Neil Fulwood at Teviot Water Gardens, Scotland
—Poetry by Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, UK
EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I
wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes
shaking me awake to tell me, “The game's
afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi
on a raft and elude a mob in company with the
Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. I
wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a
moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to
sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace
and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always
afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and
the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I
wanted the world to be what they had promised
me it was going to be—instead of the tawdry,
lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road
I wanted the extravagant world-building of anyone
who ever put pen to paper with a head full
of rocket ships and planets and orbital stations.
I wanted spice mines and alternative histories
and every single one of the things to come,
in whatever twisted shape. Zeppelins floating
monstrously silent above strange cityscapes.
I wanted time machines and crazed scientists
and the full range of robots from the almost human
to the iconically psychotic. I wanted heat rays
and laser beams and enemy fire spewing wide
of its target. I wanted holograms guiding the action
like Hamlet’s father. Droids who could moonlight
in Merchant Ivory productions. Meteors and
comets and asteroid fields, the grungy ships of
space pirates, the long sleek battle cruisers of inter-
galactic tyrants mushrooming into fireballs off the
shoulder of wherever. C-beams glittering. Grand
shuddering set-pieces of Wagnerian intensity.
Moments in time.
I wanted drawing rooms edgy with suspects
and all eyes on me, the big reveal unspooling.
I wanted the elegant self-assurance of Poirot,
the impeccably mannered low cunning
of Jane Marple. I wanted high-speed car chases
across wasteland or building sites, villains
thumped and cuffed and slammed across the
bonnet of a 3-litre Ford Consul. A pint of cask-
conditioned ale savoured in an Oxford pub, Morse
discoursing on the classics. Eighty-shilling and a
whisky chaser in an Edinburgh bar, Rebus waxing
lyrical on good bands and bad men. A pint of
bitter in a Nottingham dive and Resnick remin-
iscing about the night Milt Jackson came to town.
I wanted lands fabled and fabulous, far from
the drab and blunted ennui of the everyday.
I wanted the Faraway Tree, enchanted worlds
rotating through its upper branches. I wanted
wardrobes, broom cupboards—hell, even
washrooms—that opened into anywhere that was
better, more electric with adventure, than here.
I wanted endless winters and idyllic summers and
days that would sing with mystery and romance.
Lotus afternoons. Nights of moonlit intrigue
heady with the scent of anything exotic. I wanted
the mountain pass that gave me Shangri-La. An
exit sign for the Twilight Zone. The precise
location of the end of the rainbow.
I wanted every hero of myth and legend to be
suddenly enamoured of my credentials as sidekick.
Or failing them, any number of the more colourful
villains. But better still, my name in lights in the
starring role. I wanted my foreseeable future em-
broiled in sword and sorcery, witchcraft and
wizardry, action, adventure and alliteration.
I wanted to introduce myself to my mortal enemy
with all the grace and dignity of Inigo Montoya
and then straight up-end the blackguard. To
clamber onto the roofs of carriages, a speeding
steam loco hurtling trestle bridges and thundering
toward tunnels, defeating the last knife-wielding
henchman just in time. Infiltrate circuses and secret
societies, slum it in gambling dens and opium dens
and particularly in dens of iniquity. I wanted the
hair’s-breadth escape, hair perfect, clutching some
priceless McGuffin.
I wanted life in widescreen and Technicolor,
not this drab palette of joyless reality. I wanted
Brigadoon appearing at random in a skirl of
music and glamour, not the festering brutalism
of Whitehall. Life larger than life at twenty-four
frames per second and every cut an ecstatic truth
not this real-time footage from an unchanging
angle, reality TV as hospital car park security
footage. I wanted the mundane to blip past in
montage, a series of dissolves instead of team
meetings and seminars. Lightbulb ideas to explode
into actuality, not die the death of a thousand peer
reviews. I wanted the lone wolf, not the team
player, the renegade, not the good all-rounder,
the anti-hero, not the role model. The unpredictable
over the safe and sound. Full speed ahead
and no shits given in respect of torpedos.
