There’s probably more things I could add to the list, but this is a reasonable start.
… are worse than others
some days : i feel further
from you : than others
so : i try harder
to bridge : the gap
with jokes : that fail
to do : their job
create : moments
contrary to : what’s wanted
which is : to add joy
gift : happiness
share : proper peace
with : you
Sunday fun & games again … today’s task involves the use of acrostics & pseudo-golden shovels; forms I haven’t played with much. I tried complicating this (with mixed results) in the middle stanza, but overall, it holds up okay. The melancholy mood seems apt given the songs I’m playing with.
for the love of Murray 2
Acrostics & Golden Shovels
unfinished
waiting forlornly
for you to realise
this is a one time
love offer
if you decide again
we are meant to dance
never not ever no never
dance together we
again end with if
so i must let
my soul release you
& gently watch love go
After working 8 hours, plus a 2 hour drive to town then 3 & 1/2 hours of playreading, I was feeling somewhat frazzled yet curiously sleepless. My flight north was early morning. This is what escaped in those solitary hours.
killing time
shadows slide : behind me : into walls & dumpsters : as i drive the desert : that is : the city : cbd at night : killing empty hours : before my pre : dawn flight
an angry : drunk : couple stagger : a younger couple : trundle home in tandem : on one of those insidious scooters : left lying : like litter : all round : the barren streets : he in what appears : at a glance : to be a tux : she’s kilt-wrapped : in a large tartan : cape? : a single woman : walks : the traffic island : like a tight wire : rather than brave : the footpaths
past old homes : the few that still : remain : ones that haven’t : been converted : into doctor’s waiting rooms : or knocked down : so a big super : market chain : has an entrance : to its under : ground : car : park
nip : down to the sea : smell the beach : salt : the dog & i : once walked : every day : happy
this quick trip : rips through : high : lights : of past lives : before i fly off : to an : im : possible future
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
Playing with a word I learnt last year and thought might make a good poem title (& hopefully poem).
*****
solastalgia
The homesickness you have when you are still at home.
word & definition coined by Glenn Albrecht
Australian philosopher & Professor of Sustainability
that peculiar
form of distress
that envelopes us
in a misty kind
of claustrophobic
cling wrap
when we see our
homelands both
lived & idealised
lands which bring
peace simply by being
give us tranquility
remind us to breath
to hope to sit
quietly & still & just
when we feel those lands
callously destroyed
paddocks ploughed under
for another subdivision
megahardware store
or discount supermarket
or cut open for coal
or fracked set on fire covered in oil torn up by trucks
then
there is no solace
This is the poem I started writing yesterday till all the might have beens that never were muscled its way out into the world mid-draft. I’ve gone back to it today & finished it off.
despite insane frustration with inept governments :
& debilitating rage at arrogant greedybloodhungry
multinational corps’ ruthless relentless unabashed
pillaging of the planet : part of me knows — i
can’t really complain : for since that so long past :
never forgotten : sunday : i too have failed to meet targets
failed to reduce emissions (though reducing consumption
would be more benefit) : failed in every known dataset
that supposedly counts : for something : in life :
marriage : career : kids : success : legacy : wealth
accumulation : financial security : et cetera : & : ad nauseum
for the longest time : failed to even notice
i’d been trapped in a tomb : since the first
of those soulharrowing three days : over three
decades ago : the stone rolled back on me :
unaware : unable to escape my darkness
the difference i suppose is my failure :
has destroyed predominantly me :
(with deepest apologies to a handful
of beautiful people who were caught
in the crosshairs of my grief) : whereas
it is currently the world : being crucified
now : & into the firing range : of the future
NB I'm really hating the new WordPress. It's repeatedly refusing to let me upload photos saying I'm not connected to the internet (even though I am & capable of opening other pages, watching youtube videos, etc. It's highly frustrating & causing the delays in posting.
This emotionally draining day usually comes along at some point during NaPoWriMo but not often this soon in (although I note I will have respite in 2024 when Easter Sunday falls on March 31). Best to get it over with early I guess.
