T shirt poetics
July 29, 2011
Dedicated to all those who have ever worn a T shirt with a message on it. Written back in the Old Days when Kevin Rudd was running for Prime Minister.
T shirt poetics
That downwards stroke, belly hugging I
imprinted with messages curt or cute;
each body a chap-book (or chick-book)
moving past the reader. Mobile library,
hanging garden of haiku in Babble-on.
A glance up from well thumbed phone
must be all these poetical shirts expect.
First there are the desperate and flirty,
such as ’69’, all tucked soixante and hide
that croissant. It’s enough to make you latte
your lap. Or not.
Then come the polly tics,
with their saves and bans, their heavenly
Kevins. The shirts have faded over Summer,
but not the bloom of the loveliest wearers.
I wore them once, such earnest eager screeds,
but that wench is dead, slogans so long gone.
Someone should wear that rude arrowed
‘I’m with Stupid’ when they sit next to me,
such is my love of ‘Paris, je t’aime’ with a heart
above the wearer’s pumping one, as if Cupid
were about, looking for targets, the susceptible
or the contemptible. I sit, sip and compose
my own T shirts, such as ‘Gives good sonnet’
and the more complex ‘It’s a couplet.
Innit?’
Then ‘Get a Life’ walks past, not very nice.
But I see the point, and I take its advice.
P.S. Cottier
the opposite of poetry?
July 14, 2011
Limericks are meant to be obscene, or at the very least, scurrilous. The strong ‘message’ and the clunky rhyme pattern make them a very particular form of poetry. One could not, I think, write a moving or sensitive limerick; that’s a different KOF, to be poured into a sonnet or free verse.
But where the expressed views of a public figure seem crude and somehow thoughtless, the limerick is the best form of poetry there is. Here’s one about the current Leader of the Opposition in Australia, Mr Tony Abbott, whose political position on climate change seems to be entirely based on crude populism. (Not that Julia Gillard’s government is a shining example of The Mind Made Flesh, but still…)
And I promise not to do the limerick thing again for a while. Please excuse double spacing; for some reason my computer ‘does this’ sometimes, and won’t listen to reason. Which actually seems appropriate for this little poem‘s subject.
My budgie slipped out...
There once was a leader called Abbott
who criticised just as a habit.
The climate did fry
and he couldn’t say why
which bemused this nay-saying maggot.
P.S. Cottier
Not a rose by any prickly name at all
July 11, 2011
Cactus
Spiky camel hump, buried in sand.
Alien artichoke, Martian’s lunch.
I’m told to admire your
‘architectural qualities’. As if
we build houses of needles,
like one of those three little pigs
gone crazy, his brain curling,
dizzy, to match pale gimlet tail.
What huffing
fire-mouthed wolf-dragon
could blow you down?
Crooked eyes only, crave cacti.
Yet, every few years, you explode
into a neon gown of Brazilian hues
pulsating, pink or gold, as at Mardi Gras.
When poor become princes,
and thin desert blooms.
P.S. Cottier
Just published in The Mozzie, Queensland
Exporting pain
June 22, 2011
I wrote this poem about three years ago, and it seems like a good time to post it here. There is a push in Australia to ban live exports of sheep and cattle to countries where Australia has no real control over the conditions in which they are slaughtered (i.e. everywhere else but here). This is truly a horrible industry; not just because of the methods of slaughter often being unregulated but because of the long confinement that any trip from Australia necessarily involves. Here is a link to one of the sites pushing to have the trade banned.
It was quite predictable that there would be an outburst of stories featuring ‘honest Aussie farmers’ whose living is being threatened by ‘animal activists’. It’s unfortunate if anyone is really hurt financially, but it’s simply unacceptable that we are raising animals that are then being being tortured to death once exported. Kill the animals here, under proper religious supervision where necessary, and don’t turn a conveniently blind eye to the suffering of sentient creatures. I am a vegetarian, but there is no neutrality on this issue. Many meat-eaters have also been appalled to learn of the treatment of cattle in some foreign slaughter-houses, and the response to recently released video of conditions in some Indonesian abattoirs has reached far beyond the usual groups of animal rights supporters.
Any method of killing animals causes suffering, but this must be minimised, if people insist on eating them. The test for whether an industry is humane is ‘how would people feel if it was thousands of dogs being exported and killed like this?’ Imagine filling a container vessel with dogs and shipping them to, say, China to face a slow and painful death. What’s the difference with sheep and cattle? Oh, yes, that’s right. They’re not ‘pets’. Just animals. Delightfully logical. Enough rant, here’s the poem.
Global farms
Stock cubes
are sent to sea, flavoursome squares
of mutton flesh and bone, seasoning,
woolly sardines.
Between pasture and knife
the blue stretches, and the yellow,
as rivers soak downwards,
contained in time.
No truck of guilt to turn from,
met on sudden road. Squalor
bleats over dollar’s equator,
safely unseen.
P.S. Cottier
10 words, 2 days and a flock
June 17, 2011
I recently competed in an interesting competition run by a Canadian journal, Contemporary Verse 2. They give a list of ten words, and punters (who must have pre-registered) have two days to create a poem which contains every word. I sometimes like doing this type of thing as it stops me from falling in a rut, and if the result is less than wonderful, it doesn’t really matter.
I was very pleased to receive an honourable mention, particularly as I found myself writing about cockatoos; hardly something that the average Canadian would see stripping the bark from maple trees on a daily basis, or resting on the antlers of moose. Actually I know that Canada, like Australia, is overwhelmingly urban, so please excuse my tired and narrow stereotypes. (Is there such a thing as a vibrant and broad stereotype?) Here in Canberra cockatoos are as common as sparrows. If not commoner, which is remarkable given how many foreign birds have been released in this country over the past 200 years.
I won’t put the poem up here, as I can’t remember if I granted exclusive e-rights for a time to CV2 (probably not) but here is a link to the poem about cockatoos, imaginatively entitled ‘Cockatoos‘.
Muse with beak
Reading the other poems is fascinating; they are so good that I forgot that they had to contain the magic ten words. And the other poems were mostly urban.
Really urban, not Canberra urban.
PS Cottier 