Loud man pissing round the reading
with irrelevant comments,
dribbling self, reflected in a deep pool
of his own stewed past, steaming.
He is a true Narcissus,
but not so drop-dead gorgeous;
fungus mated with dead cat.
He smells of yesterday and loss.
He shouts his irrelevance
with every tedious joke,
every punch line a squib,
tarnishing the grey sky.
P.S. Cottier
Not the subject of the poem
A nasty wee poem indeed, based on a couple of True Incidents.
***
On a couple of more positive notes, I’ll be reading a poem or two at Tuesday night’s launch of Suddenly Curving Space Time and meeting Gerald Keaney, one of the editors for the first time. That’s at Smith’s Alternative (aka Smith’s non-Euclidean?), Alinga Street, Civic, at 5pm. There is a bar. I’m not sure if Hal Judge, the other editor, is in the country at the moment, but I will certainly find out.
UPDATE: This launch has been postponed as Gerald is stuck in Brisbane due to ‘freak weather conditions’. I think that means fog! I’ll give new details when I can.
FURTHER UPDATE: The rescheduled time of the Canberra Launch of the Suddenly Curving Space Time anthology of experimental poetry is 9.30pm – 11.30 pm on Thursday 21st July.
Secondly, the usually totally impeccable Kaaron Warren has inexplicably featured me as a guest blogger, chatting about how I refresh my wells. That is what they call a metaphor, I believe. Kaaron is seemingly aiming for a Guinness world record in having quite a few people write on this topic. Seriously, there will be enough material for a Real Book based on these jottings, some of which are very informative and detailed. Some of the contributions One of the contributions is, however, a tad frivolous and involves violence towards naiads.
PS Cottier 