Tag Archives: death

Valentine’s Day presence

So, the pay off for some hard work over the past week or so is here — I’ve been exploring/researching the world of epublishing.

love: a test run is my first foray into ebooks. I still seek publication via the literary journals & poetry publication websites & competitions, etc … but the reality is, I have already written more poems than I’m ever likely to see published via traditional methods. & I’m certainly not writing poetry for the $$$$. Not to mention, much of what I write probably doesn’t fit the criteria for online journals …

So be it…

I want people to read my stuff. Or at least have the opportunity to. To connect with it. To be moved by it. Even to disagree with it. Which is why epublishing is so amazing. & why I’ve taken this first Test Run step … & why there are more planned.

& so to love: a test run

Love - a test run

This collection of poems came out of an experiment for a project a fellow poet & I are working on (giving rise to one of the multiple meanings of “test run” which makes up the book’s subtitle).

The task was simple, to write a poem a day, every day for a month.

24 hours to conceive, plan, write & edit a new poem every day & email it to each other before midnight. Well, the midnight deadline didn’t always quite get met, but the poem a day did. This was not for the famously challenging event NaPoWrMo (National Poetry Writing Month) but shared similar draining/exhilarating characteristics. Oddly enough, once you got over the hump, it became easier the further on it went. Some days several poems came out of the exercise – but we only shared one per day.

The catch: every poem was to explore love in some form.

I haven’t edited them overly much, just a tweak or two here & there for clarity. I wanted to keep it close to what I churned out, I mean, produced in that furiouso month. I have altered the order of several poems to make the whole have a better flow; & a couple of the poems I sent through, I have replaced with others written in that month because they felt like they fitted the collection better. I would have liked to have shuffled the order more, but I really went with the “snap shot” notion of the test run here.

What pleases me is their diversity: there’s a wide range of styles evident; there are several different voices; the tone varies; some are more experimental than others; some are profoundly personal, others wholly imagined; even just simple things like the variety in their length (both of lines & overall poem); & of course, some succeed better than others. Naturally there are certain topics, images, phrases that echo themselves – but overall, I hope they make for an eclectic, interesting read.

What remains constant is the theme: there’s poems about true love, soul mate love, infidelity, whale love, first love, lost love, unrequited love, undeclared love, dark love, abandoned love, arrogant love, ghost love, broken love, eternal love, love-at-first-sight love, literary love, 10-second love, pure perfect impossible love, painful love, imagined love, fantasy love, universe-ending love … & more besides I’m sure.

I hope you seek out & enjoy love: a test run …

it’s available at these addresses:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/519315 (sample & full download available)

http://www.wattpad.com/myworks/32748708-love-a-test-run (sample only)

& via your ereading devices shortly (i hope, once it gets approval) ((if i understand how it all works 🙂 ))

if you read & like, leave a comment.

but as a taste test of the test run …

here are two poems i particularly enjoy

Day 10. explaining the universe, using the physics of love

here’s what happened
put into the simplest
language i can muster
as best as i understand
20 years on

i gave you more of my heart
than i could reasonably
be expected to lose
then you died
gone — none know where

that part of my heart so gifted
went with you

& that … is how
black holes are made

Day 16. love poem to my plump lover

how do i love thee
let me not count the weighs

Later skaters. May you survive Valentine’s Day — whether it is a day of joy or pain for you …

Day 28 – April Twenty Eight: over the top obits

Some months ago, one of the finest actors of our/any generation died after an incident with drugs went wrong.  At the time there was much speculation about what caused it. There was also an abundance of slightly sickly, sentimentalising of “the soul of the tortured artist”.  

Back then, I PDFed a few of the finer examples I read. Today I tweaked & played with some of the more sick & sycophantic phrases, shaping them into a homage to suffering. (I have not acknowledged my sources, for fear of embarrassing them.)

I ran out of time to finish it, but there’s something there I like.

