Day 05 – my first ever 2 part GloWriMoPo(em)

Um, this still isn’t the poem I promised yesterday; that’s the “trouble” when there’s lots of ideas bouncing round all the time. (You might get that poem one day or you might not.)

But this isn’t quite the poem I was hoping to present today either — hence the brillo idea of making it a 2 part poem. Part 2 will make it’s way onto these pages in a week or so. (I love it when form & content inform each other.)

*****

Quarantine: part 1

8 things Donnie did last week instead of staying at home

1. Disembarked the Ruby Princess … & caught a plane back to Adelaide
2. Bought some toilet paper, he had plenty … but was on the shelf so why not
3. Visited his grandmother, gave her a hug … & the loo paper too cos she was out
4. Spent the day at the beach … probably the last warm day before winter
5. Got his hair cut, sneezed once or twice … those chemicals always set him off
6. Caught the bus, coughing as he did … people looked at him, big deal
7. Returned to the shop three times … cos he kept forgetting things
8. Visited a few mates for a brew … though Bill, the bastard, wouldn’t let him in

What Donnie’s doing this week

1. Feeling under the weather … so decided to have a couple of days in bed

Day 04 – the flat curve round the corner

Was intending to write a poem based on exercise from yesterday’s Na/GloPoWriMo site. However, I spent so long collecting words (part of the task) that I had no time left to actually write the thing. So I’ll try & get to that tomorrow using the words gathered today.

So this then is a quick stopgap, started only an hour ago, based on one of the dozen or so ideas I’ve got stockpiled to work on this month. As such, it’s a bit rushed, but it’s okay. As I always say, Na/GloPoWriMo is not about crafting perfect poems but trying new things, having poems to work on post April; & occasionally if you’re lucky catching a lightning bolt or two in a bottle along the way.

*****

decurving

i.
the challenge with the whole lockdown
don’t leave the house, isolate yourself
curve-squashing philosophy is if it works
all the instant expert naysayers will neigh
see it wasn’t as bad as your henny penny
sky’s falling economy-killing hysteria predicted
— which although technically frustrating
is surely not as grave as the alternative,

ii,
despite this, some debate whether the cost
of flattening is really the lesser of the evils
— which in a way overlooks an essential issue
the fact that we as a species are living
way above our credit level & treating earth
as a giant hypermarket where we can grab
anything we want without needing to pay
— well, debts are starting to be called in.

Day 03 – the falling of the sky

Slowly working up steam. About Defcon 3 I’d say. Alert but not alarmed.

This doesn’t quite say what I was intending to say (or at least, not in the way I was trying to say it) when I started the poem, but it will have to do as midnight is approaching.

*****

not so little chickens

while the wet markets of Wuhan & elsewhere might be
(rightly) copping criticism as hotbeds for terrifying new
viral species-hoppers even scarier prospects face every
one of us at much closer distances to hearth & home

for our modern factory chicken facilities are now far closer
to laboratories than farms where the paltry poultry are more
like drug-addled addicts than the cutesy feathered friends
we envisage scratching round in green country gardens for grubs

today owing to genetic streamlining, stress, & overcrowding
vaccines, sulfa drugs & antibiotics are routinely added
to feed to combat the toxic bloodbath of immunodeficiencies
cancerous tumours, pus, faecal matter, & bacterial contamination

it is from one of these noble agribusinesses many virologists believe
the next great pathogen will emerge to indiscriminately kill
both fowl & man

Day 02 – the apocalypse tiptoes slowly in

Hmmm, another nice one. When does the apocalypse get here?

Patience, I’m going over some of the books I’ve been reading recently & gathering all the bits I need. Soon the dystopias will start.

