Tuesday poem: Budgerigar redux
October 26, 2015
Budgerigar
Ten million green commas punctuate blue sky,
quick breaths of swooping wonder, multiplied.
Water-hole is your target; liquid rope pulls you
and the whole emerald sky is diving,
as miniature bodies scoop down to pool.
Your individual markings have taken you
further than native flight; outside the Louvre
I saw you, cold, trying to break in, as pointillist
as Pissarro, but so acrylic in your finish.
Proud but damp escapee from French balcony,
regretting the lost seed and the found liberty.
Plump and fresh, I have heard you were good eating,
a winging fast food charred to a turn;
as far from stringy battery chook as fingers in the fire.
Most know you singly: whistling in cages,
bowing and bobbing, rattling plastic mirrors.
Driven mad you ring and ring chink-chinky bells
or make love to that hard, hard-to-get reflection.
What joy to see you
just once, as you swoop,
one stitch amongst the tapestry,
a blade of grass in feathered turf carpet,
magically landing,
transforming dreary waterside
with that fallen sward of Eire.
Swift dragon of twenty million wings,
fluorescing with your simple, beak-filled joys.
P.S. Cottier
As to the redux, this poem was posted here once before, a couple of years ago. But it deserves a new airing. The photo shows my new budgie, more pastel than the wild bird’s near-emerald. He was bought with the seeds of poetry. I am now spending my life moving his cage around and letting him out in safe places, away from my dogs.
His name is Chomp.
Next week I promise to use words that rest on a thin perch of ideas, as the last twos paras were totally and tragically Facebook. Status: idiotic.
In the meantime, fly your way to New Zealand. (She inserts something witty and slightly patriotic about rugby finals. There is a poem to be written about that, but not here, not this week. Though ‘The Ode of David Pocock’s Calf’ has potential. I’m seeing Victory born from its swelling pregnant muscles.)
Tuesday poem: Is it a haiku?
July 20, 2015
winter strawberries
nipples in snow
limacine dreams
P.S. Cottier
I was tossing up whether to have an image of a slug or a strawberry. Looks like I opted for perky and nice with this Deborah Griscom Passmore painting of a type of strawberry called Parker Earle. Planted in the glorious field we call Public Domain.
Don’t think about that wee poem too much, or rather unpleasant images may occur. By the way, there is no shame in having to look up the word ‘limacine’, which is not a kind of expensive car. I trolled around for ages before I found ‘as ovine is to sheep, X is to slug’. And the word is perfect, I think.
Being a poet is a tough job, but someone has to do it.
Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
Belated Tuesday poem: (haiku)
June 24, 2015
The scant electric tree
sheds a furred question —
let the answer comfort
dead possum
Poor little guy found under power poles on the way back from my usual café. I think he* was electrocuted, rather than hit by a car, as there is no sign of injury. Some people in Australia hate possums, but I admire them for their ability to live amongst us, running over roofs and reminding us that we aren’t totally divorced from nature.
Off to do a reading soon of nearly all new material. God but I’m prolific! Prolific as a healthy possum with access to unlimited fruit. Which is, I hope, what a possum sees after death.
Other Tuesday poets are more punctual. Read them here.
*I can’t see a pouch, so I assume he.
We are all working our way up, towards the birds
We are all working our way up, towards the birds.
Outliers like Icarus, 70s pterodactyl hanggliders,
twitchers and breeders of weird coloured parrots:
they have all felt the urge and responded
to the best of their beakless capacities.
But they are not the neo-orno avant-garde.
The egg must come first, before the flight —
putting aside philosophy, that is just true.
So who is nature’s true Anna Wintour?
Where is the next Paris to be found?
The catwalk of the world is spiked by echidna.
Platypus pouts there too. (That is hard with a bill.)
These two are the fashion-forward models,
who will soon sprout wings and launch and fly;
it is happening now, as I type and you read.
Placenta will be ditched, like yesterday’s rags.
Next year, unaided flight will be de rigueur,
and song will erupt, without instruments,
deep from the gape of seven billion throats.
We are all working our way up, towards the birds.
P.S. Cottier
This poem was recently highly commended in the Interstellar Award for Speculative Poetry. Fellow Tuesday Poet (and lovely person/editor) Tim Jones was placed second with a poem that blends the speculative and the political, and Kevin Gillam (who may be lovely, for all I know, but who lives in Western Australia, which is much further away than New Zealand, at least psychologically) was awarded first place with a fascinating work that demands several readings. (A little like that monstrous sub-clausey sentence, but much much better.) You can read their poems and the detailed judge’s report here. This was the second thing I was highly commended/shortlisted/close-but-no-cigared for in the last fortnight! I won’t bore on about the other one though, as I don’t want to publish that poetry here just yet.
If you like humorous, short poetry, I promise that some will be read at Manning Clark House on 24th June at 7.30pm. I hear there will also be some quite angry stuff, and, of course, some speculative poetry. That’s by me; I have no idea if Mark Tredinnick writes any of that sort of thing. (He is the other reader.)
Come along to 11 Tasmania Circle and find out. Also; wine.
Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
Tuesday poem: ‘P’
June 1, 2015
‘P’
Pregnant with puppies
your long stroke body and
fat little tum, poking out like
a bad boy’s tongue, reversed
(b = p topsied, topsided, pissed).
All the green puns that woke
the princess; those pesky vegies
that pulled her out of zeds
nicking peace, hatching doubts —
… elliptical peas …
P.S. Cottier
Now that Little Poem started as an ekphrastic response to an alphabet that was displayed at the Canberra Museum and Gallery…Different letters by different artists…Sarah Rice facilitated the workshop, I recall…But I can’t remember which artist did the P, so to speak. The poem is no longer as ekphrastic as it used to be…I love ellipses too much, obviously…
If you want puns (and who doesn’t?) there may be some written by other Tuesday Poets. I know not… Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
What’s the betting that the poodle above is called Prince or Princess? If I ever adopt a poodle from a shelter, I will call it Chopper.