Beautiful Helplessness

addiction haunts every artist
barely disciplined helplessness
we’re all familiar with darknesses force
if we keep the poison away, the elixir is lost
if we had everything there would be love, no desire
art mends what life shatters, so escape into our creations
torment & talent are inseparable

all the d words appear
drugs, done in a dark places in despair?
artists who’ve done deals with their demons
or rather rock star hubris, deliberately courting death
an arrogant doubtlessness they’re above the rules, above odds

the Faustian pact where only utter self-annihilation suffices

hostage possession obsession carnage

the price of prodigious creative vitality is premature & public mortality
fleeing from pain, transfigurance enables endurance of suffering
solitude & uncertainty are part & parcel of artistic expression.

banal
romantic
hyperbolic
tosh

not all great artists suffer

*****

 2014-04-28 23.51.50

Day 27 – April Twenty Seven: “Sunday Sillies” (sort of) Part 3 – poetry reincarnations

Played around with a series of things today, but most of them serious. Remembered (after forgetting last week) that I was going to use Sundays as a play day for silly experiments & games.  The first two weeks were attempts at humour (limericks & a caricature poem). This one is a crossbreeding of the poet’s game Golden Shovel invented by Terrance Hayes where the last word of each line of your poem is a word from another poem & a “found poem” I made by abridging one of my absolute favourite poems of all time: D.H. Lawrence’s “The Ship of Death”.

I allowed myself up to four words from each of his lines. They appear in the same verse structure as his poem.

There is precedent for this as Lawrence himself edited the poem before his death so there are two versions: a longer one which I believe is the superior & the one I used for this game, & a second shorter version, which lacks much of the longer poem’s emotive power.  My version is midway in length between the two, & apart from one or two clunky lines, still works pretty well I think.

The Ship of Death (Reader’s Digest abridged version)

I
falling fruit
journey towards oblivion.

drops of dew
exit from themselves.

bid farewell
exit
the fallen self.

II
you
will need it.
apples will fall
on the hardened earth.

a smell of ashes!
smell it?

the frightened soul
wincing from the cold
through the orifices.

III
quietus make
a bare bodkin?

man can make
exit for his life
is it quietus?

even self-murder
make?

IV
we know,
deep and lovely quiet
heart at peace!

quietus, make?

V
you must take
journey, to oblivion.

painful death
the new.

bruised, badly bruised,
oozing through the exit
the cruel bruise.

ocean of the end
of our wounds,
flood is upon us.

your little ark
little cakes, and wine
oblivion.

VI
the timid soul
the dark flood rises.

all of us dying
death-flood rising within us
on the outside world.

our bodies are dying
our strength leaves us,
rain over the flood,
our life.

VII
all we can do
build the ship
the longest journey.

with oars and food
accoutrements
for the departing soul.

as the body dies
out, the fragile soul
the ark of faith
pans
clothes,
black waste
waters of the end
where still we sail
and have no port.

nowhere to go
deepening black darkening still
the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness, up and down
no direction any more
she is gone.
see her by.
gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!

VIII
the body is gone
gone, entirely gone.
heavy as the lower,
the little ship
is gone
gone.

end, it is oblivion.

IX
of eternity a thread
on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
pallor upon the dark.

does the pallor fume
higher?
there’s the dawn,
coming back to life
out of oblivion.

the little ship
the deathly ashy grey
flood-dawn.

a flush of yellow
a flush of rose.

whole thing starts again.

X
like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
into the house again
with peace.

heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.

build it!
you will need it.
oblivion awaits you.

*****

 2014-04-27 14.18.17

Day 25 – April Twenty Five: “national identity day”

As I get older I understand Anzacs, Anzac Day & war more. I also understand it less. Hopefully this poem written at the Dawn Service my Papa used to attend when alive & which we go to in memory of him captures some of those understandings.

keeping the peace

bagpipes fight
the magpies
for supremacy
in cool April air
chilling autumn
leaves & evergreen
eucalypt alike
church bells bless
try to reconcile
that age old
oxymoronic misnomer
fighting for peace

aware what Anzac is
but still shocks
to see the guns
of the catafalque
party so close
reminds it’s more
than just speeches
stirring words
holidays
it’s also old men
getting under
standably drunk

*****

soldier

Image: moi

April 22 – Day Twenty Two: night visitors

Disturbing visitors last night inspired this. NB this still isn’t on word press despite being back in town is because I got back to discover my electricity has been disconnected. The glamorous life of the poet.

