| Kiss Me (I Had A Little Robin Part 24) |
[27 Oct 2009|11:29am] |
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As I‘ve mentioned before, I am an ugly man and I was an ugly boy. I look like an ape-man. Most of the time, I don’t think much about it – until something or some one reminds me. I was in my cage, doing my evening show. Once again, a crowd had gathered and they were pointing at me, throwing things such as rotten fruit and veggies at me.
Some people laughed at the sight of me; others recoiled in shock and horror. I was used to it all; it didn’t bother me. But there, in the crowd, stood the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was statuesque, athletic, and graceful. She was with a handsome man whom I guessed was her husband. They held hands and imagined them kissing one another. I imagined her kissing me. As if! As if a beauty like her would kiss me, a beast-boy. Tears came to my eyes. “Look he’s crying he must be hungry” some redneck yelled out. “Don’t cry, monkey boy, here some food for ya”! another guy shouted as he threw an apple core at me. The crowd laughed and laughed –all of them –even the beautiful woman and the handsome man. When the show was over, I walked back to my caravan. As I did, I passed a small group of men who spoke cruelly about a woman they only knew as Dagma the wolf-woman. But I knew her as my friend, Donna Lake. I grew up with Donna and her sister Lucy. They were like older sisters to me. I was about to speak up to the men who were disrespecting Donna. But then it struck me. Who was I to speak up? I was a hypocrite. I had no right to speak up. There were many women at my evening show. I noticed only the most beautiful one. I noticed her and I was envious of her husband. Her beauty reminded me of my own beastliness. I felt angered and saddened. I was no less superficial than the men who had mocked Donna. I considered myself to be a beast both inside and out. It took decades for me to release and admit that I had been suffering from depression and that I had been too hard on myself.
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| Let It Go (I Had A Little Robin Part 23) |
[15 Aug 2009|05:40pm] |
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A young mother gave her little boy a yellow balloon. He held it tightly until he saw his father coming with three cotton-candy sticks. In his excitement, the boy opened his hands and let the balloon go. The yellow balloon floated up to the blues sky, a breeze takes it across the carnival. It drifted and floated over the main attractions and the side-show allies. It floated over the carousel, the Ferris-wheel, the ghost train, the haunted house, and the tunnel- of-love. It floated over the young and the old. It floated over friends, families, strangers, lovers, losers, preachers, teachers, sundry creatures, rubes, dupes, perverts, clergymen, and Klansmen. It floated over the sick, the poor, the huddled, the cuddled, the muddled, the demented, the famous and the anonymous. It floated over Dusty,in his cage; Morty and Olga in their caravan, It floated over Harold the Talker and Bernard the Lecturer. It floated over Donna and Lucy Lake as they talked with Big Tony Blight. It floated over the carnival band as they played the blues. It floated over Mr Mephisto as he argued with Johnny Bull about things philosophical, political, and personal.. It floated over Olive the fire eater and sword swallower. It floated over Hyacinth as she sat on Bessie the elephant’s head. It floated away and the blue sky turned grey and then bible-black. The clouds were filled with raging rain and they let it go.
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| Beauty (I Had A Little Robin Part 22) |
[18 Jul 2009|05:33pm] |
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Reader, I’m going to tell you something that I rarely mention. I have psychic abilities. I seldom say anything about them because they mostly take the form of premonitions that are often silly, inconsequential and, more often than not, can be explained away as a matter of coincidence. Some examples might be that I will dream what dresses Olga and Morty will be wearing the next dar. Or I could be doing something or other and the name of a new, unreleased song by a famous singer will come to my mind and the next day, a song with that title, sung by that very singer will be playing on the radio. Also, many times, I will think of a person, and I will receive a letter or telegram from them or that person will happen to be in the town where the carnival is playing. Last night, I dreamt of Freddie Longfellow, and today a woman arrived at the carnival to audition to be our new sword swallower. She’s also a fire eater. Her name’s Olive Street and she is a beauty- a dead ringer for Louise Brooks.
I Had A Little Robin Part 1 to 22 http://laughcrythink.blogspot.com/2009_03_08_archive.html
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| Language Lessons by Alexandra Teague |
[02 Jul 2009|07:14am] |
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I found the latest poem to be featured by Ted Kooser in his latest ‘American Life in Poetry’ column’ to be quite moving.
