VIRTUAL DODO 7 SEPTEMBER 2021
Welcome to the seventh virtual show from Dodo Modern Poets. The latest production takes our tally to nearly 200 performances and contributions since launching in April 2020. Continuing thanks go to contributors for supporting this project.
We thank viewers who take time to enjoy the shows and frequently take the trouble to let us know. Your support is of enormous value.
The latest show
begins with two fine featured acts, Max Fishel and Pauline Sewards, followed
by 21 open mic contributors.
Max Fishel Born
in Liverpool to Jewish parents he now lives in London. He plays Irish music,
writes poetry and worries about hair loss. Mainly analogue, partly digital, he
enjoys performing at open mic events. ‘You can lead a horse to water but you
can’t pull the wool up the garden path’.How true this is. Thinks love is best.
He has performed as a featured poet in a live Dodo show at the King &
Queen.
Pauline
Sewards
Pauline has lived in London, Lincolnshire and Bristol in
recent years and has enjoyed being part of different poetry communities and
making new connections online. For several years she helped run Satellite of
Love, a live event in Bristol and also hosted occasional events at Torriano
Meeting House in Kentish Town. Her two collections are This is the Band ( 2018,
Hearing Eye) and Spirograph ( 2020, Burning Eye Books). Contact on paulinesewards@hotmail.co.uk
or on Facebook and Instagram as Pauline Sewards. Pauline is looking forward to
doing more readings and hearing live poetry again. She is a member of Bristol
Stanza. She has a poem featured in the forthcoming Culture Matters Anthology
‘Cry of the Poor’. She has been a featured poet at Dodo on more than one
occasion.
We hope you enjoy the show and
welcome your comments.
P.R.Murry
AIDAN NUTBROWN
ROGER STEPHENSON
STUART LARNER
JULIE STEVENS
GRAHAM BUCHAN
SIMON PARTRIDGE
LAURIE POCOCK
MANU DAVIES
ZOLAN QUOBBLE
WENDY YOUNG
EMILE SERCOMBE
JOSEPH HEALY
URSULA TROCHE
POEMS ON THE PAGE
Our show continues with poems on the page Patric Cunnane, Yan Li, John Hurley, Dave Stone, Loraine Saacks, Eddie Forde, Kevin Morris, Barry Coidan
PATRIC CUNNANE
THE BLUE BOOKSHOP IN HOMS
Despite the bombs
They insisted life
go on
They opened a blue
bookshop
Ordered stock from Damascus
Customers warmed to
the place
Memories of
childhood tales
Novels capturing
the imagination
Poetry a fuel for
love
College days when
text books
Were scanned for
information
The bookshop lives
in peril
Life provisional
Reading light hard
won
A place to smile and cry
Feel warm about the
world
Knowing it holds
more than this
One day clouds will
lift
Explosions and
funerals cease
Time to settle with
a book
Turn to the chapter
titled Hope
A Syrian couple
opened a bookshop in war-torn Homs and painted it blue.
YAN LI
Lonesome Boatman
A harvest moon flows on waves.
A surging sea on a harvest moon.
Time to rise from seafloor.
Go to your love on a far away shore.
Where to sail?
Where to row?
How to find my love on an unknown shore?
Where are sails?
Where are oars?
How to survive the falling swell?
Told you a thousand times
When I see a harvest moon flow.
Sails lost. Oars lost.
A thousand years ago.
Famine struck.
Death loomed.
All my people abandoned home.
O, my love,
She left me
And sailed away on a weeping sea.
Halve your heart.
Make oars.
Roar to waves:
Row. Row.
Skin your skin.
Make sails.
Pray to wind:
Blow. Blow.
Halve my heart.
Row my oars.
Catch the moon on waves.
Outspread my skin.
Raise my sails.
Cross this surging sea on the moonrays.
A harvest moon flows on waves.
A surging sea on a harvest moon.
Water is wide and wind low.
A seagull squalls on a rising tide.
JOHN HURLEY
ANOTHER TIME
Blackberries hung in clusters, that September.
We filled two bowls, before the fading of the light,
Walked familiar paths, with such a closeness,
Hands stained from picking natures bounty,
Fingers avoiding stabs from rapier like thorns,
Vainly attempting to reset the clock of time.
She spoke of women’s multi-tasking
Ancestors, picking berries whilst suckling a child;
Their role, in moving men from caves,
Evolving, and getting closer to breaking the glass ceiling,
Bestowing their latent talents,
And her daughters on the threshold of equality.
The luscious fruit did not fulfil her creative needs,
The fates had other things decreed.
