31 Poems for January

Happy New Year everyone! Well, it's 31 days too late, but the thought still counts I hope. For the first blog post in 2025 I've decided to walk the wire and publish on the last day of January, mainly so that I can share with you a complete project. My wonderfully inspirational friend Joy Waller is a community creator and initiative taker in an often lonely Tokyo. Apart from hosting poetry open-mics and publishing books through her indie press, this month Joy challenged a group of Tokyo poets to write something every day in response to her prompts.

And even though this has been a tiring, eventful, and homesick-plagued month, that is exactly what I've done.

Some of them are complete crap, even if I do say so myself. I guess that's what you get for not editing (yet - I promise I'll get round to it!). But I'm actually quite proud of some of them. Turns out it's true what they say about writing every day, it really does stretch the imagination! In these writings are all kinds of poems - ones that rhyme, ones that don't, ones that aren't even poems, beginner haikus, and an englyn.

I hope you find something that resonates.

This year I have much to look forward to. New connections, re-connections, lots and lots of writing. I go to Australia in March, then return home in late August. I can't wait for either. In the meantime, I'm writing and working and enjoying time with friends. My friend Silje is teaching me to knit, a skill she learnt from her grandmother Astrid. It's nice to learn something not from a screen. Though screens have served a wonderful backdrop to knitting whilst series 3 of The Traitors has been on. But that's finished now, so onto other things.

Like living. And showing you my January poems.

All my stars,

Char xxx

1st of January: Prologue

Last year's a memory

The slip of something,

Standing on the periphery of

Forever and ever and more.

Deep blue licks of regret at my toes

Bite and snap at scars.

We file away

Then pad out soft as new.

Attachment's an ailment,

It's time to breathe something fresh.

Zeitghost.

Zeitgoing.

Zeitgone.

2nd of January: Decide

26th birthday.

Optimism turns chaos

Into potpurri.

3rd of January: Craving

Desire:

Human experience.

One without the other

Is breath without life.

Illogical.

Inconceivable.

Likely as a Cockatrice.

Entwined in our scaffolding.

It yearns and grows.

Termite mound.

Sistine chapel.

Limpet-burrows into the essence of humanity.

Roots intersect,

Licking lips, engulfs its own head.

Tails knot.

Self-adulling.

Autoidolotry.

Midas-touched,

Desire becomes itself,

Becomes itself,

Becomes a child kicking and squealing in a pram at its mum,

Becomes a student gazing love-hearts across the science room,

Becomes a promotion, a mortgage, a midnight sneak into the pantry for treats.

Becomes the will, eventually, to want again.

A hospice bedroom.

Disinfectant.

Orange chair of plastic.

She breathes loudly, asks:

'More, please!

Before I go.

I want it all over!'

4th of January: Chill

Snow drops.

Red nose,

Wet your breath

And warm on me.

Even the thought of kissing you

(What a notion - the thought of kissing you) -

Blood rush to my head

Upside down -

Water on your eyelashes.

'Find which way is up.

Open your mouth,

See which way it falls'

The way you smiled at me in the white and the dark.

Locked in, memories of

Ice

Addlepated

You in a

Snowstorm

I see only

The red of your scarf

Lips

Frozen

Still

I wish you were here.

And then I would tell you it all.

And say you were right

(Oh yes, how you love to hear me say it)

When you told me it was dangerous

In warm weather

To go skiing alone.

Snow drops,

And in a blanket of white,

I remember you.

5th January: Pattern

As Yayoi

Kusama

Says:

'Creation

A solitary

Pursuit'

6th of January: Utopia

Giles, More, and Hithloday

walk into a bar

And propose Utopia.

I wait outside in the van.

Dusty spanners and loose chocolate wrappers.

Dad brings me a lemonade

Every forty minutes or so.

Asks how my homework's going,

And complains about

Indoor smoking policies.

When he's gone,

I boot up my GameBoy.

Akihabara I avoid

Vending machines,

Blue curtains

Hairless vaginas separated by

Thin layer of blue fabric

By lines of legal texts:

'eighteen is not seventeen is not child'.

Thin sliver of time changing

Objectification's ethics.

She's a thousand years old

Which makes staring okay.

