Tuesday poem: Better than a facelift
January 19, 2015
Better than a facelift
(Inspired by the rejection of a prose work I wrote about poetry for possibly supporting the view that poetry is an ‘adolescent’ activity.)
Damn those adolescents,
with their playful texts
their unruly emotions
and their weird conceits.
The world is as it seems.
Damn them for their quirky fashions
and their belief in signs and dreams.
Settle down, you freaky teens,
and develop a CV.
It is never too early to be half-dead!
There is nothing like
advanced middle age
for teaching what one should see,
and how to take things solemnly
like the sensible me-he
who patrols this moat, and keeps it pure;
ejecting the splashy-squeaky.
Exeunt, stage right, and take
your selfies with you,
and those peculiar devices. Go!
And pick up those rappers!
I like things neat as a plastic lawn,
without a single blush of flamingo,
where no emoji dares to grin
and poetry conjures forth
a proper sense of dread.
P.S. Cottier
World’s Oldest Adolescent
‘Nuff said, really. Except that when one is my age, being called potentially adolescent causes an undeniable frisson.
Of course, a view that the ‘adolescent’ is a thing to be avoided reinforces the belief that poetry is a very dated interest. Ironic that, given that some poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries tended to act like adolescents are reputed to act. Shelley (PB) for example, would now just about qualify for the modern category of ‘adolescent’; if one is oddly interested in such uneccessary categories.
There is a view, of course, that seriousness equates with solemnity. That is, like totes sad. (Rising inflection, please. For am I not an honorary adolescent?)
It did make me think though, that rejection, and swear that I would continue writing what I want. Which sometimes tends toward the playful and humorous, like this cathartic little slap of a poem. Being light, or stompingly satiric, has its place, in both prose and poetry.
I have some more poetry to write, and must break out the shocking puns and the unlikely meatphors*. I promise not to mention flamingos again for a while, as I realise that they are becoming a trope in my writing. A pink trope, which isn’t only adolescent, but ‘feminine’ as well. Shudder. That’s so flippant it’s an ornithological handbag.
*A genuine typo, but let’s let it stand.
If you would like more poetry, defying all easy categorisation, press this link.
Beyond the realm of the merely freaky
January 12, 2015
That’s where you’ll find me, from time to time. One exciting development in the horrible world that lies on the wrong side of THE THIN BEIGE LINE OF COMPARATIVE NORMALITY ©* is Midnight Echo, the official magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association. Kaaron Warren is editing the next issue, and I have a poem in it, along with a column about poetry.
Press this link for the fully horrible Table of Contents. I can’t wait to be sickened, in a good way, by the issue.
who left the drawbridge down?
I also have a poem coming up in the 200th issue of Antipodean SF, which explicitly addresses the merits, or otherwise, of flash fiction. And I believe a story of mine from THE VAULTS, otherwise known as 2008, may also be appearing.
There are other publications looming too, like the mutant pterodactyls of Moscow in a novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, but these are enough for today.
*no, not copyright at all. If you like dreadful writing, please help yourself to the phrase.
A lovely poem for the New Year!
January 8, 2015
Spliced spork
The apple sauce
and the piggywiggy
indistinguishable.
It cries on the way
to the house of death
and the tears are sweet!
Sweet as knowledge.
Tears caught in bottles
and served with the very hog
who cried them;
married to the condiment
at the level of genes.
Spliced spork
cranturk
and chickens who lay fries,
or chocolate, come Easter.
Spliced is good.
Spliced is so much nicer.
P.S. Cottier
Now even more perfect…
This was inspired by the disgusting news that you can buy a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken, if you want to be Krowned as Kholesterol King. I imagined a pig that sheds tears that could season itself, due to the Wonders of Science being put to a gluttonous use.
The only thing that stopped my putting on 500 kilos at Christmas was the fact that I am vegetarian, and that I did at least an hour’s exercise each day. I am still too plump to be properly smug though. Please understand that.
A belated Happy New Year to all readers.
Merry Christmas!
December 22, 2014
Just like the title says, to all readers.
If you press this link, you will find a radical poem by Emily Brontë about her relationship with God, along with some rather bashful commentary at the Tuesday Poem hub. (I wrote the commentary, and Emily Brontë overawes me a little. I felt as if I was putting one of those idiotic jokes that you find in Christmas crackers below something ineluctably profound.)
Now, like the entire population of Australia (give or take a few hundred thousand more sensible souls) I am off to drink and eat far too much. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, and neither do I post lists of what I achieved this year, in the manner of the fearsomely scary and boastful letters that some Americans send each other. (‘Clara is graduating from NASA as an astronaut with a sub-major in Klingon, and Peter just bought Harvard to match last year’s Yale.’)
There really is no ‘end of the year’. Time is not a commodity that we control, or which gives any attention to our calendars. But that is no reason not to have fun, and to reflect a little.
I intend to do some reflection in rock pools, and to splash in the surf.
God bless us, every one!
In Transit
December 8, 2014
When December comes, a not-so-young woman’s mind turns to a heady mix of wine, politics, religion and poetry…
At least three of these were present at the Transit Bar on Sunday, where Kaveh the Unlikely Poet, Anthony Anaxagorou and a number of other poets performed their work.
I was the judge of a women’s poetry slam, and six women performed their poetry, some of which were composed, or reworked, at an earlier workshop run by Anthony. How he was still standing, or even lounging, is beyond me, as he had finished another gig in Sydney at 3am the previous morning, driven to Canberra, and then done the seminar.
Like an idiot, I was so busy concentrating on judging the poems that I didn’t take a photograph of the participants of that part of the night. I caused unintended difficulties for the organisers by awarding first prize to two women for their poems: Sarah Rice and Jacqui Malins. Both poems were about where the poets live in a sense: Sarah’s a direct and nuanced description of he physical home, and Jacqui’s about the need for a genuine acknowledgement of the first inhabitants of Australia. Both were excellent.
Anthony and Kaveh are both poets who refuse to draw an easy line between political awareness and the poetic. These two realms are inseparable; truly borderless. Neither has much in his too-hard basket, either!
Many thanks to Kira and Jessica, the organisers, for allowing me to participate in the evening through judging.
The photo I took of Kaveh was too appalling for me to post, but a somewhat more competent person took that one of Anthony and myself at the top of the post.
PS Cottier 