Cloth Cap was looking out the window, string-phoned, contemplating. Today's fellow travellers were the usual salmagundi. Sonia - she cultivated people knowing her name - was sitting next to Walking Stick, who earlier had done her assisted sprint from the feeder bus to board this one. The Crusher had found a seat to himself, to everyone's relief. Placemaker Man was sitting behind the driver, as he always did. Blue Coat (who actually hadn't worn it for a year) had chosen Cloth Cap to sit next to today - she never sat next to the same person two day's running. Other passengers from the later stops seized the remaining seats. It was if the freeloaders had been waiting for this to happen, or because the air in the bus had reached wing-muscle temperature. Or maybe, with their acute sense of hearing, they had heard Iggy Pop singing through Cloth Cap's string phones. Whatever it was, when the cicadas started stirring on the floor of the bus the effect was electric. The Crusher turned pale and gripped his knees, conversations erupted between previously mute companions, men and women lowered their faces in consternation and tried to brush any flying freeloaders away.
Blue Coat calmly pulled a tissue from her purse, leant down and gathered up a couple of crawlers. She handed it to Cloth Cap and pointed at the open top window. Eventually all were dispatched one way or another. Iggy Pop, the iconic rocker who sometimes sang live dressed only in his undies, was still singing his punk anthem - The Passenger. "Oh the passenger, He rides and He rides, He looks through his window, what does he see?" belted through Cloth Cap's string phones. He was sure now the cicadas had only wanted to join in the riff. Iggy Pop and the Cicadas, now that would have been something.
Another poem from my University of Iowa MOOC writing experience. Visit Tuesday Poem for more great poetry.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Old paper
They stood forgotten
backs against the wall
waiting to be hung –
seven pictures,
remnants, ephemera,
a pastiche from the attics
of his life.
When his office was repainted
(‘papyrus’ - years ago)
he relegated them to a corner,
promising resurrection
later.
After the reunion that refracted
fifty years from their first shackling
to a volcano's shadow,
he warmed to palimpsests
of paintings
on parchment walls.
He would begin with the mountain –
it wears a freezing-worker's white bonnet
and tussock apron...
though absent the feather of menace
that always plumed its crater.
Yes, the volcano would be first.
He knew now which memories
might recrudesce.
Yet another poem from my University of Iowa MOOC writing experience. Visit Tuesday Poem for for a great poem by Pascale Petit: Fauverie - Emmanuel.
.
backs against the wall
waiting to be hung –
seven pictures,
remnants, ephemera,
a pastiche from the attics
of his life.
When his office was repainted
(‘papyrus’ - years ago)
he relegated them to a corner,
promising resurrection
later.
After the reunion that refracted
fifty years from their first shackling
to a volcano's shadow,
he warmed to palimpsests
of paintings
on parchment walls.
He would begin with the mountain –
it wears a freezing-worker's white bonnet
and tussock apron...
though absent the feather of menace
that always plumed its crater.
Yes, the volcano would be first.
He knew now which memories
might recrudesce.
Yet another poem from my University of Iowa MOOC writing experience. Visit Tuesday Poem for for a great poem by Pascale Petit: Fauverie - Emmanuel.
.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Life sentences
by day he is a demon drover
who roams with rats in vacant lots
eats pitted dates with monster toads
leaves rinds of snot on rabid stones
his matted mane snares the mist
he shares his mind with dented mates
is atomised by vengeful doves
rants at vets who sieve his dreams
his eyes are stained with totem odes
he vends his verse from vats of steam
stores his rage in raven's drains
strides the street with riven tomes
but when the mares of night invade
the priestly demons that he droves
divest their robes and mitred hats
and rape him on the road
Another poem from my University of Iowa MOOC writing experience. Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
who roams with rats in vacant lots
eats pitted dates with monster toads
leaves rinds of snot on rabid stones
his matted mane snares the mist
he shares his mind with dented mates
is atomised by vengeful doves
rants at vets who sieve his dreams
his eyes are stained with totem odes
he vends his verse from vats of steam
stores his rage in raven's drains
strides the street with riven tomes
but when the mares of night invade
the priestly demons that he droves
divest their robes and mitred hats
and rape him on the road
Another poem from my University of Iowa MOOC writing experience. Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Giving birth
It’s scratching, sketching, hatching, culling
reflecting, collecting, selecting, electing
building, stitching, sowing, growing
It’s being mindful while netting metaphors
from speech and prosody's tidal reaches
lapping at our multitudes of selves
It’s saving sonnets lost in others’ words
taking pleasure with the tongue
seeking freedom in constraint
It’s congregation, congress, association
looking, sweating, kissing, cussing
this gestation, this poem writing
Like one or two other Tuesday Poem poets, several other New Zealanders, and over 3,000 global poetry writers, I have over the last 6 weeks been a participant in the University of Iowa's "Writers on Writing Poetry" MOOC. I registered for this online course because I was looking for new ways and techniques to explore and use when writing poems. To this end, I have not been disappointed and have been introduced to several ideas, many processes, and some exciting entrees into writing poetry. The course finishes this week and the above poem was my response to the exercise of writing a "constraint-based" poem. The constraint to be used was ours to choose and mine was to use a word from each of the titles that made up the12 Class Sessions. The words as they appear line by line in the poem are: sketching, collecting, building, mindful, prosody, multitudes, words, pleasure, constraint, association, looking, poem. And if you can get over all the -ing words in the poem, (which is frowned on by certain of today's poetry-writing teachers), I hope you enjoy.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
