L.D. Tudge

@dreadfullypoorpublishing.co.uk

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Humourist/storyteller—not necessarily both at the same time, or either at any time. Writer-ghostwriter-consultant I've lent my pen to Steve Martin, National Lampoon, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, and untold more. https://www.dreadfullypoorpublishing.co.uk

The Common Fate of Men The Souls of the Conquered — those but lately slain, where still their blood lies warm upon the ground whereon they fell, unhorsed upon this stricken field, the clamour of battle scarcely stilled. Had you borne witness, you would have beheld Death astride a cold, yet fiery steed, whose reared ugly head turned upon you, nostrils breathing flame and frost, as though the Heat Miser and Snow Miser had somehow fused into a single ill-favoured horse. (ap•ld)
The Mahdi cut Dick Heldar’s power; he couldn’t run on steam; it was an unsightly, unkindly loss, if one could only see what I mean. Dick drew the wars for London and painted all he knew; the Empire’s hands looked cleaner when Dick improved the view. Then darkness crossed his vision— the physician read the signs; there are faults no man can mend by inspecting the front lines. He painted Melancolia before the current failed; then Bessie spoiled the picture, and Maisie took the rails. Torpenhow supplied the friendship, the whisky and advice; but neither love nor medicine could make Dick’s darkness bright. So Dick returned to battle, where bullets need no aim; the light that failed went out for good— Kipling kept the name. (ap•ld)
Dobson warned of villanelles, his caution, coarsely translated: Villanelles will put you through hell. As many, but few remaining, can tell, I've written shite verses, several ill-fated: Dobson warned of villanelles. They aren't all rubbish; some have done rather well, though none emerged unbruised or untranslated: Villanelles will put you through hell. I'm no Villanelleur. That much you can tell. I stumble on the form, then call it fated: Dobson warned of villanelles. The rhyme starts ringing its prissy little bell. The refrain returns, gauche, over-decorated: Villanelles will put you through hell. So if this collapses, let it collapse well. Let the Passeratian treatise lie there, violated: Dobson warned of villanelles. Villanelles will put you through hell.
The #midnight bells were jingling— mere chimes, if one is strict. They marked the stroke of twelve o’clock— a point I won’t contradict. They roused me from my proper rest, and summoned me from bed; a scholar should be sleeping, not rising with the dead. I peered into the outer dark; the evidence was grim: a pale hand tapped the window— from the inside.
In conversation I was immersed, But also in gin, having had it spilled Over my sober coat by a clumsy poet Wearing an artistic shirt, as it happens; And, as it happened, this drunken old Tom, To everyone’s amusement, had not coin enough To settle the reckoning for my cuff, Yet found enough to stand Sam everyone’s Daffy.
Trarira, trari! There is he, the ratcatcher. One schilling per head.
Page Four, the Last “Abby” complimented me on my riveting conversation, observing that my silver tongue was nearly as impressive as my argentian beard, though the truth would tell things differently about my conversation and my tongue. She suggested we exchange information, and perhaps go for tea back in London, to which I happily agreed. She handed me a card, kissed me on the cheek, and bid me parting is such sweet sorrow. I wrote down my addresses in Bloomsbury and Toronto, Canada. I read her card on the platform at Paddington. It contained her first name, her age, her shoe size, a list of her favourite English writers — Austen, the elder James, Spark, Pym — and, at the bottom, of the other side, three of her hobbies, and a proper sketch of her family’s cocker spaniel, Mr. Tilford, leaving no space for contact information, I suppose.
William Marshal— this #guard knew how to play cards. His hand held five kings.
It was a chance meeting at Moreton-in-Marsh, on the down-platform, in the heat of August. Her name was Abigail. She had been to a matinée of Henry IV, Part Two at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre — Michael Attenborough’s production, with Desmond Barrit as Falstaff, the one in which Falstaff’s rejection lands like a dropped tray. We talked, all the way back through the Evenlode valley, about Falstaff. She held him a coward and a sponge, justly dispatched: Hal had at last become a king, and a king cannot drink with a thief. She had read her Johnson. I cited Bradley’s Oxford Lectures, in which the rejection is taken rather harder — the fat knight being the one character in the histories who knew the histories for nonsense, and the sending of him to the Fleet an admission that Bolingbroke’s son could not carry his own conscience in motley. The sheep paid us no attention whatsoever.
