Tuesday Poem - Found Poem by John Daniel

Found Poem

I found a poem.

I will tell you how I found it.
I was walking along the beach
when I saw a stone with a bump
I brought it home and stood it on the mantelpiece
where it immediately turned into
a Work of Art.

If I can find a Work of Art on the beach I thought
I can find poems on fire extinguishers, in recipe books,
insurance policies, telephone directories,
the index to The Oxford Book of English Verse,
my grandfather's diary.

I read out the Smiths, A.J.
from the London telephone directory
and was attacked by a lady in the Lamb and Flag
screaming This isn't poetry!

I found a poem
by Jeremy Bentham, the philosopher of Utilitarianism
The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number
who had written a will stating that he was to be wheeled out
at university committee meetings
and whose head had just fallen off.

This was the end of the Found Poem.
There is only so much you can do with a headless Utilitarian,
wills and insurance policies.
I returned the poem to its beach
laying it carefully among 10,000 others
where it immediately forgot it was a Work of Art
and changed back into a pebble.

Sometimes I go for a walk
listening to the great pebble-polisher
dragging the poems off the earth
hurling them forward and back
the tug-of-war between the moon and the beach.

And sometimes I pick
up an odd-shaped pebble
but I never take it back to the mantelpiece.
That would be ecologically irresponsible.
Instead I lie hearing the rumble
of unfound poems
and the artless crash of the waves
on the beach.

John Daniel isn't a Perth poet, he lives in England, but I met him in Perth where he was a guest at the WA Poetry Festival. Quite a find, I thought. I hadn't known his work at all. I invested in two of his books - Pushing 100, and Missing the Boat - which was published by Etruscan Books in 2007. Found Poem is in Missing the Boat. His work is often hilarious, always thoughtful, wistful, retro, charming, and sometimes just a bit nuts. Love it!

If you want to read the other Tuesday Poems click on the quill icon up on the right.

Tuesday Poem - The Woodwoman by Coral Carter

 

The woodwoman and her helpers stack sawn jarrah sleepers against the back fence. One hundred and twenty dollars for a six by four. They had no change. Our first transaction and I wasn’t feeling generous about a thirty dollar tip. So Macca and Animal sped up the lane, with malice I thought, the trailer swaying in a spray of stones and dust. Hannah, the woodwoman, stayed and talked about the ugliness of palms. Stupid trees long and naked with no shade potential. The people who planted them didn’t realise what mess makers they were. A hangover from the eighties when everyone was mad for them, but this desert town is no place for a tropical palm. She hoped it didn’t rain as the red mud was ferocious. Glued itself to boots and shoes and didn’t budge except onto any indoor surface. She reckoned her kids believed she was created to clean mud off stuff. She was in a hurry and had to go to work making pizzas for hungry bastards. The men came back from getting the change. Tried to break the land speed record down the back lane.

3.23pm.

Someone is drilling.

A kid is in trouble.

My shadow chases my pen.

Cabbage moths love dance across the sky.

Crouching clouds begin to creep.

A leaf hobbles across the pavers.

I prop the gate open.

Look at the new neat woodpile.

The sawn red ends of wood.

I photograph the wood and the stupid palms.

My cup is empty.

Incense burns low.

As I preview the photographs,

I see my reflection in the camera screen.

Wrinkled and white.

That’s me now,

I say to myself,

Get used to it.

 

I met Coral at the WA Poetry Festival and loved her work. She is a dynamic reader and the kind of gutsy person who starts up a press (Mulla Mulla) to publish poetry. But she is an all-rounder, she does lots of stuff.

 

 

"Coral Carter is attracted to doing things which begin with P, poet, photographer and publisher.

You can find her poems at www.coralcarter.blogspot.com; photographs at www.rubbishphotographer.blogspot.com and www.sky-porn.blogspot.com and publishing at www.mullamullapress.com

Coral lives in Kalgoorlie Western Australia walking daily on the country she was born in." 

Tuesday Poem - A Day In The Life by Andrew Burke

A Day In The Life

My chest clenches

and I fumble in my pocket

for the Nitrolingual spray.

I'm walking

my damaged heart and dog

through tall gums.

You can watch so much

television, you can nap

just so many hours

then you itch

to do things, simple things

like stretch your legs

and walk.

I stand under a tree

to catch its breath.

A Nitrolingual mist

is working its way

through dank slums

to open the way ahead.

Zimmy sits at my feet, tongue

hanging like

a flag at half mast.

'Come on,' I say,

'let's go.'

