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Candia Comes Clean

~ Candid cultural comments from the Isles of Wonder

Tag Archives: Stain Devils

Old Michaelmas Day 2

28 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by Candia in Arts, Humour, Literature, mythology, Nature, Poetry, Suttonford, Theatre, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

aniline dye, arras, Banda, blackberries, chamberlain, Dabitoff, Dunsinane, Heaney, Jackson Pollock, Lady of Lake, Lydia seller of purple, Maud Gonne, Michaelmas Day, multitudinous seas, Ophelia, Plath, Polonius, Stain Devils, Tread softly, Vanish, Yeats

The accompanying historic post:

Okay, okay, so I went out and did it!

I can see that, Carrie remarked, looking down at my nails with a

disapproving glance. You’ll need to make an appointment with

‘Beauty and The Beast’ to sort you out with acrylic falsies.

Not me.  I’ll just cut them down and file them.  I’m a hands-on kind of

girl and couldn’t bear to have lily white fronds for hands like a Lady of the

Lake, or a drowned Ophelia.  I used to have digits like this when I started

teaching, back in the days of the spirit reproductive Banda

machine!  Oh, the smell of methylated spirits!  It gives me quite a

Proustian flashback to the classrooms of the Seventies.  So poetic too-

spirit duplicators, or spirit masters.  Sounds like the muse of Yeats or

some such bard.

Yeah, agreed Carrie.  And if he’d copied his lines for Maud Gonne:

‘Tread softly for you tread on my dreams’ and left them out in the

sun, then posterity would never have had them.

How’s that? I asked, not normally so obtuse.

Because the ultraviolet light used to fade anything produced in that

antiquated way, so the aniline dye of the reproduced type would have

been ‘mauve gone’.

Very funny, I muttered.  I don’t like her taking over my comic role.

Anyway, you got in before the Devilish deadline, said Carrie, referring

to our prior conversation (see previous post).

I did.  All are safely stowed, like Polonius behind the arras.  Well,

at any rate, they are in the freezer.

Ah, you are an inspiration to us all, Candia.  And no doubt..

Yes, I did write a poem about it, I interrupted her.  Here!

And I flicked a Jackson Pollock-stained sheet of A4 across the table,

but its patterns were fruit juice thumbprints and nothing more

sinister.

Carrie read it silently while I sipped my well-deserved coffee.

Blackberrying

I’ve been told: poetry isn’t worth it

and neither is gathering blackberries.

It’s impossible to preserve Autumn,

or capture experience in a poem.

Yet I find one or two juicy morsels,

simmering away on my mental back burners.

Lately I have looked madder and madder.

Wood pigeons witter away suddenly.

I destroy a few spider artefacts,

thumb and finger poised; then quite dizzy,

I step back and squelch in a rabbit corpse.

Maybe it isn’t worth it after all.

Blood-red clots trail from the tail of my car,

to my front door and the hall becomes

a purple passage. My bag sags with gore.

Have I perpetrated a massacre?

I look as guilty as a chamberlain

in a castle, somewhere near Dunsinane,

with my clothing liberally spattered

by inedible, indelible stains.

Fierce scratches indicate a struggle.  Heave!

I’ll shove this in the freezer and then think

what I’ll do with it.  I survey my hands.

All the perfumes of an airport will not..

What? Will all the multitudinous seas

incarnadine et cetera? They won’t.

I regret time spent on all this fieldwork-

to produce the definitive poem

on blackberrying.  Heaney, Plath did it.

I’ve spat out phrases not pithy enough;

I cannot find a rhyme to match ‘maggot’

in a poem that isn’t about sex,

or the nostalgia of a butcher’s shop.

Gather ye brambles while ye may– that’s good,

but I could murder a cup of coffee.

Reviewers, like thorns, will rip me to shreds.

If pricked, I will bleed- through my gabardine.

Yet greed makes me garner all the pickings.

Lack of appreciation will sting me,

like all the nettles I had to wade through.

I’ve spent a King’s ransom on Vanish and

Dabitoff and Stain Devils; also on

opaque nail varnish, so I won’t have hands

like Lydia, that seller of purple,

or a sufferer of Porphyria.

My cuticles will not be underlined.

My children will rise up and call me sad,

for wearing magenta, indigo and

violet, when heliotrope is out.

Trying to sum up Mother Nature’s not

all it’s cracked up to be, like rotten cobs.

Ideas should be on a rolling boil,

if they are to come to a setting point.

Maybe then hues will glow through verse’s glass,

well-labelled, stored in the mind’s dark pantry

until they are taken out and savoured

on the raw, grey days of freezing winter.

