worryingly jolly batman

Tuesday Poem now has its very own weblog, which I am really looking forward to following, and recommend to all of you out there who are into poetry (especially if you don't know New Zealand poetry very well, or conversely if you *do* know New Zealand poetry well, or contrariwise if you sort of know it but would like to know more.)

I managed to get one of my own out this week. Here it is.

Self-Portrait

It is 7:10.
I wake up.
I go, oh no.

My alarm is going to go. My alarm
is going to go. My alarm goes.
It is 7:13.

I turn over. At 8:01 am
I get up.
I go, oh no.

I go and have a shower. I turn the heat
right up.
It is 8:10.

I put cream on my face. Everything is fuzzy.
I pick my glasses up.
I go, oh no.

Nothing is fuzzy.
My time is up.
It is 8:30.
I go, oh no.


Right, so, this is sort of a villanelle. The villanelle is above and beyond my favourite form of poetry. The clever, sutble artistry of a successful villanelle delights me. You probably know Dylan Thomas' incredibly famous Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which I like mostly for its relationship with a much less well-known villanelle, Villanelle, by Jenny Bornholdt, whose minor rhyme is the same as Thomas' major rhyme, and whose subject is similar (although I p3rsonally find Bornholdt's work a good deal more moving). The villanelle is an incredible format for writing about loss; in a villanelle, the subject matter that the writer and reader struggle to forget returns again and again against their will. Alternatively, the writer returns again and again to something they wish to preserve which nevertheless slips away. One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop, is another favourite; so is Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song.

My one, I don't like it so much, but it's a big improvement on my previous attempts at the form! However, the poem didn't start out as a villanelle. In most respects I think this is a big improvement except one: I really liked a stanza in the earlier version that I failed to recreate. It went like this:

I go to my room and put cream on my face. Everything
is fuzzy. I put my glasses
on my face.

Nothing is fuzzy. I go, oh no.

I still really like those lines and wish I could have gotten them into this version. Oh well, keep going, I guess! Happy Tuesday.

The Hill

above the house where I grew up,
a scratched forest of norfolk pines grew too.
giant unplanted things
apartment blocks for birds.
magpies quardle-doodled with their neighbours and
build nests on every level. every
storey. they followed each other from branch to branch.
at the right time of the year we ran
screaming across the wide hill, covering
our heads with neon sunhats, terrified
of cowboys from above, black beaks
and bandits. the dead silence of the sun,
broken with feathers.

lions prowled below, we knew and in the morning
we woke and heard strange cries, birds
from many faraway places, distant gongs.
when we fed black Jack in the evening, we heard
the big cats feeding and their sunset roars.

we had black tarry footprints in the summer,
our soles were tough and hardened with every step.
when it rained we picked our way across the street
shoulders hunched like vultures, we dammed the gutters
with cigarette packs and dead leaves and damned the sun.
mud waterfalled down flecked with cigarette butts and
tin rings from coke cans.

away from the magpie commune, up the hill in
the other direction, we went around and around
and around and around til we reached the highest point of the city.
fireworks burst in front of us and we could touch them, we heard
them with our bodies. we could see picton, we could see australia, we could see -- everything -
it was spread out beneath us. one step away.

collecting smiles

Sunday morning. working in the dark, while the cars pass brilliantly, like rapid angels flourescing down the road. I clean the toilets, wiping the mirror and looking at my own eyes, my tired mouth. the milkybar girls stumble in with pallid hair and burnt eyes. big men in dirty caps and greased-up hands smile back at me and lean on the counter too closely. later, on the way to church, a tongan man in a shouting purple suit grins at me while sun breaks over the coffee machine, pouring into the store with startling ridiculous light. I pump petrol for a samoan family, men in sober black wraparounds, women in dresses that cling to warm wide hips. two little boys run into me with $10. a little asian man ducks and bows to me as he passes over money. when he looks up he surprises me with the curve of his lips. the woman who I know is a prostitute asks me how my week has been. in the afternoon I fill a gas bottle for a man who tells me he was born in palestine and grew up in jordan. it is not like christchurch there, he says. there are more hills.



I'm in the market for a new title for this.

dear boy-creature,
this is the poem I am writing to put firmly the distance between us.
I know! you're wondering:
             what do you mean,


             between          us?

that, my good acquaintance, is precisely the problem.

you're probably aware I have been watching you. mostly
when drunk, made indiscreet and slutty, cuddling a little
closer than is strictly decent. well, we have a history, you and me,
                                             it matters to me.

