are we having fun yet?

Conforming to probable and wholly understandable sterotypes, I (or rather my poetry) could be described as being a bit dark and depressing. I can understand that, but - as I have previously stated - it's easier to write when you're pissed off with life and all that's being thrown at you. Even when the obstacles to living a life of sunshine and bliss are wholly imagined and purely a figment of your own warped and paranoid imagination, it still feels good to mope about it and scribble black thoughts on a secret notepad. I reckon all poets are a bit miserable, even the happy ones.

So when asked by a colleague to write a nice ditty about her cat (and no Mrs Slocum jokes please) I thought it a good opportunity to try something new and see where verse light and frothy would take me. I'll spoil the ending by saying that I haven't written anything of this ilk since, which was 13 years ago and counting...)

Molly's A Cat

Molly's a cat,
I've no doubt about that.
A friendly old furry fat cat.

In front of the fire
She'll cosily retire.
I've got no problem with that.

Eat food all day,
And a ten minute play,
This is the life we all seek.

And every half hour
A sleep she'll devour,
As if she's not slept for a week.

What can I say now,
That'll make sense somehow
Of the lazy old life of a cat?

Molly's a cat,
I've no doubt about that.
A friendly old furry fat cat.

April 1996

molly the cat
image © auspices

the sinning machine

When I first arrived in London, like most people experiencing the city for the first time, I was completely blown away. Having been brought up to implicitly loathe the capital and all it's pampered and over indulged occupants, I didn't expect to feel the way I did as I walked across the Victoria Station concourse - I was excited yet slightly overawed (but in a good way).

Unfortunately, although my new job was in Tooting (and how I laugh now when I remember it as the centre of my cultural universe for two years), I was only passing through on my way to live in a small Kent town near East Grinstead with my then girlfriend. I subsequently moved to a medium-sized commuter town in the Surrey broker belt - it was okay, but neither were London proper and neither felt like home.

I was approaching the end of my first year there when I started getting itchy feet, and I wanted to spend more time out and about with my workmates in Tooting rather than getting back to the broker-belt to do nothing much in particular. The train home arrived later and later and change, not that I knew it yet, was just around the corner.

It was about this time that "Monster" by REM and "Dog Man Star" by Suede were my constant audio companions, and it was the latter that inspired the following poem by in the now usual way of providing a rhythm to hang my made up lyrics onto. There was a near-future dystopian feel to the word in general that appealed to the post-apocolyptic sci-fi geek in me, and it empathised with my ongoing situation wasting my years in a nowhere town.

However it wasn't a track from the album that pricked my consciousness, but rather a b-side (if such a thing could exist on a cd single) from one of the track releases. "Together", track two on the "New Generation" release, was the first Suede track written by (the irreplacable) Bernard Butler's replacement Richard Oakes, and I was keen to hear how it stood up.

It fared pretty well, but more importantly for me it became the vehicle for some lines I had jotted down about the darker side contained within us all, and a nod in the direction of my changing relationship and the other avenues - or more specifically, avenue in the singular - that was presenting itself to me.

The Sinning Machine

I'm a monumental sinner
With a sackful of pain,
A convoluted Non-diluted
History of senselessness and shame -
(A nice line in degradation and pain!)
But why should I bother to explain?
I don't believe I'll ever change...

February 1996

6th st salvation
image © deneyterrio