can't see the wood for the trees

Benjamin Campbell - London   I teach English and sometimes write poetry. If you're one of my students, make sure you've done your homework before going on tumblr. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. ~ my writing ~

[sketchythiings]

Often I have wondered, whilst standing here besides the Thames, whether my fate flows as surely as this mist-covered river.   Further up they call it the Isis. Further up I am allowed to drop my Ts again, like sacks of rock I suffered to shoulder.   Sometimes the mist down here thickens so much you seem to see elsewhere, perhaps, and old friends take shape if just for a moment. Visions fade.   Where is the mouth I once called with? Where are the words we shared like stones made smooth and beautiful by tides? Pebbles and memories remain.   That seems the way of my fate - slow erosion to a faceless mean, an average slate on which is writ the waterways I’ve wandered, sick at heart.

“the wanderer” (2/120)

today’s poem was inspired by The Wanderer (10th C.), Anonymous

(via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

I bend, pen in hand, to dig down to the root of things, coming up one millennium ago, when this garden looked quite different. Then our saplings were just starting to show their flowers, to bloom with their own colours, becoming before the weeds came. Three centuries of struggling ensued - but roots suppressed can still survive. I lift these twisted branches and spy their intertwined growth…Now the terms of flowers and weeds are changeable. Here our garden is rich in thyme, lavender, lonicera, lily - smelling just as sweet by any name.

“roots” (4/120)

today’s poem was inspired by The Drought of English Poetry Following the Norman Conquest of 1066

(via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

In a way we all retain a little of the soul of sweet Gawain: our voices rise to claim the tests we later leave in shame.   Honour is a concept we are no longer comfortable thinking of; there's too much stress and misery in the meaning of a cast-off glove.   So we keep our words as best we're able - leaving the rest to the time of fables.

“chivalry is dead, they said” (5/120)

today’s poem was inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th C.), Anonymous

[sketchythiings]

[sketchythiings]

The rains that came on Carthage fall on London too. When the walls of Troy burned bright and long, men saw reflected in the flames the spires of this writhing city wreathed in the same.                            This ruin, unreal, still clamours with the silence of ghosts, the shuffling motions of the not dead.   Yes, we fall to fate as they fell, losing to ruin the things we'd built, and the care we had to keep them. This city may stand for a century more - but the lack of glances, the quiet, the turned shoulders tell this place is a ruin already, as the rains softly fall.

“the ruin” (3/120)

today’s poem was inspired by The Ruin (10th C.), Anonymous

[sketchythiings]

I sent you a poem on a postcard and look where it got me. Cloistered inside the confessional booth, trapped and tortured, now I must atone for my sins. This note is necessary to exorcise the memory of finding a postcard crumpled, barely showing through the wreckage the words I had wrought from my heart’s deep forge.

a muted month 30/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

Some secret room inside my brain must hold the sleeping nature of my soul.   Whilst worn grey matter moves the mouth and puppeteers the habits learned by rote   inside this cradled space I dream of poetry, and stars, and falling leaves.   A hidden garden such as this could grow beyond its aging shell - unless   I fail to feed it, or neglect the gentle care an artist’s soul knows best.

a muted month 29/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

As we pass on our tracks the best we can do is leave notes on the fridge, chairs, doors. Unable to stop the hidden hand that moves us, we rush to end the daily circuit. So it happens our curt “I love you"s and short requests for milk or bills or emails must be made via left messages. We could surely not endure it, were it not for the gentle, soothing joy of leaving the station at dusk to find a red sky, and each other’s arms.

a muted month 23/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

The sky devoured the smoke, as from the edge I watched him die. The fire covered him like a cloak - he was my king, his throne the burning pyre.   The ground devoured our dirge, as from the edge I watched him fade. Our song was soft amongst the gold we piled to pay his passing far along.   The sea devoured my grandfather - yet, even if the bright fire wanes, still that ship will stand a beacon, and in that light he will remain.

“elegy for my grandfather” (1/120)

today’s poem was inspired by: Beowulf, 3155-3182 (10th C.), Anonymous

[sketchythiings]

A soft October sky fills my rising eyes as on a cloud I soar to heights only dreamed of before.   This dawn is drawn in a new language, for the morning light fills the floor to the foot of the bed, where it finds two halves of one body - mine, finally reunited with yours.

a muted month 20/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

“I am trying to push you,” is what I told them, though in their minds they added “…off the edge of a cliff…”   It’s not like that. It’s just that I see minds like mine but blessed with more time, and more chances to use them.   Coupled with a growing fear of how quickly it all goes, the heart lurches for a hand to pull, at first, and then push   beyond yourself.

a muted month 17/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

Autumn turns me philosophical - nostalgic for a thought I’ve never had. In passing faces I see the rain-streaked lives that sprawl across this city. Behind each set of grey eyes lies a story I want to tell.

a muted month 11/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

Close your eyes and the pixels still burn a little. The lingering sensation of unreality stings like a fever. We are suffering from double vision - brainsick sights that remain like frost on the windows.

a muted month 7/31 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

The sliced moon hangs suspended in the red afternoon like a sun half-mended.   As the painter waxes and the daylight fades, the sky relaxes to bluish shades.

the poetry machine 26/30 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

Sometimes they come like filings to a magnet, like air to a vacuum. Sometimes they happen like they were fated.   On off days I stare at blank pages like by observing them I could change their state. But this   was never a science. This was always a fall, a failed experiment, a strange transmutation.

the poetry machine 24/30 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

The moment they catch it you see the skin searing - the eyes light like smoke flares while the words form like ash on their tongues. The disease has taken root. Now nights will be spent sweating words, feverish with language, corrupted by the son. The only respite comes from the ink injection lancing the linguist’s boil.

the poetry machine 22/30 (via sketchythiings)

[sketchythiings]

The moon mocks me with memories of you. A pale pock-marked face, unhindered and wry, floating effortlessly through the sky - untouchable. Uncatchable. Unclaimable.

the poetry machine 21/30 (via sketchythiings)