An English Professor’s Lessons in Not Lecturing L.D. Tudge I was a misfit growing up — an old codger in young skin. I pestered and harried my instructors from Martley to Malvern, including Prof. Harry, a hands-off composition master who likely as not grew up listening to the bells of St Mary-le-Bow. He assigned essays and expected us to think and write our own way through them. I once asked the professor about Cicero’s De Senectute, and he replied, “Well, it’s all in the dialogue, ain’t it?”
Apparel: perilled. Mal-clad, inaptly attired, ill-suited #misfit.
The published play, Sir Tom Stoppard reminded the reader, tots up to ninety-two by the final curtain; the film, which he had directed in 1990 and was therefore at liberty to revise, takes the matter up to one hundred and sixty-eight. He gave no defence of the inflation beyond the observation that what is improbable on a stage is merely ridiculous on a screen, and that ridiculous scales, not unlike a pangolin. Sir Tom’s programme note also included an assertation from American actor Richard Dreyfuss, who had no hand — nor even thumb — in the coin-tossing process, and whose opinion on the matter was therefore considered unreliable. Let it further be known that not a single florin was tossed during the events of Hamlet, not even in Branagh’s full-text Hamlet of 1996. I had presented these discrepancies to the assembled crowd, suggested two additional readings and one more viewing, then caught a late train.
My paper: pilfered! The parchment rent from my grasp, leaving me speechless. #HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem #prose #emoetry #writing #chili #poets #poetrycommunity
On Falstaff… Eventually A symposium, a chance meeting, and a card — summer 2000 L.D. Tudge Part the First of Several I had been in Stratford to deliver a paper at the Shakespeare Institute — one of those August symposia in which a dozen of us took turns elaborating on a problem each had agreed in advance was small enough to warrant elaboration. Mine was the bookkeeping of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: how many heads, exactly, the florin throws across the run of the play, and whether the count was what it not ought to be. Sir Tom himself had addressed the question, in a programme note I had read one golden afternoon in the Bodleian, under the title On the Probable Inadequacy of Probability, with Particular Reference to a Sequence of Heads that Persists Beyond the Patience of Most Witnesses.
My Dearest Heart L.D. Tudge Dear: a word I hold near my heart’s core—but not so near as to disrupt its regular beating. My heart I hold more dear than every word of Shakespeare; ever shall I guard its part—until Time’s scythe convinces my dear heart to stop pumping. My contrition, clearly, when from my heart I depart, dearly, will be never knowing how many times the old ticker ticked before its mortal uncoiling. #vss365 #dear #poetry #poem
On “The Finest Story in the World” L.D. Tudge Henry pulled a book from his shelf — a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Phantom ‘Rickshaw and Other Tales. “Read this,” he insisted, pressing the book into my hand. “Inside you will find the finest story in the world.” “Sir, do you claim that the apex of narrative achievement is contained within this Kipling volume, alongside the ghostly tale of a man-drawn carriage?” “I did, and that is my mistake,” he said, pulling Kipling’s Many Inventions from the same shelf. “The finest story in the world is contained within these pages,” smiled Henry, adding a second volume to my reading list. “And I sincerely admire the man for having the confidence to title his story so.”
The Ghost of Giving L.D. Tudge To a former haunting ground I paid a call. Fifty quid to look about. All I saw were phantoms, wondering why I stuck around. A familiar spirit bade me leave this place, said “Mate… it’s time to go. Yer welcome to rejoin us, when you’ve given up the ghost.”