Here are Mr Kooser’s comments and the poem ‘Language Lessons’ by Alexandra Teague. American Life in Poetry: Column 223 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
There's lots of literature about the loss of innocence, because we all share in that loss and literature is about what we share. Here's a poem by Alexandra Teague, a San Franciscan, in which a child's awakening to the alphabet coincides with another awakening: the unsettling knowledge that all of us don't see things in the same way.
Language Lessons
The carpet in the kindergarten room
was alphabet blocks; all of us fidgeting
on bright, primary letters. On the shelf
sat that week's inflatable sound. The th
was shaped like a tooth. We sang
about brushing up and down, practiced
exhaling while touching our tongues
to our teeth. Next week, a puffy U
like an upside-down umbrella; the rest
of the alphabet deflated. Some days,
we saw parents through the windows
to the hallway sky. Look, a fat lady,
a boy beside me giggled. Until then
I'd only known my mother as beautiful. American Life In Poetry http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/ Google: Alexandra Teague poetry http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=alexandra+teague+poetry&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=0&oq=Alexandra+Teague
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| The Demon |
[01 May 2009|09:03pm] |
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I was nine and you were ten and we were on top
of a hill that our forefathers had dubbed The Demon.
‘Twas a hill as steep as hell and made up of blood, bitumen, and brimstone.
This mountain of a hill had broken many an arm, leg, and skull.
It had even killed a few kids in its time,
or so the rumours went.
And we were going to face it in our home-made billy cart.
Our cart was a Frankenstein thing, made up of an old fruit crate,
pram wheels that we found at the rubbish tip,
a set of superfluous exhaust pipes, and other odds and ends.
We painted our billy cart red and called it the Slayer.
Crows and magpies called out.
I sat, sweating, in the Slayer, despite the fact
that a wind as icy as a witch’s heart had began to blow
across the summit of that horrid hill.
It was said by some that, under the right conditions,
If you looked from the Apex of The Demon,
you’d see your future.
You sprinted behind the Slayer,
pushing as hard as you could,
then you jumped in behind me.
We rocketed down that horrendous hill,
Everything, a blur
We hit something
a rock, stone, perhaps a piece of brick, a log, or maybe a stick.
I don’t know what it was.
But you flew north and I was flung south.
After a few days,
we were sent home from the local hospital,
Our parents were overjoyed that we had lived.
I was grounded for a month and you for two
because you were “the older one and should have known better”.
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| Sun, Moon and She |
[30 Apr 2009|10:26am] |
Life can be a marvelous thing.
But sometimes I wonder
what's the point of it all?
Is it an eagle that flies to the sun?
Of course, there's times when I expect
to wander through gardens of terrible tenderness
that lead to whence they need to go.
I see Betty Boop crying like an angel
who feels everything on the terms of her own existence
where fire doesn't claim anything
but eagle blood dreams.
I must be aware of things
that seek out to destroy my fun.
But there's no need to worry about the nectarines;
they are sweet enough.
Sweet as a day that travels along
until it turns to night
and I look at the sky
and I see phantom eagles flying to the moon.
She
She goes with her own rhythmic, logical flow.
She swims with dolphins.
She screams with a yellow lung.
She stops at the club.
She drinks at the pub.
She yells at doughnuts.
She feels like marble.
She touches her navel.
She reaches for the stars.
She avoids cliches.
She eats blueberry muffins.
She thinks too much.
She dies in her sleep.
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| Tempestuous Contemplations |
[29 Apr 2009|01:47am] |
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The wind dances over the city,
like a silent, powerful, lunatic.
Leaves fall from an old oak tree.
Robert remembers what he cannot forget.
Are there plums in the pantry or
are they in the fridge?
Who is to say how many cliffs he must jump off?
Or what he must do to stem the tide of his doubt and guilt.
He will let tomorrow be the guide to his punch drunken lovers.
And see nevermore the horse that floats like a duck
that has made lemon meringue pies as it scrapes like a penguin
that searches for pantry liners in what can only be described
as cheese- on- toast on the moon’s parameters.
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| The Parliament |
[27 Apr 2009|07:21pm] |
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Katie collects owls.
Owls, owls, owls are everywhere around her home.
An owl statue looms large on her front lawn.
Her door bell is an owl that says “Hoo! Hoo!”
