Rumpled (Month of Poetry #11)

All that glitters is not spun straw.
A foolish father he was. A withered
little lizard of a man, he boasted to a king
who took his words for daughters.
The doubtful king knew he could not lose:
‘They feed me lies; so I will eat them.’

In a box he shut her with a wheel and
(disregarding her hayfever) demanded
three nights of gossamer thread.
For a necklace, a ring and an unknown child
a little rattle stilt made the fodder shine.
The baby brought her wealth to dust and grief.

She guessed at Mat and Mark, Sam and Cam,
Tim and Tom and Chris, and finally at Alice.
His impish name danced away on fires
and all the promise of her sweet soft boy
seemed lost into his gnarled demands.
It was only luck that found his name.

Stamp! And stuff feet! And embroider toes
into the floor like the truth is stitched pretty.
The endings vary. He split the earth with a bang
like a headsman’s axe. He fell from a good height
and flew out the window on a ladle.
He took his own foot and ripped up the middle.

One mouth says he found in the centre of the garden
there was a well, one woman’s dark wet metaphor
and in his fury he plugged her up.
But all that mattered was the story potential.
In everything, word of mouth edits like the knife.
In debris, shield will cut excess swords down blunt.

In everything, names are shields and words can rip apart.
If you find your babes among the straw
perhaps that could be gold and truth enough for spinning.
Do not promise your first-born like a necklace or a ring
do not treat them like a rare gift of jewellery:
you will not always find his name to save them.

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Today's poem is based on suggestions from nine people (yeah I know I said maximum of eight, but it's too hard just to leave out one):

@pinknantucket: "In the centre of the garden there was a well" (The Vanishing People, Katharine Briggs)
@_camer0n: "So I will eat them in a box." Dr.Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham
@markhwilliams: "All that mattered was the story potential in everything' - Supergods by Grant Morrison.
@marklawrence: "treat them like a rare gift." - Anh Do, The Happiest Refugee
@ernmalleyscat: "He was a withered little lizard of a man" Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
@attentive: 'with a bang like a headsman's axe' The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie
@dogpossum: 'stuff feet and embroider toes' - pg 51, 'Amigurumi' - LAN-Anh Bui & Josephine Wan.
@timsterne "fell from a good height, and flew" Jack Robinson, Days and Nights in W12
@matchtrick: 'The knife in debris shield will cut excess' —User Manual, Talon Petrol Line Trimmer (Model No. AT33550/AT33552)

Obviously, today's poem is about Rumpelstiltskin (which translates as 'little rattle stilt'). And it's true, the endings do vary - in the one I read as a kid he stamps his foot through the floor and gets stuck. In others, he stamps through the floor then grabs hold of his other foot and tears himself in half up the middle (gruesome), or flies out the window on a ladle, and somewhere I read a version where the queen stands above him and in his rage he flies at her and 'plugs her up'. Fairy tales, they're always about sex, aren't they?

The Rising Sun (Month of Poetry #10)

He had brought it back from Japan, starched with tourism,
hung it from a post at back of the hen house
to scare away foxes. Harsh weather seasoned the fabric,
now the Rising Sun standard hung limp against the flagpole.
Like the toga of a Roman senator, we would sometimes find
a hysterical chicken rolled up in the red striped swathe.
‘Your mother thought the Japanese would stink of fish.’
He rarely spoke of travels. Confusion blushed my face.
‘Always kept a bit of her country racism. When the
Italians moved in up town, I bet she imagined their fingers
would smell of garlic and their hair of tomatoes.’

They were never meant to fly, but his chickens hassled
themselves up into the orchard trees, singles to companies.
At ripening, fruit caught their beady eyes

they peppered the fuzzy globes with sharp beaks.
‘Is it the shape of the peaches?’ I was all parts book-learned
and naïve. His caterpillar eyebrows drew together like lovers.
I blathered: ‘Chickens have, by nature, cannibalistic tendencies.
Maybe the peaches look like, little…heads…’
The eyebrows arched. ‘Reckon the chooks just like peaches.’

Weary whiskey and evening loosened his throat.
Leather-voiced confessions: he thought each summer
was his last, he prepared for a season from the back of the head
to the affront of his death. Perhaps each daybreak was final,
the sun would never rise again hot and fierce against his eyelids.
‘I feel relief every time I see another.’ Round, burning through the sky.
‘Each one, I imgaine, ups the odds of surviving another day.’
He pointed to the hen house, the tattered fabric.
‘Reckon that flag draws up the dawn to match it, red-hot for red-hot.’

