I make no claim to it being especially good, or an annual highlight to the poetry scene, (though my 27th Birthday Poem is the most read page on site – from people Googling for the exact words of the title I guess), its just a poem about my birthday and what the day means to me.

A Year to be Surpassed

A shadow fell over yesterday,
I turned twenty-eight,
It’s not that aging is bad,
But that another year has gone.

For every joy I’ve had to pay,
Yet seek joy come what may,
The same old slate,
Without a wipe date,
I will not say it was all sad,
And it didn’t make me mad.

The beast of success I did not slay,
My performance didn’t rate,
Yet for moments I am glad,
With a niece as lovely as a chiffon.

Another milestone be gone,
Next year I’ll have myself outdone.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2010

P.S. I should add, as a cautionary note – I haven’t listed anything other than my niece being born as being explicitly good or bad. So I should note, that since my niece was born, I’ve enjoyed a fantastic time, being an uncle, thanks to some fortunate circumstances I’ve lived like a king, I’ve been to Prague, and I’ve come here to the Science Festival with some great people. Things like this were the moments I am glad for – just in case anyone thinks that I think I should be so rich and fortunate in life that the past two or three months have been less than notable.

When I think about it, it is quite strange that my niece coming into this world has marked such a massive turn around for my year, right at the end. However, life returns back to normal from here on in, I need to to start saving to make next year that bit more magical, all year round.

So to all my family and friends who have provided the highlights to my year, those moments I am glad for, have helped keep me sane when all else might have rendered me mad – I would like to say thank you. I hope I can do the same for you.

Once again I’m on holiday, this time not in Prague, but in Birmingham. I’m down for the British Science Festival, which is brilliant. So far I’ve been to the following talks and events:

• New Psychology of Leadership,
• Discovering Dyslexia
• Planets Outside the Solar System
• So What’s New in Particle Physics
• What Yeast Can Do For You

The other event I’ve been to, and this is where the poem comes in, was “There’s Science in my Fiction (And Poetry)”, which was an open mic for writers and poets who use science in their writing. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean science fiction, whereby future technologies are emphasised, but current science, and historic science that exists.

It was a really good event, there were poems on one of the first morticians, (his rise to fame, and subsequent fall), short stories set in a lab, a piece aimed at children which was all about how earth got its moon (which was really interesting), and a poem about horses.

I umm’d and ahh’d about entering, but a friend convinced me (@maryrperkins), and so yesterday afternoon I sat down and cobbled together a piece inspired by the particle physics talk earlier that day.

Here’s the great thing – I went, and I stood and I read my poem out. Shitting bricks I was, I’m not exactly a public speaker kind of person, and I know my voice, and accent (when I acknowledge I have one), don’t lend themselves to the job either. I came third in the competition, and have one a year’s subscription to BBC Focus magazine, (which I’ve never read before, but apparently is all about science, technology, and the future, so I’ll bet it’ll be interesting).

Now, we’re on to what this post is for, here’s the poem that did me proud:

Quarks of Love

Up, Down, Charm,
Forces attracting you and me,
Fundamental interactions,
Fades in the distance,
Yet still increases our attraction,
Strange, Top, Bottom,
Our basic matter a perfect fit,
Lost in orbit, your orbit.

And this is all too real,
Love gains mass.

Like the up quark,
Existing but for the moment,
Infinitesimal charge,
Destined to combine,
With your down quarks,
The beautiful neutron,
Precious foundation,
Destined to combine,
The beautiful nucleus.

Elemental forces,
Their waves alter us,
And the strong force,
Binding our love to protons,
Making us into atoms,
As one, as many,
As grains of sand,
Nuggets of gold,
And precious jewels.

And this is all too real,
Love gains mass.

Up, Down, Charm,
Forces bonding you and me,
Molecular complexities,
Build beautiful life,
But always from our force of love,
Strange, Top, Bottom,
Our basic matter a perfect fit,
Lost in orbit, your orbit.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2010

Right now, I am watching Magnum P.I., which let’s face it, is crass populist television, but at its best. I remember watching this show as a kid, and I’ve got to admit the Ferrari helped (I loved cars as a kid, mechanics son and all that), but even now it seems quite fun. It has aged better than say Knightrider.

That is not the reason for this post however, I am sure I could fire up a poem – but I ended up watching it after flicking through the channels in the mood for something nostalgic. It all started with an email, from Yahoo, they are closing down Geocities, and it was their umpteenth reminder that I should go and download my website there, or transfer it to their paid for hosting service.

It is quite shocking to think about, I have been a member of Geocities since probably around 1996/7, it was a fantastic service in the beginning and was the host of my first ever website, launching me into the internet age in style (well how much style, or even content, was involved is an arguable matter considering I was fifteen at the time).