Inside her house, she has glass owls, crystal owls,
ceramic owls, wooden owls, woolen owls, plush owls,
owl candles, owl money boxes, owl paintings,
and owl jigsaw puzzles.
She speaks on her owl-shaped phone,
and she sleeps in owl-shaped bed.
She even has two owl costumes,
one for herself and one for her lover.
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| Cold |
[26 Apr 2009|07:04am] |
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Lance’s wife, Alice, had slashed her wrists,
and had bled in the bathtub until she was dead.
Now, instead of going to the football match and then
the club on Friday, Lance would have to attend
her funeral and wake. She did it to spite me, he thought.
She knew how much I was looking forward to seeing
the game. And what was worse
was her suicide note.
It was dreadful. One cliché followed another,
as did the abstractions. It was filled with
bathos, purple prose, and it was overly emotive.
Not to mention the punctuation errors and
grammatical mistakes.
When he was a boy, his mother would slap
him silly if he wasn’t perfect in everything he did.
She would hit him until stars and little birdies flew
around his head like in the cartoons that he
had to watch at his friends’ homes.
because his mother forbade such frivolous diversions.
According to her way of thinking,
anything that did not lead to money or power was a waste of time.
After each beating,
his mother would give him a kiss, a cuddle, and a slice of cake.
And he would apologise for making her angry.
Lance ripped up Alice’s suicide note and threw it away,
lest it be read by someone else, and reflect badly on him.
He looked in the mirror and made sure each hair on his head
was perfectly in place. And then he practiced his sad face.
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| Late |
[25 Apr 2009|06:35am] |
Alarm did not ring.
Frenzied coffee thrown down throat.
Shoelace snaps. Train missed
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| Drinking Spiders and Rest in Peace. |
[24 Apr 2009|03:14pm] |
Drinking Spiders.
When I was a kid,
on hot days,
I'd drink spiders -
not the arachnid type,
the drinks: Sprite spiders, Coke spiders, lime spiders.
Like millions of other Aussie kids,
I'd grab the biggest drinking glass
that I could find
and I would fill it
with a sugary carbonated beverage.
And then I'd plop in a scoop
(or two or three) of vanilla ice-cream.
When the ice-cream hit the drink
there'd be a splash that sang to the sun.
And an effervescent explosion of ice-creamy goodness would ensue.
The concoction would fizz and bubble
like a mad science experiment,
like a roman candle on cracker night,
like a volcano erupting in an adventure story about the South Seas.
Spiders were just the thing
to wash down potato crisp sandwiches:
half a packet or so of crisps
sandwiched between two buttered slices
of unhealthy but tasty white bread.
Spiders and crisp sandwiches,
Nowadays, I've probably put on five kilos
just by writing this poem.
Rest In Peace.
Happy
Birthday
to me.
Today,
I am
older
than you were
when you
passed away
Decades
have also passed
and I still
miss you heaps.
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| Sentence Fragments |
[22 Apr 2009|11:31am] |
Lost job.
Lost home.
Lost love.
Gunshot.
Survive.
New job.
New home.
New love.
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| It Already Always Never Did Does Has Is Happened Happening Happen Happens |
[21 Apr 2009|10:58am] |
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Professor M went down to his laboratory
to start work on the plans for his latest invention:
a time machine. When suddenly,
a metallic pod appeared
and a man stepped out of it.
Much to Professor M’s shock and dismay he realised
that the man was he himself.
“Don’t invent your -my- our time machine. You –I will-have –do-did regret regretted it”.
“ But can’t –don’t I-You learn from my –our mistakes”?
“You-I have not-will not- cannot –did-do not - all You-I,
have-will- did-do is create great and destructive conundrums and paradoxes
that have-will-did- are causing cause caused a devastating loop of disarray
in the space-time continuum”
“Very well I-You will not invent my-our time machine”.
And with that
both Professor Ms are have will always never did do disappear disappeared disappearing.
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| The Weasel |
[20 Apr 2009|12:57pm] |
I don’t want to go all around this mulberry bush
anymore, said the weasel.
I’m weary and I can no longer see the point of it all.
If in fact there was any point to begin with.
Other than the payment of a penny for a spool of thread,
and a penny for a needle.
Yes, indeed, that is where the money goes.
I’m sick and tired of being chased by a monkey
until I go pop. The stress is too much.
It might be fun for that damned monkey.
But it’s hell for me.
