Pale Blue Dot (Revised Again)

Some more changes to the poem. Hope you still like it.

D

Pale Blue Dot

‘Earth is the right place for love’
Robert Frost

Four billion miles out
On the edge.
A camera turns
Refocuses robotic lenses
On this dust mote afloat
In a beam of distant sunlight.
Held by a solar thread
Remote and alone
Shrouded in giant darkness.

A self-portrait.

This speck of fertile rock
Like a grain of sand
Suspended in cosmic sea
The fragile petals
Of a wild flower, slowly unfurling.

No one is coming.

It is up to us.



© David Loffman

The Earth from the Dark Side of Saturn

Here is another photograph taken from the outer Solar System.

To the left just beyond the bright inner rings is a faint blue dot at about 10 O'clock.

The dot is Earth.

Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot

Four billion miles out
On the edge.
A camera turns
In deep space to face home.
Refocus robotic lenses
On this dust mote floating
In a beam of distant sunlight, drifting.
Remote and alone
Shrouded in giant darkness.

This speck of rock
Like a grain of sand
Suspended in a cosmic sea
Is home.

No one is coming to rescue us.

It is up to us.



© David Loffman


16 September 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_blue_dot

Handling Anger

Hi the holiday season is coming to an end. Its time to start blogging again. There are quite a few posts I want to send to the blog about the summer but this one got there first. I was invited to preach last night at the 6.30 service by our vicar. He is trying to put a team of readers together for all the different services we have - 4 services each Sunday.

And after preaching last night he has asked me to join the team.

SERMON 26 AUGUST 6.30

Handling Anger

Lord God Please take these words of mine and these words of yours and breath your holy spirit on them. Give them life in our lives and glory to you. Amen.

I have a problem handling anger. We were driving back from France last week. We had been on the road for ten hours; it was eleven thirty at night and we were desperate to get home. We finally made it to the M25 but when we were approaching our exit the motorway was closed and to my horror we were diverted on to the M23 towards Gatwick Airport. I was furious. I was really angry. We got home two hours later than we expected.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at the Sermon on the Mount, and the main reading that Trevor read to us is part of that. Throughout the Sermon Jesus wanted his disciples and us to live righteous lives. He wants people to be salt and light in the world. For that first audience it meant don’t be like the Scribes and Pharisees - who reduced the law to a series of prohibitions and observances. And we shouldn’t be like the materialistic world around us. Yes Jesus wants his audiences to do what the law commands but he wants our hearts and minds tuned into the law as well.

In verse 20 Jesus says “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus sets out to show how we can live righteous lives. Jesus takes the ten commandments as his starting point. And offers practical ways of living by them. From verse 21 – 48 he comments on the commandments, he breathes new life into them, revitalising them making them come alive.

This evening we’re going to look at verses 21 – 26 Jesus’ where Jesus comments on the sixth commandment “You shall not murder.”

In these verses

· Jesus says that anger and insults towards a sister or brother is equal to murder.
· Jesus says to be angry with a brother or sister puts you in danger of the fire of hell
· Anger is an obstacle to worship.
· Therefore be reconciled to our brother’s and sisters.
· Do this quickly
· So that you can return to true worship and living a righteous life.

In verses 21 – 23 Jesus says anger and insults are just as bad as murder.

He says “anyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgement”. Here Jesus talks about the anger that comes from a desire to get rid of somebody; somebody who stands in our way. And that for Jesus is murder. It’s an anger the spills into insults and abuse. It’s an unrighteous anger motivated by hatred, malice and revenge.

Hamlet is a play dominated by revenge. In it we are given a portrait of a revenge hero from ancient Greece. Pyrrrhus – a man seeking revenge for the murder of his father at any cost physical or spiritual.

'The rugged Pyrrhus,,Black as his purpose, did the night resembleSmeared with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,roasted in wrath and fire,And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish PyrrhusOld grandsire Priam seeks.'

Recently I’ve had some difficulties with a neighbour over parking. I didn’t know what I’d done to upset him. He became quite rude. Every time he saw me he’d swear at me. I tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn’t listen. As a result it was me that became angry. Every time I drove home I thought about him. I was like the person in

1 John 2:1 1 where he says “ whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him”. More about my neighbour later.

Hatred changes the way we live. It changes the way we behave towards people. It can turn our work places and homes into battlegrounds. Jesus says the issue of anger towards people is so important that it excludes us from the Kingdom of God. 1 John 3:15 says Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

Have you ever been so angry that you have almost lost control? Which is one reason why Jesus wanted any angry disputes solved as quickly as possible. Jesus wanted a nation united so that all their energies could be devoted to living righteous lives, worshipping in truth and purity of spirit. Jesus wanted his listeners to be a light to the world.

But conflicts were common is Jesus’ day. He lived at a time when the Jewish nation was under great pressure. Any country that is occupied by a military force is under stress. People feel fragile, insecure and vulnerable. Under these conditions it is no wonder that conflicts develop.

Also Israel in Jesus’ time was a highly structured and segregated society. And this too can be a cause of arguments. A Roman soldier insults a Jew, a Samaritan attacks a Jewish neighbour, and a Jew fights back. And within the Jewish community there were many different factions.

Is our society so different?

Okay we are not under military dictatorship but many of us live under huge amounts of pressure. Often we are stretched to the limits of our resources. Our neighbourhoods and our homes can become a breeding ground of anger, resentment and hatred. The newspaper headlines this weekend are full of gang culture and gun violence. To Jesus, when we are angry at someone its just as bad as if we were using a gun. For the LORD looks at the heart.

And this makes our worship meaningless. So we need to acknowledge our anger and tackle it. Jesus says a breach in the relations between people makes their worship fit for the rubbish dump.

In verse 24 those who use insulting language “will be in danger of the fire of hell”. The word “hell” is a translation of the word “gehenna”. To Jesus’ first audience it is a word that they understood. It is mentioned throughout the gospels. In the Old Testament it is a deep and narrow ravine just beyond the southwestern walls of Jerusalem. It was a cursed place. It was a place where the rubbish of the city was burned, where the bodies of executed criminals were dumped and where the Canaanites sacrificed children to their God by burning.

