Tag Archives: memory

Day 03 – valleys (& hobbitholes)

03 misthouse

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

 

03b Bagnoregio

Day 10 – poem about memory

_filtered__by_aksdareflection

I think I’ve mentioned before that during NaPoWriMo, I try & draft several pomes a day, testing out ideas to see what sticks … & hopefully finding an idea worthy enough to develop into some sort of acceptable first draft.

This very short pome began life as a stanza in a longer piece which wasn’t pulling its weight. I spent a long time playing with versions of it, until I realised, everything I was trying to say was in these lines. Less is more & all that. So I abandoned the rest; copied-&-pasted this bit into a new document & kept cutting*, playing with enjambment, alternative words, & finally titles; a dozen versions came & went before I stumbled onto the current choice which seems so ideal I wonder why it took so long.

Speaking of long, this introduction is so, only because the pome is so short & I wanted readers to feel like they got value for money 🙂

filtrate

he craves age
so everything
can be better
than it was, when it was

 

 

 

*sure it’s only 14 words long, but once it was 19

Day 14 – Second New Game, still learning the rules

Being a new week (after second Poet in Residence session yesterday), means I start a new game (actually I’ll be playing a couple this week).

This one I’m still kinda making up as I go along (it’s a test run for next week) & it harks back to the Title Poem of week one, I’m calling it Gossip: which means – Choosing a book, opening it randomly several times, picking out phrases, words, images, ideas … then assembling them to make a poem. I have chosen a phrase from: the first & last pages (1 & 378), every 50 pages (50, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350), & 5 random pages (55, 173, 221, 292 & 292, yes I opened it to the same page twice)

I’ve done a couple of test runs today & it’s certainly easier than Title Poem was. More fun too, cos there’s more choice & you can choose ‘clues’ to help give the book away. Can you guess the identity of the book? Today’s is, admittedly, pretty easy …

shirley of verdant verandahs

it was a terrible temptation
an irresistible temptation
so much superfluous flesh

the dark secrets of pool
& cascade soft mingling
of fireshine & shadow

the sunshine fell down
the sunshine of a 100 summers
through the misty blue air

but my ambition in life
is to go down the shore road
beyond the bend in the road

beyond the wind & stars & fireflies
till i can forget all about you
your drinking of raspberry cordial

& how one of your roses fell
out of your hair which i
picked up & put in my pocket

Verdant CLOSEUP

Note: the order the lines appear in are pages: 173, 200, 55, 1, 292, 100, 292, 350, 300, 50, 378, 221, 150, 250

 

 

 

Day 12 – lies, damn lies & autobiographies

I am reading Rebecca for the first time after it being on my wishlist for … well, ages, & while I am loving it (& subsequently in that strange frisson between ‘why didn’t you do this years ago’ & ‘perhaps it’s exactly the right time to do it now’) I cannot help but think about the artificiality of autobiographical writing of any kind. Particularly after many years have passed. Hence:

*****

the past is its own perfume

i don’t believe memoirs ;
cannot trust that upright
uptight autobiographical
‘I’
lives as lies ;
lies as narrative ;
narrativlies ;

they’re all a fiction subset ;
diaries a sanctioned form
of lying ; journals a justifying
conversation with who
we want to believe we are

my scepticism stems
from my limited recall
where i no longer recognise
if some of the wonderful
seconds of my own innocuous
history happened as i believe ;
or whether years of retelling
has altered the original impulse
beyond recognition ;

i trust baser instincts ;
scent which can roar us
back to who we were
faster than einstein’s ride
but so rarely are key moments
accompanied by unique smells ;

even music, that effortless
time travel machine
risks carbuncles calcifying
accreting, cumulating
till the detritus of decades
is attached & the original
pulse ; long lost ; gone ;

memory ; is smoke

NB I’m not entirely sure it’s finished, or whether it’s missing something, or what … but running out of time & mental acuity. Thoughts & feedback particularly welcomed on this one. (BTW thanks Sarah for the editing advice – suggesting cutting 4 words – or more accurately one word, 4 times, either way, big improvement)

*****

Smoke_by_rovokop copy

Day 10 – not the sort of guests you want sharing your picnic blanket

Another topic crossed off the list. Third of the way through, really feel like I’m smashing this NaPoWriMo. (Car crash to follow soon…)

After seeing 100’s of these little critters over the farm all summer, I’ve finally been able to give them a poetic shout out.

*****

6 short poems about Myrmecia forficata 
(inch ants)

1. The Scientific
100, 000, 000 years
of evolutionary simplicity
single chromosome pair
lowest count of any creature
cousin to bees & wasps
— endemic to Australia

2. The Philosophic
furious will to live
— as proven by sadistic
philosophers who cut
them in two in order
to activate individual
head v tail fight clubs

3. The Metaphoric
with its blown glass abdomen
it’s a brown bloodred pin
on steroids ; a segmented
chitin tank ; shiny obsidian
suit of armour ; a spinning
exoskeleton compass — complete
with scissors & a ringmaster’s moustache

4. The Literal
technically should
be called 25.4mm ants
owing to our metrication
— but it doesn’t have
the same zing to it

5. The Unusual
their well-developed vision
means they can follow
intruders from a metre off
— try hiking in the bush
knowing inch ants
could be stalking you

6. The Personal
pincers pinch the skin
worse than when
your sister caught
a piece of your cheek
between her strong nails
during a childhood brawl

it was long ago that fight
& though you’ve forgotten
what it was about
you can still feel
that slapsting as sharp
as yesterday

— the inch ant bite
is worse than that

*****

DinAus4

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