A Wee Guest Poem: Jim Murdoch

The Things We Knew

  

He didn’t hide the bottles

it is true but then neither

did he leave them on display.

He drank to help himself sleep;

that is what he told himself

and us, his conscience and God.

God knew different and so

did we. I don’t know what his

conscience knew or thought it did.

I can’t stand the stuff myself,

whisky I mean, although I’m

not fond of the truth either

if I’m totally honest.

*     *     *

Jim Murdoch lives just outside Glasgow. His poetry has appeared in small press magazines on both sides of the Atlantic for nearly forty years and now, of course, his most recent work can be found online. He has recently published a collection of poetry entitled This Is Not About What You Think in addition to two novels. A third, Milligan and Murphy, an expression of his love of the works of Samuel Beckett, has just been published. You can read more about him on his blog and website.

A Wee Guest Poem: Brian Hill

Uamh an Oir / Cave of Gold

This is a film of Brian Hill's moving tribute to musician, Martyn Bennet.

Martyn Bennet was a Scottish musician who made music with traditional roots in a very modern idiom. You can hear some and find out more at http://www.martynbennett.com/ . Martyn died in 2005 of Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Brian Hill explains:  I'd been listening to Martyn's stuff for some time and I knew he had cancer but his musical drive seemed too strong to be stopped. When he died, I was quite shocked and I wrote the poem used in the video. The title is borrowed from a traditional Gaelic song which was performed by his mother (and, according to her, recorded in a dungeon in Linlithgow Palace). The song is about a piper who enters the Cave of Gold and who says: 'Many a young maid in bloom of youth/Will pass away, will pass away/Ere I come, ere I return'. Margaret Bennet very kindly gave me the words in Gaelic and in translation.

In 2007, I made the video for the FilmG Gaelic film competition. For that I had the poem translated into Gaelic and voiced by a proper Gaelic speaker. The music is Uamh an Oir/Cave of Gold sung by Margaret Bennett, recorded and mixed by Martyn. The film made the short-list in the competitiion, which was nice. The Gaelic version is here, by the way - http://youtu.be/hsDuvEiBFq8

A Wee Guest Poem: Marion McCready

The Rest and Be Thankful

On The Rest we lie

back on tarmac eyeing up

the winter sky: Pleiades, Plough, Orion.

Drive. The Milky Way suspends

above the hollow glen, high

high up the Drover’s Road. Bend

into its curves, take no thought for the morrow

just drive. The highway kneels before us,

the windscreen is riddled with galaxies

strewn across the rotunda night.

Tonight there is no loch, no Firth of Clyde

smack into a beach wall, just a pumpkin moon

and the Glasgow road carved from a mountainside.

(First published in Poetry Scotland and The Glasgow Herald)

*     *     *

Marion McCready lives in Dunoon, Argyll. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications including The Edinburgh Review, Northwords Now and The Glasgow Herald. Calder Wood Press published her pamphlet collection Vintage Sea earlier this year. Marion blogs about poetry here - http://sorlily.blogspot.com/

A Wee Guest Fiction: Alan Crossan

One To Tell The Grandkids
 

He looked to the window again, saw nothing but ashes gathered. He stubbed out his cigarette then lit another, teasing smoke through his teeth. She remained discreet, concentration drawn behind the cover of a novel. Once this room had echoed with laughter or later at least with arguments; plates smashing on the kitchen tiles, dislodged by the vibrations of a washing machine. Or so he told the neighbours. Now, only the refrigerator buzz and the distant hum of traffic in the streets below.

Photos in silver frames on the table: A young couple gaze into each others eyes unaware of the lens trained upon them. He didn't know who they were, their facial expressions so different from anything he could associate with. They looked complete, stepping out on the floor.

But deceptions spoil the dance. Little white lies, inconsequential, they build up, ready to burst, drowning a person's sense of themselves.

I have to tell her, I owe her that much.

She said she would never trust a man, not after her father. It was a challenge, he'd prove not all men were scumbags, he'd show her if it killed him. But her paranoia had worn him down, chipped away any remaining feeling.

Is that fair? If I'd been a better husband, talked it over, reassured her.

He sighed. Her eyes rose from the page and lowering the book she flashed him a questioning smile. She looked as if she was going to speak but thought better of it and returned to her reading.

Surely she must know, its clearly not working anymore, I have to say something, get it out in the open.

He paced by the window, smoking. He had to say something, the words inside him ready to overflow and dribble down his shirt. He knew the promises he had made but surely in the end it was better for both of them.

It’s not that easy. How do you start a conversation like that? It’s not the sort of thing you just blurt out: "Sorry darling, I don't love you anymore"

Perhaps that was her father's trouble. Easier to lead a double life, leave his wife and kid at home, clamber into his lorry and drive to the other family, explain away absences with the nature of his work. Easier to live that lie than to find the words.

