Friday, July 01, 2005

nostalgic

We're getting a new computer network at home, and getting rid of an old hard drive or two. (not sure, there seem to be computers coming or going in every room at the moment) In salvaging emails, my dad found a bunch I thought were lost forever. When I was at Oxford I went through a stage of writing poems and sending them to all and sundry. This caused some interesting interactions between my school friends and university friends, some of it questioning my sanity, some appreciating the um, quirky, poems.

Looking back at the things I wrote, most of them are pretty silly, but there are a few I like. (One of them took on a life of its own: I discovered it on someone's page of their favourite poems. No idea how it got there.) Here is one of the better ones. (I hope)

Paperbacks

A perfect slab of words
Newly cut from the printer's block
Layers of pastry pages
Crammed with words
Succulent as raisins,
Spiced with commas and full stops

Half read and half digested
Front cover curls forward invitingly
Spine splays the early pages
The rest so far untasted
Waits to be devoured

Dog-eared and well thumbed
Tasted by many
Stale puff pastry
Succumbs to mould
As word-ants crawl among the crumbs.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That reminds me of this one of mine, except yours is good:

Bookshops astound me.
Rows upon rows of knowledge, packaged and bound,
Awaiting my perusal.
Some call to me with their covers
And their titles
And their authors
And the shininess of their spines
But there are too many.
I cannot buy you all!
Are you in competition?
Or are you unaware of your brothers and sisters?
Do you simply wish to be loved?
To be held
read
caressed
creased
put down (beside the bed)
cherished
handed
down
to the next generation?
Ah, you are foolish.
It will not work.
I shall go to the papershop.
I can sit there, with coffee
And look at the paper
Colours
Textures
Bindings
And fill them with my witterings
Project my thoughts onto their virgin surfaces
Except I won't.
I can't be bothered.