He Knocks

‘Poem’s From A Boy’s Book’ is a collection of poems and prose from my personal collection. Two poems from the collection have been published in ‘gairrhydd,’ with the possibility of further poems in a few more publications this year.

These poems were recorded in a bathroom. Previously, I have recorded an audiobook in a bedroom, but recording my voice in my bathroom (actually it is a small toilet) is a new thing for me.

In any case, I turned the lights off and read off my computer screen. Several takes for all of them except for “The Four Strong Winds.”

For these poems, I have adopted my favourite recital voice.

At The Funeral Of A Miner

My darling fiancee is an artist. She is preparing an exhibition of self-portraits both her own and other peoples.

While talking about the difficulties of painting and drawing faces, Hannah mentioned to me that hands are easily drawn. I told her that hands and faces are equally difficult to draw anatomically, but that the hands have only one emotion to display at a time, whereas the eyes and the mouth and the cheeks all display different sentiments.

This poem is in memory of the late John Davies.

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The Four Strong Winds

Upon reading a quote by Dylan Thomas - although its attribution is widely disputed - I noticed a kind of patriotism rise in myself.

This poem is about the sick kind of patriotism that we sometimes get.

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Narcissus

Narcissus has many legends surrounding him. Some writers say that he died of self-pity over his love for his sister, some people say that he fell in love with his reflection and drowned in the pond he was sitting by.

Sometimes people are like that too.

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Letter To Hope

A reading of prose written on a copy of ‘Le Monde Diplomatique’ and mailed to Dave Medlicott while I was in Germany.

I have never been the centre of attention on a train except for this time when I rode almost the whole length of the U2 train in Berlin scribbling furiously on pages and pages of newsprint.

It is a true story.

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If you enjoyed these

You may listen to these poems and let me know how you feel about them. If you like them, I’m sure we can arrange for you to have some of the recordings.

I’m available for commissioning.

A book for all those who are young, or trying to get young for the first time.

Teenagers are dying - but not accidently. Matt Cleaver is watching idly as his friends disappear - swallowed up by the Cloud as it hangs over Bridgend County in Summer 2008.

More like Peter Pan and less like full-grown man, Matt Cleaver returns home to Bridgend to find that he is no longer part of his hometown - where some many kids skipped youth and went straight to being old heads.

The Cloud is a semi-fictional story of a young man’s search to get back to a lost youth and to drag his friends back. This story is for everyone who is interested in the almost real story of the Bridgend Suicides.

More like Peter Pan and less like full-grown man

Matt holds his youth in one hand, the lives of his friends in the other - will he be able to stop both from slipping through his clutches? Or will The Cloud eat up everything he loves and hates?

You what?

As some of you may know, I have been working on a novel based on the Teen Suicides in Bridgend during the last three years. The book is called ‘The Cloud’ and is yet unpublished.

I am waiting on a few replies from prospective publishing houses - I’ll keep you up to date.

In the meantime, I would like to show the first three chapters of the book available to be read online.

To anyone who has already read previous drafts of the book; firstly, thankyou and secondly, there’s been a big redraft, which nobody has read as of yet.

Authonomy

Authonomy is a website run by HarperCollins books - one of the biggest publishing houses in the country - in order to find new talent. I am not particularly looking to be published by them (although it wouldn’t be a bad thing) but I am looking to create a buzz surrounding ‘The Cloud.’ If you could go and have a read and comment on it or recommend it to a friend or eight that would be super duper great.

Thanks for your support.
Marc

The world was created in six days wasn’t it? Or maybe it was six cycles? Oh well, I believe in Jesus dying on the cross and that’s all that really matters. Right?

I’ve heard a lot of interesting discussions about creationism in the recent weeks and taken part in some interesting debate about the teaching of darwinism over at Voice of Revolution. Of course, there’s only so many arguments to give in support or argument of something.

Six days, six months, six million years, 50 zillion years? Quite frankly none of them seem entirely feasible when you really think of it. 50 bazillion years seems like a bit of a bore and so does six million years.

It takes me six months to write an essay! Six days? HA!

For those who are not God

Fortunately, for those of us who are not God, it was not necessary to create the whole entirely galaxy and engineer everything in it to run precisely.

I imagine that if we were God, we’d be pretty ticked off at the rebellion of Man too!

There is no number of days or cycles which seems to be a number fitting for us to conceptualize the creation of everything in existence. It is unfathomable and cannot be done.

It takes me six months to write an essay! Six days? HA!

Thanks to stupid builders back in Babel in the first few years of the earth, we’ve got translations of the bible to argue over: some people say the days are literal, some people say the creation story is a poetic account (from a writing point of view, it’s not that good), some say it’s the only way that the writer of Genesis could portray what had occurred.

It doesn’t matter!

Step into a Bible study group on Genesis one or sit down late at night with a group of Christian university students and you will here the fateful words muttered.

Which are?

Freddy Fredrickson will, without doubt and in all sincerity (God bless his little heart) reflect, “I suppose we’ll never know will we? After all, we’re not God and in any case, we’re all agreed on the basics: Jesus died and rose again to pay for our ticket to heaven.”

He’s right about three things; Jesus died, Jesus rose again and we’re not God.

Asides from Freddy Fredrickson’s erroneous view of Christ’s mission on His earth, he’s really put his foot in it with Janey Jones.

It matters!

Janey Jones, 23 and always carrying the works of Martin Luther and Wayne Grudem books (geek!), points out to her beloved brother in Christ his erroneous ways.

Firstly, she says (in echo of my own thoughts), the Bible says it, I believe it. (Shock horror! But what about the really weird verses the others thing to themselves?)

Why couldn’t God do it in six days…?

While the moonlight shimmers on their fresh young faces, Janey expounds the following.

