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CAUGHT IN THE NET 105 - POETRY BY
PHIL HOWARD
Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit -
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Auden was right; they never get it wrong, The Old Masters, when it comes to suffering. Some, such as Bosch and Breugel, make a song And dance about it; others, like Memling, Are more subtle. In fact, they could fashion Any human truth into a painting.
from; Memling Museum, Bruges by Phil Howard |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
Unusual Meeting
Memling Museum, Bruges
Palimpsest
About Manchester
Supermarket Sweety
Lydia Dwight Resurrected. V&A Museum
Number 1054-1871
The Road to Hull
Animal Magic
Alternative Histories
Particle Participles
3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: Phil Howard
Phil Howard is a local authority worker who would like to see poetry restored as an art form which can be appreciated by all through relevant and accessible work that tackles compelling subject matter. Some of his newer poetry has been published in recent editions of Snakeskin, Streetcake and The Recusant. He is currently working on a collection titled: Inside, Out and Beyond.
Phil Howard's biog: philhowardpoet.tumblr.com
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2 - POETRY
Unusual Meeting
'The Gold Thread Works' it says on the reel;
The feel of fine wire as I hold
It pressed tight between finger and thumb.
"It's some old stock but it's the best
One can get", she says, "Stephen Simpson
Of Preston Ltd., the main man.
It's flats now", she says, the haberdashery
Store lady, "but the Work’s thread adorned hats
Worn by the doomed Titanic's crew;
So too", she confides, "it's no lie,
The Queen's lovely wedding cake".
I make the right noises; it means
A lot to her, that I can see:
An Ariadne who's kind of lost the plot.
I'm Theseus or the Minotaur -
Can't be sure how others see us -
The shop is the Labrynth; I need a clue,
A klew of thread, to follow back up top.
Memling Museum, Bruges
Auden was right; they never get it wrong,
The Old Masters, when it comes to suffering.
Some, such as Bosch and Breugel, make a song
And dance about it; others, like Memling,
Are more subtle. In fact, they could fashion
Any human truth into a painting.
Take Memling's fine 'Portrait of a Woman',
Also known as the 'Sibylla Sambetha',
She's all women distilled into a someone;
As mother, wife, daughter we just know her:
An image of serene femininity.
Then why has someone written 'wicked monster'
On the frame, making a beast of a beauty?
Genius never trumps stupidity.
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Palimpsest
I left it - hidden - there for her,
The print of the purple gerbera,
Under the photo of Causey Pike,
The one they bought for me at work
For being there for long enough
Though, frankly, it's a little naff
But it fit the gerbera frame
Because, sizewise, they're the same
Give or take a fraction or two
And, happily, that being so
It stays hidden there for her,
The print of the purple gerbera.
About Manchester
Polling around the M60 circular,
Around a city surrounded but not beat,
Around the marginal estates and neat
Semis of a city gone vehicular.
Polling on past an ex prototype factory
('Luxury conversions - each with a view.')
Past the towns of the heroes of Peterloo,
Of the rebellious and the refractory.
Polling past Weaste - site of the Engels' mill -
And further back was the Wilmslow Road,
Where Turing broke an unspeakable code.
Polling over the Ship Canal - views of Winter Hill -
And on to the 602; another story:
Salford; Tony Wilson and L. S. Lowry.
Supermarket Sweety
Walk in beauty
My own true love,
The stars above
Have a duty
To light beauty
Like yours, my love.
O in Asda
They worship her,
In Sainsburys
Her they would please,
And in Tesco's,
Also Waitrose,
And Morrisons
Glad orisons
Will praise beauty
Like yours, my love.
Lydia Dwight Resurrected. V&A Museum Number 1054-1871
She wears her shroud lightly now, Lydia Dwight,
Each fold testament to a modeller's skill,
Life-referring blooms at her feet, a skull
As memento of the grave's chilly blight;
Her figure sculpted in clay, bluish-white,
Worthy of any fine Renaissance school,
All-luminous, but still with death bed scowl,
A risen child, salt-glazed she plays with light.
How else would England’s first master potter
Give material expression to his grief
Save through the medium of stoneware clay?
What more fitting, more elegiac, way
Of reaffirming his hope and his belief
In life eternal for his dear, dead daughter?
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The Road to Hull
The sign said Welcome to Kingston-upon-Hull
But, underneath, someone had scrawled
Mindless bastard centre of the North.
Greetings signs are always bull,
But if I lived there I'd be appalled
That some embittered no mark in
Life should see fit to sally forth
And shame the long-time home of Larkin.
East coast names don't help, of course;
To Hull add Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Goole,
They're all as depressing as Hell
But surely not a reason to force
Some sad misanthropic fool
To calumnise an innocent port
(Allowing for the fishy smell);
I hope the dirty rascal's caught.
Sadly, he may not be alone:
Larkin himself called Hull a 'dump'
And slagging it's now a merry
Sport. Let the City Chiefs chafe and moan,
Something about it gives folk the hump.
But Hull suited Larkin just fine,
One senses it on the ferry:
Freedom at the end of the line.
Animal Magic
Oscar, the hospice therapy cat, knows -
Predicts - when a patient is about to die.
Upon the almost-dead he bestows
A feline benison. He'll go and lie
With the stricken one - curled up on their bed.
He's not alone; I've even heard it said
That unusual animal behaviour
Can presage storm, flood and 'quake - a kind of gift.
So, if science is to be our saviour,
Perhaps it's time for a paradigm shift
Which re-evaluates other species' worth.
Could be there are more things in heaven and earth.
Alternative Histories
I slept my way to Hell last night,
I was in the trenches, on patrol,
Bathed in a flare's implacable light,
Perhaps I found a spacetime hole
Into a parallel universe,
One that was infinitely worse.
It's happened several times before:
A glimpse of another world so clear,
The sensation of being sure
I could touch it, it feels so near,
So palpable, so very strong.
You think you understand? You're wrong.
Particle Participles
Schrödinger's cat, is he alive or dead?
He must be both, quantum theorists said;
Indeterminacy is the game that's played:
No outcome exists until measurement's made.
Out of idealism that notion's grown:
Nothing exists until it is known.
But, notwithstanding this point of view,
Sub-atomic reality just won't do:
The thought that macroscopic articles
Could behave just like single particles
Which can defy both reason and rhyme
And be in two places at the same time.
So, regardless of whether Puss is in sight,
He's either dead or alive, not both, right?
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3 - Afterword
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We are looking for other poets to feature in
this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
bio to - info@poetrykit.org
Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net. Our other magazine s
are Transparent Words ands Poetry Kit Magazine, which are webzines on the Poetry Kit site and this can be found at -
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