Mad Hatters

Good evening readers. Apologies for the late post today, I've been out seeking inspiration from the wild.
When it comes to the theme of Mad Hatters I think we've about covered all the angles this week. After a triumphant evening last Friday at the Number 5 I think it is fair to say that the standard of poetry in the group is excelling and so, with me giving up rhyme for lent, I've found writing for today extremely difficult.
Instead then, I've got a poem I wrote last week- just before pancake day as it happens. It is a piece based loosely on the act of returning to a school you've been to before and seeing just how wild kids have become in the modern day. I've been doing a lot of this lately, at various schools across the town and, if I'm honest, I'm not sure that the direction is the one I would have chosen for some of these schools. They don't seem to be what they were perhaps, in those rose-tinted days of youth we all hold dear, although I'm sure that is just my reaction on being out of the system too long. Teachers still care just as much for students as they always did and schools strive for excellence on increasingly limited funds- there will always be holes in the net for people to fall through. Without further adieu then, a poem. Next week I'll be all out of fresh rhyming poetry so watch this space to see where the new direction will take me. 

Mad Hatters.

The kids dance around in the corridors

They're moonwalking a way out of class
They see no chance for staying on

So they're taking their childhoods back

They're bolting their way out over the field
Huddling in groups outside shops
They're throwing away an education
Before knowing what chances they've got

Thrown down a challenging gauntlet
Special measures to give them more chance
You can bring in marines for discipline

But these children just want to dance

They're not asking for help with their homework
They're not turning up for their DTs
The rules left this place a long time ago

All those standards that helped to school me

Now I'm back and I feel I'm surveying
A great educational shift
I fail to see how academy status

Is giving these kids any lift

Some might put it all down to ambition
And claim home life pays such a big part

When a kid says his mum doesn't love him
It becomes a real matter of heart.

So the next time they're talking academies
Just think how the morale there might change
Half these kids just need love, that is more than enough
Even bad teachers give that in spades

Teach them life isn't rounding off edges
Rather building on strengths that are there
Let's make confident people, all created equal
Because after this place, life's not fair.

Thanks for reading, 

S. 

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Unusual Behavour?

Ok, the Mad Hatter is a little strange to say the least, but let's face it, we all have our moments ......

This week (and next) is all about appointments for me.  So many in fact, that I feel like I'm losing my mind trying to remember where on earth I'm supposed to be and when.  I've written them all down on my trusty calendar, made additional reminders on my phone, yet I still managed to forget one of them!  My brain appears to have gone on strike for the last month to six weeks, and I'm struggling to keep it under check. It also is making things hard when it comes to writing. For the most part, it has been like trying to work without any tools whatsoever, then teasingly offering a little nugget to keep me happy once in a blue moon.

Also, strangely (or perhaps not), I've been listening to the Queen track "I'm going slightly mad".  Hmmmmm.

But I digress, back to the theme for this week. I have managed to get something down on paper, but it needs work, a lot of work. Being ever critical, it just doesn't seem to flow for me.  Let me know what you think:


An Insane Fashion Item:

The Mercury is rising
Tainting blood and twisting grey
Poisonous thoughts meld
Amid a jumble of incoherence.
Snug band crowning insanity
Cocked and looking rather fine
I doff mine own to the Gent who can carry it off
No mean feat at that cost.

So why is a Raven like a writing desk?



Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts in the comments box below.  ;-)

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The Difficulty of Finding...

I have been struggling to write for too many months now. I can just about manage a few sentences, a list of observations, the odd scribble about last night's dream, but the voice of poetry evades me.

I did find it for a moment - the early hours of Saturday morning brought poetic chorus through the darkness, as if morning was finally going to dawn. I wrote the first nine words of a line and they felt like poetry, tasted like poetry. Those nine words - which seemed to be just the right words, in the right order - were like a fix. My boyfriend watched as my eyes lit and my fingers tapped out rhythm on the air. My lips made the shapes of those nine words over and over again, producing a whisper to coax my ear and mind into uncovering another line.

On parts of the track the rain has gathered,

clear and still in mud hollows

clear and still and deep in the mud dirt.

Lakes that give the forest to us again

again. As if a dream, we are giants

as if it were a dream and we were giants

able to pick hundred year old

able to pluck ancient oaks firs from the water like reeds.

Eventually all gained momentum ceased as the stanza found its end. It had ended where I hadn't anticipated or expected. This stanza, which had been thought of as an opening, now felt more like a dead-end, like I had written myself into a corner and couldn't quite figure out how to write myself back out.

I left the poetry puzzle attached to the pad. Occasionally, throughout Saturday afternoon, I glanced at the words to check if I still liked them.

As night approached, my cat came fumbling in from the window, patrolled the perimeter of the lounge before circling inwards and stepping his damp paws across the laptop and then the paper pad.            I liked the way he caused a few of the words to have inky atmospheres - as if each were a solitary planet within a universe I still fail to truly comprehend.

*          *          *

There is a turbulence between mind and creativity. At some point the poetry puzzle was torn from the pad, squeezed between clenched hands until it was compact and circular.

I thought it had been taken by the bin men.          But it hadn't.

This morning when I found the yellow paper orb tucked behind a bookend it made me think how love will always try its hardest to preserve. I wondered how much else might have been saved if love had been there longer - imagined a mountain built from thrown away paper.

Over time, something begins to accumulate - like mercury within the bodies of hat makers - and the challenge is in remembering

                                                                       who

                                                                              am

                                                                                     I

Thank you for reading,

Lara 

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