The Mind an Astrolabe

After Dransfield

The night, cool green,

tastes of air.

The sea moves beneath;

waves wind and tide coordinate.

Sniff the bougainvillea:

the South Pacific, 

the purple islands.

A cloud ... a beach....

Something about wine – 

and already the stones 

of court and temple

different, mourning.

At dVerse Poetics – Covers we are asked to do a 'cover' of someone else's poem, using their words but in some way making them one's own. I wanted to pay tribute to Michael Dransfield, but it was hard – his poems are all so perfect just as they are. In the end I decided on an erasure poem taken from my favourite, 'Patricia's Raga', using part of its subtitle as my title. (And I slightly changed the last word.) It still feels rather sacrilegious! But I hope it leads you to the hauntingly beautiful original.

Out Early with Dragon

We walked through before,

needed NOW.

There was dancing.

We smiled bitter sugar.

A long time

in the already ...

couldn’t stay always.

Great pangs ripped me.

I don’t give tempting;

I discover will.

An experiment with erasure, using today's 'morning pages' (which, in full, were fairly banal). 
I have tried to suggest meaning where actually there is none.  

Coral Loss

More than one-third of coral reefs 

died in the huge bleaching.

We were all caught by surprise.

The previous monster 

lifted background temperatures.

We were all caught by surprise.

Warm seas. Corals expel

tiny photosynthetic algae,

turn white and die.

We were all 
caught by surprise.

Future El Ninos push beyond 
thresholds – including 

the Great Barrier Reef 

and Kakadu.

Banks consider climate.

We were all caught
by surprise.

Run Softly, My Song

Run softly, my song,

sweet song, by the waters.

I hear the waters chuckle.

Summer nights are friends.

Wind and wet nights

are departed unheard.

Summer crosses fingers of leaf.

I hear the chuckle spread.

At my back, friends

have sat down by the waters,

loitering till I end my song.

The river runs softly, sweet silk.

Written for Day 15 of Poetry Month at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.  We were asked to use a complex method of poetry generation to turn a section of Eliot's The Waste Land into something more upbeat. As I couldn't access the required site on my computer, I treated a section of The Waste Land as an erasure poem, then jumbled the words around some more. I actually had two attempts and ended up combining them into one piece, hence the repetitions. The section I used was:

  The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;

Departed, have left no addresses.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

no landmark

early or late

this face

drifts on the river

the mist closes

in quietness 

a dark business

water weeds stand

like flotsam tangled

you are alone

the dark place is not safe

the way of the dead

cannot be tamed

the floating sun trails

still rust-coloured

fronds ripple a black pool

shadowy banks

the wild part used to be

alive an animal

the black spine

like question marks

this face

its sacrifice ...

peace

whatever that means


An erasure poem remixed from an early draft of an old poem of mine, Without a Signpost, which never quite worked, interwoven with the first chapter of Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate. It's an experiment; please tell me if it works for you (and also if it doesn't).

Submitted for The Tuesday Platform (24/2/15) at imaginary garden with real toads

Wet Mornings

Sat outside

first thing in the morning

to begin his dying

... heavy-lidded

shift in chair with pain

slip into semi-sleep ...

Random-seeming

dreamlike thoughts

faded out of full memory.

I look back.

All happened.
Meanwhile rain.

Submitted for dVerse Meeting the Bar: Breaking and Entering. We are asked to take a form and 'break' it in some way to make it our own. Synchronicity: I saw this prompt just after writing the above — which is a blackout poem done differently. Instead of taking a text and blacking out / erasing all except the words I wanted to use, I opened a document on my computer (an entry from my private journal) and lifted only the words I wanted on to a new document — where I proceeded to delete a few more before arranging into verses (still in order of writing) and re-punctuating (or for the most part unpunctuating). I did it just because I like playing around with erasures at present. I didn't have a conscious idea of anything I wanted to say, and what emerged was nothing like the message of the journal entry. Also it's not exactly factual, but on an emotional level it's probably very truthful. There — that's a long explanation for a short poem!

tenWords Extracted

Gave her heart

only for a few seconds.

More than enough.

******

Buying silk,

an artist expressed

a desire to know velvets.

******

In the garden

very quiet

dream-life taking hold —

remember?

******

Pure frosty mornings:

rare occasions
when there is no wind.

The tenWords form is an invention of Brian Miller's. At dVerse today we are asked to try some. I extracted the above from pages of the novel The Maker of Heavenly Trousers by Daniel Varé; so they are also, in a sense, found poems, and — because some of the words are far apart — they are similar to erasure poems too.

Of Sawdust and Screens

I hated cartoons.

(No TV:

Saturday matinees.)

Everyone laughed  

when the cat fell

over the cliff,

or the roadrunner

squashed the coyote

under a weight.

I cried: strange child,

no sense of humour.

The same with

those circuses

that came around —

shivering through

animal acts

in the sawdust rings

of my childhood.

Tough looking men

cracked sudden whips

that made me jump

like those reluctant beasts.