*****

slippage

what is being termed
social isolation by every
suddenly ultraexpert
medical practitioner
& socialmedia maestro
on the digital planet
sounds less like weeks
of solo soul hellage
cut off from the world
& all that other so-called
important stuff

& more like a couple
of normal gareth days
slipping stretchtinglingly
into several lazy idyllic
weeks of sublime solitude
— even if that slippage
means i’m not sure whether
it’s sunday or september
(so long as nasty things like
curve flattening & latest
statistics are somehow
over looked)

Photo: Villette enjoying a lazy autumn day at home, unaware of the term, “social isolation”. (Also, I didn’t realise she too is half-slipping until I uploaded the pic, so a double whammy)

Day 30 – endings (& fairy tales)

Toyed with a couple of ideas, none developed very far, when I realised I’d almost written a poem over the past 29 days. Took the titles & laid them out one after the other & they make a kind of sense. Couple of stabs at rearranging lines & adding words to help soften the occasional harsh transitions, but in the end, just went with the order they were produced, unadulterated, in a self-referential, albeit imperfect, found poem.

*****

the end

i.
the present twilight ; a long ago perfect day ; the speed of light

ii.
the many things we see in the moon from our flying machines on an unordinary day

iii.
to repair with gold failure deflated ; big top potpourri white hare

iv.
autumn day sunday farm sounds home, less holy houses day of birth ; Jubilate Canis (shout out to my dog)

v.
absence wallows the wind tree ; game of poems will never end ; senescence lest we forget ; game of moans intertextuality ; last day of holidays scans the end

BONUS POEM: April 30, 2018

Looking back over the bookface, it seems I never actually posted a Day 30 pome last year. WiFi was possibly an issue, but it was also a big travel day. None-the-less, checking my master file it seems there were three pomes drafted that day (or at least, begun) so as a special End-of-Month Bonus … I’m going to share all three (after each gets a wee tidy up).

*****

silver 3

in an outer suburb
of Bad Wildungen
on route to Kassel
where the Grimm Boys
collected, collated
& reconditioned
so many of their tales

a silver 3 heliums
its shiny foil
way to freedom. sadly
tonight someone will
be recelebrating their 1st
rather than their 13th

initially think it’s a bird
a rook or raven or some other
portentous feathered omen

seek personal symbolism
you can see signs
in anything — so i do

being in Fairy Tale land
naturally i see in
the wayward ballon

the three bears;
the little pigs;
three wishes;

three sons, two who fail,
one who saves everyone;
rules of three everywhere.

& always
always always
three dead babes

°°°°°

for the trees

i.
being here where they were
has forever altered the way
I’ll read the Household Tales
for now I understand — forest

why so many stories are set there
why so many journeys go through
for there’s forest on every third hill

a forest around every third corner
a forest bordering every third field
& road … & river … & valley

& where it’s not a forest
it’s a grove, or a copse
or even just a stand

no wonder there are
so many woodcutters,
with so much wood to cut

likewise there are so many
kings, queens, princesses & princes
when beyond every forest
may well be a new kingdom

ii.
i also comprehend having
walked in
Hansel & Gretel’s forest
that it’s so much darker,
blacker & gloomier than I could
ever have understood
from the desert’s
edge ;

Little Red’s, while
ominous
has infinitely more colour
a variegation of verde;

& seeing the virulence
with which things grow here
can well understand how
quickly thorns could over
come
Sleeping Beauty’s castle

°°°°°

Märchenstraße

I believe some of these towns
heard there was a wagon
grabbed their bands
& just jumped on

Cos their connection
to anything Fairy Tale
seems grimly tenuous
(& that’s being generous)

Day 29 – silence (& smiles)

Worked on a poem about the multiple Goldilocks zones that our world occupies, a long conceived concept, but it’s more complicated than anticipated, so this is a Plan B pome.

*****

Scans

Spent several hours sitting
next to a subdued stranger
often in stilted silence

Trying not to talk about
the hot topic of the day
even though it’s all
that occupies us

Trying extremely hard
not to compare contexts:
lives alone, never married
only an aged mother
in rapid decline
also living alone nearby
father mercifully taken
down swiftly by two
strokes in succession

Trying not to project
forward into my
unfriendly future

& failing miserable

BONUS POEM: April 29, 2018

A quiet moment of cross-cultural communication.

