I

 

[I]

 

I, the undersigned, being of sound mind

admit to repeats, infrequent defeats

indiscreet yearnings, natural burnings

crazy ambitions, dumb inhibitions;

recall motley nights, some singular plights

those dodgy neighbours, the extra labour

idiocies a score, faux pas more and more

payments outstanding, my own moon landing;

deny wrongdoing, at least what’s ensuing;

accept every wonder, the blessed thunder

a rain gauge of tears, the drain of the years;

bequeath all these words, whatever’s preferred

to your passing eyes, good-humoured and wise

my name writ at last, as I join the cast.

L

 

[L]

 

L was a light which burned all the night

and lighted the gloom of a very dark room.

 

L was Lear who wrote without fear

inventing new words strictly for the birds.

 

L was for London all of a sudden

that in a fit said it’s best to flit.

 

L was landscapes, large romantic shapes

sympathetic, with parrots alphabetic.

 

L was laureate, to whit counter-laureate

his In Memoriam a pea-green gloriam.

 

L was for limerick, simple trick

that in a stroke makes a million jokes.

 

L was Liguria, curious curiouser

departed alone but by all, well-known. 

 

The image is Edward Lear’s watercolour of the red-sided parrot (Eclectus Roratus Polychloros) made circa 1830-32. More history about this painting is here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/363843  

 

 

P

 

[P]

 

A.M. is suncloud houses, mind’s myriad post-it notes

every post a winner different but the same

youth a room of posters and what’s in a name.

Soonest a sonnet, the world trip postcard quotes.

Soonest friends posthaste, timewise prosperous.

Soonest post-prandial, post-coital, post-graduate

signposts to say it is never too late.

Poignant, precious, sometimes preposterous.

 

P.M. wishes to postpone its memories

this morning’s preludes turn a tinge of postlude

because postmodern becomes the postancient

because posthumous prospects render reveries

because posterity soonest learns new attitudes,

postscripts reminders life’s impatient.

A

 

[A]

A is for Parrot which we can plainly see

K is for its Headdress perky and fair

O are its Eyes, they stare stare blink stare

C is for Beak munching mainly seed.

S is for Flight as they curve through the trees

V is for Feathers smooth from their trip

X is for Claws front two tear, back two grip

I is for Me first, not so much as please.

 

J is for Parrot which we can plainly see

E is its Song, shrill, chattery, raucous

Q is the Hollow in the tree where they nest.

U are Incomparable (we say) of gainly speed

A for Effort, florid colourful caucus,

Y is it So you always look your best?

Images of a sulphur-crested cockatoo and King parrots, both members of the order of Psittaciformes, at Wye River. Lines 1 and 9 of this sonnet come from one of my favourite alphabet poems, ‘Alphabet’ by John Lennon, written in February 1969. 

N

 

[N]

 

From head to foot

the lover to his beloved is drawn

Yet love is unstable

like the crossbar of the letter N.

From day into night

lovers are drawn by their world of yes

yet love is tempered

with times they needs must say No.

 

The lover and his beloved each name

their love face to face

like the pathway that invites no End.

Yet lovers learn what’s new, and the same

their love remembered,

the cross-meanings that live with their Names.

 

 

The four-line poem for the letter N in Vitezslav Nezval’s alphabet book ‘Abeceda’ (1926) opens this metaphysical sonnet. Translation from the Czech is by Jindřich Toman & Matthew S. Witkowsky, published in 2001.  

 

 

V

[V]

 

Versions vary, but fairly soon after the year Dot

Aspirationals built brick-by-brick quite a lot

A pyramid reflected in the sand red hot

V constructhist poem Disk would print on the spot.

Vain to the point of vainglory they got what they got

Attending to skyhigh values, but to their Maker, not.

Verbs vertebrated, nouns nonsensed, meanings went blot

As they witless split, not clear just what governed what.

 

Versions verify various likewise latter-day plots:

Aspires who built digital reincarnations chatting rot

Atmosphere memories missing the bon mot

Voluminous city and tower of invisible bot and jot.

Vain vastnesses in Confusion © software went shot,

A cloud of unknowing begot a cloud of forgot.

A reading of Genesis 11: 1-9, assisted by the letter V in Vitezslav Nezval’s alphabet book ‘Abeceda’. A copy of this book, published in Prague in 1926, is on display at the NGV at the moment. I have copied the relevant page for reference. Nezval is still in his Russian Constructivist period, though he doesn’t do Constructivism like people in Moscow. Nezval’s ‘hot’ and ‘spot’ inspired the brickwork of end-rhymes, while his A and V inspired the pattern of reflections on the left.

