Tuesday poem: Magic from the inside
May 14, 2012
Magic from the inside
I am stuck in the conjured darkness,
mere pipe-cleaner, fluffy punch-line.
A thousand sharp screams penetrate;
giggles like flick knives reach inside.
The kids are having a great time.
I wait. Wish for real transformation,
of this black to a field of satin green,
soft as the emerald handkerchief
he converts to clover with an extra ear.
But breathing is a trick in itself, I find,
here in the crushing long tube of night
before sudden birth into searing light.
Then staccato taps of two dozen hands
on a hopping, fat balloon who squeaks.
He pushes me into the cage and says
I tried guinea pigs but they bit.
Hats off, I say, to the pigs with teeth.
P.S. Cottier
This poem was highly commended in the Gold Coast Writers’ Association Adults’ Poetry Competition, 2009, judged by Graham Nunn. (I like to send my poetry to sunny places, where it gets a tan and fake platinum blonde hair and a fluorescent bikini, before coming back to Canberra.) The topic was magic, and I thought of the unfortunate animals that perform at children’s birthday parties.
Now for other poems, most of which are probably not wearing swimmers, even of a practical cut, but rather beanies and ug boots and woollen socks, click this feather:
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
PS Cottier 