*****

Homemade

many things
have thrilled me
this past month
but perhaps
nothing so much
as this breakfast
when I pointed
at the apricot jam
& said in my best
Australian German
“hausgemacht?
sehr gut”

the “ja” & brief
blossom of a smile
to the otherwise
surly waiter’s face
was like a bee
abseiling my spine

Day 27 – intertextuality (& instagram)

Yet another poem about the joys of reading — which took on a life of its own. And even though the last line might be a wee bit much, I still love it.

*****

intertextuality

a startling line of text hooks me sideways
from ancient sword & sorcery Cimmeria
arcing me skywards, belly to the sun;
into other stories, real world experiences
& perfumes, already lodged in synapses flash
light silver-gilt sparkles quivering
from networked neural nest to another;
whirlpooled into the closeted green
dirty underwater of the Black Forest
where we each tread our paths on the way
to Red’s Grandma’s little log cabin.
breathing heavily behind a tree, see her skip
basket-swinging foolish innocence knock
of knuckle on the old crone’s red door

— but miss what happens next when a tap
on my shoulder reveals one angry looking
wolfskin-wearing weapon-wielding woodsman
…………
…………

…………
…………
BONUS POEM: April 27, 2018

Self explanatory.
NOTE: 2019 edit. Various minor tweakings & enjambments to improve the pome.

*****

#nofilter

despite gut-dropping
disappointment upon discovering
every shot of the castle
I’d ever seen had been
carefully crafted to crop
………………………………………… out
all neighbouring car parks,
camper vans, hotels, the town,
tour buses, & souvenir shops
I’m relieved to realise I need
not set an Instagram filter
on the sublime Andrews-esque
middle-earth mountains
……………………………………………beyond

Day 26 – harps (& axes)

Came across the phrase “brother to dragons, and companion to owls” a couple of times in the past week (once as the title of a book I recently bought & was about to put on its new home: instead it’s now on the TBR pile) & wondered what it meant. So I did a wee search & located where the phrase came from … & though this didn’t help me understand what it means, it did inspire me to do a reimagining of the text around it into a semi-satisfying pome. It also feels slightly synchronicitous given we are 1/3 of the way through the final season of Game of Thrones.

Note: Although I played some games with it, I was more interested in creating a new thing which worked than maintaining the meaning of the source material.

*****

Game of Moans

a harp mourns, my flute only weeps.
skin peels & baleful bones burn.
dragonbrother, owlcompanion.
mourn, but not beneath the sun
speak in assemblies, seeking help
constant churning, cannot rest;
days of affliction confront me.
hoped for good, only evil came;
looked for light, howling darkness fell.
wept the troubled, soulgrieved the needy
— yet none stretch a hand to my ruin
when I plea for help in my distress.
.
.

BONUS POEM: April 26, 2018

A pome about 2 sorts of home, written far away from both.

*****

Axe

i.
Our old rollie-smoking
Barossadeutsch neighbour once
told me, jokingly I suspect,
surrounded by sweet-smelling
wisps, about his favourite axe.
What a good axe it was.
How it’d been his since
boyhood; & he’d only
replaced 4 handles
& 2 heads in 60 years.
O wonderful, incomparable
eternal axe of his youth.
They don’t make em
like that anymore.

ii.
Feel like that ageless
axe — always waiting
for my head replacement
to continue being
the same old new me
of my youth

Day 25 – reasons (& relations)

Because Anzac Day always falls during NaPoWriMo, I often myself writing about it owing to my many & varied (often conflicting) emotions about it. I think I could quite easily publish a chapbook of just Anzac Day-themed poetry.

Once again, this is not the poem I set out to write, that one remains half completed needing more time & more research to complete. It is conceivable that parts or all of this poem may one day make their way into that more encompassing piece.