Our worship must be without blemish or fault.

It says in Leviticus 22:21 “When anyone brings from the herd or flock - traditionally a peace offering to the LORD - it must be without defect or blemish to be acceptable”.

But Jesus wants more than just the physical details of our worship to be right. He wants every aspect of our worship to be perfect. Our whole lives are to be a living sacrifice. When we have hurt someone Jesus says we should even interrupt our worship and be reconciled to the one we have hurt.

Imagine for a moment what that would have entailed to one of Jesus’ listeners. The penitent and the priest both have their hands on the sacrifice at the alter of the temple in Jerusalem. And the penitent is just about to say these words “I entreat, O Lord; I have rebelled… but I return in penitence and let this animal be for my covering” ……………. when he suddenly remembers somebody he has hurt. He lets go of the animal walks back along the long queue of penitents, to the three-day journey back to his village in Galilee. Where he finally knocks on a neighbour’s door and humbly asks for forgiveness for the wrong he has caused him. Then he turns round and looks down the road and the three-day journey back to the temple and wonders if the priest is still holding the goat he had brought.

Jesus’ solution to the breach in relationships is much simpler. And that is reconciliation, now.

Making peace involves being sensitive to the people in our lives.
It involves letting go of our self-centredness. It’s about being aware of how we affect others. Making peace involves a genuine and humble attitude to God, the people we come into contact with and our worship. It is an on going process; we must attend to it daily. We need to adopt an attitude where we are prepared to change, to admit the pain we cause others and move on.

This happened to me once years ago here at Christ Church just before a Communion service. A friend came up to me. He took me aside and asked for my forgiveness. Actually I didn’t know what wrong he had committed against me but his face was so pained and awkward so I said I forgive you. Then he hugged me and we returned to our seats. He did not want anything to come between himself and God or between God and me. He wanted our worship to be perfect.

Reconciliation is hard. It involves a denial of our pride and our ego. It’s a sacrifice of the heart. It says in Psalm 51 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.” That could not have been an easy thing for my friend to come up to me. He had made himself vulnerable and weak. But he did it anyway.

In Mathew 5:21-26 Jesus’ examples of anger and insults between people show us that God sees our anger as if we were killing someone. Whenever we are aware of the hurt we have caused others we should make peace with them as soon as possible. Without reconciliation our worship is meaningless.

And so now, back to my neighbour and our parking problems. Late one night I met him walking his dog. A few hours earlier he was swearing at me as usual. And then he came over to me and said, “I’ve had enough of all this,” and offered me his hand. And since then we’ve been fine. It seemed as if his anger was a burden to him as well as it had been for me.

Jesus is telling his listeners not to let anger take hold of our lives. Anger locks and shackles us to the world. It keeps us prisoner. In it we can barely see heaven. We should stop it before it affects our worship and our relationships with other people.

We should Be perfect, therefore just as our heavenly Father is perfect.

for the Poetry Challenge and At The Troubadour

I read this at The Troubadour last night. It got a strong reaction from a few people.

When I read the opening a few weeks back to Katy she went Yuk! So I knew I was on the right track. The poem was written as part of the poetry challenge and is part of a series of poems on Intruders.

The theme of The Troubadour evening was Home. It can be a subject that cloaks the past and often pain in soft focus. It can inspire sentimental nostalgia.

I think I wanted something raw and uncomfortable.

Kitchen Intruders

Behind the sink
A crack in the splash back
Opened up black wet, cavernous.
A dark damp nursery
Of slime coagulating
In dank glutinous blindness
Blistered with slugs
Suckling in musty darkness.

Each morning
A faint trace
Of their slow scavenge
Across the floor.
Paths crisscrossing
Like the lines of aeroplane vapour trails.

Each night
We gave the house over to them
To feast on our remains.

© David Loffman

R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts

This is a bit of a test. Hope it works. And hope you enjoy the poem and the video. One thing that strikes me about the video is how it borrows quite consciously from Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.

Anyway - the poem


Stationary

Lonely motorway
Asphalt and aggregate
A long congested tail of vehicles
Convulses to a stop.

A clock on the dashboard
Measures lost miles
As the minutes pass.

Stasis shrivels meaning,
Swallows belief.
Speed is the highway’s only currency.
Blurred lines its only vision
Visible only in movement.

Thoughts are stretched thin
Try to focus
Will dissolves
Eyes glaze
Vague distractions fail
The radio and cross words.

The anchor drags
At a motorway interchange
Layered bridges
Unscalable parapets

Debris in the gutter.
Buckled and rusted hubcaps and beer cans.

We are the discarded,
The forgotten,
On this obscene stationary carriageway
We wait, heavy on processed air.

But in that restless hypnotic emptiness
Drowsing with boredom and shame
A driver seems to rise like an Angel
Unfold himself
Crosses lanes
To the central reservation.

Arms outstretched
Like a messiah of the motorway
A sentinel on the parapets
Offers a benediction to the stranded.
Calls to us out to follow
Like a Pied Piper.

© David Loffman


30 June 2007

from The Poetry Challenge

Vinery

for Giles and Julia

Royal vines

Cut from a king’s court

Hundreds of years old – slow matured

Their roots drawing deep into England.

Their knurled trunks growing

Out of hot black loam

Under the magnified sun light

Of this Hertfordshire glasshouse.

A clot grapes

A nest of magenta beads

Suspended from the sloping glass roof.

Cool marble to touch,

Their fragile skins

Hold all summer’s blood

That breaks and melts

Over our lips

Spills onto our tongues

Then thick and sweet

Crushed flesh at our throats.

A toast to friendship.

© David Loffman

24 June 2007

from The Poetry Challenge

Hi

Sorry it has been so long since my last post - 3 weeks I think.

Jeff and I have had a short break posting poems to each other. But now we are back to it. I'm hoping now that most of the teaching is finished to spend more time working on the poems and the challenge. They have been neglected since February. So maybe you will begin to read poems with a broader vision and better worked.

