Month of Poetry #29: For my baby, starting school

the youngest of three
the brightest kiss of summer
ever-open rose

dressed and shod for school
carrying fire in her belly
ready for all things

through the door she charges
a glimmering of lightness
stepping proud and firm

I’m ready, Mama!
but I’m not, sweet lastborn child
not to let you go

 the future is here
see it in her open face
her prancing delight

my baby at school
inexorably empty
my nest lies folorn.

- Kathy, 29/1/14

Month of Poetry #26: Australia Day

Every year, for Australia Day, I write a fairly angsty, angry villanelle. This year's is even less hopeful than last year's.  However, I would like you to note the fact that I managed to find FIVE rhymes or near-rhymes for "invasion", which wasn't so damn easy :-)

a day for a sunshine discontented land
marking not nationhood, but invasion
don’t lie: it’s stolen, where we stand.

everywhere, we’re being told it’s grand
our country with such a fraught gestation
a day for a sunshine discontented land

wasn’t there a song about soil and sand
that said that all are welcome to our nation?
don’t lie: it’s stolen, where we stand.

the rich get richer; was that what we planned?
as the poor, ever with us, wait at the station
a day for a sunshine discontented land

two worlds at least, now, this brown landscape spanned
spirit-narrowing of greed may bring damnation
don’t lie: it’s stolen, where we stand.

a fist in velvet looms the master’s hand
and tighter daily draws this grim ligation
a day for a sunshine discontented land
don’t lie: it’s stolen, where we stand.

- Kathy, 26/1/14

Month of Poetry #25: Cinderella

Today's challenge on Month of Poetry was to write a multi-verse haiku series retelling a fairytale. We were encouraged to take on Rapunzel, but I decided instead to address Cinderella. This is the result.

my story begins
with the trope of the absent -
or, in this case, dead -

mother. I, the babe
left behind; hapless father
sought a replacement

which, as it turned out,
was not the happiest of
decisions for me

although it is still
not clear, to me, why anyone
would hate a baby

I did not ask to
be prettier than they are
or cleverer; why

should her resentment
of my moony skin
my honeyed silk hair

force me to my knees
scrubbing stones in dark silence -
is this not my house?

of course, it all changed
when my godmother, she
of the wild magic

befrilled me for the
ball; riding in a pumpkin
is something to try

here is a strange thing -
my stepsisters, I saw then,
are not quite ugly

just plain, in fact, and
perfectly able, left alone,
to find rich owners

but she wanted more
she wanted to sell to the
highest possible

disturbing, really,
how much of a commodity
even beloved

girls become. I
danced strategically, of course,
I spotted the prize

marriage is better
than cleaning toilets for free
(mostly, anyway)

and if you wondered -
yes, I got my house back again
rank has privileges

and my stepsisters
are quite pleasant, now, wedded
to a baker, floury

and sweet, in one case,
and off travelling the world,
as an acrobat

in the other. I
have plans, for this ever after
I don’t aim to settle

for “happily”, when
that just means owned by some man
I’d rather “busy”

and “fierce”, and also “kind”
as I become the princess
of my own dreams.

- Kathy, 25/1/14

Month of Poetry #19: The Dream

this morning I said to my husband -
I think I’ll write today’s one about my dream

well. you could, he said,
but aren’t dream poems a bit -
I dunno. Generic?

listen, I say, it worked for Coleridge.
yes, he concedes, but he was high, sweetheart -
and a genius, with it

but my dream was so vivid, I gripe,
there was a car, or perhaps a bus; I was driving it
through a dark and crowded forest
there were stiff unmoving men in fatigues, like toy soldiers
barring the way to the lake
but I crashed through, and then
the sky was a vaulted majesty for a few seconds
then I was in the water, inside the bus -

were you drowning? he asks

Yes, Oh yes, I was,
the bus (or car) was sinking and I couldn’t – there was no way to -
I tried to wake up but my body held me under and I -

Don’t write about it, he says, rubbing my neck.
Can’t you see, it’s only a nightmare, a claustrophobe’s tragedy
it doesn’t mean anything -

