Tag Archives: Robin Helweg-Larsen

Short poem: RHL, ‘Friendship, Not Passion’

Leave a reply

I had a friendship, more than passionate love, for you;
we could have been so good, easy, together.
But there’s that issue of your strong religious thoughts,
whereas I let my thoughts change with the weather.

I… well, and who’s the I you think that you address?
I ramble, googly-eyed, my arms elastic.
There are so many sweet but sadly firm believers.
I’m – more than atheist – iconoclastic.

*****

If you’re used to iambic pentameter the meter of this poem feels just a little off, with its lines of alternating 12 and 11 syllables, i.e. alternating hexameters and feminine-ending pentameters… not quite comfortable. Which is perfectly in keeping with the relationship described. And I don’t remember precisely which long-ago not-quite-girlfriend I had in mind when I wrote it; I’ve been attracted to more than one charming female, wonderfully calm and sane except for some unfortunate religious orientation or other.

I’m reminded of the 19th century Punch cartoon of the two guests at a dinner party:
She: “And what is your religion, sir?”
He: “Madam, all men of sense are of the same religion.”
She: “And which religion is that, pray tell?”
He: “Madam, men of sense never say.”

Which is all very well for friendship, but hardly a solid basis for a deeper relationship. You’re better off if you hold out for someone philosophically compatible, unless you (and they) really don’t care. In which case, you’re philosophically compatible!

‘Friendship, Not Passion’ was originally published in Lighten Up Online, edited by Jerome Betts.

Illustration: “Friendship” by h.koppdelaney is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Halloween’

Leave a reply

I sing the changing seasons of the year
And, as leaves fall, I celebrate my death.
Each inhalation may be my last breath;
Each year I lose another near and dear.
So many people live life in Death’s fear,
The very word <cough> Dead’s a shibboleth –
Paint on false youth like old Elizabeth –
Yet half the planet’s Spring, while it’s Fall here.

Eternal life is ever to be felt,
For death, rebirth, are always intertwined
In pious hopes, in science still unseen.
The pagan in me – Viking, Druid, Celt –
All celebrate when Life’s return’s divined.
It’s Halloween, so I will dress in green.

*****

This sonnet with its Petrarchan rhyme scheme (ABBA ABBA CDE CDE) was originally published in The Lyric a couple of years ago. “Founded in 1921, The Lyric is the oldest magazine in North America in continuous publication devoted to traditional poetry.”

“Green pumpkin carved into witch face jack-o-lantern” by Chris Devers is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Poem: RHL, ‘On Doing Nothing’

Leave a reply

Here where the royal poinciana’s blaze
pales to haze in the full midday craze
of light on shallows stiller than you can see
and all time stops, worn out from timeless sun
in a land and season where nothing’s to be done,
futility stretching to eternity,
and nothing is, except for heat and light…
accept the heat and light, the dazzling green and blue,
do nothing: for there’s nothing here to do.
Although elsewhere the world’s a ruin of smoke—
democracy and leadership a joke—
I unapologetically sit out the war
(whether on virus, climate change, or rich v. poor),
I’m Swede or Swiss to their corrupted plight.
A fish, a coconut—I don’t need more.
And so I sit and think, and read, and write.

*****

I should probably write a little about this poem’s form (iambic pentameter and rhyme, and could have had more shape if I had put more effort into it) or inspiration or whatever… but that would be work, and who needs that?

Published this month along with two others in Shot Glass Journal, anyway… thanks, Mary-Jane Grandinetti!

Photo: “Lazy Afternoon” by cybertoad is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Non-traditional sonnet: RHL, ‘The Range of Change’

Leave a reply

In times of no change, the advantage lies
with those who are receptive to being taught.
Parents and teachers may seem truly wise,
avoiding dangers with which life is fraught;
the stories of the old none would despise
when they hold all the answers that are sought.

In times of constant change, advantage shifts
to those who, hating school, go and explore.
Old answers fail. Fresh questions cause great rifts
with parents who are seen as wise no more;
questions now turn up unexpected gifts
in crossing unknown seas to virgin shores.

Remain alert that there’s a range of change
from none, to gradual, to fast, to strange.

*****

A sonnet, or not? 14 lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming regularly and with a final couplet. Though not in either of the standard English forms, it has the organised, compressed, reflective sense of the sonnet. Recently published in Shot Glass Journal, Online Journal of Short Poetry. Thanks, Mary-Jane Grandinetti!

“Climate change icon” by Tommaso.sansone91 is marked with CC0 1.0.

NSFW Sonnet: ‘Restaveks’

Leave a reply

Illegals, both of us; married last year,
now she cleans houses, I cut grass, sweep decks,
for superrich who see us as mere specks
while their big spaceship exit they prepare.
Earth will be fishless, treeless, plastic, bare.
They’ve offered us both jobs as restaveks,
but I said No, they just want us for sex.
She said Then suck them off, why should you care?
I said, We’ll stay. She said, I said I’d go.
I said, You’d leave me? She said, Stay, be dead.
I said, That makes you nothing but a whore.
She said, I fucked him for your job, you know;
I go to space, I’ll live, have food, have bed,
and, if I’m good, oh maybe so much more…

*****

“Restavek” is normally a term for a child of an impoverished Haitian family, sent to live as a domestic servant for a wealthier (or less poor) family. There are an estimated 300,000 in Haiti, mostly girls; and an unknown number in the Haitian communities in the US.

This sonnet (Petrarchan, rhyming ABBA ABBA CDE CDE) was recently published in the frequently NSFW Rat’s Ass Review – thanks, Roderick Bates!

