Monthly Archives: October 2019

Poem: “Eva’s Trip”

Eva

(Poster for Prostitution Support Centre, Norway)

Some of the girls I know
Go to the University
Sit so pretty
Prissy
Kiss-kiss and cissy
With beautiful boys that they know
Friends to drink tea with
Chat with and be with
Feather-headed into the feather-bedded night.

Oh no, sweet Jesus, hear me. I scream.
Such a life of show
Is beyond what I dream.
Give me a man who I’ll never know
A man without feelings, without wrong or right
Without obligations
Except for the money.
Let him be cold and hard as the money
And the money as dirty and evil as me.
I can’t trust feelings, I never trust feelings
And I don’t care
That I can’t care…
I don’t dare.

Some of the girls that I’ve seen
Listen to that classy music, they sit
And play piano while they drink their tea.
That’s somewhere I’ve never been.
Cello! Piano!! What SHIT!

Sweet JESus CATCH me beFORE I SCREAM
give me ROCK, ROCK, give me ROCK oh give me ROCK
ROCK, give me ROCK, give me ROCK
blast my MIND let me DROWN give me SO much of ALL
that my HEAD and my BODy are FINally SOUND
give me ROCK, ROCK, give me ROCK, ROCK
give me ROCK rock ROCK rock ROCK, ROCK
DROWN me DROWN me, LET me go DOWN
aWAY
aWAY
aWAY.

Some of the kids from my school
Would sit down to a smoke, have a toke and cool down,
Drift round the town feeling cool.
Not me.

Some of the students I’ve seen
Trip out on acid, they want to expand.
They want to feel all that they can, and still more.
Not me.

Give me JUNK.
Give me the rush and the bliss of fuck-all.
Give me the unsatisfaction of life.
Give me the treadmill toward the next fix,
The stealing or whoring, the need, the despair
Of being whipped up an unending stair.
A problem of Now I can just about handle,
The safety in knowing tomorrow’s the same
And the whole problem, thank God, unthinkable,
Only the treadmill toward the next fix,
The fix of nothingness, of peaceful nothing.
And let me not think
LET me not THINK
Sweet JESus if I THINK even ONCE
I’ll SCREAM I’ll SCREAM I’ll SCREAM
I’ll DIE.

This poem was originally published in Ambit in the UK when the delightful Martin Bax was editor, and has been reprinted various times, most recently under the name “Eva’s Trip” by Bewildering Stories, edited by Don Webb and John Stocks.

I wrote the poem when I was living in Copenhagen at a time that there was a lot of concern about young people from across Europe running away to Denmark, especially to Copenhagen’s “Freetown Christiania”, and ending up in prostitution. A big newspaper investigation on the subject gave the pseudonym Eva to a teenager they interviewed, and I thought the name well-chosen for the combination of innocence together with the knowledge of good and evil that such people have.

Poem: “All Aboard!”

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If an emotion pulls into your mental station
Like a steam locomotive, whatever dream motive
I second the motion, I say, “All aboard!”

Why do I, I who try not to die,
Welcome a hurricane? Waves walk, trees fly,
Houses unbuild. I don’t know why, but: All aboard!

Why do I, bride-bridled and stably stabled,
Let other girls turn my head to no purpose nor bed?
I don’t know; it’s a ride! All aboard!

Why, in hot sun or cold rain, do I take my stand
Protesting war not my war in some other land?
I don’t know; need a hand? All aboard!

Why even think? And why, from thought’s rubble,
Write without fright, and freight me with trouble?
Listen, that whistle that bristles with power! – We now are
All aboard!

This poem was published in Bewildering Stories #822. It is a paean to action, excitement, adventure, exploration and self-exploration, including both brave moral stands and dangerous irresponsibility. There is something very human in the reckless drive for experience and achievement, from Pandora’s box and Eve’s apple to the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program and Nike’s “Just Do It”. This drive can’t be suppressed without warping or destroying the human, but it can certainly be channeled into constructive rather than destructive activities… although who is to say which is which? And then this becomes yet another area for ruthless research.

Technically the poem has formal elements rather than being “formal verse” as such. It has a scattering of rhyme and a ragged rhythm; each stanza has a similar length and structure, ending in the “All aboard!” Tricks of rhetoric, designed like all formal poetry to make the passage memorable and able to be recited. But is that enough to designate it a formal poem? I’m dubious.

