Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Tue Jan 07, 2014 2:41 pm**

Yes, we got back Saturday. Beautiful weather here! Not much internet, though. I sure got used to that fast wi-fi.

Posted: **Wed Jan 29, 2014 4:05 pm**

This old computer
No longer runs stably
Constant rebooting

Given my druthers
I'd boot it off a cliff and
Use my abacus

Posted: **Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:31 am**

A rum in my hand I traversed the land
Only to halt the pain that I'd had.

The trees slick with ice and dormant with fright
haunted my way and obscured my sight.
So quickly I moved to pass the trees
that I felt my own heart beginning to freeze

so I stopped to finish the rum in my hand
just to find out that I'd been seeing so bland.

Looking up I saw the darkness of night
under a shimmer of sweet city lights.
and I finally understood the sight that I'd seen
A sun in the dark beginning to gleam.

- a poem about a walk home I had after a party in December.. I had gotten a bottle of Rum for a Christmas present.. and I guess in the end it became fairly useful.. I hate to say it but I like my own poem.. even if it is just a simple thing.

Posted: **Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:13 pm**

Sorry, I got busy!!

Rau le Creuset, you are highly welcome to 1000wgd. Loved the poem, rich with images as I read.... Jethro, a notable sally, but starting over with an ancient Chinese invention...? Hm...

February's theme: your personal Favorite Mistake (in love, that is).

Posted: **Fri Feb 14, 2014 8:07 pm**

Roses and Trolls

I never gave you a serious rose.

I gave you some of those
one-dollar ones after a disco
from a guy with a bucket.

Once, on my Valentine’s card
a rose of serious intent.

Blood red
on a black background.
So dark, your words
were written in invisible ink.

I was left with that stark rose.

It took me years and Yeats
to figure it out.
I smacked my forehead
when I finally got it.

You gave me an Eternal Rose
and I was a dope.

Strangely, you also gave me a Troll.

Pink-haired and cute
in an ugly way,
that Troll bugged me.

I scratched my head over it
long after you’d gone.

A book on symbols
and fairytales
helped to solve
the riddle of my green clad troll

crouched under a bridge
I was too afraid to cross.

So that I stood
and watched you
move away from me,
leaving me stranded.

Now I think I can read
‘The Rose and the Troll.’

Your deep intuition
proved true.

I love you
and couldn’t let go.

u.

Wrote this as part of a long series a few years back, apt for the day that's in it

Posted: **Wed Feb 19, 2014 10:56 pm**

This one is unrelated to the competition, but it's brand new and seasonal and this thread seems like the best place to post something current:

Trying to Surprise the Crocuses

I felt the first touch of Spring
on my skin. February 18th
is early and on impulse
I made the annual
pilgrimage to Perrystown*.

I thought I might
get the jump
on the crocuses.

As I walked
past the Ashleaf Centre
I caught a flash
of yellow in the distance

and knew again
that I was too late.
They were battered
by fallen branches
and drowned by a pool
of undrained water.

Plastic bags and strewn
rubbish lay round them.
The recent storms
had taken their toll.
I noticed that there was no
white to be seen. Only

purple and gold.

* Perrystown is a small place in tough area in Dublin near where I lived for a number of years.

u.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2014 2:10 pm**

Love your imagery, u.
Think I have a guess of what you were intimating, but not sure.
(I think I'm not very well-versed in poetry interpretation.)
-"Linna of the Delayed Response"

Following your example, u... and because it came to me this morning and I wanted to put it somewhere ...I'm posting a spring poem:

Before and After

"Do you want powdered sugar on it?"
Because this morning's snow
is fluffy powered sugar on the world.

I look up
in the network of bare branches,
and see four robins
puffing their feathers for warmth,
against the bright blue background.

The delicate tracery of birds' feet
has cris-crossed the ground
with their paths down below.

And I wonder,
"Is today a sugar snow,
for maple-syrup makers?"

Posted: **Sun Mar 30, 2014 10:28 pm**

Thanks, Linna. I enjoyed your poem. There's a nice echoing of the 'network of bare branches' and the birds' tracks that 'cris-crossed the ground'. Don't know if that was deliberate but it works very well.

I was following my intuition with my poem and it's a follow on from a spring poem I wrote a few years ago about the same crocuses.

