T shirt poetics
July 29, 2011
Dedicated to all those who have ever worn a T shirt with a message on it. Written back in the Old Days when Kevin Rudd was running for Prime Minister.
T shirt poetics
That downwards stroke, belly hugging I
imprinted with messages curt or cute;
each body a chap-book (or chick-book)
moving past the reader. Mobile library,
hanging garden of haiku in Babble-on.
A glance up from well thumbed phone
must be all these poetical shirts expect.
First there are the desperate and flirty,
such as ’69’, all tucked soixante and hide
that croissant. It’s enough to make you latte
your lap. Or not.
Then come the polly tics,
with their saves and bans, their heavenly
Kevins. The shirts have faded over Summer,
but not the bloom of the loveliest wearers.
I wore them once, such earnest eager screeds,
but that wench is dead, slogans so long gone.
Someone should wear that rude arrowed
‘I’m with Stupid’ when they sit next to me,
such is my love of ‘Paris, je t’aime’ with a heart
above the wearer’s pumping one, as if Cupid
were about, looking for targets, the susceptible
or the contemptible. I sit, sip and compose
my own T shirts, such as ‘Gives good sonnet’
and the more complex ‘It’s a couplet.
Innit?’
Then ‘Get a Life’ walks past, not very nice.
But I see the point, and I take its advice.
P.S. Cottier
the opposite of poetry?
July 14, 2011
Limericks are meant to be obscene, or at the very least, scurrilous. The strong ‘message’ and the clunky rhyme pattern make them a very particular form of poetry. One could not, I think, write a moving or sensitive limerick; that’s a different KOF, to be poured into a sonnet or free verse.
But where the expressed views of a public figure seem crude and somehow thoughtless, the limerick is the best form of poetry there is. Here’s one about the current Leader of the Opposition in Australia, Mr Tony Abbott, whose political position on climate change seems to be entirely based on crude populism. (Not that Julia Gillard’s government is a shining example of The Mind Made Flesh, but still…)
And I promise not to do the limerick thing again for a while. Please excuse double spacing; for some reason my computer ‘does this’ sometimes, and won’t listen to reason. Which actually seems appropriate for this little poem‘s subject.
My budgie slipped out...
There once was a leader called Abbott
who criticised just as a habit.
The climate did fry
and he couldn’t say why
which bemused this nay-saying maggot.
P.S. Cottier
Not a rose by any prickly name at all
July 11, 2011
Cactus
Spiky camel hump, buried in sand.
Alien artichoke, Martian’s lunch.
I’m told to admire your
‘architectural qualities’. As if
we build houses of needles,
like one of those three little pigs
gone crazy, his brain curling,
dizzy, to match pale gimlet tail.
What huffing
fire-mouthed wolf-dragon
could blow you down?
Crooked eyes only, crave cacti.
Yet, every few years, you explode
into a neon gown of Brazilian hues
pulsating, pink or gold, as at Mardi Gras.
When poor become princes,
and thin desert blooms.
P.S. Cottier
Just published in The Mozzie, Queensland
PS Cottier 