Haiku: “Young Man”

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Ageing Man in Mirror

(In the mirror)

Where’s the young man gone,
who lived in mirrors so long?
Putting old masks on.

This was published in Asses of Parnassus, a most worthy site for short verse, especially the flippant, frivolous or sarcastic. “Young Man” seems to be a theme I keep returning to, probably because I keep having birthdays. It’s easy enough to feel in your early 30s when you’re climbing a tree to pick fruit, or swimming, or reading; but a mirror may offer an unexpectedly different opinion.

Technically a loose sort of haiku, this poem meets the requirements of 5-7-5 syllables and the volta between lines 2 and 3, but hardly addresses a season and its sensibilities. The rhyme and near-rhyme of the three lines is not something required in Japanese, but seems to me to be necessary in an English haiku to make it a poem, i.e. to differentiate it from 17 syllables of prose written over three lines.

Poem: “Said Poor Mrs. Owen”

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Wilfred Owen

(“Futility” by Robbie Kerr) 

Said poor Mrs. Owen
To her son Wilfred
Why must you always
Write of the trenches?
Why can’t you write
Like that nice Mr. Wordsworth
Of flowers?

Said Mrs. Picasso
To her son Pablo
Why must you always
Paint so distortedly?
Why can’t you paint
Like that nice Mr. Monet
Some flowers?

Because we don’t always
Create what we celebrate,
Sometimes we model the
Things that we’d like to change,
Things we don’t like, or just
Things that we think about –
Thoughts of ours.

This poem was published in The Road Not Taken – a journal of formal poetry that is edited by Kathryn Jacobs in connection with Texas A&M University at Commerce, TX.

Technically the poem lacks some aspects of what we tend to assume is “form”, notably extensive rhyme, alliteration or assonance. But each of the stanzas has the same seven-line form, with two stressed syllables in each of the first six lines and a shorter seventh line. The first two stanzas have virtually identical structure, though one deals with poetry and the other with painting, and the third stanza answers them. The last lines repeat and rhyme.

It is really the natural rhythm of the poem that allows it to be included in a journal of formal poetry. In the sense that “form” is any trick of verse that allows it to be remembered word for word, form can be a lot broader than some of the narrow definitions of formal verse.

Updated: Formal Launch: Potcake Chapbook 5 – “Strip Down”

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05 Strip Down

“Strip down” the cashier ordered…

Potcake Chapbook 5, “Strip Down – poems of modern life” is now up and out, the post office is delivering the first copies in some countries, and others like myself will have to wait a couple of months before the post office gets its act together. So it goes.

With a mixture of lighthearted and flippant poems and others that are more meditative and bittersweet, all illustrated by the amazing Alban Low, “Strip Down” follows the formula of the earlier chapbooks. Returning Potcake Poets are Brian Allgar, Marcus Bales, Susan De Sola, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Vera Ignatowitsch, George Simmers, A.E. Stallings, Tom Vaughan and Gail White; newcomers to the series are Antonia Clark, David Galef, Claudia Gary, Paula Mahon and D.A. Prince.

Why does the potcake on the back cover wear a bow tie? Because he, like the poems, is in favour of the formal.

Why does the man on the front cover wear neither a bow tie nor anything else? Well, you’ll just have to read Marcus Bales’ little gem inside.

Poetry Resource: “SF&F Poetry Association”; Sonnet: “On a Dead Spaceship”

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Spaceship

(“Golconda Uranium (2012)” by Alexey Kashpersky)

On a dead spaceship drifting round a star
The trapped inhabitants are born and die.
The engineers’ broad privileges lie
In engine room and solar panel power.
The fruit and vegetables and protein coops
Are run by farmers with genetics skills:
The products of their dirt and careful kills
Help service trade between the several groups.
Others – musicians, architects – can skip
Along the paths of interlinking webs.
Beyond these gated pods that the rich carve
For their own selves (but still within the ship),
In useless parts, are born the lackluck plebs.
Heard but ignored, they just hunt rats or starve.

This sonnet was published in Star*Line, the official journal of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, a quarterly edited by poet and English prof Vince Gotera. Each issue contains a vast diversity of sf&f poetry. Not much of it is formal, but that is all part of the diversity which is appropriate to its genre.

So a sonnet is fine. And this one, like so much sf, is a metaphor for Earth today: circling the Sun, carrying highly unequal societies.

