Rain and Ruins and Reigning (by sarah)

Found Poems of the Concrete - The Priory

The city landscape is multifaceted and layered, within this city, the one I chose as home - there is industrial wealth rotting from the victorian glory and areas of decay a few decades in the making - fixed with memories and longings and a hope that transcends it all making it ripe for a rebirth - Tudor houses stand in grandeur around 1920's colour and glaze - we choose which story to tell - there are new glass and glitz buildings calling to the business minds and all of it is beautiful overlapped and intwined.

There are the very rocks beneath - housing stories far older than this city - than this kingdom - than this land itself - within the rocks - stories telling of different landscapes. And then there is the religious blanket that settles on this region and gave it life and industry in the middle England of old. There is the Priory and the tales that it's remains have to tell.

St Oswald's.

Golden stone arches whispering of times long forgotten and a majesty of realms, calling for exploration but first there is the semi silhouette of something more modern and yet still older than many countries can claim - a building that stands sentinel as if guarding the religiocity of the region - though weather it practices the same as the foundations as they would suggest it was something else. An evolution of Faith? A changing and growing with the times and peoples and rotation of the Earth around the Sun. It is none the less a church and is full of the patience of ages with a name of mother and of guardianship St Mary's.

The sky is a leadened dead weight that sucks the colour and definition from this built and ancient landscape, ice waters threaten but there is no storm in the roll and twist of those clouds - though there is a strange glare of light that hurts the eyes if focus is attempted. The clouds seem to phase out through the stone windows as if this world and that observed world are not quiet in alinement reminding you of tricks for meditation of doors to December and cats eating themselves and strange impossibilities that contort the mind until they do indeed become possible and you think of travel between such worlds and laugh at the riduclious idea and move on.

Or rather back, stepping further and further away from the stones and the window so that more of the decaying structure is visible as for a moment it was as if the halls had become whole once more and the collapse of centuries had fallen away. The wind whispers songs that bounce of the stones and get lost in the cracks and weathering. Little ideas are hiding in the chinks - maybe one day they will be found and listened too but not this day because you are too caught up in the stone work itself, and how it forms around the windows, and how the windows are indeed more of an absence of a thing than the thing itself.

And they mark that this was once a room, once a living breathing space, where people where and thought and become nothing but bones and memories and shadows and shades that may still lurk in the cracks and dips of this ruin. Little fragments of the before can be found when you look hard enough - and up close to these old old stones that sing of the multifarious lives that they have lived, hallowed halls of Warrior Queens and monks sending the hopes of a people to the sky god and always the gentle hum of the city around you to remind you of the place in time that these relics now inhabit. Not everything is stone, more perishable things hide in plan sight.

Time seemingly flows around this place, condensing and stretching at odd intervals and you stand in the middle observing yet another window and imagining the glory of the ground it would have stared out upon and the tapestries and drapes and trappings of various ages seem to drift across your sight, a reminder of harsh climates and cold stone walls - churning memories of the places you have lived before of brick and stone and wood and block and how each of these domiciles felt. Of those that leached heat and those that retained it. Even the canvas you slept under in the garden as a child, a surplus of the second world war so heavy and thick, or thin metal that shifts and quakes in the driving rain so loud it becomes the mind. People have been living their lives for a long time in many ways and at many levels of comfort, but these halls would unlikely have allowed you to become old. The thought is a shudder of sensation as if ice has been packed into your bones and is still expanding pushing out the marrow and splitting the core of you.

And though you can feel the tragedies of the human condition piling up through the fabric of histories you feel the tug and the pull to investigate further - to fall down the rabbit whole of archaic intrigue and to explore these words that are at once the same as our own and so completely alien that they burn the minds eye if left unfiltered. Blood or no blood, and the mer slight possibility of holy relics - of a person fragmented and normally falsified - can do little to damp your curiosity and besides someone told you it was built wrong to house such things - there is an elegance here that draws you ever onward into it.

