'In for a pound'
It's not so far from Chippenham
They've been whippin em up for years at The Pound arts centre, Corsham
Here's an aweshome place to take yourself, your friends your family
Get set up in the rake of the seated auditorium heated where needs be there's also the rehearsal room with a wall
That is so yellow and a small blue door that leads to where you'll see what's coming up
Then follow on out to where a new blue sky
Is ready to be found and all this for a pound arts centre.
Hello Corsham
My name's Johnny Fluffypunk
poet
spoken word artist
I don't know
How you've been spending your lockdown?
Hope it's been productive. I've done this,
I've built myself a shed. So I've achieved at least one thing, well two things, because I've built a shed
and I've written a poem about it
I built a shed
I built a shed I've been meaning to for ages, but I never had the time and now I don't have much
but I do have time
and so I built myself
a shed.
All this slowing down has brought the neighborhood out into our gardens
We're blinking in daylight like Blitzed cockneys the morning the bombs stopped dropping.
The weight of clocks lifted from our shoulders
we shared the time of day and then
after a bit, we started sharing surplus building materials we had kicking about and
I built a shed
The wood I had that already
The 28 sheets of corrugated tin they came from the recluse
living five doors up with his mother
In a house that smells of sad wallpaper
and vim
And we handed them over the fences at the regulation social distance
with gloves
And masks and chat about the quiet of the streets now that Alan Tunnock's Land Rover's been grounded
I built myself
a shed
And in so doing I did myself a succession of minor injuries
metal cuts, splinters
And once from trying to saw while reading a Beano strip upside down to a six-year-old
My partner, a nurse is less sympathetic
Since the episode with my morning angle grinding after her night shift
I'm made to clap louder on Thursdays now
I built a shed
I built a shed because I cannot escape a pandemic virus
but with a bit of hard graft
I can escape my own family
somewhere
I can watch the rainfall
And I can look forward to a future
Where we can all get back
To being a bit how we were in the past
It's my tin palace
And three doors up I hear the woman say that it looks like something out of a Caribbean shanty town
But as she's locked down with loud Reggae on all day long I'll take that as positive
Hello
socially isolating in the East Anglian countryside
Thought I'd do some poems. This is called
'Learning the Constellations'
I'm making... look how messy my hair is. I am making some coffee the posh Italian cafeteria pot
Is warming on the hob
I got the coffee for Christmas from my friend who shushes people at gigs
Shushers love good coffee
It all comes from the same part of the brain and if I could go to New York with anyone
It would be with my friend who shushes people at gigs
And gives good coffee as presents
In return I gave them a well-reviewed novel by someone Guardiany that they will never read
But it will look good on their shelf
I'm starting to feel bad about all the things that
I regret in life
How I feel weird leaving the house without my phone
that I can't look at a plug socket without thinking
I should have brought my charger
That every day someone falls out of love with someone they fell in love with it feels like a long time since I was singing
along to a song I knew all the words to
or I woke up and got out of bed and said I know what I'm gonna do today
I've started to teach myself the constellations
'The Big Dipper'
'The Teapot'
 
'The man in prison for something he didn't do'
The collective unhappiness of the whole universe condensed into one sparkle
Sometimes
it feels wrong that I don't know the names of the shapes of the stars
When I could borrow a book from the library or download an astrology app
And stand outside my back door and look up at the cloudless night sky
and teach myself
Maybe one night out with friends I'd be able to say that is 'Sagittarius'
There's 'Orion's Belt' who wouldn't want to be the guy who knows the names of the shapes of the stars
The other night I thought what if the stars are our ancestors
Looking down on us
What if every bit of yellow is someone who's scared who cared about us?
But can't be here with us anymore
I want to look up and say don't worry
I have taken control of things
Everything's okay
Sometimes when you've been drinking too much coffee
And staring at the sky for too long your brain gets carried away
but just in case you think maybe
I should behave in a way that will make those stars
sparkle
but when it's cloudy or
The curtains are drawn. It is far too easy to pretend
that those stars just don't exist.
