1.
Poems of The Underground — photography and short poems by Richard Partridge
From the Community
ii. Finsbury Park backwards: Krapy rub snif. -- iv. You call that busking? My ears are bleeding. Yeh mate, I’ll spare you some change just to stop you from singing. -- viii. Going underground now, gonna lose reception, entering the tunnel, sure to drop connecti… -- x. When someone stands to Offer me their seat, this will be my final underground trip, the one before I must leave.
In his original post (👇🏽)
shares ten short poems, all relating to the London Underground (otherwise aptly named 'The Tube') - all are excellent. I chose to share the ones that resonated with me the most, but I recommend reading the original post.Mostly, they made me laugh and giggle out loud. I regularly get on and off the tube at Finsbury Park (or 'Krapy rub snif' - which works nicely if you know the area), and reading these felt so resonant - like Richard went back to moments in time in my own head and plucked the words right out.
I, too, have endured the unappreciated busker. I also have sighed in relief at losing mobile signal for 30 minutes of uninterrupted 'peace' - which means listening to 'the void' inside my noise-canceling headphones when nothing is playing (to drown out the 'eeeeehhhkk' and 'scrrruuuooueeehhp' of the thing hurtling through the tracks).
But the last short poem stopped me in my tracks. More and more, I keep noticing these little messages that life keeps leaving for me to remind me of my mortality.
Thank you
for the words and photos of light relief, reflection and connection. 🖤2.
Self-Lit — a poem by KC Trommer
From The Library
You’re humming through the streets, self-lit. I have to correct strangers who touch your head without asking, as if to bless you or to take a blessing from you. When we leave the city, you become a boy hunting locusts. Nature stuns you— you load up your pockets and want to bring it home with us, but Nature stays with nature, I say, a refrain learned from another mother. You cannot be unpuzzled by things, but you marshal all your sweet bravado for me, who tries but never beats you in a game of chess. I witness the rook and Queen moving inside your thinking, squaring and hewing to pathways of wins, losses. Childhood’s end is always menacing, apparent places of stars mark its outer limits. It heaves up in you when you lose, when you rage, when you’re afraid. Glowering out of a fever dream, your eyes shine as you confess in the dark I was the monster. You show me a hornet’s nest on a bed of cotton, hold it up as an offering. I wonder with you at what you hold— summer rivers that show bracken corners, eye agate marbles, daggerwings of our days in the city built of strangers, in a country built of sky. When I pull you close, what will flee trembles in you.
I live in a small town called Stroud, which sits at the bottom of 5 connecting valleys. I can leave my house and walk for 10 minutes in any direction and I will find myself surrounded by nature. The town itself is a freak show (indeed, this is where I belong), and was once described to me as 'the town that style forgot about'.
Once every week or two, I schlep myself to North London. The contrast between the city and a small countryside town is so stark. This line: "daggerwings of our days in the city built of strangers" is rather on point for describing my experience.
I grew up in Manila. The day I came to England, I remember looking out of the car window as we drove from Heathrow Airport to Gloucestershire and I saw SHEEP! On the side of the highway! I had never seen one before that isn't a cartoon. There was so much green of all shades, and I'd never seen a sky change from blue to grey, to blinding white all in a matter of hours.
I just knew of blazing hot, or torrential monsoons, and there was hardly a sky beyond the highway bridges and high-rise buildings.
Throughout my adolescence, I sought the intensity of big cities where I felt I would find my independence. And it still gives me that feeling - that I can do anything. But somehow, the solitude of nature has found me too.
3.
On ‘missing it’ — a quote from “The Prodigal Summer” by Barbara Kingsolver
From the Library
"Don't you miss it, any of it?"
...
'I couldn’t say.' She thought about it. 'Not cars or electric lights, not movies. Books I can get if I ask. But walking around in a library, putting my hands on books I never knew about, that I miss. Any thing else, I don’t know.”
She pondered some more. "I like the beach. My husband's family had a beach house in North Carolina."
"The beach doesn't count. I mean stuff invented by people."
"Books, then. Poems, scary stories, population genetics. All those pictures Mr. Audubon painted."
"What else?"
"Chocolate? and Nannie's apple cider. And my border collie, if he weren't dead. But he counts, domestic pets are inventions of man."
She closed her yes, fishing for the taste of something lost.
"And music, maybe? That's something I used to love."
In writing this post, I was imagining living in total solitude, somewhere in the arse end of a warm-climate country like Portugal. I thought about what I would miss.
It reminded me of this quote from "The Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver, which I share with you.* What made this scene from the book memorable for me was that all the things she would miss were… art. Books, poems, stories, paintings, chocolate and music.
The material things born of human creativity and self-expression that connect us with one another.
And dogs, obviously.
*This character is called Deanna, who lives in the woods as a lone conservationist. The rest you have to read.
✉️ PS…✉️
It took me ages this morning to look for the book from my many shelves. When I finally found it, I couldn't figure out a way of looking for the quote I wanted because there was no search bar.
I ended up buying the Kindle version in order to utilise the search bar. 🤷🏻♀️
If I lived in the woods, I would miss the search bar.
I can relate to this every time I see hills and mountains when I travel. “There was so much green of all shades, and I'd never seen a sky change from blue to grey, to blinding white all in a matter of hours.
I just knew of blazing hot, or torrential monsoons, and there was hardly a sky beyond the highway bridges and high-rise buildings.”
bowing applause to you! a superb three!