E is for embryo

 I am doing this one early as I'm leaving for work early tomorrow.

(an organism in the earlier stages of its development,
as an animal still in its mother's body)

Whenever she hurts herself
no matter where she hurts
I get spikes of pain in my
stomach and legs. She is
eighteen now, no longer
the passenger of my bole
my trunk and I, the inmate
of your soul, a hunk, a solid
rock you hurtle slowly in ...

She fainted, for me, the day
she first inserted earrings
after piercing. I could not
hold her, could only cry
thinly: my daughter! darling!
I am plump fruit
fold-out princess
a wondering ...

Our adulthood together fragile
not yet mature on either side
slowly we accumulate
differences, the pain acute
less frequent, more disturbing.

* lines in italics are quotes from a poem in
my collection the very new self

D is for deficient

 This poem owes much to the Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes!

(adj. 1. lacking some element or characteristic; defective
2. insufficient; inadequate)

Right now my mind is deficient.
In the face of this word
I'm a blank.

If I were to be more efficient
I'd have a mind that's like
a full tank.

I'd turn on my mind's ignition
with a smart wrist
and plenty of verve.

And without too much wasteful emission
I'd speed into every
thought-curve.

But I'm not a car, I'm a person
and plenty of faults
lie therein

So in case my defects worsen
I'll keep these ideas
herein.

C is for Close

(vb) to stop or obstruct entrances, apertures, gaps;
to refuse access to or passage across; to bring together
the parts of; join; unite
(Stock Exchange) to be worth at the end of a trading period
(adj) shut; shut tight; not open; enclosed; confined, narrow;
lacking fresh or freely circulating air; practising secrecy, 
reticent; near, together in space, time or relation; not deviating 
from a model or original
(n) the end or conclusion; a cul-de-sac

Prelude: "All these earthquakes,
disasters: is it really end days?"

On Location: For some
those end days have
already come.

Whole cities staggering
like drunks, rusted war machines
like giant chunks of sculpture
you wish it was
it isn't, it's an aftermath
these wars are biblical
in proportion, all out of
proportion. Is anyone, ever,
going to stop the action, ask:
hey guys, what are we doing
this dirty work for?

Other Questions:
How many people occupy
The Underground?
How many are buried alive?
If you teach a six-year-old
to shoot and hate, is it
your intention he kill
his mother, his humanity?

"As a woman I have no country."
Virginia Woolf

There's no country where
home is holy, unquestioned, as is prison
the sight of a woman sickens
guns are turned casually like a camera
your shoes can make too much noise
and you are beaten
the men are highly-strung, hysterical,
cold, closed, wild and crazed
there are no doctors on the streets
to cure them

Women
have no country
no place
no home
It's worse than that

Women are traded
across borders
as commodity
It's worse than that

Women don't exist
because girls
are aborted
It's worse than that

Women have no place
when what you say
must be whispered underground
you wear clothes to hide identity
in the streets where the dead lie
and your throat is closed
against terror's blade.

After the Event
A lovely large darkness.
Driving home one hundred
kilometres, fast, a woman
alone. Driving between
walls of healthy trees, tall
and glorious, painted
on the black sky. Beyond,
pastures I know to be green
by day. I face the night
without fear

remember Wajia the refugee
returning to Kabul, hopeful
in the mini bus, and the view
we all get of pristine white
mountains, a low crumble
of clay, a desert. "But,"
she cries, "Where are the trees?
This parkland was full
of trees, beautiful flowers."

She returns to Pakistan
to the camp where young children
push over mud walls of
unoccupied houses.

I'm driving and listening
to new Polish Jewish music
modern, youthful, discordant
exuberant. The long-limbed
trees usher me home.

B is for Blubber

(1. [zool.] the fat found between the skin and muscle 
of whales and other cetaceans, from which oil is made 
2. [vb]to weep, usually noisily and with contorted face)

It's that phrase 'from which oil is made'
that most annoys. I'm sure the whale
finds better use for fat in ocean's
intolerant depths. Enabled in speeding
through a medium we can't assimilate
it's plain the idea of the oil  is all ours.
And what we've done to get it!

Russell, once 'the hellhole of the Pacific'
is unaware or refuses to allow the irony.
In Portland, the trappings attract tourists.
It's up to Greenpeace to chase the chasers
while we're content to admire the past
as 'exploits' 'heroic effort' 'incredible
brutality' the latter meaning man to man.

I blubber standing where the fat
was rendered, hand on harpoons
larger and more dangerous than life.
In the face of such incredible brutality
- man to whale - I hear myself
mourn with squeaks and moans,
bubbles of grief, spouting heavenward.

2 May 2010

A is for Aggregate

(formed by the conjunction or collection of particulars 
into a whole mass or sum; any hard material added 
to cement to make concrete; to bring together, 
collect into one sum, mass or body)

So far the pieces don't match.
Diary entries leave out the dramas.
Letters carefully tailor those same
life-altering events. There is often
much ado about nothing. All
we need is love.
Most of the poems are angry.

The drawings are of another world
even the sketches of frangipani trees,
women with babies on backs.
They're all about women, they are
not about women, the head-shrinks
would say they're about me.
I study them now for hints.

They clearly demanded intense
pressure on the coloured pencils
- the Derwents - the pressure
of living and working in foreign
community, needing a new
language. I put the humour
into brief stories, short fiction.

I laid out the beauty in acid-free
photo albums from Creative Memories.
All memory being creative, I search
and research what's gone,  the sum
of parts assembled, the hard stuff
added to delete, repair, review
make whole a phase of life anew.

One Challenge Ends, Another Begins

I can't imagine going a day without writing something poetic, so I'm going to set up the prompts for May like this: each day, I find a word at random in my Budget Macquarie Dictionary under a different letter of the alphabet and use that word as a starting point. I will start with A and my word is "aggregate" and also today will do B - the word is "blubber". I notice immediately that I may not like the words I'm given, but that's always been the challenge for us on-the-spotters/off-the-cuffers :-)  Join me if you wish; otherwise, just enjoy.

Off the Cuff 30: Meditations on Letting Go & Gratitude

APAD 30    prompt: "letting go"

Meditations on Letting Go


1.
Low weak sun insists
we let go of summer
let winter squeeze through
curtain gaps.

2.
Last night, driving,
my father's hands reaching
through time's curtain; I still
regret not being there
to hold them.

3.
And where is my daughter
going? Come back, my hands
implore, stay young, stay
home, stay smiling.
She massages my head
and hands. She smiles.
And yet, she is going.

4.
My worst nightmare
involved being on high dry land

hundreds of feet above ground
all around me the drop:

I would stop the fall through
sheer will. Why not let go?

5.
Why not let go?
Regret makes you
slow. To be fast
don't fasten, hasten
just let go
of the past.
Good advice to self
so often shelved.

6.
My mother tells me
the newspaper reports
at least one hundred and seventy
people, mostly women, of course
aged over the century are
alive in our state, Victoria.
My mother, almost eighty-four
aims to reach the dizzy heights
not let go of life, be
one of the select
to reach her centenary, and like
Agave americana, bloom again.

7,
Ferns and herbs renew.
Birth, maturity, death
for the rest of us.


Gratitude

you, plump
artefact of desire
you over-ripe melon
you soft sac:
so happy I didn't
lose you to
surgeon's cuts
happy to feel you
floppy survivor
feel your painful
reminders yet
feel the lack of
weight, absence
which makes my heart
grow fonder
feel free to take you
to bed, free
of the fear
breast
cancer bred.

 NaPoWriMo  30