One of those pretty awful poems

On Summer mornings the house can breathe

And though when we open windows wide

The flies arrive and drive their buzzing bodies

Hither thither helter skelter, the house still takes in

Gulps of air, as though in prescience aware of

Long-closed windows come Winter. 

                        The breathing river flows from front to

Back, and cleans the slate of all the un-Spring-cleaned

Detritus.  At least in my mind’s eye that’s how it goes.

A little breeze can sometimes blow and slam the doors,

Rattle windows, fling the curtains, push a toothbrush off the

Sill, drop it into baths (or toilet bowls).

For some reason this poem (written a few years ago) was listed in my files as 'One of those pretty awful poems.'   I'm not sure I entirely agree with myself.  

A poet's life

An interesting quote from Matsuo Bashō, on the life of a poet:

In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit, for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.

The extract comes from Journal of a Travel-Worn Satchel (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa) and quoted in the opening of Jane Hirschfield's book, The Heart of Haiku. 

I perhaps should be grateful that I don't feel that writing poetry is my 'lifelong business', nevertheless I understand Bashō's comments. 

Remix Mashup poems

Two 'exercise' poems...making poems using the 'rules' from the 'Remix Mashup' in The Exercise Book, edited by Bill Manhire and others. 

1.

Iamb is a poet’s word -

reminds me of I Am:

a God Word.

I am is a phrase I might duck

even though those who know me would say

‘It’ll be good for you,’

going to the height

going to the moment

going to the desire.

If I AM, that McCahon painterly phrase,

is swapped for poetical iamb,

what enclavier will I introduce into the

waddle and monitor of time?

Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby

introduced an enclavier for T H Lawrence,

helped him find himself the man of the

hour, though Allenby unenjoyed that

introduction, that momenting in time.

Did Lawrence repair Allenby?

Book him into the I-Am-bic mystery?

Typing this I think of Lawrence’s

typewriter – the photo’s onFlickr, that

irritatingly misspelt word. 

That I AM word

misspells me.

Iamb is a poet’s word. Reminds me of I Am.

Iamb looks like lamb.

2.

Crawl, walk, drop.

And spell.

When you tell me you

can’t have an opinion

I tell you that’s

blather.  So jump!

Crawl, walk, drop.

And spell.

No, not spell like in the

dictionary.  I thought you were

smart.

Are you barking mad?

Have you an unmercifully

cluttered mind?

Is your brain in the proximity of

your shoes?

Your consciousness of shoes makes you

Slurp and scoot. 

How smart is that?

Crawl, walk, drop.

And spell.

Scoot the hell out of here. 

Melodramatic Sestina

You never quite know where the Sestina form will take you.  The following over-the-top example shows what happens when you let it take the lead.  

Melodramatic Sestina

First glance she sent him with a sigh,

responded he with cheerful gleam,

she flicked an olive in his lap,

pretended she was sipping wine,

and fluttered lashes black and false

while he blushed high, with pounding heart.

He faniced he had won her heart

with little more than groan and sigh;

he failed to note that she was false

to her table mate, whose eyes a-gleam,

was more than sloshed on mid-priced wine,

while food was dropping in his lap.

Taking the olive from his lap

our hero ate, stared at her false

grey eyes with longing, but like whines

from the throat of a slaughtered goat, his sighs

stopped in their tracks at the sudden gleam

in the lady’s eyes as her table mate’s fals-

etto voice exposed his lady’s false-

hoods (brushing food from off his lap);

they’d dull of any man his gleam,

they’d break of any man his heart

and with a deep and painful sigh

in her face he splashed his dregs of wine.

The lady screamed, began to whine

in notes that diners round knew false.

The two men rose, with each a sigh

(dropping their napkins from their laps)

plunged a steak knife in the heart

of the other; blood soon dulled the gleam

of the steel.  Out of their eyes, the gleam

soon went while plates, forks, chairs, wine

toppled; unfamiliar fear gripped the heart

of the lady, whose wanton, false

deceptive acts fell in her lap.

