Tuesday poem: Cat poems, and more training
October 16, 2012
Cat poems
My cat is a cunning composer.
She leaves scores around the house.
There are syncopated jazz rats, still jerking,
replete with her creation.
They hum as tiny drumsticks protrude,
percussion and strings combined.
She arranges her catch with
an unblinking painter’s eye.
A wavering line of random feathers
changes into a bald peach bird,
elegantly draped among the pears.
She is Flemish in her still life,
Nature mort, most mort.
My Renaissance cat creates poems of pain,
with small commas of grey as meek mice
punctuate, curling. Each whisker a line of praise,
a direct compliment, to her well executed verse.
PS Cottier
I always dread putting a photograph of anything feline up, as I’m bound to get lolcats comments. Oh well, I’ll be brave…
Cats are tremendous murderers, almost as good as people. So click this feather from a bird one killed earlier, for further poesie:
My poem today was published in my first book, The Glass Violin.
ALSO: There’s a fun article about the Poets Train written by the wonderful organiser, Fiona McIlroy at this link, in which I have become PC Cottier. I haven’t been PC for a very long time, Fiona!:-)
UPDATE: I am back to being P.S. Cottier! Unfortunately, I momentarily typed and posted Fiona’s name as Fiona Wright: quite a different person. And although I corrected that quickly here, it’s up on the Australian Poetry site as Wright in my pingback comment. It’s McIlroy, I tell you! Sorry Fiona!
Tuesday poem: Bulb
October 9, 2012
Bulb
Dirt-dunked like a tulip, the head erupts,
lava lines of black, darker than any ink,
lead from that buried hub, sprawling out,
seeking prey. Such dark questing feelers,
chameleon tongues probing, blind fingers
fondling scent braille of scattered crumbs.
Ants scurry back to their deep earth home.
P.S. Cottier
For further poems, not all as anty, press this feather:
Tuesday poem: Sea
September 24, 2012
Sea
It pulls harder than any roping octopus,
Kali’s deep green army of sinuous terror,
bites deeper than haunting white shark,
bloody ghost that gutted brothers before birth.
It throws off surfers, tinnies, yachts and tankers
like a gnarly horse at rodeo, then clowns with us,
pulling down rescuers, spewing out the sodden child.
At stony beaches it applauds itself with each sigh,
the percussive pebbles played by ten thousand hands.
Sometimes, floating, I feel it stroke my back, teasing,
fingering, like a well-schooled lover. It whispers
not yet, I’m not ready, when I’m ready, you’ll go down.
P.S. Cottier
This poem appeared in my first book, The Glass Violin, which can still be ordered from Ginninderra Press. (Go to the ‘About’ page of this blog.)
I am gradually getting back into my routine of coffee and writing, after too many exciting things happening recently. I am on a panel and reading at the Conflux science fiction convention here in Canberra this weekend, speculative poetry being one of my loves. But as this is at the weekend, I don’t see it as breaking my routine.
At heart I am truly a bore. But sometimes a productive one.
More poetry? You want more? Click here and receive a free set of steak knives.*
*Imaginary steak knives in real kitchens.
Tuesday poem: Ammonite
September 10, 2012
Ammonite
Stony rose blooms from centre, soft thorns of feelers long since lost.
Aeons before any bee roamed from flower to flower, fields of round shells
pumped through seas, curled rams horns butting at white choppy waves.
Now round-eyed fossil stares at me from my desk, surprised to see
one so pink, so soft, so new. Soil frozen bubble reminds that our kind
is also a wink in time’s long receipt; a mere fingerprint of bone will
one day remain, hardened into artefact like ammonite, to be mined
and grasped (if the finders should have hands). Old cockle swirl,
ridge-back, cocks a snook at certitude; oceans of twisting time
sound through mud-filled shofar, airless conch, a mazy call of years.
P.S. Cottier
Having returned, very tired, from the Poets Train last night, I’ll recycle this old, though as yet unpublished, poem and give a more train-specific post when I’m back to my routine. Or timetable.
Suffice to say that many words have passed these lips over the weekend!
Click this feather and see if any more poems are dealing with ancient creatures:
There’s one terrific poem about robots on Tim Jones’s blog. Take my word for it…
Tuesday poem: Dogs
August 7, 2012
Dogs
Descartes strapped them down alive, and cut.
Pavlov slit their throats and made them swallow.
Better the ignorant man and his pound mutt
who know love, unadorned, and wallow
in its myriad humble wonders.
Who can see a tail waving, without
her heart leaping in metronomic time?
They exist, I know, but my mind doubts
anyone who could question that airy prayer.
Simpler philosophy is sometimes enough,
Horatio;
that endless love with no thought of death,
this wiser being that knows no half, no grey
knows no lies, no second guessing or stealth,
is constantly re-born whole every day
(except for mini-deaths when we go away).
Baptising trees with presents of smell
reading sun in every squirt,
heaven in dirt; only finds hell
when we clever ones impose it
from high-minded above.
Dig deeper dog,
show us joy
in this moment
that’s forever.
Together.
Fetch.
P.S. Cottier
Scentimental, I know.
Click this link for added poesie:
PS Cottier 