Back in June, I launched this stack with an article called Screwing Up the First Page. Therein, I alluded to a mountain of unpublished prose and poetry, which I committed to upload, building an interesting and exciting archive of my writing.
Yeah, well, I didn’t do that, did I? I probably should, and I might yet, but what I actually did was start half a dozen bespoke articles and essays, which now squat, glowering at me with unabashed menace over the rim of my drafts folder, taunting me with visions of a burgeoning parallel pile of unpublished and unpublishable nonsense.
So, here’s a compromise. Today I went to the beach at Mumbles, a headland in Swansea Bay, South Wales. The unusual name means breasts, apparently. Poetry about the wild untamed Welsh coast is a solid staple for spoken word events around here, so I pulled out my notebook and thought I’d try my hand.
As a result, you, dear readers, get to be my workshop, for two unedited first drafts of poems inspired by a sunny day at the beach. I’m experimenting with more free verse and alliteration than my usual internal rhyming performance style, so apologies if it’s trash. Let me know what you think.
Mumbles
A different place to be alone:
Waves whoosh,
washing slick sands to muddy reduction.
At a distance,
waders edge slowly into slippery slopping splosh,
braving blessings of a million bowels.
A seal emerges,
curious, victorious,
envious of greener grass
beyond the wreckage of the rocky peninsula.
Quartz teeth grin
through red rock --
stone spewed forth from volcanic vulvae
now bursting wart-like
through coal-black cinders
and fossil offal.
Nothing lives in the rock-pool --
reports of claws unverified.
A decaying dance of shaggy trolls,
shambling, incrementally through eons
of illusory intent.
I'm tired.
I take a photograph,
and call it beauty.
Sand: Before and After
Sand flats smooth shell,
channeling crème brûlée
in polished abrasion.
Delights lurk beneath the silicon surface --
protean blubber,
sweet jellied albumen,
sticky with potential --
poised in promise of natural nutrition.
A confection concealed under cracknel crust,
bubbling temptation
in anticipation of spoon-fed delights.
Fleshy, pulsating fruit,
matured through millenia --
softening, slick, and gelatinous,
sliding oesophagal sponge
in mozerella strands,
shovelled indelicate.
Cream clogging clotted gluttony.
Ecstacy belies the choking truth,
and disappointment of a soft palate
serrated by soggy salted sand.