final two

I have reached the end of NaPoWriMo. (Big sigh). I will post my thoughts on how I think it went later. For now, I need to take a break. Thanks to all of you who have been reading my poetry all through April and for the responses I have received (both on-line and off-line) it has been much appreciated and is truly what has kept me going.

how it deconstructs

Looking up I see one nostril filled

with bulging green snot

in a four-year old's nose

as he announces from the top of a slide

how he is going to descend.

A three-year old begins to understand

counting, how it deconstructs the mass,

separates one thing from another. How

the mother duck calls for her five ducklings,

but only two come back.

****

spatial awareness

With coloured plastic shapes

that link, together

we have been making flowers

and dogs, encouraging

spatial awareness.

Suddenly his bottom lip wobbles,

he wants his mother. How long

until Mum comes? he asks me.

I explain that the big hand

has to go around five times yet.

He is a child who does not do

childcare centres well.

Home with his mother

is where he feels real and whole.

And I'd do anything

to make his mother appear

at the door, anything to stop

the world for him

as tears run down his cheeks

like light lost in the rain.

***

Kay McKenzie Cooke

walkie-talkies

Marianne and Marguerite

My cousins

had a walkie-talkie doll each,

one called Marianne,

the other Marguerite,

made from brittle plastic

with shiny, synthetic hair

and ribbons.

With jointed knees and elbows

and on their backs

under their singlets,

a mysterious, round,

holey, voice box.

They had eyelashes,

blue eyes, round, rosy cheeks.

Two-feet high, they reached

our knees and were perfect

and beautiful. Marguerite

with her waist-long,

blonde, wavey hair, Marianne,

with her long, wavey, brunette

hair. Which was right,

being named after the characters

(fair-haired Margeurite,

deceived out of marriage

and true love

to the handsome, sailor William

by her dark-haired sister Marianne),

in the 'Green Dolphin Country'

serial played every night

on the wireless which I listened to,

peering among the smell

of warm electrics and tiny,

lighted bulbs in the dust-covered back

for the people I can hear in there.

We took the dolls for jerky,

stiff-legged walks,

which they could only do

by us working their arms,

and one step at a time

so they couldn't be hurried

in their pastel, nylon

frocks, puffed sleeves,

and stumpy, black,

Mary-Janes with white,

ankle socks, they

did whatever

we wanted them

to, closed their eyes in sleep,

called us, "Mama" when turned

upside-down. Anything,

at all, they were so

dumb and blank.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

fire's place

consume

I see in these split logs

creased stories of trees,

their potted histories,

what time has packed

into each grain. How quickly

the wood burns

with an organised sound of toil,

working at the fuel

with a consumer's urgency and greed.

Finally this fire

will use up whatever 'pay-shuns

and per-severance,'

(as my Irish great-grandmother

would say) it has left

to conjure the heat

needed to warm my knees

and that area there,

where so much of the day

shores up, there,

right in between

my shoulder blades.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Tuesday Poem

For the thought of muses and what is a muse anyway and the following discoveries which this subject sparked, I must thank Joanna Preston. She has been a faithful sideline supporter through this NaPoWriMo and I've been cheered on and encouraged by her as I've trooped through this month of facing head-on the challenge of writing a poem-a-day. In her latest post on her excellent blog A Dark Feathered Art, she asked how we were faring and also, by the way, how were we getting along with our muses? This got me thinking ... and as it happened, the day's incidental occurrences fitted into that thinking beautifully - as they tend to do when you are listening and looking. Which is part of the lesson I am learning from NaPoWriMo.

making my day

Catullus in Carmen

'And so, have them for yourself, whatever kind of book it is,

and whatever sort, oh patron Muse

let it last for more than one generation, eternally.'

(Student translation, 2007)

I'm an independent sort, a little stubborn, a little closed

-off, and so the thought of needing a muse to inspire me

does not appeal. Someone in diaphanous silk with a lyre

and a crown of roses, attending so closely, breathing on me,

taking away all my elbow room, unsettles me and I will have

none of it. And yet, I discover today in a portrait I see of a muse

that there is something in the face, its downward glancing,

the containment of a knowing beyond awareness, in the hand

like a butterfly, that says I did not choose to be here,

but nevertheless I am and I will make the most of it.

