The Bed

 

Three-quarters of the bed belongs to you, and

three-quarters of the bed belongs to me, so

there must naturally be some overlap, some

point in which we occupy the same space.

 

This place can either be a place of contention, or

a breathing space together, a face-to-face space.

It can be a place for melting together, or invasion,

a place for a game of space invaders, or a place where

 

each in each is buried alive but breathes, not

suffocating, but finding a new way to breathe

in each other. Or it can be a place of trespass, as in

you’re sleeping in my space, you’re squashing my

 

life out of me, you’re removing my room, you’re

crowding me out. Three-quarters of the bed belongs to

each? Not true. All of the bed belongs to each, and

each beaches in each other, and reaches harbour.

2014

 

What book shall I write

 Twenty-eight Quordle words this time. For a change I decided to write in four-line stanzas, using the Quordle words as they were listed on the dailyquordlepoem.com site as they were listed. 

What book shall I write?

 

Maybe a cook book set in a sassy, SAUCY

kitchen, where a unwitting PEACH

will be, via a hand much SURER

than mine, of its skin STRIPped.

 

In the same book, in an anecdote, a PARER

held at the specific angle – le CLASP

de la Cuisine – will surreptitiously shear a SHARD

from a non persona grata piece of beef JERKY

 

Or a thriller-noir, a fairground MELEE

in driving rain where the sun once SHONE

will bring the reader to a questioned CHECK:

how did the villain manage the slippery sideways GLIDE?

 

Or a medical nonfiction, where the author asks for the LEAST

pain, please, agonised as he sees the vast ARRAY

of surgical equipment, the X-ray of his BOWELs,

the professor asking, ‘How are we doing, MATEY?’

 

The romance: she slurping bowls of GUAVA;

he leaping from surrounding FLORA;

she a secretary of the genus LEGAL;

he a farmer, earthy, smelling of ONIONs.

 

The DIY handbook for the Everyman, whose QUALMs

have brought him desperate to its pages, where, shouting VOILA!

he sees the answer to his boat’s perpetual leaking: ‘CAULK

it!’ shouts the author, ‘You’ll soon be GOING!!’

 

Finally the YA fantasy, the frequent WHIFF

of stinky beasts, the loathsome snakes that CREEP

through every scene, the use of the BLUNTed

sword to conquer – which works better than the half-learned SPELL.

Lovers' Tiff?

 28 words for the Quordle Poem today, due to a hitch in the presentation of each day's worth. '

‘Hang it all, that makes me ANGRY.
Surely even you must be AWARE
that a stone’s value is known by its CARAT.
Plainly there is an infinite CHASM
of understanding between us; you a CHARD,
a plain green vegetable; me a CHILI
full of fire, tied to Reason as a CLEAT,
always, always ready and EAGER
for further knowledge, a star-GAZER,
no slave at Reason’s table, but a GUEST.’ 

Have you finished? So full of GUILE,
so manipulating, a hero in the GUSTO
of your own dire pride. Haven’t you HEARD
that your name is whispered at the KIOSKs,
your reputation has been KNEED
in private places, your fury needs a LEASH
to hold it, and that you are LOATH
to admit to the least fault. LUCID
I may not be in thinking, but LUCKY
am I not to be linked to a METRO-
sexual of your ilk, a man so NOISY
his brain chugs like a gluggy PUREE.
Not a single place of QUIET
resides there. WorSE, DAN
Cupid, bored, sits lonely in the SHADE
while shattered lovers fade upon the SHELF,
tarnished where once they SHONE.’ 

‘My love, my standard deviation, my SIGMA.’

