Today was a bit messy.  Every other day I’ve known what  I was going to do by about midday.  Today I had a few false starts, & nothing was really grabbing me.  So I worked on a play instead, read some articles online, read Bill Bryson’s awesome chapter on Pronunciation, read a really interesting chapter on how Russia’s political instability is founded on a lack of any clear geographic demarcations between its Western border & Europe … & the “vulnerability” of St Petersburg & Russia now that the Soviet “buffer zone” of satellite Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania etc are now “independent” states.  Written a couple of years again, it shed interesting light on the current Crimea Crisis – but helped little in the poem creation caper.

So to a walk on the beach.  Which produced:

the blue seaglass sky

rain has kept all but the dedicated away
& we’re both a little stir crazy

thankfully this strip of salty dreams
is virtually deserted, even by the gulls

henley beach a zen meditation
the beach as onomatopoeia

water becomes sand, sand becomes sky
sky becomes water … & we drift between

lost on the wind, one lost in the wind
whispers of wings that cannot be seen

waves wash water over wet sand
the sucking sounds – sausages sizzling

in the seashell cemetery, exoskeletons sing
coral cartwheeling, a dead reef xylophone

& every piece of fairy seaglass i find
is washed out blue, just like the sky

*****

Images: moi

Which, while “nice”, felt like a pretty bog standard grj poem.  It will hopefully improve once April is over & I have a chance to tweak it.  (I particularly like “the beach as onomatopoeia” & will possibly explore that in more detail, sometime.)

So, home after a wonderful wet walk, & a quick stop to shop for essentials, generated this gem:

one of the disadvantages of tardiness

get home after wet beach walk, soggy
towel dry the dog, feed the dog
think about feeding myself, consider coffee
catch from an eye corner, the clock
WTH – where did the time go, calculate
we left here at 4, clock says 6.59
the reading starts in an hour
check the oven: starts in an hour there too
we couldn’t have walked for that long
would’ve said 90 minutes at most
& i only bought a few groceries
dammit! no time for food
put the frozen stuff away. & the milk.
scramble into shower, scrape face
wriggle into jeans, search for shoes
check phone.  wait.  what?  wait!
here the reading starts in 1hr47min
i really should turn those damn
kitchen clocks back — daylight savings
has been over half a week

 *****

Image: Clock by gruelism

This was followed by attendance at said poetry reading which had previously caused such panic in my efforts to get there on time.  [We shan’t mention, the act of sitting at the computer to craft said poem, almost caused me to run late (again, so to speak) for the reading. Sometimes, it seems time is destiny.]

A quick conversation post-reading & this was spewed forth upon my return home. (I had 2 hours to meet the midnight deadline.)

operational policy

my friend works for the government
in the bureaucracy … doing something
to do with housing – or something

every time he talks about it i wittily
pretend to fall asleep. people understand if i say
‘i sit at a computer’  he jokes … before going silent

till one day i overhear him spieling to a stranger
i work for the government in operational policy
we implement what the strategic policy department

decides is a good idea … we make sure it works
i see the woman’s eyes glaze over too
i sit at a computer. aaah, the joke still works

yes, but what do you actually do, she persists
um, my work means the most vulnerable
get what they need in order to live

i haven’t pretended to fall asleep since

*****

Image: Wooden House by Kleemass

But this still didn’t feel like it.  So I returned to an abandoned effort from earlier in the day.

beyond pain
(Peaches Geldoff dies at age 25)

the deaths of celebrities are strange events
causing outpourings of grief from a deluded
General Population who believe they are somehow
“connected” just because they saw them lots on tv.
the deaths of not-really celebrities are even stranger.

while i sincerely feel the pain her father expresses
in his statement to the media, including the phrase
which titles this poem & others equally heartbreaking
Writing ‘was’ destroys me afresh &
our family, fractured so often, but never broken
the pathos is profound – his clan has done it tough.

what i do not comprehend is how the media
thinks poorly worded tweets from other
second rate celebs some of whom may even
have known the deceased are news — but FFS
Miley & Jamie — sad face emoticons are not
appropriate ways to express your condolences
when someone’s daughter, someone’s mother dies

*****

Screencap moi:  “What’s up WA? – Why is it only 3 on your Reader’s Most Viewed????

But I still wasn’t happy … which leads to today’s Official Post (see new page)