Constable who, more a paragon of vice than virtue, said that Percy’s behaviour was “not very nice.”

            ‘While he may be causing alarm to some,’ the copper corruptly suggested, ‘there’s no harm done.’

            The People disagreed. ‘Percy has made it his personal aim to maim any woman or man he considers a threat.’

            The Constable said ‘If a person bears a grudge, it’s best not to grudge the bear.’ Percy was more of a bungling bear than a ravenous lion. While he considered himself a stealthy hunter, the People thought him a cunt, a cretin, a fool – and a cuckold to boot. ‘You can’t shoot a man when all he does is prowl,’ said the constable.

            ‘Even if his behaviour’s foul?’ said the People, ‘not to mention the manner of his intention.’ Everyone knew that Percy’d had wool pulled over his eyes regarding family issues. Although it would’ve been wise for him to use discretion, keep stumm, not talk to anyone, instead he chose to stalk with aggression and target those who might expose complicity with his domestic perfidy.

            By posing as a poet (though if you read his rhymes you wouldn’t know it) Percy posted lines expressing hate of perverts, pests, and any poets who met with his distaste.

            ‘His behaviour is disgusting,’ said the People, at a loss to know why P.C. Colin didn’t give a toss. ‘We can’t allow someone to prowl upon people who’ve done this man no wrong.’ United, if not universal, in their quest to put Predatory Percival to rest, the People decided he was simply a pest.

            Their first aim: to assess whom Percy felt needed protected, and from what. A committee was formed, a leader elected. It was quickly agreed his rhymes had bugger-all to do with verse; the lines were utter doggerel or worse, whose only slant was against other poets. It was apparent they had the greater talent.

            ‘He wouldn’t know a half-rhyme, metaphor, or sympathetic fallacy,’ the Chair concluded. ‘His words are governed by his own pathetic jealousy. The only thing the People need protected from is this man’s vitriolic pronouncements which are far from poetic.’

            There was a saying in Charlotteville that “your lies and misdeeds, your foibles and fears and worst nightmares remain if you try to be something you’re not.” While it was clear he wasn’t a poet, Percy wasn’t a lion, or bear, or hunter either. This masquerade was a front; a disguise to evade the Truth that all the People knew, and had known all along. Percy had been cruelly strung along.

            He cloaked himself in denial, thinking his young wife angelic. She was in fact demonic, adorned with claws and tail and horns. Poor Percy the Prowler, returning from his pyrrhic battle, ignoring the Cuckoo’s prattle, failed to spot he also wore a mocking set of horns.

 

 

 

Begged, Borrowed, or Stolen

There has been a bit of a stramash concerning plagiarism of poetry lately. It’s nothing new – poets have pilfered from other poets for eternity, and some of the great poets are impenetrably hard to read simply because the obscure referencing is far too deeply-layered for the unenlightened. But when a poet takes another’s poem and, changing just a few words, publishes the thing as if it is their own work, alarm-bells ring in the offices of intellectual property lawyers.

Sometimes we are influenced by other writers, or hear words or phrases that get so under our skin that we re-use them without realising. The 20^th Century composer, Vaughan Williams, used the term ‘cribbing’ to describe the skill of using another’s musical idea. He said that cribbing was permissible as long as you knew that you were doing it. Music and poetry, however, are rather different forms.

One of my Phone Box Tales, which I performed at the 2013 Fringe, was about a man who spied on (or, more accurately, stalked) a poet and, stealing a bunch of dis-carded drafts of her poems got them published. I stole the idea for that story from a friend who happily permitted me – as long as I acknowledged her in the dedication! But the character in my story knew exactly what he was doing.

Other art-forms present issues when they are stolen or appropriated. A friend (now ex-friend) told me last year that her Masters Degree (in Creative Industries) had been jeopardised by someone who had plagiarised stock-photos for their project – a collaboration between students. My hunch is that it was this friend who had done this, since she only graduated recently, nearly a year after the Degree Show. The university must have given her a second chance. But theft is theft.

When I was doing a Creative Writing course with the O.U. I made the mistake of sending in a poetry assignment with one-too-many poems. The tutor, thankfully, discarded the extraneous poem in her marking. However, it meant that I couldn’t submit that poem in a subsequent assignment because it would have been picked up by the system. It seems that students can’t even plagiarise themselves!

