Sand it back

(based on suggestions from @twitofalili, @matchtrick, @anitranot channeled by @TheEndeavour, and most importantly @ernmalleyscat)

We stuck to our inheritance like flypaper.

You, big pigtails; the brat fury genius.

Me, little shoulders; the red hot scientist.

Our new/old home is slender, likes flowers.

House, how do you like your blue-eyed boy,

your sweet-limbed girl? We are grown: up.

Thirty years & well more thirty centimetres

We are drawn to this picket fence to parry,

dodge ourselves & fuse like double-sided tape.

The same argument, this time we stick it

like a gymnast. Take the paint off, sand it back

to bare solar systems of earth & crust.

Solid siblings pause: our arms. Are still.

We have ground back the years

to stand. Eyes lick the door frame.

Our heights, ground pencil against the grain,

the space of our years is a well-kerned paragraph.

Me & you; sister & brother; X & Y.

Once briefly the same height,

for a month we shared an ampersand.

_____________________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from four peeps:

• @twitofalili: "Ampersands and double-sided stickytape!"
• @matchtrick: "The Solar System. Hot scientists. e e cummings"
• @anitranot, channeled via @TheEndeavour: "if you get the word 'kerning' in, @anitranot would be very impressed."

And finally, this very special suggestion from @ernmalleyscat, who has had the idea head-floating for 10 years but never put it into writing, and so has given it to me. I am a bit honoured as it is lovely. I hope I have done it justice:

• @ernmalleyscat: "Renovating the house you grew up in and finding pencil height marks under layers of paint on door jambs."

Lines 1 and 2 of the second stanza are taken from two of my favourite e.e. cummings poems, Suppose and Buffalo Bill.

Kerning is the process of adjusting the space between characters, usually to make it visually pleasing. A well-kerned sentence looks nice. It's relative to the character pairs in the word, because every letter has different slopes and takes up a different amount of space (Capital I vs. capital V for example). Have a look at the Wikipedia picture as it's easier than me explaining in too many words. A picture is worth a thousand proverbials. A pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues*

*that's e. e. cummings again.

Laundry date

(based on suggestions from @eglantinescake and @SeanMElliott)

Stuck between a rut and a fresh place

Crush embarrassed water between fists

I've never lost a stain, I can bash

Every damp sock clean like fish on a rock

No one can answer every girl correctly

Can rinse down planets for her or

Extract powdered star granules

Retract nerves on the spin cycle and

Obey rules of romantic thermodynamics

Maybe on first listen, everyone

Asks the same soggy questions. But

No load is the same, no atom spins its

Course to clothesline soaked and alone

Every smooth sheet is a wet dream

____________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from two peeps:

• @eglantinescake: "I want you to write a poem about laundry."
• @SeanMElliott: "Science speed dating?"

Today's poem didn't go where I intended. After Penni's suggestion, I was intending a gentle, cool poem about the soothing aspects of doing the washing (I find it soothing, anyway, especially hanging it out). But when science speed dating was added into the mix, a kind of frustration crept into the words (I also find doing the laundry frustrating. DOONA COVERS are so unwieldy, argh). It's odd when words won't behave themselves for you.

Also, today's poem is another acrostic. Not that I'm obsessed by acrostics or anything.

Four autumn haiku

(based on suggestions from peeps at Paul's birthday party, but I can't remember from who! Mystery contributors today.)

**Update! Aimee has reminded me that she was the one who suggested dog food. A discussion of why there were peas in dog food followed.

i.

I fell from a tree!

Our thoughts produce xanthophylls

Leaves land in dog food

ii.

A wet gumboot march

Rubber stomp of size six dreams -

Bought before your birth

iii.

Spoon breaks the suction

Plop! It falls into the bowl

Autumn-toned dog food


iv.

I would remember

Wet leaf dreams and dog food spoons -

If I'd had less wine

__________________________________

Today's poems are haiku, 3 line poems with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. They traditionally contain a a kigo or seasonal reference (autumn, in this case) and a kireji or cutting word - this has no equivalent in English, so English haiku often use punctuation (eg. a dash, ellipsis or exclamation mark) to cut the stream of the poem or make the reader reflect on the juxtaposition of images/thoughts.

