New Malden Writers in March

Photograph by Pixabay

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The New Malden Writers’ Group was set up in 2023. If you want to join, come along to Wesley’s Café at the Methodist Church in New Malden on Fridays at 11am. The group meets for two hours. We take it in turns to read things to each other and share our thoughts. We are informal and very friendly and sometimes there are biscuits and chocolates. The coffee and tea is very good. We have a mixture of people of different ages and from different backgrounds. Some of our members have a lot of experience with writing for publication, others have very little or none. 

Phil Hall

PATRICK MCMANUS

Fish Dinner

when
he mentioned
Perhaps fish for dinner,
she enthused, yes!
a bouillabaisse!
or
calamari – deep fried squid!
coquille St. jacques –
scallops in pretty shells!
coulibiac – russian pie!
goujons – crumbed in strips!
gravadlax – scandinavian pickled salmon!
matelote – french fish stew in wine!
sole bonne femme – in mushrooms!
or even a sole meuniere!
lightly fried in butter, sprinkled
with lemon juice and herbs!

but
he said with surprise,
“been to the chippie!”
and proudly opened
his warm, folded,
vinegar-scented
newspaper.

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It’s Alright

It’s all right.
It’s all right for you

You’ve got houses, homes
central heating
beds cosy all cosy
hot water bottles and things
but I am a tree
I don’t complain

stuck out in all weathers
snows and storms all windy
rain rain wets me rotten
sun all hot burns and blisters
frost freezing sap zapping

But I’m a tree
I don’t complain
birds twittering, wittering
awful noises awful nestings.
bugs eat me moulds growing

dogs don’t talk to me about dogs
But I’m a tree.
I don’t complain

my roots—my roots are playing me up
My trunk carved, carved up
My branches fumbling failing.
My twigs splitting, splitting ends
My leaves are falling, falling out

but I am a tree
I don’t complain

so on a cold wintry night
with your fluffy slippers on
with sitcoms, chat shows, all cheery
it’s all right all right for you

but I am a tree.
I don’t complain

JOHN GRANT

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Breaking the Rules

I’ve been attending a poetry class
Where they teach you how to write and recite.
A good title is very important,
But don’t say the same thing twice.
Do not say the same thing twice!
An opening line that grabs is strongly recommended.
like ‘The pope is a twat.
or ‘I just killed the cat’.
Impact is what is intended?

Try to avoid end-rhymes;
Such things are from much earlier times.
Use assonance or dissonance,
Use apt alliteration.
Paint a picture with your words,
A verbal illustration.

And don’t the order of the words reverse,
just so that you make a rhyme,
that really is a habit perverse,
and also comes from an earlier time.
Use simile and nuance,
but best is metaphor,
like saying “Put the wood in the hole.”
when your meaning is “Shut the door.”.

And don’t use cliché, either,
or your poem is dead in the water.
poets who do get booed off the stage,
It’s like leading lambs to the slaughter.

Speak up. Speak out.
be clear, but don’t shout.
Look your audience straight in the eye.
Do not look down at the flooring

And the number one rule that you should live by
is do not ever be boring.

A Silver Ghost

Someone told me that humankind
Is actually designed to live, not much past 45.
So I am 25 years past my use-by date
And frankly surprised to still be alive.

My suspension is certainly not what it was.
I hear grinding as I struggle up hills.
The controlling computer is getting
The sack—it often forgets where to go.
I need a pacemaker to make the fuel flow,
For the timing on the main pump has gone.

My big end is much bigger than it once was.
There is not very much spark In my plug.
The exhaust I create Is a source of pollution
To the rust and chipped paint there is no solution.
and I’m dreading my next M.O.T.

But I am not quite ready for the scrapyard yet

There is still some life left in the engine
I get excited by sports and the Arts.
Good food, fine wine, women with hearts.
It will not be soon that I am used for spare parts.
so cancel my meeting with the A.A.

