Tuesday Poem: This is a poem, not a listicle
April 26, 2015
This is a poem, not a listicle.
1. It tastes like leather. Hold the stick tight.
2. If you listen you will soon note that it speaks bad French.
3. It has never been to France, except in fairly standard dreams.
4. It bought cheap steroids in Bali, but is yet to bulge.
5. It would like to contain the word ‘roseate’, but can’t.
6. It read itself out loud just last week and was well received.
7. It just watched the film The Brain from Planet Arous.
8. It keeps reciting ‘After I’m gone, your earth will be free to live out its miserable span of existence, as one of my satellites, and that’s how it’s going to be…’
9. It can’t translate that into French, even French of the worst sort.
10. This is a poem, not a listicle.
P.S. Cottier
Yes, this poet (and not just that poem) just watched The Brain from Planet Arous, in which a nasty alien brain inhabits the cranium of a scientist, and a nicer alien brain inhabits the head of the scientist’s girlfriend’s dog.
No alien brain here
Only to be watched when drunk. There are seemingly endless scenes of people tiptoeing through caves, and the woman who owns the dog never stops serving the men food. The direct speech in the poem is made by the nasty brain, who does do a mad scientist chuckle quite frequently.
I am interested in how flat the language in a poem can be before it ceases to be a poem. Also, the word listicle caught my imagination. So like popsicle, but often so disappointingly flat AND chunky.
Other poets may be playing with form, if not risking brain damage by watching dreadful 50s science fiction films. Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
Tuesday poem: The ineffable boredom of Polonius
March 30, 2015
The ineffable boredom of Polonius
Hamlet had a go; stabbing him behind the arras,
which does not mean what you may think it means
if you didn’t do Shakespeare in your degree.
But he never dies, this Polonius. He pops up as
Scoutmaster, Deputy Principal, minor MP, Mayor,
spouting cliché through his immortal mouth;
To your own self be true
he tells graduating students, some of whom
have read of him being stabbed behind the arras
and have suffered quite enough already thank you.
Youth are the future of Australia, he adds,
and I’m sure there are American and Indian and
Kyrgyzstani Poloniuses, for he has bred, you know,
splitting in two in each grave; coming up each morn
at fifty-five years. They go on cruises, Polonii,
and spend their ineffable boredom in other places
dripping like middle-aged piss for
Travel broadens the mind
which, in this case, it clearly doesn’t.
Never put off until tomorrow, he exhorts.
I feel that there must be a way to kill off his breed.
And I will work and work to find a way to eliminate
every smear of Polonius from discourse public or private.
Make hay while the sun shines,
and I am forming daggers from papier-mâché
made from the most tedious editorials still written,
in real print newspapers
crapping on about the
sacrifice of previous generations
and the inevitable
need for fiscal constraint
and I will sneak up on him, like Hamlet, but less hosey,
and force a cliché dagger down his moth-eaten throat,
though I fear he will just regurgitate the dagger,
waste not want not
he will say or
Violence is the last resort of the unintelligent and never a solution
and it is, Polonius, oh yes it is,
and may you choke on your sayings
and die, smearing the arras, wall, or whatever
in horrible, tedious wisdom, like the worlds greyest
graffiti, little vombits of save and safe and think and
look before you leap
and it will be too late, and nobody, no nobody will weep
for the death of the boring uncle, with his inexplicable fetish
for hiding behind arrases, which is the only interesting thing
that the mouldy old sententious prick ever did.
And may flights of silverfish sing him to his rest.
P.S. Cottier
Now this is not a Very Nice Poem at all, but sometimes it’s nice to have a bit of a rave.
Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here. That includes New Zealand, where they are quite good at cricket.
Tuesday Poem: Poet assassin for hire
March 17, 2015
Poet assassin for hire
The poet is armed and kicks.
Sometimes that even hurts.
Then she legs it, all enjambe
ment and blisters.
A regular mule with the metaphors,
she similes like a snake on butter,
and can tell voltas from mere electrics.
She chucks haiku
and knows better than counting
syllables like coins.
She put the eco in ecopoetry
and swoops like a precarious bird
onto the blank pages of logs.
Knuckledusters swell
on the ends of her fingers
like real toads waxing
in totes imaginary salons.
She stashes bullets
in well-worn culottes.