Hello, my name's Henry Normal and I'd like to read you a poem for the Blue Sky Festival called 'Homeschooling'
Again when I wake
For a moment all is well
Then I remember
I reduce ambition expectation
Find the lowest gear
Draw out morning routines. My house has never been so clean
It's hard to remember what day it is. They're losing names and becoming numbers
Always dress down Friday on the month of Sundays
We exist in unfashionable slippers. We live on screens
of all sizes
Stir crazy, I drink tea
on draft, wash my hands
as though my life depended on it
Exercise once a day being
once a day more
than I'm used to
Wrap myself against nature, lay my clothes fallow to avoid the wash.Each week I chance the supermarket
stand on the dotted line
over a breath away
the length of an hospital bed
Negotiate the aisles
Turn my back on the Space Invaders
I'm resorting to DIY
sorting out corners to make my home bigger
spraying the tops of taps
again
keys, doorknobs
again, and again
Resisting the itch
On my face, hands like deadly weapons
Using elbows and feet to open and close doors
leaving packages and letters
in quarantine
Experimenting with available ingredients
toasting the last of the bread
Seeing how many cups I can get out of one tea bag. The least amount of toilet paper per visit
I watch the news
And then try to find a little escape to improve my dreams
I'm weary of every cough or sneeze
every ache
Careful not to stay up late in case it lowers resistance
I treasure
I appreciate
I empathize until it hurts
Close my eyes
Again when I wake for a moment all is well
Then I remember
Man in the mirror
Man above my sink
In his Sunday best dressed for a marathon of ink
Rewriting the story set on boxing him in
How brilliant and beautiful could he
Having owned my feet for a century be having
Never left on leave from the paradox gleamed in the silhouettes framed in the name of your Camelot
He is my closest relative in the flesh
I know him. He knows me. I know his seasonal best his
achilles heel and
If he really will when the pushing turns punishment pillaged the hill
I'm, an army carved karma into pebbles and skipped a quiet sermon on a river of sticks stalking a metaphor if
I never do as a blooded being does
Do I dull my diligence and dissipate love? Is it really a cut from the common place? Buzz if I
Became him
And he came up from the mirrors in the war
Me and mirror in a war to be much more beautiful than anything before more than anything before
I am sure of the shackles
the chain and the shame that sustains our battle just
Look at me dance by my bathroom sink all salt in my stare
Well aware of a body that is
challenger and challenge
Excalibur and stone half mellow half malice have melanin and gold
Every one of us is sentient and bold
Every one of us was sent to break a mould
Every one of us is circuit breaker code sent to corrode the notion that perfection is the goal and I don't know
If I could love without the love for who I am now, the man behind the mirror that is spirit is a man down
Man above the sink on his marathon of ink it needs his own voice to score this whole marathon he's in
Man in the mirror. Man above the sink
You writing the story set unboxing him in
Hello, my name is Rosy Carrick I'm broadcasting
LIVE
In so far as I'm alive and so are you, from my house in Brighton and I'm going to read a poem from my book
'Chokey'
and I did just have the page open, but I
closed it. Here we are. The poem is called Wundt's Law and it goes like this
Look
It seems clear that nothing will come from this particular attempt, so I advise you to just stop trying right now
Put on your shoes and take a stroll outside instead. Imagine how things could be
outside you might see a shop and decide to buy a banana or a book a 50p bargain bin book maybe
Ragged looking but with the kind of title you can't not go for
'You too will die last week' or
'Magic and how to undrink it'
If the day is sunny and it is the park is close
Right now you could be in that park biting into a soft banana and reading the opening pages of a book
So like a god in its clear understanding of all your sturdiest fears that you will race back home
only to collect your dental floss and passport and will take a train to the airport without even
thinking a single thought the whole of the journey just reading and reading and sometimes for a break looking out of the window and then
You will be there and you will book a ticket on the next available flight all basic inoculations and visa requirements allowing
And you could even now be getting onto that plane and as it sets off
as it tips itself backwards and as your ears steal themselves for the popping and everything in you twists with
terrific excitement for all of the streets in the world that wait to be walked through and all
of the films you'll see in tiny cinemas with strangers and all of the alien
alcohols and chocolate bars and beetles. You will remember
very suddenly Wundt's Law regarding excitement. You will remember that too much excitement is a wholly
unpleasurable item, being attacked on the street, falling from a building in bare knees and so on and you will know
Absolutely, you are headed for that you are in that even and that this is not a good or positive challenge. It is a terrible,
terrible, and you will stand and scream and make to punch the people around you announcing all the while the intention to kill
and to cut off the hair from all unfriendly heads until the decision is made to re-land the plane and it will be
re-landed and people will make you with their eyes and their ringing hands feel very guilty and you will run
Following your police caution the confiscation of your dental floss and threats of several fines. Run
to the train, from the station to the house. Nakedly ball up. Discover the stench of your armpits. Double lock
every one of the windows and doors and jump inside of a hot and silent bath.
