A slightest touch of hangover after yesterday’s 12 hour open mic to raise money for cancer research, to which I was able to contribute a couple of wildly inappropriate poems. They were flogging Estrella behind the bar and maybe I should have stopped at six….
Here is another poem from Prole that I liked, this time by Robin Houghton. I enjoy sharing other peoples’ stuff so much maybe I should start my own magazine; I don’t know of any Leeds-based ones right now.
This poem works because I suspect we have all had holidays that fit to both “halves” of the poem. All of my trips with my second wife were like part one. Before all that, in another life, there was a magical weekend in Florence. Another in Barcelona after.
Two Honeymoons
1.
One duff clutch on the Hardknott Pass,
one haunted cottage and a coalfire dead
on its knees, mud and more mud.
A photo shows me posing on a stile
in pink sweatpants, that curly perm,
a blurred expression. the miniature train
to Muncaster Castle, hills we couldn’t
name, pubs full of climber blokes up
for Striding Edge. I don’t recall the sex.
2.
Now and then we left the third floor apartment
to fetch bread, or olives or a jar of ragù, to catch
a flash of a Plague Doctor’s white beak crossing
from a blind alley, or a tethered gondola aloof
and rocking. A palazzo doorway was our heartland
and the city drew close, warmed its hands in ours.
We almost touched the prancing horses of St Mark’s
from our window. Every night, in this church or that
we could have heard the Four Seasons by Candlelight,
we talked of it but never went, and instead grew fat
on the silence of lapping water and our own mystery.
Winter was over and Spring sensed our impatience:
we didn’t know how long we had, nor, if Venice
were to sink and send a thousand Titians out to sea
if we, naked and joyous as cherubim, would notice.
Part 2 for me please but, yes, been part of 1 too. Enjoyed the images this poem invoked. Running a magazine sounds like a good challenge!
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Currently a vague unformed crazy idea 🙂
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I have had many ideas (as have others). I let mine go as logistics to bring them to reality seem enormous and somehow to be ‘someone else’s job’. Then I see my ideas manifest at the hands of another and the ideas are successful but that person did it and I didn’t. Bon courage with your idea!
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My best friend once had the crazy idea of making 3D jigsaws. He never pursued it. Now they are everywhere! 🙂
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