Cathy Flower:

 For nearly two decades Cathy Flower has been writing and performing poetry in Australia and the UK. Since arriving in East London (2004) she has performed at William Blake's 250th Birthday: Tate Britain, 1st & 2nd Sundays: The Colony Room, Book Club Boutique: Blacks Members Bar, Worm World: Foundry, Unplugged and The Spoken Space: The Poetry Cafe, Raw: The Abbey Tavern and Central Station, Jazz Verse Juke Box: Ronnie Scotts, Spoonful of Poison: Rhythm Factory, The Legion and The Victoria, Speak Easy Cafe: Shunt, Apples & Snakes, Utter!Cats and Vintage Poison Presents Killers: Whitechapel Art Gallery, Y Tuesday: The Three Kings and many other London haunts.

CD & Book(let)

CD: Meniscus Cathy Flower Poetry

Available through the Saison Poetry Library, Level  5 Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, SE1 8XX and for sale at Eastside Books 166 Brick Lane, London, E1 6RU.

Book(let): Poetry is the Sight Within - Eight Short Poems. 

At present, independent distribution.

A New School Yo-Yo

Oh (pause) do not despair

Your right of passage has done you fair

Yet abiding all takes, you encountered mistakes

Snowed under once more with veil (pause) Questionnaire

Seeing is believing

Doing is living

There are always ways and means

To reach your inner beam.

A buffet welcomes you

You may not see it

You avoid the opportunity?

Fear? No welcome prize?

Some cope and handle

Others scramble

Whist you try to decide again (pause)

Through the aisle of vast choice

What to choose, which voice?

What to taste, which course (pause)

Of action shall you devote

This pathetic stem that you are?

What will rejoice you, you, you?

Inner strength and confidence undoubtedly a bonus

A certain push,

Out of the quagmire quicker

Less complications, better relations

You grow again once more

Engage again, creating a common score

You want to smell every scent

Breathe every colour

Taste every culture

Hear every musical texture

Dam your intestines!

You confess that you have joined a new school

Every school has an entry fee

But this one (pause) the gates are higher

Or are you a coward, driving yourself

Into a whirling mud soup

Unable to transpire?

Dam your windows to your soul!

Reflect

Unfold and grow

© Cathy Flower 2006

Sites to read and listen to Cathy Flower:

Scarecrow: www.hodmandod6.blogspot Online literary zine:

One short story and two poems

Reel Rebels Radio: RAW www.reel.rebels.radio.com

Performing and discussing poetry 8.2.10

South City Radio: www.southcityradio.org Interview with Patrick Lyons

PH7 14.10.09

The Who Boys: The Quite Album www.zen.8003.zen.co.uk/tqa/index.html 

Poems, music and song

From A True Sucker

Written before Smoke Free UK 1^st July 2007 16.2.07

So, it has come to this

Vacuum flask smoking booths in airports

When crossing vast oceans and patchwork spreads

Heading to the Great Southern Land

I am compelled to express

“So, it has come to this”

I hold my tongue

Whilst my cigarette (pause)

Gives me no joy in this Bangkok thermos

My head, was wrapped up

In metal tape tightly

With four others

Do you feel the same?

(pause) I didn’t ask

Just an expert wonderer

Give me a mood swinging glass of red and I’ll ask you right down to the nitty grit of your smelly plimsolls (pause) anything.

I stray.

Sitting and standing,

I’m sure in discomfort as well,

In between flights

Thrown in an air sealed pantry

With sand pit pedestal, to take our butts

We looked forward, us five travellers

To a smoke

(pause) In between flights

But evidence seems clear now

As we sat and stood in the shed with no air

That tobacco detriment is now a fact

Oh dear (pause) and as I write this little bit,

I smoke on the cluttered kitchen table

With over ripe bananas

Urging me to buy cake tins

Or whip up a banana smoothie (pause)

I stray again.

Is this a brand new page I turn to?

Have others quit after this unkind cubicle?

Life is now a crazy haze to dump the durry’.

I arrive in Sydney; make my way for the sky,

Take my seat, light up and smoke a joyful sigh.

The pro’s and con’s of life are an endless orbit… (pause)

The pleasure within

Inhaling the elegant 9.2 centimetres long

0.8 centimetres wide, slender filled, circular cylinder

Into my addicted, hooked cistern

Reassures my next breath

Naturally I question, will cigarettes be my ending?

Sometimes I feel as though I am a cigarette and people are smoking me.

But that is another story entirely. Again I stray.

(joyful) What a relief it is to see you!

Getting off a bus, waiting for a bus and lighting a fag

To see ashtrays in restaurants and café’s

With chosen packets upon tables;

To see ashtrays attached to walls in ladies loos!

To see you walking down the street,

Holding that neat, lit up Taylor or roley as you stride on by

(pause) I am not the only one.

Now the cattle dogs are barking

The whips-a-cracking

Cancer is like the sun, always shining

But this time (pause) a deadly ray intervenes

Gripping and clotting your internal streams

Choking your breath,

Destroying your dreams (pause)

Emphysema’s a strangling – vixen – bitch

Who will steal your song,

Whilst your daughter-in-law,

Throws out all your prized ashtrays,

The phone rings, and Mother’s beloved

(pause) Has gone (pause)

Black lungs

The pro’s and con’s…

History glistens a long-term, smoking affair

Every exclusive condiment to assist your - cloud curling flare

History glares a dull, threatening hell, smoking jail.

Some win, some fail.

Yet (pause) love always grows (pause) from somewhere…

(mock tongue) “Why that pictcha I had two years on the wall,

gone yellah now?”

(softly) I stray.

I lean on a fag when things go wrong

I lean on a fag when birds, sing a song

Healing the hardships, relieving the racket

Internal afterglow.

As filters sucked

Another art and respect, loses flow.

What do you do – if you are a – true sucker?

(sing deadpan) Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t (higher pitch) wuh-reeee…

Stainer

Stencher

But I still woncha’

A pack of cigarettes have a chat, responding to an ad –

(enthusiastic and merry) “Cheers! Isn’t it just great being a fag!

Constant reincarnation and those brilliant rods with the sharpest hooks!”

All nerve endings reach out for nicotine,

When pulled to a certain extreme

(mock tongue) “Nother day or two till ya’ get to tha’ next town,

Iff ya wanna packetah fags…”

(deadpan certainty) I will go the distance (pause)

However the sky touches you today

Light is the source

Always light up (pause)

Your life.

For better or for worse

For richer or for poorer

Yours truly

From a true sucker.

© Cathy Flower 2007