Becoming a poet
 

More flarf laffs,
(& let’s call that
‘flaff’) less form
schnorm you know
the drill.  More status
updates with poem offcuts
& tweets too #opportunity
What do we want?
More poets in tweed
When do we want it?
Kapow!  More poems that abate
carbon & precious less that raise
awareness.  More rose-scented
kitchen tidy bags w handles leading
to more implicit self esteem,
so you can say,
hand on heart  ‘Force
intact.  Still fighting.’  More
poems about Cats
Australia & NZ National Tour
1989 (& less, much less, about actual
cats) but most of all;
more pose.  This is social,
after all, this poeting yr up
to – I mean if we didn’t read
it where’d you be but on that
hypothetical atoll, toeing the Pacific,
with yr postgrad opus,
a hollow coconut and a classic
pop EP (in this parlour game
you take 3 items &
I chose for you – hope
that’s ok) & although alone
you’d be writing poems
’cause you have to
(ie that’s how you know yr that poet
you promised everyone you’d be).
So more, I say, much more pose!

 
What I found
 

There’s the Harbour, a heaving sluice
of yachts and city views – it retains
all our best attempts at describing
its irruption then chucks them back,
like we don’t know what we’ve got,
which is a Paddy’s Market tchotchke
or a box of chocolates, ‘spent coins
of abiding love.’  Good one,
thanks hon.  At the conference lunch
the industry chatterboxes turn
a gavotte, then prop and scythe
about the buffet.  Says one:
‘Being more biodynamic
is next up.’  Tops.
This morning, we lay together, lost
in gazing at the other’s figure on loan,
You spoke of the night behind us,
its flames and speeches
fading and the night before us
with its journey and low talk
in stations.  And I think,
                            hey
how did this kick off?
                            Was it you I fell upon
and embraced as I stumbled over
boxes of documents on a street
in the Rocks?

You’re the one
 

I tracked you better
than a package to where
you came to rest in a clinch
with a decade
long distraction. There I lost
you.  You lost
me there, you sd. 
This morning I dreamt
you up, just like that. We kissed
o we kissed & you
said No, this ain’t so.
& you pulled yr soap opera
move on me (yr hand
on my chest, head tilted,
eyes welling, quarter-lit).
I woke & yes it wasn’t so.
But you were the one,
o yes, the one out, one
back on the rail down
the back-straight – you lost
it on the bend of the tight
turning Moonee Valley circuit
& I tore up
my ticket, but you are still
what you were then:
piquant & meritorious & every
landscape deserves you gracing
a foreground it didn’t know
it could have.  Did I mention
that kiss?  Om
nom nom nom nom

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