Tuesday Poem: "If a Poem was an Animal"

would it listen to night music

and be fascinated by shiny things

would the noise inside its head equal the noise without,

without colouring outside its lines and blacking out

its interiors

would it give free range to a

free range idea

would it pick up something from a previous life

a phrase, a word, a concept,

a jazz syllable secret

would it carry on as though nothing had happened

would it be something concrete

or ephemeral, an in-joke

a poem within a poem about a poem...

POET'S NOTE: This poem is written as a kind of tribute to the 3rd Birthday Poem on the Hub. Prior to writing the 3rd Birthday communal poem ( ongoing as you read this at www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com), we were kicking around ideas by email about our theme, subject and approach. There were a lot of great ideas (with 30 poets it's bound to happen) and many never got used. So this is my small way of trying to snag some of my fellow Tuesday Poets' ideas from the ether and give them flesh.

I'm two days late in posting this poem, but if you hurray on over to Tuesday Poem you can still catch many of the other fabulous Tuesday poems for this week.

Tuesday Poem: "Summer Fades to Autumn in Western Australia Haiku series"

Comes the humid night,

brown-armoured and sinister

cockroaches take flight.

First cold, clear night fades

to frost, carpet of diamonds

on the wheat stubble.

Kookaburra laughs,

lizard wakes beneath rainbow,

sun on wildflowers.

Scarlet sun sinking,

heat fades, gulls’ shadows lengthen,

running with the tide.

Wonderful fellow Tuesday Poet, Janis Freegard, has success in USA:

http://marymacphoto.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/wellington-poet-published-in-us/

Let's Talk about TJ (with apologies to Lionel Shriver)

I actually find it incredulous that Americans are fiercely debating gun control with the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the Republican party defending their constitutional right to "bear arms". Maybe when disgruntled Native Americans were circling your wagons (after the whites had broken another one of countless treaties they never honoured - but that's another story) or the British Redcoats were charging your Revolutionary ranks or when Billy the Kid was about to plug you in the saloon you could offer a valid reason for bearing arms, but it is 2013 and no one needs to bear arms unless they have nefarious intent. Seriously, does anyone hunt deer with an assault rifle?

And so the disaffected individuals in American society like TJ Lane (pictured above) keep shooting innocent people. Most often these shooting victims are children or teenagers who will never live to realise their personal potential. Who knows? The discoverer of a cure for cancer could be one of these students gunned down, their lives cruelly and meaninglessly cut short.

How many parents have to be bereaved, how many sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, friends...the connections we make spread far and wide. Remember the wise, wise words of John Donne:

"Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."

See: http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/864/

Alas, it seems farcical that any civilised society could squabble over powerful anti-human weaponry while its citizens are being slaughtered by psychopaths like TJ Lane and his ilk, but in the "Land of the Free" it seems that you are free to develop a mental illness or a loner's grudge and go and slaughter innocent people who never did you any harm.

And as American society has grown more urban, technological, disparate in income and social status, and socially more isolating, the number of disaffected potential assassins has grown exponentially it would seem.

Anyone with a shred of decency and morality would recoil in disgust at what TJ Lane is quoted as saying in the article above: "The hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory" as he gave a defiant finger to the grieving family members in court.

America, now is the time to come to your senses! Gun control is really gun out-of-control in the Home of the Brave and the terminally terrified.

If you haven't read We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, you should. In fact, every politician in the USA should be made to read it before they debate gun control.

World Poetry Day - "The Waiting"

Free of weekdays’ jolting jangle, the reader sleeps late.

The poet wakes early, anticipation snapping like a trap.

Dew stowaways ride the reader’s slippers as he retrieves his newspaper.

The poet, possibility-charged, brisks to the dairy.

Coffee percolates while the reader casually unwraps the plastic.

In the dairy, the poet is poised like an expectant parent.

The reader disgorges the inserts and swoops on the cartoons.

The poet opens the section to look for the birthmark.

Breakfast arrayed, the reader opens the broadsheet with a satisfied crackle.

Smudged with print placenta, the poet witnesses another’s ink born.

The reader chews the poem with her bacon, spitting out the rind.

The poet’s labour continues for another week.

POET'S NOTE: Today, Thursday March 21, is the UN-designated World Poetry Day. I thought this poem about the poet/reader dichotomy seemed appropriate. We live in hope of showing off our "babies" to an adoring public, but we have to bow down to literature's midwife, the editor. Just as long as that "midwife" doesn't make us drive to the hospital with our frightened mother when we can't detect a heartbeat.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/8441128/Midwife-left-labouring-woman-unsupported