No, I think I will, I say. Scatter the dark stars where they fall
I know it’s only a kaleidoscope of fears and sense impressions, it has no deeper truth
but it was so real, when I was in it -

it was so real -

- Kathy, 19/1/14

Month of Poetry #17: For Jill

Back to Narnia today, for one of my favourite characters in all the books – Jill – specifically when she forgets Aslan’s instructions and lands them all in mortal danger at Harfang.

so I am just a girl, alright -
a cross-grained child
sturdy, says the marshwiggle, with that irritating glumness
that makes everything sound ridiculous

sturdy, indeed!

how on earth was I supposed to remember?
it’s so cold -

what’s wrong with wanting to be

inside

warm

by the fire

ooooooooo, eating roasted meat!

the lady said it would be OK. she did say so.
and how could I remember, unriddle that riddle
when my nose felt like it was about to drop off my face

anyway, Scrubb thought we should go in, too.
it was only the wiggle that wanted to keep poking about
under the snow, under the ice

what’s the point of a memory test when
you don’t have a chance to study?
it’s been a long and very cold journey, this
looking for as lost prince and a snake-witch

we deserve a rest. ooooooo, and a bath!
I can almost feel the sweet steam on my face -

just a girl; a girl who really, really wants to defrost
and friendly giants are alright (aren’t they?)
the city is full of light

never mind what that beautiful lion might have said
I can’t remember. Anyway, I didn’t understand it
not my fault, anyway

it’s not

onwards and upwards we go
into the mouth of the giant castle -

- Kathy, 17/1/14

Month of Poetry #15: Lament of the Extrovert

if it is the case
that I am intense -

that I fill up the sky, and overwhelm,
a little too much, maybe

then, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be
I don’t mean to overflow on you

extroversion isn’t always a blessing
energy vampire my introvert brother says,
sucking the juice from those you glom onto – 

I don’t intend it so. I try
to withdraw and hold back, but it feels unnatural
to me, the wide-open book
quick to feel a bond, for those I’m bonded to,
arms wide to catch all the sorrows of my interlocutors
heart wide to share my own

but I don’t intend it so. not to be too much
or ask too much
never to cause that pricklish discomfort
that prompts the retracted mind, the cooled word
never that.

so if it is the case that I am intense
well, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be less
or less constant, anyway
to not exhaust you with my conversation
to grow trust slowly, carefully -

to keep you my friend
(if you want it so).

- Kathy, 15/1/14

Month of Poetry #13: For Digory

Back to Narnia today, this time with a poem for Digory Kirke, the protagonist of The Magician’s Nephew and later the Professor of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I seem to be mostly picking out the characters who face moral dilemmas of one sort or another I’ve deliberately stopped the poem before Digory learns that Aslan is, in fact, going to save his mother. I think it’s a lot more powerful when he makes the choice believing it to be final.

For Digory

flying to a mountainous garden aback a newly-winged horse
over country seething with magic, sent by a talking lion
(who, perhaps, isn’t quite) -

well, it’s not the sort of thing you expect to happen, is it.

not what you look for, when you’re locked into a journey composed mostly of antiseptic smells, grief and daily misery.
but when you make a mess, I suppose you ought to clean it up.
and God knows, the Empress of Charn and my disgraceful uncle are a deep enough mess to need fixing.

so when he said, go, get me an apple, I thought -
well, if an apple’s what you want, I will – 

besides, Polly said she’d come, and that was a comfort to me.

he rather neglected to mention, though,
exactly what the properties of said apple might be
which left me vulnerable, as it happened, to a blood-mouthed witch dropping arsenic-laced honey in my ear
eternal life , she said, but that one wasn’t terribly hard to shake off -
who wants to live forever, anyway -

but then – healing for your mother – and I felt like I’d been punched in the lung
the thing I searched for, and had given up on
the promise of wholeness to exchange for my ashes -

Polly, sturdy, told me it was a trick, but left me to choose
it wasn’t, after all, her mother.

damn that lion. damn him and his inscrutable tasks

but then -

but then -

find your heart’s desire and find despair
(besides, the witch-queen thought to leave Polly behind. a bad mistake on her part, that.)

so, all right. I’ll take it to him
this apple that smells like the heart of the sun
give it him to guard the insouciance of this idyll
I said I would, so I will

and try not to think -
not now, not ever -
of a white faced woman dying in a dreary back bedroom in London -

you can’t have everything, I suppose
even when magic gets snarled into your life
even then.

