Tuesday poem: All the blond Jesuses
November 12, 2012
So, I’m improvising here. You’ll have to click this sentence and be taken to the journal Verity La, where my poem was just published. It came about after I noticed how very blond Jesus is in many stained glass windows. He’s like David Gower…If a little chubby in this version:
From an early age, his abilities in slip were manifest…Batting came later
If you like this poem, there are lots more in Triptych Poets Issue Three…
Or, click this feather, dropped by an angel, and head to New Zealand, where the mud bubbles and the poems are more than luke warm. (Little biblical pun there…Sorry.)
Tuesday poem: My lover Jim
November 5, 2012
My lover Jim
is ramrod straight, and flexible as steel.
Once he’s on top, it’s hard to make him shift.
He makes me sigh, and grunt and feel
pain, though sometimes I can just lift
him before he renders me 2D.
I have swooned and swallowed blood.
Nausea breaks like a fainting sea,
and I have to stop before it floods.
My legs at such weird wide angles
kicking the heavy sky; or squats:
my hair sweated into ratty tangles,
and arms tied in barbarous knots.
Knees squeak like fearful rodents
in the famous verse by Burns, Robbie
as I scythe myself into components.
He’s more an addiction than just a hobby.
Jim’s real charms show up in rear view
when I’m alone with a looking glass —
four times a week between one, and two,
makes miracles of muscle unsurpassed.
P.S. Cottier
My legions of loyal readers will have noticed that I just took slightly more than a week off. There were many reasons for this; a little disappointment here; a mini-existential crisis there. But my attending the gym four times a week had something to do with it too.
Now that poem above is something of an exaggeration. I have never fainted at the gym, although I have come close. There is nothing miraculous about the changes I am seeing. Some are so slow that they are only noticeable over months rather than weeks.
My legs and back are much stronger than my arms and chest. I may never be able to bench-press very much. But I am already doing much better than when I started, about four months ago. And it is a long time since I felt this fit, and that is a good thing.
With my bike and Jim, I will be a powerful beast by Christmas. I am so hoping that the beast will be a koala.
(And incidentally, a man who acted like the anthropomorphised Jim in the poem would be given short shrift by one little convert to exercise. Shrift shorter than a short string. Look! My very own tongue twister!)
Now, my dear weaklings, click this feather, if you can manage that, and head over to New Zealand for more poetry:
And, if you’re interested, fellow Tuesday Poet Tim Jones posted a review of the recently published Triptych Poets, of which I make up one-third. You could also head to his blog to read that.
Fish vases
October 26, 2012
incodible
Yesterday I assembled my collection of vases in the shape of fish for a university student to take their photograph. (This is not one of her photographs, which will be good. This is one of my snaps on an allegedly smart phone.) I was included, and dressed in suitable 1950s clothes, although 1950s with, I hope, the weird dyed hair of satire.
Who thought of the idea of vases in the shape of fish? Piscine floristry is a very strange idea indeed. Fish love water, but to leap from this to the idea of jamming roses into a marlin like a new form of bait…
I have written a poem about fish vases, which goes by the imaginative name of ‘Fish vases’:
What mind first thought of a vase
(china, hard, self-contained)
leaping with a gaping mouth
so eager for flower-bait?
Yes, there is water inside,
and fish silver ponds, rivers,
seas. But to make a billabong
of a cod; make marlin smell roses?
Odd is the first word that skims
like a flying fish, bites like barracuda,
in my bemused mind. Weird rises too,
flashy trout to drowning butterfly,
hooked on well cast cunning.
I place violets in the minnows,
arrange long stems in strange,
bright glazed, kettles of fish.
P.S. Cottier
Tuesday poem: For the mornings after, yet to come
October 23, 2012
For the mornings after, yet to come
The comedic and the tragic, the curve sailing up into smile
or diving into frown; how clearly Greeks marked their rites,
their brief glimpse of the sacred. Human weakness and wiles
jammed behind leather grins, masks held by thongs tied tight
behind the ears. But when bodies can be jigged and changed
like shoes, like coloured hair, when man’s quick shifting
puts chameleons to shame, what of this new deranged
play of holy tricks and mundane lies, souls drifting
in opalescent truths, foxing smells and opaque looks?
I met a rogue, and thought him a little rough, a little hard,
and took him home, and let him take. So much he took
from what I then called me. Pink lotus girl with palest hands
awoke in his stead, and I became that all too famous swan,
draped with skin of goat. I kissed the now transfigured man.
P.S. Cottier
Here’s a feather from the swan that kissed you:
Press for added poetry.
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:
PS Cottier 