The Poems I Have Not Written.
I am outside late at night
writing poems
about the poems
I have not written
the ones I’ve shied away from
because of embarrassment
or timidity
or , worst of all, for fear
that I might offend
and find
somewhat alarmingly
that the poems I have not written
Far outnumber those I have
I put up a post the other minute that I knew might offend people but I wanted to honour the veracity of the experience. Would it be more acceptable if the man was the one shouting, and he was the bear of the title rather than his female partner? She did unleash a scatological attack upon the poor guy. What he had done was unclear; more likely it was what he hadn’t done. The title of the piece was unavoidable, though might have been more acceptable were it the man hurling abuse.
It was what happened. Security was called. I overheard the remark, ‘woman screaming in the mall’. It was quite an event. It stopped everyone in their tracks. I could bend over backwards to sugar-coat the experience or ignore it but I’m a writer. How could I not respond to it?
I don’t like the way the branches slouch,
my grandfather would have said.
It shows a lack of moral fibre.
Grandfather did not approve of droop
though I think he could have cut the branches
some slack.
The best people slouch at times.
Oscar Wilde certainly did though he was no slouch.
And Tilda Swinton and Anne Hathaway were spotted
slouching at the Golden Globes.
I like the way Fridays slouch towards the weekend.
Poems should slouch a little too.
They should not appear cinched and pained
as if wearing a tight pair of underpants.
pic courtesy of Wikipedia
.
courtesy of Unsplash,com by ecemwashere
There’s an ad on some Word Press posts saying,
‘Don’t Cover up Your Dark Spots’ and I thought,
Whoa, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
Keep our sins and prejudices in the attic,
not hang them out like dirty linen in public,
to hide our inner trolls, I know what the ad means.
I’m not stupid. Just got carried away by the metaphor.
And anyway I almost put up a post yesterday
Revealing a darker, nasty side of me but my therapist
Urged me not to put it up, that there are dark spots,
she said, that are best concealed.
When I get burned
by love
spurned
like an old glove
ghosted
I want to be
a pachyderm
an elephant
or hippo
thick-skinned
numb
but for an artist of any kind that’s
recklessly dumb.
But is it poetry, John?
You mean, is it like Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’
you know the one, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’
or ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?
Probably not.
Well, How about Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost?
Come on, we’re talking 2020 here.
Then what?
A little bit of Billy Collins, I say, and Billy Connelly,
a sort of mad mix, the demotic and demonic.
We let our dirty laundry hang out. moon the pious,
but always in an Aussie accent. Your country first.
Does it have to rhyme? you ask. Probably not.
It’s not like Aussie Rules. There are no rules.
Though it’s a game anyone can play.
Just let it rattle off the tongue, roll off the mind,
Ignore the referees.
Have fun.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it
But I was just a kid
Stuck inside a senior’s body
And so I did.
I thought it showed a little wit
But it was way off grid
A sort of Heathcliff on the moors
A fugitive from my Id.
I should have kept a lid on it
Would have been better if I did
But not everything condescends
To sit sedately in the Id.
When I started out on my post on Pachelbel he was, in spite of being dead a few hundred years, in pretty good nick. Now it has come to my attention that he is not well. Worse, he has undergone a frightful transformation. ‘Transmogrified’ is the word.
Literal minded, know nothing, bossy auto-correct is the villain.
Whenever I wrote ‘Pachelbel,’ auto-correct fiercely underlined it with red, saying, No, No, that is not a word.[it is doing it now]. Then what word am I after? I asked. The word you are after it asserted was — wait for it! — ‘Bellyache’. What? Are you mad? I said. How do you get ‘Bellyache’ out of ‘Pachelbel’? Auto-correct became belligerent and I’m sad to report we came to fisticuffs. Finally bruised and black-eyed I over-rode auto-correct. There was no way soothing Pachelbel would become painful Bellyache! Afterwards though I did have a good belly-laugh over it.
Auto-correct is no longer speaking to me.
Have you had similar problems with auto-correct?
There’s an ad on some Word Press posts saying,
‘Don’t Cover Up Your Dark Spots’ and I thought,
Whoa, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
Keep our sins and prejudices in the attic,
not flaunt them, like dirty washing ; to hide
our inner trolls. I know what the ad means. I’m not stupid.
I just got carried away by the metaphor, that’s all.
And anyway I almost put up a post yesterday
Revealing a darker, nasty side of me but my therapist
Urged me not to put it up, that there are dark spots,
She said, that are best concealed.
John Malone 