Category: New/unpublished poems

Stormy. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

Today’s poem is self-explanatory and inadequate. That is all.

News and weather

For H.

The sun is shining here today
but an icy wind blows in the shade
and the weather has become unpredictable…
…but I’m not that writer
who metaphors climate for catastrophic events;
I’m not comfortable with
environmental similes for human conditions;
I prefer to modify language itself:
verbalise nouns and nounify verbs
reimagine inadequate vocabulary
connect unconnected ideas
with hook-and-eye words
yet today the flair for it fails me;
today, when I most need
to express my concern;
today, when I most need
to wish love and light
to a dear friend who’s staring into the eye
of a terrible, sickening storm.

Temptation Moonset. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

Today’s poem is the result of a (few days old) prompt from the NaPoWriMo site here. The suggestion was to find and rework a poem by Emily Dickinson. I chose ‘The Moon is distant from the Sea – 387’. When I started playing around with the poem, I wondered why she had altered the relationship between the moon and the sea in the final stanza so that the feminine character sounded fragile and dependent – the opposite of how the poem begins. That had to change! (I’ve posted the original version at the end of this post, after my one.)

Emily dashed: the moon is (not so) distant from the sea

The moon is distant from the sea,
and yet, her amber hand
commands him ebb and flow just so;
he seems to understand.

Striking balance, finely tuned:
natural laws at work;
then why does Emily’s last verse
reverse the moon-sea roles?

Oh, Signor, mine’s the amber hand
and thine the distant sea.
Just so we’re clear, I’ve turned it round:
my eye’s imposed on thee!

Here’s the original poem by Emily Dickinson.

The Moon is distant from the Sea – (387)

The Moon is distant from the Sea –
And yet, with Amber Hands –
She leads Him – docile as a Boy –
Along appointed Sands –

He never misses a Degree –
Obedient to Her eye –
He comes just so far – toward the Town –
Just so far – goes away –

Oh, Signor, Thine, the Amber Hand –
And mine – the distant Sea –
Obedient to the least command
Thine eye impose on me –

Inside the Teepee. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

This started out as a little riff on that old saying ‘Home is where the heart is’. A change of letter in one word and it all veered off, then circled back unexpectedly.

(W)here?

‘Home is where the heart is’, so my heart is here at home.
Or home is wherever my heart happens to be.
Where my head happens to be.
Home is where the head is?
In my house?
Home is where the house is?
Home is where the horse is?
Homer is the horse?
Homer IS the horse.
A horse named after a poet.
Horse is where the poetry is
where the trough is
where the water is.
Water is where the drinking is.
Drinking is where the wine is
where the mind is
where the fun is.
Fun is where the laughter is
where the life is
where the friends are.
Friends are where the love is.
Love is where you are.
Love is … here you are.

Surfing a Celestial Wave. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

I really have nothing to say about today’s poem.

Disconnect

I fell off the edge of the world
on Tuesday at 9.30 pm.
Dreamily I realise the thin silk line
has frayed and snapped.
Slowfloating away
I notice a tabby cat who’d disappeared from our street
seven months before;
one sock of a favourite pair, long mislaid;
an unfinished apple;
a disconnection notice from the electricity company.
I waft through the atmosphere’s edgelands
colliding with cosmic junk and space debris.
I begin to wonder what I’m doing here
and where everyone else is
when I spot a silver spaceship
rocketing towards me
and there’s a man inside
waving and smiling
so I wave and smile back
and he yanks me into his capsule.
Pleased to meet you, he says,
shakes my hand
asks if I’ve been up here long.
Me, he says, I’m just floating around
in this tin-can up here
and there’s nothing I can do
I love my wife very much but
you know, it’s quite quiet here…
…oh sorry, so rude of me, he grins
my name is Tom,
Major Tom.
And the pot I smoked
and the Bowie records I hazed to
all begin to make sense
as Starman and I
share beers and Pringles and chill
more than one hundred thousand miles
above blue planet earth.

Maserati. Photo by Robert Rath.

Last night we went to see the movie Fast and Furious 7. Today I was reading some of Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s book, Stealing the Language The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. It’s a discussion about women and the gender bias generally associated with women’s poetry.

Today’s poem twists these wildly different yet complementary creative ideas together. And in the interests of irony, I pinched Ostriker’s book title.