Dragon boats, not this ship of fools. I wanted
to take that one-in-a-million shot at the impossible
and have it come good, and to hell with naysayers,
feasibility studies and the laws of physics.
I wanted a soundtrack of Beethoven and Brahms
and Mahler, not the sound of one hand clapping.
The epic with all its extremes and excesses
not the nail-paring of minimalism. I wanted to live
and rage and roar and fight, not tick the minutes
and hours and days away in a stifled yawn
of standard operating procedures and policy docu-
ments. I wanted every office block to disintegrate
in the great levelling of make-work. I wanted the
alarm clocks and punch clocks of the world
pounded into irrelevance, the human construct of
time unstitched and reshuffled into a patchwork of
the metaphysical regarded as pure fiction only
because the small grey men who categorised it
didn’t have enough imagination. I wanted some
grand and unapologetic iconoclast to break all the
rules; I wanted their grasp to exceed their reach
and stretch into the infinite to seize that blazing
core of possibility and drag it back and harness it,
finally, to a small and shaded world too-long sold
on the banal.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
The problem for a lot of people is that they don't really know what they want. They have vague desire: to 'do something creative' or to earn more money or 'to be free', but they can't really pin down what it is precisely that they want. So they drift from one thing to another, enjoying some moments and hating others, but never really finding fulfillment or success. (…) This is why it's hard to lead a successful life (whatever that means to you) when you don't know what you want.
― John C. Parkin, Fuck It
_____________________
Our thanks to Neil Fulwood of Nottingham today for his tour de force! Neil is one of our long-time Snake pals; his first post was 6/24/15.
And today will be the last in Steff Echeverria’s Visual Journaling
workshop series at Women’s Wisdom Art in Sacramento. Click on Medusa's UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS (http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html) for details about this and other future poetry events in the NorCal area as we wind up National Poetry Month—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.
______________________
—Medusa
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I
wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes
shaking me awake to tell me, “The game's
afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi
on a raft and elude a mob in company with the
Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. I
wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a
moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to
sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace
and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always
afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and
the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I
wanted the world to be what they had promised
me it was going to be—instead of the tawdry,
lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road
I wanted the extravagant world-building of anyone
who ever put pen to paper with a head full
of rocket ships and planets and orbital stations.
I wanted spice mines and alternative histories
and every single one of the things to come,
in whatever twisted shape. Zeppelins floating
monstrously silent above strange cityscapes.
I wanted time machines and crazed scientists
and the full range of robots from the almost human
to the iconically psychotic. I wanted heat rays
and laser beams and enemy fire spewing wide
of its target. I wanted holograms guiding the action
like Hamlet’s father. Droids who could moonlight
in Merchant Ivory productions. Meteors and
comets and asteroid fields, the grungy ships of
space pirates, the long sleek battle cruisers of inter-
galactic tyrants mushrooming into fireballs off the
shoulder of wherever. C-beams glittering. Grand
shuddering set-pieces of Wagnerian intensity.
Moments in time.
I wanted drawing rooms edgy with suspects
and all eyes on me, the big reveal unspooling.
I wanted the elegant self-assurance of Poirot,
the impeccably mannered low cunning
of Jane Marple. I wanted high-speed car chases
across wasteland or building sites, villains
thumped and cuffed and slammed across the
bonnet of a 3-litre Ford Consul. A pint of cask-
conditioned ale savoured in an Oxford pub, Morse
discoursing on the classics. Eighty-shilling and a
whisky chaser in an Edinburgh bar, Rebus waxing
lyrical on good bands and bad men. A pint of
bitter in a Nottingham dive and Resnick remin-
iscing about the night Milt Jackson came to town.
I wanted lands fabled and fabulous, far from
the drab and blunted ennui of the everyday.
I wanted the Faraway Tree, enchanted worlds
rotating through its upper branches. I wanted
wardrobes, broom cupboards—hell, even
washrooms—that opened into anywhere that was
better, more electric with adventure, than here.
I wanted endless winters and idyllic summers and
days that would sing with mystery and romance.
Lotus afternoons. Nights of moonlit intrigue
heady with the scent of anything exotic. I wanted
the mountain pass that gave me Shangri-La. An
exit sign for the Twilight Zone. The precise
location of the end of the rainbow.
