Celebrity

I had to write a poem about poetry for homework for a workshop. I’d drafted a workshop on writing poetical manifestos earlier the day that I remembered the homework, so I borrowed some ideas from that. Redneck opinions trouble me, they are all around me. A truly redneck opinion is ready to dismiss any analysis of a problem area without a thought. Apologies to the sensitive, thinking, cultured rednecks. Swampy suggests I write a twin to mirror this poem’s point of view with a balancing one.

Celebrity

It was a festival appearance–

the poet and the redneck.

She talked of beauty,

of meeting strange people

from strange words,

of strumming souls,

connections with emotions.

He said, “Bullshit.”

She imagined the emotional

logic of words like

callipygous.

He asked for a crate of beer.

They agreed about

having someone to converse with

after midnight,

but not about what

or who

or how the point of view of an insect

can make a person glow

with insight, make the reader

giggle and tremble.

The host thanked them.

She wept into the hem of her skirt.

He strode away crying, “Crock of shit, crock of shit!”

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

Penelope

Some folks might remember an earlier version of this one. I took it to the poetry editing session at Peter Cowan Writers Centre–very good–and whilst I am a total pain in the arse, I did listen to the feedback, which was predominantly, ‘Expand this poem. It needs some more story to it.’

Penelope

 

I am Penelope

And I have waited,

Weaving and dyeing,

Sighing and whying,

Bitter bitter ochres, madder madders,

Indigos sting tiny retinal seerings

And I am

Slowly dying with my threads.

The physician’s penetrating diagnosis:

A mood disorder

To be sewn down, dejected,

with salty water and music.

No drops or tabs for

What I am living.

 

I have been waiting for you

To come safe through the War,

The winters and the storms.

The pirates, the high seas,

Not to mention the wolves,

Sabre tooth tigers and possibly

Bears and all that.

And, don’t forget,

The other women,

The advertising, the hype,

The power and the tassels.

 

I am Penelope

And I have stopped waiting

And started

The getting on with it.

What the other woman learnt,

So must I.

I cannot spin joy with you.

I must find someone else for

Love potions of kind words

And willing hands, silence,

Laughter. All the while remembrances

Hurt. I must fold them away

With the cloth in the cupboard,

Unravel feelings with the yellow

And orange wools, the green yarn

In the big basket of unfinished tasks.

Where have all the whys gone?

Dissolved in the tears of the weaver.

 

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

War

War

 

‘I risked my life for you,’

said the soldier.

‘I lost my son for you,’

said his mother.

‘Thankyou,’ I said,

and returned to my garden.

 

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

 

 

Gasping for detail

Gasping for detail
For Garry Colombo de Piazzi

Thinking about poetry and risk.
Thinking about how it would feel
to be typing this on
a Remington.
Must get one.
For nostalgic times.
For pretending to be
Sylvia Plath.
Biggest risk is perhaps
one’s insanity.
To be revealed
for a dreamer, a dawdler,
a prophetess, a grasshopper,
a parasitic meddler,
fumbling for what does not have to be paid,
yet often satisfies
at least some of us.
(Not enough for the salaries
of soldiers, the guns and bombs,
or gold medals for the sacrificed,
the officers’ meals,
or the strategists’ perks.)
Risky business-
being intentionally poor,
being intentionally
a poor poet,
artlessly sporting
the pen behind the ear.

 

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

Frank reply

Frank reply

Frankly, what is it that I must do

or say or smell like or believe in

or prove or cook or taste or pander to

or rage against or burrow inside

or dip or flavour or chastise or brew?

which river must I ford? which

drain drain? which stitches stitch?

which barrel with how much laughter fill?

which strange feeling question and in what soft voice?

what chariot can I hail? what channel swim? what still

waters can I stir and twist? what choice break?

what reins? what reigns? where can I

go? blister? heap? trail? stake?

When I am there and I have done

and you have seen and touched and tasted

and testified to my believings and my belovings

will you stand on the shore of my love

and fling your whole skin in?

Ah, I see how I must be:

As airy as a winter walk on the beach.

An adornment, like the purple girdle

of a bluebottle, I am trapped

astride tumescence even as it withers.

Not useful, yet I must endure

with more patience than I have

the insecurities of your pups.

I must stuff with sand

the voice in the shell.

I must be recyclable like rotting seagrass,

discreet as a bivalve,

sensitive and shy, a worm,

protected from venom only by proximity

and camouflage with the decor.

If I am still, I may stay with

the little blue glass jugs,  their noses

in the sand, superfluous as torn plastic

surrendered to the shore by the wind.

I must shame for my moon cycles, yet flame

for your name. Never useful, just toyed with

a little, a seagrass ball on the beach.

Roll with destiny, I tell myself,

my anger as futile as a nostril of fresh water

in the Indian Ocean.

