Testing
Just a test – ignore
Heartbeat
Heartbeat Lying in intensive care staring at the bleeping machines fed by pulses travelling along wires connected to various parts of me I see the curve of my heartbeat, not sinusoidal like the mains, thankfully not a straight line (which I wouldn’t see), but a complex waveform repeating over and over that can be approximated […]
Formatting Poems
Here is a way of formatting poems using the Lineate plugin I added a few years ago. The last example would be formatted as follows: [stanza] [lineate]In Xanadu did Kubla Khan[/lineate] [lineate indent=1]A stately pleasure-dome decree :[/lineate] [lineate indent=2]Where Alph, the sacred river, ran[/lineate] [lineate indent=3]Through caverns measureless to man[/lineate] [/stanza]
Gall Bladder
Gall Bladder When you bile potaters don’t let ’em run over onto the stove. There was something very vexing about his attitude. By this time I was feeling gloomy; the events of the day had stirred my bile: no sleep all night pain in the back emergency ambulance now this ultrasonic joker. One week and […]
Green Man
Green man I am bound with creepers to the trunk of a dead tree, red squirrels are attending me. They bathe my brow with honeydew bear my breast to the morning sun. A man dressed in green appears from the trunk of a nearby elm with long tendrils for hands a face carved out of […]
Admission
Another in my operation sequence. This poem describes the admission process. Admission Report to the Admissions Suite. Ignore the time on the letter, come at three o’ clock, then you won’t have to wait long for a bed. Admissions Suite sounds too much like Departure Lounge. A holiday. Sunshine. You came with me, worried sick, […]
Surgery
Today’s poem from my sequence. Surgery Not until they were wheeling me along a corridor to the theatre did it hit me: this is happening. Some time how long later cannulas inserted, ECG attached I fell down the rabbit hole never saw the march hare cheshire cat, or mad hatter: it was dark and timeless […]
AVR
I’m in the process of writing a sequence of poems about my heart op. Here is today’s effort. AVR He carried the murmur in his chest as a boy climbing trees and football mad as a teenage lover with his muted message as a computer buff whose heart sang in binary as an old man relaxing […]
Book Launch – Paul Beech & Mike Penney
Pleached Limes
Here’s a slightly mad poem from the Erdigg workshop. Pleached Limes On a cowless path between corsetted trees, well-heeled ladies shade from Apollo; you could say they are bleached, not done to a turn, but taking a turn, promenading far from the ha-ha and tanning studio of the open field. There are daguerreotypes of such […]