Haiku are a bit like picture books - people think because they're short they are easy to write, but it's because they are short that they are hard. It's easy to write crap haiku. I wrote heaps this morning and these are actually the best ones (no, really. You shoulda seen the ones I chucked out).

I'm also long-winded, so restricting an idea to 17 syllables without being too mundane or simply telling a joke is difficult. It's a bit like cramming a thought into a tweet, and you get 140 characters for that.

These haiku are based on suggestions made at Paul's party (dog food and dreams), which I had to ask about again because I couldn't remember what was suggested, and I still can't remember who suggested what. Sigh.

Xanthophyll provides the yellow colouring in autumn leaves.

Pickup time

(based on suggestions from @pinknantucket, @1000yearsago, @realnixwilliams and @MJPhotographer)

Let’s go look at the possum in the bin!

We saw Dale eat a sandwich out of there

Hey, if you were a Transformer

Would you be a Mack or a Kenworth?

Dancing on chalked up foothpaths

Legs and arms on a string

Sprayed with a shot of freckles

Feverish dandelion hair.

My dad says your dad drives a Holden.

My mum’s bringing home KFC after work.

What one? Family bucket. Lucky.

Why did Miss Ford yell at Dale again?

Filigree of dust on glue on skin

Mucilage of grime-edged hands

Blue and orange veins of texta

The magic of glitter under fingernails.

My oldest sister is househunting.

She says real estate agents are arseholes.

And prices are bloody horrendous.

Then she said the C word.

Love lights up their collar bones

Precious knees, careful ankles.

Sleek joy whirls in a swinging bag

Turns; sings out like a clarinet; runs to me

Runs to me.

__________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from four peeps:

• @pinknantucket: "how about using the word 'mucilage'?" (I do believe this is the first time I've used the word 'mucilage', ever!)
• @1000yearsago: "househunting :\"
• @realnixwilliams: "holdens! no, fords! (or the east gippsland logging equiv: mack! no, kenworth!"
• @MJPhotographer: "light love"

But also based on me eavesdropping on kids outside a primary school while they waited to be picked up. Kids are awesome.

Chills

up my spine from your latest.

I excel at pretend sharing,

this is not how I dreamt it;

wearing my ring.

Yell ‘YES!’ every time

poetry most of the time.

What happens if you cut

the top shelf off the bookshelf?

Speaking as myself, off the cuff, is a challenge.

Caveat: I am no expert.

I’ll withdraw my condescension,

reserve the right.

Spoon some in my open upturned mouth?

Related to that: repeat in different ways our whole lives,

this is not an insignificant achievement.

Cry in front of everyone.

It just turned up in an image search,

promised a hot air balloon and a dinosaur.

The temptation is to frame this as well.

It does suck for a while

Put lovely photos around it

Tearful? Silly pictures sent your way.

________________________________________

This is an extra poem for today. When people tweet at me, I am often struck by the lovely structure in their words. So this poem is just from tweets I have been sent today. Just from today, and they're in chronological order - so the poem starts at the end of today, and ends at the start. That's a timeline for you. I haven't added any words at all to your words, I have only added punctuation and line breaks. There are some beautiful phrases being tweeted, I think. I wanted to show them off.

Contributors are:

@snazzydee, @sulphura, @anthonyeaton, @jellyjellyfish, @kumuda, @facelikethunder, @realnixwilliams, @timsterne, @twitofalili, @dogpossum, @matchtrick.

Nervous Writer Note: This is obviously taking liberties with your words, so let me know if you are unhappy with your letters being plundered like this, and I'll edit to remove. (I am just playing, I do not want to offend or unfriend.)

Folding down corners

(based on suggestions from @GretasTARDIS, @pinknantucket, @quadelle and @sorrel_smith)

How when the Nazis came

They were tucked in a cupboard

Saved by a wardrobe with no Narnia.

A slim book; The Upstairs Room.

I was nine, I yawned at church

Every Sunday with my father.

I listened, fidgeted, believed.

I ate my lunch with God.

