Day 26 – April Twenty Six: I’ll be caaaaalllllllllllllling you!

I actually had a pretty good draft of this poem completed by midday.  Then I drank some wine.  Red wine.  Very rich plummy chocolaty tasting red wine.  It’s now just after 11pm.  (There’s a lesson in there somewhere!)

It’s based on a few notes I made a couple of days ago while dealing with my electricity provider.

powerless

thank you for calling Genesis Energy
please listen carefully as the following options may have changed

to feel frustrated, please press #1
to wish to kill yourself painlessly, please press #2
to be treated like a nameless shleck, please press #3
to be shunted back & forth between a variety of different Customer Assistant Consultants, none of whom will actually assist you, please press #4
to slowly go crazy as you are tag-teamed by a duet of equally perky but highly irritating male & female announcers who banter delightfully as they tell you 28 different versions of — “for other ways you can make a positive difference with Genesis Energy including Solar Heating, please talk to one of our Customer Assistant Consultants … today“, please press #5
to be utterly infuriated by the repeated-every-7-seconds burst of bland but groovy funky elevator jazz music, please press #6
to have your query answered quickly & efficiently, please press #9
(we’re just kidding of course, there is no option #9)

you have selected #5
{click}
thanks for holding
{click}
we apologise for the delay, your call will be answered as soon as possible
{click}
your call is in the queue, and will be answered in approximately < 8 > minutes

*****

 Online-channel-powered-by-call-centres

Image: Call centre hell

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

Day 24 – April Twenty Four: spit-spot off to bed

I’m reading the biography of P.L.Travers (the woman who created Mary Poppins) – it’s a wonderful rich inspiring book (unlike Disney’s saccharine superficial movie).  It sparks, tingles, fires & inspires so many ideas which I dash off as I read. This is the best of them from today.

night terrors

The children are frightened
of ceiling cracks
creaking radiators
& hot water services
which sizzle in the night

We calm them
with ancient tales
of transformation
flights against the sun
forest witches, & other grims

*****

 mary poppins

Day 23 – April Twenty Three: venting

April 23. St George’s Day. Famous day. Not the Shakespeare 450th birthday anniversary poem I was working on, but something more pressing & urgent.

In the Dark

Dear Power Company,

As I sit here
Surrounded
By candles
But mostly
In the dark
I just have
One question
How can you
Disconnect
My power
Without access
To the inside
Of the house
But you cannot
Reconnect it
The same way
The meter
Hasn’t moved
Since yesterday
When you shut
It off
You bunch
Of cocks.

Yours etc

PS Don’t think
I’m paying
The after hours
Call out fee
For this!

PS 2 sorry Bill
Your poem
Was looking
good too 

 

 

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 20 – Day Twenty: scottish inspiration

The following text is what I posted on fb that day.  Just realised I haven’t posted Day 20 – NaPoWriMo here. Came onto fb over an hour ago & got sucked into a quagmire of Easter posts, funny cat vids, ghost cars & a Guardian article “Top 10 Easter scenes in literature” which lead to several other Guardian articles I read until POEM OF THE WEEK Monday 7 October 2013.

The picture accompanying this online poem led me to write my own poem on a similar theme to Butlin (but less eloquently) & abandon the poem I had been thinking about/working on for much of the day.

Princes Street
(Holding its cup out to “Nicolson Square” by Ron Butlin)

Frozen on the silvermirrored ground
& in diamond focused digital clarity
Behind us the steeples stepladdering souls
to heaven are fuzzy & drizzlefaded
Hands buried in jacket pockets
Or, better, gloved
Under the brolley, from beneath the hood, or beret
We all look without looking, from the corner of our hearts

We know she’s there, but if we pretend she’s not
We can continue our golden walk to work, unencumbered

She, huddling in her shrugged shrunken hug
has one red glove on her lap
Perhaps to better emphasise bare finger tips
holding the paper cup
Her eyeshadow sockets stare off
somewhere at knee height but at no-one’s knees
However, the detail I’m most drawn to is,
that, the edge of her dirtybrown blanket is wet

*****

The city and the city … a woman begs on Princes Street in Edinburgh.

Image: Princes St.  Source Page: The Guardian, Poem of the Week: Ron Butlin.

April 19 – Day Nineteen: the theme continues

Still at country retreat. Same Word Press issue.

This came in a white hot rush & has barely been touched.  It’s almost Day 18: part 2. Or draft two. Or whatever. It’s a better poem than yesterday’s, that’s for sure. Was posted on fb 11 hours before midnight!!! I was impressed.

On at least one level the inspiration for today’s poem should be obvious.

Tomb

Buried. In darkness. Alone.
Wake surrounded. By the scent of aloes.
& bitter perfumes. All is dark, cold. Every
atom aches. Every muscle. Wine soaked.
Sinew & bone. I am sore. To my core.

The air smells. Mushrooms. Liquorice,
Damp smouldering wood. Eat the aloe.
Make myself sick. Eject the poison.
Wounded. In dark places I dwell. Alone
In a cave. Just me. & my angels.

*****

2014-04-24 09.53.56-8

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

~interlude~

Apologies to those following this blog for the absence of new poems over the past 6 days. This was unexpected owing to three factors:

1, being away from my wonderful study over Easter
2, while being away, being unable to remember my WordPress password to be able to log in via iPad (the method by which I intended to fulfil my posting duties)
3, returning from Easter Long weekend away to discover my power had been disconnected, followed the next day by my phone (apparently large multinational companies don’t take too kindly to financially struggling poets not paying their bills!) Both are now reinstated & the catch up will begin.

The good news is, I kept writing over those days, posting each day directly as a Facebook status instead of linking this page to fb.  So it shouldn’t take too long to update everything.

Let the deluge begin! 

April 17 – Day Seventeen: dreams of you

Well yesterday’s experiment didn’t quite get the response I was hoping for.  Hahaha, oh well.  (There’s still time to go back & play if you want to.  Read Day 16 & comment at the end for a chance to win a special prize – it has to be on my blog, fb & twitter comments don’t count.)

Maybe that’s why writing today was tough. I was a bit down. Tried a few things. Messaged a friend in the states just as he’d woken from a bad dream (it was 3am in Maryland).  We talk a bit about bad dreams. I never have them (though I have woken myself up from laughing in my dreams & in my body at the same – glorious sensation – although I think it’s how the dali lama must feel). Tried to write about that, meh! Tried to write about my friend’s scary dream of being left alone, meh.

Then this came out. Of nowhere. Not sure I understand it. Pretty sure I like it.

Shades

Half-woken scraps of you swirl round
the half sunrisen gloom of my room
through tannin-thick wetpaper-thin skull

Like souls of men recently killed
on a battlefield, afraid to leave

We have not spoken in two weeks
keep eyes closed as long as I can
these torments all I have of you

A herd of cats claw my legs
tripping me, demanding to be fed

For while I only half-remember
the dreams, I’m reluctant
to relinquish what little I have

So I leave the black shroud cloth
covering my eyes & drift

It is a prism refracting weak light
each intersection of weft & weave
it’s own rainbow link to another world

Opaque, shiny as an insect’s eye
Then. I. Don’t. Care.

*****

 hidden_eyes_beauty_2_by_bayhor-d5k5p14 copy