The poem below is part of a series of poems based on paintings I have stumbled across. Other poems include Hopper's Night Hawkes and Van Gogh's Night Cafe. These poems have been posted to this site.

Hope you enjoy the poem.

Love David



























Portrait

from L’ absinthe by Degas

She sits slumped
Like an old paper bag
That the wind had blown in
Crumpled and wrinkled.

She wears defeat
In her stained faded white bodice.

She has retreated here.
To this bench
With this man,
Beside this cold marble table.

Behind her - the white washed walls
Where pale shabby curtains fall
Against the dead white light of the sun.

There is surrender
In every part of her appearance.
There, in her dull watery eyes
That cannot focus.

There, in the tired cotton frills
That hangs slack around her neck,
Yellow ribbons cling like wilted flowers.

There, in her shoulders and arms
That drop limp and loose.
They carry the heavy failures of her life
That she dissolves
Into the glass that rests beside her.

Her head tilts against the cold
And painful morning light

And he is all in brown.
Crushes her in that hard
Battened down indifferent look –
Seared by the pain of a thousand failures.


© David Loffman

03 June 2007

from The Poetry Challenge

Neighbours

I

Watching Jack

Saturday morning
Quiet cul-de-sac.

The street basks in spot light sun
And Jack takes his dog for a walk,
Passes in front of us
Sitting behind the wide window screen
Relaxed for a moment
Before the children return.
The street, a slow unravelling
A random and effortless soap opera.

Jack passes by on the other side
He’s eighty, his dog, Alsatian,
Young, gangly and alert
On the lead – their daily exercise.

Then Black Harry comes across the road
At Jack’s dog
Barking and jumping up at his throat
There is the roar of dogs
And Jack shouts
Pulls at the lead
Then bends down
To put his arms around his dog.

When we get there
We don’t know what to do.
Jack won’t let his dog go
Harry is all jaws and saliva
His teeth around the Alsatian’s neck.
So I grab at Black Labrador Harry’s collar
Pull him straight off Jack’s dog.
He comes away easy
His anger retreats
With adult authority
Then seems disinterested
When his owner comes
To grab him off me.

She was in the back garden
Her mate in the shower
Harry must have slipped out unnoticed, she says.

So there’s Jack now
Shouting at her
He’s losing his breath
But he keeps on yelling
He changes colour.

We try and calm him
But he takes a few steps into a driveway
To get some distance from us
Pulls his dog with him.
Then he stumbles onto his knees
And crumples onto the ground.
Lies there, motionless,
Accusation and anger in his stare
With his face turning blue.

That was the last we saw of Black Harry
And Jack, stretchered into an ambulance
The driver shaking his head.


© David Loffman

from The First Poetry Challenge

It's been about three weeks since I'last posted to the Blog. So here is a picture and a poem to cheer you up.


The photograph was taken last Tuesday 10 April with our friends in their wood in Kent.
The poem was written on a visit to the wood in 2000. Hope you like them both.

Moment in the Wood

I first heard the wind
blowing far off trees.
A hushed restlessness
that could have been rain.
Then granite grained
light dissolving fast,
sun cloaked.
The wind, louder now,
metallic sounding.
Could have been
farm machinery.
Suddenly tree tops
convulsed wildly,
branches flung helpless
crisp leaves hissing
like radio static.
Now here upon us
flapping tarpaulin
smoke scattering
all over the camp,
bushes and branches
bent to knotted brambles
and the heat swallowed
up by sudden chill.
Then the wind running
off to somewhere else
leaves, everything, still.

Wind came, stopped our work,
like unwanted thoughts,
disturbed our peace,
like a door slammed
against the summer.


© David Loffman

Photograph of The Speech

A Speech in the Members' Dinning Room

It is great to get comments from visitors.

On Wednesday March 14 there were many great speeches in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons were debating Trident - there was a water cannon on College Green. The Lord's were debating their own extinction. And in the Members' Dinning Room at 4.30 I got up to address and audience of Royality, Lord's and Ladies, Ministers, Members of Parliament, an assortment of minor celebrities and many disabled students who had just been given a grant by The Snowdon Award Scheme - a charity that helps disabled people back into education.

This is what I said.

Lord Snowdon
Lords
Ladies and Gentleman

It’s really great to be here today and speak with so many people that have recently started such a varied and diverse range of courses of study. It is exciting being with people making a new start and making positive changes, a new beginning. It’s so positive and life affirming. Though I expect with your excitement there are doubts and fears.

But so many people here have struggled and overcome so much already.

Here is a bit of my story. I hope it will be an encouragement.

I left school at 16 in 1975 with no qualifications at all. I remember walking out of the school gates for the last time with a huge smile on my face and victoriously telling myself that I would never open the door of education again.

However I returned to full time education just two years later. I was recovering from a serious illness and when I went back it was to a further education college. There I started an academic journey that has redefined and changed my life completely.

At first I didn’t know what I could do so I enrolled on a basic pre O level vocational course. At the end -clutching a handful of credits and distinctions - I asked my lecturers well what should I do now – and they replied, why not try some O Level’s. And when I’d completed those I looked around wide-eyed with a beaming smile and asked again – what should I do now. Another lecturer answered well why not try some A Levels now David.

As I was completing the first year of A Levels – everyone around me seemed obsessed with universities and application forms. I had some struggles with the recurring disease but I asked again what shall I do after this. and one of the lecturers said rather impatiently I thought – you should try a degree. And so I did.

I was the first person in my family to study for a degree. It meant leaving home. It meant setting up a life independent of my family. It meant spending money my parents did not really have. And more scarily It meant taking my own responsibility for managing the disease and the damage it had left by myself.

But there seemingly out of the blue – suddenly – there was the Snowdon Award Scheme. It gave me an award that helped me be independent in those first tentative steps away from home - studying, buying books, fares back home for hospital appointments, and desperately trying to buy food that I could make into something edible.

[It was a difficult first term. And I remember sitting in a student bar on a cold January evening in the ruins of my first university relationship. I was surrounded by fit and healthy people that could party all night and walk without thinking about it. I felt that I wanted to go home. I wanted to stop and start the degree again. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.]