The Outsiders

I’m the proverbial snug bug in a rug
Bedcurled, thriller-reading when the attack begins
Intimate thunder that sounds far off
Yet feels close, frantic rain beating, never falling

As the numbers build, so too the sound
The fury, dive bombers splatting glass
On the neighbouring mesh screen, maniacal harpists
Frenetic playing to appease the wild god of light

Again & again they bash themselves
Over & over they wingertip strum
Till they fall to the ground, broken

There turn violent circles, overwound
tops hypercharged on red bull
Tyre smoking donuts by kamikaze hot rods

Already dying, despite only abandoning
Brownpaper sleeping bags hours ago

If the desire to embrace fire is so intense
Why not fly, Icarus like, at the sun

By the time dawn arrives, silver light filtered

By low clouds, dozens of wing-wrapped coffins

Sleep on

Concrete

*****

moth

Image moi. 

April 18 – Day Eighteen: Easter ghosts

I saved a bunch of articles I was planning to use/explore in poetic form during NaPoWriMo. Yet almost every day, something more “personal” gets in the way.  Good Friday (the day this was written, was one of them.)  This poem was written in the car on the drive between Adelaide & my parents’ farm.

When I re-read the poem for the first time since posting it on fb almost a week ago, the irony is, the poem itself has a huge hole. The one thing I always think about at Easter is not including, other than through indirect allusions.  Maybe it works, maybe it needs to be addressed in May, when NaPoWriMo is over & the editing process can begin on all these half begun, half completed poetical sketches.  I want to tweak it even now, but will save that for later & repost as first put onto fb.


What I think of when I think of Easter

Looking over the litany of Easters past
I recall very few moments of chocolates & egg hunts 
Haunted by decades of bright eyed moons

Floating down houseboat rivers, discovering cunnilingus
Climbing cliffs, faking falls, tomato sauce for blood
Church surfing with fish laughing at services
Glorious joyous days before he finally died
Driving overnight interstate thinking I was driving to true love
Some lost at the bottom of a bottle
Crashing cars in suburban streets
Several lazy long weekends at the farm
Amusing my nieces, annoying the rest
Walking with a black dog, before meeting my souldog

Tonight the moon’s a ruddy oblong egg
Low, ghosting the hills, as I drive north
What is life but a succession of wounds
Public crucifixions, little deaths, lying in darkness
Trapped beyond stone, & eventually rising to do it all again

What pains me are the holes
Years I can’t remember – when I’m the only constant
No other person or thing to act as yardstick
& the holes

Lovers lost, friends forgotten, children never held

*****

blood_moon_by_darkriderdlmc-d4rzhrg

Image: Dark Moon by darkriderdlmc @ deviantart.com

April 17 – Day Seventeen: dreams of you

Well yesterday’s experiment didn’t quite get the response I was hoping for.  Hahaha, oh well.  (There’s still time to go back & play if you want to.  Read Day 16 & comment at the end for a chance to win a special prize – it has to be on my blog, fb & twitter comments don’t count.)

Maybe that’s why writing today was tough. I was a bit down. Tried a few things. Messaged a friend in the states just as he’d woken from a bad dream (it was 3am in Maryland).  We talk a bit about bad dreams. I never have them (though I have woken myself up from laughing in my dreams & in my body at the same – glorious sensation – although I think it’s how the dali lama must feel). Tried to write about that, meh! Tried to write about my friend’s scary dream of being left alone, meh.

Then this came out. Of nowhere. Not sure I understand it. Pretty sure I like it.

Shades

Half-woken scraps of you swirl round
the half sunrisen gloom of my room
through tannin-thick wetpaper-thin skull

Like souls of men recently killed
on a battlefield, afraid to leave

We have not spoken in two weeks
keep eyes closed as long as I can
these torments all I have of you

A herd of cats claw my legs
tripping me, demanding to be fed

For while I only half-remember
the dreams, I’m reluctant
to relinquish what little I have

So I leave the black shroud cloth
covering my eyes & drift

It is a prism refracting weak light
each intersection of weft & weave
it’s own rainbow link to another world

Opaque, shiny as an insect’s eye
Then. I. Don’t. Care.

*****

 hidden_eyes_beauty_2_by_bayhor-d5k5p14 copy

April 11 – Day Eleven: out of nowhere

Today (as it was, Friday) was a challenging day.  I had quite a few attempts at things, none seemed inspired or inspiring. I was more interested in reading rather than writing for most of the day. I had ideas, but they just weren’t flowing.  Finally, I had to call an end to it & begin to get ready to catch up with friends & go see a (as it turned, rather strange, bland) production of Dracula.