She will absolutely murder
for a few couplets more.
I, too, dislike her.
P.S. Cottier
(Many apologies to Marianne Moore.)
Wistful and vicious
Sometimes it is good to have fun, ‘because fun is good’, as Dr Seuss wrote. Did you spot the ‘haiku’ embedded in the poem? Sorry, there is no prize.
I know at least three people that a poem written purely for fun will annoy, as they disapprove of play. I hear that Poet Assassin does not care. She is beyond shame. But obsessed by spelling; and I hear that she chose enjambement over enjambment for some obscure reason of poetics. Question that decision and die…
Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets around the world by pressing here.
***
On a very different note, there is a great new opportunity for poets who would like to write a speculative poem. A competition, organised by Joanne (Jo) Mills, will award $1000 (that’s the plucky Aussie $) to the best poem written in the science fiction, fantasy, horror or any related field. Entry is $12 (again, in the magic coin of Oz). Online entry? Yes.
Here are the details:
https://interstellaraward.wordpress.com/interstellar-award-for-speculative-poetry/
I am chuffed that the contest was partly inspired by the book The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry edited by Tim Jones and myself last year. Ms Mills had a poem called ‘Folds’ selected for the anthology by the incredibly talented and gorgeous editors, who are only slightly inclined to exaggeration in one case.
Tuesday poem: A timely monster
March 9, 2015
A timely monster
And if I could drink youth in
through my eyes — a vampire
of glance, lapping it from
perfect blush of skin —
would it be possible not to
drink and rise, leaving years
like a phone lost in cushions?
And yet, and yet…
before my eyes suck, remember
the self-consciousness,
the rash redness of life
before it wrapped itself in time?
To take, and lose a burden,
is to lift another,
cutting into hands or mind,
like an overloaded bag.
So let them pass, and let me yearn
and learn to stop, just here.
I’ll sit, and plait kind memory
through this smoked nostalgia of hair.
P.S. Cottier
Very traditional matter there, about the passing of time, given a sprinkle of Polidori. I like ‘my eyes suck’. Certainly not over-poetic! Monday was a public holiday in Canberra, so I did a little revision of this poem, and decided to post it.
More and more I find myself unable to wait the months that some journals take to say yes or no to a piece. I pity the editors, but I value my own work more! This blog now has many readers (hello to you all, from France to India to the Americas to Binalong) so why not self-publish?
Of course, I am foregoing the huge piles of pelf that poetry usually attracts, and there are some journals and anthologies that I really want to be part of, but I do like the immediacy of this medium. Particularly when I can find such cool pictures for free at Old Book Illustrations!
Other poets enjoy that too, whether they are posting their own poems, or those of others. Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets. They are definitely worth the clicks.
Tuesday poem: A persistence of jellyfish
March 3, 2015
a persistence of jellyfish
flesh liaisons bloom
sea-flowers have no soul
P.S. Cottier
‘sea-flowers…’is from Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
This bluebottle is the sort of lovely Australian creature that delights visitors. The image (PD Wiki Commons) is very fine, but doesn’t show the long tail of the creature, which is the bit that stings.
I have a vivid memory of swimming out of my depth, when one of these wrapped around my arm like a mad doctor’s blood pressure tester. I had to swim to shore, against a slight overtow, with a band of pain tightening around one of my arms. I developed a delightful weal on my arm, resembling a string of rubies given by a particularly sadistic Prince from a fairy tale by Angela Carter.*
At the time, I didn’t know how bad the sting of these creatures was, in terms of how poisonous. Fortunately, they are not too bad for most people, unlike the small invisible jellyfish found further north, which are deadly. (Some people have bad reactions to them though, as with bee-stings. See this article.)
Interestingly, the bluebottle is actually a co-operative of creatures that band together, rather than a single life-form. I believe that these are the sorts of things that we will find on other planets. ‘Other planets’ here means the south coast of NSW.
I believe that Australian wildlife may be touched on in the central Tuesday Poem this week. Press this link and find out.
*UPDATE: I have been flicking through other posts by Tuesday Poets, and just noticed that Helen Lowe is featuring a poem by Tim Jones about Angela Carter. There is an absence of jellyfish in the fine poem, but the coincidence tickled me. Like a bluebottle, but a lot less painful.
PS Cottier 