Stripes

This day's topic, STRIPES, takes me to my earliest scanning and reading of comics, and the military characters featured there.

STRIPES always signified AUTHORITY, and even the lowliest member of a Force who carried stripes on his sleeve (always men "back then") was mocked and rather mistrusted and disliked by "ordinary" soldiers, sailors and airmen.

As my father had risen to the rank of Warrant Officer First Class in the RAF, and would have worn insignia, though I never saw him in uniform, I did not go along with the common certainty that anyone with stripes must be a bastard - I preferred to believe that "earning your stripes" is necessary to gain respect in any walk of life.

So, I should like to consider what it means to "earn one's stripes" in poetry.

I guess that for most of us, being encouraged to "read aloud" in infant and junior school may well be our first encounter with poems, and rhyming and regular rhythm are probably typical characteristics.  A large number of pupils hate this as they fear being mocked for mispronunciations or stumbles, and never progress to featuring at Spoken Word activities where memorising by heart is often required.
To me this progression enabled me to gain great enjoyment from acting in plays and performing in Public Speaking Contests.

It is not usually until we join a workforce that ease in self-presentation becomes valued and used daily.  And this is especially so if one writes poetry and is expected to "perform" it at, for instance, Open Mic. events.

The best form of practice is "doing it", and finding a sympathetic audience in your locality has always been the best form of learning - initially it is more about learning to overcome your own trepidation, and that can be overcome through practice to your long-suffering partner or even the cat, than about earning prolonged applause.  

Practise the rhythm of your delivery.  

Where should an emphasis be made?  

When does the flow require a pause?  

Make your audience respond to you by making eye-contact.

All of this normally follows having probably several of your poems published preferably in different poetry magazines to prove to yourself that your work can appeal to quite different editorial tastes.

Publication helps you to "earn your stripes", but an audience "in the flesh" applauding your work seems to be regarded as much more of an accolade in 2015.

Numerous online outlets are also available to you - Seek; Find; Contribute.

Best of Good Fortune in all your poetic endeavours.

Christo 

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Zen Stripes

Unlike Magical Mr Mistoffelees, I couldn't produce a cat poem right out of the poetical hat to order the other week (so ended up writing about catsup instead); but here, finally, is my cat blog.

If we have to be categorised as cat people or dogmatised as dog people, then I am most definitely of the former and have been owned  by several very fine felines in my time.

The domestic moggy was probably first brought to these (British) shores from the eastern Mediterranean by Phoenician sailors. Cat skeletons have been found in pre-Roman Iron Age hill-forts in southern England dating back to 300 BC. It is likely they were originally ships' cats, protecting the grain that the Phoenicians brought to Britain from the ravages of mice on the long voyage.

Cats quickly became prized for their rat- and mouse-catching skills. According to 10th century documents, a newborn kitten was valued at one penny, the same as a piglet or a lamb; and the price of an adult she-cat was four pence, making her as valuable as a full-grown sheep or goat. In divorce cases, the husband had the right to take one cat from the household, but any others belonged to the wife. There were also quite hefty fines for killing a cat.

As well as keeping granaries free of mice, cats also helped to slow the progress of various waves of rat-borne plagues as they swept across Europe from the 6th century onwards, though being susceptible to bubonic plague themselves, cats will also have died in huge numbers.

In medieval times, they got some bad press from the Roman Catholic church which sanctioned the maiming and killing of cats on the grounds that they might be witches in disguise, but they survived such persecutions and in a more enlightened age cats have become firmly established as household pets.

This is the story of one such...

Zen was a marbled grey tabby. He had the most beautiful fur of any cat I've had the pleasure to have known. Tabby, to describe a cat with a striped coat, ultimately derives via the old French word atabis (meaning 'striped'), from the ancient town of Attabiy near Baghdad, which was famed for its production of a very stylish striped cloth. Tabby first found its way into common English parlance in the 17th century.

As well as being striped, Zen was remarkably sociable and very wise. He was born in a museum in the middle of a busy London roundabout, not the safest of places for a cat to grow up; so he was dropped into my life (literally) as a present from my somewhat inebriated housemate Bernadette, deposited from within the confines of her jacket as a newly-weaned kitten onto my bed at two o'clock on the morning of my 25th birthday. We lived in a mews house (no pun intended) in Camden, in a quiet cul-de-sac untroubled by the constant flow of traffic, so young Zen was able to explore the world at leisure. We only had a front-door (no rear garden) and that didn't feature a cat-flap as planning regulations wouldn't permit it, so Zen had to ask to go out or come in and spent most of every day roaming his locale. This included some big old gardens with orchards, various workshops (as is often the case in London mews) and  a couple of warehouses. I'm sure he found mice a-plenty, though he never brought them home. He would sleep on the end of my bed at night, would be waiting for me on the wall at the end of the street when I came home from work each evening and would often trot beside us to the local pub in summer and curl up under the table in a manner that would put many a dog to shame. His favourite tipple was water with a dash of vinegar and he had a taste for olives.

I used to talk to Zen a lot and he would commune with me after his fashion. Our views on life, love, politics and the pleasure of a tasty herring were very similar. Although he has been gone for years, I miss his calm presence and graceful poise...

Zen
Scrutable stripeling,
rapt in contemplation
of a sparrow bush,
the soundless brush
of one tail waving
denotes
complete absorption.

Hsu is a happy hexagram -
K'an above with
Ch'ien below
betokens
waiting, nourishment.

