My housemate & I attended Vintage Vibes tonight. It was a somewhat serendipitous choice because we got to see the legend up close & steaming … & was relevant to songs of under earth. Despite the chilly air, Dave Le’aupepe was still able to generate some much needed mythic heat.
Funfact Day 2 – is based on the idea that Yoda was partly modelled on a photo of Albert Einstein. My Poetic Factoid revolves round the device of me Yodafiying three Einstein quotes.
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Excerpt from O onstage in 2023
he is sex : uncurling : on stage : foreplaying : with all of us : on & off the beat : always chanting about : always ranting about : love
Poetic Factoid #02 — Yoda Einstein
to the person who has the answers, don’t listen; who has the questions, to that person, listen
slowed down waves of sound & light we are a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos
souls dressed up in garments biochemical & sacred, we are instruments through which our souls their music play, our bodies are
For once, I don’t feel conflicted about writing an Anzac Day Poem. And as happened 2 days ago with Bill Shakey Day, (& last year for both days) having a superimposed theme (“love” this year, “climate change” last) made me look at the day in a whole new way — which in turn has generated not 1, not 2, but 3 poems of which I am exceedingly pleased.
Looking at love in war time is a wonderful way to get around the whole uncertainty I have about A25.
It’s also a lovely way (pun intended) to honour, commemorate, call what you will my grandparents in poetical form.
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Anzac Triptych 1. Atherton Tablelands 2. Goodbye Will Moon 3. TIL
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1. Atherton Tablelands
In April 1943 following three weeks leave after seeing action at Tobruk, Mersa Matruh and El AlameinGunner RL JONES of the 2/7th Field Regiment arrived at Kairi in the Atherton Tablelands.
It was love at first sight.
Even though he was from a notoriously lush part of the Adelaide hills the green in Far North Queensland is several degrees greater than most mortal eyes are used to — or able to endure.
Gunner RL Jones remained on the Tablelands with his unit for almost two years — training and playing upon the rich red loam born in ancient volcanoes. Before being sent to Tarrakan that began the Allies’ Borneo Campaign. He survived those jungles by thinking often of the equally lush Atherton tablelands — until the Americans blew up the world and the war ended.
Gunner RL Jones eventually made his way home & made Florence his fiancé.
Rueben told Florence. Of the green. Of the red soil. Of his desire to move there.
Florence said no.
He never saw the Tablelands again
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2. Goodbye Will Moon
In late 1944 Corporal BI Burgan of RAAF 1 Squadron was likewise on leave when he visited his parents in Port Wakefield.
Quiet Sunday evening. Parents off praying. It’s been a long journey and I’ve only a few precious day’s leave. But I know dad will be disappointed if I don’t attend. So although I don’t feel like it reluctantly walk across town.
Only one seat remains in the very back pew. Slide into that space next to a beautiful young woman who smiles as I sit down. Can’t concentrate. On what the pastor is saying. Nor the service itself. Nothing but — that sublime smile.
Afterwards, I offer to walk her home and am bemused and delighted to discover she’s boarding with our next door neighbour.
We stand talking for ages til I brazenly lean in and kiss her over the garden gate. I’d best go in now, she says.
The best night of my life.
During my leave we spend as much time as possible together but it ends all too quickly. Before I deploy to New Guinea I must tell her. I confess undying love. The hammer blow. She’s engaged to another! I didn’t know I say and chivalrously offer to step aside.
Leave it with me. She says. I’ll deal with it.
And. She. Did.
*
3.
TIL
today i learnt that unlike my gran and grandad nana and papa weren’t engaged or even dating while he was away during the war they only started seeing each other after he got home
her first love died flying bombers over germany she was s h a t t e r e d when Will was killed
suddenly saw my frail ninety nine year old nana with newer sadder eyes
Today really is symbolic of more than just one loss: it’s a conglomeration of three anniversaries in one. The other two (one in June, one in July) grieve me too — but as they do not fall within Glo/NaPoWriMo they don’t usually get poems written about them. (Though the days of the FoG aren’t the only times poems get written or thoughts get thought about this topic).
Given this month’s theme is love I’ve decided to deliberately include all three griefs in one poem. On the plus side, there are a multiplicity of loves on display within the poem, so it works on many levels.