Write your own story

 Another sixteen-line Quordle poem:

BLAND, gray is the landscape;
DUSTY the car, the gravel roads.
FRUIT in the passing orchards,
LAYER on layer, has that tint of the
LOWLY, like men rising, who are
MINERs, from the pit at day’s end.
QUOTH my friend, sweating, ‘The
SCRUB ahead seems a sweet place to
SLEEP, to make camp. Open. Clear. My
SNOUT finds it out. I take my
STAND upon the very air itself, I
SWEAR by mine own career as a lion
TAMER it will go well with us.’ My
UNCLE – wrecked, panicked,
UPSET – groans. His antipathy to my
WACKY friend clearly shown. 

16 Quordle Words

For whatever reason, the Quordle site has offered four more days' worth of words in one go, after a short hiatus. Ever rising to the challenge...

‘ALTAR my suit, tailor. It’s too big around the
CHEST.’ ‘I can alter it, sir, make you look like Walter
DRAKE. Would that
DROOP your demeanour or
ELATE you?’ ‘Don’t be daft, man. I have to
EMCEE an important conference and I can’t look like a
FISH, You know, a fish about to
FLAIL around in something far too big for it.’ ‘I
GUESS I could do it, sir, though it would
HAUNT me to think that the
MICRO thread would be misaligned, like a
RIVER running, disappearing, then running. It would
SMOTE my heart. My long tailoring experience,
THERE, in that back room, would be affronted.’ ‘Your maxillary
TORUS will be affronted if you don’t do as I ask. Hurry man, my
YACHT sails on the noon tide.’

Attributed to various satirical artists

And once again...24 Quordle Words

 And once again, but this time not my fault. For some reason the Quordle words failed to appear for several days. By the time they arrived, there were another 24 of them to deal with. 

BLACK thoughts prickle me like
CACTI. Once again the teacher’s thrown the
CHALK – and missed. I ask you, is it
CIVIL to be his daily target? Is there insurance
COVER for a kid so picked upon, abused? The
CYNIC in me sees this happening till the end of term, his
GREEDy target set at a chalk a day; a kind of
GRUEL he prefers to healthier stew. Should I
INFER he sees me as the white knight at the
JOUST – he the black and surly knight, of course.
MARRY! his lance is long but blunt, loose like the
METER of this verse, not worth the page it’s penned upon nor the
PENNY possibly paid for it. Like
RAYON, it’s weak when wet, and even
RECUT, these lines would still swillow as a
RIPER fruit will slobber over fingers, as a
RIVER slid from moorings spreads in a
SAPPY stream invading fields, streets, houses.
SCRAM! you dull and diffident lines, you
STALE and dribbling anti-pentameters that
STALL like undercharged EVs, set teeth on edge with similes too
SWEET, that let the excess of metaphorical verbiage
TOWER above all sense, run off the rails like a wayward
TRAIN.                                   

Challenging myself with 24 Quordle words

 Not entirely a challenge. More the result of not having done Quordle for six days. And yes, there were two Quordles over the period with the word 'revue' in them. 

All Sport and No Whistle

BINGO! the would-be

CROOK with greased and

CURLY hair, aims his fist.

DRYLY the captain knows he’s champion in any

FIGHT; this captain of the

FINAL trip for the day on the

FJORD ferry, who stands aloof. The deck being wet, the youth slips and down the

HATCH he goes. The deck was somewhat

MOSSY, the captain admits to himself, smells somewhat

MUSKY, as of a deer in rut, or perhaps it has the

NUTTY scent of a jar not emptied from the pantry in a decade. The boy, below,

REACTs dully, like a performer in a dull

REVUE, or the dull

REVUE itself. He has no get up and go, and now he smells

RIPER than he did before, like a

ROWER out at sea too long, or a dancer doing the

RUMBA for four hours one night. He is merely seen as a

SERIF attached to some stronger part of a letter; he

SLUMPs where he stands and

SNIPEs at the captain imperturbable. He totters, rotates, this tourist-child, as a

TORUS does (I think – the word is new to me) and the

TWANG in his Aussie

VOICE is mostly a blur. This day is his

WORST.

