City Sonnets - 13 and 14

Couple of light pieces of light entertainment, and, impressively, these are both actual cities

PARIS

I’m catching up on sport in Gaie Paris

Between the metro and the Gare du Nord.

I’m catching up on sport where’er I be

Wherever I be, je recherche le sport.

I’m checking on my phone to find the news

On boxing, cycling, football and the rest,

And if you have a charger I can use

I’ll keep myself continually abreast.

I’m in the queue for the Musee D’Orsay

But keep one eye across the test’s live feed.

Between Degas and Manet and Monet

I’m checking if they picked Adil Rashid.

I’m seeing how Spurs did, in the Notre-Dame –

I’m checking up on sport wherever I am.

GLASGOW

Of course, the singer told that joke about

His brother, the guitarist, which I’d read

In NME, and yet I laughed without

reserve, as if it was its first time said.

I went there with a headache and the band

Now so reviled suspended all my pain

And worry for two hours of overmanned

Guitar rock any cool kid would disdain.

The lads of Barrowlands threw beer and worse,

they roared and swelled at every chorus line,

and we shook out our soft limbs and immersed

ourselves in that blunt tune and that flat whine.

However I confine myself to tastemaker’s disgrace,

I’ll never be ashamed of the night I loved Embrace.

City Sonnets - 11 and 12

Including a city

FRANKFURT

I flew to Frankfurt on the slate grey day

In August nineteen ninety-nine that great

eclipse of pre-millennial dismay

collapsed under its own aestival weight.

My flight was held by half a hopeful hour,

Yet still the blanket bathos did not break.

Wild heaven, let me at least glimpse your power.

My eyes looked up from reading about Nick Drake,

I craned from the cheap aisle seat at Heathrow

To see a cloud of, at best, doubtful hue.

I sighed “well here I am, well there you go,

You came, you went, you fizzled, good for you.”

Oh, Nick, you could have told me not to trust

In nature to be kind. No, nature’s just.

PITLESSIE

Picked parsley from the garden, once I knew

What parsley looked like … “just a fair-sized bunch”

She barked between her laughter. – “Look at you,

There’s nothing to you, take a proper lunch” -

So, soup with home-made melba toast, then roast

then some fruit pudding. I could eat, full well,

And, talking being what we both feared most,

I ate, and stayed politely in my shell.

I knew she was a sentry, for a far

And doting parent; she’d share notes by phone

while Staffies fussed, and when, at times, the haar

was near, that watch helped me feel less alone,

transported me beyond the fuss of life

inside the other bubbled fussy Fife.

City Sonnets - 9 and 10

Not cities ... again ...

BENAVISTA

We heard the Madridistas in the flat

Above, who’d taught their boy to shriek with fear

When dancing devil Lionel Messi spat

Defenders from his footsteps. As he neared

The Real goal a fevered horror filled the air

Of Benavista (a place that rarely sparked

To life) and dozing discreet pilgrims shared

A shiver in the Andalusian dark.

We spotted cucarachas on our floor

On the third day. Our host’s indifferent smile

Made clear that to be shocked, or expect more

Was naïve, at best, at worst, dear guests, puerile.

The morning that we left we spotted ten

Dead demons on our floor – never again.

TAIZE

At twenty-two, I thought to find no peace

Among the Christians in the summer dust,

A muttering stranger who’d felt wonder cease

And spread that doctrine – mischief and distrust.

But even in one week, the silence took

A little, led me back from where I came,

Though then, I’d no foundations to be shook

And scarce residual apostatic shame.

I heard no God return, but think I saw

the ecumenical in truest shape,

and spoke my own still small voice, quietly sure

that I was safe in refuge and escape.

The final night, I knelt at last to share

A fellowship of hope, a common prayer.

City Sonnets - 7 and 8

Two more ... fun times

DELPHI

The ghosts of Mount Parnassus hardly cope

With youthful crassicists, all Amstel breath

And Marlboro reds sneaked further down the slope.

“This is a place” their teacher says” of death

upturned, of prophecy, all history born”.

Now piqued, they drain retsinas and catch sleep.

With sore Pythian heads they greet the morn,

Pray for Apollo’s mercy then breathe … deep.

A race! the ancient stadium the site.

They scamper, kids again, the winner crowned,

His triumph brief as he regrets last night

And, oh the shame, can’t keep his dinner down.

Miasma mighty Delphi’s temple hereto has not known,

A sacrilegious offering that’s his and his alone.

CORK

Our mother grants us coke floats while we wait

In the back garden. “Late …”, she frowns and sighs.

But we’re holiday-happy, dodge the bait

‘Til your old blue Granada at last arrives.

We cross from Fishguard to Rosslare; at night

I mark the unknown hours and trace the wake.

We breach the rebel county at first light -

You’re back, and we’ve a heritage to make.

