Day 08 – cracks (& crows)

The kintsukuroi meme popped up on my feed again today, It’s a common one that does the SM rounds fairly regularly, but is no less profound for that. I’ve thought about trying to write a pome about it previously, today I gave it the good old red hot crack. It’s not there yet, but I ran out of time.

*****

to repair with gold

the philosophy is poignant : the aesthetic exquisite : the reality, harder to craft : repair broken pottery with powdered gold, silver, or platinum : mixed with lacquer : the precious metal seams : among the reassembled detritus : supposedly somehow : stronger : more beautiful : for having been broken

i doubt : the proof of fragility : together we dropped : three pots : which broke me : for over two decades : lived too long : with cracks, lines, chips, flaws, scratches, breaks : broken lines : deep trenches : the breaks, the knocks, the shattering : the fragments : too often my baked clay : wished to dry up : crumble : fall to pieces

unlike with Japanese artisans : if your pot breaks : only you can apply the lacquer : today i feel : the joins i’ve made : might be silver : perhaps one day : i’ll be strong enough : to transmute : those luminous lines to gold

BONUS POEM: April 8, 2018

Lines & images jotted down over past 3-4 days. Finally assembled & fine tuned today.

*****

Snug Voyeur

every glimpse thrills me.
secret knowledge
hidden when you’re here,
temporarily abandoned;
your harsh full stops
& half-hearted commas;
like warts like growths like blisters;
blood clots in the cerebellum
conglomerate of cancer cells

collected sticks stark
architectural recreations;
high amongst the skeletal
fog framed silhouettes,
reworkings of capillaries
tweaked bronchial tubes;
punctuating the forever
potential for new life.

when the leaves return
when the blossoms bloom
when your long flight
returns you home

Day 07 – ordinary days (& extraordinary nights)

A fun little exercise whereby I describe the things I’ve done today in more abstract ways via unordinary day alchemy; ie, went to the shops & bought vegies might be unordinary day alchemised to hunted in the long cool aisles for prey that cannot outrun me. Fear not, the examples in the poems are better (I hope 😂)

on an unordinary day

i now have

half a dozen doorways
to new nowhere rooms
if only i can get them home

two notebooks which float

more stories i own
but likely never know

two big volumes of all
the old words of once were

somewhere silky
to rest my migraine
& learn new dreams

plus a full tank to take me there

BONUS POEM: April 7, 2018

A poetic love fable. Inspired, this may come as no surprise, by the fact that Venezia has somewhat scrambled my otherwise fairly reasonable compass. Conceived on one bewildered journey; completed on several others when I set out to deliberately wander writing lines in my head as I went …

The poem so far I’m most pleased with 😁
[2019 edit: even more pleased with it following a few tweaks 😁😁]

*****

The 1000 Ways to San Marco Piazza

my love lives in Dorsoduro ; I, in Castello ; & every morning ; she promises to meet me ; in San Marco’s Piazza at sunset ; she says if we find each other there ; our love will last

if I had the talent ; I’d pen a postmodern novel ; telling of the thousand ways ; we never meet ; a short chapter ; a paragraph; even just a line, a single word ; about how my unerring ability ; to lose my way ; dooms me ; where every route I choose ; is wrong

the one where I see her on another Ponte, chase her, see her on other Pontes, but I never get closer ; the one where every Calle is a dead end ; the where I find a letter on the cobblestones from her to another ; the one where I fall in ; the one with a Calle so narrow my shoulders touch each wall, closer, closer, till I am wedged tight; the one where I meet another who might in fact be : the one true one

nights thick with the stink of summer tourists ; nights where the waters are still obsidian; nights when I don’t want to leave the house ; nights when I am dying to ; muggy shirts sticky nights ; wet winter nights ; nights where la Serenissima is a dream ; nights where only it is

& maybe ; one night ; when I least expect ; I will arrive ; & so will she ; & we ; will meet

Day 05 – the moon (& too much travel)

Another one of those last minute ring-ins (it is one of the blessings of NaPoWriMo — firing up the creative cogs after something of a lull).

After pottering round with two others pomes for varying parts of the day, this one roared at me about 45 minutes to midnight. There are other myths/folklores I would have like to have worked in but I stopped tweaking at midnight.

NOTE: the formatting may be a bit out of whack: Wordpress doesn’t cope too well with unusually spaced lines. That said, it is meant to be staggered, messy, abstract.

*****

the many things we see in the moon

over millennia in the long night darkness
human eyes, seeking patterns, discover them:

a weaving woman;
clusters of laurel trees;
an elephant jumping off a cliff;
  a girl
with a basket on her back;
many rabbits:
one working a mortar & pestle;
two fiery,
one self-sacrificing,
& one thrown into a sun;
yet one more carried by a crane;
innumerable frogs & toads:
   an immortal
goddess hiding
   in the likeness of a toad,
another hiding
   from a wolf,
   a marriage
broker for a Sky Maiden …

but of course it’s none of these
— it’s the Man in the Moon
sometimes carrying a bundle of wood
sometimes just his face (though many
Pacific Islander peoples see a woman)

the real mystery is comprehending how
others could see such bizarre things
when our interpretation is clearly correct

