Tuesday Poem: The parentless child

On Mothers Day
and Fathers Day
septs of orphans
slip thistle sepals
through their lapels,
tally the days
since partition,
taste the halite
in their lesions,
till the sepia past
for lisles that bind,
but find only silt, ash,
septal defects, pistils,
spathes and stipes
of withered lillies,
and haspless staples
with which to tile
their hills of hell
on Mothers Day
and Fathers Day

A 'sound' poem. Visit Tuesday Poem for more great poetry.

Tuesday Poem: The poor child

had she shoes they would have holes
had she a satchel it would be plastic
had she sheets she would have shelter
had she a closet she might have clothes

oh the state it wrings it hands
oh the state it contemplates its navel
oh the state it blames its predecessors
oh the state it shames her parents
oh the state it prevaricates
oh the state it waits and waits
oh the state it denies that she exists
oh the state it feigns to care about her fate
oh the state it shuts the gate
oh the state it wants the waif to go away

sometimes she goes to school to sleep
sometimes she goes for heat
sometimes she goes to school to eat
sometimes she goes to school


Poverty, inequality, and a lack of political will to do anything about them are still needling my writing skin. Visit Tuesday Poem for more great poetry.

Tuesday Poem: The bag lady

she decants each day in cans

scans the drains for plastic treasure

trades lice and rats with lepers

raids the ruins for pins and tapers

clears the bins of tripe and crabs

plaits ducted cable to her tresses

drapes her scabs in spats of peat

scrubs the crud from her dresses

daubs the seats with lunar runes

taps public stipends from the streets

spiels and reels a descant tune

laces tea with beer and acid

her nightly sleep is lanced with pain

when spiders' bites redact her brain

and render essence of a past

so redolent of yours or mine

Poverty, impoverishment, the precariousness of continuity of access to livable incomes - these have been uppermost of mind recently. Visit Tuesday Poem for more great poetry.

Tuesday Poem: Cloth Cap Commutes - the freeloaders

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 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.
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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.

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.