Cake

Go on then. Write a poem about cake. It can be a small poem or a large one, and the ingredients can be rich or plain, as you please.

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Mildew and Blackspot -- by Zephirine

for Billy Mills


Glamorous rambler
putting its show on
in cerise clusters
waving and nodding
over the archway

When you look closer
see how each branch is
dusted with powder
musty and cobwebbed
infected and grey

Dorothy Perkins
“martyr to mildew”
still it keeps coming
back every summer
doing its number

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So small at first the dark marks on the leaves
they passed unnoticed while the buds grew fat
and blooms emerged spreading their coloured silks
shining in the returned and welcome sun

Now as you bend to the familiar scent
confirming summer as you breathe it in
you see the spots have grown and turned to black
and the green shoots of spring are fading fast

Already a few yellowed leaves have curled
the blotch of blight on each draining its life
thin stems that once clung tight will lose their grip
and fall dying to the dry waiting soil

But still above them flames the flowering rose
seeming indifferent to the creeping rot
that from now on ensures its blazing pride
each year will dwindle and enfeebled fade.

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Scent of the Rose -- by Pinkerbell

Sorrow masks the scent of the rose
Pulsating in my clenched fist
Crushed like a strangled artery.
Velvet petals, laid layer on layer
Curl tightly to its sweet core
In intricate simplicity.
Its beauty threatening to fade,
Now plucked from its source of life,
Blood red congealing into black.
Its silky skin soothing and cool,
As cold to touch as the stone
Under which you lie. Withering.
And as I place it on you its
Shape springs back immaculate
And unspoilt, as if never touched.




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Underwater -- by File

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[running into the limitations of Blogger with this one, but if you click on the images the text will become much clearer]

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A caption may possibly occur to you....?

photo by commonorgarden from flickr.com

(definitely worth clicking on the pic for a full-screen view)
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For RJDL, March 2009 -- by Ringo37

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The city’s empty. Its knackered truths –
Rhubarb sheds, the Trinity, a sandstone civic quarter,
Windblown Justice on the courthouse roof –
Are worth less than ever. The Calder water
Runs clearer than it did – but symbolism’s
Dishonest, and transparency, in any case,
Is just a word for emptiness. Perhaps it isn’t
So empty, then: the sourness is just displaced –
The river runs clear but in the town
The currents aren’t so blameless nor so bright.
It would be nice to think that this was down
To negligence – to a foreman’s thoughtless oversight:
Some lever pulled in error, some sluice or weir
Breached or broken. It would be better, and not so hard to take,
If all of this was inadvertent; there would be less to fear,
And to forgive, if all this – all this shit was just someone’s mistake.
Yes, I could get along in a world unpremeditated and unmeant.
But in the world’s patterns I discern design; I apprehend intent.

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One Swallow -- by Mimitig

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illustration by David Cobb

They say
One swallow doesn’t make a summer

But they say lots of other things
Many a mickle macks a muckle
In for a penny in for a pound

Nonsense

I see a swallow coming home
And think summer

A swallow comes to nest
At home

And brings a second swallow

So if you see the one
You’ll soon see the other

And that is summer

Two swallows make their nest
Year on year, the same place
Only diverted by bigger, uglier birds like gulls

Gulls can destroy
They are predators
And if wee swallows nest
Where vicious gulls go
Gulls win

It’s nature

Happily my swallows nest
Safely

Safe space to lay tiny eggs
Hatchlings hopefully will know
A place of safety
Will grow to chicklings
Fly the nest
And come home in a year or so

To be my new swallows

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I Wish -- by Zephirine

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Here's one I wrote earlier, for the GU Poster Poems on the topic of Money, which seems more and more relevant as the days go by:

I wish that money liked me more
I wish it hung around me
and wanted to be friends, and swore
that it was glad it found me
I’d like it to cling just a bit
even be quite annoying
I could be rather rude to it
for being quite so cloying
and still it would stay close
and vow that it would never hurt me
and even if I were morose
it never would desert me

Instead, it does just as it pleases
never cares for me at all
stays outside my reach and teases
leaves me looking sad and small
it treats me mean and keeps me keen
it quite ignores my pleas and tears
slips through my fingers, every bean
it’s done it now for years and years
I swear it likes to see my pain
it finds tormenting me a pleasure
and even as it runs away
it promises me future treasure

I wish I could desert the brute
go live in simple new-age camps
and find a life devoid of loot
bartering with my fellow tramps
but that would never work for me
Money has got me firmly hooked
and I pine unrequitedly
still hopeful, ever overlooked

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JG Ballard: honouring a literary giant -- by Mimitig

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I saw this headline tonight: Cult Author JG Ballard dies at 78.

The details are here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8007331.stm

Now, I have known for several years that Ballard was fighting cancer so perhaps it should not come as a shock to read that he has died and I’m thinking what is it that surprises me and makes me feel like writing something?

It is the headline.

“Cult author”. Surely the headline should have read: “Death of a Genius” or “Best-selling author JG Ballard dies”?

JG Ballard may have started his writing life in an unassuming way – short stories sent to Sci-fi mags – but long before his death he was acknowledged widely as a writer of fiction that could not be side-lined as Sci-fi or 'cult'.

Stephen Spielberg’s Oscar-winning adaption of Empire of the Sun made sure that JG was no longer a writer in the shadows. This was reinforced when David Cronenberg chose Ballard’s Crash as a suitable book to film. Much controversy raged about the film and it did nothing to harm the sales of Ballard’s book.

I was delighted to see Ballard in the public preserve – interviews with the print media and appearances on culture shows was nothing less than the man deserved.

Yet there was a part of me that resented these johnnie-come-latelies. Where were you, I thought, when his only readers were those who picked out the yellow and purple Victor Gollancz titles of his early years?

The first Ballard I read, and I came to it through BBC Radio Four’s Book at Bedtime, was The Drowned World. I listened late at night and went to the library – to the grown-up section – and borrowed my first non-children’s book. This was a rite-of-passage – child to adult through the medium of the book.

After reading that one book I was hooked on Ballard. I searched out all the Penguins (cover price 30p) with their dramatic cover art. I bought the Triad/Panther editions – larger format, cover price now £2.50 – different sort of cover art, different font for cover and text (set in Plantin and printed and bound by Hazell Watson and Viney – just up the road from where I lived).

I was so intrigued by Ballard’s writings that I would search out every bookshop, market stall or boot sale to gather his works on my shelves.

My uncorrected book proof, not for publication bound copy of The Day of Creation remains one of my most treasured literary possessions.

Now he has died and I feel another star that lit up the literary world has gone. When writers who can enthral readers and entice them into believing the world of the book die, we, the readers, are bereft.

I thank JG Ballard for sharing his world and his imagination with us. We will be the poorer without his words.

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Cloudy Haiku -- by Pinkerbell

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