From a louse

The results of the Dunedin Robert Burns Poetry Competition were published in the Otago Daily Times this morning. The winning poems aren't in the online edition, though they did appear in the printed version today. I'd imagine they'll turn up on the Public Library website in due course.

Once again I didn't make the cut (out of a surprisingly small number of entries - only 32 in all) The three entries that did win their respective sections all went in for Scots dialect strongly (requiring translations alongside the originals!) and are quite lengthy. Mine has the merit of being short and mostly not using Scots dialect, apart from a couple of words. It's also not autobiographical, in case anyone thinks it might be.

From a louse

On reading Robbie’s To a Louse

(Preferring it to To a Mouse)

I stomp all sullen round the house

And strunt so rarely

I waken up my sleeping spouse

Who hits me squarely.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

Here from discerning spouses free us

With all their earthly power to see us

Clearly near and far;

Would enable us to safely be us

As we truly are.

Then in our smeddum we would strut,

(Pulling in our gut and butt)

And criticism out would shut

With deafened ears,

Cast off each unwanted smut

While downing beers.

We’d view ourselves forever young,

Climb safely up each corporate rung,

Fling curt bon mots from off our tongue,

Be never in a flap;

Each beauteous thought not seen as dung

Or spoken of as crap.

No longer louse to great giraffes

We’d climb up on the PowerPoint graphs

Fly far above our better halfs...

Yes, dreams are free,

And dear departed Robbie laughs:

O wad the giftie gie.

Dialect words:

Strunt: swagger

Smeddum: spirit

Three Older Poems

Three poems that have been around for a good while: the first two date back two or three decades; the last is a little younger. 

1. 

Dali-Magritte - poem written on the back of my will

 If you have ears…then listen.

There was a cat in the corner:
I know - I saw its tail twitch.

A mouse slid across the floor:

don't tell me it's only leaf shadows
flaying at windows.

Three dogs sit outside the café
drinking lattes -
I don't care if you can't see them.

A horse marches into the traffic:
why shouldn't drivers blare their horns?

Hermaphrodite elephants
impregnate each other,
struggling worms under the soil -
have you no ears?

If bottom-dwelling slugs
walked, or shrugged their shoulders,
men would cry out:
"Mountains fall on us!"
You walk as though the
moon never woke.

I know some person

dreams my dreams -
am I not in them?
will he wake?

2. 

We need poems when we...

see
a blind man point his white stick at a magazine stand,
an old lady walk against the lights while five cars grumble;

hear
the mention of worms in the ears of fish,
an empty building's bellow when a hammer drops four floors;

find
a week-dead fish in the refrigerator,
a hessian-skirted church tower,
a dead tree in a public square's brick planter;

understand
an icecream in the mind of a child,
sharp-cornered knee-height coffee tables,
two minds at one table unaware,
space between a pillar and a window where no child can squeeze;

discover
an untouched swinging lightbulb-cord,
toilets beneath the street down bleach-cleaned steps,
a boy concealed in clothes three sizes too big;

realise
literacy is for the spiritually-impaired.

learn our inability to walk in another man's shoes,
taste another man's wife's cooking,
wait for a blind date who doesn't show,
thrust too many oranges into a paper bag,
know the inability of the human hand to encompass a banana,
wear black clothes without a funeral,
find concrete block motels with orange plastic cups and tasselled bedspreads.

3. 

Lying still

Lying still,

winding down from making love,

I heard the room - for the first time - 

singing.

And realised it was not

cold, insensate,

knew it knew me

knew me naked,                                                                     

in intimacy:

in getting up and dressing,

ferreting in the dark for underpants,

slipping trousers on,

undressing, lying down,

swapping shoes for slippers,

lying buff in summer,

in winter pyjama-ed.

All walls have ears, eyes –

this room smells me, is tender towards

me, feels me in itself where

love is most hard to make

and simplest. 

Opening a morning window

it sings me to the world.