29 October 2006

Dream


The Saxon church walls sway
from side to side through the window.
We run outside and a dust fills the air.
Crumbled angels and stone. A couple pass
from the high street, eating bad food.
Paper flyers, a festival?
The owner: 'The mouse, a friend to the tors.
The dogs will be set on you if you trespass.
Leave be.'
Mark was to buy it the day before.

28 October 2006

Rej: Magma

'Swimming with dolphins is considered a good treatment for recovering from depression...'
'Unless they reject you, that brings you to a whole new level.'

27 October 2006

20 lengths, BOA pool.

Rej: Smiths Knoll, Interpreter's House

25 October 2006

Dream

I take the lift to chapter sixteen of Ulysses
recoil from the ectoplasm
smeared on the wall as I steady myself.
Chapter sixteen is the roofs above the university.
The lift careens, skids
over tile and slate
and manouevres around again for more.
Once, my foot even brushes the stone.

23 October 2006

Lines from Jeremiah

Upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot 2,20

I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly 4, 24
18 lengths at BOA pool.

Submissions sent to Agenda, Ambit and Smiths Knoll.

20 October 2006

14 lengths, BOA pool.

19 October 2006

Poetry School Poetry Surgery with Tim Liardet - Meeting One
Read 'Worship'

16 October 2006

9 lengths BOA pool

14 October 2006

Dream

Birthday (?) spread w/ Rosemary and Dick. Checking e mails – convoluted acceptance from magazine. Takes a while to realize it’s an acceptance. Later I say ‘Promise not to let me e mail a reply this evening.’

At table w/ Carrie, dressed in appalling diagonal blue/white check shirt. Carrie leaves and I think men are discussing me. I see my reflection, leant across the table.

I sit at another table. A partition of a sheet / duvet separates me and two women from the rest of the café, about three or four tables this side of the partition. They are discussing art and snow. I ask a question and we discuss her work. She shows me her book. Catherine Keenan. Portraits, eg Mona Lisa, carved on ice floor then partially obscured with snow and shot from above.

I leave to find Carrie. People are waiting for her to descend the stairs with some art to display. ‘Carrie,’ I call. She is upstairs poring over books. I tell her about the student and she says ‘Catherine Keenan?’ and hands me a copy of her book, smiling.

12 October 2006

Ivy Maud Cooper 1909 - 2006, service

Catherine resembles Ivy at her most coquetish.

'People always made gangway for her.'

'She gave me presents.'

11 October 2006

Karin, a mistake by the nurses when she was in an incubator left her blind in one eye.

On a light train - 'Your watch!'

Dream

Nick King gave me reel to reel and tape which made me laugh. Sung happy birthday? Sat in seat in front of him for ages. I turn round 'You must be wondering why I haven't thanked you.' Q magazine too. Look for band named after wooden owl in Bagpuss.

My father playing vivid arcade / computer game of jeep driving over hills. 'Drive down the 2nd and 3rd mine,' he advises.

With Carrie in school. I am aware there is a stretch of beach past the playground and down. I go up in lift, she goes down. I say I'll catch up with her. A guy in lift with acne. I'm almost sick. He kicks me by mistake and apologises.

09 October 2006

Dream

People jump off a tree, out and into the water. Lights flash onto the slick marble walkway beneath. People are coming to get music from us. I jump into the water; make it back to my room. It is communal. An old ochre-painted bike leans against the desk. I put the CDs on the counter and match them with their covers. I am missing a Django Reinhardt cassette.

A guy, storming, says ‘I’m taking command.’
A woman requires a full-length black dress.

--

I can hear the wind, the bell chimes blend like the revolutions of a teaspoon.

Two weeks ago I woke to the taste of Autumn in the air, the smell of the soil, brick and slate breathing out as the temperature returned above zero. I welcomed Autumn for the first time – my needles were not so sensitive that I immediately feared Winter.

07 October 2006

Dream

In a building, the owners away, upstairs climb staircase and crawl onto carpeted crawlway, pink, around corner and into a room with a doublebed. I wake and come down.

Jon, sleepy is walking upstairs to me, having also slept. I walk out and onto the drive. Fields of produce (?), a greenhouse up at the gate.

The owners say 'Vegetarianism, it's the only way to save the world.' I am sent to fetch Carrie and Jon for a meal. My watch says it is 4.30pm. Jon is awake, Carrie not.

A red tile on the floor, on its back. Scrawled over lines of glue '... loves you.'

06 October 2006

8 lengths BOA pool.
Dream


Suki about to leave, can't find battery. Now we'll be late to the station. Found, it fits into the suitcase fabric, right way round. Say 'bye to father.

Take students to diner. Walk through stile, two classes. I go via market, narrow, horse-shoe shape - sad cookies and biscuits. Come to the end, a stallholder gestures 'go back'. No throughway.

I come to join classes, secrete my bottle of beer best I can, come to classes look at them lined up in rows against two walls -that's them. I sit, opposite Anna (?) with braces. 'What are you having?' 'A burger I guess' 'But what about a pizza?' The menu is in Spanish: a 'gran burger.'

'Why don't we se a film?'
'Have you seen Stowfish?'
It's not my town. 'Let's see it this afternoon.'

04 October 2006

Submission The Interpreter's House 'Cold Remedy', 'Thai', 'Within, Without', 'Evening, Local', 'Accident'
In camera, held in private.

Affluence kept years from them.

xiao(young), lao (old).

03 October 2006

Yesterday - 4 lengths at BoA pool.

Dream

Dr Piggott and other lecturer 'Have you read Macbeth?' I can't answer.
At site of leaning tower, in a canoe. The land shifts so that a twenty foot high precipice of dripping rock rises out of the water before me, and the land tilts in the distance. "Impossible!'
Others are there, unpaying. I look down on them from the rock. One of them paddles into the wooden equivalent of a lift. As the water rises he shoots up suddenly inside the four walls, then is lowered, and is on his way.
Jon helps me kill a large comedy spider, like a soot sprite, which jumps and jumps across my wall. Outside my room he kills it.

02 October 2006

SUB Magma Ten Below Chicago, Field Trip Greenwich, Chicago, Between Stations, This is a Song that Makes you Fight the Tears, Heatwave
Dream

Carrie and I walk into concert hall where Van Morrison is singing. One of the tables to the front has been vacated. We take it. Soon, from the right, Van enters, masonic, distributes empty crosses of leather. Somehow this is Christian.