Recent knee problems had me thinking about the last operation.
first sedation
then the back of hand jab
backward counting
metal in the mouth
like sucking washers
or oysters with reisling
classical music as doctor &
anaesthetist
discuss a new bose sound system in the
white room
you wake elsewhere
armchaired with waiting cup of tea
wondering how they spent the two hours
you lost.
The critics were mean
(“zis merde is obscene!
In Literature’s mansion Flaubert’s built a hovel!”)
But he wrote le mot juste so much briefer than Proust
and thus Madame Bovary
was both virtual ovary
and the birth of the modern novel.
Thanks to Spoken Word SA for last night’s Dead Poets Society tribute to Ern Malley at Dymocks in Adelaide. We had Malley readings and work by Amelia Walker, David Mortimer, Daniel Watson, Khail Juredini, Jennifer Liston, Dick Dale, Ian Gibbins and me. I read the letter I sent to Cordite in 2005 (as Ethel Malley), Ethel Malley’s sonnet and Registrar of Births and Deaths (unpublished.)
The whole issue of hoaxes and plagiarism is an interesting one – as relevant in literature today as ever!
Thanks Spoken Word SA & Dymocks for organizing.
Back at Day 18 we were challenged to write a ruba’i which is a Persian form (multiple stanzas in the ruba’i form are a rubaiyat, like The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.) Basically, a ruba’i is a four-line stanza, with a rhyme scheme of AABA and has been often used in English such as Robert Frost’s famous poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening . I’ve been working on this for a few days. It began as a half-conceived idea from 2008!
So here I am, a front-row seat
in Amsterdam, a cool-jazz beat
Modern Jazz Quartet they’re called
It’s ’57. Urbane. Sweet.
Chamber music’s Modern Age,
John Lewis piano-playing sage.
Lost in music’s interplay
my seat jerks roughly towards the stage
My earplugs and my iPod fall
I realise I’m not there at all
but on a bus with windows fogged
and in Japan, I now recall.
It’s hot in here but not outside
Commuters sleep all through the ride
We pass Himeji Castle, snow,
My reverie’s abruptly died.
I wonder if I’m really here
an Alien Resident for a year
or back at Home still sound asleep,
alarm about to ring out clear…
And so it goes, banality,
the bubbles of reality
like Russian dolls each bubble pops
I doubt my person-ality.
And when I die will I be less
than all a bubble can compress?
And will the final burst reveal
a mere sphere of nothingness?
.
.
.
.
“There’s no such thing as Society!”
she exclaimed with icy rapture.
But Society’s still persisting
and there’s no more Margaret Thatcher.
rob walker