I know; it doesn't matter to you. I'm writing to absolve you.

            my broken heart
            is not your problem. never mind it!

all I
need is
a little
more time.

of course, let us not forget
you
        taking
                my
                                hand
that night, me giddy, you checking me out. oh yeah,
don't deny! you were so obvious we had a conversation on the bus
about the size of my tits, and my dedication to plunging necklines.


and the whole way home I was thinking, damn. he thinks I'm hot.


but that was a long time ago.
            (I know you remember that; you brought it up last friday,
            completely wasted, looking at me in my red boots fishnets another low-cut top.
            you do like to pass comment.

            well dear boy-friend, it was then I knew
            I had to write this poem.)
it would probably help
if you didn't mean well, in your uncaring sort of way. you never wanted
the responsibility of my heart.

and why should you have to take it.

so I'm writing you this poem, and wishing you cared enough to read it, but the whole point
is to be forgiving that you don't. I want to be flippant about it, I'm not
crying into my keyboard. So don't you worry, it's time for me to go.

all my love for the very last time,
not (quite) your ex girlfriend.



*siiigh* very unfinished but I'm thinking of submitting it tomorrow anyway - this one or the storm one from last week, rejuggled and retitled. thoughts??? also, anyone know the keyboard code for the upside-down question mark?

So we have workshop in poetry class every week, and additionally we have to submit a poem every week to the lecturer, and the poems up for workshop this week were just sent around and a couple of them are so freaking good I'm terrified. One guy wrote a sonnet in what I'm pretty sure is perfect iambic pentameter - it's pretty fucking amazing, actually, and it's not a bad piece of poetry at all. And one woman wrote this thing in a very formal kind of free verse which is pretty impressive - it has a *lot* of Maori in it, all glossed of course. I'm hesitating between saying that I think it's seriously cool - which I do - and saying that it really detracts from the poem - which I also think is true, because the vast majority of people reading the poem are going to need the gloss desperately, and it's not just five words, it's a word or two in nearly every line (and the lines are short, too, three or four words), so about a fifth of the poem is being glossed and it's just. Hm.

Anyway, I'm totally panicking and writing a lot so you guys get it archived here, you lucky things, you. ;)

you're completely cracked

your memory is weird patterns of light
from an old, cracked mirror.
not seven years, but endless time
of fractal recollection is all that's left to you.
I know you're looking for me,
but every where I am light is spidering away.

they say, you've got a memory like a sieve,
things just keep running out of it.
I think, only if the sieve is shaped like your hands,
clutching yesterday in your fists,
it keeps running over your fingers.

tomorrow you will look in the mirror
and cracks will spindle out again a little,
like you don't recognise yourself in shop windows
and you can't remember your daughter's name,
she's overshadowed,
out of focus.

the thing about spectacles is,

when you take them off,
it's impossible to see where you put them.
it's this whole big irony thing.

the thing about you is,
it's like I'm not sure where to look for you
I don't remember putting you down.

that's not quite so ironic,
I think it's deliberate.
you cultivate it, hiding behind my back,
peering out when I look the other way,
standing in front of me in the dark.

I should be able to see you,
if I could magnify you, direct
your light and your reflection
in my rear-view mirrors.
this must be on purpose.
I just had a check up,
I'm looking out for you
with my corrective lenses.



Also, sixth_light, I have Heroes.

big weather city

sometimes my big weather city
likes to express her disapproval
at teenagers kissing on the streets,
goths smoking by the traffic lights,
girls wearing very few clothes
by opening her skies and chasing them away.

only on her less tolerant days;
when she's feeling kindly she encourages them
with hot skies and a breeze,
like a hand stroking your hair.

this big weather city likes her people tough;
she makes businessmen wrestle with umbrellas
and students sprint for the old trolley buses
that run clinkety clankety, clinging precariously
to the wires that run overhead.

you could get a lot of exercise in the big weather city;
some days, if the wind is blowing in the right direction
each step is an aerobics class.

our big weather city's favourite people
have hairstyles they like to let blow in the wind,
skirts designed to stream and not billow;

when she opens her skies to chase us away,
we want to run out to the curbs and laugh at her.

ITP

I think it is a declaration of war:
the body sending red letters under my skin.

they are not easy to decipher,
ephemeral constellations of tiny bruises,
so I join the dots in blue biro.

