Tuesday poem: There are five poets in my garden
November 8, 2016
There are five poets in my garden
— and they think that they are bulbs.
But the first one smells carcinogenic,
and he is clothed in ancient brown,
as if he stole the mud-flecked jumper
from the very body of a bog-man.
The second is talking about
the fervid dangers of Pokémon,
and how in her day, they looked
for birds, and birds were quite enough.
She has a collection of empty eggs,
pilfered in her day, which lie
in an ancient purloined nest —
a weird eunuch’s severed balls,
placed in a stolen cup of misery.
Number three is being thoughtful.
He never utters a sentence without
a French theorist’s name —
like a pigeon (of stolen eggs) he says
Bourdieu, Bourdieu, and oui, he bores me.
Number four is addicted to rhyme.
He knows he is somewhat out of time,
but like a tune you know too well,
he is married to the villanelle.
And the fifth? She plants sarcasm
in a weedy succulent garden,
where such thin green tongues
poke like wee prickly dragons.
She’s fully awesome, and awfully sweet.
P.S. Cottier
I’ve been thinking too much this week about how any field of endeavour contains exactly the same percentage of unpleasant people as all the others. Whether it be poetry or painting, rugby or beekeeping, there will be the same proportion of selfish people and the likeable. Perhaps politics is a genuine exception, and contains more of the unlikeable, but generally speaking, anywhere there are people there will be all the character types, regardless of whether it is a profession where a certain amount of empathy might be expected.
Indeed, the type of poet who bangs on about his sensitivity to nature (in the sense of a convenient green strip outside his window, sans history) often seems to lean towards the arsehole side of the equation. If equations really have sides. Or arseholes.
Discuss.
Tuesday poem: The home for ancient memes
October 31, 2016
The home for ancient memes
Where they can haz cheeseburgers all day
Where jokes of nuking each other from space crack
Where everyone fusses over a grumpy cat
Where the cry of Ermahgerd echoes
Where an overly manly man flexes, endlessly
Where sad hipsters say many things
Where planking takes place every evening
Where the X all the Ys, and Y all the Xs
Where ice buckets become challenging
Where smugshrugs shrug smugly
Where seals have awkward moments
Where they debate the colour of a dress
Where they still Netflix and chill
Where…I’d definitely continue, but
Ain’t nobody got time for that
PS Cottier
Discuss the colour of this Tudor, dress-like thing.
Tuesday poem: (All written out)
October 24, 2016
All written out —
ink pushes no poems
flat-lining
P.S. Cottier
My brain, if not my heart, is convinced that the year is ending, even if it’s only late October. I have been running around too much to do the poem thing enough. Definitely looking forward to taking a break in December to jump start the brain. Must buy jump-leads.
Or vodka, which is nature’s jump-lead.
Tuesday poem: No streets, or maps to find them
October 18, 2016
It’s by link to Tim Jones’s site, where he posts a poem from my new chapbook Quick Bright Things: Poems of Fantasy and Myth. He also gives some commentary on the poem and the book, which is cool as a sea cucumber. (The poem is about a sunken city, hence the sea imagery creeping in there. Or sliding, or however sea cukes move.)
I was thinking of posting an appropriate Atlantis type image, but here instead is the cover of the book once again, with the cricketing fairy drawn by Paul Summerfield. You can buy a copy here.
Tuesday poem: ‘…Transient creatures that swarm and multiply…’
October 10, 2016
‘…Transient creatures that swarm and multiply…’
Galaxies expanding —
every grass patch blinks
with five hundred petalled suns.
Bees travel between them
mining pollen from stars.
Aliens hover amongst us,
just like us in gold lust
and frantic accumulation.
For us, though,
it’s always spring,
exempt from rumours
of compromising change.
Our ears are buzzing
with far less than bees.
The canals are Martian,
quite epically empty.
P.S. Cottier
The quotation in the title is from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The quote refers to microscopic creatures, but we shall not quibble. The canals on Mars, exploited in the poem for a pun, turned out to be mere features of topography (Here I must insert a green alien saying ‘That’s what you think!’ followed by a sinister laugh. It’s compulsory.)
Mining anything from stars would be a tad difficult, I know, but I’ll flourish my poetic licence on that one, to any cruising and literal minded traffic cops of the blogosphere.
There’s a great tradition of books about creating a breathable atmosphere on Mars, and I’m also harnessing that to a poem partly about our rabid experimentation with earth’s climate.
It’s amazing where a patch of daisies can lead you!
UPDATE: So the gutless NSW Premier has changed his mind on banning greyhound racing. Cruelty 1, Compassion 0. I’ll be interested to see what the ACT government does in response.
PS Cottier 