One night very very late we were sitting in my room drinking port and listening to David Bowie. A good friend said to me I’d make a good teacher. And I immediately thought of the Further Education. What they had given me, I could give to others: a second chance at education and the enthusiasm and wonder of learning.

And so when I completed my degree I went on to train to be a lecturer in Further Education. and that is what I have been for the last twenty years a: a lecturer in Further Education And sometimes I teach on that same basic vocational course that I first studied back in 1977. Along with becoming married, raising children, I also write a ridiculous amount of poetry – some of which is about illness and recovery.

Finally. I remember being sent an invitation to what must have been the first Snowdon Award Ceremony back in 1981. And I remember very clearly declining to attend. I remember I felt quite awkward, clumsy and very shy. I think I felt overawed and out of place.

So it is quite ironic really that 25 years later I would be given this rather wonderful and public opportunity to say thank you to Lord Snowdon, the supporters, sponsors and all the people working behind the scenes at the Snowdon Award Scheme.

And great also to have this opportunity to wish you success and satisfaction in all the diverse courses you are undertaking.

Thank you.

It was great fun.

from The Poetry Challenge

Composing Poetry

We stayed up late
through winter nights
long before you both came,
and played with names
conjuring you out from the darkness,
drawing you into our lives.
We lulled each other to sleep
with you on our lips.

We spoke them to each other,
surprised ourselves with their strength
and strangeness,
tried to catch ourselves
off balance with them.

We collected names
like given clothes
for a bottom draw.

Sometimes we’d take them out
when no one was listening
and try them on.
We savoured them on our tongues
and sounded them for size and fit.

At first all we had of you
were your names.
We covered you both
in long soft vowels
and granite consonants
years before you arrived.

© David Loffman

The Third Round

Jeff and I met today to read our second round poems to each other and vote on the best poem for the round. It was a great afternoon despite the blustery rain and wind on the South Bank. We sat outside to read and drew on the help of two waiters to help choose the best poem of the round.

It was a magical afternoon despite the cold.

Jeff won the round with his poem All At Sea, based on a painting by Turner - Fisherman At Sea. I'll post it to this blog - check it out - but I may have to remove it. I'll have to check with him. My poem The Samuri Sunset came a close second. You can find that poem on this blog too.

All At Sea

by Jeffrey Loffman

Prompted by J.M.W. Turner’s ‘Fishermen At Sea’

The open boat slaloms across the mounting wave
Crash upon crash against starb’rd
Hanging on to masts and fixed boxes
Showered awash and swathed in fear
We cling on – our faces blinded by wash
Our noses full of fish piles in baskets
Fins flapping like sails wrapped by storm
As full moon occasionally glints between black sky
Winds whip around and, distantly, a thunder burst
Far from home we are told to keep nets out
And the boat is beaten and pummelled
Will we see the dawn rise? hear gulls scream?
All we can hear is the roll bellow of towering sea
All we can feel is sodden and still soaking
All our clothes drip under our waterproofs
All on the North Sea angling for our future
Our well-being, praying to dock and beach
See lights on the shore, see home again.

And here is a poem from me that Jeff rather liked.

Music Box

Even nowthirty-seven years later
I’m still unwrapping
the gifts inside
the music box
he bought for us
one quiet Christmas morning.

And still I plunge my hand
into that darkness
and pull out the music
still hidden deep inside.
Music now so far from him
it lies out of his reach
an unfamiliar language.

But I remember
long lost Sunday mornings,
sitting at the dinning table
in his vest,
his soft voice rising
while his hands tapped out
the beat from an old biscuit tin.

And I can still hear
those first songs
strong and clear,
and see in his blue eyes
“a bright golden haze on the meadow”
the “cattle standing like statues”
and an old river of sound
flowing out through the years.


© David Loffman

I hope you like the poems

David

A Short Break

I'm poemed out.

We have come to the end of the second round of the poetry challenge. The third round starts on the 24 February. Until then I'm building up draft poems so that I have a good number that have been worked on for some weeks. It's slow work at the moment. So much is going on at home and at work as usual.

Jeff seems to have all his poems written for the entire challenge - right up until November - so he seems well ahead of me. He will spend these months editing his poems.

Although I have over thirty poems in draft I only have a handful of drafts at the moment that have been worked on enough to become finished poems. I generally choose a draft from the draft pool and work on it over a period of weeks or months before I post it to the challenge blog. At any one time I'm working on about 5 or six drafts.

The week after next is the half term holiday and at the end of that week Jeff and I meet to choose the best poem of the second round and we start posting again.

Hope you enjoy the posts.

I'll try and post to this blog every two weeks with a poem.

Take care

David

from The Poetry Challenge Quiraing

Quiraing

for Pam and Simon

Trotternish escarpment
still slow landslip
to the sea.

We came this way
low and long
along the Trotternish ridge
that towered beside us
and the steep fall to Raasay Sound below.

We walked that rough track
one late October
where we fought the wind
wrestled the cold, breathless
with thick clotted cloud
scouring the sky
picking the bones
of the exposed land.

We hardly spoke
in that roar and twist of the air
that tore into us,
picked us clean.

I waited at The Saddle
where the wind rose to meet me from both sides
wind bitten, hands numbed
as I clutched at the hard neck of rock
like riding the rock fall deep,
plunging long into the sea far below.

And watched the distant Torridon Hills
glowing red in the growing dusk
beyond the far Inner Sound.

© David Loffman



20 January 2007

from The Poetry Challenge The Samurai Sunset

The new year has begun quietly. We saw it in with friends. It is always an awkward moment for me and I never feel comfortable with it. But this was easy. We made our peace with the old year and welcomed in the new with old friends, plenty of wine and good things to eat and lots to talk about.

2006 was a difficult year in lots of ways but I think 2007 should be more straightforward. We are still settling in and adjusting to the major disruptions of 2004/5, as well as coping with new challenges at work and with the children.