A few days into the Beginning, a god covered up my [ ___ ]

Because Adam couldn't -

Clothes to cover up my

[ ___ ]

Which you then mentally pick off like a child with burger lettuce.

Now I layer up, Up, UP

In the hope that it stops you

That picking, pricking anger

Of not knowing how I'm seen.

Especially when I read.

In that bar, I worry we

Merge into one

On walls and toilet cubicles.

'Call [____] for a damned good time'

And lots of Mystery.

You love to think we're a mystery.

If I were in that bar,

I'd ask for respect,

Giles, More, and Hithloday.

And try to explain how

The Utopians

Are better

But not good

And how

Oppression in any other tome

or time

palates itself

just

the

same.

7th of January : History

Wisps

Self

I fragment myself into moments,

Place them all neatly in a

Caterpillar line

A knock at the door,

In comes my

Great

Greatgreat

Spanthecenturiesgreat

Quite nice

Grandmother.

Shock

Spiral

Polaroid particles

Whiz around

Memories

Made from the same things as her

And me.

She apologises so profusely

In a tongue I once

Now

Read

Of in a book I

Tell her it's fine

And source a blender

From one of the scattered moments.

(She's awfully surprised, but also not at all)

I ask if she's hungry.

We eat soup with bread

And take in the moment

Moments

A million of them.

Amalgamation.

Closing our

Her

eyes

Ink-jot rainbow

Kaleidoscope

Particles.

I wave one goodbye

And set it in motion.

When past becomes present

She kisses me on the forehead

And sends me away.

My dreams are particles too.

And they wash me into infinity

Deep blue sleep.

8th of January: Sky

Somewhere

In most moments

A child looks up

Or out

And dreams

Of flight.

Feather boy

Sucks himself

Into the corners

of bike sheds

And PE cupboards.

Words like

'Fairy'

Sting

And prick like

Goosebump

Black wicks

Downy vanes

From his shoulder blades.

Hurt when they erupt

Burn too.

Dragonfly

Spends hours a day

Poring over

Magazines.

Nail scissors

She uses to

C a r e f u l l y

Snip away at

Her favourite parts,

Then pastes them together

To make something

All her own.

She presents the page

With inventor's pride

And grandad gets annoyed

When he notices

The holes in his

Paper on planes.

I lie

Dreaming

And think of

Alice's Caterpillar.

Soft white puffs

All whisper

Who are you?

In material voices

I one day will know

The possible answers

I contain

A nonsense worth of

Multitudes

'You are old, father William'

I told him one day,

Rocking back and forth on a

Winged horse

My Uncle made

'Yes', he replies

With the fondest grin

'But I'm never grown out of dreams'.

The child sighs

Awash with potential energy

And decides

When they are old

To one day

Becomes a pilot.

9th of January: Cyberpunk (with heavy credit to George Herbert's 'The Collar')

'Science fiction dealing with future urban societies dominated by computer technology'

I struck the board

And cried 'no more!'

I will abroad!

What? Must I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life

Are captured here, here like the rest

I live online.

But still I yearn beneath these lights

A hyper-neon screen display

To break free from the tyrant's grasp

My core's been L E D astray

They've dimmed in me what once was bright.

Replaced my faith with trust in lies

The men monopolise our times

Their free speech forges nought but chains.

But as I rave and

Grow more fierce and wild, at

Every word

Methought I heard one calling 'Well, ACTUALLY...'

And I replied:

11th of January: Also...

... I love you.

(Just in case you didn't know.)

(It's an odd way to end this I recognise.)

(But I do.)

(So please write me back, and tell me in a post-script.)

(Let me be your addendum. I would like that thoroughly.)

(And don't forget my new address.)

(I wrote it at the top of this letter so you'd know.)

(Please don't forget. Because I'll wait by the letterbox and it's quite cold at the moment.)

I love you.

(There, again. Also and another.)

(One more for luck.)

I love you.

(That, now, is everything that needed saying).

10th of January: Disorder.

Energy.

Light.

Foxes in the bins.

The universe's birth.

Howling in the dark like no-one can hear.

