My subject matter gets ever more ordinary!  My last poem was centred on nakedness in a public changing room and this present one is about crumbs!
     This too is related to my daily swimming experience, but this time out of the changing room and into the cafe for my obligatory cup of tea.  With the tea (depending on who is making it) I get a couple of those little foil wrapped biscuits that are part of the cup of tea experience.  I tuck one of the biscuits into the side pocket of my sports bag for later use as a base for my home made yogurt, while the other is a treat that I allow myself.  It was the breaking of this little biscuit that prompted the poem.
     I suppose in some ways this is a poem about the writing of a poem, a meta-poem, because while having my cup of tea I try and write something in a small 9 x 14 cm notebook that I have with me at all times.  what I write in this book is usual banal in the extreme, something about the weather or what I am going to do, or more often something I have not done.  But the idea of the writing is to write something, anything, in the hope that a free flow of words might bring something to the surface which can be useful for a poem.  This works sometimes.  Other times, it is just pages of irrelevance.
     For some reason, after the biscuit broke as I was taking it out of its foil wrapper and half the thing bounced on the page on which I was writing, instead of brushing the tiny crumbs away I just looked at them.  Part of me was simply resting after a particularly impressive catch to stop the floorward half of the biscuit from reaching its target, but the other part was thinking about bits and pieces that get caught in the pages of books and are discovered later.  Receipts used as bookmarks, torn pieces of paper, references, comments, newspaper, insects, leaves, photographs, sand, dirt, blood, phone numbers, cloth, ribbon, food, a tiny shell, book marks, money, cards - those are just some of the things that I can remember finding.  There are also the more poignant items when you find something of a parent or a grandparent inside a book that was once theirs.  Or indeed of friends who are still very much alive but far away.
     Whatever the reason for my musing, I decided to leave the crumbs there and wonder if I would ever go back and if I did would I remember leaving them there for me to remember that I left them for that purpose.  So to speak!
     As I say in the poem,
               Should I return,
               as, having written this, I might,
                                        I am conscious that I am deliberately making something out of nothing, but it is also a playing with a concept of memory.
     I am well aware that when I re-visit some of my writing, I read it almost as a stranger - though an oddly prescient one.  Although I cannot directly and precisely relate to all the exact circumstances of the production of each piece of writing, I am certainly strangely in sympathy with the writer!
     I always enjoy experiencing,
               what another me laid down
               for future memory

Crevice crumbs

They’ll stay where pages meet.

Detritus, smaller than a nit.

Memorials to where a biscuit broke,

fell, bounced, but did not hit the floor,

but left some shattered bits to

trail along the notebook’s seam.

Slight specs, like foxing,

on the newly filled-in page.

I turn that page

and run my nail along the crease.

I feel a tiny crunch.

And start another leaf.

This notebook waits for distant eyes

to come back through and glean

the words that have been missed,

that could, perhaps, feed thought anew.

Should I return,

as, having written this, I might,

will I observe small rubble

from a crumbled rusk

and struggle to recall

why it’s still there?

Or turn the pages, losing

what another me laid down

for future memory?

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The original idea for this poem came from an exchange of views about the use of the word 'bum' in another of my poems called 'Misophonia'.  The discussion caused me to cut the word and find another way to say what I originally said.  And there it might have ended, but for the fact that, every day I go to the local pool and complete my metric mile of 60 lengths of the pool and in changing in the communal changing room, I realised that I get to see a lot of bums!  I was also reminded of Bismark's comment that, "I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring."  To be frank, most men (going on my experience of changing rooms) are not improved by nakedness; most of us do not have the ability to remove clothing and become 'Nude' rather than just starkly naked!

     The following poem might have been kickstarted by my use of a vulgar word, but then I wondered, after seeing the bottom of the man in the poem, how many times and in what ways I could use the synonyms for rear-end in a piece of short writing.

