Writes and Wrongz

Today I’m feeling pretty chuffed with myself as the 22nd and final poem for the D. O. is done and dusted… Though I’m not quite sure what I’ll do tomorrow… I know what needs to be done but it’s a new phase and the phase just done had its own rituals and rhythms that won’t work for the next stage… I’m not overly concerned as in my head it’s mostly penned already and I know at some point my fingers will just start to move of their own accord and tap it out on the keyboard… That’s mostly how I write, things swirl in my head… Then I write in one fell swoop, though not always what I had in mind but what lands lands…

Writing poems has been a different kettle of fish… A big difference being that Mr S frequently pokes his nose in to see what I’m up to… I’d say he’s used to seeing me write but that’s not strictly correct. He’s aware I write, he’s usually in bed or at work when I write. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been typing the final few words of each poem as he walks through the door, tripping over cats happy to see the big tin opener returned. I press print and he swoops the page fresh out of the printer. I enjoy that he no longer asks what I’ve been doing all day or comments about how the house is a mess… I don’t enjoy so much that he asks me what it means… That he thinks there’s a right or a wrong answer… I watch his face for the microexpressions that appear before he speaks and I know that he likes them but still his brow furroughs trying to work out what he thinks I want him to say…

Often I’ve found him rummaging through my completed pieces… Normally, he doesn’t go near my desk, in the same way that I don’t venture into his guitar zone. Our house is too small for the number of creatives that dwell here… One of the ways we maintain some level of sanity is that we all have recognised zones that are off limits to everyone else and designated communal areas. So, I catch him in my space… He’s looking to see if there’s anything he can steal for lyrics… I catch him again and quiz him on his trespass. He tells me he’s curious to see what exactly goes on in my mind, he’s curious as to what secret thoughts I have. I eye roll and wonder why he doesn’t just ask? I ask him what secrets he’s uncovered. He stares into mid-air and gently nods… Hmmm… You’re very cerebral. I resist the urge to say – excuse me? Have we met? It’s took you 30 years to work that out… I say nothing… He continues to talk and expands his comment and OK he does know who I am after all… I fleetingly feel guilty about visualising smacking the back of his head Tom & Jerry style with a frying pan…

Today he walks in and oh! Is that the last one? He’s babbling away. Finally he’s worked out that he can say what he wants… Later he makes some comment about how quickly I’ve finished them and how funny it is that I dash them off with no thought or crossing out…

I bust a gut laughing… No crossing out? Christ on a bike! Poetry is an exercise in extreme editing! In his snooping of my desk, he’s totally failed to find the inch thick wad of paper… Pages and pages of scrawls and scribbles… I sprawl the pages across the floor. He’s amazed! Not that I’ve made notes but that he’s just realised that I do actually tidy up after myself… Then he says, yeah but you’ve had all those ideas in a few weeks?

Again I bust a gut… I tell him, you know I ‘started’ this in 2014? You know it turned into me picking apart my whole life… This is a distillation of 50+ years. He says, oh really? So where are your croupier years?

Seriously? My croupier years? You read my last poem, read it again…

He says… Oh… Now I get it. I thought you were writing cryptic clues to be solved, but you’ve just been writing your own in-jokes to amuse yourself… I agree with him, yes, that’s right. He’s not wrong but he’s not entirely right. True, I’ve buried some jokes in there but mostly I write in earnest. Writing to amuse myself? Well what other kind of writing is there?

I mean seriously? If I can’t amuse myself then how on earth can I expect to engage anyone else into my words?