VIRTUAL DODO 6 MAY 2021
WELCOME TO VIRTUAL
DODO SIX - MAY 2021
Welcome to the sixth virtual show from Dodo Modern Poets. The latest production
takes our tally to 174 performances and contributions since launching in April
2020. We thank all contributors for supporting a project which has kept the
Dodo flame alive for the past year.
Emile
Sercombe's family is from
the West Country. He was brought up in Surrey, eldest of four brothers. He went
to school in Fetcham and then Dorking where his passions included art, playing
football and acting.
At eighteen he went to art school in
Guildford where a theatre module
included writing sketches for performance. Getting a place as a painter at the
Royal Academy Schools he saw many films
and plays, especially absurd, left-field comedic stuff, like Moving Picture
Mime Show and Beyond the Fringe. He taught for some years before becoming a
founder of Greenwich Mural Workshop which created acclaimed community-based
murals in the London area.
In a moment of inspiration in 1980 he discovered Worthless Words poets in
Battersea and took his only poem to a meeting. Since then his career in performance poetry
has blossomed, performing with Tongue Circus, Ragged Trousered Cabaret, Dodo
Modern Poets and other groups. He has also performed at the Turner Contemporary
in Margate.
Emile’s latest art exhibition (as Steve
Lobb) is at Pie Factory, Margate 4th to 15th June 2021.
Patric Cunnane
THE ARCHITECT OF OLD HAVANA
Brings old
buildings to life
Rewrites the
culture, accepts change
He seeks help from
Europe
Wins UNESCO
recognition
Names his work
A chapter in the
revolution
Foreign architects
applaud his work
For communities,
future generations
Inspired by
culture, he adopts
The hotel where
Hemingway wrote
He has Castro's
support
Granted one
million dollars from
Which he plants a
thousand seeds
The project grows,
creating jobs
Schools,
opportunities
For the poor and
disabled
A new city arising
from the old
Visitors toast it
in mojitos
His last work is
the Capitolio
Restored as a
jewel of Havana
When he dies the
people
Hang white sheets
in his honour
His soul is close
by
Wandering eternally
through Havana
Returning always to
its light and silence
In life and in dreams
Cuban historian
Eusebio Leal was appointed in 1994 as architect to restore the old city, which
he did with enthusiasm and passion. He died, aged 77, in July 2020.
Eddie Forde
You can join a Gym
For fifty nine
pounds ninety nine a month where you can lose weight
And
Get yourself fit
Or
You can have a walk
In the empty park
Which will do the
selfsame thing
And save yourself
fifty nine pounds ninety nine a month
Which you could
send
To a Third World
Country
Who have no need
for
Gyms or Parks
Where people
Never have any
problem
Being overweight
As they are lucky
To be able to
afford
One meal a day
Loraine Saacks
THE NEW NORMAL…
It
didn’t really work – ear-to-ear, on the ‘phone –
they were used to hearing the
groan and the moan –
the physio team really
wanted to see how the drama played out,
even if the final
scene roused an all-out vote for Gout.
Nothing
arose about an odd bruise; or mentioned the feeling of tightening of screws,
or was there a sense of the
joints and ligaments coming loose?
maybe
t’was an itch?
or a recurring stitch?
does it
sear? does it burn? does it sting? is it sore?
are you
able to kneel down on your knees on the floor?
But
now, you’re the protagonist – practise your lines and round up your props –
you’re alone on the stage,
tongue-tied, scared, ‘til the curtain drops,
try to shine, brightly, as
a night star, entertaining a medics’ matinée,
while they exchange diagnoses, and update you of your epiphany.
No way
could you whinge, cringe or explain a pain to a voice down the line,
but all changed when the Physiotherapists
decided zoom would be fine;
you won’t have to stand in
the altogether and describe your current issue –
your peers have
suggested exactly all you ever need to do –
a half-baked Gingerbread woman or man aren’t shy or demure
–
bent and
twisted, they silently expose their Tibia, Fibula or Femur.
Of
course, you could resort to a dress-maker’s dummy or a wooden marionette,
but more economic substitutes
won’t place you in debt –
aim to endure the odious
odour and squelch of humble plasticine –
and the whole theatre
will applaud your exquisite, explicit, grand finale scene.