Any way here is a poem from the poetry challenge which is going well I think. The poem comes out of some of the stresses and tensions brought about by 2004/5 changes.

Hope you like it.

Happy New Year!

Love

David

The Samurai Sunset

I brought you back this glass plate.

A peace offering,
that came with its own light,
as red as a hard pulsating bruise.

Translucent.
The colour of blood
skeletal shadows
inhabit its depths.
Deep magenta
too dark to fathom
a flame too hot to touch.

Incendiary,
incandescent magma spill
to cauterise the wound.

In the gallery where I found it
they framed the Samurai Sunset
with smooth glass pieces
soothing curves
pale shimmering lights
soft undulating lines
of green blue sea surge
and aqua-dark cyan.

I bought it for you.
It spoke my rage for me
transformed it into something of beauty.


© David Loffman


29 December 2006

from The Poetry Challenge A Bunch of Flowers and a Packet of Condoms

I've had a couple of comments from friends about the blog. As a result I shall be posting a couple of poems from the challenge now and will try to update the blog every two weeks rather than four. I miss the one hundred word project but the poetry challenge is quite demanding. I am working on about twenty poems at the moment.

So here are a couple of very recent poems from the challenge. One friend commented on, A Bunch of Flowers and a Packet of Condoms, saying it was the best poem she had seen from the challenge so far. I'm not so sure its even a poem.

These two poems are a short sequence and were written together.

Hope you like them.

Happy Christmas


A Bunch of Flowers and a Packet of Condoms

That first time at the checkout
he was pissed.
A basket full of condoms, Stella and Whiskey
and his mates
wildly pushing their way
to the front of the queue
shouting slurred and angry at everything.

But her eyes
filled the numbed wreckage
of his thoughts.

When he was outside
he looked back at her
through the big windows.

The second time
just the paper and fags.
Alone he waited –quietly
and choked out a thank you
as she dropped the change into his hand.

The third time he chose more carefully.
Baked beans and a microwave meal for one,
she made her customer smile
but he didn’t believe it.

He thought there was more.

So he came back the next day to check.
Bought chocolates and offered her one.
He said something about the weather
then wished he’d said nothing
as she moved on to the next one.

Once he thought he saw her in Woolworth’s
and he followed her for a while.

Then he came in at the weekend.
Casual, jeans, clean T shirt
The store filled with families
and their juggernaut trolleys, overflowing.
In his basket, CD’s The Kooks and Kaiser Chiefs.
He was serious,
and worried that she was Rap and R & B.

On Tuesday he filled the basket with fruit.
Stuff he’d never eat.
Large Medjool dates, ripe mangos
and small fur green looking eggs
he didn’t know the name of.
But the smell was sweet and rich
as he watched her carefully weigh
and price each one.

He thought about her
with the fruit in a bowl
while he drew a mango to his lips.

He thought about her at work
and driving home.
He thought about her in the pub on Saturday night
with his mates
and Sunday morning in the shower.

On Friday he thought about her
in the long agonizing queue.
In his basket,
red roses, the chocolates
and a packet of condoms
and when he faced her
and looked into those eyes
that seemed to swallow him whole.
He said, “these are for you,
what time do you finish here?”


© David Loffman

I Carry A Knife Now

“Once he thought he saw her in Woolworth’s
and he followed her for a while.”

Afterwards I never felt safe. Never!
Even though I moved away.
I ain’t stupid!

I always keep it with me.

Safe!

Lates is worse!

Though I still wake nights
screaming, tears in me eyes.

No one knows me here
though I’m always lookin over me shoulder.
I can’t be sure.

Like yesterday, lunch.
I’m in Woolworth’s and I see this face.
He looks familiar.
He clocks me.
Can’t place him though.
Looks a’right s’pose.
But I can’t be sure
so I try and lose him.

But he’s following.
And I lose me breath
and I’m all hot n cold
and me heart’s like thumpin hard.
Fuck! I think
and I run out the store.

Razor must ave sent him.
Dunno ow e found me.

When I get back I just wanna leave.
I’m not hangin round here.
I tell Janice, the superviser.

She says if I leave on Saturday
she’ll pay me the week
which is good cos of the rent and stuff.

But I can’t wait.
Maybe I’ll just go.
I’m like so scared.


© David Loffman

from The Poetry Challenge Treasure

Here is a poem written about our summer holiday. It was the worst holiday we have been on as a family. Possibly the hardest holiday I've ever had. But one amazing feature of the holiday were the children. They were fantastic! Always hopeful, always optimistic, full of patience and good humour, always helpful and caring.

Arran played the hardest game of football he has ever played yesterday. He was cold, wet and muddy, he felt really low and his team let him down badly I think. But he made a real job of being in goal. He stuck it out. He dived hard into the mud again and again and saved many difficult shots.

I was so proud of him.

Anyway I hope you like the poem.


Treasure

Drive them to a mountain stream
Drive them to a rocky beach
Bring them to a mountain path
Bring them to a white sandy beach.

Give them thirteen hours
in the back seat of the car
with a book, a pillow and a toy monkey.
Give them a steamed up window
to play noughts and crosses on.

Bring them a two-hour traffic jam
diverted at midnight on the M6.

Show them a couple of sheep in a field.
Show them a sparrow,
a shipwreck and a standing stone.

Bring them biscuits for breakfast,
hot chocolate for lunch
and chips for dinner.

Show them grey skies
and a thin seam of silver light
stretching over a Loch.

Show them swallows at dusk.
There are eagles in the hills.

Make them sleep in a broken tent
with three inches of water
at the bottom.

Tell them this is a holiday

Leave them on a rain-drenched beach
for two hours
until their hands and toes turn blue.

Tell them it will be better tomorrow.

Buy them fishing nets and a football.

Make them set up camp
three times in four days
in hard wind driven rain.

Don’t let them see you cry.

Show them flowering Lichen
Orchids, Rock Rose,
Cotton Grass and Heather.

Let them drink mountain water
from Sphagnum Moss.

Show them a rainbow
stretched across the island
we are leaving.