Superstition was fleeting strange; he hardly ever spoke of magic
and when he did it was like a history lesson in obscure imagery.
‘I can’t shake that red circle from my chest, it is strange.
How this goes on: the struggle to get started. Terrible.’
‘It always happens.’ My voice was soft, afraid for him:
‘The sun comes up, the chickens need their breakfast.’
He placed his glass neatly back in its wet table circle.
‘It’s such a weight, such a big red weight on my heart.
Your mother understood, she kept an eye on the dawn.’
Last light pinked at the top of the hill; the flag on the
hen-house stirred in the wind. I turned to see his face
at that salute: his brief unshuttered dread.

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

@eglantinescake: “Chickens have, by nature, cannibalistic tendencies” (no author, Keeping Chickens)
@BespokeShespoke: “It is strange how this goes on. The struggle to get started. Terrible. It always happens.” (John Steinbeck, journals)
@ernmalleyscat: “Singles to companies at ripening fruit” (Graham Pizzey, Field Guide to the Birds of Australia – Wompoo Fruit Dove)
@liamvhogan: “I feel relief every time I see another round burning through the sky. Each one, I imagine, ups the odds of surviving” (Evan Wright, Generation Kill)
@lalscotton: “He hardly ever spoke of magic, and when he did it was like a history lesson” (Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell)
@timsterne: “a season from the back of the head” (Steve Aylett, Lint)
@ChanletB: “the Rising Sun standard hung limp against the flagpole like the toga of a Roman senator” (Murakami, Norwegian Wood)
@marklawrence: “she imagined their fingers would smell of garlic” (Catherine Bateson, The Vigilant Heart)

Today's poem was really hard - I struggled for a lot longer than usual to fit the lines in, and as I wrote along, it became quite a strange poem. When I finished, I scanned back over my stanzas and thought: "Yep. That's weird." But chickens are pretty damn weird, aren't they? All that brooding.

Children in an ancient world (Month of Poetry #9)

Sea full of lovely chaos and crusted zinc
a cacophony of children spray shouts
in a wet garble of sound: they are a TV
turned up too loud; an audience of cockatoos.
No voice cuts out of tune, they are harmonised.

Three boys gesture a game of thrones and swords
'Aye, my lord,' bows one, with all the regal
purpose of an ocean. A shell in one hand,
he kneels in the shallows, is knighted with
a strip of kelp. And dunked for good measure.

A mother's voice rings out like a flung quoit
sweeps an armful of triangle sandwiches
bright buttered pinwheels of Vegemite,
ham and pickle, egg and lettuce. The game halts
the knights slough their armour: there will be no conclusion.

They take. They eat. A jumble of towels drapes
along shivering shoulders. I distract downwards,
stirring the sand with my finger, dragging my eyes
to notice a welt, bulging against the grain.
I smooth it clean: a white disc of shell.

We used to call them 'back doors'. Sea snails
hold them tight against their soft jelly feet,
protection against sharp beaks and rough swells.
Younger-limbed, we'd duck our heads down
underwater, let it seal over us in silence.

Occasional stingrays wafted past. Like fainting spells
we sank down dimly, peeled open our eyes:
children in an ancient world. The weight of water felt quiet
and dying. Unnerved, we popped like champagne corks
roaring in relief back up to light and speeding time.

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

@timsterne: "my finger dragging my eyes" (Penni Russon, Only Ever Always)
@KarenCollum: "stingrays wafted past like fainting spells" (Sonya Hartnett, The Ghost's Child)
@ernmalleyscat: "a TV turned up too loud" (MJ Hyland, How the Light Gets In)
@astarlia: "aye, my lord" (George R.R. Martin, Dance of Dragons)
@greenspace01: "They take. They eat." (John Ajvide Lindqvist, Little Star)
@matchtrick: "There will be no conclusion." (Peter Hoeg, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow)

Being underwater in the ocean is always strange, like going suddenly deaf or stepping out of the world. And then you come up for air and it's all kids shouting and lunches and mothers, like no time has passed while you were under.

I'd seen airplanes up in the air (Month of Poetry #8)

Kept an eye on the eaves through a crack in the venetians
we knew the undersides should be golden before we
stripped up the shades to face the afternoon light.
We peered into that blinding slit of summer, white
as royal icing, white as the middle of the pink tablets
that mostly kept me from going crazy.
Crisped-up Christmas trees blew up the street
first abandoned singly, then wedded into pairs:
dry needles matted together like veins and syringes.

Across the street, we called it the 'lamp house':
bare bulbs swung on frayed cords but behind
one spat and grubby window bloomed a fringed
and tasselled shade, supported by a brassy naked woman.
When January fury warmed to dusk and the lamp house
(crack house) shouts of 'Fucking mother FUCKER!'
slowed to intermittent we knew (in the same way
you know microwave popcorn is ready) we could
let the dregs of daylight in our balcony door.