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Old Michaelmas Day 2

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Candia in Education, Humour, Literature, Nature, Poetry, Suttonford, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Banda machine, blackberrying, Dabitoff, Dunsinane, Heaney, Jackson Pollock, Lady of the Lake, Lydia, Maud Gonne, methylated spirits, Michaelmas, Ophelia, Plath, Polonius, Porphyria, spirit duplicator, spirit master, Stain Devils, Vanish, Yeats

Okay, okay, so I went out and did it!

I can see that, Carrie remarked, looking down at my nails with a

disapproving glance. You’ll need to make an appointment with

‘Beauty and The Beast’ to sort you out with acrylic falsies.

Not me.  I’ll just cut them down and file them.  I’m a hands-on kind of

girl and couldn’t bear to have lily white fronds for hands like a Lady of the

Lake, or a drowned Ophelia.  I used to have digits like this when I started

teaching, back in the days of the spirit reproductive Banda

machine!  Oh, the smell of methylated spirits!  It gives me quite a

Proustian flashback to the classrooms of the Seventies.  So poetic too-

spirit duplicators, or spirit masters.  Sounds like the muse of Yeats or

some such bard.

Yeah, agreed Carrie.  And if he’d copied his lines for Maud Gonne:

‘Tread softly for you tread on my dreams’ and left them out in the

sun, then posterity would never have had them.

How’s that? I asked, not normally so obtuse.

Because the ultraviolet light used to fade anything produced in that

antiquated way, so the aniline dye of the reproduced type would have

been ‘mauve gone’.

Very funny, I muttered.  I don’t like her taking over my comic role.

Vintage Banda Spirit Duplicator Fluid Motor Oil Tin Can - 1 Imperial Gallon

Anyway, you got in before the Devilish deadline, said Carrie, referring

to our prior conversation (see previous post).

I did.  All are safely stowed, like Polonius behind the arras.  Well,

at any rate, they are in the freezer.

Ah, you are an inspiration to us all, Candia.  And no doubt..

Yes, I did write a poem about it, I interrupted her.  Here!

And I flicked a Jackson Pollock-stained sheet of A4 across the table,

but its patterns were fruit juice thumbprints and nothing more

sinister.

Carrie read it silently while I sipped my well-deserved coffee.

Blackberrying


I’ve been told: poetry isn’t worth it

and neither is gathering blackberries.

It’s impossible to preserve Autumn,

or capture experience in a poem.

Yet I find one or two juicy morsels,

simmering away on my mental back burners.

Lately I have looked madder and madder.

Wood pigeons witter away suddenly.

I destroy a few spider artefacts,

thumb and finger poised; then quite dizzy,

I step back and squelch in a rabbit corpse.

Maybe it isn’t worth it after all.

Blood-red clots trail from the tail of my car,

to my front door and the hall becomes

a purple passage. My bag sags with gore.

Have I perpetrated a massacre?

I look as guilty as a chamberlain

in a castle, somewhere near Dunsinane,

with my clothing liberally spattered

by inedible, indelible stains.

Fierce scratches indicate a struggle.  Heave!

I’ll shove this in the freezer and then think

what I’ll do with it.  I survey my hands.

All the perfumes of an airport will not..

What? Will all the multitudinous seas

incarnadine et cetera? They won’t.

I regret time spent on all this fieldwork-

to produce the definitive poem

on blackberrying.  Heaney, Plath did it.

I’ve spat out phrases not pithy enough;

I cannot find a rhyme to match ‘maggot’

in a poem that isn’t about sex,

or the nostalgia of a butcher’s shop.

Gather ye brambles while ye may– that’s good,

but I could murder a cup of coffee.

Reviewers, like thorns, will rip me to shreds.

If pricked, I will bleed- through my gabardine.

Yet greed makes me garner all the pickings.

Lack of appreciation will sting me,

like all the nettles I had to wade through.

I’ve spent a King’s ransom on Vanish and

Dabitoff and Stain Devils; also on

opaque nail varnish, so I won’t have hands

like Lydia, that seller of purple,

or a sufferer of Porphyria.

My cuticles will not be underlined.

My children will rise up and call me sad,

for wearing magenta, indigo and

violet, when heliotrope is out.

Trying to sum up Mother Nature’s not

all it’s cracked up to be, like rotten cobs.

Ideas should be on a rolling boil,

if they are to come to a setting point.

Maybe then hues will glow through verse’s glass,

well-labelled, stored in the mind’s dark pantry

until they are taken out and savoured

on the raw, grey days of freezing winter.

Share this:

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  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Print
  • Tumblr
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Like this:

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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