He was better than that. He wouldn’t hold out for this dying relationship. Time to read the last rites; he had to say something.

"Leanne"

"Mmm?"

I can’t do it.

He couldn't bear it. The look whenever she talked about that man. He gulped down his intentions, buried them deep in his chest.

"Fancy a cuppa?"

"I'm good thanks"

"Okay"

He looked to the window again. It had started to rain, puddles forming between the geraniums rotting in the window box. The British summer; something else he was going to have to live with.

*     *     *

Alan Crossan lives in Barrhead near Glasgow. He writes mainly short stories and flash fiction but is currently working on his first novel. He is a member of the Glasgow Writers Group and his work is featured in The McCollection, an anthology from McStorytellers.

A Wee Guest Fiction: Brendan Gisby

Extract from the Journal of a Highland Journey, Circa 1970

 

He seemed to have left Pitlochry behind in no time at all.  When he came to the top of a rise in the road, he looked back to see a faint silhouette of the town away in the distance.  Ahead of him, stretching for miles on either side of the narrow strip of road, the ground was flat and purple with heather.  Mountains, blue and hazy, filled the far horizon.  This is more like it, he thought.  This is what he had come for.

          And then he saw them.  They were about a hundred yards away on his right, standing beside an old, battered wooden caravan that had been parked a few feet back from the road.  A skinny-looking pony grazed at some distance from the caravan.  The four men all had long hair and wore black bonnets and different coloured kilts.  The one furthest away wore a green kilt and was fiddling about with what looked like a set of bagpipes.

          Tinkers!  His mother detested them.  She said they were a blight over in Eire, her homeland.  ‘They’re not like the Gypsies,’ she once warned him.  ‘The Gypsies are a proud people.  Tinkers will rob and murder you as soon as look at you.’

          He told himself that he couldn’t turn back, that that would be cowardly, that he had no option but to brazen it out.  He gulped and crossed over to the other side of the road, so that the width of the road would separate him and the tinkers, and then he marched towards them.

          As he got closer to the men, he saw that their hair and their clothes were dirty and unkempt.  When he passed them, the one in the green kilt shouted something which he didn’t understand.  He just smiled and waved nonchalantly and kept on going.

          It was only when his back was to the tinkers that he really became frightened.  How stupid could he have been?  He was trapped now, unable to turn back.  They could drag him out into the heather and cut his throat and leave him there, and no-one would know.

          There was a boulder by the side of the road just ahead of him.  When he reached it, he sat down on it, pretended to tie one of his laces and looked back at the tinkers.  They were all too busy to notice him, though.  A bus full of tourists – Americans, probably – had come up from Pitlochry.  Three of the tinkers were selling sprigs of ‘lucky heather’ to some of the tourists, while the fourth tinker, the one in the green kilt, was starting up the bagpipes.

          He got up from the boulder and continued on his way at a brisk pace.  He was immensely relieved not only to be leaving the tinkers behind, but also to be quickly out of earshot of the screeching and wailing of the worst rendition of ‘Scotland the Brave’ that he would ever hear.

*     *     *

Brendan Gisby was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, halfway through the 20th century, and was brought up just along the road in South Queensferry (the Ferry) in the shadow of the world-famous Forth Bridge. He has published two novels, "The Island of Whispers" and "The Olive Branch"; a collection of short stories about growing up in the Ferry during the 1950's and 1960's, "Ferry Tales"; and a biography of his late father, "The Bookie’s Runner". His author's website can be found here. Brendan is also the founder of McStorytellers, a website which showcases the work of Scottish-connected short story writers.

Wee Fictions: Call For Submissions

Wee Fictions is accepting submissions of poetry and prose (maximum 500 words) all through December.

Submissions should be sent to andrewmccallumcrawfordAThotmailDOTcom, with 'Wee Fictions' in the subject field.

Andrew McCallum Crawford - 'Gimlet' in Spilling Ink Review 7

Well pleased to have my story, Gimlet, in issue 7 of Spilling Ink Review.

A cracking sound. A crack and a jolt. He opened an eye. It must have been his head off the step. Marble. There was no pain. How did he get here? He’d climbed three flights and he was outside his gaff. He leaned over and dug the key out of his pocket. It was buried under a wad of coins and banknotes.
The place, in darkness, stank of old shoes. He managed to open the balcony door. He staggered to the mattress and collapsed. Old shoes and newsprint. Joss sticks.
The Weeping Song.
He reached over and pulled the phone out of the wall.
Oh, Matt.
Pissed again.

You can read the complete story online here.

Nick Cave gets a mention. He's singing this:

Nick Cave - The Weeping Song