Red carpets, the Glenavon, shabby grand

Up steep Cork city streets for scattered rest,

We’re breakfast connoisseurs at once, this land

Of puddings white and black put to our test.

We roam the land with the most Irish man you’ve ever known

Our father art in heaven – and that week, that heaven’s home.

City Sonnets - 5 and 6

I just changed the blog to this font. I like it. It's a much better font.

Here are two more sonnets ... there's going to be flippin' loads of them ... when i get an idea, I run it to exhaustion

RIO DE JANEIRO

A photo cheaply printed on a plate

On Corcovado of a squinting boy

In baseball cap and shorts, stood stiffly straight,

His hands held down in front, a gesture coy

And quite mysterious to the man himself

Many years later, dusting souvenirs

And rearranging memories on the shelf

Of unconsidered moments through the years.

And then he gets it! Those unbending arms

Which point to hell with such a narrowing

Raw sense of shame are cowed by the wide stance

Of the Redeemer overshadowing.

No mimicry, no imagery allowed –

The boy observant, arms cast down, head bowed.

ST ANDREWS

That day you drove me in, the town was lapped

In the late summer light, and I was hooked

In love with it for good. Those four years trapped

By old stone on the ledge of the East Neuk

Awash with Pringle, Callaway and beer,

I was abuzz with rainless blasts of wind

Imbued with ancient messages of fear

For callow youths who wouldn’t know they’d sinned.

That day, as planes of Leuchars roared above,

you told of childhood Elie holidays,

the sea, the castle, Old Course all at once

ransacked my breath and ever held my gaze.

Years later, from Rule’s Tower, I looked back the way

And saw us, happy-sad, that late September day.

City Sonnets - 3 and 4

Here are two more - they really aren't cities but there we go ...

ARDMORE

 The churn of Loch a Chadh-fi births the choir

Of mocking zombies singing out the old

East German National Anthem, while the gyre

Behind the motor calls him to its cold

Unspoken danger, like the siren pool

At Caldbeck, three years earlier, pulling down

In quiet and plain sight, wondering wryly who’ll

play hero, as he meekly learns to drown.

Then dessicated on Foinaven’s ridge

He gasps and pukes up trickles; now he’s tied

to Lowther, three years earlier, hears the bridge

and chorus, singing “look on the bright side”.

Of life and death, so glibly and so soon

he’s forced to learn a fragment of his tune.

KABALE

The rainy season’s certainties laid bare,

Kabale fizzed. I felt like I could see

The bottom half of Africa, and there

I tell you I was brave. Then look at me

Alone and walking roads all burnt and white

For miles untroubled by my superpower,

A person among persons in plain sight

Half-caked in mud, parboiled in each fresh shower

McManaman! He cried, McManaman!

the hotel TV snapped me back, and I

was never quite so brave or true again

so wholly, firmly lost under the sky.

McManaman!, months later, home and hosed,

An echo, just a ghost, a chapter closed.

City Sonnets - 1 and 2

This is my next thing I've been doing/am doing. I thought I'd write 14 city sonnets, because I thought it would be nice to practise a form, with a set subject, and be limited by that.

The thing is, the second one I wrote wasn't actually about an actual city, and then when I'd done 14, I saw that a lot of them could be better so I thought I'd write more to see if i could get 14 satisfactory ones, and I've sort of expanded to almost any "place" I've been to.

It's curiously addictive, and of course, for me, it's nice to get in touch with a memory and shape it into something - though these are not all, of course, wholly true memories.

Some of the memories/stories, such as they are, would be better served by a different form, but packing it into 14 lines is good for me to practise

I don't really know how to lay these out, or which ones are good or not....

I'll post two at a time ...


STOCKHOLM
A giant spider of tight islands hides
Its secrets in the dazzling open cold,
A city which both authors and abides,
Preserves its shipwrecks, spins it woes to gold.
We keep on crossing bridges till we’ve found
Ourselves back at the start, with emptied hands
Which paid to hear the treasure in each sound
and leave each relic breathing, where it stands.

Such grandeur! fostered opulence at each
Clear corner. I can see in every hall
that some fresh masterpiece is within reach,
and free? Hardly …but … equally free for all …
We caught the train to Gothenburg before midday
But it grew dark as soon as we were on our way.

BIRMINGHAM
“We’re mostly here for company” she said
Though I had hardly asked. I was impressed
Nevertheless, and since my faith was dead,
Almost, in any case, pleased she’d not dressed
This rigmarole in pretty gilded lies.
The Scottish vicar (bitter, hairy) drank
His share of lunchtime brandy, thought it wise
To whizz us round the ring road (his car stank

Of fags and God, of course) to Sellyoak,
Where I devised a method, in one week,
To hold a mirror to the stifling smoke
And plot, at least, a comfort I could seek.
Apostasy, my honour and my friend,
In Birmingham where missions go to end.