Today’s poem is paired with one I wrote 28 years ago. It is included as bonus: an Easter egg if you like, not that you have to look too hard to find it.
advice from a fish
although today commemorates the first loss
you’re in countless poems, plays, story ideas all three of you
for endless sorrowfilled years i wore your rings round my neck
till they got too heavy to endure & i was told
by the fish for my own sanity take them off
you knew too well without the self-flagellation of my despair
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BONUS POEM:
3 silver rings
around her neck she wears three silver rings on a gold chain & crucifix one, a rose one, a gallic cross & one, all stars & moons
My two wallowversaries are quite close together this year — Good Friday & Easter Sunday. GF being Day 1 of the Festival of Grief, ES Day 2. Each year I don’t know whether I’ll write about my grief on the date it happened or the day. Some years it’s both. The interesting thing about choosing a theme for the month is it makes me approach topics I’ve written about countless times with fresh eyes. Such as this …
to pin a wish
my only-ever astral child my first star girl my free spirit my whispered wish
only briefly tethered postmarked but never delivered addressed but never sent never faded never dimmed always present in my heart
would’ve loved you with my whole soul every ether of being guided you from child to woman as best i
cradled you comforted you held eggshell close gifted free range love love loved
walked you down any aisle — assuming i could see given my eyes are waterfalls simply imagining such moments
the first wish i’d make if any benevolent genie ever give me a chance
my beautiful wondrous astral-only child my heart was torn away the day you ran red down your mother’s legs
During NaPoWriMo there are a plethora of sites & groups publishing writing prompts to help poets overcome the terrifying prospect of the blank screen or page day after day for 30 straight days. I rarely have a problem finding a topic but I usually check out what the prompts are in the groups I’m part of, just to see if there’s anything that interests me.
An Australian-run group called The Dirty Thirty’s chosen topic today was myth. The number 13 is lucky and scary and shrouded in myth. So today, let’s talk myths. In your poem, find creative ways to include the actual story your myth was based on.
This is manna from heaven for me & I immediately thought of one of my go to topics: the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice. I love this topic so much that I have several books devoted to the subject & I’ve written at least a dozen poems around the theme; the best of which I one day hope to publish as a chapbook or suite of poems (as part of a bigger volume) called songs of under earth.
The Death of Orpheus
after many years : wandering : ever-mourning : his lost Eurydice : Orpheus worshipped : only the Apollo-sun
one morning : at the Dionysian oracle : on Mount Pangaion : while greeting dawn’s rosy fingers : with his peerless lyre-playing : as part of his : daily sun god salute : the Maenads : resenting Orpheus’ refusal : to honour : his previous patron : sought to harm him : threw sticks & stones : yet the lilt : of his music : was so sublime : & so strong : the rocks & branches : refused to strike
enraged : they threw themselves : instead : in a furioso frenzy : ripping : rending : wrenching : his mortal body : to shreds : blood lust madness : engulfing them all
when the women : who tore him apart : tried to cleanse : their gore-covered hands : the river sank : below ground
as did : Orpheus’ shade : finally : to be reunited
My housemate & I saw the play Constellations tonight. It was his choice because as the program states: Payne’s script presents a series of vignettes centring on two characters across various parallel universes — the same setting & conversation, but different outcomes each time. This unconventional love story set in the quantum multiverse has us asking: What if there are infinite versions of you & I? And what if there are multiple universes pulling our lives in a myriad of different directions? — & he has been toying with similar themes in a play he said he wants to call the final last night of our lives. (I think it’s a great title & might even pinch it if he doesn’t produce something soon. Fair warning given!)
Tonight’s play was interesting without being awe-inspiring. But given it explored themes of love in occasionally unusual ways, there was some useful material that had me both thinking during the play & on the drive home. With that in mind here’s a pome-in-progress; structural inspired by the play — ie, in vignette form & using rhythm, repetition & some images from the play.
lessons from Constellations (vignettes about love)
i. love is knife edge sharp love is knife edge hard love is a knife i am knifed Et tu
ii. the dangerous act of loving someone leaves you alone with your fragility
iib. perhaps even frail, guilty for there is always one other who comes between us & our egos
iii. we remain perpetually lost among the great mechanical quantumness of love forevers
we blithely step through those ever sliding doors some into happy afters some into miseries unending some into sunlight some into death supernova bright
we still try
iv. night ships titanic dinghies missing their chance thieving time as they crash into everything but the ice
v. always peeking doors of death despite the possible multiplicities & symmetry of circles
there is no formula for love all we have are our imperfect hearts & fireflies brief lives
Worked on a poem about the multiple Goldilocks zones that our world occupies, a long conceived concept, but it’s more complicated than anticipated, so this is a Plan B pome.
