Day 10 - finally got there

Helen

Caught up in your gravity well,
caught up in our very own big bang,
for those few years that you were the centre of my life,
and everything revolved around you,
when we lay on our backs at night,
watching satellites, spin past in the sky,
watching for the one, bright, light, that was the Shuttle,
in orbit for the very first time,
when we spoke of the principles of geometry,
and theories of relativity
and string theory, ties more
than my sticky, pocket bound fingers
it furls my tongue, leaves me twisted
folded upon myself,
n-space, not Euclidean space,
but cold vacuous space.
Like the space between us in our bed,
in the last days of our relationship,
when our gravities were so polarised,
we repelled each other.

We lay awake, on opposite sides of the world,
yet in the same room,
and stared up at the same night sky,
realising that the world had stopped spinning,
that the sun had stopped shining,
that we were being tossed
from our warm womb by our own inertia,
being sucked away by the cosmos’s vacuum.
Then things changed.
No longer were you the centre of my world,
No longer did I revolve around you,
but, my world, had become the centre of my world
I could do nothing but think about myself,
become me-centric, my orbit, erratic
going from never having missed a trick,
to a self obsessed lunatic.

Like continents, we slowly drifted apart.

until that day, I looked up, to see you there
in your familiar place, like you’d never been away.
What then brought you back?
what papal decree? what wishful dream?
did you see me descending
through my own circles of hell
through my saturnalian rings
was it the end of time?
or was it the remembered promise
that you would be mine?
I’m just grateful you took me back
pulled me to you, comforted by your warm skin
Whatever, I must leave it unquestioned
unobserved, un-quantified
I am too afraid to ask,
to open that box,
to determine a state of flux,
to stroke Schrodinger's cat.

I can’t trust that a love returned
can ever be the same,
as that first time, when we lay,
on new dew dappled grass,
in the morning of our lives.
While here, at even song,
I hold your hand in silence,
your thoughts, somewhere,
and mine,

somewhere else.

Day 7

I'm back from my trip to Ireland, all refreshed and smooth of skin from excessive use of the hotels sauna and steam room, and free moisturisers, and having recorded and edited my poem over the last few days, have uploaded the podcasts to the flash player on the right hand side of this page. Also, I've done a bit of a mind map of the poem to help me think out the process.

and the winner is....

I was named the winner of the latest round of Slamidopodcast.com's poetry slam last night. It feels great to have won something, and firstly I'd like to thank all those that took the time to vote for me, thanks to Simon for hosting the event, and thanks to the other poets for making it such a good competition.

For a while I was thinking of retiring the poem 'all the girls...', but you know, it may get a new lease of life yet!

So what now? At last I'm able to put something on my poetry CV, and that should make submitting work to magazines a bit more worthwhile, and thats what I want next, to get something published. Also I'd hope that I could get a five minute set somewhere, some night, but that means getting out there, schmoozing the hosts, and making a name for myself - somehow I don't think letting my poetry do all the talking for me is enough. There was a night last year, at a rooftop party in LA, when I met the writer, Jimmy Palmiotti, who gave me some advice, ' have the balls to belive in what you want to say, and then have the balls to say it, and never apologise for what it is you've just said' I've kinda paraphrased him, but it's something that has stuck with me this year, and it's the attitude I need to maintain to make some headway in this writing business.

So, whats next? A new slam idol competition - this time an audio blog over a ten day period writing another poem. I'm usually quite quick in dashing off a poem, so making it last ten days might be tough - or it might show me how to hone a poem in new ways. My first thoughts are to do something more media savvy with the poem, some video, some music, something more web 2.0, a scoial network of a poem! I'll be posting something here over the next few days - then I'm off to Ireland for a long weekend - I'll bring something to record my thoughts.

Keep coming back!

Thanks

Dominic

Interview with a vampire, erm, er, poet

Slamidol Interview

You can listen to my interview with Simon Toon on the above link. I'm really pleased with some of the comments he made about me, some great compliments. I am a little 'less-than-fluent' at times, erm-ing and err-ing my way through some of the questions, and mis-quoting the title of my own poem! I think I may have got a taste for a life of fame, at the very least Simon has convinced me to podcast a little more - and get a few more audio mp3's out on this blog.