Tuesday Poem - 'Angels' by Luke Fischer

Angels

I wonder sometimes whether angels are waitresses

and we spend our lives at a large table in a dim bistro.

A business man recounts the success of a trade-deal

with China while a mother relates how her son broke

his leg in training for the junior Olympics. A football match

unrolls on a corner screen backed by drunken cheers and sighs.

Roses for your lady, a migrant asks a spruce young man,

pleading with his gaze and wafting the perfumed bouquet.

And he scores! We toast with full glasses that shimmer

like dusk on the wine-dark sea and graze on plates of pretzels

that never run out. Have you heard the story about the donkey?

says a man with a bristly beard. Well, once upon a time

there lived a donkey, a very happy donkey. Every morning he went

to his trough and always found plenty of feed … Meanwhile

a mademoiselle lures the tide of her date's feeling

with her shadowed lunar eyes. At times we overhear

the decanting of a spring, glimpse silhouettes

of supple hands, a disembodied face in a tea-light's flicker

but pay little thought to these apparitions

until the waiter appears at 2 a.m. : a final round

or shall I bring the bill?

Good stuff from Luke Fischer's book 'Paths of Flight' put out by Black Pepper.

I happened to be at the Melbourne launch (jointly with Chains of Snow by Jakob

Ziguras – Pitt Street Poetry). You know how you can just happen to be at a launch.

Had a good time, heard some good work, invested in two books.

http://blackpepperpublishing.com/current_releases.html

Tuesday Poem - 'The end of the shed' by Sandra Thibodeaux

The end of the shed

You pull down the shed and ignore the long-grass

that’s trying to tell you the obvious

about leaving things go too long.

This is a love affair in reverse.

This is creation caving in.

You look at a slab of concrete where a shed has been.

You stand in a shower cubicle

without the shower, without the cubicle.

You peer over the drain,

watch the dregs of rain and try

to work out what comes next.

A stream of smoke next-door

gives permission to destroy the rest.

               Wiring, defeated, cut at the roots

                Doors, destined for pigs, strapped to the ute

                Hardware deals discounted by flames

                Tiles you’ll never lay

                A tired Christmas tree

                Tunnels in a French dictionary –

                white ant resistance

                The score of Stabat Mater

                past singing for a wasted son

                Weeping negatives

                in an age where no-one knows

                what to do with them anymore

                but their eyes burn holes through stories

                you’ve heard before

Suddenly, your lover’s gone

and you look at a gaping hole

where a shed once stood,

where a shed once stood in the way

of your Balinese vision:

verandah, termite-treated timber

and a shower with a portal to the moon,

clean as it always was,

waiting for you to clear that ugly ruin.

I haven't met Sandra yet, or heard her read, because she lives in Darwin,

at the Top End, as they say, but I am looking forward to it. One day soon.

Chris Mansell describes her work (on the back of Sandra's new book 'Dirty
 H2O' from Mulla Mulla Press) as – 'Turbulent, hot and irascible.' And that is
just about right, I would say.

http://mullamullapress.com/Dirty-H2O-by-Sandra-Thibodeaux-mulla-mulla-press

Tuesday Poem - 'So Over The Rainbow' by Jennifer Compton

So Over the Rainbow

My son tells me that

it's all over the Internet

Dark Side of the Moon

is the soundtrack for

The Wizard of Oz.

O Emerald City!

I travel north to pitch

a film to Fox

reading Spinster

by Ashton-Warner

written on my patch.

So few of us

from Kiwiland

that paua is annotated.

As the train pulls into

Emerald Central - paua*

*paua - irridescent hell.

I am awaiting permission from a poet (who is away at a festival it seems)

so was caught short this week without a poem. I was rummaging around

in my back files and came upon this poem, which I have always liked, but

have never managed to get anyone else enthusiastic about. No one seems

to get it. I suppose it hinges upon knowing that Sydney used to be called

Emerald City from time to time, oh way back then. And that I didn't live in

Sydney at that time. And as I am from NZ I know a paua when I come across

one. And the book, written by a NZer, which I was reading in the train, had a

most amusing typo. Hell instead of shell. That I read as the train was pulling

into Sydney (Emerald City). A poem shouldn't need so much explication,

right? But still, I have an affection for the poem. This is its first outing. 