Appalled, she crumpled with a sigh. 

envoi

Don’t diminish the gleam in living the false,

spilling Life’s wine in Fate’s shallow lap;

to splinter the heart, start with a sigh.

Novelists fear primarily

This 'found' poem started out as an exercise using groups of three words: noun, verb, adjective, in each case.  I played around with another form and then came on the approach I've used here.  The repetitions add to the rhythm and the energy, and even give the piece a hint of drama (!)  The words are in the order as first 'found', though occasional grammar improvements and punctuation have been added.  

Novelists fear primarily

Fear primarily alphabet

Primarily alphabet tests

Alphabet tests private

Tests private media

Private media asks

Media asks, addictive?

Asks addictive?, calm

Addictive; calm suggests

Calm suggests important

Suggests important priority

Important priority manages

Priority manages notice

Manages notice campaign

Notice campaign thinks

Campaign thinks financial

Thinks financial life

Financial life invents

Life invents growing

Invents growing writer

Growing writer speaks

Writer speaks – unruly! -

Speaks, unruly weekend

Unruly weekend source

Weekend source knows

Source knows paragraph

Knows paragraph input

Paragraph input distrust

Input distrusts conference

Distrusts conference easily

Conference easily swollen

Easily swollen novelists. 

Playing with a Pantoum again

I took a number of lines from Tweets (on Twitter - Tweeters can be surprisingly poetic) and shuffled them around into a Pantoum until I was (fairly) happy.  And then just for fun used the same lines in a slightly more extended poem. 


Meaning?  Up to you, the reader...

Twitter Pantoum 

Kids today are less moronic

Not all heroes enjoy the role

Once the term is activated                                                

Kind words can be short and easy.

Not all heroes enjoy the role

He can only be taken away if he wants to be stolen

Kind words can be short and easy

Buying an island he does it with style.

He can only be taken away if he wants to be stolen

Would someone mind slowing down the world?

Buying an island he does it with style

The roadmap reveals new handsets.

Would someone mind slowing down the world?

Night store heater stores heat overnight

The roadmap reveals new handsets

More fun than you can shake a false eyelash at.

Night store heater stores heat overnight

The bridesmaids’ dresses are equally ugly

More fun than you can shake a false eyelash at

Watching pretty little liars like myself.

The bridesmaids’ dresses are equally ugly

Kind words can be short and easy

Watching pretty little liars like myself

Kids today are less moronic.

And another approach, not in the Pantoum style:

Kids today are less moronic

From the time they’re embryonic

Once the term is activated                                                

Fires of life initiated

They can only be taken away if they want to be stolen.

Not all heroes enjoy the role

Some prefer being on the dole,

Kind words can be short and easy

Some kind words are sick and queasy

More fun than you can shake a false eyelash at.

Night store heater stores heat overnight

If they don’t we’ve a morning cold fright

The roadmap reveals new handsets

The broadband reveals new bandwidths

Would someone mind slowing down the world?

Buying an island he does it with style

Buying islands bores after a while,

The bridesmaids’ dresses are equally ugly

The bride, however, is very snugly

Watching pretty little liars like myself

It’s not surprising I’ve been left on the shelf.  

For another example of 'found' phrases check here. 

Flash Fiction

Running and Waiting

The rhododendron, paler than white, leans in the heat towards the path which is sunk below the road. The glistening heat has melted the rhododendron petals off the branches; they settle as browning water lilies in the grass. But the grass doesn’t pour down towards the path because it isn’t water.

The path is a deep dip, so that a child can race with her dog down one side and make it up the other before running out of puff.

The child runs down the path, her knots of knees pumping past faster than the eye can grasp. There is a splash, but this isn’t water. The dog pulls on the lead and drags the child, strains to move forward. The child’s grazed knees bleed in rivulets. She pushes herself upwards, stands, sobs for a moment.

Calls to the dog. Calls the dog names.The dog sits on the hot pavement, indifferent. English is not his first language.

The girl dabs at her knees with a tissue: the heat of the sun is already drying the rivulets of blood. The dog waits, as dogs do. The pavement is warm. Waiting isn’t difficult. Boredom is not in his experience, or vocabulary.