BONUS POEM: April 5, 2018

Mine haven’t arrived yet, but I’m sure we won’t be like this. Probably needs a good edit which I don’t have time for (sorry for long pome, I didn’t have time to write a short one 😁 NOTE: this incarnation, edited)

*****

Pax Familia

visiting endless iterations
of the long dead past
taxes the best of us
today I touristed more
   tears, tantrums & hissy fits
   pleas to be carried
   how much longer whines
   and demands to go home
than
   statues
   artwork
   or archaeological knick-knacks

despite non fluency in your tongue
I get you are
tense annoyed fully aggro
or just plain over it

such is the beauty
of traveling solo
no one to blame
for arriving late
getting lost
taking too long to decide

no, I never do those things
have never done anything so foolish

Day 04 – time travel (& road rules)

Several poems started, then a last minute contender rushed in demanding to be completed with 37 minutes till midnight to go. Such is the joy of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.

Further complications were added when my wireless keyboard batteries went flat & I had to see if any of my dozen or so randomly distributed rechargeable batteries had enough charge to fire this badboy back up. 49 combinations later, little green light was go.

*****

the speed of light

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
for the foreseeable future my favourite
star is going to be 12 Ophiuchi
a main-sequence orange-red dwarf
BY Draconis-type variable star
in the east central corner
of Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer

at around 83 percent of Sol’s mass
85 to 100 percent of its diameter
& being similarly as enriched
in elements heavier than hydrogen
as our sun it is a semi-sort kind of a twin
i guess, i don’t really know much
about the astrophysiwhatsit specs
the reason i’m interested in
this faint little blip of light
in a relatively unknown
constellation is simple

it is 31.89 light-years away

which means the light my eye
is trampolining onto the back
of my retina & zipping off up
the optic nerve to my visual cortex
left the star 31.89 years ago
which according to my (admittedly
roughly hewn calculations)

… is about 3 days before we first met

BONUS POEM: April 4, 2018

*****

Crash Course
(A Poetic Interpretation of the 12 Rules of Driving on Italian Roads)

1.
i’m just kidding of course
there’s no such list

Day 03 – valleys (& hobbitholes)

Reading a Carl Sagan book earlier, where he describes a perfect day from his childhood at a World Fair & got to wondering, what might a perfect day from my childhood be?

*****

a long ago perfect day

a sunday, naturally
they’re always sundays

autumn morning
cool but not too cold
not unlike today

overprotective mist
hugging the edges
of our tiny valley

book snug under covers
wasn’t a doona then
but in this memory
i’m stitching it so

hurried lunch
sardines on toast
tomato sauce
can’t be away too long
from the otherworld

back into bed
till tea

tinned tomato soup
heated in aluminium
saucepan on the stove
thinned with milk

fire in the potbelly
wood i probably chopped

not much mattered
beyond the old stone walls
indeed other than grandparents’ homes
i barely knew anything
greater than a dozen miles distant

except the stars of course
always the stars

BONUS POEM: April 3, 2018

Visited a place I’ve wanted to experience, since reading about it nearly a decade ago. It was as wonderful as anticipated, even if I was disappointed to discover they now have their own iPhone app. The world changes even when we wish it wouldn’t…

*****

Civitie de Bagnoregio

to live upon
a mountain top
alone
like many monk
incarnations before

a town of hobbit
holes on a hill
instead of in
if all mine i’d fill
every home
with books

if only

i were unaware
of the signs
of
land
slipping
away

Day 02 – twilight (& touristas)

No longwinded introduction needed tonight.

*****

twilight: autumn roll call driving home

in the 25 dusky kilometres
between work’s end
& my welcoming door
i choose the slower route
the winding back way
through hills

by so doing, i glimpse three
glitteringly furred foxes;
half a dozen twitchy roos;
two scraps of darkness
reveal themselves as bats;
a crossing echidna forces brakes;
& a stealth owl i can’t identify
skims the windscreen
in an unwise game of chicken

& although these are all
common enough creatures
for my part of the earth
every one ticks the box
inside my greengrass heart
labelled TINY THRILL

BONUS POEM: April 2, 2018

Wandering round Rome’s big Roman attractions (the Flavian Amphitheatre, Circus Maximus, Palatine Hill, the Forum) has been somewhat surreal. I loved classics since a kid; read countless histories & fictions set there, that to experience them firsthand was bliss (despite the blisters, boom, you’re welcome).

But this is the subject of a separate poem. What you get today is somewhat lighter & more whimsical 😬.

*****

Selfie Schtick

something about me
clearly implies trust
(or an ability to fake it
photographically)

for today, on top
of Palatine Hill,
i’ve been requested
to supplant
the selfie stick
almost a dozen times

i quickly developed
my own schtick
by the second request
— a trio of American
boys who laughed
at the result

which of course
meant the joke
grew with exposure
till its inevitable
demise with a Russian
(perhaps) family

who failed to see
the humour in having
one photo of my face
& two blurry ones
of their own four
(so poorly framed
owing to gross self
congratulation with
my cheekiness)
i neglected to include
the Vatican
in the background

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Tag Archives: #GloPoWriMo

Day 08 – cracks (& crows)

Day 07 – ordinary days (& extraordinary nights)

Day 05 – the moon (& too much travel)

Day 04 – time travel (& road rules)

Day 03 – valleys (& hobbitholes)

Day 02 – twilight (& touristas)

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