The Germ

A mighty creature is the germ,

Though smaller than the pachyderm.

His customary dwelling place

Is deep inside the human race.

His childish pride he often pleases

By giving people strange diseases.

Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?

You probably contain a germ.

(by none other than the inimitable Ogden Nash.)

We had a poetry night tonight. It involved copious amounts of poetry along with wine, port (sipped from port pipes!), cheese, scones, and other good things, including a healthy bunch of good people (no germs here!!).

Lethal found us an awesome deaf poem which you should totally look up. It's called Dandelions.

We had original poems, beat poems, old sonnets, beautiful things, funny things, ancient Sappho fragments and a good dose of Leunig.

Dusk in the Country

The riddle silently sees its image. It spins evening

among the motionless reeds.

There is a frailty no one notices

there, in the web of grass.

Silent cattle stare with green eyes.

They mosey in evening calm down to the water.

And the lake holds its immense spoon

up to all the mouths.

- Harry Edmund Martinson, trans. Robert Bly

OH! and I went for an awesome bike ride this arvo with some friends. The Fernleigh track from Adamstown to Belmont. If you haven't been down it you totally should. Gorgeous bush-lined ride, and no hills!!

Fridge Fragments

these were invented with one of those magnetic word kits that you make poems (and other forms of ridiculousness) from.
...created by the canaries and friends!

It is always essential chocolate day.

Sing friend
and spray purple juiceness

music
his raw chant
rain's powerful
wind over the forest

use mother's leg
as car

be a live gift

I am not the flood
wanting beauty like blood

trip
o
u
t
man

dreaming
is love true or are you drunk
weak
sweet

I have the urge to eat the girl from TV
but she would club me on the head

a vision of a frantic fiddle storm symphony

please take my ache

though thousand ships fall
let's swim by time
but stare not.

part of me is ugly with lies

one may ask by worship

whisper love
shine a light in life together
eternity

near this black void
were those who cry

sun
spring
your delirious summer peach goddess
winter

i scream at sad sausages..........

A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

-Leonard Cohen

Lover [ly]

I am a little bit in love. Maybe more than a little bit. One of the current objects of my affection is the poet Mary Oliver. So hard to choose which to share here!

Next Time

Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.

When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.

And for all, I'd know more -- the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


Black Oaks

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

poetry class still rules...

So we took our poetry class to the pub.
We drank beer (most of us)
read poems (some of us)
talked about poets (many of us)
listened to the lecturer talking about poems
and poetry
and love-hate-family
and general possibly-related-but-probably-not-really stuff.

We plan to do so again sometime
[why not every time!!?]


The Six Strings

The guitar
makes dreams weep.
The sobs of lost
souls
escape through its round
mouth.
And like the tarantula
it weaves a large star
to trap the sighs
floating in its black
wooden cistern.

- Federico Garcia Lorca

Spring song

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the boidies* is.
They say the boid is on the wing.
Ain't that absoid?
I thought the wing was on the boid.

My Grandfather always used to say this - at least, I remember him oft repeating the first two lines.. I tried to find out who it is by - apparently it's by Anonymous. There is much internetal discussion about the correct version and possible author/s.

All that to say.. Welcome spring - in all your lush greenness and spicy scents!

*boidies=birdies

Poetry class rulz ok?!

So, in "Poetry in Action", we engage in various actions or behaviours, as you might expect:

-hunting down exciting poetry, eyes and ears open, hands clawing and unclawing, teeth bared..
-reading exciting poetry
-arm-waving
-inventive pronunciation attempting
-space-staring
-listening to exciting poetry lecturer rave on.. [seat-wriggling, note-scribbling, head-scratching, eye-blinking etc]

(His other joblife is at the fish market. He loves fish. And fishing. He also loves poetry - any kind. He loves reading and writing it way more than writing his thesis - which is sad for his poor neglected thesis, but not for everyone else!)

One time we even got to write some. Some was about a tree.

Mountain Ash

tiny spark spears forth
from earth
pillars stripped back
in old sky.

crisp of sheen the
shining neck
towers gently,
beckons.

by unraked sea
in time of triumph
whisper softly
one leaf I stole.

and caught by curves
of echoed cliffs
trunk hallows fragments
of lost wind.

Poetry night the First

in Just

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's spring
and the goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

ee cummings

A few friends, a many poems read performed and mused upon.. satiated with scones and the infinitely varied flavours of the world through wordy encounters..

and a little last to end with a laugh:

I eat my peas with honey,
I've done it all my life.
It makes them taste quite funny
But it keeps them on the knife!

anonymous