Sunday 30 November 2014

2nd Pinocchio poem

Waiting for Geppetto:


I stand in this forest, stretch toward light, even blind I can see; 
my leaves - the fractured eyes of a green Mayfly - watch 
for your coming. Like Odin, I dangle, see glimpses of all that may be; 
hope my mind is strong enough to recall the vision. Like Christ I wait 
to be cut down and, by clever hands and tools, shaped to fit your image.

The kiss of blade to sever me forever from the earth; to separate 
trunk from roots so my nightmares radiate with the darkness of soil. 
The bark to be pealed free; clothes no longer needed - fed to the coals 
while your rough hands take coarse paper and knives and search 
for me within the grain - set me free and bind me to this new form.

Forever at your debt; my words spoken at your mercy.
My acts, vibrations at your beck and call.

Yet somehow I must find my own footsteps, break from the love 
and demands you will place upon me to find that I alone am real -
you merely a dream I once had while my branches swayed in a storm
and the fear of death by lightning overcame me. Life is a terrible distance
to fall. I wait for the kiss of your axe and the plunge into my humanity.


Saturday 29 November 2014

suite of Pinocchio Poems


Hi everyone, these poems formed the basis of my novel (to be released by Satalyte Publishing)  Gepetto's Son. I will post them 1 at a time over the next weeks.

Hope you enjoy

Danny

first poem:

Pinocchio’s evolution:
It started with the aglet of the lace
painted upon the left black shoe
on the foot of his carved leg.

After an unknown interval
an entire shoelace turned real,
moved  to an intrusive breeze.

The strings were still there
when behind a knot of wood
his heart began to beat.

The right eye moistened first,
saw the crease of flesh
and a single blue vein underneath.

One day the finger nail
of his right thumb
started to grow and curl.

A strand of blue-black hair
at the back of his head stirred; 

a lash of his eye fell free, fluttered,
landed upon his wooden cheek.

The right foot bent, returned.
His left hand made its first fist.

His ears filled with wax
weeks before his bottom and top lips
cracked and split

and a full year, at least,
before the tongue, like a debutant,
shyly poked between.

It was a sunny day
when he first began to think;

rained heavily the afternoon
all his wood was finally skin,

yet the tale is easier told when,
with the wave of a wand,
and a hoarse whisper of a spell,
the puppet can speak.

Thursday 27 November 2014

Ode To Rusden:


 
I went to study Language and Literature
and fell like the fool for the rope of theatre,
hung myself on that stage, dangled
upside down: Watched the world
slide by while thoughts in my head
were filled in with the words of others — had they too
hung and spun,
examined the world as if it were frozen
and the only thing that moved
was my desire
as it seeped passed flesh and heart and ear and lip?

I remember Visions.

I remember an apple
and the impulse to say whatever.
I remember the three-way script
spun outwards like a web to snare an audience in ways
I had never fathomed.

I remember I wrote a piece about Russian Caravan Tea
and listened to my words plunge as if I were a well
and (having filled the page) became empty and filled again
by hearing someone else speak my mind.

Once we travelled like beetles to Sydney,
listened to playwrights rewrite their histories
and then there was the tour into the countryside:
There was day in the middle of an oval,
the band  through Paul finding a way to heaven,
 the kids, the dispersing clouds that spun away
like the old sheets on mum’s clothesline, the sun and I…
I swear if I could I would hold that day forever.

And the time I watched Elena and Neil find and lose themselves
in The Woods
that too I would hold
and the Vowles, the Cliffs…

The very fabric of me
stretched out and tossed by the hands of fellow learners of the craft,
by dancers and singers and lovers and friends,
only to fall back again and cover my skin as if nothing had changed
and it hadn’t and it had
just like the very best of things.

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Rusden Sonnet 2:


She said she read auras, mine she said, was red: I told stories and as we
lay on the ground and I recovered from the metaphor of an aura
said to be red I told her a story in the form of a poem of two people
living on two different islands and the journey it might take for them
to reach out and find each other and in that darkened room the red
forgotten my words floated out to touch the cosmic pressed tin ceiling
and her hand reached out as she told me red was not so bad after all
not of it came with  a voice as bright as any full moon and in the dark

I remember I smiled at that and thought my words were more like hooks
that the ideas behind them were the bait for her lips to nibble upon
and then she said but though red was fine for me it spelt only trouble
for her and before the next breath fell into the anchored lungs within
my shipwrecked chest she rose up like a leviathan in the night and left:
I remained an island drifting again through the ocean of another night.

