The poetry train becomes a car!

Well Dudes and Dudettes that was a mighty journey , I didn't know where the feck we were going, a proper mystery train for sure.We stopped at a record 17 stations, 18 if you include my departure lounge and 19 if you include the buffet car where a bit of a shindig broke out when the bar opened.All the stops were different and all interesting, perhaps my faves so far. There was surely a few songs written as well as poems.The general poetic consensus ,for all the preamble and blather , seems to be that for better or for worse when we think of home we think of the place we were raised as children. Thanks to everyone who joined in and I hope you all got round to the others.There were a few late arrivals so I'm posting the full list again today. Incidentally I initially chose My Hometown By Bruce Springsteen because for all the years I've listened to it I've had the same little movie in my head that the lyrics conjure up. I didn't think too much of that till mRs EEj confessed the same and then I read in an interview that Springsteen had taken ten years trying to perfect writing cinematographically.He didn't say how, but that struck me as pretty amazing.Now, what that has to do with us writing a poem is less clear other than I think that creativity is contagious and one persons talent/ inspiration or art can inspire anothers.I'm trying to find catalysts to spark revolutions of writing by getting people to write what they otherwise may not have written.Which brings me rather neatly to this weeks task.Mwaahahaha ha, oh, the power! It's gone to my fat little baldy head. I would like you (yes ,YOU,all of you!) to read the poem below by Ted Hughes (The thought Fox) .Maybe print it off and carry it around with you. Read it as often as you can, in the car(unless you're driving of course), on the train,(ditto) the aeroplane, the helicopter, the toilet, at the dentists, at work, when you're watching telly,when you're not watching telly, in the bath, on the roof, cutting the grass, cooking,when you're having bedroom action with your partner,when you're eating, when you're sleeping, just all the feckin time right? Think about it, get to know it, and what it means to you, soak it all in. It is a tea bag and you are a cup of boiling water and we're gonna make poetea. It's not very long ,you might even learn it. Then read the second one 'The Horses' and by Monday write your own poem with all the things you've imagined about the poem tied up into it .We're going for a drive down the poetry superhighway,Ted's poem's are the catalyst to spark your imagination and we're driving out of his thoughts ,but your poem is the car, don't be tempted to write about his, they're just the petrol in the tank. We're on the road to nowhere ,come on and DRIVE! The usual recommendations of peace and solitude cups of tea/ coffee/ poteen /pork scratchings etc etc apply where possible.

Part two of this exercise involves putting a€50/£/$ note into a brown envelope and sending it to

Mr Total Fecking EEjit

Feckwit Castle

The Peoples Republo d'EEjit

North West Tipp.

THE THOUGHT-FOX

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.


Through the window I see no star:
Something more near

Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.




The Horses

I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,


Not a leaf, not a bird -
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood


Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness


Till the moorline - blackening dregs of the brightening grey -
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:


Huge in the dense grey - ten together -
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,


with draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.


I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments


Of a grey silent world.


I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.


Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted


Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,


And the big planets hanging -
I turned


Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,


And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,


Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them


The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,


Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys in the red levelling rays -


In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place


Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.












.Dominic Rivron
http://dominicrivron.blogspot.com/2009/09/one-day.html
Jeanne
http://iconicrealism.blogspot.com/2009/09/fielding-first-love.html
Karen
http://keepingsecrets-karen.blogspot.com/2009/09/going-home.html
Rachel Fox
http://crowd-pleasers.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem-here-we-go-again.html
Niamh
http://variouscushions.blogspot.com/2009/09/another-monday.html
Mrs Nesbitt
http://mrsnesbittsspace.blogspot.com/2009/09/poem-by-moi.html
Don't Feed The Pixies
http://hungrypixies.blogspot.com/2009/09/wordzzle-and-eejit-poem.html
The Weaver of Grass
http://weaverofgrass.blogspot.com/2009/09/two-memes-in-one-day.html
NanU
http://sciencegirltraveler.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poetry-my-hometown.html
The Watercats
http://thewatercats.blogspot.com/2009/09/totalfeckineejits-monday-thingy.html
Uiscebot
http://johnholten.blogspot.com/2009/09/posted-poetry.html
Heather
http://raggedoldblogger.blogspot.com/2009/09/mondays-poetry-post.html
PJ Nolan
http://pjnolan.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem-hometown-thoughts.html
Willow
http://willowmanor.blogspot.com/
Titus
http://titusthedog.blogspot.com/2009/09/tfes-third-monday-challenge.html
Emerging Writer
http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/2009/09/change-at-crewe.html
Sandra Leigh
http://sandarastraveljournal.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-monday-and-other-poems-some-of.html

Swiss

http://travelsinthefloatingelvis.blogspot.com/2009/09/two-poems-about-songs.html