A storm churns reminding you of legends older than the building though not older than the cut blocks that make it up and certainly not older than the stone that was quarried from dead seas that hide in Cotswold Hills. But still the cycle of stories push at you, as if trying to summon thick mists like dragons breath to hide the roads and red bricked buildings that surround.

Brexit Breaking (by sarah)

Brexit breaking, where was the plan?
If we were going to leave it had to be quick and decisive
now we're in a muddle of no mans land -
sinking in economic quick sand.
Companies slinking or merely clinging,
some just blinking out of existence

The economic news of the last few weeks has not been brilliant - with companies in administration and large ones at that - caused by the weakness of the pound since Brexit and yeah they've blamed the pound not Brexit and the idea of Brexit itself is not the issue - the issue is that this country had no plan, and has stalled and fannied about and that indecision is causing harm. Financial stuff hates uncertainty and that is exactly what we have.

Now the third largest company is relocating to Rotterdam after 100 years in London and I can only see more of this happening until we have nothing. So I wrote a poem - it didn't start out as a poem - it was a Facebook update to accompany this mornings news but it became a poem.

International Mens Day (by sarah)

It is International Mens Day today - this popped up in my memories on Facebook - Alaric curled up with kitten Lithium after her op. Alaric as he says is not shy about his emotions like most male people but he does still have extreme self reliance which causes him much misery and is part of the bundle that makes men more likely to commit suicide - my friends that have killed themselves to escape the dark places have so far all been men - here is the tribute song/poem that I made for them:

And also Al's write up of the miscarriage from the father point of view. Something which often gets over looked.

And guys - if you are in that dark place please please seek help - I know it's the hardest thing to do.

Expectancy’s Shadow (by sarah)

Some of the poetry written about the miscarriage including pieces written before it was def. a miscarriage, Alaric is working on one in Lojban which we will share once it is finished.

These are not the poems and drawings that we had hoped to produce but it is pretty much all we can do. Mary at least has found the visual poem useful and has drawn her own.

Spotting the Gunk

Chewing a cardoman pod
dreading the day
antiseptic flavour
stings my throat
Moments tick in sips of tea
A jar full of piss
Awaits
I got it on my hand
Dark scars mar the sky
With no stars and grey dawn
Heart breaking
Wanting to know
Not wanting to go
For the scan
to check for
A little life
That is probably
Already gone.

Grain of Rice

They called you a grain of rice
Sitting there on the screen
Not even really that
So small
More puddin rice
still just a bundle a ball
Of cells
But no heart beat
Maybe because of size
But a bloody surprise had us
Glued to the screen
Seeing you
Possibly for the only time
Our little grain

Don't be dead
Don't be a zombie baby
Don't rot and poison me

Be strong and healthy
Grow and beat that little heart
But if you need to go
Just know we love you
We will remember our
Little rice grain

Couldn't Stay to Play

Mad but Lovely Times! (by sarah)

Things have been pretty mad here! There have been Science Festivals, poetry festival, scare acting and a whole host of other things! Last week saw SMASHfest at Gloucester Library which was super super amazing and Cuddly Science had a fab time.

The Wiggly Pet Press launched the Gloucester Poetry Societies first book Poetry without Pretension at the The Gloucester Poetry Festival and Salaric Art and Craft have been out and about doing Upcycling projects and drawing like fiends!

And of course all three of those things are me plus the acting! This last week alone saw me filmed for TV, interviewed for radio and though I wasn't in the photo Cuddly Science was photographed for the newspaper. I have so many photos and things to share and November is looking pretty exciting too with more acting, Christmas craft workshops, archaeology digs, singing, Diversity, literature and poetry Festivals, craft fayres, community outreach and museum gigs! I am no longer taking bookings for 2017 sorry about that but I really am full!

And that's without all the domestic stuff like my hospital appointments and halloween/fireworks events for kids etc... not to mention Nanowrimo and stuff.