Spring Rain

Rain against the window
A staccato beat telling me
"Don't think I'll water your plants!
You should have left the clothes out.
I enjoy making them all wet again."
It thunders at me to pay attention,
Random flashes of temper light the room,
Wind howls around corners

Flicking the electricity on and off

Angry children acting out 

Each vying for center stage

On! Off! Crash! Flash! Beating

Ever softer a staccato rhythm

"You ruined all our fun... 

You ruined all our fun..."

Margaret Atwood Quotes

A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. 

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise. 

Gardening is not a rational act. 

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done.


I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.


In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.


One I truly love of hers:  "Longed for him. Got him. Shit."

Mahler

Warm dark chocolate slowly melting in the sun
Fingers travelling down, tracing contours,  having fun
Traversing valleys, aromatic spices blending
One person beginning the other never ending
Music dripping into the empty spaces,
Past and present entwine.  Embraces
gathering momentum, passion and heat.
Blind passions sweeping reason of it's feet.

Half formed ideas: Beginings, middle and endings that go or come from nowhere.

Icy, cold, empty, staring blankly into my heart
Commenting once again on my dead libido
Telling me why I am wrong, highlighting flaws,
Showing five minutes of affection laced with scorn

Howl (2010)

Oh My Gods!  Exploration of Ginsberg's epic poem and the controversy surrounding it!  Think about the fuss over Gable not giving a damn a few years earlier (1939) then Ginsberg comes out and talks about sodomy and male genitalia (1954)!  


Ginsberg was a gay rights and mental health activist at a time when both were viewed as things to lock away and hide.  He was a man searching for spirituality and peace in a country searching for another excuse to go to war and using the fear of Communism and the love of a White Baptist God to do so.


Howl breaks the poetic conventions of rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure.  It is a free form streaming of consciousness exploring his own childhood, his countries politics and the lives of those around him.  


When I first read Howl it opened my eyes to what language could be.  Secondary school poetry was rigidly classified by meeting the conventions.  It had to rhyme, it had to be in stanzas, it had to be able to be clapped to.  Crassness had no place in poetry, you could use metaphor but not meta-phwoar.  


For someone on a diet of Blake, Shelley, Keats, Lawson and Patterson Howl opened me to my own voice.


Stream of consciousness was OK.  The poem became about expressing who you were, where you were, when you were.  It became a statement of the larger picture and removed the constraints of "Today you will write a piece on happiness" which seemed to be the English teachers idea of introducing people to poetry.  (No wonder so many of my friends think that poetry peaked with the Raven and the writings of Dr Suess!)


Howl helped me go from:


The little bird on it's branch
Dreams of the far off ranch
It spreads it's wings into the sky
Drifting on the wind up high
Freedom like this makes him happy
Meter and rhythm are so crappy

To:

Happiness... the hollow pursuit
The needing to own and be owned
Possessions filling the voids in our souls
The latest, the greatest, the next must have thing

Happiness... sitting alone in the dark
Waiting for a call you know won't come
Fooling yourself that his preoccupation is you
Dreaming that the next moment the cell will ring

Happiness... that myth espoused from the pulpit
That carrot dangled in our faces hinting
Showing us the afterlife that is gone!
An empty space filled with advertising and shopping

Happiness co-opted by corporations
Governments in four year spaces
Lies upon lies, smile it will be better,
The panacea of our times, the band-aid to fix all things

Thank you Mr Ginsberg.

Teen Angst: Valentine's Day and Suicidal Tendencies.

Written 1990 while bored out of my brain in a class at N* Secondary College.  Doesn't seem too bad for a not yet Goth, cathartic, disenfranchised teen, angst piece.

Skulls and bones
Deserts Dry
Unanswered phones
No questions "Why?"
Stab through heart
Blood runs red
Lovers apart
Cupid dead

Where as this could be used as an example of why teenage girls who dream of Robert Smith and Sylvia Plath should maybe not put pen to paper...

Pray thee peace
Enter my realm
Let me sleep
Deep in the ground
Death, oh, Death
To thee I beseech!
Take my life
Into your firm reach!

Forth Birthday Fairy Greeting.

The fairies in the garden send you a little wish

They've sprinkled you with rainbow dust

Made by mermaid from the laughs of fish!

They've showered you with love,

Granted you a dream for every star

That twinkles in the eternal sky above!

Have a Happy Birthday girl of four

May this day bring you all that you want

and more

Thanking a teacher for Ada Lovelace Day

I was reading this:  http://findingada.com/ and it got me thinking about the female teachers I've had over time.

Miss Gunther who insisted I learn to write cursive and not in block capitals all the time.  She also introduced me to the concept of misplaced rhyme, meter, metaphor and that poetry could be a construct and not a free form.  (Misplaced rhyme: The rhyme comes but not at the end of the sentence.  My term I can't think of hers.)

Miss Howe who told me that my poetry was good and encouraged me to keep writing.

Mrs Woods who I gave my very first story poem to.  It was in 1984, I was 9.  I now wish I had it back as I'd love to read it from an adult perspective.  All I can remember is:

"The magician waves his magic wand,
The rabbit appears, the shows begun"

Mrs Hughes, who gave me readers beyond the other kids in the class.  Being an uncoordinated 7 year old, with no social skills unless talking to people 50 years older, and a love of the written word means you get bullied a lot.  Mrs Hughes gave me readers designed for the Grade 6 class.  She also told me about authors that she felt I'd enjoy.  When I had her again in grade 6 she handed me Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and told me to read it.  I learned to wheelbarrow the names I couldn't pronounce but loved that an adult had so much belief in me.  (Something I only felt from one other adult at the time.)

Mrs Karyannis, I owe an apology to.  Not just for spelling her name wrong, as I'm sure I have, but for "dissing" her at a reunion.  Ten years on I realise that this is what alcoholics talk about when they mention their drinking hurting others.  One day I'll be able to say sorry to her and thank her for helping me get sober.

Miss Collins, who gave me a love of science, one of the most valuable gifts I've ever been given.

Miss Padani who taught me that what you read is as important as how much, and that cheap paper back romances aren't Louisa May Alcott, the Bronte sisters or L P Hartley. (I'll forgive her for "The Go Between" one day.  I may never forgive her for Anne Tyler and "The Accidental Tourist."  I thank her for Jessica Anderson's "Tirra Lirra By The River.")  She was also wrong about meter being the most important aspect of poetry... honey, the meter don't matter if the meaning is mush...
 
There were teachers who opened my mind to a thought or concept that I can't remember the names of, there were sadistic physical education teachers who never understood what it was like barely being able to walk without falling over your own feet and getting puffed let alone do a somersault.  There were one's who showed open hearted kindnesses or closed minded disciplines.  They all shaped who I am now.

I am grateful to all of these women.  I would love to know what they are up to now and hope they are all happy...