     As you will see from the poem, the writing became something more and perhaps less than that.  Or just different.  Anyway, the poem is a response to general nakedness rather than a specific piece of flesh, though the detail is actual!

     I debated about this poem being something for general consumption, rather than a personal piece of writing attempting to write within verbal limits, but eventually, after a number of edits I felt that this was something which could benefit from wider circulation.

     In my blog Cardiff to Catalonia (Cardifftocatalonia.blogspot.com) I speculated about how much time I have spent in swimming pools and came to the conclusion that 2 seconds out of every minute of my life, waking and sleeping, is spent swimming!  This is a significant chunk, and it is therefore not surprising that a number of my poems are related in some way to the pool and my progress through it.  That being said, I aways hope that I manage to point to something beyond the everyday quality of the subject matter.

     I am sure that, even with the revisions that I have already made to the poem when it was first written, this is one of those pieces of writing which will nag at me and encourage further edits!

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring. Otto von Bismarck
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/otto_von_bismarck_149423

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring. Otto von Bismarck
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/otto_von_bismarck_149423

Changing Room Scenery

His face was nondescript,

his body masked inside unstructured clothes,

a short and stocky man.

I’m not much good at guessing years -

but well beyond the boyish stage.

His baggy shorts came off

and all his clothes,

to show a belly just a bit too big,

about to overhang.  And,

set against the front, the back:

a bubble butt, absurdly pert,

coquettish, almost feminine,

with faded, lightish-blue tattoos

cut in on either cheek.

His finest feature saved for

changing room inconsequence!

For uninvolved, indifferent male eyes!

But, all men look, you know.

We’re none of us so confident

comparisons can be ignored

without defensive thoughts.

How many squat thrusts

have to be endured

to mould such buns? 

And why?  For whom?

A tattooed arse! 

The remnant of a reckless youth?

Bravado?  Invitation?  Threat?

For some,

the body’s a construction site

where the unsettled architect

must form, and form again the

seagulls’ wings of mound and dip,

of blood and muscle, sinew, sweat -

to show that fullness and concavity

can say so little, and so much.

 

Having showered after exercise, one feels bright and clean and fully justified in having a celebratory cup of tea - especially tea made to my specific requirements by the well-trained staff in my local swimming pool's cafe.
     This isn't Britain and so, in spite of it being late-ish November, it is perfectly possible to sit outside in shirt sleeves and soak up the sun and scribble a few notes for possible write-up later.
     This idyllic picture is only spoilt by the number of unseasonable flies that seem to relish freshly washed skin in the same way that I enjoy my tea!  Frankly, I feel cheated.  We are brought up to regard flies with a certain loathing as disgusting insects that feed on filth and dissolve that filth with the enzymes in their own vomit which they then suck up.  So why is the squeaky clean me such a target?
     Flies obviously have a certain fascination for me as this is not the first time that they have been the subject of one of my poems.  I suppose I am interested in the way that their lives seem to be linked to ours in many ways and yet at the same time completely separate.  And their speed of life is so far removed from ours - the lazy way in which they seem to be able to avoid a swatting hand; we must be so slow and clumsy to them!
     Anyway, the number of the buzzing pests alighting on my knees (yes, I am still wearing shorts!) prompted me to write.
     The title links to the ending of the poem and perhaps ironically references human vanity.

The Victors

How flies

(those airborne harvesters of death

sucking their way towards the bone)

enjoy

my soaped fresh flesh!

They sense decay

beneath the skin:

memento mori banqueting.

The autumn sunshine crafts a day,

shielding the cold within its warmth

as subtle as a bone-stroked breeze

that cannot move the emptied trees.

A seismic shift of my great limbs

as drink is brought up to my lips

disrupts the feeders’ tiny feasts,

but gravity will drag them back

to what must always be their world.

 

Given the political situation inside Catalonia today, it is hardly surprising that a good god-fearing socialist (you will noice all of those words were with small letters) such as myself should find himself going up to Barcelona to protest about the clear injustices that the right wing minority National Spanish government inflicts on us.

