Category: New/unpublished poems

This morning I was going through a book called The Poetics of Indeterminacy by Marjorie Perloff. One of the chapters was called ‘”The Space of a Door”: Beckett and the Poetry of Absence’.

I wrote the following few lines: ‘The space of a door / displaces me / frames a no, / a yes, / a maybe…’ and then I left it to finish later.

This evening I went to a most moving launch of a book written by one of my very talented uni colleagues, Kristina Olsson. The extraordinary story is called Boy, Lost; Kristina’s mother lost her baby boy, Peter, when he was snatched by his father from her arms as she sat in a train waiting to leave Cairns. I was privileged to hear Kristina, her sister Sharon and their lost – now found – brother Peter, speak so eloquently and bravely about the secrets, the heartache and ultimately the healing.

Then I came home and finished the poem.

boy, found

(I)

The space of a train door
displaces him
frames a no,
a yes,
a maybe,
faces her towards
a terrible symmetry;
safety for them both
was for her
pinned here
on the nearer side of there,
was for her stolen infant
there
on the further side of her(e).

(II)

Decades of tight-lipped memories,
secret sibling absence
a haunting presence
in the hearts of innocents,
waiting patiently.

(III)

A lifetime.
A searching.
A file.
A family found.

Today I was reading some poems by Jack Spicer. His ‘Letter to Gary Bottone’ captivated me.

So I replied using his vocabulary.

Letter to Jack Spicer

Dear Jack,

although I cannot see you either
I can still love you.
I have love enough for us both.
I remember when I walked
reluctantly
into my own dreadful, wonderful Bohemia.
I’m still navigating the hellish corridors,
eyes not yet open,
not yet despairing,
but I trust I will soon see windows into heaven
and expect to blast a few myself
through the rocks of hell.
I haven’t yet paid
the price you paid
but I hope you’re there,
all the same,
waiting for me
with open arms.
For now,
these poems will go on
and I will continue
to love you
by letter
from an alien world.

Love,
Jennifer

For a writing exercise in our poetry group, we had to take a foreign-language poem and translate it.

I chose Jacques Prévert’s ‘Pour toi mon amour’ from his collection Paroles.

Here is the original poem followed by my translation.

Pour toi mon amour

Je suis allé au marché aux oiseaux
Et j’ai acheté des oiseaux
Pour toi
mon amour
Je suis allé au marché aux fleurs
Et j’ai acheté des fleurs
Pour toi
mon amour
Je suis allé au marché à la ferraille
Et j’ai acheté des chaînes
De lourdes chaînes
Pour toi
mon amour
Et puis je suis allé au marché aux esclaves
Et je t’ai cherchée
Mais je ne t’ai pas trouvée
mon amour.

For you my love

I went to the bird market
And I bought birds
For you
my love
I went to the flower market
And I bought flowers
For you
my love
I went to the scrap iron market
And I bought chains
Heavy chains
For you
my love
And then I went to the slave market
And I looked for you
But I didn’t find you
my love.

In his poem ‘Lamia’ John Keats used the phrases ‘cold philosophy’ and ‘unweave a rainbow’ to lament science’s cold deconstruction of a rainbow into seven colours.

According to Richard Dawkins, however, when discussing his book Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder , the opposite is true: solved mysteries reveal deeper beauty and as such, science can be the inspiration for great poetry.

Night wonder

She asks a question
about the halo of ice crystals
around Adelaide’s half moon tonight
and the conversation flickers
around reflected light
and lunar bows,
a rainbow’s shyer sibling,
its darker moonlit twin.

Cold philosophy
may have unweaved rainbows
but has yet
to whet its blade
on moonbows,
long abandoned by leprechauns
with pots of gold in tow.

I wrote today’s poem after reading a prompt suggested by Robert Lee Brewer two days ago at Writers’ Digest over here. The prompt: to write an impossible poem.

The whisper

You cannot write an impossible poem,
‘they’ say.
(Why do I refer to faceless, nameless experts
to underpin arguments,
to reinforce doubts,
to underscore futility?
‘They’ often get their way
and in my way).

Every impossible poem whispers ‘I’m possible’
and if I hear it
I write it,
therefore only possible poems exist.

I find that the probable poems
are most unlikely.

Today, day 17, I played with randomness.

I wrote a phrase, ‘The empty basket of wonder’. Then, I wrote lists, independently, of close rhymes for ’empty’, ‘basket’ and ‘wonder’. After that I ordered each list alphabetically.

Today’s poem is a list of those phrases, with the first phrase being the ‘control’.

I love interesting and unexpected results!

Random 17 wonders

The empty basket of wonder.
The angry anklet of blunder.
The bendy bandit of comfort.
The brandy banquet of drunkard.
The cranky biscuit of hunger.
The friendly blanket of jumper.
The handy classic of monster.
The manky credit of number.
The phlegmy dammit of puncture.
The plenty elastic of runner.
The randy facet of slumber.
The sandy gadget of songster.
The scanty hamlet of summer.
The swanky magnet of sunder.
The testy palette of thunder.
The trendy plastic of tumbler.
The twenty respite of under.
The zesty tablet of youngster.

Today I spent some time researching mind mapping software.

Oh hello, poem number 16.

I might develop this idea further.

Cartographer

Like a spidery weather pattern
my ideas are mapped on screen;
coloured lines like isobars
associate words,
connect concepts.

My ideas,
precipitated by incessant rainstorms
and erupting volcanoes of my thinking systems.
How do I map these internal topographies?

Over time, I have felt
my coastlines of conviction erode,
my oceans of hope evaporate,
fissure vents rupture my meadows of joy.
Every day I witness
climate change.

Today’s poem is probably half the size it could be due to it being half-way to the end of this poem-a-day project.

Are we there yet?

Half way,
where the distance ahead
equals the distance travelled:
there to there divided by two.

You and I measure our closeness in silence.

Half way,
the middle ground
for optimists and pessimists.

Here we ramble, you and I.

Half way,
where a fence-sitter perches
before making a decision.

Our fences are flimsy.

Half way,
signalling the end of a beginning
and the imminence of finish.

You and I are our better halves.

Day 14’s poem.

Left

You never know what you will find
in an op shop;
discarded trash
becomes your treasure;
someone’s boredom
with their wardrobe
yields designer brands
and other riches
at recycle prices.
Sometimes, like Russian nested dolls,
you might uncover treasure within treasure:
I have found a five-dollar note
in the pocket of pristine Esprit jeans ($15),
an Italian business card case
zipped into a Kenneth Cole handbag ($6),
a first edition of Seamus Heaney’s North
with his signature on the title page ($5),
and once,
tucked into the lining of a blue Yves St Laurent jacket (₤35),
a crumpled, black-inked note
from ‘Jean-Pierre’ to ‘Rose’
confessing several affairs and
wishing her all the best.