Tuesday poem: Not the full Fiat
July 24, 2017
Not the full Fiat
Pushing up, lying back,
I imagine a Fiat 500
clamped to the end of my toes,
flying into space.
500cc, 500 kilos,
give or take,
that darling wee Italian.
I am at 450kg, so not
the full Fiat, not yet,
but it’s like birthing a bambina.
Or bambino, for weight
doesn’t discriminate.
My knees swell like tyres.
PS Cottier
Yes, possibly the boastiest poem ever. I am managing, sometimes, to load 400kg on the leg press and to push it up and back, even if not far enough down to be beautiful. (The machine itself weighs about 50kgs, without added plates.)
The statement ‘weight doesn’t discriminate’ is a bit iffy, as obviously, most men can move more weight at the gym. Upper body particularly. But the leg press is a bit of an equaliser, I think. Or could be, as I have to say that most women are less likely to push themselves to the point of vomiting than the current writer, who is just discovering strength at a comparatively advanced age.
I have no idea if this particular 500 is 500 kilos or not, but it looks great, and allows me to include the word Spotto! Which has to be a good thing.
(Image by TTTNIS Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.)
Tuesday poem: (bikes sticks birds)
July 20, 2017
bikes sticks birds
inner city Canberra
feathered bustle
PS Cottier
This beautiful bird was photographed in ‘inner city’ Canberra, a few kilometres from Parliament House. It was walking around a pond, one that was relatively recently created as part of a project to return some of Sullivan’s Creek to a more, um, creek-like state rather than the concrete drain it has been for a while.
In my little book Paths Into Inner Canberra I talk about this effort to recreate a ‘natural’ environment in a little more depth. But it’s great to be able to spot creatures like this heron so near to where I live.
Tuesday poem: (Old green turtle)
July 1, 2017
Old green turtle
round mummy in plastic
excess drowning
PS Cottier
Not exactly the type of turtle I had in mind, but a very nice illustration. I think I should lay off the plastic, as this is the second poem in the last few months dealing with that material, but there’s just a lot of it about!
Sorry for recent silence here. Hopefully things are picking up again. (To use a vaguely plastic sounding metaphor.)
Tuesday poems at Eureka Street
June 12, 2017
I just had three poems published at Eureka Street called ‘Three aspects of Australian racism’, ‘Doing a Bradbury’, and ‘Release the dogs of scorn!’.
Why not have a read? I was quite angry when I wrote two of them, and I think it shows. Some think that poetry is the loser if there’s too much anger, but I don’t necessarily agree.
A very well-balanced type of poem, where everything is smooth and lovely, and where any aspect of the external world that manages to sneak in seemingly exists only for the benefit of the poet, begins to annoy me very quickly. There’s certainly a place for political poetry of the more obvious sort, so long as it avoids rant and cliché. You can comment at Eureka Street, should you feel so inclined.
And here’s a very cool picture of a giant. I’m not quite uncouth enough to make a political statement out of him. Not this week, anyway.
(For overseas readers, the Bradbury mentioned in one poem is Steven Bradbury, who won Australia’s first Winter Olympics gold medal in a memorable way.)
Tuesday poem: Forty-league boots
June 6, 2017
Forty-league boots
We cross the Pacific
leaping between plastic islands.
Great ballooning whales
squeak beneath our soles,
harpooned by our heels.
We are the waste-walkers —
everyone her own Jesus.
PS Cottier
So we’re contributing to the flooding of small Pacific nations, while creating huge floating islands of trash. Gives a whole new meaning to the word recycling. ‘We’, in this context, refers to all the industrial economies that refuse to take global warming seriously.
And I know Jesus walked on water, not convenient piles of trash, but it seemed to make a kind of sense.