The grazes sting in the heat. The child brushes the stings aside in her mind. Self-pity is not in her experience, or vocabulary.

This story first appeared online in the February 2012 Flash Frontier anthology: Heat. 

Not avoiding the I

The following poem (which may yet go through some further revisions) is based around the idea of starting each line with the letter that the previous line ended with...I've only cheated once, I think, in the second half. (To my surprise, the poem neatly sorted itself out into two halves of twenty lines each.) 

It also alludes to the idea of limiting yourself to a single vowel, but that's beyond me at this stage of my career. However, two writers who've done work in this way, Georges Perec, and Christian Bök, both get a look in [that's Bök in the photo].  Christian Bök was apparently named, as a newborn, 'Christian Book,' but altered the spelling of his surname to avoid 'unseemly confusion with the Bible.' 

Not avoiding the I

‘You forbid yourself use of a vowel,

legislatively avoiding every I -

if possible.’ However, this poem

makes no attempt to avoid that letter,

rapidly realising that too many words

solidly take their place only because

each one has an I in it.  And

don’t let it imply that I’m referring

generatively to the first person pronoun;

no, I definitely mean the letter itself,

furnishing space for definitely or

realising, words that without those

eyes (as they sound) would come straight

to a halt. Definitely would sound

dismal as though missing the

echoing roof of the mouth, or

realising would struggle to be

even a fragment of itself, the mutter of

fatheads incapable of voicing the

exalted English language. 

Such restriction inhibits stiffly;

you amplify, in individual lines, utility,

intensifying I increasingly until as

sky far as the I can see a diatribe of that

third vowel swimmingly impinges, and

dismisses different vowels, so that

the I who’s hardly there in ‘in’ sees

some of what you’re up to, grows boastful,

latterly insists on an univocalic spirit.

This is soon declined by vowels impartial,

leniently none reminding I of Perec’s

singular E-voided novel,

La Disparition, or the Perec

counterparting work Les revenentes where

E appears alone.  And lonely.

Yet think, too, you vowels, of Christian

- nee Book (too close to biblical) - Bök

kindly offering his univocalic

cinque-chaptered Eunoia, where

each holy vowel receives pre-eminent place.

Note, though Eunoia is supposedly the shortest word in the language containing all the vowels, (it means beautiful thinking), it's (possibly) been superseded by Iouea, not only a shorter word, but one that still manages to have four syllables.  There's a delightful article about the word, which relates to a fossil sponge, and has a New Zealand connection.  The word was invented by M. W. de Laubenfels, but the name for the particular sponge may have been replaced by a newer name.  

Zen Poem

Playing again with found/collage lines to form a poem.  Here the lines came (mostly ready-made) from a variety of cuttings I have on file, including several poems.  In a few instances I've dropped a word or changed the tense or a pronoun.  I've called it a Zen Poem because it's somewhat reminiscent of that Zen approach in which a non sequiter often seems to follow a straightforward question.  However, the 'wisdom' that appears here may not be quite on a par with the tradition of Zen.  And it's possible some responses could be shifted to answer a different question....

Zen Poem

Why are you washing and smearing windows?

Sometimes you catch your face in a mirror.

What happens if we bring all the little pieces together?

The dawning awareness of the thinness of disembodied life.

Where was easily the most exciting game you ever played?

In the online ecosystem I’m inhabiting.

When is the placebo helpful, and when is it not?

Always in the supermarket, and out and about.

What are the usual superficial divisions between Right and Left?

A team snaps out of its streak and wins a bunch of games.

Why won’t attempts at control be abandoned?

The subjectivity of others is confirmed by a failure to point.

Why do you court silence as prayer?

Everything I do is instantly news.

What if you were patient and could spare the time?

I view relationships as based on utility and exchange.

Would you self-impose a moratorium?

Nothing so conclusively proves one’s ability to lead.

What if change was discontinuous with the past?

The depression years take up large chunks of my story.

Have you been reduced to doling out slops to pigs?