Challenging myself with twenty Quordle words

 Most days I write a 'Daily Quordle Poem', but there are occasions when I get behind. Usually this is only a day or two, but on the 1st September I found myself five days behind due to various circumstances. 

The result was I did a catch-up poem of five stanzas, each one using the Quordle words in order, as they'd appeared over the five days. Surprisingly, an interesting little story was hinted at as I worked at using the various words as starting points. 

On the
JETTY they’re selling tubs of
PESTO, deep in its green as a
PRUNE is deep in red and brown, or a
TAWNY lion yellow in its yellowness. 

The
BOOTH announces, ‘Former Welterweight
CHAMP.’ His wife, a few feet away, in heels that
CLACK across the weatherworn boards,
PIVOTs as I say, ‘Done with the boxing then?’

A
BRIEF glance, under heaviest eyebrows. A
LEASH, self-imposed, holds back comments. His
BASAL mode’s controlled; he keeps himself from
SMEARs against his former occupation. 

But
BLUNT is his wife’s middle name. No
SHADY subtleties of speech here. She
STOKEs the constant fires of anger: one
VOWEL is enough to tell me her temper.

The
ALLOY of ferocious mixed with self-restraint, I guess, gives
FIBRE to their marriage, keeps them sane. He’s
FORTY, at a guess, but her age I can’t gauge. The
PAINT of makeup could hide anything from twenty-five to fifty.    

Rain on a green tin roof

A poem from around 2008, which for some reason unknown to me has never made it onto this blog.  

Rain on a green tin roof
Is proof that God exists.
No life force, no gene
Hopping from human being
To human being, no
Combination of chances
Or amoeba romances
Would consider such a
Lullaby sleep-enticing
Sound; no unexplained
Gaps or haphazard
Scattered jigsaw maps
Could contrive to
Bring alive the man in a shell
Sheltered-from-the-elements
Feel. And though
Stars in their courses
Might wheel insensibly
Round, I have found that
Rain on a green tin roof
Is proof for me that God exists.

Forgetting a poem that formed itself

 Came across this poem today that I'd forgotten I'd written...don't know how long ago. 

Forgetting a poem that formed itself

Perfectly in the night is like a moth

caught in a spiderweb long abandoned: the

moth’s life wasted; the spider unperceiving

of its acquisition and unaware its

rare and sapid meal remains neglected.

 

All the moth’s failed effort to stay alive,

all the struggle and strive, the fervid flutter,

the death disregarded by fellow moths, the

transfixing on a toilet window that never sees the

cleaner’s cleaning, all speak fervently of the

loss of a poem formed perfectly in the night.

6th Batch of Quordle Poems

   An explanation of Quordle poems is here.

Update: all my Quordle Poems, along with some hundreds of others, can now be found the Daily Quordle Poem website.

27.7.22 (Both these appeared that day as a kind of 'reverse approach)

The meal was of immense VALUE,
but one look at the DEBIT
card made me feel LOUSY.
My wife, in her generous way, called me an inGRATE!

GRATE my bones and gnash my teeth,
DEBIT my flesh and graze my skin.
LOUSY with pain and an occasional flea, I
VALUE my life still, ‘spite a sword wound from kin.           

28.7.22

FRANK, me old mate, the blacksmith working at the
FORGE, isn’t much of an artisan; truth to tell he’s a bit of a
PLANK, but boy, can he make a beast of a bonny
SALSA!          

31.7.22

REVUE begins; instant garbage
SLUSH from the comedian’s mouth
REPELs this audience member. I
YIELD my ticket and go home. 

1.8.22

CHOCK full of the mind-searing joys of
OPIUM, I raise up what’s left of my brain and
CYNICally ravage the savage
HORDE of naysayers. 

2.8.22

BROWN-minded from despair, and all those
WOKE-Nigglers who say how much they care; O-
VARY the tune a little, Wokes, let me play happily just for once in a
FIELD where privilege and offence aren’t niggling at the rest of us folks!  