reflecting, collecting, selecting, electing
building, stitching, sowing, growing
It’s being mindful while netting metaphors
from speech and prosody's tidal reaches
lapping at our multitudes of selves
It’s saving sonnets lost in others’ words
taking pleasure with the tongue
seeking freedom in constraint
It’s congregation, congress, association
looking, sweating, kissing, cussing
this gestation, this poem writing
Like one or two other Tuesday Poem poets, several other New Zealanders, and over 3,000 global poetry writers, I have over the last 6 weeks been a participant in the University of Iowa's "Writers on Writing Poetry" MOOC. I registered for this online course because I was looking for new ways and techniques to explore and use when writing poems. To this end, I have not been disappointed and have been introduced to several ideas, many processes, and some exciting entrees into writing poetry. The course finishes this week and the above poem was my response to the exercise of writing a "constraint-based" poem. The constraint to be used was ours to choose and mine was to use a word from each of the titles that made up the12 Class Sessions. The words as they appear line by line in the poem are: sketching, collecting, building, mindful, prosody, multitudes, words, pleasure, constraint, association, looking, poem. And if you can get over all the -ing words in the poem, (which is frowned on by certain of today's poetry-writing teachers), I hope you enjoy.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Tuesday Poem: The ghost of Abbassia
Why so pale, young soldier-lad
what gloominess is this?
The days are breathing summer’s heat
what can there be amiss?
The boy he gazed into his beer
then looked around real slow
before he told to me this tale
in voice that trembled low:
I was on a signals course
we was testing radio.
We drove out to Abbassia
six months or so ago.
The night was bollocks freezing
there was ice on top of snow
the mountain she was steaming
the moon with blood did glow.
We set up camp and had a feed
but not a drop of booze.
I went outside to take a leak
and saw a bloody ghoul.
His face was black, his lips was burnt
cordite stained his hands.
His battle dress was ripped to shreds
He wore a gunner’s badge.
He said to me his gun had breached
a live one up the spout.
The crew was dead and dying –
go rouse the medics out.
I looked at him and knew he was
not human any more.
The gun it did explode alright
but thirty years before.
I told the ghost to bugger off –
his crew was feeding worms.
The gunner ghoul he swore real foul
then on me laid a curse.
He told me not to venture near
the swamp at Ngamatea
‘specially in the summer
for I would disappear.
He said the swamp would swallow me
like all them sheeps ‘n cattle
my bony bits would marry theirs
and never even rattle.
I laughed away that ghostie’s curse
when we was back in base
until today when Sarge he said
with malice on his face
‘You lot is slack and need a run
stay off the smokes ‘n beer
tomorrow sharp at sparrow’s fart
we head for Ngamatea.’
I wish I’d never seen nor dissed
the ghost of Abbassia –
tomorrow I’ll be drowning in
that swamp at Ngamatea.
I wrote this ballad several years ago (apologies to Keats for the first two lines). It is based on a couple of incidents I experienced when I was a boy soldier in the 1960s. The ghost observation was reported by several of my colleagues during training when they were based at an NZ Army satellite camp (Abbassia, near Waiouru). Research later revealed that a gunner had been killed there 30 years previously when a shell exploded in a gun barrel during live-firing practice. We were also spun many stories about the Ngamatea (Nah-ma-tee-ah) swamp and how we would one day have to run through it during our physical training. These combined in my over-active but slow imagination 45 years later to spark this poem.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems and where this week's post is 'News from the Island' by Tracey Sullivan.
what gloominess is this?
The days are breathing summer’s heat
what can there be amiss?
The boy he gazed into his beer
then looked around real slow
before he told to me this tale
in voice that trembled low:
I was on a signals course
we was testing radio.
We drove out to Abbassia
six months or so ago.
The night was bollocks freezing
there was ice on top of snow
the mountain she was steaming
the moon with blood did glow.
We set up camp and had a feed
but not a drop of booze.
I went outside to take a leak
and saw a bloody ghoul.
His face was black, his lips was burnt
cordite stained his hands.
His battle dress was ripped to shreds
He wore a gunner’s badge.
He said to me his gun had breached
a live one up the spout.
The crew was dead and dying –
go rouse the medics out.
I looked at him and knew he was
not human any more.
The gun it did explode alright
but thirty years before.
I told the ghost to bugger off –
his crew was feeding worms.
The gunner ghoul he swore real foul
then on me laid a curse.
He told me not to venture near
the swamp at Ngamatea
‘specially in the summer
for I would disappear.
He said the swamp would swallow me
like all them sheeps ‘n cattle
my bony bits would marry theirs
and never even rattle.
I laughed away that ghostie’s curse
when we was back in base
until today when Sarge he said
with malice on his face
‘You lot is slack and need a run
stay off the smokes ‘n beer
tomorrow sharp at sparrow’s fart
we head for Ngamatea.’