Even More After The Sirens Part Three, with reservations L.D. Tudge No sooner had the song-spinning Sirens fallen silent than upon the wine-dark did later come a god-sent mist, a god-swirled whirlpool, and a god-knows-what — a multi-headed Scyllaean serpent of inconsiderate disposition, perhaps a teratological plaything of Amphitrite, the moist queen herself. Such was the much-suffering Ithacan king’s Trolley Problem: his swift black ship the trolley, his — “But trolleys didn’t exist,” I hear you screech, like a whiny siren bitch who hasn’t tasted sailor since the fall of Troy. How can one honestly test the deontological ethics of death-doomed mortals when Circe is trotting about the ancient world pulling on divine, dilemma-spoiling trolley levers? When the gods transform toil-worn human problems into prudence, they are turning trailers into spoilers, which is still, more or less, a lesser evil.
After The Sirens L.D. Tudge It is generally agreed by most scholiasts that, after the engagement with the sirens, there followed additional trials for the oar-worn Odysseyians, numerous afflictions of the ear — the extraction of beeswax having been, in those years, a labour worthy of Heracles himself, even with recourse to the most modern of medical practices, namely fingers, sticks, and seawater. The otological case of one Tinnitus of Cephallenia, an oarsman of the highest order from the lower bench, is preserved by Hellanicus: the sufferer is reported to have complained that the sirens’ echoes rang in him still, after the most vigorous shaking of the head, on multiple occasions. Tinnitus was eventually sent home on a raft.
On Sirens, Their Numbers, And Look, It Was Probably Three A private notation on the count L.D. Tudge I can tell you Odysseus lost no men to the sea on the sirens’ account — or a lack of a count, which was likely on the order of three, give or take one siren. That is, unless you are inclined to align with Andrew Lang’s Homeric essay My Accounting of Sirens, as It Pertains to the Odyssey, A Heroically Heroic and Epic Tale Containing A Number of Sirens and really, Does It Make a Whinny of a Difference How Many? Three sirens is a chorus. Four or more is commedia dell’arte.
Kidney bean transplant chili courses through roiled veins adding #zest to life
Of shape, fit, and size, the denim clings, waist to thighs - Jeans? Uncompromised.
On Lightning A private notation, after a prompt L.D. Tudge Lightning, you say? Well, I'd rather not say, thank you. You see, I'm not one to gossip about the weather, unless I'm certain it intends to listen, and the rumours are never traced back to me. But to speak so confidently about the weather? To stare into the eye of the tempest and ask it when the ‘real’ tempest expects to join us. “Sir, I must say your lack of tempestuosity disappoints me in a way no storm ever has before. I’ve felt stronger gusts from the last breaths of dying men. I wouldn’t trust you to whip up a smoothie.” If you want to talk tempests, tropical showers, and thunderstorms, or you’re keen on sinking barometers and sinking ships — I suggest you take up with Joseph Conrad. I tend to veer away from meteorological dribble—I avoid what lurks in the fog. I won’t lend further assistance to the fog-lurkers and their pursuit of becoming qualified purse snatchers.
Suddenly stilled skies- downcast, quixotic windmills. The air is their whirled.
This dame had me framed... She put to shame my good name. That's not how we play.
On the Proof Being in Ovid's Pudding L.D. Tudge Robinson Ellis was everything asked of a teacher, several things unasked, and one or two things you avoided asking entirely, even after graduation. But it was a lesson well taught: if you asked Mr. Ellis about the Ibis, you had better have brought receipts for the Ibis, which would have proven desperately and irrecoverably Sisyphean when Ellis owned every receipt of the Ibis and had receipts for those receipts to prove it. (ap·dt) #prose #poetry #writing #vss365 #emoetry #poem
On Needles Dale Tudge Just across the Channel on the edge of the Garden Isle, close to the Hampshire shore, lie The Needles. Well, one needle lies for certain, and truth be told, the rest of the lot are still standing. A night-light was erected above Scratchell's Bay, possibly named after the second or third Earl of Scratchell, replacing the pillar gravity had sent storming off its chalky perch and into the Solent. I was told the noise was considerable, and although a nuisance, no fines were issued by municipal officials. The dust took over a fortnight to settle over Lymington, where villagers, not understanding Wight from right, opened their mouths in awe, and also to catch the bitter-tasting snowflakes on their native tongues.