Dave Stone January 2008
Born to be a Soldier
If you remember Universal soldier by Donovan, then you
can use the tune for the chorus parts,
otherwise it’s a slow and sad 12 bar in A
When he was a little boy, he always played with guns
I suppose that’s not unusual, when you’re a soldier’s
son
But he never grew out of it, and when he turned
eighteen
He went into the office and signed on for the Queen
His Mother tried to smile, though her heart was
breaking
His Daddy died in Ireland, from nothing of his making
But he wanted to do his bit, and be the very best
He wanted to come back home with ribbons on his chest
He was born to be a soldier
A warrior for the Queen
Joined up to be a soldier
When he was still eighteen
All too soon the wait was over and he was off to his
camp
Another junior soldier in the cold and the damp
But he was used to all the effort, even when he was
tired
When you’re born to be a soldier, you are inspired
So he did the Sergeants bidding, always top of his
intake
Though his mates used to rag him, during every break
But soon that great day dawned, when the training was
all done
And he stood there in a line up, spit, and polish and
a gun
He was born to be a soldier
A warrior for the Queen
Joined up to be a soldier
When he was just eighteen.
He found the waiting stressful, all the drill was hard
Training on a cold wet range, firing at a card
It wasn’t what he had joined for, all the waiting
round
Guarding an empty warehouse on some freezing parade
ground
But then one
day the call came, there was a war out in the East
And our boys had to go there, to try to keep the peace
And as they queued up for the aircraft, to take them
on their way
He remembered his father, and what he used to say
I was born to be a soldier
A warrior for the Queen
I don’t want you to follow me
When you’re seventeen
But all these wise words faded as they got onto the
plane
And as they left England's shores, he thought of home
again
And vowed that he’d be back soon, just as soon as they
were done
Then he sat back in his seat, and checked over his gun
The war was short and fierce, and didn’t last for long
The enemy were disorganised and always got it wrong
But even a wrong bullet can sometimes find its mark
It hurt like hell for a second, then everything went
dark
He was born to be a soldier
To follow the Queens flag
And he came home wrapped in it,
In a drab green body bag
He was born to be a soldier
A warrior for the Queen
Joined up to be a soldier
But he never saw Nineteen
LORRAINE SACKS
[Based on the ‘discovery’ of ‘METRO’ in
mid July 2021, as follows:
OAP stashed WWII Nazi tank in cellar armoury
A German pensioner who had a
World War II Panzer tank among a
huge arsenal of weaponry in his
cellar has been fined £213,000.
Klaus-Dieter Flick, 84, from the
town of Heikendorf, broke the War
Weapons Control Act.’]
SO WHAT’S IN YOUR CELLAR
[©]Loraine Saacks
Some pensioners are pretty astute,
they don’t always invest in
a bank,
seems kin of Herr Flick of repute,
thought
it prudent to hide a WW2 Panzer tank!
Here, the warriors
of yore keep pets, treasure their souvenirs,
and their old horses are put
out to graze,
tv battle docs
are on tap and the veterans’ eyes fill with tears,
but
the cellar couldn’t contain huge armoured machines made to raze.
The Leas by the Sea in
Folkestone
By Eddie Forde
At one time
The Grand Hotel
On the Leas
Was the place to be
With
Edward VII
And
His entourage
Including Mrs Kepple in attendance
Where they
Enjoyed the Sea air
And the finest of wines
All paid
By
The Tax Payer
As they
Fornicated
Throughout
The
Night
And day
Which put
The Great back
Into Great Britain
Often I feel their Spirits still linger on
Where most of them were never happier
|
|
Leaving:
On my way home
I touched the stone
Of my local church.
And longed to stay
With the singing birds
On this summer evening.
I have oft heard
The birds singing
And regretted leaving.
I envy them
For, unlike men
They do not weep.
For they see not
The final sleep.
While I
Knowing that man must die
Have the beauty of birdsong,
Which does not last long
|
I have grown tired of dullness,
of pessimism masquerading as experience,
of drawn-out winter nights.
All that is bright will be my new endeavour.
With skimmed eyes to look afresh
at what I, tutored in boredom,
fatalism and cynicism, ignored.
I will become childlike.
The streets I walked down in
a monochrome haze, will sparkle
with the freshness of a new water colour wash.
The morning sun, I used to
sleep through, will be my early
morning call.
I will greet postmen and road sweepers with a smile.
My hands once plunged
deep into my coat pockets
will, in future, warmly grasp my neighbour
I will cancel my subscription to world weary publications.
From today foreswearing
all despondency
I will tear off my dull clothes of uniformity
And wear glad rags of optimism and innocence.
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