3.8.22

CLOUD meanders over the sunshot field; good
REHAB for a man of my years and modest wisdom;
WHINE away – yes, I do – along with the bee and
THORN bird, impaled as he or I might be, in the heart. 

This was accompanied the following painting by Leopold Graf Von Kalckreuth:

5th Batch of Quordle Poems

  An explanation of Quordle poems is here.

Update: all my Quordle Poems, along with some hundreds of others, can now be found the Daily Quordle Poem website.

19.7.22

GOING back home to my weak and wonky
HOVEL where the windows are weak-minded, and the door
HINGE, the one at the bottom and not at the top, has a
QUIRK that makes a rough and whinging scuff along the floor.  

21.7.22

GUAVA
FUDGE; now I’ve heard everything. My brain
BEGINs to ignite, over-idle, rev up and 
MOTOR

22.7.22

ASHEN burns on ancient brown ash-
TRAYS. Nicotine stains on fingers.
BUGLE warning, hide the stash! Something’s
AMISS! It’s that smoky reek than lingers!

(Thanks, Rupert Brooke, for the last three words - they appear in his poem The Great Lover)

TRAYS was actually the wrong word; I'd picked it up somehow instead of TRAIT. 

25.7.22

NINJA receives the Sceptic’s
AWARD for proving that the
OZONE layer isn’t
QUITE as holey as once proclaimed. 

26.7.22

CHUTE the messenger? Don’t.
SIEVE the messenger? Do.
ADAPT the messenger and take him into your family? You’d be
DITTY not to. 

[Courtesy of a poet still struggling with the intricacies of English pronunciation.]

The correct 'translation' - which also appeared as a tweet - was:

SHOOT the messenger? Don’t.
SAVE the messenger? Do.
ADOPT the messenger and take him into your family? You’d be
DOTTY not to. 

I love the way you can play around with Quordle poems, and no one complains!

4th Batch of Quordle Poems

 An explanation of Quordle poems is here.

Update: all my Quordle Poems, along with some hundreds of others, can now be found the Daily Quordle Poem website.

8.7.22

PINKY on the left hand goes
NINJA, adds a note and makes a
SANER
CHORD. 

Gustave Caillebotte - ‘Man Playing the Piano’

9.7.22

LIPID ain’t limpid, like your limpid eyes, my dear.
TULIP ain’t two lips, though you have two, it’s clear.
MUCUS ain’t music, though your words are music to my ears. But…
SPADEs is trumps, so it’s clear, hear this in your ears, I win again, my dear.   

10.7.22

SLING,
MAYBE, the
CHILD over one shoulder, the
BANJO over the other…        

12.7.22

A
CANON, trendy, trying to ra-
P-RUDE-ly, was soundly censored by the
AMPLE, abundant, bounteous mind of the wisest member of the
DUCHY. 

13.7.22

SAVVY be, to do the work that
OTHER blokes may like to shirk;
RELAY this message to your mates, there’s no
QUIRK in doing a good day’s work.  

15.7.22

NYMPHs and shepherds come away,
OVOID the forests, stay away,
FERAL wolves chase shepherds away,
SPECKs of dust blow nymphs away. 

18.7.22

[I missed a day, so made up for it by writing first one poem with one set of words, and the next with both sets of words from the two days.]

DINER emptied his plate in a
TRICE. ‘It was nice,’ he said. ‘But the only thing to
SULLY my pleasure is offering an
INGOT and getting no change on it.’ 

DINER, perusing the racing guide, at LUNCH, in a
TRICE, changes his mind re the HORSE, whose
STYLE is in a state of SULLY after
COYLY losing not just the bettor’s shirt but his INGOT.

3rd Batch of Quordle Poems

An explanation of Quordle poems is here.

Update: all my Quordle Poems, along with some hundreds of others, can now be found the Daily Quordle Poem website.