Last year in a charred and broken February,
fire broke out, skipped parole and pleasured
up our street like a tongue. It tickled our eaves
a different golden hue and slopped across the road
to slaver five houses flat. In the soggy morning after,
a bunch of regulars worried the footpath grey:
to their relief, the lamp house survived.
We didn't mind the daily swearing or sirens,
they never gave us any trouble (or any crack).

Summer pills made my head heavy with sanity.
It is easy to be crazy, full of glory and forget
and brilliant white wings of time. I wore out
three pairs of winter shoes in places I had never
put down rubber or my face in sleep before.
But no one trusts you if you never get tired,
and a back corner of your brain mistrusts yourself.
So milligram by milligram I weighed my thoughts in place
until I grew too jealous of the undrugged morning light.

You said to me at night: 'You're a funny one.'
I never wanted to be a comedian.
You'd think I'd never been outside after dawn in
all my life. I'd seen airplanes up in the air, new year
babies with slim legs lotus-pale against the glare.
In dread of another chemical day, I said to you:
'I will go to sleep.' In the sun, those prescription days
were overfocused and full of sharp edges.
I saw too much of everything. It hurt, I had to close my eyes.

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

@_boobook_: "I will go to sleep in the sun" (Roald Dahl, Death of an Old Man)
@timsterne: "Fucking motherFUCKER!" (Tony O'Neill, Sick City)
@ernmalleyscat: "The undersides should be golden" (Jamie Oliver, 30 Minute Meals)
@eglantinescake: "To their relief, the lamp house survived" (H.O.U.S.E.: Habitable Objects Unique Spatial Extraordinary)
@gretapunch: "All my life I'd seen airplanes up in the air" (Justin Bieber, First Step 2 Forever)
@matchtrick: "I never wanted to be a comedian" (Stewart Lee, How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian)

What's a lamp house? I have no idea. So I made one up.

An extra identity (Month of Poetry #7)

In the last weeks she would struggle with the vertical,
a catalogue of twinges I could neither appreciate
nor salve. She railed against pregnancy dogma:
'This slab of rules, it's to make me think I'm a prisoner,
frantic with corporeality: one bite of soft cheese
and one unpasteurised spoonful away from child abuse.'
The suggestion of heat-treated sugar saw me dissolved.
'I will get you honey,' I concluded against her eyebrows.

When she held him first, I burst with sweetness.
A calm baby and almond-eyed; a stately, plump buck.
'Mulligan' came from the stairhead of her ancestral home,
carved into wood like a suggestion. We placed it
in his middle, an extra identity in case of unseen futures.
This is a city of beggars and thieves and faces gone dark for
dark business: perhaps he would have need of an alias.

The second afternoon caught her wet-faced by surprise.
Uneased, I forced assurance that no single, individual moment
is in and of itself unendurable. Her anger snapped electric and shone
out like the dog star stood beneath the Judgement Seats.
And raged: 'Tell me that when you've been in fucking transition,
when your nipples have been ripped through a cheese grater.'
The tiny tyrant screeched instead against unstoppable historia:
he condemned the pyramids on principle,
damned the Incan temples and ripped forth his fury
at the unsought blinding chill of his and every birth.
The baby would not stop, would not stop screaming.

On the third sunrise he had been quiet for seven hours;
those monsters had gone back to their lairs.
In his unconscious slack-limbed state I peeled,
cleaned and re-wrapped him into a baby burrito.
His chest fluttered like the small brown sparrow
flies down again to snap up screen-stuck midges.
'He is still alive,' I remember whispering.
She kept her back and shoulders to us
and murmured back: 'Am I?'

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Today's poem is based on suggestions from eleven (eek) people:

@_camer0n: "I will get you honey" (Stanley and Jan Berenstain, The Big Honey Hunt)
@scooter_lass: "this is a city of beggars and thieves" (Terry Pratchett, Stuff)
@_boobook_: "The small brown sparrow flies down again" (Anna Branford, Violet Mackerel's Natural Habitat)
@robcorr: "Dark for dark business" (JRR Tolkein, The Hobbit)
@facelikethunder: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead" (James Joyce, Ulysses)
@twitofalili: "The dog star stood beneath the Judgement Seats and raged" (Diana Wynne Jones, Dogsbody)
@anti_kate: "That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable" (David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest)
@Hannibal_: "it's to make me think I'm a prisoner, frantic with corporeality" (Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing #6)
@attentive: "those monsters had gone back to their lairs in his unconscious" (Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard)
@ernmalleyscat: "He is still alive, I remember whispering" (Patti Smith, Just Kids)
@timsterne: "he condemned the pyramids on principle" (Peter Conrad, Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life)

Disclaimer: I got up at 5:30am so I could write this in the hour before my 3 year old usually wakes up, except today he decided to wake up then too. So instead it was written over the next three hours, in between Rice Bubbles, poo, and him yelling "I'VE GOT A GIANT VACUUM CLEANER" over and over and over. So I might not have had the same levels of concentration as usual (or, you know, any level).

