WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIVE PERFORMANCES

at the QMU from toadinmud.co.uk

Well, well, well, we’re getting into our stride again, up and staggering. So we invite you to come and be entertained:

POETRY, PROSE, DRAMA, MUSIC and etc.

LIVE WRITING PERFORMANCES and OPEN MIC,
The Lacuna Cafe
Queen Margaret Union (the QMU)
Wednesday 31st January 2007
8pm prompt(ish).

You may have heard about it already. If you haven’t, now you know and come along. And if you have, where are you?

Our “Writer’s Wednesday” is an event aiming to provide a venue for new and current writers to perform their works and for others to be entertained by new talent. In the past few months we have featured guests; Liz Lochhead, Alan Bisset and Alan Riach and hope to invite them back and others in the near future.

As informal and unpretentious as we are capable of being, anyone of any discipline and perceived talent is encouraged to come along and perform. Either by prior arrangement or on an open mic basis. If you are not a writer yourself then we invite you to come along and enjoy the performances. We begin at 8pm and usually perform for around an hour and a half, there is coffee (discounted), snacks and of course, beer and stronger beverages available to purchase. Also expect some form of “audience participation”, with the chance of prizes for creative effort. Afterwards we retire downstairs to discuss the performances, or play pool. Its a laugh.

If you do wish to perform on Wednesday night, contact us at this address (toad@toadinmud.co.uk) giving as little or as much detail as you like. (Number of works, number of lines in works, estimate length of performance etc.) If you prefer, contact me, Tom Coles, on 0792 635 0161. If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

We also run a website, www.toadinmud.co.uk featuring works from Wednesday Nights and else where, check the site for performance times and upcoming events, as well as seeing what the writers are producing. On the site you can also hear Podcasts (audio downloads) of previous performances.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Coles

toad@toadinmud.co.uk

You had ten,
I was skint to patching point
and lord knows
only two of them get aired
or submerged
on a regular basis
anyway.

Anyhow, you’ll like the buyer.
He brown-papers parts of dead saints
in his Vatican office,
then posts them
to those in need of faith power-ups.

Unfortunately the good-guy corpse stock
is waning faster than demand,
and far be it for me -
or you for that matter -
to deny desperate pastors
teetering on a lapse
their decomposing digit of comfort.

It doesn’t matter
that you have never
fasted, martyred your arse,
been chased with torches,
preached kindness, or ever
really suffered.

Your fingers
will age falsely fast, gaining gravity
like coffee-stained school project magna cartas,
but the rest of you
should be dandy for years yet.

Oh that? Not to worry.
I know my obligations.
At your shoulder
like a sticky nit, I’ll transcribe your memoirs,
brush your teeth,
tug your faux-saintly sceptre to bliss
of a morning, even
head out in the storms of October
for your shopping. And baby,
we can afford the nice stuff now.

Your tits are rubbish, your trough of wealth
makes me want to drag you
by the ponytail
through acervated cave guano.

Your threatening/sexy strut
implies self-sodomy with one
of your pistols, which you wear
on your hips like zirconia
stud earrings, and your accent is meh.

But your deaths, Lara, are what make you hot.
What other girl can swallow dive,
legs a barbed tailfeather, onto a carpet
of unforgiving rock?

What girl can crumple
with all the clatter of a lifesize model skeleton,
its wire snipped?

What girl can take a javelin
right up the vagina, out through the left eye,
then sigh and tumble sideways like you do?

Does anyone ignite so easily?
Would anyone else, richly aflame,
wander sure-footed, sans primal howl,
before expiring in the sponge of moss?

I don’t think so.

And what kind of landed lady
writhes and bucks with such orgasmic energy
when she drowns in a deep sea cavern?

Or swaps elocution
for electrocution
in the kitchen of a capsizing icebreaker?

Or remains unbloody, intact,
death-gripping her pistolbrace,
after getting her spine massaged
by a tumbling boulder?

What girl could meet all these ends
and still come back for another run
at a ledge they can never reach?

What other girl, Lara,
would die for me,
not for my love, or to save my neck,
but just to stir, to rub, to make
me damn her wretched luck?