Sonnet

 

This coming Monday we will travel to Wangaratta to attend the requiem for our friend Robert Whalley. Here in Australia many of us have known Rob for over twenty years. His calling to encourage and build community was a gift we all experienced, something he discovered for himself (and importantly others) in his previous life in California. Rob understood how this is done incrementally, at the grassroots, and in small ways as well as large. For me personally, this showed itself very directly in the early weeks of the pandemic. Considering the sudden reality of iso and in an inspired move to create community from simple play, he wrote to me from his fastness in Wangaratta with the idea of running an online Sonnet School. Even then, I grasped that Rob was also getting me to do something useful in the new unknown atmosphere of Covid, something to keep me occupied and alive to the possibilities in others. Inspired by the simplicity, but equally the sophistication, of such a long-distance social exercise, I composed an invitation. I copy this invitation out now, in honour of the Founder of Sonnet School, Robert Whalley: ‘SONNET SCHOOL. Posted on FB 19^th of March 2020. We think of the beautiful people of Italy who live in complete lockdown. Italy, as we learnt in school, invented the sonnet. Petrarch is the most famous early practitioner. The English went mad on the sonnet in the Renaissance, and the 20th century was even madder. “The lunatic, the lover and the poet/ Are of imagination all compact” according to Shakespeare, whose own relationship with the sonnet is pleasingly complex and an inspiring model. As we know from his plays, he also had a thing about Italy. Sonnet School is in, now that self-isolation and online learning are what we wake up to each day. My friend Robert Whalley writes: “I have a suggestion for these trying times: could you lead some of us, who’ve never had the courage to try a DIY sonnet, through the mechanics of said beast? We can even share our works in progress for your counsel.” So, I invite you to write a sonnet, with Robert’s suggested process as our guide. Let me know if you’d like to give it a go. There’s plenty of time to write your sonnet, and plenty of time to write more sonnets. Google ‘sonnet’ to find out how the form is constructed, then find a theme that suits your current mood. As I remarked in an earlier post, “The sonnet is one of the best forms as a trial exercise as you are stating an argument briefly but dramatically and you work with fun limits. The main fun limit is 14 lines, which means you only have 120-180 words to play with and must say everything with those words. I'll keep people posted on this mini-Decameron idea.” Text, message, email, whatever, I’m here to listen and advise, even though they are your words, not mine. The Decameron is a famous work of Italian literature written by Boccaccio, friend of the aforementioned sonneteer Petrarch. (See photograph of them chatting together, hands sanitised, and in suitable robes.) The Decameron’s context is a plague year in which people practising social distancing and self-isolation tell each other stories to while away the long hours indoors.’

T

 

[T]

 

What’s the tea? We want to know everything, now

if only to say typical, truly?, tough luck, too much, it’s all talk.

The see-saw of so-and-so’s tribulations make small talk,

judge and jury behind our eyes guessing who, why, how.

Unremarkable news turns into topic of all remarks

storms in teacups, a torrent of half-truths and theories:

tantalising, well-timed, tomfoolery!, tragic, too too teary.

Glad it’s not us, tracking the tale from light into dark.

 

And which tea then’s it to be? A friendly brew,

a careful stir, apostle spoon, slow boat to China?

Or something stronger, sharp with wedge of bitter lemon,

unstrained, a well of well well well, and who knew? Who?

Or lacking entirely milk of human kindness? Finer

than rising steam, the stew of our little demons.  

 

Q

 

[Q]

 

Quixote, pronounce the name how you will,

Ventures boy-like to land on the moon of his want

His rocket science antique, his book in Delusion font

His sidekick eyerolling at the nothing gained, nil.

Q will do for you next his famous rescue mission

Whisk his only sweetheart from what she’s been doing

Who does quite nicely and doesn’t need rescuing

And is all in his head, Herself and her damsel position.

 

He joins the Q of all the Q’s on celebrity calendars

Face fierce, hand grand, shoulder bolder, foot fit

A lunchbox legend in his own present tenses

His quill a keyboard, his helmet a colander ….

How long till he falls from his horse in a porridge of bullshit

His backstory moondust, as he comes to his senses?

U

 

Winter leaflets No. 26 (2021)

[U]

 

Understandably, notwithstanding

everything else alive, a fear steps uninvited

at the sign of wildfire worldwide cited

iceshelfs sighted gone long to water, nothing.

Underestimating the scale is simple;

mind speaks inferno and deluge,

eyes shut while dreams find helpless refuge

in lifetime snaps, their own special sample.

 

Except morning again forbids mourning.

A fragment of pop song venerates only U.

Upstanding, such fear again is pushed aside

as if possible are respite and u-turnings,

today like unto others made from cold dew

and sunbeam, normal noise, regular tide.

M

 

[M]

 

Mal-born, mellow-bairn, male-burn

anyways the mouth pushes softly before

boom or bust, make or break B, do or

die, a staid name politely taking its turn.

Victoria dubs thee meal-bun, mail-bin,

Melba-urn, mall-bored, Marlboro-brown

most golden marvel, Olympic hoop town

to be, or not, a faraway name to lose or win.