I wish I’d never seen nor dissed
the ghost of Abbassia –
tomorrow I’ll be drowning in
that swamp at Ngamatea.
I wrote this ballad several years ago (apologies to Keats for the first two lines). It is based on a couple of incidents I experienced when I was a boy soldier in the 1960s. The ghost observation was reported by several of my colleagues during training when they were based at an NZ Army satellite camp (Abbassia, near Waiouru). Research later revealed that a gunner had been killed there 30 years previously when a shell exploded in a gun barrel during live-firing practice. We were also spun many stories about the Ngamatea (Nah-ma-tee-ah) swamp and how we would one day have to run through it during our physical training. These combined in my over-active but slow imagination 45 years later to spark this poem.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems and where this week's post is 'News from the Island' by Tracey Sullivan.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Facial impressions
On the map it’s a runny nose
dripping Florida’s Keys
into the Gulf of Mexico.
But when the Beach Boys sing Kokomo
I still join in – Key Largo, Montego…
Come on pretty mama
That’s where you wanna go…
Although you can’t say Everglades to me
without large birds flapping their gantry wings
as they fly away from the evil
that slithers into the swamp
near those ghoul-like cypress trees
dreadlocked in Spanish moss.
And you can’t say Lake Okeechobee
without me seeing the mass murderer
who is really innocent
running through the lake-edge water
looking over his shoulder and tripping
when he hears the sound
of the blood hounds
that he can’t see through the mist
that parts then shrouds
the spectral trees.
And if you say Miami to me
I say vice, Don Johnson
the film whose names I can’t remember
with the Florida chapter of the mafia
that the Chicago Godfather
wants to rub out/pencil in
for an unstable alliance
between the New York bosses
and the Cuban connection
that morphs to the Pelican Brief
that changes into Scarface
starring Al Pacino.
I say it’s the front tooth of a mouth
which is really a womb
annually spawning several children
each with chainsaw limbs
only one eye
and a murderer’s heart.
This poem appeared in Tongues of Ash. Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
dripping Florida’s Keys
into the Gulf of Mexico.
But when the Beach Boys sing Kokomo
I still join in – Key Largo, Montego…
Come on pretty mama
That’s where you wanna go…
Although you can’t say Everglades to me
without large birds flapping their gantry wings
as they fly away from the evil
that slithers into the swamp
near those ghoul-like cypress trees
dreadlocked in Spanish moss.
And you can’t say Lake Okeechobee
without me seeing the mass murderer
who is really innocent
running through the lake-edge water
looking over his shoulder and tripping
when he hears the sound
of the blood hounds
that he can’t see through the mist
that parts then shrouds
the spectral trees.
And if you say Miami to me
I say vice, Don Johnson
the film whose names I can’t remember
with the Florida chapter of the mafia
that the Chicago Godfather
wants to rub out/pencil in
for an unstable alliance
between the New York bosses
and the Cuban connection
that morphs to the Pelican Brief
that changes into Scarface
starring Al Pacino.
I say it’s the front tooth of a mouth
which is really a womb
annually spawning several children
each with chainsaw limbs
only one eye
and a murderer’s heart.
This poem appeared in Tongues of Ash. Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Today, there are twenty-three
Dead leaves
scratch the city street.
The sky is light-weak,
wearing another winter’s
manifest on a sleeve
abstained by blue.
The street’s address
is solid Golden Mile,
where Versace, Gucci,
and Swarovski sup with
the Saatchi brothers.
It is voting season too,
the season of evasion,
sanitised reports,
lies disguised as promises,
squabbles about deciles
of squalor, poverty, jobs,
housing, inequality;
during which politicians
will make the brothers
even richer.
On Golden Mile
beggars squat.
Today, there are twenty-three
between Manners Street
and Parliament.
Dead leaves
scuffle round their feet.
We are just coming into New Zealand's winter and we have a general election in September. Hopefully (or perhaps not), the poem says it all.
I'm also the hub Tuesday Poem editor this week, and the poem I've chosen is "Quail Flat, 1960" by Kerry Popplewell. Check it out at the main Tuesday Poem blog, and don't forget to check out the poems in the sidebar as well!
scratch the city street.
The sky is light-weak,
wearing another winter’s
manifest on a sleeve
abstained by blue.
The street’s address
is solid Golden Mile,
where Versace, Gucci,
and Swarovski sup with
the Saatchi brothers.
It is voting season too,
the season of evasion,
sanitised reports,
lies disguised as promises,
squabbles about deciles
of squalor, poverty, jobs,
housing, inequality;
during which politicians
will make the brothers
even richer.
On Golden Mile
beggars squat.
Today, there are twenty-three
between Manners Street
and Parliament.
Dead leaves
scuffle round their feet.
We are just coming into New Zealand's winter and we have a general election in September. Hopefully (or perhaps not), the poem says it all.
I'm also the hub Tuesday Poem editor this week, and the poem I've chosen is "Quail Flat, 1960" by Kerry Popplewell. Check it out at the main Tuesday Poem blog, and don't forget to check out the poems in the sidebar as well!
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