Could you squeeze her
into a haiku? No, that would not do.
Her life was too sprawly.
It simply wouldn’t fit.
Something larger, more inclusive.
Perhaps a biopic.
Month: September 2018
Cauldron of Creation
I don’t know whether you noticed but when I write a poem I slam it down on the page still white –hot from the cauldron of creation. Only when it cools do I see its cracks and imperfections. This may take minutes, more often hours, sometimes days. One poem took me nine years to write. There’s still a few I’m working on from twenty years back.
Those of you who see the still molten post will be surprised when you see the reworked version solidifying into its present state. Yes, you should edit. The trick is not to edit out the primal energy which birthed the poem.
I Can’t be Buggered
I could go for a walk but I can’t be buggered.
I could check my Facebook status but I can’t be buggered.
I could cut back the bush near the letter box so the postie can chuff past more easily on his motor scooter.
But I can’t be buggered.
I could put more effort in getting my next manuscript together — the editor is interested — but I can’t be buggered doing that either.
I almost can’t be buggered writing this poem about not being buggered.
Would rather curl up in the sun out the back with a good crime novel and lose myself in the plot.
to Stand Out
I was reading about Miss Jean Brodie
About her being in her prime
her ‘owning’ the stage
Of the classroom
With the forty girls sitting in rows
Looking and listening
& I thought
How much blogging is like this
How each of us
Performs on the platform of the page
Seeking to impress
to stand out
To make our ‘mark’ upon
The rows and rows of readers
& how one day
Perhaps
A fellow blogger
Will remember our performances
And memorialize us
As Muriel Spark did Miss Kay
Sexual Predator
“No rest for the innocent”, she sighs —
As she looks out the back door.
“Looks like he’s raping her again.
He’s as randy as Harvey Weinstein”.
.
“For fuck’s sake, they’re blackbirds,” I say.
.”How anthropomorphic can you get?
And anyway, all things being eventual.
The act might well be consensual.”
On Reading Jilly Cooper
I do not much like her novels.
They are crammed with characters like clowns jammed in jalopies.
But I like her epilogues.
They are lean and succinct, sinewy.
A bit like you, Bev says with a chuckle.
I may not have a novel in me but I have a draw full of epilogues.
And when push comes to shove I can pump out prologues at the drop of a hat.
It’s the in-between bits I’m not good at.
I could leave them to someone else.
Jilly Cooper, for instance.
On Cannibalism
Montaigne wrote an essay on Cannibalism
But he was not thinking of the literary kind.
Lately, having been ravaged by an uncontrollable
Hunger for poems to post, I have begun feasting
On a number of my haiku, being both salubrious
& delicious, not to mention efficacious. No one else’s
poems were hurt during the making of this poem.
The proof, they say, is in the pudding, which
I will set out before you to decide whether
Such a practice should occasionally be condoned.
a Well-Known Novelist
She crams characters
Into her novels like clowns
Jammed in jalopies
The Red Pencil Sharpener
I am staring down the barrels of
the red pencil sharpener
its holes
big as drainpipes
fat as full moons
flared like the nostrils
of horses;
they are
deep wells
dark tunnels
O-shaped mouths hungry
for pencils
The red pencil sharpener sharpens
my imagination
Hold Like an Apple
Whenever I feel a poem ‘coming on’
The images flickering before me like dragonflies
In sunlight, the sentences skittering off
In the distance, I feel like Cezanne bawling out
Vollard who kept falling asleep during a pose,
“Wretch! Stay still! You’re ruining everything.
You must hold your pose like an apple.”
John Malone 