Ghost Tour

‘Will you cover for me?’ I’m helpless, delving into a set of well-worn expressions, shunning the stutter he beckons, projecting: Yeah, I reckon. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I owe you one.’ At this point, more like twenty, a reckoning that’s chasing propriety into an early grave. A new voice: ‘Step lively,’ says Greg, head a conspiracy tilt past the fire hatch and we scurry, him stubbing, me shrugging, Greg’s gaze a spinning speculation I nudge from him. ‘Madame’s on the march,’ he confides. I sigh. ‘No closer to the prize?’ My turn to roll my eyes, grab regulation headgear, unprop the door while trawling for witticisms. Zilch. There’s always next time. ‘Sure, love. Sure.’ We watch as the other darts ahead.    

Tiptoeing upstage,

we are mismatched murderers

longing for a break.

More Whimsy for Spectral, in the form of a haibun (or as haibunnish as English can get and not strictly speaking autobiographical either), written originally for NaPoWriMo 2019.

This is, essentially, a scene from my own house – the red hat that has accompanied me to many festivals, generally as a compere at various events at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, or at my own stage (Wild Strawberries) at Cambridge’s Strawberry Fair, and the hatstand... Hah.

I’ve always wanted a proper hatstand. I have... a lot of hats (literal as well as figurative), and there was never space or opportunity... until I went for a late-night walk while talking to friends on discord and almost literally stumbled across this fellow, abandoned on the pavement next to a large mirror spiderwebbed with a myriad of cracks. Bearing in mind that it was possibly cursed, I still felt that a midnight, frost-rimed gift of a piece of furniture I’d always craved, and such a handsome example, was not something to turn down.

Hard to say the figure I must have cut, and this is a solid chunk of wood and metal to hoick down the street over one’s shoulder, but there we have it – cursed or not, it’s currently draped in a red velvety throw and adorned with my hat, sitting quietly behind the door of my living room, and I hope it’s as happy to be here as I am to have it.

Meet Me In Marigolds

The Post-it note has a smiley face,
and it’s a race between emotions –
notionally: pleasure, beckoned by
the sight of your handwriting,
the way you fail to dot your every i.
‘There’s nothing else it could be!’
My smile stretches, sly and sweet.

Next: anticipation, a wave of adrenaline
spiking through the morning fugue
with images of rising to the challenge,
followed swiftly by the warm reward.

And then: contention bells in my head,
dread lurching to the fore;
for all the sweetness of imagination
there’s more, broadening the view of
victory to see us… where?

Are we in a field of fleshy flowers,
a barely-veiled metaphor dotting us
with pollen?
Hardly.
You’re neither hardy nor hearty,
usually eschewing outdoor pursuits,
pressing your suit in more… suitable locations…

Okay. Maybe we meet wreathed in blossoms,
top-heavy under some local post,
in-joke harking back to spy movies
and classified ads and brown-paper-wrapped
bad little habits in seaside retreats…?
Better.
But still not there yet.
Betting on landmarks seems foolhardy
in a city thronging with history.

This is a brutal test of my affections.

Next I consider: who am I missing?
Is this the name of one of your many associates?
Am I to approach a list of barely-retained
strangers to say: ‘Hey, is my… um… there today?’
stumbling and mumbling over names and titles,
bright with embarrassment and everything
we’ve never said?
You’re off your head, babe.
Hey, maybe we should call it a day?
This pressure’s getting heavy…

And then it hits me and I
dip my head, grin, slip to the sink,
rummage in its undercarriage and
come up golden.

Snap.

This is going to be one dirty weekend.

Back in late 2010, a poet named Tim Clare upped the ante on his annual poem-writing challenge, and set the stage to write 101 poems in a day. He asked for suggestions, and I ventured the title of this piece. He did it proud! I’m now the kind of person who runs poetry workshops, it turns out, and, when I’m faced with people who’ve done my standard prompt for a poem (“Lemons”, if you’re interested), I tell them: “Pick a book off the shelf and open it at a random page. That, or you could try ‘Meet Me in Marigolds’.” Very few have taken me up on that, sadly. By the time it got to late NaPoWriMo 2017, starting to run out of notions, I thought it was time I put my stanzas where my stylus is. Or something. Anyway, this is what happens when I’m being fussy about other people’s prompts - random story poems. It will be making an appearance in the Whimsy section of Spectral later this year.

“Well, it won’t take long to draw this!” I thought. Feeling this especially true after I blasted so fast (for me) through drawing the kingfisher for Monarch. Oh well! It took me a long time to be happy with this one, and I think it’s pretty good now. Always difficult to tell, writing these so shortly after finishing drawing, when I’m still in the stage where I think it’s very flawed in every way. But the creases look better than anticipated in places, and I’ve decided that It Will Do.