Six time periods of… say 1,000,000 years? Ok. Let’s do some math.

If that’s true… does that mean that Jonah was in the whale for 40,000,000 years? Jesus in the tomb for 3,000,000 (yucky!)? Don’t even ask how old I am!

Why couldn’t God do it in six days?

It’s a trait of the human race to choose selectively. We choose the things which suit us best - no matter if they really make sense. Christians do it to. We decide to listen to certain passages of the Bible.

For example, how is it that someone finds the idea of salvation and resurrection and God as a man completely plausible (and I believe that is), but cannot believe that the same God created the world in 6 days…

Come on - raising the dead isn’t exactly a scientific experiment is it?

If you question the power of God in creation or even dim it down, Janey pounds forward in reason, you have to ask yourself some pretty hard questions about whether or not you can believe it anywhere else.

Janey’s campfire amigos are all sitting mouths open in amazement at Jenny’s powers of logic…

Again, if you question the validity of the translation of the first chapter of the Bible, why not question the rest of the unbelievable passages too?

After all, we’re all saved right? Or should you question that impossibility too?

Note: To avoid confusion, this writer confirms his literal belief in creationism and a literal account in Genesis including the belief that God created the universe in 6 literal periods of 24 hours

“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” read Gareth Ward on March 6th 2009 at his Grandfathers (Dad-cu) funeral, “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

The Funeral of John David Davies took place on March 6th 2009. The service was recorded for the family but many more requests were received for a copy of the recording. It is for this reason that I have included the entire service on this webpage.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith…

The files may be listened to directly on this page by clicking the ‘play’ button or downloaded by clicking here and downloading individually

Introduction to the funeral and entrance of the family

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Singing of “Here is Love (Vast as the Ocean)”

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Psalm 16 - Read by Bethan Ward

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Tribute to John by Philip and Gareth Ward

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Tribute to John by Peter Hallsworth

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Tribute to John by Rev. James Brown

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Singing of “Tydi A Wnaeth Y Wrth (O! Grist Fab Duw)”

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Gospel Message by Rev. James Brown

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Singing of “Crown Him With Many Crowns”

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Blessing

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Exit of Family

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Once again, you may listen to the recordings above or by clicking here to save them to your computer

Praise God for a life well lived.

Classes at school taught Little Johnny Nomates an awful lot (That’s pronounced Noh-Mar-Tees by the way.) The classes taught him that he shouldn’t mix electricity with water and any number of complex theories! Even still, Johnny has no idea how to think for himself. He’s written 10,000 word essays but only managed to write a hundred of those words himself because he doesn’t have any ideas of his own.

Johnny can’t be blamed though. They often tell him that if he just writes what is already written he can’t go wrong - They’ve got a point.

One of the most vital parts of our education is the ability to think for ourselves.

One of the most vital parts of our education is the ability to think for ourselves.

“Gadzooks Batman, how will we ever cope? How can we learn to think for ourselves?” Johnny Nomates once asked me,

“Don’t worry,” I told them, “I’ll teach you about popular culture with my new ‘Introducing:’ blogs on heknocks.com” My quick response to Johnny Nomates caused a look of relief on his face.

With this, I’m proud to introduce you to ‘Introducing:’ - Lessons in popular culture. Oh yeah, thought we’d start with someone really interesting: Jack Kerouac

Jack My Boy

Better known as Jack Kerouac, Jean Louis was born March 12th 1922 in that state whose name is more than hard to say and too difficult to write… you know the one… it’s got Boston in it.

It might be true that Kerouac constantly gave conflicting stories about his family descent, but who cares to be honest? That’s weird. What really matters is what the man did, and not where or how or who he came from.

Kerouac was an athletic kind of guy at the start of his life, winning a sports scholarship to Columbia University. He didn’t stay very long though, after which he stayed in New York for a while and then joined the Navy. That didn’t last very long either.

Instead, he began a career as a writer, publishing his first novel, “The Town and City” in 1950.

Insanity vs. Madness

120 foot is a long way. It’s roughly 20 of me laid head to toe on the floor… Oh, yeh, and then covered with some of the best words in the history of literature.

Kerouac got down to serious writing in April 1951. Jack used a somewhat experimental style of prose called, ‘Spontaneous Prose’ or ‘Thinkwrite’ or whatever other name you might use to describe this brilliant form of writing. Kerouac’s style has probably had the largest influence on my own writing style.

“Blow as deep as you want to blow.”

In its original form, the novel was considered to be too explicit and too sympathetic to African Americans as well as other minority groups. Additionally, there was the small issue of the whole manuscript being printed on one piece of paper. That probably had something to do with the difficulty in sending it to publishers.

The book was finally published in 1957 by Viking.

Beat it kid

Not only was Kerouac a genius poet and author, but he also became a cult figure because of the definition he gave to the ‘Beat’ generation.

I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s.
- Bob Dylan

The beat generation was defined by belief in youth, freedom and jazz music.

Everything made in the Beat period typifies it - from spontaneous prose to the new kinds of music which emerged and the influence which On the Road, had for so many other cultural icons e.g Hunter S. Thompson.

Quite the man.

The Good Stuff

• On The Road - Book
• The Subterraneans - Book
• Poetry for the Beat Generation - Audio recording
• Blues and Haikus - Audio Recording

Hope that was informative. The most important thing with learning, is that you need to keep going and finding links between people. If you’ve never done this before, try finding out about some of the following people:

• Neal Cassady
• Allen Ginsberg
• Charlie Parker
• Hunter S. Thompson
• Bob Dylan

Click the play button to hear Jack reading:

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(If you are the owner of this audio file, please feel free to contact me. I will readily remove it if requested. Thank you.)