And watch a light
shine from their wind weary faces.
And watch their smiles lift you higher
than all the rain grey clouds.

© David Loffman

Upgrade

I know it looks pretty much the same but I've upgraded this blog.

One advantage of this is I've been able to add Links to the blog - something I've been trying to do for a while and now I've done it.

Over the next few weeks or months there will be some changes and I hope the blog will look more personal.

Watch this space.

David

from The Poetry Challenge Hearing 'The Thought Fox on the Radio'

The Thought Fox by Hughes

I wrote this poem last winter. I was asked to read at The Troubadour one animal poem no more than 25 lines and there was a week to go and I still did not have a poem. So I thought I'd read Hughes poem about the thought fox.

I was driving back late from somewhere and I put the radio on and suddenly there it was, Hughes larger than life reading the poem. And I knew I could not read it.

The next morning we were driving down to Guildford and out of the corner of my eye I saw a dead fox in the gutter of the A3. It was then I knew I had a poem at last.

At the reading, Hugh Epstein and me did a double act, he agreed to read The Thought Fox by way of an introduction to mine that followed straight after.

Ted Hughes's poem first then mine

The Thought Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides 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 sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The windowis starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

and my poem

Hearing “The Thought Fox” on the Radio

Midnight. Winter darkness.

I drove home
through lonely silent suburbs.

Frost gathered –
formed a white lining
in the streets.

Then the hard dark grain
of Hughes’s voice
burst into the car
conjuring his midnight fox

so loud I thought he sat beside me
haloed in neon and moonlight –
the creature hidden
in the folds of his coat.

Later, in the road
among fallen leaves and branches -
a dead fox

rolled up like a discarded carpet
rust coloured
slumped in a gutter.

The insistent reach
of Hughes’s voice still
shadows me
now, as I write.


© David Loffman

11 December 2005

from The Poetry Challenge Nighthawkes

Nighthawkes

In the late night diner
they perch on bar stools
leaning forward
hunched against
the vast seamless window
that frames them.

In the darkness
hard fluorescent light
bares them blind
to the deserted streets.

They wandered in
on a troubled night.
To pick at the bones
of their marriage,
savaging the reaches
of their revenge,
in this mime of misery,
where there is no escape
and the coffee offers
only stinging bitterness.

They sit in the empty yellow
glare of spotlights
on this sprawling midnight canvas
that spreads its wings
and submerges us all.



© David Loffman

21 October 2006

from The Poetry Challenge The Bell of All Hallow's

Here is a poem from the poetry challenge. Just in case you were wondering what I've been getting up to. I'll try and post a poem a month from the challenge. Hope you like it.

The Bell Of All Hallow’s

Each morning
during the summer term
with all the classroom windows open
and the wind in the right direction,
the bells of All Hallow’s
comes to us
like a solemn whisper
a hushed promise -
its faint chimes
ripple out over the town.

They come to us
a gentle gift -
a wave that flows
above the low drone
of pre motorway traffic
and over the hard
lines of the roads.

Between our words
a soft peal drops -
sky music.
A quivering island of sound
blown by the wind
reaches out over the suburbs
calling to us
as pleasing as a tuning fork
resonating to the bone.

© David Loffman

25 September 2006

The end of the One Hundred Word Project

This post marks the official end of the One Hundred Word Project. The project started over a year ago.

The poetry challenge started three weeks ago and the challenge is due to end at Christmas 2008. I intend to post my challenge poems to this blog on a regular basis -not always once a week. The occasional One Hundred Words will slip through and the usual book, film and I also intend to post Poem Reviews will also be posted. I also hope to make more use of photographs - my own and those on the net.

Watch this space!

One Hundred Words About Summer's End

The summer holiday has come to an end.

Our lives have come back to us with a sudden rush of activity. So much is happening around us it is hard to keep track of everything. The children have started their different secondary schools. And seem to be settling in. They are managing their very different school journeys, meeting new friends and keeping contact with older ones.

Katy and me are settling into our own new routines.

Katy is establishing her freelance work, she has been writing and talking to potential clients and these contacts really seem positive. She is so much happier when she is plunged deep in the middle of work – the difficulty is establishing the right balance.

One Hundred Words About Silence

I have a difficult relationship with silence.

I think we all do.

At the moment I am writing a sequence of poems on silence. It begins with a simple Sunday morning before everyone wakes up. But ends – probably seven poems later – connecting silence with death and finally our society’s war against silence.

In the front line are the ipod and mp3 players. I watch the ipod generation in the classroom, not just blocking out the voices of their friends, or my teaching voice, but their own inner fragile voices that speak of what they need and who they truly are.

One Hundred Words About Reading

I’ve not read a book all holiday.

I have tried but I can’t get passed the first few pages. There may be a couple of reasons. Firstly I’ve spent a lot of time since June writing poetry in preparation for the poetry challenge with Jeff. Writing always seems to make reading – especially novels - very difficult for me. Secondly I seem to be having a reaction to the pressure of reading. I’m a member of two book groups where I’ve been reading books set by other people and I’ve not enjoyed them.

I’ve not even enjoyed the novels I've set.

One Hundred Words About My Holiday

Streetmap.co.uk- search results

Disturbingly these have been the best two days of my holiday so far. Disturbing because the children are away. Yesterday we handed my son over to his grandmother at St James, Piccadilly. Then hand in hand we made a dash for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. At six we walked to Wagamams in Lexington Street and then from there to the Coach & Horses in Great Marlborough Street to hear a comedy show. We then walked to Oxford Circus and home.

We spent today with old friends. It was just wonderful. Sunshine, good food, long talks and laughter.

One Hundred Words About The Children On Holiday

On our last visit to Iona, cloud was dark and low. The island a grey, vague blur. There was no wind but it was raining. It was a soft and constant rain. A rain so finely grained we breathed it in. I made my way to the Abbey, Katy wanted to browse the village store and we left the children on the beach.

When I arrived back two hours later - in a shroud of mist and rain - the children were there, changed into swimming costumes, building sandcastles, digging holes, skimming stones and throwing sand into the sea.