Technically, it is a sonnet to be sneered at by purists: it rhymes ABBA CDDC EFGEFG, the second quartet failing to rhyme with the first, making it a flawed Petrarchan sonnet. In addition, rhyming “star” with “power” is a bit of a stretch, one syllable against two, and none of them sharing quite the same vowel… Oh well, it’s only Science Fiction…

Poetry Resource: “Shot Glass Journal”, Poem: “In the Metal Box”

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You sit in the humming metal box
And the unlikely landscape rolls
Beneath you in its crumpled seas and rocks
Seen from some miles above on long papyrus scrolls.

This little poem was recently published in Shot Glass Journal, whose motto is “… brevity is the soul of wit …” Accepting only short verse (although “16 lines or less” seems overly generous for “short”) in either free or form, it is remarkable for an American institution in reserving half its space for non-US poets. In the current issue, the left-hand column of 21 US poets is balanced by the right-hand column of 21 poets from Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, India, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey and the UK. This in itself adds richness and interest to the journal, all the more tasty and accessible in a short-form environment.

Normally edited by Mary-Jane Grandinetti, the current issue (#29) is guest-edited by poet R.G. Rader, the poet and playwright who founded Muse-Pie Press. Muse-Pie Press publishes Shot Glass Journal, as well as two other idiosyncratic magazines, Bent Ear Review of spoken poetry (audio or video submissions only, naturally) and the fib review of Fibonacci poetry. All are open to both formal and free verse.

Technically, this might or might not be a “throwaway poem”. That’s how I would describe it, meaning just a casual thought in verse; but on the other hand some people use the term to mean hand-written thoughts (usually not well-formed) on scraps of paper left behind on public transit or in the park. This one has a bit of form: rhyme, meter, and the last two lines lengthening in imitation of the endlessness of air travel and of the landscape that is being flown over.

 

Sonnet: “Unanswered”

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The Afterlife – some Happy Hunting Ground?
Or Jesus, virgins, merging flesh and breath?
Or god of your own world, white-robed and crowned?
Or ghost? Rebirth? Just, please, no final death!

The sparrow through the Saxon hall at night –
Brief light and warmth, then cold obscurity.
Is this our life? But yet the bird in flight
lived in the dark, both pre and post. Do we?

Frogs, living in a buried water tank,
spend all their time in darkness. Then the lid
is lifted and sun shines into the dank –
lid down, light gone… but they live on, though hid.

We work and play throughout our brief day’s sun –
Day raises many questions – night, just one.

This sonnet was published in Snakeskin No. 265, edited by George Simmers. I write both religious and irreligious poetry as the muse suggests, but my own personal views are Fundamentalist Agnostic: “Nescio et tu quoque”, “I don’t know and neither do you.” The sparrow reference is to a passage in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People which usually seems to resonate well.

Technically the sonnet is Shakespearean: iambic pentameter rhyming ABAB CECD EFEF GG. The three quatrains are each self-contained, but leading to the resolution (or lack of resolution) in the couplet. The last line is the strongest, which is always satisfying.

Sonnet Contest: Cash prizes, no entry fee!

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poetry magazine, Better than Starbucks logo

Better Than Starbucks has just opened its annual sonnet contest, an opportunity for all lovers of formal poetry to practice their skills and show off their best work.

Open through October and November (closes December 1), the contest has no entry fee but awards prizes of $100, $50 and $25 for the top three sonnets, which will be published in the magazine along with seven runners-up.

Expect the competition to be fierce! Better Than Starbucks already has a solid following among formal poets. Last year’s competition drew 560 sonnets, this year’s will undoubtedly see more. And you can only send two sonnets. Make sure they are good!

What “good” means can be gleaned from looking at last year’s results in the January 2019 issue, and more sonnets on the Formal Poetry page in March 2019. There are explanatory notes on the contest page, showing some leniency in the definition, and clarifying that previously-published work is acceptable:

This contest is for a metrical sonnet.
Your sonnet can be shakespearean, petrarchan, spenserian, rhymed, or slant-rhymed.
Blank verse is fine, as long as the sonnet form is clearly identifiable.
We’ll consider tetrameter, hexameter, etc. as well as pentameter.
Some metrical variation is fine, but don’t forget the volta!
As always, we do accept previously published work.

Good luck!