1.7.22

The
TOCSIN rings its heraldic
TONIC, beginning of the new jazz
SUITE, a piece that quickly has our fingers
CLICKing, and toes ticking. 

2.7.22 Not quite a poem but an exercise in dialect.

ENDOW did you intend to
SULLY my
DYING father’s name,
UTILE me!

3.7.22

BASTE the ramen? The
RAMEN, don’t baste. The taste is
STAID and woody. That
WOODY taste is such a waste.    

5.7.22

SONAR from a swooping, silent
MIDGE sees a sure bet in my
FURRY skin, sets a scheme to
WRACK my sweet and simple, serene somnambulance.  

6.7.22

MANGY cat, by the spicy
SUMAC, pay your equal
TITHEs of nine lives, each a
REMIT of the sequel.      

 7.7.22  

HEARD my
NAVEL calling. It doesn’t do this often but sometimes as I
LABOR I hear it squirm and wriggle and writhe then
TAPER off.                                                                                            

2nd Batch of Quordle Poems

The first batch of Quordle poems, and an explanation, is here

Update: all my Quordle Poems, along with some hundreds of others, can now be found the Daily Quordle Poem website.

24.6.22

THRUM I in a kind of hum,
CHASE away the sounds of drum,
CROWD turns pale to hear the
CONCH which brings to surface all their fear. 

26.6.22

RATTY twists among the cargo,
TWICE twists and thrice turns,
CARGO free for such as Ratty;
TWISTs twixt holds, bows and sterns.   

28.6.22

LUCID,
MAGMA is not; a blazing red and orange shimmering force
SLIMEs its way towards us while someone screams on the
AUDIO.                                                                

After some commenting back and forth about the style of the Quordle poem above, Chris Hutchinson @CAHutch1990 wrote: 

Sublime
was the inclusio
of Mike's chiastic
bookends

 sublime, inclusio and chiastic had all come up in the tweets.        

And David Wright @ohthatwright wrote: 

It was mirror symetric, [sic]
As was also the metric.       

29.6.22

CHIEF, new, female, comes in with a
SWIRL; the assembled staff say
SHUSH to each other, each one trying to
OUTDO each other in shushiness.              29.6.22

First batch of Quordle poems

 Quordle Poems 1

A sample of the poems published on Twitter under the DailyQuordlePoem hashtag. 

The format is as follows, but sometimes I experiment with it:

Write poems of 4 lines, in 1 tweet. Lines start with the words from yesterday's Quordle. Tag with #DailyQuordlePoem. Curated: @ohthatwright  Created: @mKyleEdwards

Update: all my Quordle Poems, along with some hundreds of others, can now be found the Daily Quordle Poem website.

In the first few I was just finding my feet...

11.6.22

RAJAH, with care, opens the jar;
COBRA pokes his head out, just so far;
PIXIE sets the snake to bite the mare’s
SHANK, which raises all the rajah’s fears.  

12.6.22

AN ODE I wrote but yesterday,
BEGAN to recite by
AUDIO, but young May cried!
CHASM opened in my way.  

 14.6.22

‘DRAFT, there’s a draft! Close the door!’
‘LEANT on it, sure I did. Blew open once more.’
‘A(h), ZURE, that’s what ya always swore.
ARRAY wif ya! I’ll see ya no more.’    

15.6.22

SWOON, you soft and sweet and
SALTY moon, you’re in a splendour
PHASE and soon your tender
MANIA is strewn in another land.  

20.6.22

METAL, the Meccano was; metal
MODEL in Meccano led to panic;
PANIC of a clueless parent; by
A GATE, made A GETA-way.  

22.6.22

BURST a hole in the
LINEN beanbag; as a result the
TRAIN of itty bitty beans
SWEEP up I now have to. 

With thanks to Yoda, who’s always helpful in a metric jam.  

