I have started a Poetry Writing Course being ran by the Crescent Arts centre in Belfast and is being facilitated by Stephen de Burca. I am thoroughly enjoying being in a space with other like-minded people. Every week we are given prompts and asked to write something. I do write every day but it rarely has a focus or a plan.
Week one. Write a Haiku about each of the seasons:
Spring: Daffodils Blossom. Lambs leap and bleat in fields. The sun gently shines.
Summer: Air conditioning Is not something that we here Thought we’d ever need
Autumn: Red, yellow and brown Make a carpet for the ground. Dogs are delighted.
Winter: Footprints in fresh snow. Icy projectiles surprise Any who come near.
OK I have hmm’d and haa’d but most importantly I have Paid for this site so I am going to start using it.
The same loose collection of things that pop into my head but I have lately become a lot more focussed on poetry with specific reference to Poetry born here.
I am as comfortable with Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dante as I am with Heaney, Mahon and Kavanagh. I have a particular preference for poetry in my accent and that could well be the focus of this whatever this is. They used to be called blogs, didn’t they?
Ah, lads, we lost Mr. Cho, Professor Chobertington McBiteyface Furryfucktrousers McGonagall has crossed the Styx.
He simply would not have countenanced the Rainbow Bridge. He was a Goth and therefore was at all times THE NIGHT.
I’ve not planned anything here, it’s just gonna be a bit of stream-of-consciousness on grief when I should be working from home. I’m even using my works laptop to do this because I am a cheeky chappie.
Hang on, I’m going to grab another slice of coffee.
Still here? Glutton for it.
Anyway as you may or may not be aware, grief has been front and centre of my life for a couple of years. I lost my mother and father in November 2022 within five days of each other. That was rough as I’m sure you wouldn’t need telling. That’s a grief that you live with, it never diminishes. Grief is one of those things. The impact, the weight of it, all of these things never diminish but we get stronger, at least I think that’s what it is. Maybe my brain just broke in a way that looks like coping even to me? Either way, as overwhelmed as I was (and I was for a long time. I’m on my fifth job since they died because I couldn’t cope with the amount of grief I had to take on all at once) I became stronger with it, or learned to handle it but the amount hasn’t diminished one iota.
Every now and again, seemingly out of nowhere, I’ll be hit with a wave of it. A song will play on the Shopping Centres tannoy. Someone will post something on Facebook. A passage from a book. A lot of things hit differently and I don’t realise that they will until it happens. A previously unseen connection with a song or a poem will make itself known the first time you listen to or read it after the event and it’ll level you right there and then, no matter where you are.
Grief doesn’t come with an expectation of privacy.
During the early stages of my grief there were many, many sleepless nights. I’d wander down to the living room a bit lost amongst all the familiarity. I’d just sit on the sofa and stare at nothing, numb, shell-shocked and concussed with the weight of what I’d just been hit with. Mr Cho would be there.
Cats have a thing they do which is adorable. Once they have decided that you are worthy, and this is not a persistent state, they will come over and assess your worth as a cushion. They will sometimes start kneading your torso (a hangover from kittenhood, they are looking for a nipple) and then bury their heads. This is after using you as a climbing frame and making sure you get a good eyeful of bumhole.
And then he’d just lie on me. Purring away, making wee mlerms and slabbers in his sleep. And for that moment it was enough.