It was one such demonstration called to show support for the Catalan political prisoners and for their release that prompted the following poem.  It is not however political.

As I have now been to a number of political demonstrations I am wise in the ways of them.  I have found that there is a great deal of standing up and waiting, so I now brin with me a collapsable chair so that when I and my friends have found our 'spot' I am able to participate while saving my legs and feet!

Coming back from the demonstration by train I end up in Gràcia metro station to get my train to Castelldefels, where my bike is waiting for me in the bicibox which will get me home.

Grácia is an unpleasant metro stop where the amount of walking between platforms is inordinate.  And when you get to the platform you need you find there are no seats but only a metal pole on which to rest your weary bottom.

When I finally got to the platform I needed it was packed and I was lucky to find a seat - well, a bit of the pole on which to wait.

It was then that I realize that the person next to me was eating crisps.  Metro stations are full of hard surfaces, hard curved surfaces that can amplify certain noises.  Like eating crisps.

I think I share with my father a general dislike of watching poeple eat, and certainly of hearing them.  I am not paranoid about it, but I notice that I am sometimes disturbed.

This poem is a response to the experience.

Misophonia

If she’d been opposite,

two sets of silent metro tracks away

and leaning on the rail that

stands for seats on Gràcia,

I could have looked and liked

what I’d have seen.

Her dinky boots

and sprayed on jeans;

her long dark hair and

elegantly tended nails; her full

red mouth lipsticked to

just this side of slut, and

slim & tall.

I grabbed the first (and only) space

I found to rest my bum.

And she was next to me.

And she was eating crisps.

Each one.

Apart.

And in that sullen silence

crowded strangers keep while

waiting for a train,

each crisp’s demise became

a cut through quiet, like

a blackboard’s finger’s nail’s decent

on my raw soul.

Each solitary crisp -

sought out by fingers’ pince -

observed, a moment;

placed and crunched

excruciatingly.

I thought to move but

reasoned that to stay and suffer

would ennoble more.

And stay I did.

And fought the urge to slap

her bag, and hands, and face.                                 

She made the packet last

until her train drew in.

She left,

and rumbled off.

There was a silence in that sound

that resonated deep within,

and I, if not exactly happy,

was content to wait,

a little longer,

for my train.

By the time I entered secondary school I was taller than three-quarters of my grandparents, with only my mother’s father overtopping me.  On our first day in The Cardiff High School for Boys, we were lined up in order of height and then distributed to the Houses so that each one could have a ‘fair’ selection for their rugby teams!  At the end of the line, I was the second tallest.  And in case you’re wondering, as I was never exactly willowy, I was placed in the second row in the house rugby team and there I stayed for seven muddy years!

I am working to a point.  If you are tall and solid, the ‘dangling child’ years are limited and what I describe in the short poem that follows was restricted to a painfully short number of 'growing' years.

I can remember sitting on my father’s shoulders, and there exists a picture of me standing on his shoulders during one of our many visits to Barry Island beach.  But the memory that stays with me most concerns flying and the sea.

My especial delight was to accompany my dad into our bit of the Bristol Channel in Barry Bay, then put a foot into his cupped hands and be thrown over his shoulder into the waves.  I could happily have been flung for hours, but physical  (dad's not mine) limited my satisfaction.  All too soon I was too tall and too solid for my dad to pander to my aeronautical desires.

In school too, in gym lessons, demonstrations on the trampoline for example, always used the lighter, smaller, more manageable kids.  Not I.  I needed the teacher to ensure my safety and he was in shorter supply than fellow students.  Still, I would be lying if I said that gym lessons were my favourites, and I was generally quite happy to watch rather than participate.  But the memory of flung flight has never left me.

Sometimes in the pool I see fathers and sons engaging in what for me is only a distant memory.  It was noticing one such couple that was the inspiration for the following poem.