Fill me with juice watch me roar away.
Let’s forget tomorrow and live for today.
Call me not old, call me CLASSIC.

KARL RUTLIDGE

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The Thames Path

Lead me to the Thames Path, for there I wish to walk
Beside the ancient artery, the city’s tidal heart.
Show me where the roe deer play and parakeets do squawk,
And Old Harry’s royal barge from jetty didst depart.
I long to visit Hampton Court and grace poor Wolsey’s pile,
But not be ferried to the Tower through fearful Traitor’s Gate!
In Staines or Kingston would I shop with an eye to style,
Then potter by the estuary where natural wonders wait.
Bridges galore do spread their span over the wide waters,
From Richmond’s calming splendour to concrete Waterloo.
Nature’s beauty is supplemented by human brick and mortar,
Even though Thames Water treat the river like their loo!
So, along this fabled Path, I jolly well will go,
But never in the water will you see me dip my toe!

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I.C.E.

We will never melt ICE until we melt our hearts,
Break down walls of stone and cut the barbs of wire
Erected to fortify land stolen by conquest and musket.
When founding myths become as poisoned, toxic darts
Thrown to slay those set alight by a dream of prosperous fire
That flickered over Hollywood screens like a trap, set
To capture them in a snare, we will never heal these parts.
If God creates all equal, then we make her a liar
When we say that might is right is white with no regret.
The chill, shrill daggers of ICE will hold their freeze
As long as Christ is caged and Trump very pleased
With our complicity in hate and othering’s dark breeze.

Strut

Fascists don’t always wear jackboots and goosestep.
Sometimes, they strut around well-heeled gatherings,
Throwing wordbombs conceived in gross gold-gilded ballrooms,
Sowing pestilent seeds of fake tan coated chaos,
And demanding your attention in this sordid dark matter.
The power of law has been bulldozed and shattered
As thoroughly as any Gazan street or international court
By the law of power, and to hell with truths that fail to fit
The rhetoric of red-hatted MAGA-cultish menace.
We can do what we like with our military might,
Economic hand grenades and shrapnel-sharp tariffs;
That land will be ourselves by deal or by fight.
The bloodthirsty curse, America first, a vortex of toxic ambition,
Swirls in ramble-babble and spews forth from ‘Truth’ Social,
While the irony of ironies pumps out hollow chill laughter,
As indited war criminals adorn the chopping board of peace.

TOM FRANK

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The Lazy Principle

In the last three weeks, I’ve found it’s true:
All animals do this, same as me and you.

In our garden, we put out feeders for the birds,
But scatter seed on the lawn and flocks come—it’s absurd!
Oh, one or two bother with the feeders,
But most of them are lazy creatures.

What other animals do we know like this?
Make it easy, and they’ll love the offered dish.

Our neighbour’s cat sneaks in to eat the special
Pâté we give her, till she’s absolutely replete.
Our fish in the pond, with the frogs assisting,
Never know when they really should be resisting.

And oh, some human animals give the same reply:
Even when it’s sweet, though they know they’ll die.

The instinct is strong,
For evolution is long.
An easy meal is a fantastic deal—
So much easier than working for it.

Who Knows?

I was at a funeral today of a colleague who died recently.
She was a relatively young woman, and a competent director
of the college where I teach. She died in extreme pain.

Can anyone explain
Why she had to suffer so,
Why we need to go that way?
We know how to fight it, they say.

She was an influential personage.
Her ideas were great for the college.
Her legacy is there to see
She leaves a big hole to be
Filled one day—but carefully.

Her skill was in administration.
She came to us from another nation.

Many bitter tears flowed.
And though faith tells us she has gone
To some other place,
If I meet her there,
Will we recognise each other’s face?

Who knows?

PHIL HALL

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Clodhopper

She is old and alone
She feels me looking at her in wonder
Briefly, showing me her hillsides
Covered in fields of sparkling crystals

Her velvet night gown
Crackling static
Flecked with phosphine
Falls apart momentarily
Then closes to
No one has seen such beauty before
Through a lens.