It was something I'd seen before and I knew then that I had it

all wrong, for what I was seeing in the face of the muse,

were the faces of my grandchildren. And then out of the blue

my son in Kyoto Skypes me saying my granddaughter

kept asking for, "G'an'ma," and pointing to his laptop.

Then before I knew it, there we were, over acres of space,

all three of us singing together, 'Twinkle, Twinkle, little Star'

and 'Eency Weency Spider' and I held up my mug of tea

and she her drink-bottle of wheat tea and we said, "Cheers!"

and toasted, I guess, family and long distances

broken down between. And to seeing. Later,

I tell Kate about it and she says, "But that's so cool.

That must have really made your day."

Kay McKenzie Cooke

For more Tuesday Poems go to Tuesday Poem.

ANZAC Day, Dawn Service

final note

By the war memorial as darkness thaws

to dawn, the wind shifts through

the large trees full of dying leaves

with a shudder that moves us

to imagine the sound of dark waves

rolling on to a beach

in a more perilous, morning light.

The soldiers had enough ammo

to make a way through,

to protect a mate,

or so they believed. The Last Post

sounds, the bugle's indefinite final note

like a question, a haunting echo

for those hearing it to hold on to

and remember

as it hangs in dank air

like an oar just before it slices back

down again into black water.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

here and there

Our son fell in love with Japan after visiting there as a fifteen-year old on a school trip. When he returned home he said, "I 'm going back." And he did, about 6 years later. "Don't worry Mum", he said at the airport, "It's only for a year." That was 6 or 7 years ago. Three years ago he fell in love with a young Japanese woman who has since become his wife. They now have a daughter and a son. We visited them in October last year and also fell in love with Japan. It was all meant to be - Japan has now become part of our family.

I remember when our son was a toddler and how with his blond curls he was often a popular subject for Japanese tourist's cameras. How they loved to photograph him! Maybe there is something in that of 'coming events casting their shadow' ...

homesick for Japan

As we approach by air

the still islands that make up

Japan, our own small stories

beat an urgent song

from the yearning to see family.

Surrounded by a language

we cannot translate,

we drink airport-lounge coffee

and something that we never expected

we'd have to make room for

already begins to re-configure

the strange into the familiar,

grafting it to our blood

with a careful husbandry, aided

by the burying of the placentas

of our two grandchildren

in ancient, family-land in Okayama,

under magnolia

and olive tree saplings,

so that our DNA becomes a part

of a foreign country's soil.

So much so that after staying there

long enough to befriend and absorb,

we leave behind

what has now also become

partly home, and knowing

that we've only just begun

to understand

what it means to marry

to ourselves such mystery.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Concrete Dinosaur

I spent some time with my grandson today - you can see him there at the bottom of the dinosaur's neck, feeling very pleased with himself after having accomplished a smooth slide.

dinosaur slide

We count the dinosaur's toes and then we count them

again. Its rough, tree-trunk legs hefty with concrete

have been painted many times over, this time

in art-deco colours, yet they still retain

the original marks of the trowel.

The first child I watched slide down its long neck,

was thirty-six years ago, almost to the day,

a boy called Daniel, the son of a friend,

when fall zones, combination play pieces,

donkey rockers and tubular steel

wasn't as important as sawdust and function,

jungle-gyms, old wagon-wheels

and real traction engines. Today my grandson

looks at me with a composure

drawn from the sap of a million ancestors,

as if he knows all there is to know already

from here, but is unsure

whether he'll let me in on the secret or not.

For now, we'll just stick with him deciding

when it's time to leave.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

feeling sluggish

I had a slow day today, I felt like a turtle or an owl. I wished I owned a green car.

interesting adjectives

Today I felt as sluggish as the low cloud

not bothering to move from where it lay

slung all day grey and heavy

as a lump of clay. Today I thought

of looking up interesting adjectives

to make a list to use in everyday

conversation. Today I thought

about how a study proved

the happiest people

are the ones who own green cars.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

by a cold sea

Today was one of those dream days with splendid weather. Because I didn't have any work, I took the opportunity to revel in the warm, autumn sun and with camera-in-hand, explore.