When #clouds are backed up, whither are they stored, and what precipitates this? #HaikuFeels #verse #DailyHaikuPrompt #Senryu #Haiku #HaikuSky #Poetry #MicroPoetry #writing #poem ##verse #prose #emoetry #writing
The attaché? Dispatched. "It's an #open and shut case," so claimed the luggage.
#Wisteria, man, no, not Wisteria Man. He's like, not real, man.
The chambers’ new sign “Barristers - Solicitors” legally affirmed. #haiku #senryu #writing #poem #poetry #prose #verse
PoemsAbout #EdgeOfKnowing @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity
This #poem: a tale tooled together without toil, not #sung, but intoned.
On the Roastiness of Plump Unspeakable Birds We had walked some way down Blind Lane, which is in Dorset, as anyone could plainly see, before it occurred to either of us that the mute swans awaiting our inspection at the swannery at Abbotsbury might, at some earlier point in their institutional history, have taken a vow of silence — or at the very least, a vow of relative quiet; which is, if anything, more Benedictine than total silence. Whether St. Peter approved of the swan farming of Fleet Lagoon, he certainly knew the monks loved a fat roasted swan best of any roast.
Lo, an inner tube ambling down the River Ewe, withdrawn from its #bank.
An Indelible Thirst for Ink Dale Tudge O,what a drought is this that grips my hand! My quill, once nimble, lieth still and dry, The fountain of my fancy stopped at source, And every page a desert in itself. Speak, spirit — or if thou wilt not speak, then weep, That I might catch thy tears upon this leaf And call them ink, and call myself restored. And then call my dear, elderly Aunt Hilda, who I fear has taken another tumble. This time, I resolve to discover the name of this sotted aunt-tumbling scoundrel.
Vouchsafe Me a Pot of That Ink Dale Tudge The sheets on my bureau were thirsty for ink. “O Muse, descend and lend thy gracious wit Upon this trembling hand and barren page, Pour down some measure of thy boundless store, For I am parched, and there are no words To quench our thirst.” I was eager to write, to slake, to draft and to draught, to sate my droughty sheets. However, the pot of P. & J. Arnold’s was dryer than the Queen’s amusement. Also, I had chewed my quill to the rachis. And I knew not what parch meant.
My Answers to Correspondents submission — a curiosity item on the particular thickness of London fog — came back bleeding with editor’s remarks, a penny #ink certainly, the aniline red of uncertain provenance, smelling of coal-tar and dye-vat as one smells standing downwind of Hackney Wick on a fog-free afternoon. The marginalia had bled through to the verso, where Alfred’s bloody second thoughts had leeched through to the recto in turn. My copy came back looking more Whitechapel victim than stretcher. A house that will not spend tuppence on its own marginalia is unlikely to spend little more on its contributors. (ap·dt)
As it so happened, bike, pitched over dyke, into water most brackish.
Red #sand 'tween my toes barefoot stroll on Martian soil up Olympus Mons
Haikus are far out. They're groovy bitchin' poems. Can you dig that, #man?
"Destroy that planet!" #Exalted Emperor sneers, wringing his evil hands.
"#Exalted spirits, I beseech thee pallid wisps— the mists heed me not."
While air #buds blossom, my dog skips winn-dixily through the free willies.
Already finished, yet I’m just getting started. Okay, now I’m done.
Tilling, and toiling. All that reaping... and sowing! (Not in that order.) #poem #haiku #poetry #poet #senryu #writing
On The Irish Names That Were Not Dale Tudge If someone had handed me Croker’s Fairy Legends, I would have said sprites, elves, hobgoblins, and understood them perfectly well. I had the English vocabulary for Irish things and did not know it was the wrong vocabulary. Yeats corrected that when he selected and edited Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. The sidhe were not sprites, the Leanhaun Shee was not, precisely, a muse, and English had no word for what these creatures were and my education had not prepared me to notice.
