Tuesday poem: (Tiny quick lassos)
April 20, 2020
Tiny quick lassos
flung out by coronaboys —
all virus wrangled
PS Cottier
What is the appropriate attitude to this virus? Although it is obviously serious, humour is sometimes necessary as a survival mechanism, particularly as we’re not able to go out so much.
I had a dream about nanobots, and turned that into coronaboys. Like cowboys, but fully wee.
Tuesday guide to not writing haiku
March 15, 2020
Straining to create
seventeen syllable pups —
such stillborn haiku
That’s about the type of haiku where the number of syllables dictates everything. It’s a bit of an example of what to avoid, though I am rather fond of the second line.
Tuesday poem: Skiing for the first time
November 12, 2019
Skiing for the first time is like…
…strapping a fake pelican’s bill to your face
and being told go fish, go now, go quick!
And the sardines are fifty metres below
and the waves are all like Teahupo’o,
but icy as the Atlantic, not tropical Tahitian,
so you can’t feel your new prow because it’s frozen
to your nose. It’s growing, speedy as Pinocchio’s,
this aberrant beak, and you wish that you had lied
and pleaded stomach bugs or swine flu or Death,
who now looms, laughing in pink fluorescent pants
urging you to push off, go now, go quick!
And you gaze down, down to the white fields
soon to be strewn with your broken, severed legs,
punctuating cold pages with exclamatory pain.
Whoosh!!
PS Cottier
‘Skiing for the first time is like…’ awarded second prize in the Cooma Feast of Poetry 2009 (Adult open section). Published in Cooma Feast of Poetry chapbook, 2009.
Just a follow up from the mountain themed entry last week. But I have never skied; too much of a wimp, and too little snow. The nearest I’ve been is on a sled; a bit like the guy above.
UPDATE: I previously posted a link to a review I wrote of a history of Australian women’s football, but a reader has informed me that it’s behind a paywall, so I have removed it. So skiing is the only sport here!
Tuesday poem: Tribute
September 9, 2019
A strange tendency
we adore that which monsters
Stephen Edwin King
I am very much enjoying the current Stephen King glut of films and TV series. But for me, the prospect of a new book by King beats all of that. Can’t wait to read The Institute, which I think comes out in November. Long may King continue to scare the crap out of us, all the world around.
UPDATE: I don’t know where I got that November idea from, as the book’s out now!
On the shocking spread of unregulated materials
Gnomes
Despise
Picnic
Rugs
PS Cottier
Pun based acrostics have their place at my place. Particularly when one has been tormented by numerous emails about one’s privacy for weeks. If you’ve never heard of the GDPR, you have my felicitations. Which is not to say that it’s not A Good Thing, but let there be an end to the emails, please. And this is from someone living in Australia; I dread to think what it’s been like in Europe (which includes the UK, at least for now).
PS Cottier 