Tuesday poem: He wouldn’t know a poem…
August 9, 2016
He wouldn’t know a poem…
…if it had a business card that said A. Poem
(‘read me and weep’) which it presented to him
while waving a bright purple beret under his nose
(which organ is unable to detect the whiff of poesy)
while reciting itself, excitedly or coolly,
while pouring itself a sixth large glass of wine
(which would be hard, because of clutched beret and card case,
except that it would first return the beret to its poeting head,
at such an interesting angle, and would put the card case back
in a voluminous tote bag, full of its brother and sister poems
gathered into slim books which are now remaindered)
while squatting and shitting lines of the purest gold.
He just wouldn’t know it,
for what it seems to be.
P.S. Cottier
Talk to the beret
Now I could have the heading ‘nasty little poem’ for that but I’ve become a tad bored with that self-generated meme.
***
I’m been working on a little manuscript of fantasy poems at the moment; more about that anon. Speaking of that type of thing, there’s a nice competition on at the moment, run by the Science Fiction Poetry Association in the US, for poems of all lengths written in a speculative genre (fantasy, horror, science fiction etc.). If you write such things, why not have a go? It is only $2 (that’s the ‘somewhat more valuable than the Australian $ at the moment, but we’ll see after their election, American $’) to enter. You don’t have to be a member of the SFPA to enter (I am a member), and it would be lovely to have more Antipodean entries.
It closes at the end of the month, and entries can be lodged on-line.
Tuesday poem: Turn away
August 2, 2016
Turn away from the night.
Too much freedom is implied.
Trap stars in flags, pin them down,
render them national, bordered,
an angular abacus to figure normality.
Adorn children’s essays with thin
gold paper star stickers.
Wonder is juvenilia that we must
grow to despise, jettison
like milk teeth swapped for coin.
Yet those million suns, flickering
light sirens, keep calling, ululating.
Day demands in clear clipped diction
that we make work’s timed rituals
the sum of all equations. From such
abbreviation, each star whispers
turn away, turn to me,
turn to me, and turn away.
P.S. Cottier
I can’t remember if this has been published before; it’s not on my List, so probably not. There’s going to be a lot of flag waving soon at the Olympics (and, of course, in the final grim push to the US elections) so it seemed appropriate.
My poem ‘Criminals who are no longer criminals’ has been included in this year’s Award Winning Australian Writing, which included poems and prose that have previously been awarded first place in a literary competition (as you can probably read on the cover). The annual is published by Melbourne Books, and I’ll be going down for the launch late this month and reading the poem, which will be fun.
The poem qualified as it was placed first in the Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing, organised by the New England Writers Centre, and it is concerned with the definition of crime changing over time. It also has a speculative element, as there are ghosts involved.
I believe that the current Thunderbolt Prize is still open for entries: check out the rules and categories here.
Tuesday poem: Oppressing the gnomes
July 11, 2016
Oppressing the gnomes
The garden gnomes are downing tools
all over Australia, and whimsy is plummeting.
No more riding snails and pushing barrows,
or fishing for strangely ecstatic cod,
who gape for hooks in a pornography of cute.
The gnomes are turning nasty, attacking
the flamingos who continue to strut —
elegant pink scabs over the quirky lawns.
Gnomes piss on succulents and smear
foul gnome shit on the guinea pigs.
What do we want? they ask the air.
But they don’t know what to chant back —
their dissatisfaction is merely existential.
Even their industrial action raises a laugh,
with their crooked green caps slipping,
and their endless pipes twixt ruddy lips.
Their signs are egregiously misspelt.
Nome’s R Us is at least legible,
but the kerning is much worse than that,
and the punctuation speaks volumes.
Get back to it, gnomes, I say, imperiously.
Ply those forks, and play that accordion.
I bask in my elevation to exploiter,
swaying in a complacent hammock.
Surly yet amusing, the wee green men obey.
The ringleader rides a frog to the pond,
and casts in his line like a sigh.
P.S. Cottier
This is probably a weird commentary on the zeitgeist. Either that or the gnomes have been putting things in my tea.
Tuesday poem: (haiku)
July 4, 2016
Blue eye of the sea
flutters white eyelashes —
wet sand flirts
P.S Cottier
The poet vows that she will be nastier next time after an unaccountably pretty haiku
Tuesday Poem: Walking out of the bar (Seventh…)
June 20, 2016
Walking out of the bar
(Seventh in a long series of nasty little poems)
There is a place that humour goes to die
like superannuated elephants.
The three part joke:
first this
than that
then punchline.
No final mild tingle
can ever atone
for the violence done to the ear
the appalling cringe of taking time
and parking a huge lump of
premeditation there.
People, mostly men,
dump these jokes like turds
to mark the boundaries of thought.
This is a funny! It moves like a funny!
So it must be funny!
You never shed boredom, m’dear.
You just packed it into a new shape;
a triangle of sludge, which you call
a joke. There is no jazz
to such a thing; no quip.
You play your lardy triangle
with a tardy limping tongue.
I listen for inadvertent puns,
or simply walk away.
Far better rude than bored,
says the woman in the beret,
unbearably self assured.
She’s walking out of the bar.
P.S. Cottier
Over at Project 365 + 1, I just posted a poem about the gym which I like quite a lot. It has the optimistic name ‘Four times a week’. Aspirational, one might say. This was poem number twenty for that project, so I will do another ten days. It makes the gym seem easy, I must say.
PS Cottier 