Illustration: “Tiny Empires 3000” by Daniel Voyager is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Excerpt: ‘You, Yes You’

Leave a reply

You, yes you, contain multitudes, conflicted mobs-–
the adroit who holds two jobs,
the maladroit who fails and sobs,
the shortcut thug, dacoit, who simply robs-–
you’ve urges to protect and to exploit:
be just! (but help yourself when you’ve the chance
and no one’s there to look at you askance.)
Priests educate, instruct and rape their flock
as farmers care for, milk and eat their herd
and statesmen love the country they extort.

*****

This is (apparently) the most interesting excerpt from a longer rant that was more than the Rat’s Ass Review wanted. Thanks Roderick Bates for selecting this piece!

“Disagreement” by Petri Damstén is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Poem on Poetry: ‘Poets Do Tricks With Words’

2 Replies

Poets do tricks with words,
play games, weld rhyme,
but we don’t do this nicely all the time–
we’ve also anger at unfairness, anger hot-white
at wasteful power, at greed and spite,
where fear meets selfishness, drives right and left
to persecution, torture, war and theft.

Each trick sticks bricks, fixed and unfixed,
into an apartheid verbal wall
that warbles claims to separate
sense from nonsense–though we appreciate
all’s one, all’s all the same,
word walls are just a Jenga game,
and all bricks fall.

We can play games with words,
thread and unthread them in a silly tangle,
loom and illuminate light warp, dark weft,
wrong them and wring them ringing through a mangle
as sometimes the only way
to find a new way to say
things said ten thousand times before:
how brightness has a rightness,
whether in the sky, the sea, a face or an idea.

So cook with words, mix, bake,
packing in raisins, nuts, half cherries for a cake
with flour just enough for a pretence
that it’ll hold together and make sense.

*****

Formal? Free? The arguments about the appropriate structure for poetry in English never seem to end. The semi-formal compromise has been around for a long time: take the rhythmic, rhyme-rich ramblings of Arnold’s ‘A Summer Night’ from 170 years ago, or Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’, written in 1911. To me, the test of good verse is that it is easy to memorise and recite: the ideas and imagery have to be memorable, but so does the expression, word for word. The tricks may vary by language and culture, but whatever tricks the poet can manage to achieve memorableness are legitimate.

‘A Summer Night’ was in my English A Level curriculum <cough> years ago, and the middle section which I still know by heart encouraged me to run away from school. (I was found trying to sleep in a phone booth while waiting for a morning train, and brought back to school at 2 in the morning.) The poem’s semi-formal structure has always appealed to me with its rhetorical power, and over the years I’ve often used that freedom when writing about poetry, as in ‘Some Who Would Teach‘ and ‘Inspiration 2‘ and ‘Memorableness‘.

‘Poets Do Tricks With Words’ has just been published in Orbis, edited by Carole Baldock.

Photo: “National Fruitcake Day” by outdoorPDK is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Short poem, ‘Vetch in the Spring’

1 Reply

Love comes back like vetch in the Spring:
You knew it was there, but it’s still a surprise –
The flower is lovely, but wildly unwise.
Love comes back like vetch in the Spring,
You keep pulling it out but you’re never free;
You think it’s gone, but it won’t ever be.
It just comes back like vetch in the Spring.
Love’s just a thing.

*****

With a bit more attention, this poem might have made a satisfactory rondelet (like the previous post by Susan McLean)… but it’s in the form that it occurred to me and, like vetch, it’s just there in its undisciplined fashion. Published this month in Allegro Poetry Magazine, edited by Sally Long.

Photo: “vetch flower and tendril, with ant” by Martin LaBar is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sonnet: ‘Parking Lot’

Leave a reply

Although not of their class, I went to church
with Bryce and Nicky in the congregation.
In a shop’s parking lot and in the lurch
I asked Bryce for a job, loan, or donation.
Then Nicky’s car came up and Bryce got in,
the bastards swerved to hit me, ran me down;
when I got up, they ran me down again,
hit the wall with their car, left with a frown.
They don’t apologise, don’t feel the need –
“You caused it all ill-manneredly,” they say.
“Our car was damaged too.” (But did they bleed?)
I bothered them; they wanted me away.
The congregation says “Forgive, forget.”
Decades have passed. Forget? Forgive? Not yet.

*****

This Shakespearean sonnet (iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) has just been published in this month’s Snakeskin. Editor George Simmers expressed concern that it might be a true story… let me reassure everyone, I neither attend church nor get hit by cars. The poem is at most a parable, a parabolic approach to events.

Photo: from Snakeskin.

Sonnet: ‘Wanderer, or Odin/Merlin in the 21st Century’

2 Replies

It isn’t money, power, or (really) sex;
it’s wisdom, knowledge, understanding, truth,
the motivation from my earliest youth.
So now I watch as all our dreams turn wrecks,
as statesmen bluster, muscles bulge and flex,
economists forecast but can’t say sooth,
and life extension folks are thought uncouth–
they hoard possessions, but can’t save their necks.
I wandered, ragged, with a missing eye,
patched so none knew my implant’s extra sight,
seeking her who’d save from oblivion
the things I’ve found; for I see I must die,
and I’m now summoning the acolyte
who’ll carry knowledge on. Come, Vivien.

*****

The child wandering, the youth hitchhiking, the middle-aged tramp, the old hobo… in my view, they all have the spirit of Odin, Merlin, Hermes, Papa Legba, searching for knowledge, intermediary between the human and the divine/posthuman.

This sonnet was recently published in The Road Not Taken – a Journal of Formal Poetry. Thanks, Dr. Kathryn Jacobs!

Illustration: DALL-E