I read in the bath, wrinkled wet pages.

A slim book; The Upstairs Room.

On page 95 I learned

About gas in a room like showers.

How they gave them soap

Led them in like cattle

Led them in like children

Promised icecream later.

A picky eater, I demanded

Plain pasta with butter (no parsley)

The exotic octopus balls and bonito flakes

Adults relished; it was ash in my mouth.

At night, I cried quietly about God

Worried myself raw over communion.

At page 95, I could not understand

How he made this chamber true.

In a dull hall of instruction

I cradled my green vinyl hymnal

Turned to page 95

And folded down the corner.

Every Sunday, like a quiet furnace

I drew a soft, warm text

From a dark oak slot and registered

My complaint with the angels.

I was nine, so I could not change history.

A picky eater; pasta with butter.

I could not feed those children

Or lead them away to ice cream.

A small show of revolution

A folded corner of protest

A whisper in a giant cathedral

‘I don’t believe you.’

_______________________________________

The book, The Upstairs Room, is a 1972 YA novel (and was a Newbery honor book in the year Julie of the Wolves - which I also adore - won) by Holocaust survivor Johanna Reiss. It was my first introduction to the horrors of that time. The passage I'm referring to is a very brief and simple paragraph where the young Jewish protagonist Annie learns from an underground newspaper why they are hiding from the Nazis:

"Lots of people went into the shower-room holding pieces of soap in their hands, until the room was so full that the steel door could just barely be closed. No water was turned on. Gas was. It didn't take more than fifteen minutes. Most of the time everybody was dead when this happened."

In my copy this passage was on page 95. Every Sunday at church after that I folded down the corner of page 95 in the catholic hymnal I happened to sit in front of. I think I wanted to leave a mark of what I had learned, and how I could not equate the God of love I was learning about with Holocaust events. That's what I think in retrospect, anyway. At nine, I just needed to act somehow on what I had read on page 95. What an odd child.

Today's poem is based on suggestions from four people:

• @GretasTARDIS: "Nazi Germany" (The Upstairs Room was Holland, but close enough)
• @pinknantucket: "What about octopus balls? The tasty edible kind you get from Japanese restaurants with magical bonito flakes on top."
• @quadelle: "Ice cream."
• @sorrel_smith: "Therapy. I mean, social revolution."
  

The photo on this post is of Johanna Reiss (left) as a young girl. What a gorgeous little face.

In case you are wondering, as an adult I am atheist.

Decennial

To think we never used to notice it,

Enduring just a day upon the pile.

Not special, never such a perfect fit,

You’d never guess we’d wear it down the aisle.

Each growing year has long expected this,

A daffodil, a diamond furled in tin.

Received with all the care of a first kiss,

So as to keep the secret genius in.

My words have worked at time, have worked at play,

At times I’ve torn our wings apart like crêpe,

Took matches, sulphur. Fire and brimstone days,

& then, an easy joy is given shape:

For when these creatures wake; a call to light

Invokes the year, drives off another night.

__________________________________

This poem is for Mat and Fi on their 10th wedding anniversary. They are wonderful friends: I hope they like it. This poem is also an acrostic, because I really love acrostics.

I wrote a sonnet for this poem, because anniversaries demand sonnets. A sonnet is 14 lines long, with ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GG rhyme structure, also it is in iambic pentameter - five feet per line.

I write most of my poetry by hand, because I am all sorts of places - trains/bars/walking - when I write it. So the photo at the end is my draft of this poem. It's a bit crumply, because I had to shove it into my bag when I ran for the train. But, you can see the process, a bit? I set my acrostic and wrote my last two lines on the computer at work. I always write the last lines first, then write the rest of the poem (with mad crossing-out and editing), then hate the last lines, erase them, then write them again really fast.

And, as if you didn't need MORE explanations - a daffodil is the flower of the 10-year anniversary, and tin is the gift of the 10-year anniversary, and the 'modern' symbol of a 10-year anniversary is a diamond.

So please, read down the side and wish Mat and Fi a very glorious, very genius, very everything 10 year wedding anniversary.

Much love, and wishes for a happy day and year ahead,

xx A