summer has come late

walking on soft grass
this day is so much sun
I can’t help imagining your hand holding mine
I’ve lost my granny and I have to find her
but the familiar beauty is a vague boredom
and I imagine your fingers
and I scramble on some oyster rocks
and see the sandbars gently lapping
and over a green hill I find my granny and sit and look at boats
but this is not the age of sail
no, granny, surely it is not
and now she is talking about family with that all-encompassing view
the sweep of everyone’s life
but I am just thinking about ours
and the sandbars are dreamily floating up to the surface

wizzy

Mourning a person is not quite like
A building. A war.
softer and and a slippery importance
or perhaps insignificance
Neveretheless we will write a eulogy.
The council would like to regret
1. the way, in the middle of
an essay, bike ride, painting of a poster for the gay fair day
break into song, viz
ooh, we’re halfway there
ooh living on a prayer
take my hand, we’ll make it I swear
– nevertheless we did not make it
and go to parties alone seeing a person wearing
2. karate gear or a suit, no matter the costume theme
endlessly solid vibrant life in a blank ephemeral cyber world
don’t cry. She will keep hugging you
and take you to the shops, and buy
3. one kilogram kangaroo mince, frozen vegetables and rice
of course you used to feed her to stave off this simplicity
now
everything will be less complex.

My little sister broke up with her girlfriend so I wrote her this poem.

I listened to the new Feist album driving home from Canberra. Ended up crying to the Circle Married the Line as it made me think of Boy. And then I was like omg there is a whole nother meaning (which some people probably got on the first go though).

one other way of inhaling the landscape

reading whole book of alix olson = writing dodgy slam poetry YES I WILL THANKYOU

do you want to walk, take a stroll in my country
it’s just a little hot, just a little bit empty
do you find it a little barren? not what you expected
I know the brochures were all cities and beaches
but I take my yearning from the burning interior
not that sort of woman to sit down and play for you
not that girl who piano, and soccer and reads
nothing but textbooks, collects nothing but trophies
american exhaltation of infantile achievements
GPA and varsity, home to a white protestant picket fence
it’s all nonsense and you know it, you know you ain’t worth shit
when you’re standing in my desert wondering how to get out of it
how to go back to her green fields and clean hair
how to live down your last little love affair
well you’re never going to get this red dirt out your skin
I’m gonna daub you with the sweat you never put in
I’m gonna climb a mountain, get that strength into my veins
gonna write a poem, how’s them droughts and flooding plains
you want that girl who floods at buttons you know how to press
well I’m a little complicated, you might have to guess
you might have to work a little harder, try to be
a little better than you were at seventeen
high school’s your peak and then you all just stop
pay a lot of money to end up at a machine shop
after a few years of drinking, gathering a couple facts
or studying ‘pre-med’ how fucking arrogant is that
this morning the wind was whipping through my trees
and I laughed in its face and said come at me please
living for the storm-rush its wildness always telling me
I know how to fight these waves, no white tower for this poetry
I’m gonna sail to Hobart and not shower for a week
a woman not beholden to the prettiness you seek
I know revenge is bitter but I hope your own heart makes
a few force tens to blacken your polite little lake
and you will know this ancient woman’s anger and this ancient land
are not lightly trodden on. We will not let you stand.

I think it’s ok given that I have little practice at rhyme. And I need to go to bed. Need less of specific people and more of the original contrast I wanted to set up, which is firstly about landscape, and then a metaphor for people.

whales

home again!

to unlaid floor and moved furniture and newly painted walls…. so much work to fix it all up! Now bed and a big week of work and getting ready for Christmas.

We did a lot of sailing in the rain in New Zealand, and other things I will discuss in due course. For now this is a boat memory

once was a whaling boy home from the sea
once was
bright eyes in oilskins
bright cheek in cold wind
creamy skin always skin
six foot tucked in a wet blanket tea and boots in
flesh always flesh
home unwrapped fish parcelled
think long arms clumsy and dry
and heart always whales

More New Zealand

More from last Bay of Islands trip! This photo is actually one that we took. The poem is pretty family oriented and the order of verses is kinda random, I have them written in three different axes on one piece of paper, and some more on another one, and not time yet to sort it out.

On the Occasion of a Storm

I found some verses I wrote last December when we were on a boating holiday in NZ. They were having a nasty incident with a bottle of lube in the bottom of my bedside table so I thought they’d better finally get electronic. Also we are back to the Bay of Islands soon!

Love Poem

I wanted to write a love poem for Boy. It’s mostly about when we met. Maybe over summer I can actually edit some of my scribbles and give them a structure. But I think he liked it so that’s good (otherwise I would be disappointed with him!)

the flying cloud

Another old poem:

a very long string yanks
the bow of our little boat
eight tons net weight
I can steer her with one poet’s hand
jerking, diving, dragging us up waves and slack down
they say each wave is a half ton itself
but they surrender to our insistence
waves allowing themselves to be put apart, divided, sunk into
in awe of our order
atoms collected, bound, driven
a neat powerful arrangment of white fibreglass and wooden trim
symmetry disguising, embodying, the tension of the atoms
their need to dissolve back into wild sea

I don’t really know where to go with this one. Just writing stuff in my head while sitting on the side for hours in another short offshore race, they’re pretty boring. I do really like the boat, I’d like to write a good poem about her sometime.

Lilli Pilli

restless misery is back.
this is a cool song: http://www.triplejunearthed.com/JackColwellTheOwls
this is me angsting on the train:

well so much for that

suddenly I’m not so pumped, I feel all shit and I can’t tell why. I can’t even tell if I’m angry or sad or stressed or what.

I talked to mum today and it made me a bit sad, she helped me with some things but didn’t seem to understand some of them. Bit tricky.

From earlier this semester:

I need
a shield
a numbed mind
cold feet soften the concrete
a short fuse and a terrible darkness
I can see the light but I can’t step towards it