"bloomsbury" poems
I¹m not sure how I came to be obsessed with Dorothy L. Sayers and her
beloved Peter Wimsey. At any rate, I was determined to go on a pilgrimage
to England and walk in the places where she walked and to see the place
where her ashes lay. And to ostensibly find a signed copy of one of her
books every copy of which was beyond my economic horizons on my internet
searching. So I went to London I saw her heroine, Harriet Vane¹s
Bloomsbury. I went to Russell Square and stepped back into a time when
hotels smelled of potted meat and wet wool and it was always raining. I
saw where Harriet and Peter set up housekeeping after their marriage.
Finally, I wnet to St. Anne¹s Church in Soho DLS¹s final resting place
where she was warden for some 12 years before her deaeth in 1957. It took
three trips to the small tower where her ashes lay under the concrete before
I could get inside and stand in that place, but I finally got there What
is it that makes us feel connected when we stand where someone else is
buried?
And wandering around London on our second day there I stumbled into a
small book shop and, wonder of wonders, I asked if they had any Dorothy L.
Sayers¹ books and they said ³Are you her to look at her private library that
they had recently purchased at auction?¹ So I now have three of DLS¹s own
books and I have one signed and annotated in ink by her from her private
library. I have the books sitting in my living room in a small house, in a
small town in Indiana. But I have a part of something in my bookshelf I
take it out periodically and ****** it and feel like I can reawaken some
lost show in some other place and time.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 5:50 PM UTC
SMELLS
WET WOOL
HEAT
BREWING TEA
YEAST AND WARM ROLLS
TINNED MEAT
DAMP WOOD
MOLD
OLD
RAIN
OLD MEN WITH MUSTACHES
AND UMBRELLAS,
SITTING IN CHAIRS
EMPYING DINING ROOM
GRAND STAIRCASE
FADING RED STARRED CARPET
HOTEL RUSSELL
BLOOMSBURY
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 5:49 PM UTC
Inflation is just another form of taxation
on the poor.
Was it Keynes who coined that phrase
back in those Bloomsbury days?
when the world was younger than now
when the when and the why and the who and the how
didn't matter
but now
it's appropriate
because of the awful state
we find ourselves in.
Was it him
Was it Keynes?
It seems that he was right
and if so,
then we must fight against poverty
fight against penury
we
could find insolvency
in our own back yard
Life is hard and they make it harder
raiding the larder
taking the food from your mouth.
The South
bleeds us dry
from the Tyne
to the Wye.
We really ought to get wise
and get rid of those guys
in grey suits.
May 11, 2013
May 11, 2013 at 5:32 PM UTC
Who lives a still life? he asked.
It was the end of the day,
he was alone.
He could think of a few souls
living quietly, not doing much,
letting the days go by.
They would say they were busy
exercising their minds,
reading sporadically,
worrying a little about distant children,
noisy neighbours, absent friends,
the state of the house.
But they espoused stillness,
enjoyed the afternoon light
as it fell across the windowed sill
illuminating that Venetian vase.
They were not anxious about making tea,
just yet. It was good, this being still.
She often wondered about the still life,
the artists’ ultimate challenge, duty even
to that most particular of genres;
the attempt to catch the moment,
the fleeting moment, it could only be
a moment when light fell
sharp or diffused on objects chosen
or arranged, a never to be recovered
moment, except by the painter’s hand.
Here was a chair,
a red armchair in a room
almost certainly in Gordon Square,
Bloomsbury, a Vanessa Bell, she said,
painted in, well, 1934 or 5,
and very characteristic then,
its dark blue cushion
plumped for a soon-to-be sitter.
It stands in front of her painted screen,
obscuring the lower part of the window
open to the morning, yesterday’s flowers
in a vase nearby, on a table with books.
And above the chair,
a small painting hangs,
an intimate scene,
left of the window where
the long curtains fall
to a still pool of fabric
gathered on the wooden floor.
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 10:02 AM UTC
bukowski socialized with
sean penn and madonna
but he did not care for
the material girl with her airs,
acting like a literary
poseur, name dropping, chatting
about swinburne, like
some patron at a bloomsbury
salon. she even asked
him if he would appear
in her raunchy *** book
but he refused. bukowski
would complain to sean
about madonna's phony
behavior and sean would
get furious and defensive.
bukowski just laughed it
off. he valued sean as a
friend and an artist but
he had no time for
madonna playing hip,
he said, she's not being real.
bukowski treasured his
daughter, his wife, his cats,
classical music and his
muse, his way with words,
characters, situations.
he was a regular guy
and a gifted poet...
and everyone called him hank.
Jul 16, 2015
Jul 16, 2015 at 2:44 PM UTC
It¹s Raining
Here in this place a forgotten past
The smells of damp wood, of mold, of dusty books, of rooms occupied for many
years;
Of wet wool
Of brewing all day long; of cooked cabbage and rolls and butter; of potted
meat;
The mustached old men close their umbrellas they make sounds like talking
of something but nothing is said;
These rooms are not here any more -
It is a place of another time that I know but cannot have known.
Will it disappear the moment I step back outside into the Bloomsbury street?
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 5:49 PM UTC
Tell Dr Blood it's Mrs Bloomsbury;
He always sees me right away;
He's such a wonderful doctor - so much
Better than that Doctor Day.
What the devil are you incinerating,
I consider your tone a right cheek,
I've not bothered you for ages; I've
Not phoned for at least … a week.
But this is an emergency;
Yes of course it's serious,
I'm sweating, shivering, sneezing
And feel quite delirious.
I'm running a terrible temperature,
I'm covered all over in spots,
My body aches from head to toe,
My muscles all tied up in knots.
My heart's got the palpitations,
Though I've still got a pulse - it's quite weak;
My poor throat's ever so red and sore,
It's increasingly hard ... to ... speak,
My eyes are all glazed and weepy,
My ears are infected and blocked,
I think there's a chill in my kidneys
And my joints have all stiffened and locked.
My stools - are alarmingly liquid,
My water's grey, misty and strong,
I'm suffering pins and needles, in fact ...
I don't think I've got very long.
He can see me on Thursday morning,
An appointment for half-past-ten,
But that’s no good at all to me ...
I'll be better again - by then!
Jun 11, 2017
Jun 11, 2017 at 1:53 AM UTC
My, my
Beautiful mornings. And wet grass -
Oh, hello you lot! You fabulous lot!
Lying in 'til noon in your soot-washed townhouses
Tall, pumping chimney smog and fruit stained letters into the London sky,
I see you - Miss Vanessa, Miss Woolf, Forster, Fry!
How we all swarm about this little town now!
Look how I eat pomegranates and write prose in your name.
Look how I put on sturdy boots, and totter from square to square -
Admiring this honeyed writer's air.
Oh, evening all, lights of London, subdued spring-time!
Eucalyptus suburbs, just a short walk from bedlam and grime.
Mar 18, 2018
Mar 18, 2018 at 7:45 PM UTC
What did I miss
while I was busy kissing shadows moving slowly on the bedroom wall?
So busy I could not hear her call.
I hesitate to say,
she did not wait.
But
she,
did not wait
Now it's too late
Oh what a state I'm in.
Age is what I write upon the page that should be filled
with daffodils and words
of love.
But it seems the wild flowers cracked
and massed, attacked me
Now I'm backed against the bedroom wall
I can no longer hear her call
I've lost it all.
Too busy kissing shadows.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 8:03 AM UTC
Pigeons strut
Hopeful among lovers
Someone whistles
With the laughter of flowers
Such lovers
As rain falls
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 12:02 PM UTC