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| The Cockatoos |
[18 Apr 2009|11:40am] |
Around where I live,
colonies of white cockatoos fly about in their hundreds,
and wherever they land becomes Narnia.
One day, as I was walking home,
I saw nine on them sitting in a line,on a telegraph wire.
They were eating oranges that they had taken from my neighbour's tree.
Nine white cockatoos sitting in a line, on a telegraph wire
eating nine round,bright orange oranges
that they pilfered from a suburban backyard.
Possibly, there's a poem in that I thought.
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| Past Lives |
[16 Apr 2009|09:51pm] |
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I died
and then I came back
as a cat. A family
adopted me and feed me
fish, milk, and cream
until I was fat.
Yeah, I was a fat cat
that ate a lot and sat on a mat.
One day,
the youngest boy in the family
took to me with a baseball bat.
Whack! Whack! Whack!!
He batted me flat as I sat on my mat.
I died once more
and came back as a chicken
I lived with thousands of other chickens
all of us crammed into tiny cages,
like something out of a fowl version
of a Charles Dickens’s novel.
It was a hell to live in such a hovel.
Once again, my demise was messy and gory.
And on goes my story.
I was reborn once more
as a poet
but nobody knew it.
So I now I work as a manager in a takeaway chicken shop,
and live in the suburbs with my cat.
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[15 Apr 2009|10:40pm] |
The sun bestows warmth upon the Earth,
acorns adorn the majestic oak tree,
a squirrel rubs its nuts.
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| Show Me. |
[14 Apr 2009|06:41am] |
Square trousers have never done me wrong
like a river of golden boots
that float like cosmic wristwatches,
or rakes hurled across absinthe skies.
Give me this the time of day;
turn, turn, turn like a burning kite
that knows no wrong, no wrong at all.
Time is of the essence of the skeletal dead.
But who knows what the rabbit wants?
Show me a clock.
Show me a shoe.
Show me a rock.
Show me lava and love and candle wax.
Oh what fun it is
to see a clown riding a bike
that’s covered in roses .
Roses that are red, yellow and white
Sometimes, the clown hollers
at the roses as he rides through hill and dale ,
then he rides to the seaside.
And gets onto a sailing ship
and he sails away until he comes to an island,
the Island of Love.
He spends a lot of time at the Island of Love.
Bur then he has to go home.
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| The Son’s First Hunting Trip |
[13 Apr 2009|06:38am] |
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The father comes home
with words that will not,
cannot leave his throat.
They don’t have to.
One look at his face
which has aged a life time
and the mother knows.
She knows before she knows
She knows at a level before thought and language,
at a level as primal as her scream.
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| Ritual, Orlando and Petula, and Despair |
[10 Apr 2009|08:08am] |
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Once again I won't have access to the 'net for a couple of days; so, here's three poems.
Ritual
4.30 pm.
It’s that time again.
Time for a coffee or tea, a ciggie, and piece of cake or pie
Or maybe a blueberry muffin or a toasted cheese sanga or a honey-dripping crumpet.
Time to kick off the shoes and relax.
What’s going to happen today?
What shenanigans, skullduggery, seductions, and sabotage shall take place?
Will Brooke and Ridge break up once more?
Or will they continue on with their chorny love sessions?
Can you believe that Steffy falling for that cad, Rick
who indirectly killed Steffy’s twin sister, Phoebe,
and he used to go out with Taylor, the twins’ mother!
And what about Crazy Pammy with her crotched bikinis?
And how was Donna’s form, kissing Eric on the catwalk
in front of Stephanie?!
Will someone fall into a comma?
Will a mysterious stanger, or a long lost or unknown, never known relative arrive to cause grief?
Will it all be a dream?
The saxophones begin to play,
Break time is over.
Time to do what must be done.
Orlando and Petula
Orlando and Petula tip and tap all around
Mirth Island where wide-girthed lads and lasses
dance the tango and eat pineapple pies.
Orlando’s wife, Petula is one of those full-figured locals.
She loves to devour honey dew melons,
and she has a Doctoral degree in chemical engineering
From Mirth Island University.
Despair
It's the wild dogs of despair
that call out for vengeance.
They are sitting on rocks
They are sailing ships.
Who is the owl that sits in that old oak tree?
Bulls in the china shop cry
as babies float in the sky.
Where is your mother
Where is your mother?
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