I find the message still a little confusing,
like maybe it's written back to front,
on the underside of my capillaries.

because it is too difficult to make a settlement,
I send in pale troops every morning;
battlefields flare and fade on my arms, my legs, my chest.

every change becomes a sign;
my nerves fray rapidly.
the body fights back, purple tides rising under my skin.

it is too much for me; please,
I am ready to broker peace.




I am applying for a creative writing poetry course for the first semester next year. It's fairly restricted entry and I am, pretty much, entirely terrified that I'll submit a portfolio and won't be accepted. This probably ties in with an opinion of my poetry that... well, okay. "people who post original poetry on their Livejournals" are pretty much in the same category as "people who blog about their cats" and they're definitely in the same category as "people who talk about cutting themselves a lot" and "people who dye their hair black and wear a lot of eyeliner." (Um, there are people on my flist who do all of these things, and I love them all very much, but you know what I mean.) So I usually strive to make my poetry as non-emo as possible, because god, no-one wants to read amateur Evanescence lyrics, am I right? But there are things that I find intensely difficult to write about without being emo. Illness is one of these, mine and those around me - I've made several starts at writing about my grandfather, who's pretty much off his rocker, and I don't feel like any of them have really transcended my personal experience into being something that might actually speak to others as well - which is what good poetry is about, IMO. Someone said that "poetry should not mean, but be"; I absolutely believe this, but also that poetry that is intensely personal is almost always bad poetry because it might mean a lot to the author, but when it comes to the audience, they may have nothing in common with you.

Which is a roundabout way of saying, I am trying to write a bit about some things that matter to me right now, and I'm not sure I'm succeeding, but I think I have to get rid of them anyway. And if you think this is way too subjective, you should read some of the other stuff I have on my hd. ;)

The other thing I've been doing is working on two poetry collections for a writing competition. I know I won't win, because a) they never give prizes to poetry (it's open format, but the winner will be a short story or essay or script, not poetry. Poetry is too subjective) and b)I haven't got a quantity of stuff I think is really good that also fits together, so I've jammed some good stuff with some less good stuff (I'll admit it: I really like, and am proud of, some of the poems here. Some of them I hate.) Anyway, these are the two collections as I'm probably going to submit them; I'd really appreciate any criticism, including placement of poems and collection titles. Some of this is older material; some of it's new.

( brief lives )



( mabel forgets how to sing )

what it's like

I thought the other day I'd call you.
and then of course I didn't,

I don't know why my subconscious mind
doesn't know what's good for me,

like hearing your voice on the other end
of the line, after months

and time away. Well I guess it's
not all wrong, I'm not sure

if I'd have anything to say; we might
stay on the line and listen to each other

breathe. I can't help thinking that
silence maybe just what I need,

strained through filaments like
I think we are sometimes, when

we sleep at the same time but never
realise it, except if I might see you in my dream--

I thought this morning that I'd call you tonight
hope you'll still be awake when the phone rings.


In other news, more icons, only 7 this time, these ones made specially for megaffe, sweetie I hope you like them, text by James K Baxter, bases again from the superlative posticonic. Please credit posticonic! Other credit is nice but not necessary. (Also, Meggie, if you have alternate ideas welcome to request something of COURSE).

Teaser: 1.
( ride easy, stranger )

Shortest exam I ever sat, right there. Three hours in theory, finished in 50 minutes. So, in the fine traditions of Me Doing Exams, I'm home early and on teh internets instead of studying for phil tomorrow.

Also in my fine traditions, I spent the spare ten minutes- we couldn't leave for an hour- that I had writing poetry. If I had all the poetry I've written in exams over the years, I'd have a lot of really peculiar poetry.

( I only had ten minutes, so these are quite short. )

*wry* maybe my first poetry book will be called Songs from the Examination Hall, and other bits and bats. As I said: I've written a lot of poetry in exam rooms, although a lot of it I've also never had back; it's rotting in some English teacher's basket somewhere, or on spare bits of paper left elsewhere. Which is kind of funny- actually I do like writing poetry on my papers, even though it's probably not sensible: the idea that someone's going to read it, maybe, but I won't know, it'll be untraceable. Mm.

Also, from gabbysun: If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing LJ entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your Livejournal. *snort*

And finally: I am blessed with a f-list that clearly knows when I have an extra hour to read it. Because it looks interesting today. :)