She calls me.
Venus calls,
Whispering to Earth:
My love,
I am drowning in clouds

Earth answers faintly:
Hang on a minute
I’ll be right there.
Just give me a thousand years
And a silver spaceship.

Planetary thoughts
Swirl, marbling the view
You never thought you’d see
So much roiling, glowing
Spiraling and flowing, did you?

Hot and flushing
She has no more ice
And can’t stay cool
Over aeons

Everything between us
Has become a dance
Every storm and stone rolling
Every volcanic eruption
Shows up in a familiar pattern
Of fireworks unwinding,

Her hair
Is black and ammoniac
To the solar touch
Locks and tresses of air
Eddy and circle
Stroking Venus’s cheeks

Alongside you
A billion years
Feels like a week
Hidden under shining clouds

Great ballasted ships
Are floating in oceans,
Powered by an immoderate heat
They have been sailing here
For as long as crocodiles

The cosmos is polluted
By the nostalgia of the view
Of the yellow rock and mountains
And the clouds that twist around them
And the battering sulfuric rain

There are painful reminders
Of losses incurred
The passing of geological time
Eats up the manifest
Hardly stopping to savour
Oysters of softest sentience

Time accelerates
Gathering gravity
The years stream past
Fall off, fall away

And every explorer feels
Unworthy of their discovery
Every explorer is a clodhopper
Who crushes butterflies

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Carnations

Carnations are used for
Wreaths, garlands, chaplets, crowns
God-made-flesh
Diana loved a shepherd boy who turned her down.
She ripped out his eyes and threw them to the ground.
Up grew a carnation

The carnation’s leaves are glaucous
Its stem slender
It blooms red, white, yellow, blue and green
The carnation is a fragrant, hermaphrodite
Whose radiating symmetry
Consists of six sting-pointed leaves
Scaling round the calyx

The wild carnation is found
in the Mediterranean
In Kerchedin, Shoiperia,
Konstantinoupoli and Acireale
Sardinia and Spain

Carnation cultivars with no fragrance
Are often used by men as boutonnières
Or “buttonholes”

Carnations express love, fascination, and distinction
And Socialism.
If you are against a coup d’etat
Wear a red carnation

Dianthus is its Latin name
Meaning, the flower of Jove.
If you loved your mother and she has died
Wear a white carnation

Recently, Florigene, used genetic engineering
To create an abomination
A violet carnation, she
Mixed in the genes
Of petunias and snapdragons.

And …
(I am speculating)
If carnations represent both life and death,
The carnation must therefore also signify
Reincarnation.
Reminding us, like the scent of roses,
Of our other lives

Stop! Drop! Ein Soph!

Not being at peace,
Not being calm at all,
Not being at ease—
Of what use is it to possess an equanimity
So easily disturbed
By bombs,
By separations,
By bereavements,
And by physical and mental pain?
Of what use is a sense of the essential
If it is brittle,
And breaks?

Dropping
          Ein Soph.

Pink blossoms in April sleeting past,
Draughts ruffling the feathers of Whitethroats
Sitting on the branches
Of a cherry tree.
The roots of the cherry tree clutching
Dark incorporating soil,
The soil lying on caked
Coffee-cream clay,
Clay that clasps basalt and granite.
And the stone warms up the further down you go—
A magma swirls, bubbles up, explodes, and
           Drops.

Ein Soph.

The planets are cooling beads
Shaken off the shaggy fireball of the sun.
Sol circulated into materiality
Down a plughole
In space-time,
And the emanations slow and stop
from Ein Soph.

Why this lonely outburst?
Blossoming into black—
Why did being explode into emptiness
Only to lose itself:
Losing peace,
Calm,
And ease?

I asked!
The answer came:
        “Be patient!”

If you want to stay buoyant, simply breathe in.
If you want to sink, breathe out.

Stop. If you like,
         Drop!
Back into Ein Soph.