12th of January: Mute

The day I read, they cut

my tongue, yet through the blood I muttered

Something sharper and more cutting still:

That Will once freed cannot be shut.

13th of January: Rose

Tennessee Williams tattooed

Kisses fall like petals

And turn to purple-black blooms

On my chest.

Encased in glass

To be cracked in case of emergency,

Fists caress

And take cuttings of me for later use.

The CCTV footage

will not show up in red.

14th of January: Divine

There are no atheists in

foxholes

trenches

Falling planes

Totalitarian governments

A hostage crisis

The end.

In times such as these,

open your arms and

Circle the globe in words

Amen

Bismillah

Shema Yisrael

Om Mani Padme Hum

Mitakuye Oyasin

Open wide Agape

Speak and let

The Earth return your call.

When they stopped my plane and

Grounded us in the middle of backwater nowhere

The people we were staying with

Converted their school library into a prayer room.

In those days I saw

People worship in ways

I'd never thought to

imagine.

Mats upon mats upon hats and beads

Scarves, caps, footwear, no footwear

Made my outfit feel plain

In comparison to their powerful

Colourful garbs

Backdropped by a tv set

Playing the same

Crackled image

As they had

Been for

days

I wished for something more to come over me

And help make meaning from this misery.

15th of January: Trash

Bright-eyed flash with bushy tail

Scampers o'er night-time veil

Surfs the stars, avoids bright lights

For she's a mind to feast tonight

And neither gas nor metal's might

Makes maggot-grub of rubbish sprites.

This pixie picks her trove with care

Is led by smells on rancid air

Bled through the black, escaped the knot

A stubborn smell, the stench of rot

But one man's trash is other's fare.

So Foxy doesn't care one jot.

She rips the bag, and gorges all,

A workout for tomorrow's caul.

Coffee grinds and and orange peel

When mixed, she finds, make quite the meal.

And licks the bits seen fit to fall

Enthralled she howls out: 'What a steal!'

That morning had me howling too

Upon finding her residue

Forgetting when the bins were due

I'd left the rubbish out in view!

And orchestrated this duress

As foxes always make a mess

Of all that we folk might make clean

Where once my driveway was pristine

Now seems a sight that some might deem

Best paired up with a guillotine.

One final swipe, as her adieu

She deadheaded my flowers too!

16th of January. Interlude.

[ ]

That's quite enough. Now back to our normal programming.

17th of January: Beneath

(or, 'Set in the space between my futon and duvet, where the air is warm and people are kind')

Sweet, restful cocoon

Cacophany alarm rings

Out, cold air thrusts in.

18th of January: Yesterday

A rise

And fall

A broken breath

She holds me close

Under the kitchen table

Heavy,

warm,

wood

And tells me it's nearly over

In sixteen days

It is over

Starting

from

now.

Yet up

In the air

A hundred times my height

They still come down.

Down they come,

And cast one last shower

Of shadow

Before the break

Of dawn.

Cracks in the

wood

warm

heavy

It comes from the other end

Of a tunnel

A tube

A telephone rings out

Calling to be picked up

By my mother

Who is not there

Anymore

Today

dust particles

Rain down

Instead.

Dancing figures under

Fluorescent light

Coffee grains in the bottom of a

Disposable paper cup on the

Victoria line.

Too crowded to think,

He forgets his newspaper

And the names printed inside.

Henry Nicholas John Gunther,

Was lucky to be known.

A small fortune

But

Would we all have that gift.

19th of January: Drift

In the spaces between

Dreams and reality

The thin beep

Of my alarm

punctuates.

I press into you,

Soft and warm give way to the

Resistance of bone

Draw me out from

A curl of spines

Muscles tense

Then settle like breath.

'One day, when we wake up

together,

Let's call in sick

And just stay in bed

Like this.

It's too nice'.

A nod is a nuzzle

Is a head-turn

Into the crook between

your neck and collarbone

Snooze-setting pressed,

Into you

I whisper:

'Let's'.

20th of January: Impulse

When I was nineteen, I sat in on my first Practical Criticism supervision at Cambridge, and was very confused.

'All your life', Dr. Steve Watts said to me and the three other gawky teens sat in his plush, paper-filled office, 'You have been taught to search for meaning outside of what's in front of you. Spending hours researching context and guessing at an authorial intent we can't ever really know. Well on this course we do things a different way'.

