dear reader

How long ago was it now? Can’t remember… ten. Let’s say ten. Yonks in other words.

Anyway, yonks ago, I joined a forum, a ‘poetry’ forum. The idea was to share poems and get feedback. The experience was so poisonous and acrimonious and lots of other words that end in ‘…ious’, including ‘ode’ that I retreated from it very quickly, although not quickly enough for some - maybe I left a bucket of sick resentments behind which I forgot to go back and collect but it’s too late now, the malevolence and dankness no doubt wretch on unabated, in my absence, I'm glad to say.

Maybe it was just me and now all harmony and compassion has been restored. Two of the friends I met on that forum, Sue and Jerry, I’m privileged to remain in touch with. The cascade of offensiveness and vitriol and hatred amazed me. I was less exposed then, than I am now, to the tide of effluence which pours out of the internet and found it utterly repugnant and shocking at the time. Sadly, I am more or less used to the abuse and vilification which I encounter in virtuality these days, and so, somehow I try not to have too much of an opinion about it.

I mention all this, in view of the fact that I have recently decided to archive a proportion of my written scribbles, (in longhand - including juvenile, drunken and contaminated expositions) on the wonderful world of the web, (which definitely gives us what we deserve) and in this way I offer to broadcast and share my words, words, words, with intelligent consenting readers.

So far I have had one word of complaint, from a man called John, who said ‘Do you know how irritating this is?’  Yes, I know, is the answer, I’ve been told by the police: I choose to refuse to take the blame for other people’s offended attitudes, whilst at the same time I am sorry for causing individuals to blame me for their bad feelings. I only feel ashamed, that it is something less than my words themselves which have caused offence but the mere fact of the manner of my inept attempts at promotion which provoked John’s reaction. At least he said how he felt, I respect him for that. It’s rare these days to be given an honest opinion. Although people saying they feel angry is perhaps more common than people saying they feel touched and moved.

I’m spilt in two about using the internet with all its pernicious implications but I’ve decided to take the rough with the smooth, at one and the same time I do understand that someone like John can have their subtle sensibilities easily tripped off by a robotic and unwarranted intrusion, which I wince at in regret, I confess.

My poor little poems, on the other hand, have remained mostly un-irritating to anybody, except in private correspondence and ephemeral performance, for thirty odd years. I chose to keep them unpublished and mainly hidden from human eyes, during this time, perhaps to avoid the pain of conflict and attrition which I know they’re likely to stir. Some of the reasoning for this, also, is that these poems are not always that brilliant – they are squibs of expression which served the purpose of helping me to project my thoughts onto paper, which can be burned, instead of into conflict, which can wreak untold damage. They were written sometimes when it was therapeutically essential for me to do so, or go screaming down the road with a hedge-trimmer eviscerating puppies. Maybe the sketches of madness, which they sometimes are, will be of interest and recognition to other people who are trying to find a landmark in the avaricious jungle of life’s unlaundered lunacy.

I didn’t get any thanks for not irritating anyone I have to say. I didn’t feel good about avoiding conflict and provocation by staying in the desert of splendid isolation, keeping my cave paintings hidden from the sunlight either. In exposing my scribbles, I have to take the risk upon myself that the same sunlight of perusal could degrade and fade and dissolve my puny etchings or occasionally illuminate them under the bright ray of readership.

I am massively encouraged by the positive response I have had so far. Moved and touched also!!!  It’s so personal and intimate and brave and considerate of people to bother to read my poems - and to go further and even bother to make comments and to go further still in some cases and write to me personally. Of course I prefer correspondence to contempt! Of course I prefer temporal recognition to critical immortality. Emily Bronte was read by a mere six people in her lifetime but she will be read for all time because she is an eternal genius. The only thing that she and I have in common is that we come from the same town, Bradford, which, as Jamie said, quite rightly, is a violent but friendly place.

Probably the fact that I have decided to publish my poems is an admission that they are unlikely to grow into great Oaks but will remain like preserved little acorns and pressed leaves or flowers kept in between the pages of books produced by greater minds than mine will ever become.

So thank you once again those of you, among the magnificent six or seven, who have read a few of my scrawls, my compulsive etch a sketches my metro mementoes, my ‘advanced graffiti’ as Bill Molan once called my rhymes. I am very grateful to you all, for your support and interest.

Cheers – love peace and dolly mixtures –

Martin