In the shower, however, the first lines of this poem (“i hear voices in the water, singing in the shower stream”) made themselves known to me.  Others came pretty rapidly as the wonderful pounding heat soothed my stress away.  The fact that these lines were later bumped into verse 2 & tweaked a bit is of no consequence. The fact that I was almost late to the play because of the need to finish the poem, perhaps is …

company

at my old house. 3 sets of footsteps
would run away. when you approached
the front door. stop. as you unlocked.
then race to the back room. temperature’s
changed. for no reason. the back bedroom
was always colder. no matter the weather.

here, i hear voices. in the water.
people talking. in the shower stream.
singing. where the drain turns a corner
down deep there. below the bath
& it always feels. someone is near
not too near. perhaps. but close by.

not always, a good thing
for those. who live. alone.

*****

films_about_ghosts_by_lneprz-d4izjmu

 

Image: films about ghosts by LNePrZ

April 9 – Day Nine: a change of tack

While at the launch of a book of poetry tonight, the phrase “eco-anarchist” lit a fire under a few things I’ve been thinking for some time. What is the place of poetry? Can it change the world? Probably not, but if it can challenge it, that’s almost as good.

The Redistribution Manifesto & Hit List

1.
Redistribution

The dam wall is about to break
It’s been building for a while
This resentment towards the so-called 1%
Really it’s a much lower number
Too long we’ve allowed them their dominance
The corporate capitalistic oligarchy
has been tried & found wanting.
Their socio-comic irrationalism
is getting in the way of our fee market economy
If free-trade agreements were not actually misnomers
& if globalisation brought equal benefits globally
but …

The solution is simple.
They’ve had their chance.
Been given ample opportunity to change,
yet they cling, confidently cling,
knowing nothing’s altered in 200 years
Other than increasing the odds in their favour
so why now.

The solution, I said, is simple.
Take back what’s ours.
Or just — take equality.
(as we’ve probably never truly had it)
The irony is that the right is actually not
What’s left of the left, needs to step up,
& grow a pair.
Militant actions are necessary.
Gandhi spoke of non-violent resistance
But the conservatives’ poster boy,
turned over tables in the temple.

It’s time to turn some tables.

My solution is simple.
Kill the rich. Just the ultras, for a start.
For the price of a few bullets
maybe a carbomb
great injustices could be undone.
I myself am willing to train.
Willing to risk eternity in hell
to free the millions, the billions.
Yes indeed, I’ll cop that
to prevent this inexorable dystopia.
Let’s try another route.
& if it’s built on a few
dead billionaire’s bodies, so be it.
Is their death worth more
than the millions in sweat shops,
& slave labour camps,
let alone the billions in
daily grind employment
that are not sweat shops
– yet still don’t provide
financial security.
Who would not, knowing
what we know now
& given the chance, have drowned a certain young Austrian
artist as he stood at his easel by the Danube River in 1900

 

2.
The Manifesto

1. Publish the hit list.
2. Reward the Redistributor.
3. Wait a week. If nothing changes, move down the list.
4. Anyone who gives away 20% of their wealth in each 7 day period, is safe for the following week.
5. Every so often, mix up the order. Keep em on their toes.
6. Repeat till extreme affluence — or extreme poverty — no longer exists.

 

3.
The Hit List: a first draft (the top 5)

0. Gates [$76 billion] even though he’s #1
he gets a short reprieve for already offloading
a fair whack of cash. & encouraging others to do so too.

1. A Walton is first. Doesn’t matter which of the 4.
[each worth between $34 & $37 billion]
Whichever one goes might make the others think fast.
Thus, a few birds, one stone. Oh! & tidy up Walmart salaries. Today.
Actually, scratch that. Tidy your third world workers salaries today.
You can fix your employees up tomorrow.

2. A Koch brother is next. [$40 billion each]
Again it doesn’t matter which.
(supposedly pronounced “Coke”, we know the truth)
One less sociopath in the world, is always welcome.
We’re just deregulating a few pesky wealth hoarders.

3. Although ex-Aussie Murdoch [$13.5 billion] is a relative minnow,
eliminating him early on could have nice knock on effects.
Watch the rabid Fox Newsrabbit “journalists”
fear monger their way out of that one.
Make sure an American Redistributes old Rupe
(They do, after all, have the right to bear arms)

4. Putin is in some lists as having a secret $70 billion in assets.
Not sure if it’s true, but ditto for knock on effects.
Can anyone say Crimea?