Grey cashmere pullover, ghost of ginger biscuit at the crust of his lip, Steve lectured us as if from the top of Mount Sinai - and in a metaphorical way he kind of was.

Practical Criticism and Critical Practice has been a touchstone of the Cambridge English Literature Tripos for nearly one hundred years. Which ironically makes it on the younger side of theory. It's a form of literary criticism mainly used by Modernist thinkers who believe in a Formalist approach. That is to say, it basically trains you to put blinkers on when interacting with a text, so you are able to analyse it without consulting any other work or person on its interpretation. In this I was trained and formally tested in a four-hour long exam in the University of Cambridge Sports Hall one sweltering June afternoon. Faced with analysing three out of a batch of eight possible excerpts from novels, poetry, history books, and a poorly handwritten letter detailing the Battle of the Somme, we students were tasked with leashing the impulse to assume any context or form that wasn't on the page - we weren't even given the names, authors, or publication date of any text. Instead we juggled theory - played with fluid and air. Modernism, Feminist Theory, New Historicism, Postcolonialism, Post Structuralism. A million books in my mental library buzzing and singing to be opened, calling out words painstakingly memorised - anaphora, polysyndeton, topos, trochee. So much to explore and detail, my thoughts grew wings that soon identified themselves as far too long and heavy to fly.

Practical Criticism is part of who I became, a writer in control. Sharp, focused, research-heavy. Steve Watts took breaks from daydreaming of Joyce and scrawled 'this hurt me' on my first submitted essay, tangled and overgrown. I hated him for a year in the way a child hates parents who give good advice. Today I wonder if that 67-year old Yorkshire boy turned silver spoon academic saw something of himself in my flowery tendencies, and so tried to refine me in the way that was done to him. Maybe he succeeded - who knows? Often in this scene I find myself stuck with how unimpulsive a writer I am - controlled, finepoint edits and plans and lines in to-do-list forms. Perfect for an academic - but a creative?

There are many things that make people a writer, but in most places here I see fire and lightning - cracking, witty, absurd and obscene writing, in me I cultivate earth. Which I fear makes me boring and stuffy at times, but at least adds some diversity. I'm hoping this challenge helps me find that impulse again, and the confidence to grow a garden of words that the Big-R Romantics would have been envious of.

I am certain that somewhere, deep down, the heartbeat of impulse is still wick.

21st of January: Silver

I found you on the beach

Curled in the bottom of my bucket

Smooth like

the slippery part of a

seashell

Hair brittle and

waving with the tide

Soft scraping sensation of my thumb

Stroking you

Waders to my knees,

Beige stains of sand on every part

Of waterproof me

Pooling in silt

Draw our names

Like washing is optional

You blow bubbles

ask for freedom

in morse code made from

saline compounds

Or could we

Skull for eternity

together

Duck under and

Taste salt.

Bedtime.

Switchblade grey and dull

Twists around and turns to foam

Washing you away in the bath

I cut the hoof from

A loaf of bread

And eat it with margarine.

And now an absent sun sets,

train doors slide shut

Tight with a swill and

Carry me away into

The quagmire of

Modern city life

long

grey

line.

22nd of January: Calm.

Calm is a reminder

Of my road at home

Popping up on the village

Facebook group.

Depicting snapshots from my

Memory

Sleepy car rides

Home from practice after school

Seeing the signs

Knowing I'm

Nearly home.

23rd of January: Weak

He told me

On the edge

Nearly 17

Crying in my arms

Fat tears

Polka-dot feelings

On my shirt

Like stars

Drawing

Orion's Belt

Across my breast

Said

he felt

A failure

For feeling.

Weak.

I said

He was wrong.

24th of January: Step

And p

W e f t

and

Half of every step a stumble,

Eventually

l c

Ba ed

Is what we become.

25th of January: Dystopia

Today

I go to google

Dystopia

Searching

Etymology

Alternative uses

Anything

Because it feels

Too easy

To just write about now.

I find

Dystopia (n.)

From 'dys'

Bad.

Abnormal

and

'topos'

land.