I asked my erstwhile friend why people would want to plagiarise: surely artists and creative types strive for authenticity? She mumbled something about laziness, or hope that they wouldn’t be found out. She never uttered anything stronger, or voiced concern for the other students on her course. Her main beef was that the cost of the course would be wasted.

To be a good artist, or an original creator, you have to develop a voice of your own. To do that, you also have to soak up all available influences by reading, viewing, learning, and listening to everything there is. I get irritated by young poets who think they are teaching kids about poetry by presenting their own take on the form (which is in fact performance art, not poetry) having never studied poetry themselves. Simply passing off the great masters as ‘boring’ is arrogant, and ignorant.

Some of my earliest influences, from school-teachers, continue to feed my poetic voice. I latched onto the pop-poets (the Liverpool Sound) when a middle-school teacher enthused about Roger McGough, but I was 19 before Brian Patten impacted on me. We were fed the War Poets, but it was Pat Barker’s trilogy that brought them alive years later. I got the Sylvia Plath confessional stuff, yet it took decades to understand her universality. As for the Romantics: I’ve barely scratched the surface.

All these – and many other – styles affect and influence me, and if I steal or crib or pilfer from any of my favourite (or even, less-favoured) poets and writers, I make my official apology here. Sometimes, however, I write poems that are nonetheless based quite closely on existing pieces. I think this may be called pastiche. That said, at risk of plagiarism, here is my take on a Roger McGough poem.

 

Dining Solo

 

When Roger McGough bought fish & chips for one,

He felt like a priest in the chip-shop cue.

And it’s true: sometimes, when I sit in a café alone

I wish I had someone to share my pot of tea-for-two.

 

I’ve also learned, on the subject of plagiarising oneself, that there is a tricky problem when submitting work to a publication or competition if it has already appeared on a personal blog or other form of social media. To publish = “make public.” However, one is allowed to use a 10% sample. So here is a wee taster of a story that I am currently sending off for publication:

 

(extract from 'Revenge' - a short story)

 

                We did all the things that new lovers do: the furtive glances led to casual coffees; texting became frequent; we’d meet in favourite places. The glances led to kisses; the rapid-fire texts turned suggestive; the places we met became ‘special’ and – finally – we consummated our relationship in a way that no film can. She was, at first, reticent to commit, but I let it pass. On my side, there was a secrecy to which we were both sworn. My position in the University gave her a frisson; me, a vulnerability.

                As summer lingered, I knew time was on my side. If money can’t buy love, it sure as hell can’t buy time. Once, as we sat on newly-mown grass in the Gardens, she suddenly said: ‘I’ve got a secret.’

                ‘Oh?’ I sat up, curious.

                ‘It’s a biggie,’ she added.

                Quietly pleased to be let into her confidence, I said, ‘Go on.’

                ‘I’ve always secretly wanted to have a child. On my own.’

                ‘On your own?’ I pointed out: ‘Impossible!’

                ‘Not so,’ she explained: ‘You can buy the means off the internet.’

                Perplexed, ‘But…’ Touching the fingers of her left hand I said: ‘You’ve got me.’ Her hair dropped over her eyes as she lowered her head.

                ‘I know,’ she replied, a half-smile breaking on her lips as she moved to kiss me: ‘I know.’

                By autumn, it was over. Not a word, explanation or reason. Not a hint of the season which had warmed our bodies was to be seen. I dropped by her flat one evening, but looking through the bare windows saw the room was cold and empty. She was gone.

 

If it doesn’t find a home, and I have whetted your appetite, I guess I’ll let you have the remaining 90% at some point. Unless someone else steals it from me first. Next month, I will conclude the story of the past four blog-posts and tell the truth behind my poetry.

Secrets and Lies

Anyone reading this blog for the first time might want to read the two preceding posts, since this is the continuation of a long tale. This is a story of secrets, lies, deception, and control. In Anglican liturgy there is a sentence that precedes the rite of confession: ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.’ Avoiding theology, I prefer to use ‘wrong’ rather than sin.

