Max Scratchmann's Blog, page 3

2013 in Review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2013. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Animal Crackers

I was a “take-away poet” at Portobello Library (Edinburgh) yesterday, where people would come up to me and ask me to write a poem for them. There were all sorts of requests, but my favourite was a little girl called Iona who wanted a poem about small cute animals, leopard cubs in particular!

The animals were talking in the jungle one day,

There were tigers and leopards and a cheetah called Ray,

When Mister Len Leopard, announced to the group,

That his good wife was cooking some antelope soup.

And the tigers and wolf-cubs and lions and bears,

Went round to the Leopards’ and sat down in chairs,

And good Mrs Leopard served up bowls of stew,

With side orders of salad and antelope goo!

But at the top of the table sat a cub called Iona,

A cute spotted leopard cub, I’m sure that you know her,

She ate soup with her parents and said, this is good,

I’ll have second helpings, I think that I should.

So she ate and she ate, she had elephant cake,

Green octopus salad and mockingbird bake,

Salt-battered conger eel tart and walrus bratwurst,

But just before pudding, Iona, she burst!

Dr Who Poems

Tardis Dreams

There was an old police box down our way,

Wedged tightly on the corner of

Peter’s Café and Mario’s Chipper.

And I remember it shrouded in fog

On a Sunday night,

Coming home from visiting my Aunty Barbara,

And sometimes,

If the planetary line-up was

Just so,

The blue light on top would flash like a beacon

As we shuffled past

With out chips and Caramel Logs.

And I used to dream

That the Doctor was setting off

On one of his adventures

And maybe, just maybe,

If I was really good and didn’t complain about

Eating gristly mince,

This time,

This time he’d take me with him.

Who needs witches and wardrobes,

After all,

In this world of Tardis dreams.

The First Decade

Suburban gardens overrun with children

Are suddenly stilled,

Rows of little square lawns empty,

Whole streets

Like a wasteland,

Living room windows filled with nuclear test dummies

Huddled around the tiny screens

As entire avenues echo to the refrain of

Kiddillydac-Kiddillydac – Woooo-ooo,

Wooo-hoooo-wah-woo!

A new religion sweeping the country,

As children with plungers on their heads

And wearing egg box skirts

Bark

Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!

To long-suffering mothers.

Ten years on we still watch on a Saturday night,

The televisions in colour now,

But bigger screens

Show up the warts and faults.

And cloth-draped boxes and

Monsters pulled by strings

Are no match for the pull of

The Old Grey Whistle Test

And

Local Odeons showing films full of the promise of

SEX…

Joining the Edinburgh Poetry Bus Tour Earlier Today

With the lovely Nicole Strachan and Graham the Tour Guide (thanks to Lothian Buses for the pic and promoting the gig!)

Edinburgh Poetry Tour

Share a Bus with Four Poets

Yes, it’s the middle of November and it’s freezing and I’m performing on a bus!  But it’s all true, tomorrow (21st November) sees me performing with the lovely Nicole Strachan on the (green) Edinburgh tour as part of the city’s winter history festival.  And, if that’s not enough, we’ll be followed by the spectacular JA Sutherland and the deadpan Andrew Blair.  What a line up, what a city, it can only be in Edinburgh.

The Never Ending Story

Vote for me the smiler said,

To the man who lost his head,

Lost his head and lost his arms,

When he voted for the smiler’s charms.

Vote for me he oozed with guile,

His flinty eyes, his beaming smile,

Vote for war and vote for strife,

Vote for me and give your life.

And the young men lie upon the hill,

The smiling man has had his will,

And sitting back he smiles so bright,

Oh who will vote for me tonight?

Edgar Allen Poe in Suburbia

The fucking dog barked all day and all night, and the kid just kept shouting at it. “Pluto, hey, Pluto!” like he was Mickey fucking Mouse or something.

I tried throwing things, I tried bribery, I even tried violence, but nothing worked. Damn kid and damn dog just yapped all god-damned night and day.

Eventually, I took matters into my own hands. I dug a huge pit in the yard and I threw the dog into it, and, when the kid yelled at me, I threw him in too.

Then I filled it in and concreted over the top of it. Peace at last. Or that’s what I thought.

The damn dog just kept on barking under the ground and I could hear the kid still ineffectually yelling at him. All night and day. Echoing in my head. Round and round.

Could I cling on to whatever shards of reason I still possessed? Was I mad?

There was only one thing left for me to do to preserve my sanity.

Move.

[ends]

House of Usher plc

It was turning into quite a dull dark and soundless day at House of Usher plc. There had been complaints about a black cat who had swallowed a whole cask of Amontillado, tried to eat a raven at the local cemetery and then promptly thrown it all up over the pristine tomb of Ligeia. Luckily, the local paper had given this no publicity as it was obsessed with the current spate of murders in the Rue Morgue, but it was a near thing, and to make the day worse, Annabelle Lee, a rival executive at Pit and Pendulum, had successfully bid for the Lenore account.

The parent firm had sent someone over to remonstrate, of course, a Monsieur Valdimar from the Paris office, but there had been a mix-up with his luggage at Heathrow and he’d arrived clutching a strange case. So, all in all, it had been a pretty disastrous morning, and when asked if he was coming back, the departing Frenchman clutched his tell-tale heart theatrically and replied, “Nevermore!”

First Kiss

For National Poetry Day

My first kiss was with a girl whose name I didn’t know,

It wasn’t really anything to write home about.

I’d expected a big romance,

Swirling orchestral score,

Julie Andrews skittering down the mountainside,

Not two strangers suddenly going mouth to mouth,

Like a pair of sturgeons lip-locked in a fishmongers window,

As disco lights flashed like running water down the slab.

There wasn’t even really a song to lock the moment in my heart,

Just Marc Bolan and T Rex going

La La La, La-La-La La, mmmm, ah, ah ahha!

Still, she was pretty,

With long dark hair and gold lamé hotpants,

Her shapely legs in clumpy white PVC boots.

But she legged it as soon as the song was done

And vanished behind a wall of skinheads

That no amount of hormones were going to propel me across.

However

A search at school on Monday morning revealed that her name was

Jessie

or maybe Lorraine,

But, horror of horrors,

She was in 3B,

A year above me and a million miles away,

And my message sent on the grapevine of jungle drums

Played by giggling girls,

That, Max wants to go with you,

Vanished sadly into the ether,

And Jorraine,

Never acknowledged me again.

Though,

In school uniform she wasn’t that hot,

So,

Really,

It was no big loss.

Poets’ Boyfriends

By popular request!

At first

She can’t find him in the gloom of their darkened room,

But she follows the snapping undergrowth of

Pizza boxes and crumpled beer cans to his chair,

The sonorous chant of football fans

Echoing

Like a throbbing descant of cicadas.

Good night, love?

His voice floats through the miasma.

The best, she begins, elated,

I’m slam champion of the world…

Oh, that’s good…

He says,

Not quite with her,

Oh, oh, oh, yes, yes, YES!

What a goal!

Sorry,

What were you saying, love?