Monster

The monster rose up from the crypt
A creature straight from horror tales
From fangs, the caustic venom dripped
It plates its great hunched frame with scales
The slashing tail swung and whipped
And vicious talons stood for nails
Escaping from deep underground
It terrorized all those around

To save from being killed and maimed
The people chose to pay the price
That demon for their safety claimed
Which was a human sacrifice
No other way it could be tamed
(Forgive the hackneyed plot device)
It taxed them, to their great despair
The price of one young maiden, fair.

The girl they chose for this was smart
Could knit and crochet, sew and darn.
She prised the monster’s scales apart
She stabbed, without a hint to warn,
Her knitting needle in its heart.
So here’s the message of my yarn:
(Though clear to those with any wits)
You NEVER mess with girls who knit.

3WW: Sacrifice, caustic, hunch

Swan Lake

Going to see Carlos Acosta in Ballet Nacional De Cuba's Swan Lake at the London Coliseum tonight. Very excited.

A young prince's heart is entwined
With a princess in swan's form confined
But he worsens her plight
Mistakes black swan for white
Now that's what you call colour blind.

3WW: Writers Block

Now, regarding the prompt words, I have to say frankly
Though I hunger for ideas my mind loiters blankly
And I’ve really no way to try solving the puzzle
Of a sensible reason to use the verb “nuzzle”
So I’ve brazened it out, I’m now anxiously waiting
For next week’s muse – hope she’s more accommodating

3WW: Brazen, Hunger, Nuzzle

The Alcoholic

The greatest star in all the land
A huge celeb, so famed and grand
He’s coming to our town, it’s said
The luminary named “Big Ted”

So what demands does he decree?
What satisfies this VIP?
Fine caviar and coats of mink
But most of all, our Ted wants drink

Ten bottles of top French champagne
And best Rioja straight from Spain
Tequila with fresh limes and salt

Plus Scottish whisky, single malt

The moment for his act draws near
They’re waiting for him to appear
The girls are screaming “where’s our hunk?”
He’s passed out on the bed, dead drunk

Sunday Scribblings: Demands

Some people are only happy when they're not...

So now spring has sprung and it’s fab,
Am I just an ungrateful crab
If, melting, I say
I wish there’s a way
To TURN OFF the heat in my lab?

The Pigeon

With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe...

One night I studied, weak and weary, over tomes of quantum theory
Trying to decipher what it meant for physics’s laws
While a migraine starting stinging, all at once I heard a pinging
As of someone gently ringing, ringing at my flat’s front door
“’Tis some drunken fool,” I muttered, “Ringing at my flat’s front door
Only this and nothing more”

No clue what was to befall me, how those ideas could enthral me
The breakthroughs and the struggles of researchers gone before
As I sat absorbed in reading, concepts through my head were speeding
Brain on crazy theories feeding, feeding on Einstein and Bohr
Avidly digesting works of Einstein, Planck and Bohr
Craving to learn even more

While my pulse beat ever faster, apprehending much disaster
Through the spell there rang the bell again of my front door
Like a shard cut through my dreaming, through the notions and the scheming
Twisting through my mind and streaming, streaming with chaotic roar
Over the confused abstractions crying with chaotic roar
Loud the doorbell rang once more

When at last my door I’d unlocked, when the entrance hall I’d unblocked
What a bizarre creature landed on my parquet floor
Serious as true religion, feathers ruffled up a smidgeon
Into my flat there flew a pigeon, pigeon with much filth and gore
Ugly as a gargoyle’s mother, stinking of trash cans and gore
Difficult, that, to ignore

Once that bird had found a free perch then my mind returned to research
To the world of physics I was longing to explore
“Now this obsession hath befell me, an addiction to enspell me,
bird, I ask you, won’t you tell me, tell me pigeon I implore:
How long will last this compulsion? Tell me pigeon, I implore”
Quoth the pigeon, “Evermore.”

“Though I know that it’s imprudent, I shall become a grad student
A creature that the working world doth distain and abhor
Though it fills me with misgiving that is how I’ll earn my living,
From the research unforgiving, unforgiving and paid poor
Bird, how long shall I be overworked and far too poor?”
Quoth the pigeon “Evermore”

So here I sit at my computer hiding from my college tutor
Trying to do research cutting edge and quite hardcore
Trying not to waste time moping, looking for new ways of coping
And forever I’ll be hoping, hoping that the end’s in store
Hoping that a PhD at last's what lies in store
Else I’ll be here evermore.

3WW: shard, pulse, weary

Sunday Scribblings: The book that changed everything

It was the strangest place to find a book. In fact, it was the strangest place on earth simply to wake up in the morning, a plush, five-star business hotel by a lake in the middle of the Chinese countryside. Its whole purpose was the hosting of conferences and isolated retreats, and the shabby little town that had sprung up next to it was purely to house workers for the sprawling, decadent palace of a hotel. As a new postgrad, I'd thought myself lucky to be invited to a meeting in such an unusual setting, and to be able to travel so far from home, but was beginning to feel like a fish out of water.

There was nothing to read. I was sick to death of research papers with more equations than writing, but they were the only things in a language I understood. The town had no bookstore, almost no shops at all. And then I found it. Tucked away in a corner, apparently abandoned by some previous guest, hidden from the cleaners like some forbidden political treatise.

“The Ode Less Travelled” by Stephen Fry. Guiltily, feeling like some dissident rebel, I tucked it into my bag to read on the plane.

Right from the start, I was hooked. The clear passion of the author for poetry, the encouragement to write, to not be afraid, to not mind the quality of the result, but to revel in the fun of putting pen to paper. And the introduction to technique – despite years of English lessons at school I'd never even heard of metre before. I'd always struggled so much when being presented with a blank page, and here finally was some help.

"However well or badly we were taught English literature, how many of us have ever been shown how to write our own poems?

'Don't worry, it doesn't have to rhyme. Don't bother with metre and verses. Just express yourself. Pour out your feelings'.

Suppose you had never played the piano in your life.

'Don't worry, Just lift the lid and express yourself. Pour out your feelings'.

We have all heard children do just that and we have all wanted to treat them with great violence as a result."

There wasn't time on the short flight from Kunming to Hong Kong to read the whole book, let alone attempt any of the exercises. But just dipping into it put a whole load of ideas into my head.

I'd organised a few days holiday in Hong Kong, a respite after the intellectual rigours of the conference. So the next day, sitting in a park in Kowloon, with flamingos in the foreground, skyscrapers behind, I took out my travel journal. And instead of writing “I see flamingos and skyscrapers, what a strange combination”, I thought for a moment and began.

“There once was a bird called Domingo...”

My notebooks and journals have been filled with poetry in the two years since that trip to China. Now I'm even inflicting it on others, through the blog. Whether the results are any better than the plain old prose I used to produce, I can't say. But it's a hell of a lot more fun to write.

3WW: The kitten's story

By day she hides behind a mask
A veil of domesticity
And modifies her every task
To conceal her duplicity

By night, this image she'll reject
Prowls out to fuel her hunter's thirst
Docility's a dog's defect
Obedient? Never! Tame? Death first!


The 3WW words are modify, obedient and veil

Crossword clue

I liked this clue on today's crossword so much that it gets its own blog post.

"Cloth that crossed bridge?"

Five letters, starting with "T".

3WW: Enough Moping Already

The winter blues can leave us bowed
And daily life seems sad and stale
But sun still shines above the cloud
Just hiding high behind a veil
We wait for warmer days to hail
But though we dream of summer’s blaze
Why wait til then for moods to sail?
Forget tomorrows, live todays

The city’s filled with goal-gripped crowd
Who rush to climb career’s iced rail
But one day all will wear a shroud
Their sacred quest’s to no avail
For death comes fast and life is frail
The world seems racing through a maze
But urgency hides all detail,
Forget tomorrows, live todays

Ambitions won may please the proud
But turn obsessive should they fail
Beyond all wisdom, on they’ve ploughed
Still chasing down their great white whale
They struggle further up the trail
And aim for power, money, praise
Against these, how can joy prevail?
Forget tomorrows, live todays

Prince, cease attempts all heights to scale
Eternal striving never pays
So pause, relax, de-stress, exhale,
Forget tomorrows, live todays.

The 3WW words are amaze, frail and sacred. Not sure I entirely agree with the sentiment of my refrain, however “Plan for tomorrow but don’t get so overwhelmed by it that you forget to live today” isn’t really well suited to iambic tetrameter.