A few months ago I saw a short article on manipulators. I wish I’d read it twelve months ago – although I had no idea at that time that I was being duped by an unscrupulous, frighteningly duplicitous person.

This woman, who I have been at pains not to name or identify, had no concept of wrong. She showed no remorse for the wrong-doings in her life, and was equally dismissive of my difficult past. When I opened up to her and shared elements of my personal history, making myself totally vulnerable, she expressed nothing but unflinching support and respect for me. Expressing her thoughts on love, however, apparently scared her. I never imagined that she had an ulterior motive.

How could I do anything other than believe that she was scared of love? Or was reticent to name it? Like the queen in Suzanne Vega’s song, she closed herself up like a fan. She spoke of a ‘bird in her chest.’ Sometimes the feathers fluttered pleasurably; other times, this thing threatened to angrily burst out of her chest. How could I interpret this? In poetry, of course. Since I assumed she had some knowledge of classical music – she claimed to be giving violin lessons, though I never heard her play – much of my poetry was based on song. One was after a beautiful song by Delius:

 

 

Twilight Answers

With a lowly rumble of chords and a spiky tritone

Delius evokes the forest’s misty floor, from where
a herd-boy lifts his horn and, calling through
the enveloping dark, gives ear to the reply.

He senses through the throbbing harmony

the shepherd in a clearing in the dying light;
his horn-call as it penetrates the canopy
calls out to someone, somewhere, hearing,
as the silent sun goes down.

He knows she’s there, can almost hear

the evening breeze like feathers in her hair.
But in the fading light, with drooping semitone
he, lowering his instrument, loiters yet alone.

The composer conjures another throbbing

expectation and although, in the distance,
the shepherd now hears a yearning sobbing
his lips remain unlicked; retaining his stance
he sees the sun going down.

So Delius repeats the now-familiar strophe
as if to tempt, avoid, or coax catastrophe;
the crackle of twigs in the early glistening
gloam assures the shepherd she is listening

but will not, or cannot, or perhaps, chooses

not to answer. He lifts his horn a final time
and as darkness falls the herd-boy refuses
to hear the piano’s final diminishing  sigh
that saw the sun go down.

 

She was, it seemed, creative. I’d seen some of her photography when idly googling her name on the internet. She made films too, apparently. She sent me a short piece which she’d put together, based on a poem. In the film-captions, she credited herself as the writer, dedicated it to me, and put the name of the voice-over – a university colleague. For this reason, I cannot post the film on here. But I can put a link to the film which she’d taken, cropping the ending and passing it off as her own.

 

Morning, Noon, and Night

The cuckoo, according to the rhyme,

allegedly changes its tune over time.
As a chick, it starts out with a semitone;
a tentative chirp in its burrowed home,
then expands to a whole-note interval
to celebrate its fledgling festival.
It’s not long before the minor-third
becomes the adolescent bird,
then, brighter still, comes major next
as the cuckoo attempts to flee the nest.
As the interval grows ever-wider,
the cuckoo finds it increasingly harder
to establish itself with its broken voice,
and nature gives it little choice
but to steal another’s nest (or lover)
and repeat the same tune over and over.

 

During this time, the cuckoo kept on cropping up in my poetry. I had no idea that this woman who I was becoming more and more besotted with was not only too good to be true, but was stealing more than other birds’ nests. It would be a matter of weeks that the cuckoo’s call, with its ominous warning, would be heard, too late. ‘Oh, bird of fear, unpleasing to the married ear,’ as Shakespeare says. Having shared much of the poetry I was writing, my ‘girlfriend’ (not that I was able to call her that) sent me a picture that she had been working on. It was a vulture: sinister and macabre.

If this was the bird that fluttered inside her chest, there really was something strange going on. But, as I said in my previous post, there was also something far more important developing deep inside her. Then, however, at a crucial point in our relationship something shocking happened. Despite being estranged from her family whose religious convictions she did not share, my ‘new-love’ was dealt a strange blow. Her mother, allegedly prone to extreme mental ill-health, took her own life.

Around this time, my parents were due to visit me to hear a poetry reading I was giving at the National Library. I wanted to introduce them to the new person in my life. Unfortunately, she had to travel to England for her mother’s funeral. Seemingly in shock (but coping admirably) she ended up organising everything for the funeral – she even sent me pictures of all the flowers she’d bought.