In medical terms

In early times

'extraction of an organ'

More, without the heart.

Then

I see

the

'Trending Words'

tab.

Word Number One:

Kakistocracy

click.

(n.)

'Government by the worst element of society'

From

Greek Kakistos

Worst.

Kakos

Bad.

Cracy.

So then

I started to feel that too.

Maybe being original

Doesn't matter so much now.

26th of January: Spicy

My friend

Says Pineapple is spicy

To which I called her

So strange

weak

white

Like tea

Limescale skull in

Pale beige

Now she thinks

She's allergic

Which to be fair is

Probably right.

We made fun of her

senselessly.

But now take special care

While cooking

All the same.

27th of January: Forgotten

Memories lie as

thoughts forgotten. But in bed -

Crash intrusively!

28th of January - Duality

Mirror girl, breathing in the steam

Exhale, wipe squeak clean and

Push her face

Against the glass.

Smush her softness into cold, hard

Flesh

Wish the reflection could

Freeze

Her down to

nothing

And let her

fracture

Sweep herself

And be reformed

smaller and more dainty

Paint the cracks with glue made

Strong and gold.

A teenage brain begs for sunglasses

Block out the light

Lend her a different lens.

One to obscure

Not reflect

And avoid the pain of

growing

flesh

form

Realising her soul is trapped

Within a hairy thing

That shits and breathes and shaves.

Kicks a fairy-tale tome beneath her bed, curses:

'I should have stayed in the woods'.

Baby crying, sucking on wolf-milk.

Begging Rome,

Just let it be!

Let it be, the twin

That stayed,

Let Remus remain,

Clutching at the she-wolf's flank

Howling forever like wax

Let him not develop a mind

that could outgrow the human form.

Let him never outgrow the baby

Who was a wolf, nothing more.

Happy gurgles from caves in the ground.

2020.

She is seen by her phone

Which when turned off

Turns just as reflective.

Perceived

In pursuit of Panoptic approval

She buys a hula hoop with

bumps

That will train her waist

To lose them.

Meanwhile.

Lacan looks down from heaven

Derrida's cat circling his ankles

In philosophical purrs.

He imagines they both

wonder at a world where what other people see

matters more than the lens you look through

yourself.

The cat just grins like Cheshire,

Then spies something.

Mouse.

Pounce.

Full.

'Do you suppose', he turns and says,

'I am content?'

29th of January - Mix

Pouring Salt into the Rubicon

I make water lighter

Lifted by hot air

Tanning

And dreaming of a future where

The tears of my people shall build an empire even better for floating

30th January - Statue

I am no traveller from an antique land.

I am land itself

I am the Earth

The thing that grows and crumbles to

dust

Ashes painted over cave walls by firelight

Mixed with water, daubed on faces and canvases and buildings.

I am the sand that your footprints press upon

And the wave that washes them away.

I am the last thing Ozymandius saw back when he was

Just Ramesses

I was the stone his body became

- Atherosclerosis ; Renal Calculus -

More than mere Nephrolith

I made him monolith

Hardened him from Earth and

Gave him centuries

Turned to steel then

Took him away

Chiselled him down to rubble

Nose down to a stub

Turning

Feet to sand

He crumbled from the bottom up

To be found and then spoken of

Later

By one teller to another.

Crushing

myself to black

Spreading

Thin over mesh into

paper

Together

We gave him more life still.

I am all of this and so much more.

I am History.

With hands and tools

I am the ropes that bind and pull him

up,

And then reverse myself

To bring them tumbling back down towards me.

Colston; Columbus, Kings of all Kinds.

Despite them,

So alive am I

Beyond story and memories and Earth.

I am What shall remain,

Even when the truth cannot.

31st of January: Epilogue.

A rest in the road after poetry's passage.

Thirty days written, one still to dream.

Then once more, unto the next.

(P.S - Honest request to anyone reading this, I'm going to try editing some of these to send off to magazines, so if you see one that resonates and actually has a chance of making something of itself please let me know - it's super difficult to be objective over these things. Many thanks and so many stars xoxox)

(It was this diva's 26th bday 29 days ago. Crazy she's got this far without changing in face or vibe)