Old shoes shine themselves.
Black ties for boys, white ribbon for girls.
Grey bones kept in the closet.
Shoe-brush scrapes a sharpie scrawl
across flesh. Polished expectations.
The pony steps one back leg forwards.
From an angle, three front hooves align.
Tripod of nerves and promises.
Draw the bride churchwards
on coconut shell feet.
Trouser legs up the anti to ankles.
Disestablish the moment – an aria
sung by a country girl. Chauvinism
beats down like sunburn
sings vinyl in the red throats of farmers.
The horse carries his bones past
weddings into anniversaries into
mornings run out of jam
Bluebirds fly over winter children
rainbow hat flaps tied down in the chill.
Black film reels itself into glory
Accentuates the negative
I carry my history at all times
for safekeeping. Scan them into
the brick in my pocket. Let them glow.
_____________________________________
Today's poem is based on suggestions from five peeps. All the suggestions are in there somewhere, you just have to find them:
- @msmisrule: “Or else Judy Garland on vinyl.”
- @sushipyjamas: “Sunburn and tree roots”
- @facelikethunder: “The middle voice”
- @matchtrick: “Skellingtons! Throat singing! Those little skin tags on your fingernail that you can use to flay your hand! Hats with flaps! Antidisestablishmentarianism. And a pony. With three legs. Three legs. On the front.”
- @GretasTARDIS: “running out of jam. old shoes. ribbon”
Um, what? My knowledge of grammatical terms is not great, to be honest. So trying to wrap my head around a concept without a back catalogue of ancient greek to refer to was a bit of a brainfry. Still, I came across a sentence that made sense to me: "The subject acts on or for itself, eg: 'The boy washes himself'" Doing the whole poem in middle voice wouldn't have allowed me to tell a story properly, so I have just done the first line of each stanza in it (I think I have, anyway). I want to read more about the grammatical voices of other languages. Apparently Classic Mongolian has five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal and cooperative. That is brilliant. I wonder what the reciprocal voice entails? Perhaps it's like call and response at hip hop gigs? "When I say pump that y'all say] shit up], pump that! [shit up] pump that! [shit up]"
Anyway.
Today's poem is written after seeing @msmisrule's old family wedding photographs. How awesome are the black shoes/white shoes, the too-short pants and the Split-Enz hair?
1 comment:
I love this poem. Lots of great little plays , like 'steps one back leg forwards' and 'trouser legs up the anti to ankles'.
Again, I find it amazing you can come up with something so integral from such random diverse suggestions.
Post a Comment