What I really want is someone rolling around in the text.

What is the sweet heat made from two bodies in the bed?

Despair, a side of mutton, roaming the slaughterhouse.

What if you became a hunch-backed old man?

I accept that we just have to live with sandflies.

What if I asked: what is it like to drown?

Vigilante tactics, smashing illegal stills, flogging drunks.

What is it about correlation and causation?

You can’t tell the story of rage in soccer without talking about managers.

Is solving for motivation the wrong solution?

In dreams of reason you may drink of life’s streams.

Are you going to die having missed nearly everything?

You can still get out of jail free.

The body returns...

The body returns to gravity
after lying deep in a
long hot bath

Twitter Collage Poem

In the past I've written found or collage poems, with varying degrees of success.  However, it occurred to me that Twitter provides a fruitful place for picking up interesting 'found' lines (rather like the abbreviated messages on postcards).  The following is one possibility formed in couplets that may or may not have connections.  And thanks to all the Twitters who inadvertently gave me lines to work with...I've acknowledged those I could retrace below. 


Twitter Collage Poem

He gets to the sandwiches at the lock-up first

fruitlessly to find meaning in spilled coffee grounds.

Sing out if you want to spend a bit of time -

in my youth my patience is limited.

Shivers of unendurable glee

brutally encased in formaldehyde.

It ain’t just the Aussies who produce dire pop songs;

feel free to send info on must do’s in Israel.

Off to drink Sangria in the park, then I’m off to the zoo -

they’ve been given an order and are openly insubordinate.

Everybody already has their lines prepared and it’s

these carry me along on a stream of sporadic notes.

Vaguely shaped like a rack of ribs: if I’m not interested in

something anymore then no one else should be interested either.

@_jjw_

@IanTLS

@BilgeEbiri

@nzlistener

@asdeos

@sixthformpoet

@chrisberg

Grandparents

This is an older poem that first appeared online here.  I've altered a couple of words.  (Please note, the first part is tongue-in-cheek, something that wasn't recognised when it was first published.)

Grandparents are best kept in separate houses.

Each pair thinks their mutual grandchild is theirs

And theirs alone. 

Sharing is a no-no, and the thought that others have

Input on a grandparent level is

Disturbing, to say the least.

It’s a strange thing that we two grandparents

Can give our whole hearts to our grandchildren

And yet, four other sets of grandparents

Have also given their whole hearts away.

Why aren’t the grandchildren

Swamped with all that love? 

Wouldn’t you think that the parents’ love,

And the paternal grandparents’ love,

And the maternal grandparents’ love,

And, in at least one case,

The great-grandparent’s love

Would be like a huge enveloping balloon,

A blimp full of love that made it hard to breathe?

Apparently not.

With childlike ease the grandchildren

Absorb it all and have room for more.

Phew!  Love like a whole world.

Phew!  Love like the universe expanding.

Phew!  Love as broad as eternity.

It’s just as well for grandparents to stay

Separate.

Otherwise the rest of the world might begin to

Soak up all that love and set itself alight.

Backpfeifengesicht

I came across this wonderful German word yesterday, and its even more wonderful meaning.  It's pronounced - if my long-distant German lessons serve me right - Bark fie fen gay zicked.  (Please note, this is extremely approximate!)

Backpfeifengesicht

English speakers have no word for

a face that badly needs a punch.

The German compound word is

Backpfeifengesicht

Which could easily seem to mean

a face like a smelly drain

Though transliterally it’s close to

a back-pipe face, which isn’t

Complementary.  And

on the face of it, the word looks like

Bagpipes make me sick¸ though

since I have a friend who’s learning

To play the bagpipes, using

Backpfeifengesicht

In a pretended translation

seems likely to bring me to a

Place where I might well have

a face that badly needs a punch. 

Two poems waiting for a home

Weather Report

Never mind that Waiouru's
frozen, iced and brutal,
or that Kaitaia, which is in the tropics anyway,

is constantly fine

and has no excuse to be otherwise;
or that Auckland rains flood in all seasons,
or that Wellington's swept off the map
with gusts and winds whose rate of knots
exceed the speed of light,
or the Garden City's smog smudges
homes, faces, windscreens
with a grey and pernicious smuttiness...