One Hundred Words About Our Holiday

Map of United Kingdom | Multimap.com

Scotland was difficult.

After driving all night we set up the tent at Fiddon the beautiful and exposed southwestern tip of Mull. However by mid afternoon the wind broke one of the tent poles and we retreated to a hotel. Our second camp was wild and exposed too, near Killechronan but after a night of rain the morning brought more wind that damaged the tent further. Our third camp was set up on the sheltered east side at Tobermory – tamer and more built up. From there we ventured out in the safety of the car, west to Iona and Calgary.

A Film Review Nil By Mouth

Nil by Mouth (1997)

Nil By Mouth A Film Review

Gary Oldman has made a harsh and brutal film that is very disturbing and utterly compelling, about a working class family living on a council estate in east London.

From the opening credits the focus of the film is Ray a very violent and disturbed man, married to Val who is pregnant with their second child. Around this couple are Val’s brother Billy, a heroin addict, Janet, Val’s mother and Kath, Val’s grandmother.

What we are confronted with throughout the film is the suffering and poverty of these people’s lives. Janet watches helplessly as her son Billy slides further and further into heroin addiction and her daughter Val is beaten up by Ray in a obsessive and jealous rage killing his unborn child.

Ray is a man tortured by his own upbringing particularly his relationship with his father. In the most powerful scene in the film Ray, drunk and full of rage and despair Ray tries to grapple and overcome his pain and anger of the past; to take control of his emotions instead of allowing them to control him.

The acting is outstanding. Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke are totally convincing.

By the end of the film there is a sense of reconciliation the family gathered around a kitchen table. Ray has redecorated and fixed the flat he had earlier demolished and quietly accepts the compliment from his mother in law.

The hope for Val and Ray lies in that one expression of Ray’s quiet humility.

It is so different from the blind and uncontrolled monster that dominates the film that casts a sinister and dangerous shadow, a Kurtz figure presiding over a modern day wasteland.

The setting is November around these South London concrete and graffiti estates. it is always dark, claustrophobic, a yellow anaemic florescent light illuminates abandoned walkways and faces filled with fear and pain.

The film is a harrowing and breath taking achievement from beginning to end, difficult to watch but harder to turn away from.

One Hundred Words About A Job

I glanced at the job specifications a month ago and decided the post was not for me.

Then on the day after the deadline passed my head of faculty asked why my letter of application was not on her desk. I told her she would have it that afternoon.

Since then I have barely thought of anything else. I’ve been in turmoil about it. The post includes supporting staff, raising student achievement, moderating coursework, and running meetings.

The interview was Tuesday. I have the job of course coordinator for the second year of the English Language and Literature A Level.

One Hundred Words About Hammocks

  

I'm sitting in a hammock swinging gently under the shade of Ash trees. Hard bright sunlight filters through leaves. Over there I can hear the laughter of children and before me the wood in radiant July stretches out with birch and hornbeam.

The children cannot see me and I drift unnoticed for a few minutes before lunch.

If I look back towards the camp I can see a new hammock with someone else lying in it. And in my dreamlike state I imagine hammocks surrounding the whole camp where each one of us can slip away unnoticed for a while.

Our Sun In Ultra Violet

  

I thought you might like this amazing photograph of our sun using ultra violet light.

One Hundred Words About An Ending

It has been a busy few weeks since my last one hundred words. Most of my free time has been spent thinking about the poetry challenge which has left little time or energy for this blog.

So I announce that from the 29 July the one hundred word project will end.

In its place I will post my contribution to the poetry challenge each week. The occasional one hundred words may slip in from time to time and there may be a week or so when my poem is so poor I cannot bare to post it to this blog.

One Hundred Words About The Poetry Challenge

The last challenge was in 2001.

At the end of this July we begin our second poetry challenge.

Each week for one year my cousin Jeff and me will post to each other a poem a week. It can get quite stressful and competitive.

We will meet four times during the year to read, discuss and judge each quarter’s poems and at the end of the year we will meet to judge and proclaim the winning poem.

I wrote 56 poems for the last challenge and I worked on one quarter of those and now consider 12 of them good.

One Hundred Words About The White Castle

Amazon.com: The White Castle : A Novel (Vintage International): Books: Orhan Pamuk

It is Orphan Pamuk’s first novel. Set in seventeenth century Turkey. A Venetian scholar is captured by Turks and sold into slavery. Hoja – meaning master - buys him because of his learning and thus begins the tale of a relationship characterised by envy and competition. Almost identical the pair are bound together in an obsessive attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe. But the more they strive for external knowledge, the deeper, more complex, cruel and claustrophobic their relationship becomes.

Against a backdrop of Turkish decline and European cultural and economic accent Pamuk explores issues of east and west.

Film Review The New World

The New World (2005)

The New World

This is the story of Pocahontas and John Smith but this is not Disneyland. It is a harsh and powerfully realistic demythifying – yet beautiful retelling of the Pocahontas story.

The film follows Pocahontas’s life as she chooses the settlers over her people. It follows her marriage and family – not to John Smith; and journey to England and a royal audience with the King at Hampton Court. Then finally, her mysterious death soon after her final meeting with Smith; the man she truly loves.

This latest film uses and develops many of the techniques Malick has used in previous films. The most impressive of these is his cinematography. Beautiful sweeping landscapes are caught at twilight. Malick, I think like Bergman has a real feel for the quality of light. The land is presented as green and lush; there is a freshness and clarity in the settings. He pays special attention to the natural world and focuses on the little details of a rich and unspoilt America just as the Europeans begin to settle the land.

And then the familiar narrator – this time the voice of John Smith – like Private Wit in The Thin Red Line, Malick has adopted an adult male voice, reflecting on what he sees describing thoughts, actions and plans. We see the film from Smiths’ perspective. Yet because he is absent from at least half the film the voice over is far weaker. It is also more prosaic, thinner and flatter than his other films –especially Badlands and Days of Heaven - even the hardened voice of Linda in Days of Heaven conveys poetry in its gritty and earthy strongly accented monologues.