Eleven suggestions! Jaysus. Might have to cut things off at the first 8 from now on if I intend to live out the month.

Ship Shapes (Month of Poetry #6)

I could tell he was in my wardrobe, from the shuffling noises.
Unsure of which end to open first – open it left or open it right?
As if Jonathan Creek would filter the scene and each panel I slid
back would prove him still invisible. And then there was the
glass eye of the mirrored doors, predicting my presence
and promising nothing of his. I chose the left.
‘I’m sailing a big ship, Ma! It’s full of aminals!’
Soft arms gripped the plastic chair helm,
fierce waves of my dresses crashed across the bow.
The animals were not pathetic two-by-two, but soldiers,
(‘might there be Ferrets among the crew?’ I asked
the gesture of reply was non-committal.)
The ship’s belly prodded at carpeted shores and
they took the city for their spoils, gloried in
the treasure of my dusty shoes. Soon the mighty ship
dropped anchor among the storage tubs
because it was time to go to the supermarket.

Each day spits salt into the evening’s furrowed dreams,
smashes a wave across our brains, holds us foetal and
floating in the amniotic sea of our earliest oblivion.
Thinking produces; suffering twists it into strange shapes.
That night I swept out across the bed, sweated visions
of dessicated animal skins fluttering like skirts,
high seas where lightening sent down its white spider legs
and bent coat-hanger wires to pierce my arms. A clothed
and dead Reepicheep tilted his wind-stripped skull
at my suitcases and when I would not understand
he took a mirror and sliced away my fingers.
When my eyes broke open to a song of toast and cuddles,
his wardrobe still gaped open-mouthed.
‘I dreamed about your ship’, I said.
He shook his dandelion head in half-asleep.
‘My ship’s gone to the other place,’ he murmured.
I slid the mirror shut to vanish clothes and shoes
and caught my fingernail between the door and wall.

________________________________________________

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

@kirsty_l: “Thinking produces suffering” (Stendhal, The Red and the Black)
@erinmilne: “open it left or open it right” (Nick Sharratt, What’s in the Witch’s Kitchen)
@pinknantucket: “And then there was the glass eye” (Roald Dahl, The Twits)
@cathcrowley: “lightening sent down its white spider legs” (Karen Russell, Swamplandia)
@timsterne: “floating in the amniotic sea of our earliest oblivion” (Siri Hustvedt, The Summer without Men)
@robcorr: “they took the city for their spoils” (Hammett, Red Harvest)
@dogpossum: “might there be Ferrets among the crew?” (Tamora Pierce, Mastiff)

Luka's make-believe has a funny effect on my mind sometimes. And if you've never dreamed of a skeletal Reepicheep, be thankful.

A very ordinary form of madness (Month of Poetry #5)

Panic is in the details. I've lost all sense in
the thought of Rice Bubbles, toilet training
and squinting at the Panadol bottle at 2am.
Never mind that I am shaping a person,
about that fact my conceit, pomposity and
indignation grow in old age.
Like nostril hairs and earlobes, these small things
threaten storm clouds over the overtired.

When you ask the matter of it, I recalibrate my
words five times until certainly they beat me
speechless and you frustrated to sleep. I want to say:
'I am terrified by sandwiches and getting to daycare
on time and remembering to brush his teeth.'
What I mean is: 'I am frightened of being his mother.'
What I say is: 'μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος'
then I can't remember how to use my lungs.

This dissonance, the break between your concern
and my nonsense or silence of reply. While it
might be a very ordinary form of madness now,
if you pull it you had better not be bluffing.
I've taken too many swallows to find my throat;
the room has flattened into dumb sleep.
I will wake up into a parent again and wonder
why the question found me mute with tears.

I don't think that's the asking. I think
it's the breath I've lost trying to answer.

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

@eglantinescake: "It might be a very ordinary form of madness" (Kenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncannay Life)
@facelikethunder: "μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος" (which translates as "Rage -- Goddess, sing, the rage of Peleus' son Achilles" - Homer, The Iliad)
@lalscotton: "Pomposity and indignation grow in old age, like nostril hairs and earlobes" (Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles)
@attentive: "Certainly they beat me" (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)
@timsterne: "Now, if you pull it you had better not be bluffing" (Mark Brandon Read, Chopper 4)
@matchtrick: "I don't think that's the asking" (Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go)

Luka comes home to me today after over a week staying with his grandparents. It's possible I'm a little bit apprehensive at plunging back into parenthood again.