Concern

How would you like to have your very own personal, individual, totally unique piece of TFE art? Imagine the jealousy of your friends and neighbours, imagine the thrill of looking at it every day, bringing pleasure on an unparalleled level, imagine how it can only become a collectors item and eventually be worth a small fortune!

And it's so simple comrades, to grab a unique piece of TFE fine art all you have to do is donate, say €5 (or less or more, it's up to you) ,to third world charity ' Concern' at their website http://www.concern.net/ -it only takes a few clicks of the mouse.

When you have done this just leave a message in one of the TFE comments boxes with your email address and the subject you would like drawn.(I won't publish your email address) I specialise in portraiture so if you would like to email me a photo that would be fine. When it is done I will email you the finished image for you to print and frame.Imagine a truly amazing piece of TFE art memorabilia on your wall,it will probably be worth more than your house eventually and we will be doing a tiny bit of good along the way.

The ArtSparker experiment

The very talented ArtSparker http://artsparktheatre.blogspot.com/2009/10/illustration-challenge.html invited us to finish off one of her drawings,so I did. Can you tell which bit is hers?

Apologies.

Sorry to let you all down, but despite the runaway success of my latest poem,'Little Tommy Tucker' (already shortlisted for 3 major prizes) I have decided against publishing my other latest poem entitled 'Little Tommy Tunt'

MONDAY TASK GET ON DA POETRY BUS

It was a train then a car, now it's deffo a bus, people can get on and get off when they like,the journey is for fun and for free,come aboard.Tough journey last week poetry hero SuperTed gave us a cerebral workout and with great results all round, songs, multiple poems,creative dismay, horses ,runaway horses,wolves,breakdowns (mechanical and emotional)classroom boredom, pikes, candles,Teddy buoys,badgers,haiku(PAH!) black rabbits,barn owls, stars and Devils eyes,earth rampant on a field of Sky! How d'ya like dem apples poetry people! Thanks a million to everyone who had a go , I tip me hat to each and every one of ye. Now for next Monday, I've left it too late to set my originally intended task but fortunately fellow blogger Niamh had already suggested we write a poem about a photograph, so that is the Poetry Bus journey for next Monday.I didn't have time to find a suitably good photoblog, but fortunately I am also the best photographer in the world so have rustled up 10 images .You can choose one or as many as you like, use them for inspiration,just write whatever comes to you when you look at them.Be interesting to see who chooses what and how poems might differ for the same photo.I can't load all 10 together so 5 are here and 5 in the post below.

The Poetry Bus part deux

Balaclavas and mittens

An extract from CLOTHING from Guineys book of bollix.


The name "balaclava" comes from the town of Balaklava, near Sevastopol in Crimea (now Ukraine).[1] During the Crimean War, knitted balaclavas were sent over to the British troops to help protect them from the bitter cold weather. This spurred the troops onto victory. A similar scenario at the battle of 'Mitten' in the Scottish highlands ended in disaster when the British soldiers ,freezing in the Scottish hills ,were issued with a new type of glove made in great haste -hence only having an individual space for the thumb alone ,the rest of the hand and fingers being trapped in the same woolly pocket.The gloves were named 'Mitten' (or those fuckin' bastardin' useless gloves) after the terrible battle there where British soldiers were routed due to not being able to position their mitten bound fingers on the trigger of their rifles.

I was unfortunate enough to be issued with a balaclava as a schoolboy and it did indeed keep you warm and cocooned from the world ,covering as it did your entire head including ears and all your peripheral vision.This however ,though having the advantage of thermal retension,made crossing the road like a game of Russian roulette as you could neither hear, nor barely see, the traffic.I was run over several times before the age of 10. Luckily out of the 10 accidents I was only killed twice, the other tmes escaping with broken limbs, decapitation and mild abrasions.

Also, as we were poor and mammy had already splashed the cash on the balaclava ,mittens were only to be dreamt of.Instead we went to school with just the string running through the sleeves of our coat to which normally would be attached a pair of mittens.If challenged by rich kids we merely feigned shock that our cashmere mittens had disasterously fallen from the strings.

Tommy Tucker

A poem following a prompt from new follower, PhilipH.tanx ye Phil!

Little Tommy Tucker
was an ugly little fucker,
his mother, the old hag,
made him wear a paper bag,
his schoolmates took the piss
saying, 'Oi! Just look at this!'
But Tommy had the last laugh
Coz he stabbed them all.

Prizes beckon, cheques a plenty, more and greater and more ,OOh and AAhh and Oh! the glory of me , myself and I , look at me Ma, Twat of the world!!

YABBA DABBA AND DOOO IT'S MONDAY

Thats right folks the day we have all been waiting for is here.Thank feck the weekend is over at last,bask now comrades in rays of joyous exaltation and frollick in the fabulous knowledge that magnificent monday poetry est arrivé. Last week I had the brilliant idea (well it seemed so at the time) of seeing if the poetry of Ted Hughes might spur us on to even greater heights than last week. I spent much longer getting this poem into shape, found it harder, had to work at it,it had to be chiselled out from quite a large rock, I was beginning to think there would be nothing left, I was beginning to hope there would be nothing left ! Looking forward to seeing everyone else's but fear there won't be so many this week. Anyway here's mine ,why don't you show me yours?