All day a poem has quietly murmured in my brain ... not sure yet if I heard exactly what it was saying, but it's close enough for now.

***

by a cold sea

Someone sitting at an outside table

under a too-large nikau-palm

whose days were numbered, told me

that we all age at exactly the same rate.

The proof of this will I'm sure

become more and more evident as I go on

walking, seeing the colours

of autumn's quiet, breathing-out

and suddenly a monkey puzzle tree

I didn't see coming,

or the edge of the world

at the beach where I'm up to my ankles

in goose-grey sand

with nothing to worry about,

my toes printing daisies by a cold sea

only too eager to wipe them away.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

shopping for poems

Something I've discovered about writing a poem a day, is how little room it leaves for anything else. Like a beagle, my mind persists in attaching itself to and following anything that has even a hint of poetic material. The whole day starts to turn itself into a poem. I really must try to stop, it's driving me a little crazy. Thankfully I feel the yen for a landscape poem ... which gives me the perfect excuse to head out of town sometime before this month is over.

***

shopping second-hand

Time mocks me as it slides by

turning memories only five years old

into sentiment. Like how I miss

certain people, now gone from this place

with no chance any more

of bumping into them down town.

In the cleanest Public Toilets

I look at myself in the mirror, afraid

that what I see isn't the real me,

or alternatively, is an only too-real

reflection of someone shopping alone.

Too long spent tumbling

your own unspoken thoughts

will drive you crazy in the end.

It's no wonder lonely people

cry out suddenly or wave to strange cars

and buses when they cross at the lights.

To get the bus home I happily retreat

from designer-frontages, clever windows,

to dog-eared Rattray Street,

a detour to Stafford's SaveMart,

where pretension is a foreign concept

and friends take cheerful intakes of breath

at surprise finds, “Do I look good in this?”

Where I am content

among the smell of other people

and no longer have to try.

I know where these people are coming from

and why they stay. I feel myself relax

into a ball of happy plasma.

Kay McKenziee Cooke

Tuesday's Poem

old music

I am in a circus trick of the balancing kind

my running feet must never leave

this rolling planet's surface

as I make my way back home,

and all I want to do is sleep, not plod.

And there again in the sound of the wind

through wires in the empty playground

where a concrete whale

dopey with its ache for children

to play, can't stop smiling, love

right there, and in the way that last corner

before home calmly crooks

like a parent's elbow, restful

around their child despite knowing

all that we cannot bear.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

This is a poem in its first draft (like all my others posted recently). I am doing NaPoWriMo all through April, attempting to write a poem a day - and it's just about killing me! They are all imperfect and un-formed, so please excuse ...

For more perfectly formed poems, I urge you to go here (to Tuesday's Poem).

old news & new news

And here we are at Day 18 of the month and what should rightly be my 18th poem - like THAT is going to happen. (I have actually not been keeping count. On purpose).

However, it's looking like this week's not going to be such a busy week for me as last week was, so I may be able to get back on track again for the final leg.

rhythm & design

My mind rests on rhythms and what a day means

and how a volcano in Iceland can disrupt the normal.

Meanwhile, at the window the cat whines like a puppy

as he regards the fantail's firty skirt. A bumblebee mouths

the sill. A kereru whop-whops above where I sit

on the garden-seat swinging and thinking of rhythms.

Soon, the smell of cedar among the firewood

will signal the beginning of the day ending,

the sizzle of what's in the pan for dinner semi-drowning

the voice of the television newsreader with news

perhaps of some solo rower crossing an ocean

in order to repeat what his father did some years ago

but in the opposite direction, which in a way is what

we all do every day of our lives, by chance or by design.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Too Tired ...

I am pretty much* 'brain-numbed', totally*, so no poem tonight; not even a stream-of-consciousness one like the one last night. Maybe I will double-up in the weekend, go full-out* and write like crazy*.

A week of working a 9.00 a.m. - 6.00 p.m. shift has like*pretty much* killed any desire in me to write. How did Wallace Stevens do it? (Didn't he like* work as an accountant every day of his writing life and like* write when he got home in the evenings?)

