Somehow my real job got in the way recently! It takes a clear space to find time to write and with doing the open uni degree, which I love, and working at my business I have not had a moment. I don't really have one now either but I thought I would mention another small obsession that I have at the moment - I have discovered the "beat " poets of 1960's USA particularly Allen Ginsberg and his poem "Howl". It is an extremely reactionary poem and one that falls between the genre of popular and high literature. I am in the process of writing a TMA argueing that it is indeed much higher than at first one would think. It is built on an inherent scaffolding of high literature for all that it appeals to the "mass culture" (Dwight Macdonald's classification of popular literature) Urban art at its most interesting so to keep apace I am now posting one of my earlier darker urban poems called:
Cold Nourishment.
Stuttering down in life’s grimy gutters,
drug ridden, punch drunk, grey;
no escape from the darkest depths
of this treacherous river of life.
The underbellies of our glass cities
masticate on the poor -
throw them a rope of intestines
to close the cavernous gap
between them and the privileged populations,
who discard them like wasted food.
On the plate of life, hunger and sated stomachs
lie side by side, succulent sweets beside cold savouries,
undesirable, congealed;
How can the rich lay this on their tastebuds
while children’s tongues swell with thirst?
