having trouble making sense of a few things

With a Fee Fie Foe!
Saw a widdle piney toe
And his eggy bobbing handy down the vine

Gone before his lunch
And no-one there to punch
he was teary, for his eggy he did pine

IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE!
Roared a Heckler from the floor
My hat is younger than your eggy-piner

If it's silly verse you want
Then go read Immanuel  Kant
For yourn eggy couldn't hide a moral finer.

Oh wibble, wailed the stealer
I'd spin my spurtle beater
But my piney toe is tangled in the vine,

And I cannot wiggle back
Nor can change this beagle tack
Until the eggy bobbing says she's mine.


Tim R

Another Sunday,

I'm extemporizing here, because I have nothing on hand ready. This is an idea that has kept coming back at me on and off for about seven years now, this will probably not be the last time I attack it.

Here goes then...

Fish

Would you take to the water with a wizened old man
rowing in a leaky scow
To the spot where beacon's in line with the cleft
of the hill you can see from the prow?

Would you wrinkle your nose at the sweet rotten smell
of the blood-slimy bait that he cuts,
And prick your fingers as they slip on the hook
as you try to make the bait stay put?

Would you swallow as the waves of a passing barge
lift your stomach to your throat as they rock
while you wait with your finger on a just tight line
for the kahawai to strike with a shock?

Will you thrill to the nibble on the just tight cord;
to the snapper's tugging morse code bites?
Will you smooth down his spines as you grab him from the line
and grip him as he wriggles and he fights?

Do you have it within you to take his life
with a blow from a rowlock or a truncheon
and carry him home in a sea-wet sack
to set him on the table for your luncheon?

Or,

Do you just find it much more expedient
to look on the supermarket rack;
much cleaner, and nice and convenient
to buy your fish crumbed in a pack?


If you need a clue it was inspired by (but the thought is not exclusive to) the difference between mainstream commercial recorded, and live local music

Happy Christmas
The Gedle

Sunday Poem.

I think I might have half-pie promised a poem every Sunday on here.  We'll see how long that lasts.  At any rate due to the current activity of time-leeches in my area I have nothing entirely new to offer today.  So, in lieu of something wholly new, I here present my entire literary output from 2009. It's about the closest I get to a definitive political statement.

Those from Dunedin may recognise our stadium as the theme and have a small chuckle.

Those familiar with the work of the Coleridge will either be amused or mortified.

So, without further ado...

A Vision in a Dream (with apologies to S.T. Coleridge)

In Awatea did Chairman Mal
A sunny rugby-dome decree :
Where Leith, th’ancestral water, fell
Through campus, fair, but cold as hell

Down to the southern sea.

Two score square rods of grassy ground
With concrete stands were girdled round :
there was a roof, a  sparkling Perspex cover,
And there was many a sponsor’s banner there.

A thousand thousand cobbles scattered over,
In shades of grey with which grey can’t compare.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which lay
twixt concrete hills beneath the perspex cover!
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath the winter sun was haunted
By stalwart wailing for his terrace uncovered!
Down in this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
Two mighty teams each other now adversing :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted passing
Huge forwards collide like thick rebounding hail,
while dainty wingers chase each other’s tails :
A pilgrimage from out the scarfies quarter
comes, following drunkenly th’ancestral water.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Past Cook and Gardies (painted blue as well),
They reach the campus, fair, but cold as hell,
then down with  tumult t‘ward the southern ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Malcolm hears them all
In mighty chorus, OTAAAAAGOOO’s call!

The roof across the dome was measured
The crowd was pack’d tight in its pouch ;
And Malcolm thought with tingling pleasure
No way in hell they’ll burn a couch!

It is a Miracle of rare device,

A rugby-dome with roof. How nice!

A long forgotten highlander

In a vision once I saw:

            He was a dunedinite of old

            And in my dream he proudly told

            Stories of Carisbrook

Could I revive within me

His proud nostalgic song,

Then in a moment I’d forget me,

Malcolm’s speeches loud and long,

Wherewith he builds that dome in air,

The rugby dome! how nice! come look!

