Still on senses

Whilst we're talking and thinking about the senses...wouldn't you just know it...I have a poem about senses too (in fact I fear my catchphrase is fast becoming 'hey! I have a poem about that!'). Anyway, here's the poem:


Seeing isn't everything

I may not notice colours much
Or wallpaper (at all)
But I will hear every pin drop
Every baby sniff
Every change in the wind's direction
And I can hear quite clearly
The bloke three doors down
Who cries himself to sleep at night
Too often for my liking

The furniture may all be rearranged
And would I care?
Or care about caring?
But I can smell the difference
Between good and bad
Between a joke and something far more serious
I smell the changing face of sweetness
It's amazing
Try not to miss it

I may not be aware
Of changes in your hair
Or new jeans or a coat or earrings
But I taste most competently
The extra lemon juice
The way too much salt
I will notice and enjoy
The complete and fuller flavour
It takes some time

And though I try hard
To see better
To see colour and shape
All the time I am feeling
And knowing
And feeling it all instead
It's another way of seeing
A feeling type of seeing
A purely personal point of view


RF 2006



To be honest with you I sort of love this poem. In fact if I'm completely honest (and I do try to be, remember...) I love all my poems (which is very different to saying I think they're brilliant or anything - love is a complicated business...). Still...even saying I love them...that's a bit of a faux pas, isn't it? Whoever admits that? What kind of idiot! What vanity! What insanity! How absolutely not the way people speak in 'Poetry Review'! But luckily none of that stuff bothers me so I can just love them. And why? Because they have all done something for me in some way...made me laugh or made me realise something... some have even made me new friends. This one, for example, helped me understand how I work, think and see things (in every sense). It was also something like a letter to some of my more visually orientated friends who laugh at me (in a good-natured way...) for not noticing their new interior decorations and such. I wrote about having a relatively weak visual sense in connection with visual art too (back here) for anyone who wasn't reading back in September 08 (and who is interested) by the way.

'Seeing isn't everything' is about senses but of course it's about writing too (as are most things on some level...). As I entered Poetry World in the late 90s/early 00s I was soon aware that compared to a lot of poetry in literary magazines for example, my poems were not particularly huge on visual imagery and details. It was a bit weird to begin with and I did wonder if there was something really wrong with me! Then I wrote this poem and it all became clear (well, a bit clearer...). I do see...I just see through walls! Ah ha (as Alan Partridge might say)! It was like a light really did switch on somewhere in my head. Eureka...and all that.

Then, even better, the poem went on to do quite well for me. It is in my book and it's on the website in the section called 'Seeing and believing' but it was also published in the North-east Scotland literary magazine 'Pushing out the Boat' (issue 6). This was interesting because generally speaking literary magazines don't really get that excited about my poems! In fact often I can hear the editor thinking 'who is this moron?' from however many miles away they are...sometimes they even write me odd notes. But really who let the administrators take over the asylum? Oh, that's another whole post...maybe later in the week...maybe later in the year...

x