Surprising is the treatment of the Europeans in the film. Their life is presented realistically and sympathetically as they struggle to survive and establish themselves in the New World. The native American’s treat them suspiciously. At first befriending them but later attacking them once they realise they are plan to stay.

Yes there are the usual symbols of colonial rule. She, the native American representing the spirit of the land which is ancient, fragile, beautiful, full of life and fertility, the other. As Donne puts it, “Oh my America/My new found land.” And Captain Smith the male, European settler, seduced by the land and her beauty and vitality. But these traditional images are perhaps undermined by Pocahontas’s dominance of the film and Smith’s fading away.

I think the film lacks a strong and dynamic conflict. The tension between white men and native American’s smoulders and never really sustains our engagement. The relationship between the lovers is dramatic but soon turns to loss, melancholy and longing that takes up much of the film. Malick just manages to hold our attention in this 150 minute epic.

One Hundred Words About Anger

It happened about twenty-four hours ago and it still dominates my thoughts. It becomes a pain at the back of my throat and I feel sick. If I can be distracted then the pain eases a little, for a while. But it’s never far away and easily exposed.

This anger is deep. It touches something inside me so raw, painful and strong I can barely cope with it. It is about control. For a year I had little control of my life or even my body. To survive I accepted that powerlessness. Now I find any loss of control difficult.

One Hundred Words About A Birthday

 

Thirty-three years ago today I bought my first LP.

It was June the first 1973, my fourteenth birthday and I asked my father if he would buy me Aladdin Sane the new record from David Bowie. I had already bought two singles by Bowie, Starman and John I’m Only Dancing. And had only recently realised they were by the same singer. And then Radio One previewed his new LP.

There was something delicious and different about this music. But more than this, this music was mine. I drenched myself in it for months until it became part of my soul. 

One Way Of Posting My Photograph Into My Profile

  

One Hundred Words About New Malden

The soul of my New Malden cannot be seen from the high street.

But New Malden’s face is the high street. Its late Victorian backdrop of shops, red London brick, with sand stone arches, covered with plastic laminated shop façades. Nothing special. The usual chain of names, like Boots, Woolworth and Waitrose and then the occasional independent shop like Tarmal’s – ironmonger, Pengilies – cobbler and Tudor Williams – a family department store. Recently Korean shops have sprung up, a travel agents, supermarkets and restaurants. And charity shops have filled the gaps where small businesses have failed.

Trees line the renovated high street.

One Hundred Words About Oxted, Surrey

We visited friends in Oxted yesterday. We had lunch and then walked down to the green. At one end a cricket pavilion and ground. At another corner a section fenced off – a playground, “for the enjoyment of all.”

On all sides of the green, the small town seemed to radiate out. On the playground side, the ninth century church with a clock tower that tolled the hours. At another corner the high street filled with small independent shops, a cinema and theatre.

Hills rise up on each side of the town.

I can see why they came here to live.

One Hundred Words About Joy And Fear

It still does not feel like our home.

Sometimes when the children are busy in the garden or in their rooms, and Katy is in the study, and I’m reading in the sitting room, I become aware of the wonder of our home. And I am filled with a sudden joy, a tingling excitement.

At the same time, falling like a shadow in happiness’s wake is dread. The family scattered through the house appears like a beautiful dream that is out of our grasp. It fades as fear begins to spiral into panic. I have to keep myself in check.

One Hundred Words About Holiday's

Being busy is easy.

I don’t have to think. Life has meaning.

Twenty students in a class, sixty in a workshop, students calling from the team room door, colleagues wanting to talk, emails and memos, lessons to prepare, work to mark, lessons to teach, meetings to attend, paper work in order.

On holiday time works differently.

The first day is always busy with urgent or left over jobs. But then the gaps start appearing. And all those buried thoughts and fears I didn’t have time for rise up.

It’s the sudden silences and the empty days that feel so difficult.

One Hundred Words About Silence

I am making peace with silence again.

It is never easy. At first I have to convince myself that silence is precious. I sit impatiently, looking for a distraction like the television, the phone, radio and the CD player. I can feel my computer calling me.

Mostly I give in.The house is a trap of sound. In every room it waits for me, I struggle against it.

But sometimes silence becomes a gift.

I become still and just focus on the moment. I become aware of a great thirst, hidden by all the noises.

Only silence can quench it.

One Hundred Words About Tiredness

It feels as if I have lead weights in my pockets that tempt me off balance. I feel like a tent straining against guy ropes, pegs and poles and long to collapse in a heap. I stumble through the day tripping up over my words and sway as I walk. I stand in the classrooms and avoid the chairs. I drank two cups of strong coffee today. I cannot concentrate my thoughts keep drifting in a mental blur. When I lay down I cannot lie still, in the distance I hear the television and there are things still to do.

One Hundred Words About A Busy Term

The mock exams for my six A level classes have been marked and handed back to the students. Feedback lessons on each question they answered have also been done. Timed essays have been marked and handed back with extensive feedback lessons. A Hamlet revision workshop on Hamlet’s soliloquies was prepared and delivered to over fifty students. Revision lessons have been given on Hamlet, Frankenstein, American Poetry, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Spoken Word. I’ve co judged a creative writing competition and co hosted the prize giving.

I have three classes of communications portfolios still to compile, manage and assess.

Three Haikus With Knots

Here are three Haiku's inspired by the comments on One Hundred Words About Knots.

I

almost asleep
the smooth thread of your body
twisted into mine

II

harbour rope holds
the stinging smell of the sea
wind bitten splices

III

on the granite cross
ancient double stranded plaits
woven into worn stone

(c) David Loffman

One Hundred Words About The One Hundred Words

Welcome to 100 Words

I’ve been reading through the One Hundred Word project entries recently.

I started the project almost a year ago inspired by a website – one hundred words.

It has been quite an amazing year for the family and my one hundred words chronicle some of the dramatic events of the year.

But the entries are more than a diary for me.

I’ve tried to use the entries as notes for new poems.

Only a handful of entries have become poems and some of those poems have become one hundred word entries themselves.

It is often good to put feelings into words.