READING

Up until about fourteen the only books I had read were my parents Readers Digest book club books, and some westerns that my dad had.

I read a lot of comics and magazines especially football related. The football magazine Shoot I got weekly from the shop next door to our house--very handy that shop was.

Then I discovered the library.  Airdrie Library which I didn`t even know it existed until the day I wandered in by chance.

I`m writing something in more detail about that which I`ll post in due course.

In the meantime a couple of poems and examples of the eclectic nature of my reading.  Imaginative reading is reading to me regardless of the form.

Roy of the Rovers:  my favourite since I could kick a ball around my back garden, and still reading the anthology pictured below.

The Brother Karamazov: my all time favourite book even though I`ve only read it once.  That was when I was twenty and read it over the Christmas holidays from college.  I dispapeared to my room for that time as I couldn`t stop reading it, it really did blow my mind regarding what you could do with writing.  Heavens knows what my family thought I was up to!  I would get worried knocks on the door checking if I was okay.  `Just reading.`

Poems are below the images.

ROY OF THE ROVERS            

George Best to Jimmy Johnstone

A flick of the ball from Roy of the Rovers

To me.

Collecting it without breaking my stride

Weaving past imaginary opponents

Eagle eye the top corner of the net

My deadly right foot thunderbolt net bulging

Taking the rapture of the crowd in my stride.

George, Jimmy and Roy beaming the beam

Of the daily last minute goal.

We had done it again.

Dreaming was real.

The comic script inside my head

Inked and drawn in my back garden.

The clothes poles a tough defence.

The garage wall the one two

That fooled them every time.

The unstoppable blast against the top corner

Of the garden fence.

It was a dream I woke from

Not realising then

That I was building another dream

Within a dream.

Images stored with feeling

For this poem.

 

 THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV   

Crunching through knee high Russian snow.

Devouring pages of Dostoyevsky bread and vodka

Feeding my mind.

Burning thoughts into existence.

Murder, mayhem, good and evil square go in front of a burning log fire.

Can you say that the fledgling writer says to the murky candlelit room?

‘Och aye.’ Says Dostoyevsky!  ‘Dinnae muck aboot. Get in there with your

Aching soul, pull up a chair and tell your tale. 

Lay it bare, peel the skin off the face

Let the thoughts lie where they fall.’

I’ve never re visited the book.

Sometimes I doubt I even read it.

A memory picked up from someone else and re written for my own end.

Tell you a story.

Two cousins sitting beers in hand cherry picking the past.

Two cousins sitting beers in hand remembered white sheets Chaplain, Keaton,

Beamed along a smoky beam.

Two cousins sitting beers in hand nodding heads at the shared memory.

A projector stuttering to a stop

Mid Chaplain funny walk twirling walking stick.

The white screen sheet tumbling from the window

Crumpling Keaton’s deadpan face.

Hand up I’m one of the cousins.

Two hands up if I wasn’t even stardust in my daddy’s eye on movie nights.

Thing is: I was there.

Thing is:  I read that book.

Thing is:  Fiction or fact that’s me.

 

 Published under the title Dostoyevsky in  Southlight magazine issue 26.