Tag Archives: death

Day 4 -CRIME DOESN’T PAY

Not sure what’s up with my sleeping patterns at the moment, but my body seems to think key hours of slumber are 8pm-2am. It’s been my standard for the past 3 or 4 nights. Which means I write one of these, put it aside to come back to & then fall asleep before posting it. Sigh. Hopefully things will clear up soon.

Today’s effort was going to be epicreads.com’s “19 Most Anticipated YA Books to Read in April” but I realised the titles, while lovely, were similar in tone to how Day 1 & Day 2’s poems turned out. So I went to one of my desktop folders “Book Lists” (which no doubt will be referred to again later) & pulled up The Irish Times’ “Best crime fiction of 2015” list instead.

Thus we have a dark love poem …

 

Camille

are you watching me
in the world gone by
from the way of sorrows

this is everything i never told you

you were the girl
on the train
in the spider’s web
my gun street girl

even after the fire of silver
bullets   those we left behind
even the dead with our
blessing   shut eyes
& sang their snowy
song of shadows

but black-eyed weeks
walking the tight
rope defence
our assassin’s acts   our
killing   weighs down
your drowned boy

I managed to get 19+out of 24 titles in (I challenge anyone to work pleasantville, acts of the assassins, the snow kimono, black-eyed susans & tennison seamlessly into a pome.)

NOTE: Here’s the article if you’re interested in who wrote what.

Day 3 – from Other Poets’ Poems

NOTE: so the lesson learnt from late last night is: remember to press the publish button, not the preview one. 

Today’s title poem comes from a different source than the first two. Friendly Street Poets had a session at the Payneham library & I went to listen to/support friends (I didn’t read given I’ll be yabbering on enough this month). While I was there

While I was there I recorded as many of the titles of the poems read out as I could (some poets don’t speak very audibly & some poets in the audience vague out from time to time). Then when I got home (after a quick diversion to a public house to discuss important issues like how many hands a clock has & our views on cats on the continent of Australia) I typed up the list of titles (those I could decipher given my scrawl) & from that subset drew my list of phrases.

Out of 71 possible titles I used 44, I probably could have got more in but I felt I was already ‘losing control’ of the draft as it was. It definitely would be better shorter, but that’s not the exercise this month.

Thanks & apologies in advance to any poets who are horrified that I have appropriated parts of their masterpieces for this Frankenpoem. If you are really upset, just remember — it’d be a better poem, if you gave me better titles hahaha…

 

scraping the (sleepless) nights

toward evening’s
moment of departure
you in your rocking chair

love your collection of axioms
poetry is dead
time is a hound
it’s best to be sure
love is a no through road
there’s no wonder in an open door
red in the morning
death by stoning’s too good, etc

your leftover questions
why are people so cruel
who can know the mind of the sea

your opinions
on the philosophy of cut flowers
on the 6.04pm platform 8 to osborne
on poetry as an alternative to oxygen masks

your admission
when aunty was dying
that night she said
she was living in a draft
of a new life

i ache to find
the ink trail lost
between words

the crux of trust
the genesis of hope

otherwise it’s just
the losing of wisdom

but you pack
your twilight years
up in neat little boxes
snuggle down
into your multi
coloured dream coat
your face turned
toward the garden
& the cold autumn wind

 

 

 

 

Day 14 – poem about weight

 

helix nebula

NaPoWriMo should cycle through the months of the year, because repeated participation throws up the same zeitgesty events annually. Today, a topic that continues to intrigue me.

14 sorrows

i.
all that remains
the kiss complete
sentence cast

ii.
weight is not great
merely wood, would
the rest weighed less

iii.
stumble, fall
twice more for
dramatic effect

iv.
love i’ve denied
before me where
others share, i’ve hid

v.
brother shoulders
compelled to bear
what he’d gladly choose

vi.
a cool cloth
give her my face
& my thanks

vii.
halfway to skulls
stagger again, stumble
tumble into desert dust

viii.
women weep
barren wombs, dry breasts
call mountains to crumble

ix.
fall
a third time
at last, almost done

x.
stolen clothes
brigands barter
naked before the gods

xi.
metal bites
wood absorbs blood
more than flesh hangs

xii.
enough
call for poison
the sleep of death

xiii.
amid weeping, relief
the weight off
down, done

xiv.
lie, in darkness
hopefully, finally
some peace

Day 13 – something a bit shorter & simpler after yesterday

Yesterday’s poem was hard work to get my head around & then to hone back, once I was inside it. I’ve written a couple of poems today, all of them short & ‘simple’. This is a nice capture of a thought I often have.

*****

painting silence

on those truly cold days
when i can see right
through myself

stare at the bare part
where my heart
should be

finally comprehending
what dying alone
will mean

as opposed to
making it
— a joke

*****

Alone____by_MichiLauke

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