The Scam

To the prison poets, 16 years later

Poetry, that bridge

across separate realities, 

lifted me out of the dark

to see and know

the lie lying over you

as untrue. 

That tomb, prison,

left many marks I'm sure,

but they were not you.

Only the marks you made,

on the page, revealed

the true soul – so far

from everyday reality,

and so much more real.

Sad, then, 

that after all

physical freedom threw you

back to the world's fraud

where we all act out 

external roles

learned early.

What got you in there

engulfed you again, out.

The brawler, the drunk,

the druggie, the thief,

the hustler, the sucker 

found no other way

of coping. Poetry

doesn't pay the rent

or put food on the table,

and when it gets you the girl

it doesn't teach you

how to live with her,

how to keep her.

Sorry, I didn't mean

to do such a good con job.

I myself was gullible.

It worked for me –

but I started out

luckier, I guess.

There were those of you 
(few) 
turned it around,
became

after false starts

amalgamated:

inner and outer man

combining to be new,

and grow.

Some, as far as I know,

still make poems. 

Others stopped.

This has nothing to do

with which ones 

changed their lives,

and who did not.

Poetry and I 

might be

irrelevant.

Once upon a time I was a poetry tutor in a men's prison. They were all poets already and had approached the Poets Union, through their Education Officer, to ask for a regular workshop.

For this poem I used a word list from 'imaginary garden with real toads' for Get Listed – April Ain't Fooling Edition, Day 13 of April Poetry Month. We were asked to use at least three of these words (I used all but one): bridge, con, lie, tomb, scam, gullible, fraud, president, hustler, sucker, mark, prison. 

Also linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #349.

Succumbing

Sailing straight-up,
but caught
in stormy passion,
too soon tilted tipsy –
went hurtling three sheets to the wind
shaken, twisted, hammered
by dirty rain and whiskey-coloured ocean,
to crash on the rocks: kamikaze.

De Jackson at dVerse Poetics: Muse Mixocology asks for 33 words or less, some of which must be from this alcohol-related list – but we must use them in some other way/s:


shaken stirred rum sour whiskey last call
elixir on the rocks straight up twist round chaser
back dirty proof tumbler three sheets to the wind
tie one on shots hammered tipsy hair of the dog
absinthe vesper tonic kamikaze spritzer
tie one on liquid courage name your poison drown your sorrows
wet your whistle

Secrets Rising Up

It was the merest fragment 

of a glimpse — she was
insistent on that — no clear view
of what he was withdrawing
from the early morning sea.

It could have been a body, or just

a mess of wet clay, she said.

I wanted to worry at her story, as if
it was a bone to be gnawed, and I
a dog with a huge empty belly.
My hunger was a sharp knife.

But it was like trying to bite fog;

my gnashing teeth closed on nothing.

The place had us both tangled —

lonely suburb at the ocean’s edge,

miasma weighting the air. Behind each door,

behind the blank face of every house,
you could almost smell it: blood.

This is another attempt at a poem using the following word list from some Pablo Neruda poems: fragment / insistent / withdrawing / sea / clay / gnawed / empty / knife / suburb / face / house / blood. It was in fact my first attempt, but I couldn't make it work so I wrote the 'Uneasy Tanka' instead. I've done some more work on this one since, and am linking it to this week's Tuesday Platform at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Uneasy Tanka

A fragment of leaf

dances, frail yet insistent

in the white shallows —

withdrawing, approaching

on flirting tide, teasing sea.

*****

With her long fingers

she kept moulding the wet clay,

but it gnawed at her

with its great blankness, empty.

Some truths must be shaped by knife.

*****

The suburb is masked.

Each door hides a secret face;

each house holds stories

pent up, threatening to spill

like wastes unflushed, or dark blood.

Written in response to 'Get listed for May' at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

The word list we were asked to use came from poems by Neruda, but I don't know that my efforts owe much to him! The words, from three different poems, were fragment / insistent / withdrawing / sea; clay / gnawed / empty / knife; suburb / face / house / blood. I decided to make a separate poem for each sequence, and the tanka form suggested itself — 'uneasy' because they get progressively darker. I'm not sure where that mood came from — but perhaps, after all, from Neruda, getting into my subconscious.