Well, bloody Hell …
“Dear *******,
Recently you submitted a poem to our Poetry Rivals 2012 competition and I’m pleased to announce that your poem, Coma, has been accepted for publication.
For this exciting competition, poets were invited to show off their creativity by writing a poem in the style and theme of their choice. After weeks of intensive selection, our team of editors have collected the successful poems together in Poetry Rivals’ poetry anthologies. Your work will be featured in Poetry Rivals’ Collection 2012 – Strokes of Inspiration – a collection of poems from adult writers.
As a contributor to Strokes, you now have the chance to be selected as one of the top 100 poets in the competition. Our editors will go on to pick the top 100 poems from across the series … winners will then be invited to a prestigious poetry slam to perform their poem in front of an expert panel of judges and a live audience. The overall winner from the over 18’s category will win either £1,000 or a publishing contract with Bonacia Ltd, the UK’s largest publisher of new poetry!”
To say I’m excited, would be a little scrape of an understatement.
For once, Royal Fail delivered something nice to my door. I’d forgotten about that entry, too 😛
Well, on the off chance Coma is selected for a public reading, I won’t have time for stage fright – it’s only 12 lines long.
Levelling my Land
Listening to the Levellers, I see again the barefoot kid who never brushed her hair (until Mum threatened to have it all sheared off), longed for pure gypsy blood, wore skirts to sweep the dirt and wandered long hours alone – never lonely – under dripping trees and over sunbaked clay. I smell the hot tarmac, feel how it burnt my toes. No spots, not a scrap of makeup. Only writing and travel on my mind, apart from the usual short-term fluff of staying out past sunset and reaching the top of a treasured tree.
There were also peripheral visions of the long-haired wild man I’d one day find in the middle of Nowhere, who’d catch my heart like no one else, make me trust and maybe marry him, if he could keep up with me and I him. But I was still too young a sprog for that kind of thing yet. Still, he’d carry a guitar, and know what peace there is in a still silence between comfortable friends. And he’d definately climb trees.
Well, my first real love was Swampy, after all 😉 I was about twelve, entering the early bloom of my hippychick years. Which bordered nicely with my puberty – I held that off as long as possible, believe me. Mum despaired of ever introducing me to deodorant, or daily washes.
Still, there were the Levellers. Finally, a band singing, playing about things I believed in. They weren’t talking about clubs and bling, sweaty gym-bods. Their voices rang with a riot’s call, minus the pointless bloodbath; they were too busy drinking from the bottle to throw it. They had the idle, gratuitous politician’s nailed to the wall, spliced to pour out truth; they knew the tricks of the world, made sure everyone heard them too. They called out for justice done on the natural world’s pains at human hands, an issue very dear to my gnarly heart.
And best of all, they spoke of travel – the endless road that hardens and brightens the eye and soul, scuffs the feet and bruises the knees everytime you fall. But God it’s worth the fall. Especially with these guys to pull you back up for another round of drinks and a song.
I’m lightly mulled on the river of rum, blissed out in candlelight and closer to home than I’ve felt in a long while. Home being where the heart is, mine went wandering ages ago, reckless fiend that it is; sometimes though, I manage to call it back.
Walking on.
celenagaia 