I've gotta* have this, like*, space in my head for writing, so a full-on job with pre-schoolers leaves no room man* for anything else. Far out man*. It, like* totally* freaks me out* and plunders any extra resources and energy so that by Thursday night, I'm like* robbed of any inclination to write. This is so wrong on so many levels.*

Roll on the weekend and a chilled-out* week next week. So far I have NO work lined-up for next week. Awesome man!*

* (You may have noticed some younger generation 'isms' have snuck their way into this post, speckling my normal, more stilted, older-generation writing style. Comes from working with them and living with them!)

it's a poetry thing

I don't think I can manage a poem today. There was a poetry reading on tonight, and after a full day at work, no window available - oh, apart from the 11.00 p.m. - 1.00 a.m. window; but I have used that one a little too much this week, and my body is paying me back, aching for reasonable sleeps.

Well ... maybe I can give one a go. It will have to be about the poetry reading I guess ...

poetry night

Our heads cloudy with words.

According to my friend Joyce*,

there are about as many poets in the world

as wearers of Davy Crockett hats,

so not a lot.

D.T. is here for the first time

- says he's a closet poet.

C's real, off-line outline

materialises

into herself, warm and dear.

A and M and L and C,

and S and J. sit, quietly

dancing on the inside.

L has his ukelele.

C M looks taller than I remember.

The coffee machine goes quiet.

The poets stand up, recite;

beautiful , perplexing

curious, lovely,

lovely, lovely ...

water and fish and rainbows and rooms and birds and parents and eyes and colours ...

We file out, farewells clinking

on a St. Andrew Street

chilling up its autumn night.

As we drive home

we remember other poetry nights.

All different. It's an organic thing.

As I write this, outside

a possum hisses and wheezes

from somewhere

in the pittosporum.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

* Even though I haven't asked Joyce's permission to use the line about Davy Crockett, I certainly want to acknowledge it as her's.

eyes of an apologetic blue

Diagnosed at eight years old
my first glasses gave me planes
in the sky, the ability
to spot at ten yards
the stubble on my father's face,

the delineation of each tree
on hills no longer just a blue wash.
At first I was a novelty,
the freckled kid in glasses,
then, the teenager

with eyes behind lenses so thick
they looked like those of a crab's.
Later I was told I needed contacts
to be set free
to see in the rain.

Now age is a factor, my optician says
as he rolls away the robot face
and enters the latest data
in a book started forty years ago,
before computers.

Half-filled now, worn

with writing and thin numbers

only he can understand,

it has long traced and calculated

the transit of my eyesight.

I look down, see my feet
tidily stashed on the chair's high step.
Like the easy child,
they've never given me any trouble,
unlike my eyes

that when I look in the mirror,

stare back,

looking old, surrounded
by signs of erosion, and wanting

to say sorry.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Tuesday's Poem

Even though the date on this post says 'Monday', believe me, it is in fact well into the early hours of Tuesday a.m. when I write this. My blog's time isn't set to NZ time on purpose, because sometimes I like to fox the overseas readers into thinking I am writing on the same day as they are ... (handy to keep a day up my sleeve, for example, for the purposes of NaPoWriMo).
So, despite appearances, it is in fact a bona-fide Tuesday Poem I post here. (Please go here to read more by other contributing poets).
My great-grandmother (the subject of the poem posted below) may or may not approve of my' time management' ... but being far and long removed from the constraints of time herself, may in fact be able to enjoy a little bit of managing it herself; from some far celestial plane ... who knows?

***



Granny Butler

When they spoke of Alison, it was as the widow
who lost two sons to the First World War
and how it was written forever
in her eyes, the sadness and surrender.

Her parents came from Scotland, the Borders,
Peebleshire, where the meaning of their name
'Riddle' can be traced back to the words 'rye'
and 'valley'. They emigrate to New Zealand,

to a town of gullies at the bottom of the world,
where the trees bow and scrape to polar winds
and where Alison was born and later fell in love
with Joe Butler, a Cockney, a song-and-dance man,

builder, gardener, who died young, leaving her
with a three-year old daughter, Elizabeth (Bessie)
my grandmother. When Bessie married, Alison moved in
with her, walked to church every Sunday,

never darkening the door of a pub.
"Come on, Granny," her grandchildren call
back to her, now she's the old woman in black,
struggling to keep up. She remembers things

like Joe's garden, how good it always looked
and the day her two boys came into the house,
beaming, each with a fistful of tiny carrots
from a whole row pulled up before they were ready.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