Always, always, in the Deep South
according to the (fair)-weathermen and -women
ensconced behind the Bombay Wall of Hills,
 it’s:

‘Snow,’
preferably down to 200 metres.

The Luddite Dreams

The Internet is down – for good.

Bookshops come back into their own;

Google has gone; librarians once again

Are the source of all knowledge. 

Everything you wanted to know in a hurry

You have to wait for, just as you did in the past.

You can’t order online, or pay online,

You have to communicate face to face,

With real faces, real voices, and discover

They are, for the most part, worth communicating with.

No more poker games online, no more

Pornography available at the touch of a key.

Life slows down, immeasurably, and

Millions of people find employment again.  

A parallelogram of light

Things have been a little quiet on the poetry front because of the amount of work being done on the musical I've written: Grimhilda!  However, here's a small offering to keep my fans from fretting...

A parallelogram of

light 

caught 

out of the

corner of my sight,

formed 

on a white

inner wall 

by a window.

Pantoum: The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Toad

Toads are less popular than frogs.

Ostriches bury their heads in sand.

The upright abhors toadying

When winter’s hibernation ends.

Ostriches bury their heads in sand.

The archetypical dwell in halls

When winter’s hibernation ends.

The eponymous hero promises.

The archetypical dwell in halls,

Endearing and obnoxious.

The eponymous hero promises.

The princess marries the prince.

Endearing and obnoxious,

His eyes look abnormally large.

The princess marries the prince.

The conceited ass never learns.

His eyes look abnormally large.

There are more to toads than meet the eye.

The conceited ass never learns.

Beauty’s ambivalence drives.

There are more to toads than meet the eye.

The upright abhors toadying.

Beauty’s ambivalence drives.

Toads are less popular than frogs.

If you're not familiar with the pantoum format, it consists (in English) of four lines in which the 2nd and 4th are repeated as the 1st and 3rd in the next verse, and so on.  When you're ready to come to an end, the original 1st and 3rd lines are placed as the 2nd and 4th of the last stanza.  There's a tendency for the pantoum to drum its way along at a fairly stolid pace (although that may depend on the poet) because of the repetitions.  However, the repetitions, coming as they do against new lines, tend to take on new meanings.  

This particular one is based on phrases and lines and words from this morning's Wordways (John Hale) in the ODT: The Ambivalent Amphibian. 

And they all think they’re standing still…

And they all think they’re standing still…
but I know that each and every object, the
29 inch Sanyo television, the
Epson stylus photo 830U, the
CD case inexplicably marked:
38374653gd, the
one remaining Christmas card with a Santa surprised at work-
I know they’re all whizzing round the world at
a speed that is somewhat akin to that of a recently-
discovered comet which may or may not hit the Earth;
I know they’re all under the delusion that
they’re stationary, that the only moving object here is
me.

But when I walk to the kitchen, a walk that’s roughly Eastward,
I am perhaps going faster than they are, or maybe
slower, depending on which direction the earth is spinning.
My calculation is that Eastward is the way we sail, but
I’m open to correction, since I’m also under the
impression that the Southern hemisphere is actually in the North,
though to argue such a rearrangement would set the world aflame.
I’m easily misinformed, however; a stand-up comic’s joke can fool me,
a salesman at a party can sell me nonsense,
a grandmother can spout ancient wisdom and I will rest
happy in my new-found knowledge.

So when I’ve put the jug on, and come back to the lounge,
the jug races ahead of the rest of us;
though facing forwards, I’m walking
backwards, gaining time I lost on my Eastern trip.
Or so I think.   But not being one prone to
contemplation, it’s possible the
29 inch Sanyo television with Dynamic Platinum Flat Screen,
the Epson stylus 830U that prints photo quality reproductions,
the CD case marked 38374653gd as a code to identify its user,
the one left-over Christmas card with a Santa shuffling
two wrapped presents from side to side in an indeliberate manner
all have it over me in the analytical stakes,
and that while they sit they have
the time to discern whether the sun rises in the kitchen,
whether the world rolls like a cricket ball towards a never-to-be-found boundary,
whether the North denies the South’s rightful place,
and whether silent objects, the stuff of still life paintings,
have any ability to think upon their place upon the planet.

