Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Ooh, I’ve written ten poems this year.

That’s not very good. Even if we count the two-and-a-half months I was out of action, that still leaves me with four months in which to write. I think I like three of the poems I’ve written, but I feel guilty that two of them are so short. I’ve sent two of them to M to see what he thinks of them (sigh, it’ll be a while before he reads them, being out on the coast for a week or so. I always feel slightly lost when M goes away)

Despite not writing as many poems as I’d like, I’ve been reading maybe 3-4 poems a day for the last two months or so.

I was reading Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Aubade’ the other day (aubades are beautiful. Larkin’s is…interesting…). The first few lines are just amazing:

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.

I think a lot of people must identify with the first two lines (I know I have…), and the next few lines remind me of my insomniac struggles.

I also read a really disturbing one by Simon Armitage the other day. I wanted to send this to DC because it reminds me of how the most seemingly upstanding of folk can also be the most evil.

‘Poem’

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night
And slippered her the one time that she lied.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn’t spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.

Here’s how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

I was a bit upset before and Dee spoke to me for a bit online and I feel much better. This human gig sucks sometimes, I’m almost tempted to say perhaps life on robot drugs was better after all…

Groan, I accidentally deleted Interpol’s album Turn On the Bright Lights from our server and don’t have a copy of it on my actual computer. Now I’m going to have to go back to my parents’ to find it and rip it onto the server again. Bah. It has one of my favourite songs, ‘Obstacle 1′ as is evidenced by my last.fm playlist (yes, it’s in French because I’m trying to practise it every opportunity I get).