I had the honour of launching Andrew Burke's new book Qwerty at the Bodhi Tree cafe during the WA Poetry Festival. It was published by Mullamulla Press which is an initiative of the irrepressible Coral Carter. I made a few jokes about launching and lunching and chapbooks being cheap books but of course, as Coral adamantly asserted, she doesn't publish chapbooks, she publishes slim volumes.

http://www.mullamullapress.com/QWERTY

If you want to check out the other Tuesday Poems click on the quill icon above. 

Tuesday Poem - thin by Janet Jackson

thin

His piss in the toilet,
his siren sweat in the air:
gone, in the light.

In the sink, a glass, his lick
dried on it
somewhere.

In the open bin, on the tissues and the plastic,
two knotted condoms, 3am, 4am.
He wouldn't stay till morning, add a third.
He wouldn't sleep
beside me.

Naked in my purple bathrobe
I kneel on the vinyl beside the bin,
pick out the condoms, hold
them in my fingers, his come,
no longer white, now cloudy-clear and thin,
his sperm dying.

He was so hot.
From the drawer by the sink
I get the big scissors and, not knowing
what will happen, make a small cut
near the end of one condom. His come rushes
onto my hand, cool, amniotic,
albumen-clingy, thin, slightly
distasteful. I wouldn't lick it
now.

The kitchen is chill, silent, scentless.
I raise my skin, inhale:
clean cut grass and musk
tainted with latex.
I can't smell him, only
an abstraction.

The danger I couldn't touch
runs over my hand into the bin.

Before I can do anything
I have to wash it off me.


I've just got back home from the Perth Poetry Festival and heard so much poetry! It was very full on. I heard so much poetry and met so many poets that I will be posting poems from over the other side of Australia for a while. It is great to draw a much bigger Venn diagram. My idea of poetry includes so much more now. Going to a festival will do that for you. I am too tired now to write much more so I shall just say - First up, JANET JACKSON!

thin was published on the author's site Proximity.

Below find the link to Janet's site where you can read her poems, find out more about her, buy her books and find the dates of her gigs.

http://www.proximitypoetry.com/

Tuesday Poem - Leaving Home by Andy Kissane

Leaving Home

The oven door was permanently ajar,

hanging by its last hinge, when my mother

crossed the kitchen and planted a kiss

on my father’s bristly cheek, just below

his grey-flecked, neatly squared sideburn.

She didn’t say anything or look back

as the wire door slammed shut. Striding

calmly towards the oak tree, my mother

glanced at the clothes line spinning idly

in the breeze, smiled at the garden gnome

lounging by the pond, his fishing rod poised

above the lily pads. Free from the ache

of varicose veins, she climbed the tree.

“At last,” she said to herself, “I have managed

to get my priorities right” — and with that

the feathers sprouted from her scapula

and her dentures dropped, orphan-like,

from her lips. High now, dangerously high,

she stretched out her supple wings

until they were as flat as an ironing board.

Sensing the far-off salty air, she hesitated

for a moment, then leapt into the wind. She circled
the house once, gliding over the FOR SALE sign

in the front yard as if she might just perch

there, before rising up again. My mother

felt her heart beat with wonder at the way

the rolling air held her aloft. Her nomadic eyes

scanned the darkening north and she flew away.

http://andykissane.com/

Andy Kissane was born in Melbourne but now he lives in Sydney. This poem is from his latest book 'Out To Lunch' published by Puncher & Wattmann.  

Tuesday Poem - The Toppled Head by Les Murray

The Toppled Head

The big bald head is asleep
like Lenin on a pavement.
Tipping backwards, it starts
a great mouth-breathing snore
throttling as stormwater
loud as a hangar door
     running on rails
but his companion gently
reshapes his pillow, till his
position's once more foetal,
breathing towards his feet.
His timbre goes silent, and
the glottal dies in a gulp.


Something amusing from Les, just to keep the pot boiling.

Tuesday Poem - I Came Home With The Shopping by Jennifer Compton

I Came Home with the Shopping

And I said to him as he opened the front door -

Do you remember what day it is tomorrow?

And he said - No. What day is it?

Then I said - Do you remember who you married?

Yes - he said. Yes. I do remember her.

And then we both said – How many years is it?

Should we do something? - he said. No - I said.

Let's just do what we always do. I like doing that.

I feel quite stunned at the moment because while I was in New Zealand trying to do my Brilliant Book Tour for This City my mother dropped off the twig. Her timing was exquisite, as was her triumphant reconciliation with me in the corridor of Wellington Hospital. I never thought she would be able to find the right thing to say, but she did. So, I ended up going to her funeral in St Judes Lyall Bay the day before I was booked to fly back to Australia. St Judes was the church where Matt and I got married in 1971 on 31st July. So her timing wasn't quite consummate, because her funeral was on August 2nd. Anyway, I just went and forgot our wedding anniversary because I was in the thick of it, so tonight I am posting one of the few poems I have written for my precious husband Matthew.