Tuesday Poem - 'Cats No Less Liquid Than Their Shadows' by A. S. J. Tessimond

 

Cats No Less Liquid Than Their Shadows

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned

To rules or routes for journeys; counter
Attack with non-resistance; twist
Enticing through the curving fingers
And leave an angered, empty fist.

They wait, obsequious as darkness
Quick to retire, quick to return;
Admit no aim or ethics; flatter
With reservations; will not learn

To answer to their names; are seldom
Truly owned till shot and skinned.
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.

 

 Written in 1934
by A. S. J. Tessimond [1902 - 1962]

Tuesday Poem - 'A Man, Somewhere In History, Dying' by Jennifer Compton

A Man, Somewhere In History, Dying

Somebody somehow had a cache of film and a recording device.

To shoot the man sinking into the snow drift and looking up

in some Russian city under siege all those black and white

years ago.

And the light went out of his eyes, now we watch him die

and we can watch him die tomorrow, if we want to, and

the day after.

He gives his death, of hunger and cold and despair, to us.

Tuesday Poem - 'Midday Gavotte' by Alex Skovron

MIDDAY GAVOTTE

‘a duet in which the other instrument is silent’  
                                                       — Henry Miller

                             

His fiddle burns in the sun

as the shoppers crowd around to listen,

looking for the hat. He has come

out of nowhere, his teeth are missing

and his oversize jacket

wriggles with the music, and he glistens

with sweat. His violin is lacquered

a brilliant ochre, the bow

dances, and the eyes bestow a regular rapid

smile (not the lips though),

and the little stool that he perches upon

is almost comically too low,

and a second almost identical one

stands empty a foot away.

Just then he nods at the invisible companion,

sniffs, and ceases to play –

but continues tapping out the colourful beat

with his bow; he nods again

and smiles surprisingly, his absent teeth

gaping, as if in pride

at so adept a partner, steals a fleet

inspection of the financial side

of the performance but continues conducting.

All at once he nuzzles high

into his instrument, slyly whispers something

to the second fiddle: with a poetic

toss he resumes his own song, disrupting

the loud silence of traffic,

all the unseen migrations, the mall’s frenzy;

the audience is clapping

as if in appreciation of the tacit cadenza

just concluded – then sever

slowly, diplomatically from the climaxing dancer

 

to go about their day. Weather

is turning: he stops, collects his disconsolate chum

and they walk off the stage together.

Alex Skovron

I finally caught up with Alex Skovron's 2003 book The Man and the Map (Five 

Islands Press). I googled and you can still pick up copies here and there, or if you

bump into Alex around the Melbourne traps you might be able to score one off him,

like I did. That was a great night the Melbourne Poets Union put on at The Architect's

Basement, and I came away with an excellent book. I mean, I knew Alex was a fine 

poet, just I had never got round to sitting down to a book of his. You know how it

is. And now I want more, and I want to hear Alex read his work. I just haven't heard

him read as much as I would like. I often bump into him, like he bought me a coffee

at a reading at Fed Square (I owe you a coffee, Alex, must remember for next time

we meet) but he is not up on his hind legs in front of the microphone as much as one

would wish.

Tuesday Poem - Cargoes by John Masefield

CARGOES

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

With a cargo of ivory,

And apes and peacocks,

Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,

With a cargo of diamonds,

Emeralds, amythysts,

Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,

Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,

With a cargo of Tyne coal,

Road-rails, pig-lead,

Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

Because I am reading 'Now All Roads Lead To France' by Matthew Hollis,

which is about the last years of Edward Thomas, my mind has turned back

to the poets of that time. Edward Thomas seemed to be right in the thick

of the scene, (he reviewed poetry before he began writing it himself -

encouraged on by Robert Frost, who was visiting England with his family),

and all the poets I have ever heard of from that time are in the book. 

Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon, Yeats, Pound, Abercrombie 

Lascelles etc etc, and Masefield.

'Cargoes' is a poem I came upon at a very young age, and liked very 

 much, I became almost drunk on the sound of the words and the beating

 rhythm, and that final triumphant shout of – 'cheap tin trays'! In my found 

object art making stage I did a piece called 'Cheap Tin Tray”. I've chosen 

'Cargoes' this week because I thought maybe these days the work of 

Masefield and his ilk are not so easily come across. Maybe some people 

don't know it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masefield