poem

Stars and Stripes

nyc

 

The place where it all happens

Oh America, Oh

Or until it does, it doesn’t matter

Oh America, Oh

Home of the internet, land of the free*

Oh America, Oh 

(*offer, first month only)

Where a double-amputee becomes a mermaid and is “sexy”

Oh America, Oh

Where breasts are revered, but not for nursing

Oh America, Oh

And maternity leave leaves mothers cursing

D’oh America, d’oh

Your corporate culture spoiled two of our jobs

Oh America, Oh

Yet we still pander to the US mob

Oh America, Oh

(if I publish this after 6, I’ll get more hits!)

Good morning America, Oh

I grimace at your fears re: Trump

No America, please no

Coz Down Under we had our onion eater – first for once!

Oh Australia, Oh

Of course there’s so much good stuff too

Oh America, Oh

Hamburgers, ice cream – but not just food

Go America, go

A place I’ve been, can’t claim to know

Oh America, Oh

But New York was just how I hoped

Oh America, Oh

Manhattan fire escapes like a Friends set

Oh America, Oh

So many sights I’ll not forget

Oh America, Oh

Houses like Sweet Valley High, upstate NY

Oh America, Oh

And the way the girls said “a dime”

Oh America, Oh

A friend at Coachella saw Gunners live

Oh America, Oh

Of course I’ve also watched The Wire

Woah America, woah

So I’ve seen how it is on the dark side a’right?

Oh America, Oh

And the backdrop of American cities

Oh America, Oh

Buried in my mind, like false memories

Oh America, Oh

Awards for everything under the sky

Oh America, Oh

If you do something great, seems you’d really fly

Oh America, Oh

Then again, it also seems easier to die

Oh America, Oh

When the Twin Towers define our lives

Woe America, woe

And all those Wall Street crises

Oh America, Oh

Are the ambitions of America a lie?

Oh America, Oh

Where self-help’s a religion

Oh America, Oh

And Meg Ryan the patron saint of rom-com

Oh America, Oh, Ohh Ohhhh Ohh!

Selling us that love affair

Oh America, Oh

Sell, sell, sell everywhere

Oh America, Oh

The arrogance of all that arable land

Sow America, sow

Does something to you, I understand

Oh America, Oh

I’ve seen it in Australia, and Russia too

Хорошо, America, Хорошо

Seems no matter what y’all do

Oh America, Oh

Oh America, there’s no getting around you

 

 

Today’s National/Global Poetry Writing Month prompt/challenge was to write a poem that incorporates a call and response.

 

Maudlin in the Morning

egg

 

The horrendous overtopping greed

And craven doltishness

The shit we can’t get over

Why can’t we see

When pollies, pretty pollies,

And the uncomely ones

Act like

Kindergarten kids nicking each others’ sandwiches

Only to put a mellifluous spin on

The situation in the papers

Or is it that the journalists, who surely see

Preternatural beings

In their Mirrors, their Suns, shining sublime

Out of their own nether-regions

They pick their way daintily

Over the susurrating mess of a political landscape

Or the physical one

A bleached reef, an abandoned open-cut mine, a melting pole

All value and pulchritude

Sacrificed to their loquaciousness

One barely notices

A haze of sassafras

Creeping over the terrain

Like a persistent 9.15 train

Trying to make amends

While we hang our wet washing

And throw away old receipts

For plastic things bought, discarded already

Paramount in the moment

As those fucking politicians who

We merely moan over

On Facebook and

Pen poems to zero effect

And I think I need an egg this morning

Because it’s one perfect thing contained

Until it’s broken of course, fractured

In servitude to my greed

 

Today’s National/Global Poetry Writing Month prompt/challenge was to write a list of overly poetic words – words that you think just sound too high-flown to really be used by anyone in everyday speech. Then make a list of words that you might use or hear every day, but which seem too boring or quotidian to be in a poem. Now mix and match examples from both of your lists into a single poem.

I feel like I often blend the mundane with the maudlin and florid so this wasn’t a huge stretch for me, although I did enjoy slapping out the thesaurus (mental and physical) to use some ridiculously overblown language. 

In Adelaide

 

 

Try to remember what my nana, Floss, would say

Someone’s telling a story and she’s amazed

It wasn’t “fancy” or “I’ll be blowed”

Maybe it was “nev-er!” or “say it’s not so”?

I think it was “true” — either question or statement.

And what of my childish chat, no abatement?

As she worked like billy-oh to run the house smooth

I’d follow, try to help, mostly intrude

(strife, kids are prolific)

She’d listen and grin and ’twas always: “Triffic!”

 

Today’s National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) prompt/challenge was to think back to your childhood, and the figures of speech and particular ways of talking that the people around you used, and which you may not hear anymore.

Zurich Almanac

Have I written a poem about Zurich yet?

Has the place sunk far enough into my subconscious?

The poetry strata: down where the dinosaur fossils lie

a Jurassic stanza, incorporating the city’s ancient guilds

 

The dull colours of conservative cool

Sitting in roccoco shop windows and on the shoulders of locals

While Ganymed begs the eagle to mount him “in a Swiss way”

Take him to the mountains, Hubacher must mean…

 

ALL ZÜRI, ALL CHRANK: Schweizerdeutsch I can read

Maybe the church spires inject some with cruel medicine.

I’m vaccinated, indoctrinated, the hot needles of last summer’s heat

Tattooed this city across the skin of hometown memories

 

Nothing in nature can kill you here – mammals, reptiles, fish

Just don’t get caught beneath an avalanche

or those blossoms, heavy with spring, before

they fall to the ground like confetti, like ashes, like tiny pieces of my heart

overflowing.