'stay'

Another Autumn - Winter Poetry Reading Session starts off in Dunedin - beginning this Wednesday night (14th) at 8.00 pm. at the Circadian Rhythm, St Andrew Street. Each fortnight there will be an open mic. and either a guest reader or a theme.
So far the schedule is as follows (with June & July yet to be finalised) :

April 14th - Open Mic. Theme: 'Lenses and Windows'
April 28th - Guest Poet: Sue Wootton + Open Mic.
May 5th - Open Mic. Theme: 'Games'.
May 19th - Guest Poet: Carolyn McCurdie + Open Mic.

***

I'm not really keeping up in excellent fashion with the NaPoWriMo challenge - nevertheless, I am writing far more poetry than I would've been otherwise just from sheer terror at the sound of panting poets chasing and passing me! Good for the soul ... I think. Either that, or it's forcing me to write for the sake of writing, whether that's good or bad, time will tell.

***


This is another Mike Cooke drawing I love - I have it in my office and often glance up at it and smile. Today as my fingers hovered over the keys in preparation to write another April poem - for NaPoWriMo - (inter-)National Poem Writing Month - my eyes found the 'stay' drawing again. That's all I needed for inspiration and I was off. (A shame that in copying the drawing, the green where the figures stand has not come out).

stay

He loves his bike

and configuring

desolate calculations.

He wears only black,

is very thin and mostly

see-through.

so tends not to block

anyone's view. He treats his bike

like it's a dog. “Stay”, he says

when he leaves it

for any length of time.

For example,

when he finds himself

on the edge of some random planet

where bikes are forbidden,

with a boiler-grey atmosphere

above and macaw-red clouds

puffed-up

with the importance

of some cosmic drama.

He points a twiggy finger in emphasis.

“Stay”, he says. But it's easy to see

with its handlebars

at that obstinate angle,

its wheels prepared

any moment to roll over

the edge

of such a flat

and reasonable green,

that's it's hopeless.

Grim resignation

floats all over

his transparent face.

He knows

that he will return

with a heart trying not to break,

skipping

hope against hope

that the bike is not out free-wheeling

on dark, airless roads,

lost in depthless skies.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

at work

Today I was told by a three-year old
I wasn't her friend.
Observed total misery,
raw delight. Found shoes,
placed grubby soft-toys
up high, picked up
from the floor playdough
as pink as old-fashioned
woollen long-johns. Named
a painting of a hippo.
Saw a guinea pig's
engaged disposition.

Applied ice to a bruise
nestled like a purple berry
behind a small ear.
Followed perfectly
instructions to place a beanbag
on my head, walk around
the room. And first thing,
as I uncovered
the sandpit and wiped
with a towel
condensation-coated
outdoor equipment,

saw a pair of horses
from the stables next door

being put through their paces,

heard the even drum

of well-behaved hooves,
glimpsed the stretch

from the bit to the sulky

swaying like a boat behind,

the silver aerial of reins

transmitting their message of order,

how it begins
in the light of early mornings.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

cyclical

Think circadian, lion-maned

pincushion. For days

the sunflower prowls,

flares for a season, only to die

as predestined,

an inglorious death,

the drained petals reduced

to insipid paper,

the seed-head hub sinking

into brown, grey

then black and such a deadened,

one-eyed stare

that if put inside a coop,
will scare the hens,

put them off laying

as from inside

their ugly capsule the seeds

rattle a warning

to return and once again

stalk the sun.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

P.S. If you don't believe me re the hens ... go to this link (The comments are interesting too!)

the figuring out of the sky

Photo taken somewhere between Oamaru and Kakanui, Otago, New Zealand.

This time we halt

the car's pointing nose

and I take a photo

of something, what exactly

I can't quite fathom, maybe

a fenced-in softness

to the grass or the sound

of a shuffling deck

of clouds. We are unsure

of where it is exactly

we are headed, but glad

to have stopped, caught

what I imagine

to be the love of a tireless sun

heading west, again

the tractor purring

along the fence-line,

that check of the lie of the land,

the figuring out of the sky.

