Oops, hehe, I forgot that the hyperlink wouldn't work… Here is that live journal entry.

DISCLAMER: The poems are MOST DEFINITELY not mine and I didn't put them there for any profit on my behalf. The live journal entry, however IS mine… (yes, I know the use of the shift key has alluded me in this. That's just how I type my journal…

Subject:	so i'm an english geek now as well...
Time:	2:49 pm.
Mood:	weird... but... bad weird.
Music:	the theme of that thing with dick van dyke in it..

we looked at two poems today that really struck me. i transpose them here for your enjoyment, complete with why i like them :)

The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping
(Grace Nicholls)

Shopping in London winter
is a real drag for the fat black woman
going from store to store
in search of accommodating clothes
and de weather so cold

Look at the frozen thin manniquins
fixing her with grin
and de pretty face salesgirls
exchanging slimming glances
thinking she don't notice

Lord is aggravating

Nothing soft and bright and billowing
to flow like breezy sunlight
when she walking

The fat black woman curses in Swahili/Yoruba
and nation language under her breathing
all this journeying and journeying

The fat black woman could only conclude
that when it come to fashion
the choice is lean

Nothing much beyond size 14

i think this just reminded me how grace nicholls' poetry was the only stuff i actually liked at gcse, and i love this poem :) especially that "lord is aggravating" line.

anyway, here's the next one. longish explanation follows.

(from) Long Distance
(Tony Harrison)

Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.

You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone.
He'd put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather bound phone book there's your name
and the disconnected number I still call.


right, explanation forthcoming... but first, a dream that i re-remembered at break today. my "farscape" dream. enjoy :)

it was only short, and very bizarre (hey, like i ever have any normal dreams... the day i do, i'll be very scared). it was a john&aeryn dream (again), my second on record, and that makes me officially obsessed... okay, so we knew that. anyway, i digress. the dream.

i think i was aeryn. i don't really remember, it was all very hazy. if not, then i was watching it. in fact, i vaguely remember actually seeing aeryn, so i probably can't have been her, but the whole thing was very odd, sort of veiled. like i was drunk, or very tired, and the atmosphere was... weird. and the colouring was very warm, all reds and yellows and browns and oranges. it reminded me a little of a scene from "lolita" (the jeremy irons version), but i forget why.

from what i remember, plot-wise, there was very little. there was a room. a window. it was late evening in summer, or possibly early morning, but it was that sort of time where the sun is just barely visible and everything looks all shadowy, but it's still light. and it was all very warm... i remember the warmth of it. and there was a chair... and john was in the chair... just a little wooden one, i think, and aeryn came in... and she just sat on his lap. and they were just there, in each others arms.

i recall it made me feel all warm and tingly inside... but it was vaguely upsetting after monday's ep (and i think that must be where it came from...)

then... it got a little surreal. (of course.) something about the sun, and how it couldn't touch her (that might be to do with those solar flares in the ep, too.)... and i recall this feeling of overwhelming dread...

that's about all i remember coherently. i forgot it when i woke up, but i had a feeling i'd dreamt something really... weird, or profound, or something, but i just had this feeling...

then i remembered it in the middle of poetry after i read the harrison poem... weird, huh?

but that poem... it just reminded me so inexplicably of john and aeryn, and don't ask me to explain why because i can't. switch the gender roles, imagine they have a child who's telling this, i don't know, but it did. it was that line, "as though his still raw love were such a crime." it really got to me.

and i hate it when things get to me and i don't know why…

Okay, the rest wasn't important… Just thought this would be interesting so you could see how I came up with the image of the room and everything… Right, you can go now.