Over time, I’ve always had some kind of web presence there, even if it is just to leave an old site loitering about.  Back in the early days I used to have a site in Area 51, back when GeoCities was made up of Neighbourhoods, which I used to write about sci-fi television, but that site is long forgotten in the annals of history. The site currently there has not been touched since 2002, most of it since 2001. It was a site to host all my poetry and writings, and anything else of interest such as my studies into history.

I’ve been on this morning and downloaded all the pages, while I was there, I found a site from 2007 called Aspiring (which must have been when I was between hosts), which was a very early prototype of a site I wanted to do, it was going to be a poetry ezine, much in the flavour of the Creative Edge, (which many moons ago was the ezine created, and edited by Imdaewen for writers-ramblings.com forum – this site’s precursor). I would still love, one day, to launch an ezine, but one thing at a time. So, now I have the whole website saved to my computer, the big question is, what do I do with it? Well the poetry, though it is old (most of it from my late teens, early twenties), I’m going to put in a section on here. The stories, I’m going to redo them, from scratch. They are atrociously written, the level of spelling and grammar mistakes is appalling, and the concepts were born of an age of innocence about writing and storytelling – though one, which never really got past chapter three, I’m still quite thrilled with for all its faults.

Everything else, well I guess that goes to the scrap heap of history, though I am a hoarder so for the next decade it will probably drift around on this hard drive, or that hard drive, maybe a DVD backup occasionally – where eventually I’ll stumble across it, and have all these thoughts again. That is the way of most of my digital life, I am in fact loathe to delete anything. Ironic then, that this all started because I was doing the rare job of actually deleting some of the emails in my main account, when I noticed the previously ignored warning about my GeoCities account.

I’m off to go start working on an area on this site to archive my older poetry (hopefully without clogging up my journal, or my blog homepage).

And farewell GeoCities, your demise is the end of an era. From an old Homesteader, ta-ra.

If you enjoy it, let me know – but likewise if you have constructive feedback I’d welcome that too.

Later, I’ll be using this poem as one of the sources for a post about editing poetry, so you never know, I may be back with a better version yet – but I still love this one.

Spider Poem

Have you ever taken a moment out of your day,

To watch something truly unimpressive,

Yet overwhelmingly inspiring all the same?

You might never consider it worthwhile to say,

Events so small it’s easy to be dismissive,

If you discard it I think you should feel shame.

An event of such minor proportions happened to me,

So life alteringly small,

It unlocked a door to my soul,

And something changed within.

It started with a visit to the loo,

Hardly an auspicious opening,

But I was stuck transfixed to what I saw.

A spider of insignificant tall,

Trapped in the bath bowl,

Myths say forever trapped therein.

It tried and tried with web of glue,

Of this castle it was not destined to king,

With no regard to mythological law,

With as much chance of escape as a ball,

And remember no digging, it’s not a mole,

This spider free of thoughtful sin.

It could climb so far then fall,

Web attached it would roll,

No more than a silent din.

I felt this littlest of heroes would try till it was blue,

It would never throe the towel into the ring,

Like a drowning man, desperate to reach the shore.

I am in awe that it would not let it’s fate just be,

It answered life’s challange with dignity and a call,

And finally, or most orgasmically, ended was it’s toll,

It won it’s mighty quest to the envy of it’s kin.

A much larger spider had watched and did stay,

A coward, but in its size it was impressive,

it didn’t matter though the little one won this game.

Nothing now stopped this little spider may,

It climbed a shampoo bottle, then the wall its complete missive,

The little spider inspired my writing and this poem came.

Have you ever taken a moment out of your day,

To watch something truly unimpressive,

Yet overwhelmingly inspiring all the same?

I did and it truly did dividends pay,

And the time it took may seem excessive,

But I was changed, no longer the writer eternally lame.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2009

Disaster of a Dream

Soaring high above the world,
Glorious hue of unadultered blue,
Wisps of clouds stretching far beneath,
Breaks of green, and brown, and blue,
I am free, nothing can ever get to me here.

Feeling secure here, I swirled,
Blinded by beauty, I never had a clue,
My flight is at an end, I fall towards heath,
Panic flairs, my joy now seesm untrue,
I am trapped, falling to my death in fear.

Without warning, I am curled,
My workplace, twisted and strange,
An assault of vaunted ceilings, and a scary bar,
Signs of the office I know in the range,
I flee, this new world is out to get me.

The scene to Birmingham I’m hurled,
All about me recognised in change,
I bump into a scarey person with a scar,
He grabs me, we fall down a derange,
I hold on, he continues to fall free.