True to your essential being,
strength lies in patience,
perseverance brings good fortune.
The gift of food
comes in its own time.

Lucky cat,
your dish
already holds a brisling
if you did but know.
Sparrows fly.


Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-)

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Have you earned yours?

Society. We're a funny bunch aren't we?! Making rules about what is acceptable and what isn't. When it comes to laws that's fine ... we need them to structure our society with what is right and wrong, but dictating what a person should look like?  No. We are surrounded by images every day of super thin and airbrushed models dictating silently that we should aspire to be like them. Plastic looking, with trowelled on make-up, plumped lips, perky bosoms, tan, hair extensions, false nails and lashes, threaded eyebrows impossible high and thin. Collagen, botox, teeth whitening, fake tanning (if they're sensible), plastic surgery, implants, waxed to beyond an inch of their lives. They are the ideal, the look to be achieved.

Anything less, well .... Why though? Tell me why I should even try and look like a blow-up doll! I'd much rather look like me thanks! But that's what it's all about isn't it? Looking "good" for the opposite sex. Those magazines which began this perpetuation of how a woman should look were started by men for men. I fully appreciate that I sound a complete feminist at the moment, revelling in my rights to vote or burn my bra if I so wish, but that is not what I am trying to portray. That is not me. Yes, I enjoy the freedoms that this era, this country brings and I appreciate them wholeheartedly. But what I am truly saying is this .... we are each individual. It would be an impossibility for all women to try and look like that and frankly, why would they want to? So, I embrace all that I am. I take pride in my curves and rolls. I accept that not all men are alike. I know that in my heart (and outside too) I am beautiful in my own way. I am me ... and I'm ok with that!


Stripes earned ... not bought:

I wear my map of life
in glorious 3D and technicolour.
Each traceable blue vein,
laughter or frown line,
silver stretch mark or 
wiry white hair ...
they plot the paths
I have taken thus far.
Every mole and freckle,
dimple and pock,
fat pocket and scar,
symbolise each rise and fall,
high and all time low,
mountain and trough,
that this wonderful,
marvellous body
has endured.
I earned my tiger stripes
and I wear them
with goddamn pride ...
they are ME!!


Thanks for reading! ;-) x

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Stripes

I have to admit that I was stuck. The theme this week is ‘stripes’ and the only thing that sprung to mind was the uniforms given to internees at concentration camps during the holocaust.  The acclaimed novel, Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was written in 2006 by Irish novelist John Boyne, who recalls that unlike the months of planning devoted to his other books, he wrote the entire first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end.  He obviously had something that needed to be said. As of March 2010, the novel had sold more than five million copies around the world and reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as in the UK, Ireland and Australia. The film of the book was released in 2008.    

My first sojourn into serious writing was while studying for an Open College Network ‘B’ Unit in creative writing. We were very lucky, the final exam was a ‘take home piece’ – we were given a selection of photographs and instructed to write a poem, a short story or a dramatic monologue. I went straight into the library, found a desk and wrote a poem about one photograph. It was a curiosity-type, shop window.  I reeled the first draft off in a round an hour and left for home feeling very pleased with myself. Perhaps another hour of refining would secure the exam and I could email it in. That would have been great.  Unfortunately, I looked again at the other photographs and when I looked at one in particular my mind began to take over.  The image would not leave me alone.

 

 It was a black and white still of some gentlemen’s coats and hats, hanging on pegs in the vestibule (hallway) of a slightly unloved terraced house. It was an unremarkable photograph but it took me on a five day journey into the truth about Bergen- Belsen. I wrote a dramatic monologue, researching not only the statements of eye witnesses to the liberation of the camp but preserved memories from conversations, over thirty years earlier, with a colleague who became a lay–preacher following his own experience as a young soldier, entering the camp in 1945.

Bergen -Belsen was not a death camp. Prisoners were not sent there to be gassed.  Many were not Jewish: They were dissidents. Dissenting voices, just like ours. They were writers, academics, intellectuals, musicians, poets.  They were interred because they disagreed with the Nazi government and were unafraid to speak out. A former army garrison, meant to house 1,000 became a disease ridden pit of death, packed with over 60,000 prisoners, all held without crime.  It was also a repository for displaced Hungarian Jews and Russian POW’s. Over 35,000 innocent people died at Belsen through typhus, dysentery or starvation,  shortly before or after liberation. Those who survived were found living and eating with 10,000 unburied dead.  The camp was raised to the ground after liberation but a stone memorial now stands, where the gates to hell once opened.  

Stripes can be wonderful.  I should think of the seaside at Blackpool, of vivid coloured sticks of rock, striped deckchairs, donkey rides, buckets and spades.  I had that kind of wonderful childhood.  I still live in Blackpool but at first mention of stripes, the image that stands out for me is of the striped uniform used to degrade my fellow human beings.  My hope is, that if we always remember those terrible crimes against humanity that our children and our children’s children will find a way to understand each other, to accept our differences and to live together live in peace.  

 

 

 

 A person

I see your face,

once full of life, now desperation.
Eyes deep in fearful sockets,
cheeks tracked by tearful deprivation. 

I see your suit,

stained sour with degradation.

Poor poisoned weeds,

browning from their dehydration.

I see your limbs,

protruding from striped humiliation,
camouflaged against your prison bars,
you are translucent in emaciation. 

You disappeared inside your cover,

my brother, sister, friend

and I declare with all I have that’s human, 

this hate must end.

 

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Adele

 

 

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