Opening

A splash of yellow
to catch my eye,
then purple, then
white. Crocuses
yelp their joy
in Perrystown.

They surprise
my wintered face.

The body hides
corms. Driving
from deep within
to draw a smile
that each year
is sweet,
sweeter.

u.

Posted: **Wed May 14, 2014 9:08 pm**

A friend of mine recently got his first poem published. I thought I'd post it here. I know it's a bit early, but summer's not that far away

Eggtime in August

In the shadow-flowing doorway
In its sunny wall
It is eggtime in August
And busying itself around
A can of milk and the green cutlery drawer
Hanging out of the dresser,
Full of that smell and the spindly tines,
Soft edges and chipped handles.
The tap flowing down the yard,
A slash in the evening dust
Some August we peopled, we
Took out the eggcups, we were
Looking at the long shelves, the oilcloth.
Once our eyes became used to the dim
Back-kitchen, the narrow passage,
We made tea and sliced brown bread,
But there was no time, with all our running,
There was the sunbrow, the molten evening,
The dust we kicked back the yard
Into the scrap-iron shadows
Under the slim eave of galvanise,
Everything drying and drying up to a quench
Except the tap in the dark, dripping
Except the grease-gun lying on the ledge.

.

Posted: **Fri Aug 08, 2014 10:48 am**

Ussusimiel's lovely words for fallen crocuses are about how I feel right now... I am so late, but the months have flown by... U was February's only offering, so he gets 1000wgd.

Maybe rather than monthly, I will just periodically check in, enjoy, and randomly pick someone to bless with 1000 valuable wgds.

Posted: **Fri Aug 08, 2014 11:00 am**

Thanks, Deer!

Good to see you around and safe

I've been cranking up my inolvement in writing on the Watch since the 'Fest. Check out these threads for some medieval devotional writing that I've posted:

- Julian of Norwich

- Julian of Norwich - writing exercise

Here're a couple of poems that I wrote in response to the writing exercise I started:

Grace of god

I thought I would have been
wt magdalene
and wt others
that were Chriʃt’s lovers.

I might have ʃeen
bodily the paʃʃion
that I might haue ʃuffered
with him as others
who loved him.

I Deʃired

a bodily ʃight
wherin I might
have more knowledge
of the bodily^pains
of our saviour

and of the compaʃʃion
of our lady
and of all his true lovers
for I would be

one of them

Undeserved mercy of a reformed prostitute

I have seen the ardent love
that can be borne.
Can I endure
what I have so lacked?
The feeling again of woman.

u.

[EDIT: to fix formatting.]

Posted: **Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:02 am**

Wow, U. I am floored by these. Seriously.

Both of them.

Wow. *bows*

Posted: **Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:53 am**

deer of the dawn wrote:Wow, U. I am floored by these. Seriously.

Thanks, Deer, and most of the credit goes to Julian. Her writing is powerful and has a latent poetry in it that almost makes me feel guilty for inserting myself into it.

On a different topic, I have been trying to come up with an idea for some way to draw the activity here in HOG, the stuff in Gen. Lit. and the engagement in the Writers' Circle and even the Mallory's Haiku thread into a more central place. Even a single thread, where creative work is shared, so that all the activity is in the one place. What would you think if I started a thread in Gen. Disc. that gathers some of the stuff together and links the rest. Would that be useful or do you think that might be too much forum boundary breaking?

u.

Posted: **Wed Sep 03, 2014 2:22 am**

Skinless Tomatoes

Blood sizzles and sprays
when our twin disappears
into the haze that God’s Grace
allows us to resist.

We are formed in fire and air
and never again feel safe in our skin.
It’s thin. Always ready to dissolve
and let us out or them in.

Posted: **Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:52 am**

irish mike - writing belongs in writing. but a central posting in writing highlighting the writing in writing would be cool. you should write that writing thread about writing. I have wriiten it, so it shall be writ.

Posted: **Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:21 pm**

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Already writ, Sarge, and you and I are are represented there! I shall now proceed to represent myself there again!

u.

Posted: **Wed Sep 03, 2014 6:05 pm**

ussusimiel wrote:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Already writ, Sarge, and you and I are are represented there! I shall now proceed to represent myself there again!

u.

good work that writing you wrote.

Kevin's Watch

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