She had booked a holiday with friends, due to leave the day after the funeral. I’d planned a trip to England too, so this meant a brief separation. First, we had to discuss the tricky issue of her pregnancy. We agreed, given the early stage of our relationship, that we were not ready to have a child in our lives. My fear that this bombshell would seriously undermine what was going on between us was unfounded. She professed her love for me; we made love (if only that was the true term) for hours and then, she departed for the funeral/holiday.

During that holiday, only a few weeks into the pregnancy, she had a miscarriage. I was hundreds of miles away, and could not have felt further from the person (so I thought) I loved. Then a bigger bombshell dropped. After many “wish you were here”-type texts from her holiday destination in the Western Isles, I received the message that no-one in love wants to hear. She wanted to withdraw from our intimate relationship.  

 

The Cuckoo and The Nightingale

 

                And the King…

                harkened to the Nightingale’s sorrowfulness

                ’til all his own was gone.

                                                - Walter De La Mare

 

Handel penned an organ conversation

between two lonely, disparate birds.
The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,
though seldom seen or heard together,
met in a Garden where a King once walked.
Though tentative at first, they talked and talked.

‘Your song is sad,’ the Cuckoo said: ‘Why so?’

The Nightingale recited melodies
relating a thousand sorry stories
of love lost, slighted, or unrequited;
of Knights-at-arms, and shepherds-in-thrall
to merciless, mendacious maidens;
of Cypress trees and a lonely King
with unexplained sadness; and willows weeping.

The Cuckoo was appalled at how

the Nightingale regaled the sadnesses
that filled the early evening air.
While she cuckoo’d her ostinato
Nightingale whistled and trilled,
and repeated his tune in a modulation.
Cuckoo continued her cliché, rejoicing
in all that was unpleasing to her friend.

‘You’re a funny little bird,’ said Cuckoo.

‘All your jargon sings of sorrowfulness
and yet you pepper it with turns and trills
and ornaments.’

                                ‘I beg your pardon,’

requested Nightingale. ‘My song goes on
while yours – little more than a cheap thrill –
is spent by June or – at latest – July.’

‘That may be true, Cuckoo replied,’

since I must fly the nest. I refuse
to waste my song in elaborate catches. I
adapt my interval to fit whatever music matches.
You move in modulation while I cadence;
your sequential passages are smart,
but I provide a satisfying answer
without elaboration of intellect or heart.

The Nightingale noticed a flaw in the argument.

‘I hear that basic tune you pipe without
emotion, simplistic. While you augment
your vocals I remain bel canto.

                                                ‘You fantasize,’

accused Cuckoo, ‘that I am common and stupid.
Though classically trained you’d be wise
to remember the potency of cheap music.’

At this point Nightingale halted his song,

although neither was out of turn. Cuckoo, however,
had seen her chance and focussed her notes on a
trysting couple who met in the Garden.
Nightingale, silent, observed as the courting
occurred and the new lovers kissed.
The Cuckoo transgressed; her melody turned
from melancholic minor third to a perfect fourth.

Nightingale chirruped and warned them

of this cheeky bird’s deceit. But cuckoos
never give a fuck whose hearts are broken,
or who may be tricked by a fleeting melody.
While Nightingale revelled in bitter malady
and analysed every single conversation,
Cuckoo adapted to whatever was wanted
and summed up the simple sexual situation.

But Nightingale, noticing that Cuckoo’s notes

were (like the lovers) already drifting apart,
introduced a tone that some describe as ‘blue.’
Cuckoo, completing the movement, instigated
a musical rendition of “I love you”
(contestable, of course) at which
the conversation of the lovers was through.
However, the birds still had to settle a score.

Said Nightingale: ‘You started with a minor third,

but by the end a major fifth was heard.’

                                                 ‘I know,’

concurred Cuckoo, ‘But don’t imagine I don’t
feel guilty myself. Most of the lovers I court
fall apart and end up unhappy as yours.
All I do is laugh and jest and then
fly off again in search of another nest – 
in fruitless pursuit of love and happiness.’