*****

Lest we forget

i.
When Cousin George
declared war
against Cousin Wilhelm
in August 1914,
13 year old Australia,
a British Empire dominion
was likewise at war
— automatically.
We had no choice.

ii.
While many thousands of young
men eagerly rushed to enlist;
thinking it a grand adventure
to assist three spoilt imperial cousins
squabble over colonial interests;
Australia twice voted against conscription
as political parties split & formed new
alliances, elections were fought
& a Prime Minister resigned over
the contentious issue of our involvement.

iii.
60,000 Australian diggers
were treated for venereal diseases —
almost as many who were killed.

iv.
When the war was over
thousands of thousands of men
many with debilitating physical
wounds: torn limbs, gas-burnt lungs,
missing eyes, metal-sliced flesh;
as well as those enduring
post-traumatic stress disorder
back when it was much more
poetically named shell-shock:
the warhorror of bursting bombs
mates exploding next to you,
then days in the trenches
alongside their rotting corpses,
had to be re-integrated into a society
revulsed at the monumental destruction,
keen to resign the war (& too often
those symbols of it) to the past
& attempt to resume normal life.
Many soldiers kept their war silent.
But many of those did not
or could not
make the transition.

BONUS POEM: April 25, 2018

In France. In V-B. 100 years on.

*****

Idols

for many windswept years
it’s been our special story
entrenched in lore & legend

my grandfather’s uncle
his father’s younger brother
guts unpacked by a MG bullet

killed in the battle
to retake Villers-Brettoneux
early morning, Anzac Day 1918

however today I met three
families with the same story
all blood drained from it

like a carcass on the hook
plus the bone dry testimonies
of half a dozen more

which has simultaneously
made our special day
less & a little more so

Day 24 – glory (& well, more glory)

Thoughts which have been broiling round in my brain while driving round the Barossa these past few weeks as Vintage wraps up, have finally coalesced into a reasonable poem. (After a bit of a biological brush up on the process of leaf colour changing.)

*****

senescence

i
with the arrival of mechanical harvesters
the Valley lost much of its vivid autumnal charm.
over violent shaking of the vines strips a quarter
or more of the leaf cover & startles the remainder
into a state of shock. though improved technology
has recently reduced the trauma & restored slightly
the brilliant explosions, breathtaking feast-your-eyes
yellow-golds, gorgeous scarlets, cheekblushing-crimsons,
redhued-rubies, winedark-purples, outrageous-oranges.
but still, slowly, the old ways die.

ii
a smilier malaise is affecting the less prevalent,
but still present, deciduous population. normally
as daylight declines & the nights grow long & cold,
chlorophyll production slows as plants recycle
& ship to storage those molecules ready for next season.
the domineering chlorophyll, no longer in the ascendancy
allows the always-present but lushly masked
complex chemistry compounds called carotenoids,
yellows & oranges, to have their moment in the sun
(as it were); before the red, pink, & purple pigments
responsible for sunscreen, light protection & pest prevention
kick in to complete the slow motion fireworks display.

iii
but this year’s long dry summer means unhealthy
water-stressed trees seem to be cutting their losses
carte blanche by snap-drying then rapidly dumping
instabrown dry paperwisps; terraforming the sky
to the same dusty brown as the droughtbaked dirt
it mirrors

BONUS POEM: April 24, 2018

A place Mum & I had to visit. & somewhere I think I’d love to live.

2019 EDIT: minor tweaks to improve flow, rejambed enjambment, & various images given extra bite. All in all, at least a 50% better poem than previous incarnation.

*****

sitting on the Doc’s step

after driftwalking
half in the world
the rest in my own head ;
limbo rambling in
artfully framed narrative ;
& the much messier
more inconveniently laid
out reality ; I sit on
his fake slate step —
wanting ; wishing ; hoping
to someday leave
such a through
looking-glass legacy
for other daytrip
dreamers

gareth roi poet boi

gareth roi's playful poetry place

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Tag Archives: NAPOWRIMO

Day 04 – the flat curve round the corner

Day 03 – the falling of the sky

Day 30 – endings (& fairy tales)

Day 29 – silence (& smiles)

Day 27 – intertextuality (& instagram)

Day 26 – harps (& axes)

Day 25 – reasons (& relations)

Day 24 – glory (& well, more glory)

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