I wanted every hero of myth and legend to be
suddenly enamoured of my credentials as sidekick.
Or failing them, any number of the more colourful
villains. But better still, my name in lights in the
starring role. I wanted my foreseeable future em-
broiled in sword and sorcery, witchcraft and
wizardry, action, adventure and alliteration.
I wanted to introduce myself to my mortal enemy
with all the grace and dignity of Inigo Montoya
and then straight up-end the blackguard. To
clamber onto the roofs of carriages, a speeding
steam loco hurtling trestle bridges and thundering
toward tunnels, defeating the last knife-wielding
henchman just in time. Infiltrate circuses and secret
societies, slum it in gambling dens and opium dens
and particularly in dens of iniquity. I wanted the
hair’s-breadth escape, hair perfect, clutching some
priceless McGuffin.
I wanted life in widescreen and Technicolor,
not this drab palette of joyless reality. I wanted
Brigadoon appearing at random in a skirl of
music and glamour, not the festering brutalism
of Whitehall. Life larger than life at twenty-four
frames per second and every cut an ecstatic truth
not this real-time footage from an unchanging
angle, reality TV as hospital car park security
footage. I wanted the mundane to blip past in
montage, a series of dissolves instead of team
meetings and seminars. Lightbulb ideas to explode
into actuality, not die the death of a thousand peer
reviews. I wanted the lone wolf, not the team
player, the renegade, not the good all-rounder,
the anti-hero, not the role model. The unpredictable
over the safe and sound. Full speed ahead
and no shits given in respect of torpedos.
Dragon boats, not this ship of fools. I wanted
to take that one-in-a-million shot at the impossible
and have it come good, and to hell with naysayers,
feasibility studies and the laws of physics.
I wanted a soundtrack of Beethoven and Brahms
and Mahler, not the sound of one hand clapping.
The epic with all its extremes and excesses
not the nail-paring of minimalism. I wanted to live
and rage and roar and fight, not tick the minutes
and hours and days away in a stifled yawn
of standard operating procedures and policy docu-
ments. I wanted every office block to disintegrate
in the great levelling of make-work. I wanted the
alarm clocks and punch clocks of the world
pounded into irrelevance, the human construct of
time unstitched and reshuffled into a patchwork of
the metaphysical regarded as pure fiction only
because the small grey men who categorised it
didn’t have enough imagination. I wanted some
grand and unapologetic iconoclast to break all the
rules; I wanted their grasp to exceed their reach
and stretch into the infinite to seize that blazing
core of possibility and drag it back and harness it,
finally, to a small and shaded world too-long sold
on the banal.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
The problem for a lot of people is that they don't really know what they want. They have vague desire: to 'do something creative' or to earn more money or 'to be free', but they can't really pin down what it is precisely that they want. So they drift from one thing to another, enjoying some moments and hating others, but never really finding fulfillment or success. (…) This is why it's hard to lead a successful life (whatever that means to you) when you don't know what you want.
― John C. Parkin, Fuck It
_____________________
Our thanks to Neil Fulwood of Nottingham today for his tour de force! Neil is one of our long-time Snake pals; his first post was 6/24/15.
And today will be the last in Steff Echeverria’s Visual Journaling
workshop series at Women’s Wisdom Art in Sacramento. Click on Medusa's UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS (http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html) for details about this and other future poetry events in the NorCal area as we wind up National Poetry Month—and keep an eye on this link and on the Kitchen for happenings that might pop up during the week.
______________________
—Medusa
For more about National Poetry Month,
including ways to celebrate, see
https://poets.org/national-poetry-month.
And sign up for Poem-a-Day at
https://poets.org/poem-a-day/, plus
read about Poem in Your Pocket Day
(this year, April 27) at
https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day/.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
including ways to celebrate, see
https://poets.org/national-poetry-month.
And sign up for Poem-a-Day at
https://poets.org/poem-a-day/, plus
read about Poem in Your Pocket Day
(this year, April 27) at
https://poets.org/national-poetry-month/poem-your-pocket-day/.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