Cirque du Soleil, now,

that’s rmagic.

In my own living room

the clowns dance; they are

jugglers, acrobats,

flyers. Their bodies

writhe and slide, twisting

serpents of light.

Their voices of silver

soar and swing.

A tightrope cyclist

jumps a man, lands

precisely. Flames leap up

and swirl. The arena

is strafed by stars.

22/3/06 – 13/1/15

Another oldie finally improved by erasure.

Scene One

Interior forest: morning.

Tim is eight.

Walking through the forest

he falls, cries out.

A tiny fairy alights.

They talk in a new way

instantly.

She is in his garden.

The dVerse prompt at present is to do a 'blackout' poem. This is my second attempt, using the first section of a practice pitch my late husband, Andrew E Wade, did for his children's novel Jorell, when he was in a screen writers' group. (Jorell was already published as a book but never became a movie.) Below is the original, with and without blackouts:

Interior Forest: morning

Tim Simons is eight years old. Since he was five he has been obsessed with the ambition of seeing a fairy.

On this particular morning Tim is walking through the forest and fails to see a hole in the path. His foot gets caught in it. He falls, twisting his ankle, and cries out in pain.

A tiny fairy, curious about the noise this human is making, alights on a mushroom near his foot.  Tim looks up and is startled by the sight of her. He leans closer.

“Far out!” he exclaims, “Are you real?”

“Yes, b-but you’re not supposed to…humans can’t see fairies.”

They continue to talk but in a new way – by exchanging thoughts.

Now Tim asks Jorell if he can see her again. “Just call me,” she says, “and I’ll come.”

But Tim doesn’t. Jorell wonders where he is, and with her power to be anywhere instantly she is in his garden. Tim is seated with his head in his hands and a grey cloud swirling around his head.

“Tim!” she says loudly. Tim takes no notice. Jorell flies above him and drops a cloud of fairy dust. Tim springs to life, sees Jorell and tells her to go away.  He’s angry. He’d asked his dad about fairies and his dad says fairies are in books not real life.

JORELL

Interior Forest: morning

Tim Simons is eight years old. Since he was five he has been obsessed with the ambition of seeing a fairy.

On this particular morning Tim is walking through the forest and fails to see a hole in the path. His foot gets caught in it. He falls, twisting his ankle, and cries out in pain.

A tiny fairy, curious about the noise this human is making, alights on a mushroom near his foot.  Tim looks up and is startled by the sight of her. He leans closer.

“Far out!” he exclaims, “Are you real?”

“Yes, b-but you’re not supposed to…humans can’t see fairies.”

They continue to talk but in a new way – by exchanging thoughts.

Now Tim asks Jorell if he can see her again. “Just call me,” she says, “and I’ll come.”

But Tim doesn’t. Jorell wonders where he is, and with her power to be anywhere instantly she is in his garden. Tim is seated with his head in his hands and a grey cloud swirling around his head.

“Tim!” she says loudly. Tim takes no notice. Jorell flies above him and drops a cloud of fairy dust. Tim springs to life, sees Jorell and tells her to go away.  He’s angry. He’d asked his dad about fairies and his dad says fairies are in books not real life.

 Jorell suggests Tim start a garden and all the fairies will help. Tim asks his dad if he can start a veggie garden and gets the ok.

Storm Watching (blackout poem)

Storm Watching

Cool rain

lazy thunder.

Back verandah calm,

the brave uneasy.

Spraying. Pelting.

I am tender.

The front draping, the door

near me. Safety.

Not an electricity blackout, but a response to the latest dVerse prompt. I promised myself that this year I would prefer revisions to prompts, but this prompt gives me a method of revising! I decided to use it on one of my own recent poems which I thought a bit lack-lustre. The original is here.  And the blackout is below. (Mind you, I still don't like the poem, lol. Sometimes they are beyond saving. This was one way to find that out.)

I sit outside in the cool,

in the rain and lazy thunder,

under the wide overhang

of the back verandah.

My companion stretches and shifts

on his blanket, attempting calm.

But his sister was the brave cat.

Without her, he's uneasy.

So we come inside from thunder

and spraying, pelting rain.

I like all that – but he, I guess, has no need

to prove himself to me. He knows

I am very tender of him, I won't

challenge or scorn or compete.

Instead I usher him in, get him settled,

Then I find me a spot on the front verandah.

I see him through the flywire

draping himself inside the door,

looking out -- near me

in safety. We are both content.

27/11/14

More About the Dead Woman

(‘Less is more’)

The dead woman
is watching.

She wants to hang on.

The dead woman
taking long sniffs

lets the heat burst.

The dead woman
sits

without turning.

She dreams
that the rain

is nothing.



Threads:
I wanted to try an erasure poem.
I had discovered that my 'Dead Woman' poem was incomplete, as the form is supposed to include a second piece: 'More About ...'  (So this is the companion piece to the first one.)
I did the erasure on my own original Dead Woman poem, with the idea of saying something new (more) while paring it right down (less).