Thank you, that's the end of my poem and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the event, um
Catch you later, dudes. Bye
Hello Pound Arts
um
I'm going to share a
new piece with you today that I've written
during lockdown
I stumped my toe on my solitude today
Sometimes it serves me other times it gets in the way, so I consider feng shui
We don't even have a language for this emotion
What letter should it start with?
Where was my tongue when the clock struck lockdown?
what's the squaw
the base
The foundational sound that will bring us home. What is the universal sound for loneliness?
And which gland does it secrete from?
a slow
condulating sound that works upwards like a lava lamp. A gravity defying epithanema
neon and bulbus floating up with helium in echoes you no longer touch the ground
This is the sound that unearths us
I've lost my train of thought now thinking of howling now
of Ginsberg. Thinking of oceans wrong of burning
That muted face
The sorrow
Why did I write in red today?
Why did I get angry today?
This word. This emotion
Does it start with why?
No
I don't think it does. I think it starts with you an uneasy curling of the lips, the lower jaw hanging open
like a begging bowl
I stumped my toe on my solitude today
Sometimes it serves me other times it gets in the way so I consider feng shui
Th cure for loneliness is solitude
I've come to accept it
It happened mid-shower
Like most good epiphanies. It came with water. I am a product of two loners
I don't know any better
Irony is a classroom
Contradiction is the bedrock of eastern philosophy stops us from thinking that we know it all
That we can see it all
It all makes sense to us and immediately
is utterly beyond us
I used to watch too many horrors
To the point where I haunted myself into an eternal
hangover
those midnight marathons
The only antidote was to walk around my house in complete darkness
The fear that only exists when you're walking up the stairs feeling like someone is behind you
Can only be cured by walking a little bit slower than before
Counterclockwise like an odyssey track
5 4 dancing out of time in and out
I've come to know myself by being around others
Knowing that I'd rather be on my own
It's a chosen path and you'll never see it because I didn't want to share it with you
I stumped my toe on my solitude today
Sometimes it serves me other times it gets in the way
So I consider saying feng shui
Thank you
Hello Blue Sky and Beyond my name is Toby Thompson transmitting
live
not live
from
I mean it's live
It's live. It feels live
um from Normandy, France. My Auntie's garden. That's pumpkin
luxuriating in the sun back there
um
I'm gonna say a couple of poems now
The first of them is called 'M Sweet Angel'
and it's about a picnic.
The scene is impossibly idyllic
Picasso couldn't paint it better with a brush drenched in mottled green acrylic
I tell her these visuals are astonishing terrific
astrologically vivid
It kind of makes me want to jot a scenic lyric
Entitled something stupid like botany is wicked
Just then a pause descends over the contents of our picnic
Lasting about the length of time a frog might take to ribbit
Twice and for a breath or two I locked myself within it
Before breaking out and saying right okay, so, can you help me please I'm trying to rhyme opulent and mythic
And so far all I've got is providence and Pritt Stick
She says will you drop the sodding sonnets for a minute now come here and sip the tonic of my spirit
What about spiral chai chocolate flavoured mystic?
