Australian sentences #who’s counting
December 7, 2009 at 6:46 pm | Posted in poetry, writing | 20 CommentsTags: 20 min exercise, australian sentences, centrepiece, rules suck
If I want to I shall write a life-times worth of poems about dogs and love, frogs and fish and how amazingly beautiful my wife is. In Australian pubs we used to turn the empty glass upside down and slam it on the bar. In the bad old days, that was, now of course we politely request a quick phone call to our lawyer.
It’s a hard life being famous and poor, I tell ya. You don’t want that, son. Anonymity is of course a prerequisite for the artist since only the most vain would assume that they know me from these words, no matter how many they have read. You alone have escaped the hearsay, gossip and Chinese whispers.
Endless permutations of joy, who else would write such a thing but a mad man in love. I don’t care if it is a cliche. Nor about the little frenchified mark which allows one to run out the vowel whilst stroking one’s outrageous moustachios my darling. Where are you?
(this piece has been podcast here, with all the linked poems)
Protected: Pam Brown agrees with a drunk bastard.
November 15, 2009 at 1:50 pm | Posted in blogging, contemporary poetry, memoirs, writing | Enter your password to view comments.Tags: australian sentences, memoirs, Pam Brown
The pianoplayer plays “Ham and Cheese Sandwich”
October 10, 2009 at 9:37 am | Posted in australian poetry, contemporary poetry, links, memoirs | 9 CommentsTags: australian sentences, define rock, Pam Brown
‘Surprises and Apologies’ perhaps reminded of ‘Ornithology’.
Sometimes he just drifts around til he finds a boat
But I remember saying over and over that you rock those
and paddling around on a flat sea without an F# is quite boring.
Boing splat, some semi-aquatic half amphibian, ripple e dee, I have decided it is best I never arrive in Melbourne.
But any time you are up in Brisbane or perhaps in some New York basement nightclub art gallery with a black baby grand
I am going to do what ever I can
to get you roaring drunk, Pam Brown. Cin cin,
Gabrielle Bryden listening to Oscar Peterson
August 9, 2009 at 8:41 am | Posted in australia, writing | 14 CommentsTags: a simple hand clap, australian sentences
This incredibly wonderful human type creature, a Gabrielle, lives just up the coast from me. She is a protector of strange chickens which remind me of French noblemen. They are indeed marvellous creations.
She worries about chicken hawks and I can well understand the difference between Oscar Peterson’s obvious lyricism and Monk’s right hand. I wrote a series of poems in which a mysterious man is always popping in and out of limos, his name was three card.
Both those gentleman understand that there is narrative in sound. A narrative in other than words
And now, Gabrielle, I am sitting here on a gorgeous blue winter morning. The air is so clear. Some woodland bird is practising his first mating call. Spring and the tiger meditation, not yet sprung,
(listening to Oscar Peterson’s Night Train, link goes to a cool review.)
Australian Sentences
May 6, 2009 at 9:45 pm | Posted in writing | 20 CommentsTags: australian sentences, writing
I live at the bottom of a hill across the road from a park and today the sky is unbroken blue. There are roundabouts at either end of my street, two circles. Sentences which unfurl like trees maintaining their momentum through the adjectival breeze. Shorter sentences hiding their pretension to the faux-naive and yes, that is Oscar Peterson out for a stroll. They are happy to have been scrawled in a note book under this ancient fig tree. There are mansions on the hill with libraries containing dusty leather bound volumes in which these sentences will one day reside. In preparation they are on their best behaviour like boys in ceremonial clothes, shuffling uncomfortably and tugging nervously at their adverbs. The fig tree fusses over them, leaves tucking in a dangling participle, branches reminding that the geometry of mansions requires well mannered servants. The sentences would rather be fishing, sitting, waiting for a line break but in this landscape poetry remains inappropriate.
The Architecture Of Water.
January 19, 2009 at 6:46 pm | Posted in prosepoemthingy, writing | 15 CommentsTags: australian sentences, if I was, writing
Dear Mr MC Paulus of gmail dot com,
Further to your letter of 3/1/09 we regret to inform you that we are unable to supply three pairs of bright green parachute pants (‘M C Hammer style’ or otherwise embroidered).
This is a staircase.
Subtitle (and/or font change like a spicy sidestep tango dip and delve.) If I was M. C. Escher to whom I would address these Australian sentences with windows through which black bowler hat shaped silences appear in a clear blue sky…
Thou accuseded me of stream of consciousness (inspirated me through unintended accusation) and whilst I confess to wetness often inappropriate, I hold to my comfortable self-delusion of linguistic architecture-hood.
If I was M C Paulus the words would be clouds, the architecture of water, ridiculously delicate and precise balancing those holes in the sky and there would be no first word just as there is no last.
The Mythology Of Robert
December 20, 2008 at 5:27 pm | Posted in memoirs, writing | 9 CommentsTags: australian sentences, memoirs, writing, writing as time travel
The great achievements of the modern age, post-Pharoahs, were rarely singular. Generally they were bought with the sweat and blood and lives of ordinary men and women, driven more by need than desire for immortality. You expect me to tell you there was some nobility in their honest poverty but that is a myth designed to comfort you and keep you silent.
There were lamed wufnicks, of course. A beautiful image of the wandering innocents, a handful of redeemers with no thought for themselves, unaware of their purpose. Should one realise their state they would die and be replaced.
And the star vampires of H. P. Lovecraft who consumed not only your life but all trace of your being, memories, mistakes, til the world becomes just as it would have been if you had never existed.
I told her on the telephone that Andrew found him blue. She said I’m sure you did all that you could do, please never contact me again.
I lived by the ocean in a wide bay of mangroves and at low tide vast mud flats stretching off to two horizons, one the line of the shore and one the line of the sky and in between the vast welcoming silence of the sea with ospreys for companions and my shock.
(The story behind the second last paragraph can be found here. A True Story.)
The Puzzle Box
gingatao, the podcast- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- The Australian Poet Laureate
- another quote from Robert Adamson January 31, 2010
- Three Quotes from Robert Adamson October 22, 2009
- The copyright question (2) October 7, 2009
legal formalities
© P Squires, gingatao, 2007-2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Paul Squires and gingatao, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
'And you have to deal with the terrible karma too.' Paul Squires.
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