Here’s my first poem on my wolking blag. Blakling wog. Whatever.
I write poetry sometimes. I call it poetry, but then others may not name it so, as poetry is all about structure and relationship, like music, flowing with a strong sense of scientia bene movendi. It’s a nice ideal, but the thing I most like in poetry is not a metre but rhythm – musical links and melodic idiosyncrasies. See Olivier Messiaen’s relationship with melody and his Stravinskyist developments with the concept of rhythm. This provides colou
r in the flow and a non-metrical propulsion, and a unique ability to create within phrases crescendi and climax.
Anyhoo, this is my act of walking to my local baguette shop. It is annotated for little reason:
From the office[1] to the baguette shop[2]
[3]I often walk down this street[4]
but never in the same activity –
the brain cranes[5],[6] no business[7] trite[8]
but Supers[9] thought by gravity[10]
My vanity[11] is taught by what it gleans
on fells pikes Pillar gables or Grike
up gills ghylls dales dens or deep glens[12]
of wind-rushing rain and lightning strike
Alike to the extinction of atmosphere
this street a [13]sore neap[14] of archi…[15]
not arty but of kirky existential metaphor
a kindness of urban organ…[16] anarchy
Arching trudge, pillared step (in this tensile street are novels)[17]
each walk a balk of ecstatic-mad other-love
I’m living in the other-life of fell-ridden vales,
cracking leaves, archi-slate, my ’trepid mush push to shove:
Away with me…
(‘Egg mayo and bacon,[18] if you please’)
[1] 21 Dean’s Yard SW1P.
[2] The Dairy, Strutton Ground.
[3] Song with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.
[4] Victoria Street, Westminster.
[5] Cranes, from cranium, the brain enclosure.
[6] Cranes are indispensible in Vic-Street-style building industry.
[7] Department for Business, Innovation, Skills, Job-creation, Stuff, and Nonsense.
[8] Pararhyming.
[9] the activity of a senior police constable – sitting at his desk in the HQ, ‘Supering’.
[10] My own preferred reality.
[11] Repetition.
[12] Geographical features – hills and valleys – of the Cumbrian Fells.
[13] The forefather of existentialism.
[14] Fairly randomly (superficially) – a sea-sore-eaten hill at HP 596 160.
[15] Archi+tecture would describe what Vic Street has none of.
[16] Organ+ised and anarchy are two sides of the same Vic Street coin, therefore organanarchy.
[17] Gothic enthusiasm. Arch=good. Tensile stress=bad.
[18] My favourite.
UPDATE: The Dairy has now closed, to be replaced by yet another capitalist member of a chain of expensive and unnecessary coffee providers.
Will's Walks 