- Kathy, 13/1/14

Month of Poetry #11: Haiku Day

It's haiku day over at Month of Poetry today. This is a simple, very traditional one - 5/7/5, no punctuation, focusing on a small point of nature, with a seasonal reference.

As I said on Twitter last night, I am going to have to sharpen my haiku skills and toughen my hide, as I am launching a slightly out-there project at work next week which will involve the writing of a weekly puzzle / riddle haiku. This obviously won't be one of them, but the practice is good for me!

the bud of a rose
cradled in small tapered hands
breathes scent of summer

- Kathy,  11/1/14

Month of Poetry #10: Love

love

not in glamour
not in glory
just because
you know my story

and stay, anyway.

not with fireworks
on no mountain
but comfort, here
a constant fountain

rest and gentleness.

years of winding
threads together
though caution stops me
saying forever…

I do think so.

- Kathy, 10/1/14

Month of Poetry #9: On Collaboration (For Tumnus, a ethical faun in spite of himself)

The third of my Narnia poems … trying it as a villanelle.

in the abstract, it all sounded well
what is a human child to me, after all?
for the safety it would buy, so small to sell.

doubts, if any, were not hard to quell
my love of my own safety didn’t pall
in the abstract, it all sounded well.

I knew, I knew, the whispers that would tell
if I ever tried to hide, or even stall
for the safety it would buy, so small to sell.

I think I knew her first by her unchancy smell
cinnamon, and honey, and remembered caul
in the abstract, it all sounded well.

but sitting by my fireside, I saw hell
in handing over innocence in thrall
for the safety it would buy, so small to sell.

and now I hear in every wind, the bell
and wait, and wait, and wait for pain to fall
in the abstract, it all sounded well
for the safety it would buy, so small to sell.

- Kathy, 9/1/14

Month of Poetry #5: Turkish Delight

Continuing on my Narnia-inspired run, this one's for Edmund ... 

her sled spun of ice-lace, her arms
white white white
but warm, even so
the snow is falling

I know I should not

sweet
ahhhhhh

powdered sugar on my tongue
altering my brain chemistry
firing me with longing -

it's not really my doing. witched candy
wraps its sticky tendrils around my heart

third children, second sons
are born to be sidelined

but she

gave

me

delight

even though I knew it was poison
even then

powdered sugar on my lips
the secrets dropping from my mouth like crystals

secrets for delight. it seems a fair exchange, for a while,
even though I could taste the underbite of sour all along

but I wanted it, I wanted it
I want -

- Kathy, 5/1/14

Month of poetry #2: For Lucy

some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again -
he said, to the goddaughter caught in amber on the page
destined - or doomed? - to be the darling of the story forevermore

to grow, then shrink, then grow again
telescoping from past to future
from witch-cursed winter to lion-gold wild spring
hunter, hunted, smacked with salt spray on the deck of a quest ship
stalking hidden magicks and backing restoration wars
flung about among the stars and all their worlds; a heroine, yes,
courage mandatory, doubt impermissible
going forth, whether she will or no

and of course, foreshadowed, a vision of the way it finishes -
death is not the end, but the beginning
the first chapter is written when the storybook stops
the fairytale would have it so. and so he did believe it.
an eternity of pastoral and child-like delight, which sounds nice enough -

(perhaps, when she was 9).

- Kathy, 2/1/14

Month of Poetry #1: Turn

the year has turned. the future is here
wearing a baffled and uncertain face

north and west of here, a cyclone with a beautiful name
casually flings ships to shore as she spirals to oceanic extinction.

while on two islands, barred,
seekers of refuge find none.

back here, in the rich and rampant east
the sky lights up in pink and gold, and the people cheer.

- Kathy. 1/1/2014