As Nightingale half-listened she went on:

‘My sorrowfulness is never, ever gone.
While I am stuck in perfidious, invincible spring,
your sorrow (or the lovers’ you console) is done.’
Nightingale noticed Cuckoo had changed her tune.
‘I know,’ said cuckoo, sadly. ‘It’s what I do.’
So Nightingale continued his melancholy song,
while Cuckoo said again: ‘I know. It’s what I do.’

 

To say I was devastated understates the damage she had intended to cause me. Something was seriously wrong. The person I had been in an intimate and ecstatic relationship with for several months had dumped me by text, blocked me from Facebook, and deleted her twitter. It was at this point that the elaborate web of deceit that she had strung me along with began to unravel.

 

Jigsaw

               

I tried to piece together

   the puzzle of our love.

But you’d placed your

  pieces upside down.

 

You claimed we

   didn’t fit together.

Only when you left

   did I begin to see

 

the fuller picture

    and the missing

piece you took

   away with you

 

After she abruptly and cruelly ended our relationship, I began to dig for clues. The question that plagued me was: why did she do this? I wanted to get to the bottom of it – to know the truth. As Hannah Arendt said, ‘there is only one truth, but it is alive, and so has a constantly changing face.’ I was in a desperate state of heart-break and confusion, and at that stage, still concerned for her. After all, she had just lost the child that we had supposedly created. But was this even true?

In my desperation, I went to her flat to deliver a poem in person. I’d printed it out on tiny slips of thin paper, stitched together with a feather. It was originally titled with her surname which, so she told me, meant ‘little bird.’ I’m sure that, whatever her own understanding of truth, she had been as taken in by her own mendacity as I had been deceived. But I had also managed to deceive myself, as I discovered when I knocked at her door.

 

Little Bird

 

Against all probability
and expectations of weather,
I discovered a fancy, a charm:
a tiny, exquisite feather.

I gave it to my loved one
but she wasn’t that impressed.
She said she felt it flutter deep
inside her delicate chest.
 
As it grew against her wishes
with teasing and with tickling
the thing became a little bird
with uncontrollable wings.
 
My love was, first, beguiled
but soon it turned into confusion,
for a single lucky feather
quickly grew into profusion.
 
It would, she knew, develop
from fledgling to fully-grown;
she felt it was far more
than just a feather I had sown.
 
In time the bird grew desperate,
and flapped and pecked and clawed.
It neither sang nor carolled,
nor chirped nor karked nor cawed.
 
It was as if the bird alive
was trapped inside a cage;
with no way of escape it flapped
in frantic, pointless rage.
 
I asked, what type of bird is this:
a pigeon or a dove?
A cuckoo or a nightingale;
a bird of prey or love?
 
She couldn’t say at first but then
declared it was a vulture.
It wasn’t quite what I had wished-
for in this wingéd creature.
 
She feared its wings would open wide
and break out of her frame.
Consoling her with soothing words –
she panicked just the same –
 
I said, this bird is real, I know:
a creature of our making.
Embrace it, place it in your heart:
it is yours for the taking.
 
But if she took, I’ll never know,
for the feather faded away.
The bird, disturbed, disappeared
without word in a single day.
 
It was at the hottest time of the year
that we came together as one.
But, as Icarus was mortal, we also
had flown too close to the sun.
 
The charm I gave my love was
little more than a waxen feather.
And as the sun went down, the bird
melted and slid right out of her.

Against all possibility,
in meaning beyond my verse
I discovered how a blessing
quickly turns into a curse.

 

If you have been following this story in the previous posts on this blog, you will know that I once saw her with a grey-haired man, about whom I knew nothing since she was careful not to reveal his existence to me. I found a link between him and her on Facebook.  She claimed he was one of her ‘best friends in the world.’ Their picture said otherwise. This man answered the door. I then learned that she hadn’t been attending her mother’s funeral two Saturdays before, as she had told me.

This man, a so-called best friend, was my ex-lover’s new husband. Her mother had attended their wedding on the day she was supposedly being laid to rest. As secrets turned to lies, at first I thought there must be some confusion. But when the penny dropped with a loud clang, I told this man exactly what had been going on. Understandably, he asked me to leave. And as I did, I swear I heard the cuckoo’s mocking call.

 

If I could leave this story here, I would.