Some More Of Me Poetry

SOME OF ME POETRY

Pam Ayres titled one of her collections: Some More Of Me Poetry.

Here is some of mine.

When I first heard of Pam Ayers’ work, apart from having always loathed the shorter form of my name, I decided I could easily write in her style. I stood at the kitchen sink (lots of washing up when you have four children) and thought of a first line. Once I had that, the rest of the poem came very quickly. Just flowed with the water from my taps. That poem is in my collection of poetry and is called ‘In And Out The Lonely Tea Shops’.

Please let me and Zitebooks know if you would be interested in reading my poetry collection, which begins with poetry written when I was a teenager, and proceeds to poems written just now.

Many of my stories have been said to be written ‘in poetic prose’. Take another look at some of the writing in REASONS.

 

ECSTASY PILL

 

How can I get me an ecstasy pill before I shall reach sixty five?

I have heard it said it is only with those that you really first come alive.

How can I get a trim bum and trim tum, so I can fit in small nix,

Before hip replacement and walking frame at good old sixty six?

Where can I get what would make up my heaven

Before I totter on sticks to – oh, God – sixty seven?

Oh, please let me have some good times `ere, too late,

Teeth and hair falling out I approach sixty eight.

When will come the birthright I was sure must be mine:

Success, lover, money – before sixty nine?

 

From six o to six four the years whistled through –

So did twenty to sixty now I think of it too.

Will my hopes wither and to deep sorrow dive,

When I reach the good age of seventy five?

And what of the rest – will I still be alive –

Apart from my hopes – ere I reach eighty five?

I did not wear stilettos nor yet learn to jive,

Can I have a late teenage before ninety five?

Most phases I missed – no, no hair in beehive –

Just one little toy boy ere a hundred and five?

 

OUT OF WINDOW

 

Out of window,

I tell the seasons.

 

In coats in scarves in boots huddled up

Now. The shorts the bare arms

Bare middles sunglasses

Light steps skipping.

 

I see the future see fear. Promise

Someone taking pillows out of car. Neighbours`

 

Son coming to stay again? Noisy parties?

 

But. Out of window I once saw

 

A basket of primroses.

 

I have chosen these two examples of my work to show you first, because of the contrast in style and subject matter. I wrote Ecstasy Pill because, when I ran a Creative Writing Group, one my students wrote a poem with that title. She was just coming up to the age of sixty five, had heard of this pill, and was wondering what it was like. I never had a copy of her poem, but I was so attracted by the title that I went home and wrote my own.

I have other poems on the subject of older women and their sexuality. Indeed on their lack of a sex life. It is a theme of mine that our sexual scene is such that sex is seen as mainly for the young – especially where women are concerned. When in fact I know of married couples who are sexually active to the ends of their lives; as long as they are both alive.

OUT OF WINDOW is a surprise to me. Was a surprise. I am a bit of a scraps of paper person. No matter how many noteboos I have, no matter how many times I go for computer teaching on how to write lists on my ipad, I still end up with shopping lists and to do lists, and writing scribbles and ideas and poems, on envelopes or receipts! I must write a blog about it. I am very organised in every other way. But not in that way.

So – trying to get this poetry collection together is proving a nightmare. Remembering all I have written, trying to find all I have written. Looking for every version of a new poem in process.

Doing more of this last week, I came upon OUT OF WINDOWS. I was quite amazed. Well, pleased.Even shocked. It felt as though I were reading someone else`s poem, reminding me as it does of a poet I have studied. T S Eliot? Pound? Or some of the American poetry I adored when reading for my English Literature degree. Cummings? Carlos Williams?

Anyway I am proud of it and, if I have to choose what to put in my collection and what to leave out. I am going to insist this one stays. Usually our publisher has the last word. But he knows I am rock solid on some things.

I am indeed proud of it. It has not been worked or re-worked. And I always claim that some of my best stories just kind of wrote themselves. So maybe that is why this one feels so good as it does to me.

I do not remember writing it but it must have come from a friend who speaks to me on the phone most days and often tells me of today`s weather by describing what he can see out of his window. People are wearing scarves and hats. People are rushing along all huddled up as if freezing. Everyone has umbrellas up. Or, they are all going along in shorts and short sleeves.

I always love hearing these descriptions. It is like a picture, and always reminds me of Lowry painting.

This friend does not always go out every day, so I guess the poem originated from my interest in the idea of a person who experiences a lot of their life by looking out of the window.

 

Pamela Pickton’s book Neverland is on sale on Amazon now, and on all good ebook websites, and you can also find more about Pamela Pickton’s travails and worldly challenges in her Zitebooks’ collection of short stories, Reasons, also ready to buy on Amazon.