Airconditioning

Sitting in aircon drinking coffee and 

Singapore Coffee Shop
CC licensed. Click image to view source.

Hearing accents like my own 

I'm looking out through picture-frame glass 

At the local coffee shop across the road. 

The price of my coffee would have 

Bought me breakfast over there. 

I could say I’ve already eaten - 

Which is true - 

But I also wanted the comfort 

Of the familiar, 

Of a filtered environment 

Where I can breathe easy. 

In the humidity over there 

And the noise of passing traffic 

I'm a little less in control, 

A little less comfortable. 

Here, in my ubiquitous 

Coffee shop, 

I can quietly turn my back 

On the world I am colonising.

Istanbul

A baklava city
With its traditional
Forty layers of paper
Thin pastry, honey, pistachios.

Our guide told me it's
Best turned upside down
So that the crisp
Foundation sticks

To the top of your
Mouth - like words
Struggling for articulation.
All that history:

One religion built
On another and
Another. Pagan temples,
Under Cristian churches,

Beneath Mosques,
Shadowed by office
Buildings with
Telecom-tower minarets.

And through it all,
1700 years of tourists
Wearing away at the stone,
Crawling through the layers,

In the honey-sweet
Sickliness of history.



Link to my photos - a week in Istanbul April 2018

How many words do you have to write before what you have written has never been written before?

Lemon poltergeist

Got it in two -

At least according to 

Google who knows all

About the digital world.

But what of the millennia

Before the internet?

Did some child in 

A distant town 

In a far away time

Utter without understanding

These exact words?

Or was it the code-name

Of a Russian spy

With a penchant

For English mysticism 

And a love of citrus?

Maybe a dying 

Colonist at the 

End of his tether

After yet one more

Year watching 

His trees and dreams

Wither.

Two words seem

Unlikely.

The real challenge

Would be to create 

New meaning

From only one

Prodrigue

Two Poems

We've been working on poetry in my Grade 8 class. The process is to find a poet we admire, explore how they write and adopt an element of their technique in our own poems. As I worked to model for students I wrote two poems. The one I shared for students to work on with me is called "Medusa". Gwen Harwood's cycle of poems called "1927" gave me inspiration.

The other poem I didn't share because I'm a little unsettled by it. The inspiration came from a poem I stumbled across by Stephane Mallarme. Every now and then a poem or a piece of prose will reach off the page and punch you: not just because it's a great poem; also, I think, because it is saying something you are just then ripe to hear. My poem responds to the idea of cutting into the future but the metaphor seemed too raw to use as a model for students. Still, I think it's a poem worth sharing. Here's Mallarme's poem and then my own. And below that is the my poem "Medusa" which I shared with students.

Stéphane Mallarmé

A Toast

Stephane Mallarme
By Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Nothing, this foam, virgin verse

Depicting the chalice alone:

Far off a band of Sirens drown

Many of them head first.

We sail, O my various

Friends, I already at the stern,

You at the lavish prow that churns

The lightning’s and the winters’ flood:

A sweet intoxication urges me

Despite pitching, tossing, fearlessly

To offer this toast while standing

Solitude, reef, and starry veil

To whatever’s worthy of knowing

The white anxiety of our sail.

Undefined

cogdogblog - https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/5702592254/

Purity, a knife, cutting

Into the virgin white 

Of the blank space.

My cursor doing

Violence to the 

Peaceful undefined. 

With good intent,

I break forward

Seeking to shape

A new understanding.

But the chaos

Of my voice

Cuts and cuts 

And cuts 

Again.

Searching for this

Elusive meaning

I am   

Most alive.        

Medusa. 

By Powerhouse Museum from Sydney, Australia
Girl (Cook family) on front doorstep carrying a
toy 'Life Savers' truck, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51424376

My Brother thought up the name

For the girl next door.

We played with her sister

And ran and explored

And did what young kids do.

When the younger sister appeared,

We’d scream “medusa”

Invoking the Greek monster who,

We had read, was so ugly 

That mortals were turned 

To stone 

Just by looking at her. 

We’d run and hide

Leaving her standing alone 

On her doorstep. 

Only now do I look back. 

Remembering our cruelty 

And hoping her heart 

Was not too much hardened

By the ugliness she saw. 

Remnant

In the small patch of forest

Beside the new

HDB they’re building,

There’s a family of

Dogs that seem

Somehow to survive.

I see one standing

Sentinel sniffing the air

And watching warily

The towers of concrete

That slowly encroach

On his home.

Last night they chased me.

Three wild dogs barking

At my heels

As I pedalled down

The footpath, heart

Pounding, trying to look calm.

They didn’t bite

Despite my fears

And my vulnerability.

Instead they left me wondering

Whether the world will be better

When they’re gone.