This poem was written some time ago, and is only now added to the blog. 

Update, 2014. This poem was accepted for an Australian speculative poetry anthology called Stars Like Sand, edited by Tim Jones and P S Cotter.

More on Villanelles

I've talked about Villanelles on this blog before, and included at least one example that I haven't written myself. 


I've just come across another, this time by Theodore Roethke.  I was reading this poem, courtesy of the daily Writer's Almanac email, and realised within a stanza or so that it was a Villanelle.   The title is The Waking, and you can read it here - where they have permission to reproduce it.   Here are the first three lines:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

The first and last line reappear (not always exactly, which is common in this form) throughout the poem.   Note the paradoxical theme as well - waking to sleep, learning by going where he has to go.  That second idea is something poets often pursue in the course of their writing: writing in order to find out what it is you want to say. 

Incarpaliar rock

Incarpaliar rock

The train cheats through the desert.

My elbow is warmed from its resting on the window.

What a fuss I left behind!

That singing brick, making music to soothe the papoose.

I might as well have a sandwich – so-called –

though the railway doesn’t know what a sandwich is.

Why can’t I sleep on trains?

That would stop me feeling hungry.

It’s worse on a plane – the cramped carpal tunnel.

It’s like your dreams are cheated when you try and sleep

on a plane.

On trains, I doze....

A train has rhythm  - (rhythm,

what a stinker of a word to spell).  Rhythm.  Rhythm.

On trains the rocking motion reminds you of being a papoose

listening to your mother’s music,

warmed up from inside out by her oh-so-familiar voice.

Not the voice that later would say, Get it? Get it??

when plainly I didn’t. 

As though she’d seen what sort of a fool she’d brought up.

What a fuss she’d make over it.

No wonder I’m dreaming of being on a train,

streaming through the desert.

cheating her, somehow. 

This poem, (not autobiographical, by the way), is the result of working out one of the exercises in The Exercise Book, edited by Bill Manhire and others. 

Montezuma’s Revenge

I got The Exercise Book out of the library yesterday - it's edited by Bill Manhire, amongst others.  It's a grab bag of ideas to stimulate your writing, and the poem below is the result of one of these stimulations...this is a first run at it - there may be improved versions still to come.   

Montezuma’s Revenge

One of the blankets I hung out to air

was dry when I first hung it out.

It’s now wet from the spitting rain,

so I’ve hung it in the glasshouse

to dry again.

The tomatoes in the glasshouse are a

very few red; the remainder green.

The blanket is child’s blue, green, red, a

child’s blanket kept to cover the dog’s

cage, where he sleeps at night, in the

kitchen, with the curtains closed, to

shut out the extra light.

We’ve been up in the night the

last three nights, letting the dog out

in the dark at least three times a

night – he’s had the backdoor trots,

(our back door rattles in the wind

as I write), Montezuma’s Revenge –

the runs, the summer complaint,

though for eating what I know not what.

Montezuma’s Revenge: why does a

Dutch a cappella rock-pop group

name itself after a South American

loosening of the guts? 

But they did just such.

They’ve called it quits once –

not the loosening, though most would

call quits (including the dog) on that as

quickly as. Three years ago

they quit, but last December

were touring as if detachment never

happened, their Dutch phizogs

bouyant on a poster for

Montezuma’s Revenge

Strikes Back: an a capella

circus.

Google translates the revival:

“It buzzed for a while in the

corridors and it is true!  After a

number of theatres with the

question of Montezuma was 

again not what we could do the 

heads together. Such a chance will

not let you lie...a fall or winter or 

summer break depression is

now time for a spring cleaning.

That sounds like we have met 

once the broom by the occupation.”

You can see Montezuma's Revenge's website here.