We think we'll try

for somewhere

in the next town.

Or maybe not. Whatever

the outcome, this day's

soft mouth is to blame

as it turns to our easy pull

on the bit, canters

on into night.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

weatherboard home

As well as Monday's NaPoWriMo entry, this is also my Tuesday Poem - go HERE to Mary McCallum's blog for amazing poetry & links to more. Please consider posting poems yourself for this new Poetry Site.

Another house poem - one that yelled out to be written after yesterday's visit to Robert's grandparent's old home full of history, memories and stories. I think this is just one of a few more poems yet to be written about this dear, wee home ...

weatherboard home

It concentrates, this house,

straining with the effort

to remember

it once had a green roof

and a garden full of pink phlox.

It's my mother-in-law's

childhood home

and she remembers the tin

sheet hammered over

the window-frame

after the glass broke,

how the wind howled through it.

Three owners and seventy-

something years later,

on a day stoked with autumn,

we are able to look through.

She examines the hot-water

cylinder in its cupboard,

the corner wardrobe,

its sweet, old, metal catch.

"It's just the same.

Pop would hang his coats

on that very peg."

The owner's fox terrier

snuffles and whines

at the smell of mice

behind the skirting boards.

Outside, the persistent view

of rocks, hills, tussock, lake

and the pear tree still there

with its back to us, huge

and self-important.

The owner tells us

of how when they first looked

at the house (now used

just as a holiday hut)

it was on a bitter, snowy day,

an open fire sputtering

with only two sticks for fuel,

the man and woman

desperate to sell, shivering

with the disappointment

of dead strawberry plants

sent down from Auckland.

"He sat at the table,

right there", she says

pointing to its shadow,

"eating weetbix with gravy".

Kay McKenzie Cooke

state house

A recent photo of what was my Nana and Grandad's house until the late 1970s.

And a poem about the same house as I remember it.

state house

This house should burst

like a pod spent with life, spill

all its remembered smells

of freshly-laundered sheets,

the mystery of the wobbly ins-

and-outs of the weather-house

man with umbrella, woman

with watering-can. The tin of Tang

above the sink. The macrame

-and-bead necklace draped across

the dressing-table mirror.

Grandad's Golden Kiwi ticket

pinned to the pin-cushion.

Nana's girdle scones with golden syrup.

The 2-in-1 oil-can and 'Show me the Way

To Go Home' ashtray.

But the house does not remember

the Postie on her bike delivering letters

through the window, the girl walking

her pet goat. Silly house. We are stopped

before you and you do not know

why. Do not even so much as wink

your windows as blank

as the eyes of a ghost's.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

such attendance

There is love in the mulligatawny soup,
in the doorbell birds,
in the rain band's smother.

Love in the woman who wears socks
with jandals, in the man
for his pot-belly, the tenderness

as he bears it across the road.
Love in the way the Flat Earth
Society lays the world at your feet.

There is love too in proud hands
whose science, like trees,
relies soley on harmony.

And love in the sun, such attendance
we can count on to set and rise
again, feel its sweet, sweet scald.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

'good-bye to the scorpion'

This is my first poem for NaPoWriMo - which is basically a challenge to write a poem a day throughout April. I intend to use ReadWritePoem for support and encouragement.

And I've found over on Joanne Preston's blog, 'A Dark Feathered Art', some more ideas with a New Zealand twist.

We are going away for most of Easter, so I won't post the poems I write then until after we get back.

This first poem to launch NaNoWriMo for me, I've written for our son who for the past three months has been living and working in the desert somewhere in Mexico. He is due any day now to leave there with plans to make a beeline for the sea - in fact, any body of water will do, he said.

'good-bye to the scorpion'

for Chris

He longs for the coast again,

to taste that accidental brush

with salt on skin, that sound

of the world tipping itself out.

He's ready to say good-bye

to the scorpion, the starving foal,

the starry map of night, thorny cactus

with milk for blood,

and head down any road that leads

to where the land eventually

slips into blue liquid.

He knows now the fire

of the sun is no cheaper

wherever you find yourself.

He's ready now to trade,

heat for squall, dust for sand.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

***