The next batch of Quordle poems is here

Who is Celia, as opposed to Who is Sylvia (well, who is Sylvia anyway?)

Who is Celia, what is she,
That all the blokes commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
Though it pays not to offend her! –
Yet she still will much admired be,
Even when someone she loves drives her up the wall, which some might think – though they’d be wrong - happens frequently.

Is she kind as she is fair?
Of course she’s full of kindness!
All the house she does repair
And overlooks the blindness
Of others who inhabit there,
And when it comes to tools that are too tricky to work out she politely ignores their lack of flair.

Then to Celia let us sing,
Our Celia all excelling:
Yup, she excels each living thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling.
But don’t to her your garlands bring
Because she doesn’t like you to buy flowers, preferring ones that come out of the garden, free, and all sweet-smelling.

 

2019

When we make love

 When we make love
oxygen flies from the room ˗
we’re left gasping for breath. 

When we make love
sheets and blankets twist and writhe -
agonies of torment. 

When we make love
a strange menagerie surrounds the walls
making un-animal trumpets and moans. 

When we make love
our eyes see nothing
not even the ridiculous. 

When we make love
the night is as bright as the day
darkness and light are alike to us. 

When we make love
bodies, limbs, digits entangle -
we become one flesh.

2014

 

 

Celia is the sky

Celia is the sky; I am the earth.
Celia is the sky and she is worth
all the wide sky’s breadth in glittering gold,
and I, if I may be so bold,
am just a little glitter, gutter-
picked by her bright heavenly eye:
since I, as I have precedently told,
I am the earth; and Celia is the sky.

Written for my wife's birthday, 2nd April 2012

In Memoriam: Helen Vicary Mann

My self-proclaimed ‘most favourite customer,’
constant supporter of OC Books.

As one who knew you best through your passion for books,
I find the list of your other passions intriguing:
wine, chocolate, Pilates, makeovers, opera, French perfume. 

And how did I never hear about Malawi,
the Mothers Union, amoebic dysentery,
the construction of pit privies,
the expertise on flute and piano? 

I heard all about Celtic Christianity –
you may have been first to bring it
to my attention. And Lampeter, a place in
Wales that might have been on the moon. 

Then there was Pelagius, whom you
considered much underrated in the
sainthood department; we may have debated it.
You had no time for his bête noire, Augustine.
When a young student used the word Pelagian
in one of his doctoral essays, you bristled:
he’d leaned towards the concept that
Pelagius was a heretic – the very idea! 

And, of course, having been the first woman priest
to be ordained, by the first woman bishop
not only in New Zealand, but also in the world,
you bristled at the notion of women as
lesser creatures, a thought that flitted – then fled - across the minds
of those male priests who regarded women priests –
let alone women bishops – as somehow opposed to nature,
opposed to God Himself. Sorry, Herself. 

Is there some irony in the fact that your middle name was
Vicary, you vicar at Holy Cross, at Palmerston, at Hampden?
Was it your small stature that made you more aware of those
creatures who attended your Cathedral-based Pet Services,
barking heart-stopping barks, or flittering in cages,
on hands, searching perhaps for St Francis?
The line in your obituary, she always had an eye for the
underdog, says maybe more than the writer intended. 

The last time we saw you, blown by a breeze in
King Edward St, wanting to chat (as always),
the yellow tinge in your skin, your
Trinitarian cancer alive and well,
dragging you step after step towards death,
we ached at the change.   

Helene,

may the saints and angels enliven your steps in the life beyond;
may the dogs who preceded you revel anew in your presence;
may you find Pelagius and Augustine at peace;
may you accompany on your flute wild Celtic songs sung by
wild Celtic saints, the fingers that once gained you a place in a
Norwegian orchestra flexing anew as they race beyond mere
human agility.

 

 

4.6.12

I was manager of the Christian bookshop, OC Books; Helene (pronounced Helen) was one of its most supportive customers. 

Lampeter is a town in Wales.