Rue des Beaux-Arts Dale Tudge Arthur and Moore went to find Shaw at the Pavillon de l’Alma. Rodin’s work held no mystery for me that afternoon. I had somewhere else to be. The Hotel d’Alsace. 13 Rue des Beaux-Arts—a finer address than the hotel merited. Ossie was in his room on the second floor, thinner than I had prepared myself for, wearing a dressing gown that had once been magnificent. The wallpaper was, as he had already informed several visitors, “winning”. He said Ross had brought flowers again, as though flowers were what was needed. There were other things in the room. Slim shadows that kept to the corners. Crooked shapes that did not quite resolve into furnishings. Each evil sprite that walks by night.* The phantoms keeping their tryst. “Of course you’d see them.” He almost smiled. “My dear observer,” he said, and closed his eyes. I told him about the Exposition. The telescope. Arthur’s extremely hot peppers. A heat, I said, that introduces itself politely, excuses itself, and reminds you again shortly thereafter. He looked at me for a long time. “You have described,” he said, “to the letter, my entire reputation.”
An honest eye will distinguish gold from gilt: #illusory splendour.
Granny Smith Dale Tudge Beyond the bloomin' onions, past the cherry paste trees, lies Granny Smith's orchard. Best leave them apples be. Granny's from the outback, and out back is where she'll be, feedin' her boneless chickens, fattenin' up their flaccid wings. I wouldn't mess with Granny; she's more than what she seems. She'll grind your bones to bake her scones, and serve them with clotted cream.
A Strong Hand Is No Assurance of Strong Writing Dale Tudge There was a woman of my acquaintance who could produce written prose at a rate that defied physiological expectation. She had, I will say, the fastest transcribing hand I have encountered in any century. She could write for hours without fatigue, without hesitation, and without, it must be admitted, hand cramping. The material was appalling. Execrable. It was truly the output of a hand operating without proper supervision. When a palsy disrupted her hand, the mind — frustrated, forced into an unfamiliar patience — began producing sentences that were, for the first time, worth the ink. She did not consider this adequate compensation.
On the Subject of Walton Goggins or Possibly Clifton Young Dale Tudge I’ve taken a shine to this young Walton Goggins fellow. He’s got some chops, fine chops. He’s angular, watchful, slightly feral. He reminds me of a young Clifton Young, as there is no old Clifton Young to remind me of. One much older than me can recall watching young Clifton Young and, in some supporting capacity, Humphrey Bogart in the somewhat thrilling, sometimes chilling Dark Passage. The air-refrigerated Strand made the experience doubly chilling — either from the man-on-the-run plot, or the disorienting point of view. From the front row.
The Beleaguered Flame Dale Tudge The beleaguered flame wavereth in the draught. Whiles the perfidious window shudders in sympathy, I can neither shutter the one nor relocate the other, lest the flicker be summarily snuffethed by my benighted dithering, and irresolute indecisiveness.
On the Writing of Ghostwork for Ghosts Dale Tudge Sheek invited me out for a “tuna sandwich au gratin” at Schwab’s on Sunset—on his dime. Such generosity only expressed itself when that dime was found on the boulevard sidewalk. As luncheonette counters go, including those going or gone, Schwab’s Pharmacy was the cat’s meow, at least according to the strays scouring the bins behind the restaurant. “Groucho needs ten pages for College Humor. We can do five each.” “Do you want it to be good, or should it read like Beds?” Sheek offered a very moist raspberry for a response, handed me a manila envelope, grabbed his hat, and left. I looked at the envelope, and then at my tuna melt, and thought: I really should charge more for my work.
On the Exhibition of Mr. Houdini Dale Tudge Most people were eager to witness Harry Houdini at the London Hippodrome. But I’m not most people, nor even some people, least of all any people you would know. If I learned anything from P.T. Barnum, it was unwise to call him Peter. Also that a lollipop is born every minute. I was not prepared to be a lollipop at this minute or any other. A shilling to watch a man struggle in handcuffs behind a shabby little cabinet*? I could go to Margate most weekdays and see it done properly for a ha’penny. (ap·dt) * This was billed as Houdini’s “Ghost Cabinet.” Not “The Cabinet of Eternal Suffering.” Not even “The Slightly Uncomfortable Cabinet.” I had expected rather more from a man who charged a shilling.