5. Ingvar Kamprad [$53 billion] is next. Probably a nice guy,
but your top five position is for bringing us IKEA.

The rest of the list will be released, 1 week from today.
Brace yourselves.

 

 

April 8 – Day Eight: The OFFICIAL entry: verbatim

So after the chopping & changing mentioned in the other April 8 entry, I finally got back to the main idea that had caught my attention during the day.

One of my HairyFooted One ring destroying Big Bellied Innocent Tiny people buddies (goes by the nick, RhubarbCrumbles) & I were chatting on Line about houses, where we grew up & whatnot (her & her husband, RL nickname Blokie, are soon to start building one of their own) when she mentioned she was on googlemaps. Actually on it. She even sent me a picture.

This intrigued me & I asked her for more info.  So she proceeded to tell me the story of her google mapping experience.  As she told me, (& by told, I mean typed in conversation with me, like an extended text message exchange) I begun to consider her story as a possible source for Found Poetry.

Now having friends who are playwrights, I was aware of the relatively recent theatre form, Verbatim Theatre (in which plays are constructed using the precise words spoken by people interviewed about a particular event/topic). I thought I could apply the same techniques to Poetry (I also hadn’t heard of it being done before in poetry. Naturally a later google search reveal it had; although the way I was proposing was closer in approach to Verbatim Theatre, than the more traditional Verbatim Poetry seemed to represent.)

So what follows is pretty much literally, word for word, Rhu’s story – presented in poetic form. The only minor tweaks I have made are: 1) taking out all my interjections (which, unusually, were relatively few); 2) even rarer, made slight adjustments to grammar, usually to better structure a reply to a question I asked & to make Rhu’s response flow fractionally better; 3) removed a few unrelated chunks where we talked about the game; & 4) twice moved a line to a different position within the poem.  Now if any/all of these break any cardinal VP rules, I care not. I was more interested in the final product than the process/technique by which I got there. That said I know I can confidently say, “These are at least 95% Rhu’s words, Rhu’s voice, if not higher”. The sculptors knife was only used very lightly.

As always, keen for any thoughts? responses? critiques? of this never-before-tried-by-me, poetic form.

google mapped
or the Alcester Rut

Amusingly I am immortalised in google maps
[Photo]
Taken the week I was leaving the UK (though I didn’t know it at the time)
I know it’s the week before I left because of the shirt I was wearing
I wore it once to paint the hallway
We sold it after my father died.

We left as we needed a change.
Alcester is a small town.
A very small village, technically a hamlet
Kind of like the Lou Reed song
Small Town
It might have been John Cale. Or one he recorded with him.
But the lyrics go something like
Growing up in a small town x3
You just wanna get out
We were stuck in a routine
And had always talked about moving abroad

US wouldn’t have been our first choice, but its where blokie had an opportunity
Yes. We have one brother each. No parents.
Friends are diversely spread across the globe and UK.
And those in Alcester were part of the rut.
We’d watch the footie in the boozer on a Sunday.
Blokie would play darts on a Tuesday.
And quiz league on Thursdays.
We’d still be doing that if we lived there.
So we moved.

It wasn’t a huge wrench.
I’m fairly pragmatic.
And it was exciting.
No tears.
Maybe a small lump in my throat for my bro.
And an odd drunken conv with one of my best mates who declared his love for me.
Like 1 day before u leave, what was I supposed to say to that! Other than awkward.
Probably better for him that I left I suspect.
I don’t want to be anyone’s unrequited love.
And no, no quickie.

US is pretty much as u expect it to be.
Inherently right of centre.
Money orientated
Family orientated.
More religious than I appreciated.
And a complete lack of understanding of anything outside their own shores.

How? Um.
Blokie loves google maps/earth.
If he sees a sports stadium or landmark on tv,
he likes to locate them and see whether its a good place to visit.
I guess he was just having a gander at Alcester, and there I was.

The first thing I bought with my inheritance
was a copy of the Times Atlas of the World for him.
That was a while ago though.
It props up the PS3 now.

 

*****

 

photo

Image: googleearth & RhubarbCrumbles