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…Well not completely as I am still in pain, just not as much as I was.

I hurt my back this morning picking something up, annoyingly it wasn’t something heavy or particularly awkward - It was just a towel that I had dropped on the floor. Despite this though the pain I was in wasn’t any less for this, I was left barely unable to stand upright and wincing at almost any movement in my back and like when I broke my shoulder 8 years ago I was soon reminded how much you move your back and shoulders when you walk, or do pretty much anything for that matter.

I’ve had an aching back before and whilst uncomfortable, I’ve known what has caused it and the pain hasn’t been anywhere near the level I am experiencing - Pain now thankfully being dulled by a selection of pain killing and anti-inflammatory drugs, but still rather painful nonetheless. What particularly concerns me however is what I felt when I caused the injury, it felt like something shifted in my spine dropped down leaving me two inches shorter. I know (and hope) that is it probably nothing serious, but as my father has a slipped disc in his back I have seen just how badly someone can be affected by back injuries.

Despite the pain or perhaps because of it today, my muse is still with me and I managed to muster up the two following haiku:

growing up
father’s pain remembered
backache

—

tortured
a handful of pills
promises release

Work was as monotonous and boring as ever today, but for a Monday it wasn’t particularly busy - Hopefully this means that some kind of plagues is affecting stupid people and killing them off, or at least rendering them unable to use the phone!

This meant that I have needed to fill my day at work with things to fend off boredom and as the Internet is off limits and I forgot to bring a book to work today I opted to try and write some haiku, as I haven’t composed any for a while.

The first and possibly funniest haiku of the day was inspired by my supervisor asking me for ornithological advice, assuming wrongly that I was some kind of amateur Bill Oddie because of my photography. I’ll admit I do photograph birds regularly, but as I pointed out to him - They tend to be the drunken rather than feathered kind.

The first draft of the resultant haiku was:

great tits
bobbing up and down
with thrushes

But I wasn’t happy with this and so with the aid of Google I did a bit of research on British birds and came up with:

great tits
bobbing up and down
and swallows

I showed this to a colleague and was accused of writing smut. I tried explaining that it was a haiku, but they were having none of it as they didn’t want to listen to me explain about keigos and how haiku are concerned with nature and that the swallows set the piece firmly in the summer.

As I was accused of writing smut and the girl next to me is off to Italy in a month I was then moved to produce another haiku:

roman lover
with a problem
leaning tower

Yes, I know it’s a senryu and not a haiku. But if you know what I am talking about you also know most people don’t know the difference. Inspiration for the next senryu also came from a nearby woman, as I happened to notice she had pretty gray eyes. I noticed this at about the same time as she noticed me noticing her and rather than staring at her further, I wrote:

gazing across
flicker of interest shown
in gray eyes

Finally my own current plight of weight loss and going to the gym after work produced the following mildly humorous piece:

maths geek
working out a problem
hates the gym

Ideally I’d be putting a photo of a leak up here today, but sadly I have leaks in my central heating system and not leeks in my garden - We do however have three daffodils randomly growing and so here is a photo of one of them instead.

Just to check my knowledge of Saint David I did a quick check on Wikipedia and found an amusing quote regarding one of the miracles attributed to him:

The best-known miracle associated with Saint David is said to have taken place when he was preaching in the middle of a large crowd at the Synod of Llanddewi Brefi. When those at the back complained that they could not see or hear him, the ground on which he stood is reputed to have risen up to form a small hill so that everyone had a good view…. John Davies notes that one can scarcely “conceive of any miracle more superfluous” in that part of Wales^[1]—a more mundane version of this story is that he simply recommended that the synod participants move to the hilltop.

I have to admit having spent a little time in Wales I am inclined to agree with John Davies’ assessment, after all Wales is worse than Bristol for hills so finding a flat spot is more of a miracle - Although maybe it just means that St. David visited Bristol at some point and did a few miracles here as well when on his way to Glastonbury or Jerusalem.

And as it’s been a while and I was bored at work today here is a haiku in honour of St David’s Day:

wind playing
golden trumpets
heralds winters end

Yes I know it’s just a picture of a front door, but it’s a perfect illustration to go alongside the haiku* I wrote at work today.

banging at the door-
an unexpected guest or
man with joke pehaps

And before you ask, yes I was very bored at work today. Whilst I enjoy writing poems (and for some reason haven’t done so for a while) I wouldn’t usually use knock knock jokes as my inspiration

*And for any purists reading this I know it’s not a haiku and for anyone that didn’t know and is interested it’s a senryu. A haiku is not just any poem of 3 lines in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern, a haiku is defined by it’s subject matter and should concern nature and doesn’t have to be 5-7-5 (at least not in English anyways).  Anything which follows the form, but isn’t about nature is at best a senryu.

My words as I finished work today say it all really, “I am a free man, unemployed but free”. No longer am I a call centre drone getting pissed off with stupid people and hoaxers. I am now even lower on the scales of society, which hopefully is where I shall be staying*.

My last day at work was spent pleasantly enough, I may have been answering the phones occasionally, but not frequently enough to really intrude upon the All, Allo marathon I had planned for today. if anything I had to break it up for myself as thanks to the DVD not having subtitles I had to play it quietly so as not to disturb others and strain my hearing instead.