 

Not so, Naarm. Name buried under breastbone

denied its breath, name in dirt, old hurt

ownership nasal resonant through cranium, chest

resurrected by committee, stayed, all for the best

that repetition rendered home in ever alert

centuries, redolent of mists and mellow tones.

Please

 

As they have every year since release on the 11^th of January 1963, the astonishing opening bars of ‘Please Please Me’ still astonish as they reverberate in the air. Whatever the miracle is that these four musicians discovered about their gifts in Hamburg clubs and Liverpool everywhere, it is happening full force in this take. Every listener becomes party to a musical experiment where anything could happen and the air is literally electric. The up starts with a down beat, some of the chords defy explanation, they’re English but what kind of singing is that? Two minutes of what’s that? To me, the song refutes the palaver about greatest albums, the ’Revolver’ apotheosis theory, as what they can do and will do is already there as distinctly as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ ... every listener was party to seven years of, what’s that? Reflecting on this during intermissions in the last couple of years, it was pleasing to find Haruki Murakami has similar thoughts about ‘Please Please Me’. In his essay ‘On Originality’, Murakami remembers hearing the song aged 15 on his transistor, thinking “This is amazing, not like anything else I’ve heard!” It “totally blew my mind,” whatever blow my mind is in Japanese. Every Beatles Tragic knows that John Lennon wrote the song as a slow Roy Orbison ballad, but George Martin thought it wasn’t working, could they play it double time. Which immediately they did, being the Beatles, taking a sad song and making it better. The result was something typical of many of their songs, a melancholy or begging or frustration lyric performed with an elation breaking into ecstasy, a quizzical contradiction between word and music listeners happily overlooked, or took in their stride. Why do you make me blue? they shout at the tops of their voices. Even at the age of 7 it had an inexplicable beauty. Murakami admits he cannot explain either, other than in commonplaces: “nothing could be more different”, “they had something special”, “its quality was far and away the best.” Trying to define the difference, the Japanese novelist is reduced to saying “Your ears will tell!” True enough, no doubt. For him originality like ‘Please Please Me’ made him feel “a sense of profound well-being, a natural high. Liberated from the constraints of reality, it is as if my feet have left the ground.” Sixty years has not changed the fascination and delight inspired by this and all the sixties songs that followed. John’s witty play on the meanings of ‘please’ (should there be a comma in the title? Is anyone fussed?), the over-the-top Everly Brothers’ backing vocals, the perfect forward and backbeat control of the percussion, we hear them synthesising and transforming different musical forms, making them their own. Nothing could be more different. They had something special. Your ears will tell!

Image: Iso-mandala No. 80, made in August 2020 during lockdown. And here’s a collage of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPfgC5IzGU

Phone

 

Schoolboy with schoolbag in one hand, phone in the other at all times. Young woman at the top window of the library, tapping notes into her phone methodically. Businessman at the lounge window for brunch, reading climate news on his latest smart phone. Grey-haired writer with his phone at the ready, composing in Notes a phone cityscape. A middle-aged woman at an intersection, typing with both thumbs at once into her phone, messages home. A young independent man checks for the tenth time today on his phone, not looking up, the weather. A family sits at a café table having ordered a meal, each engrossed in the contents of their own phone. A woman of indeterminate age stands in the porch of an unopened shop, talking something personal into her phone, away from pedestrian traffic. Relatively young man scours the data on his phone for an old contact who could save his life. Woman with earplug sits in public place balancing her phone, waiting for the next call in the drama. Women and men seated in a carriage, each reading a phone as the driver crosses a convenient freeway bridge. Driver with steering wheel in one hand, phone in the other, illegally checks in. Well-preserved woman at the back window of the bus, uncontrollably scrolling her phone, abstractly. Unreserved man in a hurry inextricably tied for life with his phone, his handcuff wherever, in this case the waiting room of ‘doom’. Another nomophobe clocks hours at a time on his swiss army phone, kept in a top pocket outside charging hour. Wild-haired student curled in an armchair with his phone, contacting everyone in turn via voice, text, image, dot dot dot whatever comes to mind square brackets Send. A well-presented woman at a signboard photographing information on her phone, with a fingernail, for later zoom-up reference. A young emotional man phubs on his phone, not looking up, present company excepted, for excepted read: excluded. An ostentatious woman with irritating ringtones answers her lifeline phone every five minutes in a crowded train. Teenager eyeballs the phone, the phone of fabulous pop sockets, the phone of endless cascades, the world at his fingertips. A reflective woman stares gently at her phone, a container of everything she is not, breathe in breathe out. A shirt-hanging-out man argues unwittingly into his phone, witnessed by untalking passers-by. Relatively old man reaches into the depths of his satchel too late, as his phone of indeterminant age once more goes ping. An old contact accidentally pocket-calls the phone of an old contact. Woman with brocade phone texts floral messages to her nearest and dearest rose emoji sunflower emoji carnation emoji. Women photograph men and men women on their phone across the universe of the daylight metropolis, press Send.