My parents would often tell me about my early love of swimming pools.  When I couldn’t walk but had elevated crawling into a juvenile Olympic sport, I was placed pool side in a swimming pool in Leeds and proceeded to make my determined way towards the water’s edge.  My father swept me up before I fell in, but he rapidly tired of thwarting my ambition to get wet.  He decided, therefore, to allow me to achieve my goal, suffer the consequences and thereby learn just why he constantly picked me up before I got to my destination.

I crawled.  I fell.  I spluttered.  I was rescued.  Lesson learned, I was placed poolside once again.  And proceeded to crawl towards the edge.  I had obviously decided that death was a reasonable price to pay to get to the element that I enjoyed!  As I am typing this more than sixty years later, you can appreciate that my father did not let me drown, in spite of my best efforts then, and indeed on one or two other occasions much later!

A child believes that mum and dad will always be there.  You can be thrown in the air in a blanket held by parents in a grandparents’ house; you can be held upside down by one leg and swung around; you can be held and be pretend-dropped and caught just-in-time - because your parents will make sure that you come to no harm.  It is the safe-danger of parents, like the safe-danger of thrilling fairground rides.

But your parents are not always there.  And belief is tested.  And faith strained.  And assumptions questioned.  Some trust games destroy rather than cement.

So the last two lines of the poem are perhaps a cautionary exploration of the implications of the word ‘play’ in the title.

As always, I welcome comments.

Pool play

A wriggling and excited child,

manhandled by devoted dad,

and tumbling down his father’s frame,

caught upside down in

incoherent glee.

A careful roughhouse,

ending with a tummy kiss,

and rest,

with hands on shoulders,

with bright eyes wet

with dangerous delight.

 

From time to time, usually prompted by vague feelings of guilt, I do a trawl through my notebook and see if any of the scribblings that I have written and ignored might be worth working up into a poem.  Sometimes it is some of the seemingly most unpromising of my thoughts that I take further.

Many years ago I had an argument with my parents which ended with my stamping off to my bedroom and my telling myself that this time, this time I would never forgive them for what they had done.  I can remember my fury and my sense of injustice.  I can remember details of my room in 25, Dogfield Street, Cathays in Cardiff and, even now I can sort of re-texture my childish anger.  What I can't do is remember what the argument was about!  I can feel the pain, but I can't remember the point!

Although I am argumentative, I do not like arguments.  I feel them too keenly.  Passionate debate is fine: high words and bluster - but real cross words, felt personal disagreement I find hard to take.

Given that, it was probably not surprising that I was deeply moved by part of the Holocaust gallery in the Imperial War Museum.  I mean I was moved by it all, but it was the filmed 'testimony' in the final section where a screen played a film loop of survivors of the camps speaking directly to camera and articulating their feelings that moved me most.

I remember one survivor responding to the questions of memory and forgiveness.  To explain the feelings involved the survivor described the experience via a metaphor of a rock thrown into a pool: at first there is the splash and the ripples spread out, then the ripples subside and the surface of the pool is still - but the rock is still there under the water.  A version of this explanation informs the short poem that I wrote.

Like my childish self, I can't remember the 'real' inspiration for the sketchy notes that I jotted down, and I have to say that the poem itself was recollection written in sun bathing tranquillity!  But though I was, you might say, content when I wrote it, there is an appreciation of unease that informs the lines!

Although the poem is very short, I have tried to compress thought into a wider ambiguity that the chosen words offer.

I think this is the first time that I have used a title as a line in the poem.

I didn't enjoy writing this poem, but I do enjoy reading it.  Which I find interesting.

As always, any and all comments will be welcome.

An argument is

liquid: mirroring.

Ripples from a carelessly thrown stone

gift surface substance.

Reflection momentarily obscures

transparency.

Water smooths.

And there, beneath the glass,

and in plain sight,

the lithos, like a monument,

remains for future

use.