We have been back exactly a week today.  Having missed out on summer, I have grown obsessed with weather, which is just as well because we seem to be having quite a lot of it.  From Saturday’s heatwave, to today’s underwater weather; yes, there is plenty to think about.  We had Martin’s daughter to stay at the weekend and we took her to see the sights in Great Yarmouth during the heatwave.  The sights consisted of, between fairground rides, a vast quantity of food in a varying array of unnatural colours.  Amy’s current obsession is with Firemen Sam, so most of her choices revolve around the colours blue and yellow to match his uniform: a yellow milkshake (banana), a blue ice cream (bubble gum), a blue Slush Puppy (heaven knows).

*shuffles sheepishly up to the screen* Ok, this is all very well, but I have nothing to report on the poem front. Not since the beginning of June, which is probably the longest I haven’t written since I’ve been writing.  I have just been editing all of the Bluebeard poems (nineteen altogether), in order to a) edit them of course, making them better and shinier; b) get back into what I was doing in the hope I might one day, do it again; and c) it’s much easier to write something on something which has already be written without the frank gaze of the Blank Page assessing your wherewithall and finding it wanting.

So I tell you what Mr Blank Page, I’m going to make myself a coffee and then I am going to darn well write me a poem this morning.  It may not be the best poem I’ve ever written, and it is unlikely to change the face of British poetry, but it will be my poem from inside my own dingy skull.  For some reason now, I am reminded of this poem by  Stephen Crane:

Heart

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.

I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”