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Scans
Spent several hours sitting next to a subdued stranger often in stilted silence
Trying not to talk about the hot topic of the day
even though it’s all
that occupies us
Trying extremely hard not to compare contexts:
lives alone, never married
only an aged mother
in rapid decline
also living alone nearby
father mercifully taken down swiftly by two strokes in succession
Trying not to project
forward into my unfriendly future
& failing miserable
BONUS POEM: April 29, 2018
A quiet moment of cross-cultural communication.
*****
Homemade
many things have thrilled me
this past month
but perhaps nothing so much
as this breakfast
when I pointed
at the apricot jam
& said in my best
Australian German
“hausgemacht? sehr gut”
the “ja” & brief blossom of a smile to the otherwise surly waiter’s face
was like a bee
abseiling my spine
Working on a poem that I knew wouldn’t be finished till very close to midnight when I realised I hadn’t watched episode 2 of GOT yet!!! So abandoned other poem for now & played a quick found poem with GOT episode titles. Several versions made.
Of course, I had to make it harder by choosing only one title per season AND keeping them in the order they aired. This is the best of the bunch. It almost makes sense. No extra words added. Made by trying to choose the most memorable phrase from each season’s options.
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Game of Poems, iv
Winter Is Coming What Is Dead May Never Die And Now His Watch Is Ended First of His Name Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken Blood of My Blood Beyond the Wall Winterfell
BONUS POEM: April 22, 2018
The past isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. NOTE: edits made in 2019 to tighten a few phrases & tweak enjambment.
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Bunhill Fields Cemetery, London: another anticlimax
Bunyan gets a sepulchre, Defoe an obelisk.
yet your single flaking stone
isn’t even tickled by lush London grass but choked by drab pavers. not even here the engraving says, your remains lie nearby.
the long imagined session
of cross-century communion one bucolic spring afternoon
in a quaint ancient graveyard
turns out to be a rain splattered overcoat complete with two hobos drinking cheap wine & spitting.
why keep gazing back to these inconsequential prisons over
looked by tawdry two bedroom apartments & cheap office blocks; containing IT startups
here yesterday, gone later today;
surrounded by tiny tidy lives daily gazing dispassionately
over a non-eternal resting place;
neither caring, nor knowing, the wonderful Will you were
Spent a large chunk of my writing time today trying to craft a pome comparing & contrasting the fire at Notre Dame with the fire in our climate. While many parts worked, a few did not & I realised longer would be needed to resolve the kinks.
However, while researching the idea I came across another, far less known story, which led to this …
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holy houses
in less widely covered news, the revered al-asqa mosque in east jerusalem
was also struck by (a far less dramatic)
blaze at the same time as notre dame’s inferno in france — damaging solomon’s stables beneath a corner of temple mount
here’s a thought:
perhaps god is trying to tell us something
.
.
BONUS POEM: April 16, 2018
The theme persists.
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immemorial
stone is worn
moss softens
lichen gathers chiselled lines flatten
it rains hard
the sun shines
& pretty soon
everything
is forgotten
Been playing round with some hare-inspired poems. This is my reconstruction of a West Country legend of a witch who takes the form of a white hare.
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white hare
while hunting : in the afterbones : of night : her siren warning : sways over the valley : a white hare warms me : goldeneyes gleaming light : look away look away : must not stare : into her eyes : or my soul : she’ll steal : a swift shadow approaches : white haired woman : wooing me : face of ashen grey : begging me to stay : look away look away : white belly : dancing bare : on the heather : from dusk till dawn : hounds bray
look away look away
BONUS POEM: April 12, 2018
Part of the holiday experience is visiting places my ancestors left a century or more ago. This is one of them.EDIT: formatted lines the way I wanted them to look last year, but couldn’t owing to facebook.
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wandering round the churchyard at St Winnow
good Cornish stone sprouting grey
among green dandelions & wild cowslips long ago some single
still yet-to-be great greatgreat greatgrandparents left what they thought a harsh life
for one with more hope
in the far off dust of Australia
a short prayer away the Fowey flows south like silver slate
I walk over lusciousness
wanting to make amends
for a hiccup of snow amongst stones so weatherworn & lichenloved they’re illegible we vow we’ll remember forever
when a generation or two is the most most of us get
so though I might be treading on
ancient ancestors given the perfection of their forgetting place
I don’t believe they’ll mind
gareth roi poet boi 