I look over to my partner and tap him on the nose—twice. That means we're being watched, or is it "I smell danger." I know what danger looks like... most of the time. But what does danger smell like exactly? A burned figgy pudding? The deceptively sweet and frankly toxic flesh of a yewberry? Spilled petrol? Petrol is certainly dangerous, spilled or otherwise. Yes, that explains it. It's the two suspicious men hiding in the yewberry bush across the lane. It has to be! Two taps means twice the danger. And I only brought one pudding.
torpid thespians actors in an #idle play, moribund... perhaps.
The First Dimmening: A Cataract Origin Tale A Study in Progressive Occlusion, Mature Suffusion, and Divine Aphakia In the age before the Dimmening, where the gods looked down and the people of the Cataracta looked up and the looking was unobstructed, where even the least vastest of the vast stars can—or could, but probably can—be seen—so begins the Stele of Presbyos. The people could count the black basalt cones of the Bayuda from the river, each peak distinct against the sky. They had one word for truth and sight, and one word for falsehood and fog, which made the events that followed difficult to discuss without also doubting them—and I have given you no reason to doubt me. Have I? The temple of the Cataractatianites—the demonym accrued syllables as successive translators declined to abbreviate their predecessors—stood at the base of Jebel Barkal, a flat-topped mountain rising from the desert plain. The Kushites would later call it the Pure Mountain, believing their god Amun born behind its southern face. But the Cataracts arrived first, building into its rock a narrow chamber they called the Iris, through which a single aperture admitted or refused all light. Their ceremonies required aqueous humour—of the humorous kind—a fermented ritual drink whose recipe has not survived, though the vessels have. Then Sclera, goddess of the outer boundary, quarrelled with her sister Cornea, keeper of the threshold, over who controlled what entered the eye of the sky. Cornea, in her fury, breathed mist upon the land. Sclera hardened the mist to a film—an opacity, in the language of those who came after—and between them they sealed the heavens behind a milky veil. The people of the Cataracta looked up and could no longer resolve the stars. The mountain, no longer clearly visible from the river, was quietly reclassified as the Mostly Pure Mountain, and later, after progressive deterioration, as the Mountain of Conditions.
Romance Sonámbulo A love forlorned, and love for Lorne and Lorna Dale Tudge The bookstore had invited an English-speaking professor to read Lorca in the original Spanish, which nobody in the room spoke well, or at all, including the handsome professor, whose field was accounting but who had a beautiful reading voice and a recently difficult divorce. Lorna sat in the third row because the first two were taken by women who had come for the professor — or would soon. Lorne sat in the third row because the fourth row had a broken chair and he’d already fallen off it once. The professor read “Romance Sonámbulo.” Verde, que te quiero verde. Green, how much I want you green. Neither Lorne nor Lorna understood the wanting, but both recognized it. The professor’s voice broke slightly on a line about a railing and a moon, and everyone in the room pretended not to notice. Afterward there was Marqués de Murrieta in paper cups. The professor attempted to read the side of the box aloud to the women from the first two rows, who had encircled him near the register, his Spanish tongue loosened by the grape. He gave the Marqués the same tenderness he’d given Lorca. They hadn’t come for either — though the wine had a satisfying finish. Lorne held his cup with both hands, which Lorna found either endearing or concerning, she hadn’t decided. He told her he’d come for the Lorca. She told him she’d come for the free wine. Both were lying, but in opposite directions. Lorna and Lorne went home together — and it wasn’t to study Spanish, but judging from Lorca, it probably also was. The professor went home alone, to the house he still shared with his ex. One woman from the front row left with a copy of Romancero Gitano. Another took a half-empty box of Marqués. A third later asked the bookstore owner if she could book the professor for a private function. Nobody discussed the poetry.