Tweet Prose-Poems, August 2008

Dreaming of Colorado, where a friend is creating a temple. – 2/7/08

Last night's frost sank into my dreams. I woke up with a memory of whimpering from the cold, or did I dream it? Even the cats looked sad. - 15/8/08

Staying up far too late, chasing poems through the dark. Tonight they are elusive, glimpsed only. I'm wishing for red wine and chocolates. – 18/8/08

Desert man, u write v th sea. What wd u know? At last, aftr 2 lovg yrs, I find myslf irritated. Its end v wintr here. Stick yr perfct haiku. - 27/8/08

Listeng 2 classical music (Beethoven & stuff) w/ gr8 enjoymt. This never happens. Now I KNOW I must somehow have grown old. Or at least up. – 31/8/09

A Rant Poem

(Last Wednesday's challenge from Poetic Asides. Not sure this qualifies as a rant exactly, but it's all I've got.)

Dobbing in Hubby: senryu sequence

Elbow in the back.
Not my favourite waking.
Accident, he says.

New water bottle
dribbles all over his face.
He opened it wrong.

How can I tell him,
"In age, slowness is wisdom.
Do things mindfully!" ?

"Oh, poop to you too,"
he says when I read him this.
But he's laughing hard.

I rescue his plate
parked on the bed and tilting,
just before milk spills.

C***

It’s just like one of those weeds
that swallows insects.
And it’s hungry! It seeks to feed.
I’ll swear it reaches out with its big side-flaps
and stretches and sucks —
you can hear the air retreat
in front of its jet funnel,
its ruching of in-drawn petals.
It puckers to an arch kiss,
pouts, plops like a fish,
flops to a loose pocket.
It gapes, it salivates, it wants your juices.
You tickle its hairy leaves and it gasps —
you are so pretty.
You are a winged thing,
and here is this coarse slobberer —
stop, take pity!
Only stroke it. Watch how it widens.
Oh yes — it’s sticky! It grasps, fastens,
clamps: magnet.
And the fierce little eye in the middle
goes red, goes wild, throbs blindly, sizzles.

Bites, tightens till you shrivel.


© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1974
from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985
First published (earlier version) Compass

The title – in case you haven't figured it out already – is a four-letter word meaning female genitalia. I don't usually censor it, but as this is a public space and I don't want Google removing my blog....

First written in 1974 and bravely published by Chris Mansell in the now-defunct literary magazine Compass, this was a famous poem in Australia for a while – and in some quarters infamous. It was universally referred to, both by those who loved it and those who hated it, as "THAT poem". Many people begged me to change the title to something more discreet or euphemistic, but I have always been convinced that this title is absolutely right POETICALLY.

I do believe it was the first "literary" piece of its kind, at least in this part of the world, where it inspired others to poems on the same and similar subjects. It appears on my "Texas Poetry Trip" blog, but I decided it was high time to post it here as well. I chose Melanie's wonderful orchid pic to use, with her permission, as my "Passionate Crone" icon largely because it struck me as a perfect illustration for this poem!

Dream Poem

(Wednesday prompt from Poetic Asides.)

Frosty night seeping
into my dreams.
Waking and freezing
I remember only
whimpering from cold
afraid and alone,
was that real?

Yet Another Poetry Challenge!

This was a challenge I found on Lori Williams's blog on MySpace, where she and others have posted some wonderful interpretations; do go have a look. The challenge was to write a poem incorporating the words:

NEIGHBOR
DYNAMISM
FREE-FOR-ALL
INDIO
LUSTER
BURN
JUICES
INFILTRATE
SCROTUM
MOTH

(Only in my case with Aussie spelling.)

I didn't know what Indio meant, but thought it would be fun to write the poem before finding out. It would have been a different poem had I known it is both a place in California where various festivals happen, and the professional name of Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Peterson. But I didn't know and this is the poem that happened:


Journey From Indio

"Indio, what's that?" she said,
"A place?" He cocked one eyebrow,
scratching his scrotum idly.
"I've got better things
to think about," he said.

She gave him a long look
from under her lashes.
"You know," she said,
"You lack a certain …
dynamism." She smirked.
He gave a low growl.
"Ha! I can still get
your juices flowing."

He let his cigarette burn down
in the ashtray, unnoticed
except by a tiny moth
which immolated itself
on the last flare of red
before the glow faded.

He faced down her stare
and moved in, for what
the neighbour, unable
to infiltrate the play
of their surface hostilities,
liked to describe as
"next-door having another
free-for-all," hearing
in the shrieks and thumps
something quite other
than what was happening.

They liked that little edge
of aggression, you see,
to get them started.
It moistened their lips,
made their eyes shine,
added to each, for each,
a dangerous, exciting lustre.

15/8/08

Tanka

Two kookaburras
on my TV arial
laughing their heads off.
A black bat, wide-winged, swoops low.
They fly to the nearest tree.


(The Wednesday prompt this week was Marriage. This was not written in response to it but simply in response to the events described. Then I realised, these protagonists were definitely a couple!)

Cento Australiana

Wednesday challenge (many days late this week). A cento is a poem made up of lines by other poets.

I love a sunburnt country.
On her dark breast we spring like points of light,
morning’s first colour, curving to day’s end

the children screaming at the water’s edge with seagulls,
hearing the birds’ ancestral incantations
among the arid relics of old tide patterns.

Sometimes when summer is over the land
the harbour breaks up in thunders of sunlight
and a steep blue sky

as I feel the weight of light begin to bleach my feet
where seagulls rode upon the foam
and the hawk in the high sky hung.

January heat. Raw saplings stand like cattle
at high voltage summer noon.
Flies multiply in the heat.

The scrub is thick in the gully
with graceful curves of dried up streams,
lantana green smell on your hands.

Look at the sky! It’s ‘trying’ to rain;
this desert, blinding, unnamed
leaving us undefended as the stars.

Red rock forms sheltering walls
by a ring of worn river stones,
lightning-gutted remnants.

Walk into the memory of rain
the dream of grass
the glint of fronds and blades in the light

this hushed sun-haze morning,
turning over wet leaves with my walking stick;
green leaves – a patch of world along a river.

Because a little vagrant wind veered south from China Sea
slow drops of rain began to fall; the wind
suspended in the amber sky.

The moon had rippled past the hotel glass
and suddenly there was a presence.
Sniff the bougainvillea and you’re in the south pacific again the purple islands.

The East wind sucks itself along sea shelves
it blows all summer long like a bellows
great murmur of rain spreading over suburbs and into the hills.

At night, in each other’s arms, we touch the sun . . .
watching the rocks bleed lichen onto the snow.
I am rested and walk away, into the rolling dunes.


Australian poets (in above order):
Dorothea Mackellar
Judith Wright
Joyce Lee
Rosemary Dobson
Gwen Harwood
Bev Roberts
Bruce Dawe
Vincent Buckley
Rod Moran
Jennifer Rankin
Kristin Henry
Dorothy Hewett
Les Murray
Dorothy Porter
Tony Page
Barbara Giles
Michael Leunig
Chris Mansell
Susan Hampton
Barrett Reid
Shelton Lea
Wendy Poussard
Mal Morgan
Gary Catalano
Katherine Gallagher
Jennie Fraine
Roland Robinson
Philip Martin
Liz Hall-Downs
John Shaw Neilson
C.J. Dennis
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
David Campbell
Pi O
John Kinsella
Michael Dransfield
Maie Casey
Bridget Porter Oldale
Judith Rodriguez
David Malouf
Doris Leadbetter
Jenny Boult (aka M.M. Bliss)