A Poem: Under A Tree In Rishikesh

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Parmath Niketan ashram by the Ganges in Rishikesh was our base for a week after we escaped the 46 degree heat of the Indian desert.  In the ashram we rested, ate incredibly healthily and practiced yoga.

Under a tree in the pretty, lush gardens by the yoga school (which is incidentally just next to the World Toilet College) Collette and I took a couple of hours to relax surrounded by the butterflies, colour shifting lizards, tropical birds and insects before we were rudely disturbed by the rhesus macaques. I was writing plenty of poems during the peace of this time and here is one inspired by the garden beasties.

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Poem Boner

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Greetings from Luang Prabang in Laos.

Since January and as we have been travelling,  I have been having fun writing screenplays, a book and some poems.  I am learning a lot and I am definitely getting better.  I love it.  I’ve learnt some new words ‘n’ that ‘n’ all like vermiculate and penumbra.  And kerfs.  Gonna use ’em.  I am thrilled that the poem, ‘Pillars’ below has been selected from a competition (which had entrants from all over the world) to be printed in a real book made out of paper and everything.  I have a proper poem boner.
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The Abandoned Construction Site: An Excerpt From Red Moon

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Whilst in India I have started to write a book.  I’m calling the book Red Moon and here’s an early excerpt.  The book centres around disappearances of young people in Goa.  The initial inspiration was supplied by some spooky events in Pondicherry.   This is the second post related to the book.  You can read the other by clicking the link at the end. Enjoy!  Or not as the case may be…
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The Bread and Roses Poetry Competition

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Hello and good day to all

Please find below my three poems as entries to your fabulously apt poetry competition. I am early, like all good boy scouts and I believe I have met the brief and provided verses true to the commoner, the common good and the music of poetry.
My important details are as follows:

Name: Peter Boydell
Email: peter.boydell@hotmail.co.uk
WhatsApp: +44(0)7730 098 486
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A Poem: Watching A Fly On A Slate Table: A Fly Tetralogy

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With the full privilege of a month in a Himalayan hut, I was granted the rare liberty of observing a common fly for a period not too removed of two hours.  I’d avoided flies in Rishikesh: they’d usually flown hot, straight from a homeless and vomiting cow’s arse.  But here in the flowery mountains, I imagined this one had just danced from a pink rose or at worst had been pestering a butterfly.  You may think that flies are just black dots that you brush off, but I firmly advocate closer inspection.  A whole world is waiting in the minutiae.  My protracted period of muscidae monitoring resulted in the following poem.

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Yurik’s Prisoner: An Excerpt from Red Moon.

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Whilst in India I have started to write a book.  I’m calling the book Red Moon and here’s an early excerpt.  The book centres around disappearances of young people in Goa.  The initial inspiration was supplied by some spooky events in Pondicherry.   This is the second post related to the book.  You can read the other by clicking the link at the end. Enjoy!  Or not as the case may be… Continue reading →

What is Progress?

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There are misconceptions that: only ‘Big Business’ can generate the lifestyle that we seek collectively; in order to make the poor richer, we must make the rich richer, if we regulate the corporate tax avoiders no-one will have a job and that support for a welfare state undermines the efforts of hard-working tax payers. Failed communism is often referenced as the only alternative and the suggestion is that without the golden chalice of capitalism we will suddenly live in a commune, with no lighting, cuddling a goat. The Russian’s had a space program too. They just didn’t fake a moon landing. China did. Don’t get me started.

My phone is gone. It has bounced out of my scooter basket when I hit a speed bump in Rishikesh. It was then picked up by a monkey, who ran into the woods. Funny symbolism that. It’s like a comedy remake of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Iphones are big here. Iphones are a symbol of capitalist success. The youth here sit glued to them watching videos of billionaire pop stars and fast cars. However, I can’t help feeling that proper sanitation, decent schooling or an affordable hospital would not be a greater symbol of progress here.  Continue reading →

Hello To The Queen

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Dessert has arrived. It’s confusing. An industrial block of ice cream. Some broken biscuits and a few bananas nudged in. Snapped Oreos are jammed in the side of the block and it’s finished with five butterflied satsuma segments, four raisins and a squabble of chocolate sauce. I’ve seen, ‘Hello To The Queen’ on every travellers’ menu since Fort Kochin. It seems to have some heritage here, but a quick Google suggests that no-one knows what it is, where it came from or how to make it. There was no, ‘Up Yours Elizabeth’. I’d have preferred that. I’m reminded of Blighty and I consider the forthcoming election. Continue reading →