Normal Service Really HAS been resumed!

The next LIVE Performances at the QMU will be held:

The Queen Margaret Union
Lacuna Cafe
Wednesday 17th January 2007
8pm Promptish

We are looking to achieve a slight branching out.

If any of you are musically, and more important, lyrically (lyrics being the illegitimate son of verse, to be purposefully controversial) minded then we would love to have people give us some sort of interlude, to regale us with tales accompanied by some sort of instrument. This instrument may be your voice, it may be a pair of coconut halves, it may be some tin cans, a guitar. Go crazy.

Also, we are soliciting actors. Poetry is drama, drama is poetry.

If you wish to perform, don’t hesitate to drop a email off to toad@toadinmud.co.uk, or simply arrive on the night with something to give and we shall accomodate.

Thank you,

toadinmud.

It’s hard to get lost
In such a small space,
But dosage to tear
to turpentine fashion
high-heels. ‘just’…
out of place
I mean, what is appropriate when one side looks
Thesameasthenext?

No reflections of birds
No crimes of passion
Prefab Sq. foots of depleting
Slow-motion.
“through,- lacklustre surprise
(nondisguised)
I can’t move something temporary.

Upon,     and Fond of well-loved Blonde
It’s company decides;
That
anywhere can be special with just the right people.
And teased by the breeze,
stealing words
from the sequel.
The scarf round my neck
Never warms my cold toes,
I guess there’s not much
Between two Portakabin windows.

Once, long time, ago, crawling through a window, I recalled a pleasant
recollection I’d once had some good few months previously. I’d been sitting
near a small hand-painted bucket at the time.
Of course, my solicitor was there, chaking curled fingers into my furred
depths, mutering as she did about colour, as if that was the crux of the
issue. For Jupiter!.and it was whilst recalling this and other true facts of
my very own life, that, and I remind you that this is whilst I was
recollecting, that I remembered a recent chance meeting with my dear old Mr.
Armitage Shanks.
“Er, note-eh ben-eh, lad.ready? The following if you please: Shanks comma
Armitage comma.pause.question mark new question (capital dee lad) do females
comma human comma know of said Shanks question mark. End.”
Well, tenderly I urged my own tongue into an almost inaccessible cavity of
my young lads self esteem as I cast my eyes over the note.

“Tut”

I said.

“Tut tut.”

Much later my legal paraphernaliant raised her skirts and gently tugged down
those sweet sails of England. Oh a hideous aroma did arise, like yeast with
dough only backwards and worse! I’d rather chuckle on my own moundings, or
steal eggs from the ravens! But before all of that.

“Tut!”

Then, through at last, I fell to the inside floor with the thump of parsnips
without the grace of the carrot. I was in! Old Armitage had been right.

To Be Continued.

If I were a man
I would be a baby-immature,
Unable to command the respect
Of my fellow men
Or garner the attention of women,
Certainly unable to,
In the eye of a market storm,
Write up the changing prices
On that chalk board,
Look down into the pit
With its cubicles,
Their short desks, round-dial black telephones and lamps,
Along with the Astor tea-room in Calle Junín
The last remains of Dickens in this world.

The previous night I had lapped up
A raven-head’s black cunt;
As she pushed herself murmuring into my mouth
I thought of the English cricket team:
How they were mentally weak.

Somebody had to be Judas.
Don’t think I don’t see that.
Bad luck

for me.
Good news, of course,
for Christians everywhere.

It was such a strange week:
the febrile arrival -
Jesusmania -

the nervous soldiery,
the angry shaken beards.
The transaction.

And then that wholly awful night -
“Is it me, Lord? Is it me?”
That business with the bread.

Then - general hubbub,
upturned tables …
You try flouncing out in sandals.

They say he agonised for hours,
crying “Lord, I am not worthy!”
Was I worthy?

Through me was accomplished
the Redemption.
I could not

not kiss him
in the garden,
in the torches’ flare.

So I went down,
to perpetual suffering, I suppose -
to eternal ignominy, I expect …

There was never more joy in heaven.
One homecoming king.
One fatted calf.