As always, today’s poem has just been moulded, so please forgive its rough edges.

Stealing the language

I will break out the jargon
of corporations
and thug nations
I will steal it back
modify and transform it
turn native cams and coils
over and inside out
cranking and revving that engine
then parachute its supercharged ass
from a plane
in an alien sky
fuel-inject it
then reverse it off impossible cliffs
hyperjump it between buildings
joyride it rough
through no-through roads
and hairpin bends in conversation
making sense of nonsense
tearing this sorry town down
from its lofty, mannish notions

Once In A Red Moon, In Our Backyard. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

This evening Robert and I went to Tungkillo, about an hour east of Adelaide, to watch and photograph the eclipse. I used an old eclipse image of Robert’s for this post, but I know he’ll have some sensational shots of tonight’s lunar activity. Just not soon enough for me!

A lunatic proposition

The blood moon she rise, she rise…
…but how can I write about that lunar disk
high above a low horizon
being eclipsed, our shadow slowly covering her
over the greened-granite ground of Tungkillo?
I am reminded how
timing is and isn’t everything,
how a break through the haze
may lead to a hope for understanding,
how the sky is 3D-clouded
just like my judgement
of the wisdom
of writing about
what writers and artists and photographers
have already witnessed
in true poetic justice.

Someone Else’s Images. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

This evening Robert and I went to the Trent Parke photography exhibition, The Black Rose, at the Art Gallery of South Australia. I had already visited it with several lovely poetry friends during the week, but the exhibition needed at least a second viewing. The body of work on display is immense, powerful and spans a range of subjects; dark, personal and moving. Many of the images are accompanied by text written by the photographer about dreams and life events deeply connected with the images.

Today’s poem inspired by the exhibition refers to images in the exhibition but offers a sinister twist. Originally, the first line of the poem was it – the entire poem – but more insisted on being included.

Candidly speaking

The woman in the photograph followed me home.

Out of that dark room.

A sombre kind of shadow.

Mirroring my breathing,

my captured memories: like butterflies in cages

and rabbits in sand dunes;

the fox! the fox!

Spines and skeletons and bones

are everywhere reminders.

Here a mother’s hair.

There a father’s gallstones.

Depressed shutter; press. Press. Firm.

Here with me now, she frames the doorway

of this dark room,

she touches my cheek; whispers

that she is moved by my portrait.

Ash, Rain, Clay and Smoke. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

Hello day two.

The title of today’s poem is from a rather enigmatic essay I was reading today called ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ by French feminist Hélène Cixous in 1976.

We are black and we are beautiful

like the barrel of a Beretta
like pudding: blood and bone
like a length of salted liquorice
like the slick-swoop of a crow

like your morning-kickstart coffee
like a Nazi’s polished boot
like a layer of tar for feathers
like your formal mourning suit

like the ink on first-love letters
like Roisín; mail; and mass
like a supermodel’s mascara
like a hole; a little dress

like a porcelain black cowry
like keys that tone a chord
like that mongrel on your shoulder
or your winning, ace-filled hand

Small Moves to the Orion Nebula. Photo by Robert Rath from Robert’s website.

So, here I am again: I had a momentary lapse of synaptic connectivity and registered for NaPoWriMo, the 2015 poem-a-day project.

I read somewhere recently about how we may all have been born under different astrological signs if the so-called thirteenth sign of the zodiac, Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, had been included. Today’s poem imagines how that may have unfolded for poor old Ophiuchus.

As always, I preface these poems with the reminder: they are daily-fresh and may need time to mature after rework!

The forgotten constellation

Serpent-bearer Ophiuchus
left out in the astrological cold
clenches a furious fist
spits venom at his exclusion
from the circle of twelve
while his cold-blooded pet
slides lazily
up his tightened right arm
along the back of his broad, hunched shoulders
then down, encircling his waist
in starry-eyed slitheriness;
Ophiuchus huffs and puffs
stamps on Scorpio
in stormy rage
hollers about unlucky thirteenth
at his Milky Way neighbour;
tired of the temper and the celestial carry-on
the serpent glides down, down
over knotted limbs
and meteored feet
slips silently into a black, black hole
leaving Ophiuchus desolate:
purposeless now,
permanently banished
to an astral wasteland.