New Poetry #1

Whilst attending a free day of workshops and talks on music and sound: ‘Sounds of Space’, hosted@Spaces (Vijzelstraat and Keizersgracht), I was fortunate to attend a singing and songwriting class with an experienced singer, songwriter and performer, Ushaya.

She works with young people who are disaffected or struggling with identity and a sense of place. Alongside this she performs and writes music collaboratively. Using her own unique style, she set us a task using our right shoes... and my resulting lyrics are this:

Disheveled and dirty, a soul bought second hand,
Maroon, torn, stretched and scruffy with a worn out star,
Stomped in with youthful energy watching my neice’s band
‘til I’m worn out, like my soul, and we cycle home from the bar.

A bargain: a bedraggled second hand hand-me-down
From the antique filled Real McCoy, on Fore Street.
Since that day when Ali - my party animal lover - came to town.
This wrinkled, high-topped soul bounces to a new beat.

Inseparable dance floor buddies, disco dancers,
Jazz n jive, funk n soul, drum n bass - we rave,
Or on those lazy days, lay molded to the sofa, life chancers,
As our souls lie abandoned at the door, ready to be saved

For another day...

Poem #2 - using the above style I saw an abandoned comb beside a canal. Here I try to turn it into an unrhyming poem/lyric about a relationship...instead of features of the comb I have used the work love, but what else could I have used?

Love lies, now, in a row still
but dirtied, wet, like before,
but in a different way.
Sort of absent-mindedly
Splashed on
Driven over
Ignored.
Love stays there.

There, Love’s spine spikes.
Simple, cheap, blackened.
He lost his love weeks ago
before he remembered
He’d left it at her flat.
Plastic, and filthy.
Put out with the rubbish.
She threw out love
Like she threw him,
With no looking back.

Poem #3 - me attempting to try out the above technique but as free prose... I spotted a lonely glove left behind on a ticket machine at Amsterdam Centraal station and took a photo. Later on a tried to write some lyrics/poetry and replaced glove for hate. But wondered if it could work with love, conversely?

Solo, single, leather hate.
It lies alone.
One abandoned hate.
Lost -
Forgotten black, worn out hate
Reaching, rescued.
A soft, cold finger atop the ticket machine
Reaching out towards a distracted
Someone, somewhere.

A gift, from a while back,
As she made her way, a mad dash,
Down the escalator,
To her love down there.
A forgotten finger seemingly points
Towards her back
as she descends.

Her other hate encases her hand as she
Clasps the hand rail, resting,
Unmoved.
While her naked, cold slender digits
Curl away, and inwards, from
The accusing hateful relic.

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