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

Food

This is a re-write of an earlier poem about Hansel and Gretel. It benefited from the combined input of Julie Watts, Nicola-Jane Le Breton, Flora Smith, Mags Webster, Garry de Piazzi, John Ryan, Josephine Wilson, Rashida Murphy, Liana Christensen, and tutor, Lucy Dougan. This is in the context of a masterclass series run by Peter Cowan Writers Centre, based at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia.  I still feel like the fraud poet at the table, however, I have a mother’s sensitivity about my poems and I like it that they are nurtured by some of the best!

Food

 

I.

 

Who owns the food?

With what thanks,

she chops and stirs and steams

the small portion is all that can be afforded—

a splash, a celebration.

Another time she watches, empty, whilst the children eat.

 

II.

 

When there is not enough to eat,

which mother chooses which child starves?

And in what finery, what gilt and golden robes,

with what light and hasty words,

do the fed stalk the streets

mocking the skinny need to choose?

 

III.

 

You say,

Let nature do it, the sifting and the sieving.

Nature takes care of the innocent.

So handsome is my brown-eyed boy,

the gift, the sacrifice to the whimsical

and erratic rhythms of the years,

the one with the rips and the tears

and the tears.

 

Me, I am just me,

girl in a puffball skirt

and a peasant blouse,

with fripperies in her hair.

 

In the pleasuring forest we walk slowly.

We talk in constantlys, regard dirt in insect detail.

It is as if words could fuel us.

They can. They do.

Compost your vowels, my sweetling.

I cannot stop up the images, the ideas,

tiny timings within words that are

raindrops falling in a cup.

We must have ideas, have ideas, have ideas.

Must feed ideas, feed them, feed them.

They need beckoning, caressing,

Bathing and burping, pinching and prodding.

 

We walk and wander,

scattering inky parrots under storm clouds,

watching as stars pop and fizz,

waiting as the sun gurgles down amongst the trees,

greeting the sky blistering into another morning

and the dogs need walking.

 

Every few steps you throw down raisins.

The raisins are wolfed by the dogs.

The dogs leave silver trails of saliva,

A trail of food to waste.

 

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

 

 

Fear makes me

Hm. Well. Had that panicky feeling of not being able to find a child? I nearly had kittens.

 

Fear makes me

 

Fear makes me harsh.

Just as a house takes a while in the making,

I have that settled person

who is me, going forth, going right,

who takes things in hand, in stride,

on the cheek, on the hip,

by the book.

I fancy that my walls

are stable and ready to paint

lavender or

any colour announcing maturity.

I find I am wrong,

undone by the matter,

the tremor,

that is a child lost.

In the minutes I build

the portrait of an abduction and

sweat and gasp each heartbeat,

that graciously proportioned façade

with its little scrolls and delicate touches,

is undone.

A pile of tumbled, crumpled offal.

Wrenching from the stench,

what remains inhabits a screaming,

an avenging,

an entirely poisonous

machine of burning aluminium,

still melting down

when the child is found.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

Solace in Nature

This poem was born of a Kevin Gillam exercise. ‘Go out in nature,’ was the instruction, ‘feeling alone and find something that makes it all better.’ This is influenced, not consciously, by the quirky slants on things of poet, Liana Christensen.

Solace in Nature

I was alone.

I decided to return to

Nature.

To ease such

painful grieving.

I found a cup

of weedflower buds in an umbel.

Inside

was a tiny blue butterfly.

I found

the tiger feather

of a sparrowhawk.

I found a dead vole.

I looked at how a vole

barely has eyes.

I pondered how tiny its heart must be.

I pictured a vole family in mourning.

I felt better.

Copyright © 2011 cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

On tobacco

Still in Brighton and hemmed in by 8 year old and unable to think straight. Having fun though. xo

On tobacco

Now I am old and

illjudgedly

a parent once again,

I surprise myself

with my parenting shortcuts.

My eldest son, I told him

I would throw him out of the house

if he took up with tobacco.

My youngest son, still but a thumb

to his upright index finger brother,

with him I gently remind,

‘Smokers’ knobs drop off

if they don’t stop.’

Copyright © 2011 cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.

When a garden gnome feels out of place

How can I make this more comic?

When a garden gnome feels out of place

She glowered at me.

She fundamentally scowled

from the bottoms of her black pumps.

After all,  my gaze had every right

to nip across the boundary,

to pop across the shared flint wall,

to acknowledge the woman next door.

Surely she has many advantages–

a red vintage dress, crafted bleached hair, her mobile phone,

my old house with contemporary designer features,

seaviews if you lean out the top windows, seagulls on the roof,

chartered surveyors at the bottom of the garden,

kind neighbours like my hosts had she but valued them.

She glared at me.

I guess I can understand why

things are only just almost so nearly

perfect here.

So many ways to make or spoil the view.

Copyright © 2011 cuttlewoman All Rights Reserved.