I say as I lean into her collarbone and kiss it
She melts
she
melts
Usually her body well it's not exactly stiff
It's just a bit posh a tad British
I mean it's in the habit of acknowledging its limits but crumbs
Now her posture is the opposite of rigid
Somehow I've gone and turned a solid into liquid
A minute later I'm wiping a fleck of slobber from her lipstick
Whispering today is but a drop in our tropical pacific
And fool that I am silly wally billy dimwit
I take her nod to mean that she is more than moderately complicit
She was nibbling on my finger like it was a sausage or a twiglet
And I remember thinking well I'm not a connoisseur of kinship but I'm pretty sure for her my fondness is infinite
And even though everything that followed
Was horrific
In that moment
I still believe she loved me from the bottom of her soul to the softness of her wingtip
My sweet angel
Just had a rice cake with some peanut butter on
I'm starting to get worried that had bits between um
Sorry, that's no way to segue between poems
um
Right I'm going to do another one now
On the subject of love
It's called 'Love'
And it goes like this
I believe you can drink love straight if you've got the right goblet. I believe that
I believe you can take love to work if you've got the right Tupperware
And you can eat that
For lunch as long as you keep some space in your stomach spare
I believe you can make love blush. You just need to pluck up the courage to say something heartfelt and honest
I believe we can all find the answer to what is
Love we just need to quit asking our logics
The science is hardly as hard as for rockets. You haven't even got to go to classes at college
merely give your soul's eyes glasses of polish
And search the way that people do for car keys and wallets
i.e. start with your pockets
It won't be there but don't despair remain calm as you forage
For all the truest loves love a game of hide and seek
So just take your time the key is to play the part of the novice
Being a human being is bizarre
Be astonished
unfasten the clasps of your locket
by which I mean let
flabbergasted air pass past the gargoyles guarding your locked lips
and if the mood moves your arms and your coccyx
Well, then by all means
extemporary dance naked but for a garland of olives
Green garlic stuffed olives
Excuse me, I digress as usual
All I'm trying to say is that love is a trillion times ten times as high technical and useful
as any conceivable future pairs of spooky sci-fi spectacles by Google
I believe you can dance on the surface of love's legs
Until the wise owl flying by the full moon silver lights fuse a bewildered by rouge
And still have dry shoes if you spill the right moons
Moreover you can glide. Similar to penguins on ice into love's boundless ocean never to re-emerge
Love's a real cheap date. There's
rarely a debit to reimburse. You can pay the price of love's devotion and never need a purse
On another footnote
Affection hath an eloquence that never needed words
As much as I would like to think the book of love
Novella would have said its peace in verse I know the lyrics it delivers
And more like those whispered
by the larynx of the leopard
When it serenely purrs
More like the mesmeric rustling of the leaves the gentlest breeze disturbs, I believe
That love can find a field of mole hill
Where once lay a mountain range of obstacles demanding to be stressfully traversed
I believe love will free you from the flesh and bone confines of yourself
like melodies escaping from the slender beaks of birds
Forgive me I'm waffling
Long story shortened from the length of the tongue of a young giraffe
To the length of the thumb that's been cut in half
I believe love is a back rub in a bubble bath
Not wanting to beat around the shrubbery green and lush. I mean to put it in the shells of a couple of pecan nuts
Ever since I learnt love from the mother whose teat I sucked
I've believed being human is a wonderful piece of luck
I believe peace is true
and love is the key to
stuff
Thus I believe in nothing but peace and
Love
Bye Blue Sky and Beyond. Enjoy the rest of your spoken word
Say bye Pumpkin, PUMPS
She's always ignoring me.
 