Monday 24 November 2014

Rusden Sonnet 1:


Sometimes I think about that strange place where we,
the mad children of the times collected in black caverns
of fantasy and desire. It was so long ago now when we let
our voices whisper and roar as we raced through love and lust,
our hands slipping and gripping even as the familiarity
wove an unbroken chain through the ensuing years.
The hurts we gave to each other were never intended
for we were the wild flowers that bloom in innocence.

I miss those times we spent together laughing and learning,
for though I have found many more moments in the light,
and many moments, too, alone before the howling abyss,
it is the first blossom in company with like-yielding wild flowers
that always fill memories stolen in the fading evening sunlight
with the strongest scent of both tears shed and laughter shared.

Saturday 22 November 2014

The Wild Flowers of Rusden Teachers College



beware, first edit so this will take a bit of editing/polishing...

The Wild Flowers Of Rusden Teachers College:

Sometimes I think about that strange place
where buildings collected as if they had fallen -
not a thought for rhyme or reason, apt for the times
before every shape took on someone’s importance,
while we, the mad children of the times
collected in black caverns of fantasy and desire
strutted under lights while we ingested or drank
and never gave a thought to time’s heedless passage.

It was so long ago now, so far away in time,
those lessons in limbo when experiences fell through fingers
like sand lifted up in the hand and we let our voices
whisper and roar as we raced through love and lust
our hands slipping and gripping even as the familiarity
wove an unbroken chain through the ensuing years.

It was a time of youthful energy, when the follies
and the hurts we gave to each other were never intended
for we were the wild flowers that bloom in innocence
as we climbed the stairs into adulthood’s light –
oh we thought ourselves so majestically grown then,
took ourselves far too seriously, as only the young truly can,
 and played so hard we fell alone or together, rose again
like starving Draculas seeking the next dramatic neck
to drain to the very last bittersweet drop then taking the bow.

I miss those times, that moment of blossoming,
for though I have found many such moments in the light,
and many moments too alone before the howling abyss,
it is the first blossom in company with like-yielding wild flowers
that always fill memories stolen in the evening sunlight

with the strongest scent of both tears shed and laughter shared.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Paul Adkin's latest novel

When Sirens Call

Follow the link and have a look. I can't recommend his writing strongly enough so do yourself a favor and have a read. Great get for threekookaburras Press I might add.



Thursday 6 November 2014

Regret 2:



He hates sailing now, though he must if he is ever
to find his way back to Penelope’s arms; arms
he desires even as he fears her serious eyes —
for Odysseus knows she will see the stain of Hecabe.

She will witness Odysseus’ eyes,
she will study Hecabe’s leap from the prow,
a Trojan rock breaking free from the cliff
and falling silent  into the utter coldness of the sea;
a leap to death’s green drowning
preferable to the supplication of his bed.



Regret 1:


 
Odysseus stands before another window,
his hands hold the weathered frame, framing
himself, a forgotten Samson about to suffer
the collapse of the temple. He breathes in,
attempts to catch a salt-laden breeze;
perhaps that might  blow away the regret
that lingers like a leech draining him dry.

He has dreamed again of that day after the horse
when he stood silent and watched
the slaughter of Polyxena and Astyanax,
children both, their small bodies no more than limp flags
waved by joyous warriors to signal the end the war.

The girl had her swan-like throat slit,
her bright blood flung upon the tomb of Achilles —
death to her, profanity to him,
greatest hero and never one who desired
an innocent’s blood to be shed for any reason.

The boy thrown from the highest Trojan wall
(like hay to the hungry horse’s stable).
While the drunken Greeks cheered and pointed
the boy fell, swift to death yet that fall eternal
in Odysseus’ mind: The Greeks cupped their ears
to catch the sound of his breathing body
colliding with the stones below…they savored
the crunch of his small death.

To the city below he whispers—How can I
return to Penelope and to my son Telemachus
when those deaths permanently stain my flesh?