I also managed to round off the day with a quintet of poems composed for various competitions that caught my eye on AllPoetry

also playing around on AllPoetry as I have been doing of late I was pleased to discover that one of my recent competition entries had managed to claim 1st place. It may not be my greatest ever piece, but it’s always gratifying to find out that someone not only likes your work, but actually prefers it to the efforts of others. Flushed with success I wound up entering four more contests thanks to them providing inspiration. Most were in response to pictures and were as ever for me short:

four sails propelled
along by a stiff breeze
going nowhere

—

wife waving goodbye
to dutiful husband-
punch bag

—

towards dancing queen
hopeful suitor approaches-
disco balls

The challenge was to pick a title from a list of options and compose a piece, the result for me was a song called, Vampiric Blues:

Vampiric Blues

Bitten by a vampire,
Two hundred years ago.
Eternity’s a long, long time,
And damn it’s going slow!

(Chorus)
Vampiric blues, vampiric blues,
I didn’t choose,
To be bitten by-
The vampiric blues.

I’m gonna live forever,
In the shadows of the night.
It’s true, I may not love the girls,
But I’ll take them for a bite.

(Chorus)

The nighttime’s nearly over,
It’s time to go to bed,
Before the sun, it rises up,
And burns me ’til I’m dead.

(Chorus)

I lie here in my coffin,
On earth from my homeland.
In trying to avoid my death,
I became one of the damned.

(Chorus)

My final effort was for a another contest; the first of a series based around the seven sins, the first one picked was wrath and ever the unforgiving type I entered:

Vengence Is Mine Sayeth I

 

Vengence is mine sayeth I-
Unwilling to trust,
A God to punish you.

 

Once I’ve finished making,
Your life a hell on earth.
You can go to hell,
As far as I’m concerned.

 

Incandescently indignant,
I will punish you and have retribution-
Tenfold over you.

 

An eye for an eye? Pah!
I’ll take both your eyes,
But I won’t stop there.
For the lies you fed me,
I’ll tear out your tongue.
I’ll show you but one mercy,
By silencing your screams,
When I burst your ear drums.

 

Then in your silent darkness,
All there will be is pain-
As I kick you whilst your down.

Despite all this though, my last day did hold one massive disappointment for me - I didn’t get a chance to tell a hoax caller what I thought of them, as although I had been asked to work until 11pm it was so quiet I got to go home before the hoax callers could get to me. I really wanted to have a go at a hoax caller, as normally we have to be nice to them and on my last I was counting on the fact that that even if I did something so spectacular that they fired me on the spot, I wouldn’t really have lost that much.

*Although I hope to swap my unemployed status for that of a student.

I am not at work today. In fact I am enjoying my last day off from work, as the next free day I have is Tuesday and that will be my first day of unemployment. Hopefully I will not be unemployed for long as I should be hearing this week about my applications to be a student teacher, the courses for which would start in the next two weeks.

Just in case though, I have been formulating cunning plans, as although I have a month to find a proper job if required I’d prefer to avoid that eventuality. Especially as thanks to the grapevine and a few contacts there is a chance I could wind up doing photography to pay the bills and still have time and money left over to do other things.

One thing I will miss about my current job is all the free time it gives me, after most of the time phones are not coming in constantly and I can pretty much do what I want between calls as long as I am ready to answer a call when it comes in. For the most part this has meant reading books, browsing websites, watching DVDs*, trying to teach myself Japanese and writing poems- The plus side of unemployment is that I won’t have to commute into the centre of Bristol to do all of this and I won’t keep getting interrupted by phone calls.

Anyways, the title of this post is, “More Poetry From Work” and here’s a couple from the last couple of days at work that I have dashed off for competition on Allpoetry.com where I occasionally look for ideas by finding competitions that give me an idea. They haven’t been judged yet so I have no idea what will be made of them, but biased though I may be I do not feel that these are the worst entries to the competition.

The first competition was to write a piece in response to this picture:

Now usually when I write I favour shorter pieces and whilst this piece is not really long, by my standards it is an epic. To see the competition I am up against have a look here on AllPoetry, but to save you clicking on links here is my entry to the competition (and yes I know that the pictured figure is dressed more than a touch impractically for a duel) :

Proud Warrior

His honour besmirched.
Implacably, he stares-
Across at his foe.

Striding forwards to take his place,
Before the duel commences.
He pauses, allowing one last chance,
For an apology to be given.

With none forthcoming,
He raises his sword and salutes.
Acknowledging the cur,
Raising him up,
But intending to cut him down.

Confident truth will overcome-
With justice, honour and God at his side,
He fights with courage and zeal.

Pushing his attack, he presses forward,
Pulling his sword back,
The final blow coming-
His adversary plants his sword,
And pain blooms in the heroes chest.

Red blossom spreads,
Bearing bitter fruit.
Despite the morning sun looking down,
Colours fade away,
As the fallen hero staring up asks,
“Why?”

The second competition I entered provided the inspiration by giving a list of words that had to be used in the poem. The words I had to include were; -nude, lingerie, trace, solace, paper, taste and old. The result was the following short piece:

Disconsolate Nude

Crumpled up,
Like used wrapping paper on Christmas Day morn,
But with less joy,
The nude dons lingerie-
An old gift from a former lover.
Seeking solace,
She traces the patterns,
Where once he used to kiss, tasting her,
Before he gave her a taste of loneliness.

*I only get to watch DVDs on Sundays and bank holidays - Guess what my last two days at work are going to comprise of!