Tuesday Poem: The Cootamundra Wattle
May 15, 2017
This one is via a link to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, site. If you scroll right down the page you will find a free PDF anthology to download, full of excellent poems about plants. The anthology is called New Shoots, and was created by Red Room Poetry, Rochford Street Review, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.
My poem, at page 50, is called ‘The Cootamundra Wattle’, and here’s a somewhat coy looking poet peeping out from behind a wattle last year. The anthology is really worth a look, and hopefully, a printed copy will also appear at a later date.
“Tuesday” poem: Cockatoos
May 5, 2017
Cockatoos
Yes, we’ve heard their sad repetitions,
the ‘pieces of eight’, the rote ‘Pretty boys’,
dropped from tired beaks like peanut shells;
birds bored far beyond the thinning bone.
Compulsive as a handwasher who never
satisfies herself against germy armies
(save her hands are gloved in blood,
and cleansed into gauntlets of agony)
the caged bird will repeat this or that,
sigh, then hear that weird word clever,
thrown at his misery like a charity coin,
a beggar at our table of meaning.
But to see them treed, hanging upside-down,
greeting wet wind like a blown umbrella,
yellow winking at sun like a wicked punch-line,
raucous joy a cascade of brassy cunning sax;
this is the true sound of this bossy bright thing.
Why quibble about what they know, or don’t?
A screech floats to ground like a metal bird,
cut with tin-shears by a half-blind drunk,
so gratingly loud that ears are near-shorn.
Cockatoos mar the sky with jagged freedom,
as far from a nightingale’s sweet treacle
as a sudden mouthful of shattered glass.
PS Cottier
An old poem this, but there are so many cockatoos in Canberra at the moment that I thought I would post it again. I think of dinosaurs every time I hear one screech. Whether that is unkind to dinosaurs is something we can’t know.
Tuesday poem: Anatomical heart
April 10, 2017
Anatomical heart
You beat metronomically, ventricles
brassy as tacks, and there is no swish
swish, no frou-frou to disrupt
your carefully boxed geometry.
You have been abstracted, so
as to embody accuracy, but you are the
piece of paper, placed on the chest
of he who faces the guns. Accurate,
to the point of pornography,
no weak slush of blood
no missed, syncopated beat
punctuates your perfection.
Anatomical heart is only a step to the side
of atomic: atta boy! Go fetch energy!
Anatomical love knows nothing of doubt.
Lke a web from that anatomical heart —
anatomy of certainty clutches,
squashing ambiguity. Neurotypical heart,
stomping diverse beats. (Red is red is red.)
O for an autistic heart,
stimming each second,
bloody minded flicker of thought.
Sweet opener of Aladdins of knowledge,
within the chest and also without,
questioning whyer of refusal —
of the one way arteries of thought.
PS Cottier
After a short break, the blog with a big heart is back…
Seriously though, I like this poem more than many others I have written recently, hence my popping it up here rather than hoarding it for a journal.
I don’t agree with a certain trend in some poetry to eschew ideas. Hence this poem is stuffed with them, even clogged with and attacked by them.
Next week; livers and bright lights.
Tuesday poem: A limited number of autumns
March 28, 2017
A limited number of autumns
mulched, or tumbled in a barrel,
spread thin, or just allowed to fall.
The angry man with the blower.
The desperate, toothy rake,
plied like a weapon to hold back
swarming leaves of dragon red.
Carpeting drive and inscribing soil —
the pointed, scarlet letters
of a limited number of autumns.
PS Cottier
I belong to the ‘let it fall where it will’ school of gardening, which must frustrate those with gardens that look like they were bought from Ikea and assembled with an Allen key. There are many introduced species of trees in Canberra, which provide people with the ideal way of expressing their personalities as they battle the leaves. Or not.
Tuesday poem: I remember the lost skirt of Carlton
February 15, 2017
I remember the lost skirt of Carlton
Nimble and nineteen, perhaps twenty, I saw you;
velvet A-line, satin belt, and my heart dropped open
knowing how you would swathe me in excellence
hang just right, soft as a crop of Labrador’s dark ears.
Student poor, with a world to change, I stood outside,
longing, mental tongue lapping, dressed in thin dream.
Today, girt in husband’s semi-silken wage,
(and the splendid coin of Poesie)
I could command your like be snipped
to the pattern of sweet memory.
But my waist has grown
along with his pay,
so perfect skirt, in time or space,
will always always
slip
away.
PS Cottier
Based on a True Incident, this is a very old, but (I think) unpublished poem. It describes a true first world problem, but both Canberra and Melbourne (of which Carlton is a university infested suburb, or just about) are in the first world, so that’s hardly surprising.
Fashion is interesting in that usually only young people look the best in retro or vintage gear; people assume that middle-aged people have been wearing 50s gear since it was new, and just forgot to change over the intervening decades.
Speaking of change, this seems to mark a difference from the usual socio-political cleverness for which this blog is known by some! And hello to you, dear Some.
PS Cottier 