Horses

forming words, tight-locked polished
poisoned black pearls, wrought
naked in the half-light, strangled in suffering.
Poetry is the journey, not the end of the tunnel.

Lines to die for, breaths from death’s blue-blue lips,
damned digging deeper down ,
poems beneath his nails, her nails,
dug down deep, deep in the
mind's black hole, no thoughts, no life
beyond the blank page, the ticking clock
and Horses. Horses. Horses.

And here's the rest of the gang!

Jeanne

http://iconicrealism.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poetry-respite_26.html

Swiss

http://travelsinthefloatingelvis.blogspot.com/2009/09/poems-about-horses-and-foxes.html

(see also the previous 'Ted collision' post)

Mrs Niamh

http://variouscushions.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem.html

Rachel

http://crowd-pleasers.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem-take-it-to-top-ted.html

Uiscebot

http://theblogsthejob.blogspot.com/2009/09/giddy-fuck-up.html

P.Nolan

http://pjnolan.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem-teddy-buoy.html

The Watercats

http://thewatercats.blogspot.com/2009/09/couldnt-help-it-wolves.html

Titus The Dog

http://titusthedog.blogspot.com/2009/09/tfes-monday-challenge-i-thought-it-was.html

Heather

http://raggedoldblogger.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-weeks-poetry-post.html

Dominic Rivron

http://dominicrivron.blogspot.com/2009/09/busy-busy-busy.html

Domestic Oubliette

http://domesticoubliette.blogspot.com/2009/09/oh-monday-monday.html

The Weaver Of Grass

http://weaverofgrass.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem.html

Sandra Leigh

http://sandarastraveljournal.blogspot.com/

Argent

http://argent-delusionsofadequacy.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-poem.html

Emeging Writer

http://emergingwriter.blogspot.com/2009/09/black-rabbit.html

A lesser day

Pictures and Postcards


Mountains to mist, Beckett to boxer to blonde-
platinum of course, looking me straight in the eye,
over the slope of her shoulder.
She says nothing, and a million things.
not one can I catch as, like the accusations, I fly.
I’m back on the midnight bus as it pulls out and pulls in
passengers from the random roundabouts of my youth,
girlfriends dressed to kill and dying from the cold.
Yards and years away are barges passing,
coal powered, just like the square panes of light from the
Arndale block that lure people like moths.
The bigger picture hints of a hunt, of war, of winter,
brothers in arms, their quarry sought their silence confident,
reflective, pleased with themselves and whatever they have done.
I remember their faces peering in from the streets to the dreamy Cafés
‘Stay a while’, they seem to say, ‘Drink your coffee,
Compile this list for lesser days.’

(First published in The SHOp 27 Summer 2008)

Comedy at any cost?

Well,I used to think the only criteria for comedy was that it had to be funny.Beyond that anything goes, nothing is off limits.Maybe I was young, maybe I was naive, but mainly I was just plain uncaring egotistical selfish and wrong. I wrote a funny poem about Ted Hughes the other day but as soon as I had written it, and it really wasn't that bad, I knew I wouldn't post it.Comedy sometimes has a cost, at worst it has a victim, then that joke just isn't funny anymore. Billy Connolly, one of the few comics that could actually make me laugh, the only comic I have paid money to see, found this out when he cracked a joke about a real life hostage and how he wished his captors would just get on with it and kill him. Connolly paid a price for his humour at any cost mentality.Here in Ireland Tommy Tiernan one of our most talented comedians at the percieved to be enlightened artsy Electric picnic is being given full support for his jokes about Jews. I quote..

'But these Jews, these fuckin Jew cunts came up to me.Fuckin Christ killin bastards! Fuckin six million?I would have got 10 or 12 million out of that.No fuckin problem! Fuckin two at a time, they would have gone! Hold hands get in there! Leave us your teeth and your glasses.'

Funny?Well he and the Electric picnic crowd appeared to think so, no objections were raised till 3 weeks later when his joke was printed in a newspaper. Tiernan somewhat ironically claims to be greatly upset that these comments have caused hurt to others as this was never his intention.Maybe, or maybe not , either way his priority was to boost his ego.He claims his remarks were taken out of context? In what context known to man would these comments have been acceptable let alone humourous? As far as I know the entire audience was with him, nobody objected (as they did to Connolly) nobody booed and nobody walked out. Tiernan has previously made jokes about Travellers and people with Down Syndrome , all of which I've heard and all of which I've found offensive. I've always sensed the negative charisma of the bully within Tiernan. Neither he nor his backers feel the need to apologise, he will continue to tour, continue to sell out (in every sense of the word) and continue to offend with impunity.