Tuesday Poem: Dear Reader

Dear reader

I am afraid

That the act of writing a poem

Might force me to take a position

Or make a confession

Or both

I know that I should avoid

Adopting a stance

I may regret later

In a world transformed

By the scurrilous germination

Of early spring

Or some new fashion

Oh reader

How I wish

We could simply go there together

Without all this language and paper

And geographical space

Between us

Forget poetry altogether

And take our clothes off

I don’t want to write a poem

To avoid having to make a decision

There is a time for writing a poem

And a time for mowing the lawn

I don’t want to write a petition

Or to pamphleteer on the pavement

Like one of those earnest, hard-working

Well-intentioned people

That nobody likes

No unnecessary paperwork, please!

Dearest reader

I must confess

I am afraid

To be here in my poem

At all

All I have to offer

Are some minor details of August:

Rain

The huddled masses in retreat

Songbirds celebrating the concrete-coloured sky

Cameron Birnie

(Another poem by my son - thanks cam.)

Tuesday Poem

Irish Pipes in the Forrester Gallery

The ceiling is libidinous
It curls and swells
and holds
lightly to decorum

The floor is knotty
But sound and square
It promises
to keep behaving

49 chairs are in position
They were prised open
An hour ago
They are not comfortable

Under a man’s arm
A bag is filling up with air
Pipes hang over his knee
Skinny and awkward

His fingers cradle a hollow bone
The bellow is breathing
Dust molecules, huddled in corners
Turn to face the music

The chairs roll onto tiptoe

The ceiling cups her breast

The floor forgets his promise.

Pam Morrison

Tuesday Poem

Regrets: I’ve had a few

Imagine saying it over again,
This time against a backdrop of lush orchestration,
A swollen reservoir of strings
And the twittering of flutes overhead.

Imagine saying it over again,
This time with an open hand.
I realize the trapdoor is about to open beneath me
When the sky begins to resonate with canned laughter.

Imagine saying it over again.
I could have just told her the true things,
Aubergine clocks and double-breasted werewolf suits and so forth,
All the while gnawing a dinosaur bone,

And still she would have dispatched me
With those baffled refugee eyes.


Cameron Morrison Birnie