 

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I’m doing National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge was interesting in that it was one I initially did not like the sound of. But, as is often the way, it turned out to be quite inspiring as it wasn’t how I’d normally think to construct a poem.

It was as follows: fill out, in no more than five minutes, the following “Almanac Questionnaire,” which solicits concrete details about a specific place (real or imagined). Then write a poem incorporating or based on one or more of your answers. 

Almanac Questionnaire (I’ve included my answers too)

Weather: wet, usually dry
Flora: heavy with spring blossoms
Architecture: cool modern and roccoco
Customs: polite and on time, can be brusque
Mammals/reptiles/fish: nothing can kill you
Childhood dream: Heidi
Found on the Street: sticks
Export: watches and choc
Graffiti: all zuri, all chrank
Lover: Berlin?
Conspiracy: old zuri guilds
Dress: dull colours of conservative cool
Hometown memory: flooded back in last summer’s heat
Notable person: Jung
Outside your window, you find: church spires and spring
Today’s news headline:
Scrap from a letter:
Animal from a myth: dinosaurs?
Story read to children at night: Schellen Ursli
You walk three minutes down an alley and you find: nature
You walk to the border and hear: italian, french, german
What you fear: the lights going out
Picture on your city’s postcard: Ganymede

Duet

 

http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/images/l/06124001.jpg

Le Violon d’Ingres by Man Ray

 

Body like a viola

Always a string to his bow

Music made with closed windows

Harmonies no one will know

 

I’m doing National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge was to write a poem that incorporates the idea of doubles, because today marks the halfway point in the NaPoWriMo month.

The Fortunate Ones

Respect. Photo: Iain Scott

Respect! You show courage

And sometimes I forget

Your support is like the floor beneath me

I don’t look where I tread

 

Our swirling, whirling life

We never seem to stop

but pause, fleetingly, in slipstreams, shouting:

“We’ve really done a lot”

 

The way you face things, the man you are

And it’s not easy, marriage

I don’t say this often enough:

Respect! You show courage

 

I’m doing National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge for 13th April was this: the number 13 is often considered unlucky, so today I’d like to challenge you to beat the bad luck away with a poem inspired by fortune cookies. 

Braised

 

Seems old-fashioned to braise

And none of the below

Make me reappraise

This thought. In fact

I’m not even sure on looking

What kind of cooking

Braising actually involves

 

Turnips: Braised and Glazed

Braised Celery – not a felony

Braised Fennel in Meat Juices with Cheese, if you please

Braised Stuffed Trotters, not a lotta demand (surely?)

Ladies and Gentlemen may I present: Braised Tongue with Madeira Sauce, why of course!

Braised Witlof, I shit not

braising

meat

vegetables

Brandied Cumquats… oops I went too far.

 

I’m doing National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge was to write an “ index poem” using found language from an actual index (or you could invent an index, like in this kickarse poem by Thomas Brendler they gave as an example). I used found words from the index of one of my favourite Australian classic cookbooks, Stephanie Alexander, The Cook’s Companion. AND YES I KNOW MY OVEN IS FILTHY!! 

Morning song

Beardsley-inspired ink poster by Steven Huntington from www.behance.net/gallery/7198651/Aubrey-Beardsley-Poster

 

Soft, stilldark early morning

birds’ small, individual rounds

chirping, tweeting, calling

create a wall of nature-sound

 

The trams surging up Schaffhauserstrasse

juddering scrape, metal wheels on rails

a sibilant symphony: electric power

near-majestic, benign strength prevails

 

Church bells bong quarterly

soundwaves hanging in the air

on the hour a vortex: echo-vibration, stereolocation

you almost see it shimmering there

 

The planes: further away, their churn

high-up, unmistakable

as toward tarmac or clouds they kern

ripping the sky, rippling by

 

My baby lets out a cry: 5am

down the hall in his room

he snuffles, goes quiet again

I don’t get up… but soon

 

Traffic noise, a distant soundtrack

underpins cities like cement

no one drives up our street yet

Still: the neverending improvement

 

The soft crunch of my duvet

as I stretch my legs in the warm bed

can’t sleep now should I choose it

I think about Sydney instead

 

I’m doing National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge was to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does.

Kids I know

kids

Ava, Aria, Annie, Austin, Annabel, Amelia, Alice, Adrien, Arthur, Alexander, Alessandro, Ambrose, Argento

Eva Eve, Ena, Effie, Eliza, Elliot, Elliott, Elias, Eden, Eliana

Isaac, Indira, Isabelle, Indiana, Isla

Otto, Olivia, Oliver, Oscar

Quinn

Milla, Mila, Millie, Mio, Mia, Mira, Max, Molly, Matilda, Matthew, Michael, Magnus, Madeline, Miriam, Melody, Maible

Felix, Harvey, Hope

Tara, Thandi, Thomas, Tias, Theo

Gabriel, Gabrielle, Genivieve, Giselle, Georgie

Donovan, Daphne, Dusty, Dino

Lia, Lara, Leo, Leonie, Leonard, Lily, Lucinda, Luke, LJ

Percy, Peter, Priya

Cleo, Chloe, Calliope, Constance, Caolan, Carter

Ruben, Ruby, Rhoswen, Rory, Raphael

Kaspar

Sylvester, Simon, Sebastian, Sadie, Sas

Wolfe, Will, Vivienne

Jan, Juno, Joe, Beatrix, Bo

Zoe

 

I’m doing National/Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo / GloPoWriMo) – write one poem, per day throughout April. Today’s prompt/challenge was to write a “book spine” poem, which involves taking a look at your bookshelves, and writing down titles in order (or rearranging the titles) to create a poem. I did a slightly different take (and sorry if I forgot anyone!). Might try the book spine poem at some point though.