writing

lost poem

~ extraplorer ~ 4 Comments

A poem hovered near me the other day
while I was doing something else
possibly more important, I
can’t remember.

Giggling silently, it swished its yellow plastic
grass skirt,
tried to catch my eye.
‘Check me out’, it was
longing to say,
but it instead just lurked,
transmitting ‘catch me’, ‘catch me’
through its pores.
Preoccupied, tired, I was aware,
but not quite.

It was funny, maybe
even laugh-out-loud hilarious.
It wanted to be written in
rhyming couplets
for a joke; it was all
irony and winks and
hijinks.

I caught the tail of the poem
that preceded it, reeled it in,
but despite my inner
‘must write that down’
tasks overtook me.  The cute
poem with the dancing eyes,
disconsolate,
went to play elsewhere.

Maybe my cheeky quirky poem will come back to
visit me.  Maybe not.
Either way,
I’m not making the same mistake this time.

early blog anxiety

~ extraplorer ~ 5 Comments

I am afraid of flatlining;
forty-eight dots on the WordPress
navigation bar
haunt my waking moments.

Ooooh the thrill of the tall
proud towers of views;
a forest of admiration;
peaks of blog achievement
I could almost stick my flag in.

I try to rationalise the valleys of
(invisibility)
which only occur (be reasonable)
when many other very
fulfilling and important
things are going on in the
real world.

The data analytics inner self
is not convinced.
We are losing momentum!
This is our chance!  Where is our poem
producer?  Nail her to her desk!

I try ignoring those dots…
It’s important for an artist to have
fallow period, I offer the comfort
of metaphors from the natural world.

All futile.  ‘If a tree falls in a wood
with no one to hear it’, or something?
Bottom line?  I don’t exist now.

When I signed up for this,
I had no idea that the dots were
taking over.

lost journal – the journal’s tale

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Only slowly does it dawn on me
that motion has ceased.
It is silent for the first time
in a long while.

I cannot make a sound
to attract attention.
I wait so still,
hoping.

It is warm between
the Financial Times
and Vogue.
But I shiver.

Swoop, arms gather the
newspaper and detritus
of flight BA0589
from Milan Linate.
I slide out under the
seat in front of you.

Will they come with vacuum
cleaners?
Not this time.  I hear the
hum of new arrivals.
Distant first,
then nearer.

Am I going back to Milan?
I recall cosy bedrooms,
grand galleries
and a few moments at a café,
when I was loved.

I miss the motion of her
pen, the flicking of my pages
and the close attention of her
eyes rereading and sometimes
looking away.

I miss the triumphant tick
in a small blue box
the sigh of satisfaction
and the sometime quick
snap-shut of a distraction.

What’s that?  Far from being
cornered by another
bag, I am being retrieved
by a total stranger.
I hold my covers tightly
shut through sheer willpower
to no avail.

Alien eyes peruse my pages.
I hope her writing turns
to scribble just in time.
My pages are flicked back and forward.
‘There’s no address’ I observe
unnoticed.  Only ‘private’ and
maybe hidden clues, who knows?

With relief, I remark
a kind of gentleness of touch.
Hope glimmers – perhaps I might
be restored to my owner?
I know she is looking for me
amongst the other
lost possessions, can hear her
hopeful tap-tapping of her plea
to find me.

I am being
slid in
to someone’s business bag.
I smell leather and Apple.
My pages snag on chargers.
For the first time, I am afraid of the dark.
I want to go home.

And I know I won’t.

lost journal

~ extraplorer ~ 2 Comments

lost journal

I lost my journal on the plane
flower print, ditsy,
‘she dreamed of diamonds
and life on the ocean wave’.

My blue-biro pen loops,
curls and lines and dots
are orphaned.
How will they manage
without me?

Tiny hand-drawn to-do boxes
will be half-unticked.
forever.
Scribbled inspirations
may never see
the light of day now.

I feel fortunate
I forged a bond
with the crew of
BA0589
from Milan Linate.
But how much was
just politeness?

And anyway, perhaps
it was an unknown cleaner
who discovered treasure
under the Financial Times?

I hover over the
lost luggage website.
It seems my life
is now in the company
of Macbook Airs, Dubai dates
and an antique firearm
(Business Class Lounge,
Lufthansa).

I slip poetry into
every non-drop-down-box
of the standard claim;
perhaps a small serenade
might lure Juliet
to her balcony.

I send the form,
and wonder.
What will they send me?

nearly three months review

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Suddenly more months have gone past and I haven’t had a moment to look back.  Christmas, New Year, woosh.

But it’s a sunny Sunday morning and I am nearing the three month anniversary of starting extraplorer.  I have a few minutes peace between business trips and the perfect moment to reflect and be happy about writing.

Of course when I started extraplorer, I had bits of writing lying around that I could add to extraplorer when I liked.  That gave me a thrill of momentum, but it was not sustainable forever.  I wish I had more time to write, but I am also happy to have a busy life of adventures in the outside world.  I wouldn’t swap the balance, I don’t think, even though it sometimes makes me feel restless.

Only one person in my ‘real life’ knows about extraplorer – my mother.  I am very very lucky that I have a mother who is trustworthy with these small attempts at writing.  Writing and having her comments is one thing that has given me more confidence that what I am doing is ‘real writing’.

And having real readers is the other thing.  I find it amazing to think of readers reading my writing (thank you so much fellow extraplorers!).

Sometimes I feel sad that I have not invited all my friends to join and see extraplorer yet.  In a way it feels awful, like having a baby and then asking a lot of strangers to come to visit it in the hospital while you tell your friends they are not welcome.  I am very lucky that some of my friends know about my blog, and are happy for me to trying things out in secret.  In a way, my friends’ generosity of spirit is the third thing that is making my writing be able to grow.

Thanks to these three sources of encouragement, I am becoming braver and getting closer to the day when I can share my work more confidently with more people.