©, Jonathan Lawrence 2009

Now just a bit about this poem :

This poem is a half truth, if I’m honest to the best of my recollection I have never had a dream like that in the first half,  (Soaring high above the world), but I wish I had. The second half on the other hand is all too true, this was a dream I had not long since, it woke me up, and I was seriously freaked out.  I don’t often remember dreams, just one or two a month. When I woke up, and calmed down, I decided I wanted to remember this nightmare, so I grabbed my trust E71, and furioulsy typed the events of my dream. It wasn’t easy at 3:30am with no light, but I did it, and as a result, the nightmare has been with me since.

The notes I have are far more detailed than this poem, this poem just scratches the surface, I’ve got descriptions for everyone, and dialogue, more thoughts, more feelings – but if I wanted to retell the nightmare exactly, I would probably lose something in translation.

I would have liked another part of this poem, unfortunately the consistent rhyme based on the word "world", didn’t go as far as I would have liked. I know poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, but sometimes a rhyme keeps a focus. I could go back and abandon it, but then it’s spoilt my initial outpouring. I may post up a second version tonight that’s edited – but in this case the edit would be a similar be seperate poem to my mind, and heat.

The man stands there a few moments before finally seeming to get the confidence to raise the microphone to his mouth again, as he megaphone reaches position this time his cheeks take on a bit of velour, and his eyes seem ablaze, he takes a deep meaningful breath, and speaks into the megaphone,

“Right, listen up,” now all eyes are on him, only they’re attentive rather than annoyed, “I demand to know where my inspiration is! I think it’s wholly unfair that you’ve abandoned me right now. I need you, I can’t write without you. Without you these pages are blank, and what words come are empty.
“Inspiration I’ve never needed you so bad, I’ve got all these things to do, and you’ve abandoned me, given up the fight, and now I stand alone against the tide of battle.
“I beg you return to me your charm, your talent. Words are meaningless without you!”

The audience looks rapt, his words have moved them, they feel his desperation, and they ponder borrowing the megaphone.

The man looks down upon his audience, upon their swept up faces, he watches the emotions play across their faces. Then a thought dawns in his mind, a realisation, maybe even epiphany.

What the man realised was this – inspiration is hard to achieve, but it can hit at the strangest moments, and all you can do is find the nearest waiting apparatus and take advantage.

Everyone has different things that inspires them to write, and inspires what to write. For myself these are most often two different events, for others they might be most often the same.

There is also another possibility one without the other, which can either be liberating or frustrating, for example:

• I may have a brilliant idea what to write, but no inspiration (will) to write it – so it all plays out in my head because try as I might I can’t convert it into words. Obviously a form of writers block.
• Something may give me inspiration (the will) to write, but without any inspiration. Here my mind, and the paper is ab empty canvas, and I can just let my thoughts flow freely. Probably doesn’t make for great reading, but it’s fun and liberating for me.

Everybody is different when it comes to inspiration, I know all too well what holds true for me, is complete gibberish to another. In broad strokes, I have probably captured the general forms of inspiration.

In terms of what inspires me to write (gives me the will), it falls down to three categories: the outdoors (nature, weather, scenery, architecture, etc…), other people’s creativity (a book, a film, a piece of music, also biographical information about a creative person, or someone who’s faced adversity in their life), and challenges (nothing gets my creative juices better than a bit of competition).

Sadly these things aren’t guaranteed to get me writing, but most often once I start writing it’s because I was inspired to by one of the above.

In terms of my inspiration what to write, it’s usually something close to hand, something I’ve imagined happening, my emotional state (yes, I can be a bit emo in my poetry), or a need to impress others so I can belong, and validate myself.

I’ve written about many things, from religion to coke cans, from fantasyic tales to mundane moments of life, and from historical events to nature.

Sometimes my indpirations puts me on the path to something specific, sometimes it’s just the starting point, or catalyst for a cascade of ideas.

I will say this, whatever the idea, I do love it when it happens, it’s a veritable joy to let poetry over take me, a joy and love that only falls short of sex.

As I’m getting older, inspiration is getting harder – dry spells last longer, but when the floodgates open, I feel sure the joy is deeper, as I come to appreciate it more.

Still I would live in those moments more if I were able to, giving myself over to the wild abandon of inspiration.

So I feel abandoned when inspiration doesn’t come, and call to it from my megaphone, hoping to attract it back. For me my megaphone is going to beautiful places, reading and listening to music, and entering challenges – hoping beyond hope, inspiration heads my call and answers.

That’s what inspiration is to me.

Today we have one about the weather, which bears no relation to the weather experienced this weekend funnily enough.