Li Yan
Butterfly Love
Please don’t cry.
Don’t be sad.
Whatever ends
Will start new life again.
Love brings laughter.
Love brings tears.
Love breaks one’s heart
To make a heart of love.
As long as we come
And go in a cycle,
Nothing will tear us apart
Till the rivers run dry.
Julian Mann
MONDAY
linen cloth, was following Jesus.
They tried
to arrest him, but he ran away
naked,
leaving the cloth behind.
— Mark
14:51
Of branches, offered me
Like hands in green sunlight.
They are dead; they go
To dancing grasses:
Later, starlings
Will feel their new breezes.
A couple of thugs, chirping for
their mothers.
But tonight the moonlight after
ale
Reaches into the darkness
With dead fruits.
There is a sort of moonlight
To my loneliness, this side of
the furnace
I have been running
Naked,
Since the garden.
The nights, something is shifting
within me.
I am bonded by my brother
To the ground with skins of
corn.
Kate B Hall
Peter
You’re
the very first person I took to the doctors
a novel that makes me cry on the tube
my favourite notebook filled up too soon
when I get a coffee with a brown sugar cube
You’re
the dolls pram for Christmas when I was six
that moment at school when I learned to read
the line in a poem that just makes sense
being pillion on a motorbike loving the speed
You’re
waiting at the dentist then being seen
my favourite food shop with money to spend
an unexpected present
that’s just what I want
the thank you cards I forget to send
You’re
The fox cubs who were born in our garden
Fred Astaire and his famous top hat
a cup with the bees Lucy thought were flies
my joyful singing that’s probably flat
Max Fishel
England is a hard place
Bliss in the town, till the
next high
rise. There are drugs here,
down
alleys, in bankers’ creamy
toilets;
your job is to ambulance the
ODs;
your job is to bless them, father,
for England is a hard place.
In DNA kiosks in the night,
under the
bleary bulb on the road to
the bridge,
lovers share needles and
hindsight
over a map of the forsaken
world; we
are nearly America now as the
bricks
rot; cry, for England is a
hard place.
The child is ill-clothed,
ill-fed, and
ill. The child is English,
and can prove
it in a test, but the canvas
flag is too
heavy and she falls and
becomes
foreign. No-one can spell foreign,
but
it is the worst thing to be,
for England
is a hard place.
Barry Coidan
Rear view mirror
A photograph from the summer of ’75.
Outside St Briavels youth hostel.
We’re about to set off: anticipating the day ahead.
Fiona, with her back to the camera,
so commanding then, so sure of her place.
Died a few years ago – alone.
Her partner in a care home with dementia.
Chris and Jenny handholding, Chris smoking.
Jenny died ten, maybe eleven, years ago
of a brain haemorrhage as Chris looked on.
And there’s me walking out of the picture.
John Hurley
CHILD AT WAKE
I noticed his brown boots
were missing
his feet protruding from a
shroud
I heard the hum of well known
mantra
a rosary from assembled crowd
crucifix clasped in callused
fingers
shaved and washed and so
pristine
been made ready to meet his
maker
I had never seen him look so
clean
in that room there was deep
sadness
I shivered in the fading
light
as neighbours’ beads sped
through their fingers
their prayers repeated
through the night
I should have prayed but I
was elsewhere
thinking of the songs he sung
for as his hammer struck the
anvil
you felt as if the church
bells rung
the glowing fire and the
clack of bellows
shaping crimson metal to his
will
hot steel hissing in cold
water
a compliant horse just
standing still
ivy covered forge now stands
deserted
hammer and tongs strewn on
the floor
no flying sparks or smoking
chimney
where once I heard a furnace
roar
DJANGO MOON
I am a sample
Of one
Testing myself
Against who I am
Who I’ve been
And who...
I might be
No comparisons
I am neither judged
Nor am I judge
In this game
I play
With myself—
Solitaire.
Solitaire—
In solitary
How else to play
With myself
Without being judged
In a world
Of duality.
I am a sample
Of One
The One
Unity found
Hidden
In the duality
Of my words
I am an example
Of One
The One
Unity found
Hidden
In the duality
Of our worlds.
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