Tuesday Poem: Till life do us part

Till life do us part

I

A warbling note, suspended in air,

Gravity its prepaid fare.

Veins expanded, twinned cells green,

Blue lids blink blind at nature's scene.

The verse is written (now) and seems

Emboldened by the spotlight's beams,

Above reproach, beyond reversal,

Ordained, as death is, universal.

And what must come is washed in brine,

Mottled by discordant time.

Vulgar, vital insatiety -

A broad riposte to mute sobriety.

II

Harmonics, incidentals - friends

will dream of meeting lovers' ends.

Pallid, exposed and gone to seed,

We come to rest a breakneck speed.

With poems, gingerly, we entreat,

Then with petitions, then receipts.

Our dream selves stand aloof, aloft,

Smiles duplicitous, organs soft.

Denying endgame, we begin.

I kiss the scar across your wing,

Forgetting already what we have begun,

Drawing our strength from the same guileless sun.

Cameron Birnie

(Another from my son Cam.)

9 sleeps

ta ta te ta ta te ta ta in august (high as kite on the ...) i'm not sure i ever knew all the words, but the tune's there and it just keeps slipping out when I'm not looking. I'm heading off to the other side of world. Nine sleeps to go. I think about it and I'm happy. I don't think about it and I'm still happy. My son, when six or seven years old, coined the term joy fit (as in: "i'm having one".) And now from time to time, I get attacks of same. I don't kick the blankets about with my feet, but I do other things: sink my knees a few inches (a curious one), flick my thumbs up when my hands start to rise, sing snatches of old songs, and only when I catch what I can of the words, figure what I'm feeling: very very good. The coming occasion is the wedding of my niece Susannah and her fiancee Patrick, who will marry in a tiny ancient church in the Dordogne, France. And I'm going.

Tuesday Poem: angel

she undoes her hands shows him how

tendrils of corn hair lie plaited in her palm

it’s angel hair she says in a cool

cool voice but her heart is telltale beating

her cheek slips into shadow no one looks

as her hand closes back in the fold of the other

at night when he is asleep she opens

her eyes and waits for the wing to descend

Pam M

A quote I am liking

"We may talk our whole life away, without speaking anything other than interminable repetitions that fill the empty minute, but the steps of thought which we take during the lonely work of creativity all lead us downwards, deeper into ourselves, the only direction which is not closed to us, the only direction in which we can proceed, albeit with much greater trevail, towards an outcome of truth."

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Tuesday Poem: Word has it

The opening poem at a poetry evening, held in Dunedin to celebrate poetry day last Friday, was an artful reminder of the weird stuff that goes on in people's heads at poetry readings. We - well certainly I (and she seemed to know it) - make use of such events to take a wander inside my immobilised body. I un-focus, drift in a meandery way, let the images brush me, poke me, hum gently, run me over. There are periods of time where I'm sunk deep in the cushion of my head, oblivious to the offerings. Others where I'm off and running, triggered by a turn of phrase, writing my own soon to be forgotten first line of a poem. It's gorgeous, and no-one asks me where I've been.

Then there's the odd occasion where the weird and wonderfully unexpected takes place outside of my head. The following poem was inspired by an encounter at another poetry reading here in my city.

WORD HAS IT

Word has it that she’s 70

But the woman on my left

Is bah phooey

The way she lives it

We’re starting out

So we go for topics

That sit safely

Between us

I say: this bag

Is a cow’s stomach

And I open 1,2,3,4 soft black

Openings in evidence

I am elbow deep

Foraging for glasses

She says: look

It’s like a vulva

Glee takes hold

flickers without a sound

(It is a poetry reading after all)

Our mouths ripple

My complicit arm comes out

From the dark folds

There in hand is a

Firm ripe tomato

The G spot! we splutter

There's no holding back

We are simply delicious

Decorum is undone.

PM

Re-entry and a Tuesday Poem

Hello.

I’m finding it a challenge to modulate my voice. Is this too loud … too soft…? I’m speaking again into this place after a time of absence. Life’s gone on of course, in all its hurly-burly, but part of me has been very quiet.

Research shows that the longer a person holds back from speaking in a group, the less likely they are to begin. Yep. So here I am, tumbling back into my blog, needing to start again this …logue. Suddenly wanting, really wanting, to overcome this curious sense of shyness, this inhibition that feels like it could grow big, and cause me to shut shop here at cadence.

Silence has been a theme for me for a while. I’ve had a love affair with it in recent months. Recently, I’ve been up against its other face. No longer the lush darkly folded place of presence (the fur coat route to narnia), but a place that seemed thin, reedy. I remembered a poem that I wrote a few years ago. Then too, I’d become aware that my own inner sound had altered - a sense that somehow my internal orchestra had gone quiet. It made me wonder – where did all the instruments go?

PICCOLO

A piccolo is playing in the hollow of my neck

The orchestra has vamoosed

The performance pit is empty

The piccolo is upstairs, playing on alone

The cello spat the dummy

Is sulking in the corner

Fretting on some score

The double bass has lost heart

It knows by holding still and turning to wood

It can pull off a vanishing trick

The trumpet has given up on noise

And is napping with the mute

On a bed of black velvet.

The violins are awol

Cavorting in a field

They may not be back

The piccolo is not holding its breath

PM

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.)