Dambo

Dambo.

I want to be a gangly recycle artist like Dambo,

the builder of wooden trolls.

Instead of discarded furniture, I use discarded poems,

snippets I’ve copied down in my commonplace books,

bits and pieces on suffering coz I know what’s that like now.

All the best poems have been written, Daz says.

He’s the one who wrote ‘The Parable of the Albino Pigeon’

so I listen.

“About suffering they were never wrong the Old Masters’,

says Auden, and I added:

while someone is bringing in the bins, watching ‘Bullet Train’

on Binge, or cleaning the car of dogs’ fur like my neighbour

who asks, Hey Bro, how’s it hanging? Do I even want to answer that?

‘This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears’

says Hopkins in ‘Felix Randall’

who taught me empathy;

and those lines from Mary Oliver;

‘Someone I once loved

gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this too was a gift’.

You can’t better that, Daz would say.

So is cancer a gift?

Anyhow I want to build my wooden trolls of poems

coz like Daz says, the best poems have all been written.

pic courtesy of pinterest

Who Has Written These Poems?

Who has written these poems ?

I say

as I browse through the pages

of this commonplace book.

I have neglected to name their authors.

There’s one about

Tennessee Fainting Goats

which calls to mind

my ‘Cows in a Paddock’ ;

another about women in a junkshop staring through a window

at the rain

‘where a taxi as yellow as a forsythia

is turning a corner’,

and a snippet about snow over Xmas and New Year

hanging around long after

‘like the drunk at the bar

who needs to go home’

Hmmmm.

Could any of these be mine?

But the one about the fortune cookie is Ed’s.

It’s got his mark all over it.

But the others? I just don’t know.

Could I be that good?

I don’t think so.

Why Do You Do it?

Why do you do it? she asked.

Why do you copy other people’s poems and passages into your notebooks?

Why don’t you write your own stuff?

But I do, I answered. You know I do.

Then why this?

How do you explain the notion of a commonplace book to a non-writer?

For inspiration, I say, For enjoyment, the way people flicker through old photo albums

or their smart phone galleries.

But it wasn’t quite like that.

It was modeling too,

getting the feel for writing at the top of its game, to remind you how it’s done,

for quotes like this: ‘I don’t believe in writer’s block … plumbers don’t get plumber’s block,

doctors don’t get doctor’s block.

Why should writers be any different and then expect sympathy for it?’

[ Philip Pullman]

But she didn’t get it.

You’ve got heaps of these notebooks in your cupboard, she said. What is wrong with you?

Have you no faith in yourself?

There was no point in arguing.

But when she came upon me ‘copying’ I would flinch as if caught in some shameful act.