Sonnet frenzy - and Sonnet 21

Having written the first half of Odour Issues by February, I abruptly left off in order to get stuck into a welter of short stories. Having written eight or ten stories, probably by the beginning of May, I took up anew with the Montpeliad, which had been languishing for a couple of years as the 40 line introduction to a Papist (Pope - giddy?) satire of the follies of Montpelier in Bristol, where I have lived for over a decade. The Montpeliad being completed, very swiftly published in Bristol 247, and daubed as previously described on the walls of Meat/Liquor, I have now embarked on a sonnet frenzy. The thinking here is that Shakespeare wrote - correct me if I'm wrong - 154 sonnets, so I can write 155 of the bastards. Anyway, I've written 21 so far, in a variety of Petrarchan and Shakespearean rhyme scheme, although none so far in the Spenserian style. My latest effort is a sort of experimental reverse Petrarchan, insofar as the sestet precedes the octet.

Sonnet 21

Has Earth to show anything more uncouth?

Dulled to a greyness now, the underpants

cling limply to his calamari cleft:

their seventh week as barnacle to youth,

a scowling spitting verminous pissant

of all the social niceties bereft.

Fair maiden, pharmaceutically fatigued

carps like a slave in his triumphant ear;

joins, renegade, the world against him leagued.

Where is the valium of yesteryear?

Not to be had at 6am, for sure.

Watch from your window as the forms recede.

A brief crescendo. Someone slams a door.

You lie upon your bed and try to read.

I Join the Ranks of Bristol's Graffitirati.

I recently spent an entire week writing utter filth on the walls of the disabled toilet in Stokes Croft Bar MeatLiquor. The Montpeliad, all 620 lines of it, is now up in glorious monochrome Sharpie, and I have tendonitis of the inside elbow.*

I'll get myself back down there in the next day or two and take some pictures. For now, I thought I would take the opportunity to thank Chris and his team for being so very nice about the weirdo in the khazi.

*19.10.16 I saw the doctor about this a few weeks ago, and she diagnosed bicep tendonitis. It's not really getting any better as yet, sad to say.

An amusing juxtaposition in yesterday's Guardian

In the echo chamber that is modern leftism, it is of course perfectly normal for the bourse of a newly failed state to be entering a bull market:-

Sonnet 14

Sonnet 14 has as its target a certain particularly coarse kind of rage which seems lately to have overtaken political discourse on the left of the spectrum. I'm thinking particularly of

(i) the anti-semitism controversy which Livingstone & Galloway and more recently Corbyn have got caught up in;

and, perhaps more immediately of

(ii) the reaction of many Remainers to the Brexit vote, and the bullying and coercive tones adopted by Remainers, which - and here's my theory - drove Leavers underground. This explanation accounts quite well for the surprising nature of the result; call this the 'quiet leaver' explanation.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the work in question.

Sonnet 14

Your face inflamed with that bottomless rage,

that fashionable nihilism quite bereft

of moderation or respect for age:

the ranting coarseness of the modern left.

There’s more decorum in the ape-house yet

than iv’ry towers in defence of Mao.

Fly to your eco-conference by jet,

and do not ask the little people how

your cosmopolitan outlook’s at odds

with their quotidian reality:

the shop-workers, the carriers of hods;

to you, of course, utmost banality,

something to rant about in Stokes Croft bars

while buying the coke and ordering the cars.

Sonnet 14 has a Shakespearean rhyme scheme:- abab cdcd efef gg. Regarding the volta, I would hesitate to say that it's in its traditional place at line 9. In fact, I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is one, although there are a couple of shifts in tone. So ... not entirely orthodox in every way, but at least it's in iambic pentameter and has one of the orthodox rhyme schemes.

Bristol 24/7 publishes The Montpeliad in its entirety

Here's a link:-
http://www.bristol247.com/channel/culture/books/poetry/local-poet-pens-epic-the-montpeliad-bristol
I will never be able to show my face in this town again!

To be honest, I am a little surprised - in a good way - that they went ahead so promptly with publication.

Sonnet 5

I've lately taken to writing sonnets - Petrarchan rather than Shakespearean. No doubt this follows on from my completion of The Montpeliad (619 line heroic couplet satire of the follies of Bristol, modelled on Pope's Dunciad).

I've written five or six sonnets in this latest frenzy. So far one or two have seemed slightly shallow to me; one or two slightly better. Sonnet 5 below is highly topical, given that I'm writing this post on the eve of the Referendum. I think I'm quite pleased with it. It doesn't sound too trite to my ear.

Sonnet 5

The tide’s edge where, lurking between the ebb

and flow, flip-flop between each absolute,

this moment when affairs become acute,

you lounge on your divan with your Black Leb.

At least you’re reading up on politics:

Ryan, who lectured you at UCL.

You really thought tonight you might as well

Here, history bifurcates. Some ratchet clicks.

That slouching beast of Yeats, or evil twin

of beast, pauses for breath in Beit Sahour. 

Rancour develops between fastest friends,

fools prick eachother’s effigies with pins.

Someone like Kissinger extends a claw,

and Eliott’s whimper signals when it ends.

Another gruesome image of Referendum debaters exchanging spit in Stokes Croft

Almost every day, I walk past this splendidly witty contribution to the Referendum debate, which is to be found in Stokes Croft, Bristol:

which is modelled on this iconic image of Cold War tyrannosauri Brezhnev and Honecker engaging in tonsil hockey:

I thought that, in light of Eddie Izzard's thoughtful and restrained Question Time performance the other night, I might add my own amateurishly photoshopped reimagining: