I sometimes wonder
whether this blog is in breach of the Trades Descriptions Act. It’s billed as ‘Phil
The Bard’ but there’s often very little ‘bardic’ on it – (‘I am Taliesin ...’).
Even the header photo is
misleading. My daughter set it up and took it. Much as I appreciated her
trouble, there are inaccuracies.
For a kick-off I never,
ever, ever, ever (did I say ‘ever’?) drink beer from a can. It’d more likely to
be a bottle-conditioned ale. My daughter, bless her, found an empty bottle of Stout
that my wife had used in cooking. She did drink Stout from cans, my wife, when
the kids were babies. It helped with the lactation. But that’s too much
information. If I’m going to drink Stout I’ll have it from hand-pumps down at
my local or else from a bottle. Never from a can. Same goes for other ales.
So, this is a misleading
blog. A bardic blog with few poems on it. Well, I’m about to rectify that as I’ve
had seven poems published in recent weeks. It’s like buses. You don’t get one
for ages and then they all come at once. I’m pleased to say that I’ve had six
in the latest edition of Iota (Iota 91) and one in Planet, the Welsh
Internationalist Magazine. This is the first time I’ve made it into Iota and to
have all six submissions accepted is very gratifying. It’s the second time I’ve
been in Planet. What a great magazine it is.
What I’ll do is
reproduce one of the published poems here and put it along with the rest on one
of the side links should anyone be kind enough to want to read them.
Or you can read them here and here.
Or you can read them here and here.
If you do, then pray let
me know what you think. We bardic types like that. We’re all ego. We’d like to
think it’s art.
The Gas Fridge
What else
in 1980s bedsit land
but 1960s
furniture? Earlier even.
Items I
had not seen since pre-fab
parlours,
great aunts' kitchens.
Then, unexpectedly,
where I
prepared for finals
and for
unemployment, a gas fridge.
Half the
height of ours at home,
it fed,
like cooker and gas fire,
on the
50p coins I pressed and turned
into the
meter every second day.
It showed
its life by a pilot-light,
blue and
awkward behind its back.
To ignite
it I would stoop and drop
match
after lighted match
down its
fissured tube, hope
that they
would reach and catch
before
they fizzled out.
I could
waste half a precious box
before I
found the knack.
Who would
have thought
that
Einstein patented the spell
that
drove ammonia around
those
cooling pipes without a sound?
A pity
then no patent way
to keep
the pilot light from going out
in Mrs
Hossey's redbrick bedsits.
'No blacks, lovey, no coloureds.'
Just two
pints of Stones
in The
Little Park on my 21st
birthday.
The Sheffield drifting
in the
South Atlantic, charred
and
stricken. Boys my own age
between
her decks, burning.
--
