It’s been a week of X-rays, ultrasounds and MRIs… One good thing to come out of it has been this poem. I’m not sure that it’s finished, but I think the idea is a good start.
holding our future in nervous hands
we come with x-rays – ikons
in large envelopes with corporate logos
queue for the Delphic Oracle
who divines the auspices
like chook entrails.
this arcane analysis
reading the stars within…
Months later when a nervous dog tells me
to back off – a denouement.
That boy had been trying to tell me the same thing
when I’d asked him to join the lesson.
Those kids were laughing at him
and this was my first warning
if he were cornered
he would become violent.
Rejected by both natural parents
a string of foster parents and GOM carers
his amygdala knew about self-preservation.
His body was a 12 year old boy
his brain was a cornered animal, back to the wall.
Niceties stripped down it’s
You or Them.
His breathing takes over, sucking,
blowing through teeth and nostrils.
The rage begins.
The animal returns.
(N.B. GOM = Guardianship Of the Minister, i.e. ‘ward of the state’.)
Yesterday’s prompt was to write a poem from a songlist.
My musical tastes are a bit unusual. Most of the music I listen to at the moment is on dig.ccmixter.org. My current favourite is the vocalist ciggi burns. The randomly-generated playlist came up with
One for Me, The Only Love I Ever Needed, Still Water, How Lucky I Am,
The Drunken Sailor’s Plea To The Hooker and Small Back Room.
Here’s the poem I came up with:
How lucky I am!
The only love I ever needed was to be
lost at sea,
found in still water.
you please me for a minute
in a small back room
yet that deep water
between lands
will sustain me
for a lifetime.
The one for me
is the sea…
The prompt for day 8 was to rewrite a famous poem. I couldn’t decide between two of Carlos Williams’ poems “This is just to say” and “The Red Wheelbarrow” – so I did both.
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the fridge
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Let it go.
Anyway, they
tasted like
shit.
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the fridge
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Sucked in.
middle-aged casanova
so much depends
on a red
sports
car
a toupé
an
u
p
w
a
r
d
l
y
mobile
personal
assistant
&
a
r
g
a
i
v
Yet another everyday memory of one of my years in Himeji, Japan.
It’s the reason you get up every day. The
most ordinary bus or train trip transformed
by one image, a different perspective.
rainbows trapped in ice crystals on the roof of an
old car. snow on a discarded car tyre a study in black and white.
a slice of sky caught in a drain,
the joy of the unexpected mundane.
smell of a mandarine permeating the bus.
a chance meeting with the student you call
walnut who gives you a little box of handmade
chocolates because she says in her understated
Japanese way
I made too many