It’s not quite tied into the Climate Change theme as, erm, intricately as it perhaps could be. That said it did come out of a poem I was working on which was more intensely linked … & you could argue that there have been a series of dates & deadlines that could have dramatically affected/lessened the potential clout of the coming temperature rise … so thematically there’s a connection … so … I’m gonna allow it! (Whew, I was worried there for a sec I wasn’t going to convince myself.)
all the might have beens that never were
today : mournday sunday
is one of two : fallow days
in every : whimpering year
i allow myself : to truly : wallow
to weep deep : for my
lost three : to wonder
over all the might have beens
that never : were
to let grief’s heat : blister
through : the other mes
other lives : other trajectories
other doors : other : if onlys
all the stars that might : have burned
all the constellations : that others :
might have read : into that sky
all the other pathways : all the other joys
all the other : others : that never were
30 years ago today, Easter Sunday 1990 (April 15 of that year), my fiancé/soulmate & I experienced the first of three miscarriages of our three and half year relationship. We were kids, both 19.
Back then there was no internet, we didn’t know where to go get support, no easy way of knowing that we were not unique in this. But it happened twice more during the next two & half years. Each time got harder, harder to come back from. Eventually our relationship ended, in no small part due to the stresses & sadnesses of those three losses; although there were other circumstances complicating things too.
I have never fully recovered from the loss; almost daily wonder what different paths my life would have taken had I become a father way back then. It damaged me in ways I didn’t understand for decades. It took almost 25 years to “process” the grief (even though I still feel it) but eventually my alter-ego wrote & staged a 1-woman play which got much of the pain out of me … & enabled me to find a fragile kind of peace. Naturally, I’ve written countless poems about it. & every Na/GloWriPoMo the poem on April 15 or Easter Sunday is bound to explore it in some way. That’s another little gift: the fact that it has two “anniversaries” which have only aligned once in the last 30 years.
Also helping is the fact that a once young person I taught drama to writes about her miscarriages so honestly, lovingly, & beautifully on facebook (that often trite medium). I believe her words are profoundly positive & healing for me, herself, her partner, friends & family, & no doubt many others. I also love how someone I once taught is now teaching me. Thanks, Alice, for giving me the courage to write this post so openly & reinforcing the serenity to know it’s okay on those days when coping doesn’t seem possible.
*****
pandemic for one
this disease : infects & reinfects my mind : repeatedly : over decades : every easter : of course : but christmases too : birthdays : facebook posts : of friends celebrating : first days of school : & 21sts : & weddings : & births of grandkids : & just about anything fucking else : can set it off : a time bomb explosion : of regret : anger : what ifs : why mes : & i wonders :
there is no herd immunity : i am the herd : reinfection is frequent : sometimes more virulent : than ever before : the curve has not flattened : the only cure : a wormhole
29 years today.
*****
home, less
the home is new
but sadness stays
my old heart yearns
for all the birthdays
that never came
.
.
BONUS POEM: April 15, 2018
Today. Every year.
*****
goldfish kisses
in the back of memory
monks monophone softly
as fish shivers pianoforte
glockenspielling my spine
these tingling goldfish kiss
past present & forever
into one molten lovechant
calcium dissolving moment
lift me up-in-to you
a been apart too long
old friend reminder
the sadness builds
I wait
to come home
..
Familiar theme. Unfamiliar ending.
*****
Sunday afternoon farm sounds
mostly sleepy silence
a suite of breezes
of differing thicknesses
cartwheeling leaves
bone-crunching lawn dogs
young pup’s yips
unsure what’s going on
mad gabbing of parrots
lonely cry of a duck
searching for the lost flock
solitary desolation
of the only crow around
the soporific drone of man
whether high sky, dirt disturbing
or distant roadway rumbling
a forgotten radio
playing to a shed of ghosts
the irritating digital pings
as new words arrive
at my mother’s phone
& my beautiful grandmother
humming made up melodies
& starting sentences
memory won’t let her finish
BONUS POEM: April 14, 2018
Bit of theme developing. Oh well, it’s part of the reason behind the trip …
NOTE: minor 2019 edits to improve flow.
*****
looking for Ambrose in the Torringtons
start in lush Merton sunshine
where we are confident one is sown
yet six of us, crisscrossing, find nothing
except freshly cut grass, lichen
& boredom blooming like mushrooms
— so five leave as one goes on
to the Torringtons three: Little —
unclear if any were ever planted here
regular — where a football pitch garden
implies looking for needles that might
not even be in this granite haystack
for not a single 18th century date’s
visible beneath time’s smoothings
whereas ironically Great — no longer
seems to exist. realise I need simply to enjoy
the moss path beneath my feet
settling sunbeams on my skin
& be reassured that if Ambrose et al
even still care, I have tried.
moments later I pass a bus full of silly
young people preparing for a wedding
which seems eminently appropriate —
reassures me I made the right choice.
gareth roi poet boi 