And all who hear would stop and stare

And all should cry, Who Cares! Who cares!

This pompous man gives himself airs!

We’ve got the damn thing, let’s go look,

But to the chairman bar the gates ,

We know he hates the taste of speights,

And never loved our Carisbrook

Brain dead... more sport.

Aaaah.. children.

The Queen of Night desired she should be fed.
An apple sat, not far, within her sight,
But when she called the servants were in bed.

"I see an apple near!", she loudly pled.
"Will you come fetch that I might take a bite?
The Queen of Night desires she should be fed!"

The house was still, no sound of step or tread
and no-one came to ease her dreadful plight
For when she called, the servants were in bed.

"Did no-one hear a single word I said?!!
Come feed me now, and then turn off my light!
The Queen of Night desires she should be fed!"

"I'd also like a slice or two of bread!
And crackers.  Four should be alright!"
But when she called, the servants were in bed.

"I s'pose you'll all be happy when I'm dead.
Don't worry then, I won't last through the night."
The Queen of Night desired she should be fed,
But when she called, the servants were in bed.

TFR 12/10

Sunday

He said: For sport I'll write a villanelle,
With verses five and quatrain at the end
And it, with style and wit, shall rhyme as well.

One Sunday morning, caught in boredom's spell
and looking, sad, at other lines he'd penned
He said: For sport I'll write a villanelle.

A story, neatly bound in form, I'll tell
And to that form, the meaning will I bend
And it, with style and wit, shall rhyme as well.

Two lines refraining, tolling, as a bell
will call my reader always to attend
He said. For sport, I'll write a villanelle.

It shall be tragic, magic, fay and fell
And through, a wistful wantonness shall wend
And it, with style and wit, shall rhyme as well.

Without a muse, the poem's just a shell,
But form still serves the poet in the end.
He said: For sport I'll write a villanelle,
And it, with style and wit, shall rhyme as well.

Tim Robinson  27/11/2010

I know, I know... That was a terrible poem

But that's precisely the reason I like it. For me it's terrible for all the right reasons and none of the wrong ones. And, as I said, I wanted my first ever blog post to be something I could always improve on.  The blame for that poem,  if blame must be laid, lies firmly with whoever put a bunch of Spike Milligan books on the bookshelves when I was a child.

I don't understand poetry at all by the way.  I've written a few arrangements of words on the page and called them poems since that first one.  Back in  2000ish I even sat an undergraduate course in Poetry writing, for which I scored a final mark of  "A+".  That didn't mean any of it was publishable of course, and looking back on those poems now I tend to agree with the people who told me so at the time.  That doesn't mean that I won't at times publish the odd few verses here if and when the mood takes me.

If you did ask me what I thought poetry was, however, I would say that any poem is a sort of mnemonic.  Like Roy G. Biv reminds us the order of the colours of the rainbow; like "first class goods do an excellent business" tells us in which order to place sharps in a key signature, a poem acts like a mnemonic aid to clearly call to mind an event, an image, a feeling, or a state of mind. 

Of course this function of poetry which I (have decided to) call mnemonic is more subtle and complex than the simple memory aids we remember from science and music classes.  The triggers for memory or understanding in poetry come from the combination of sounds in the chosen words, the particular images evoked by metaphor and sometimes the coherence or lack of coherence of the language used.  As with mnemonics as we understand them, without any key to understanding a poem may be meaningless to anybody except its author.

This reminds me. My poem needs a better title. Does anybody have a suggestion?

There. Having disavowed any understanding of poetry I have gone on to attempt to explain it.  I'm afraid this is what you will come to expect of me. 

All the best
The Gedle

Hello World!

In order to begin any journey, one must first establish a point, however lowly from which to begin.  With this in mind I here publish my first serious poem, written around 1998.  While I am no longer in possession of the original manuscript of this poem, the words are emblazoned firmly on my conciousness and still speak to me on some deep level even now.  They capture the circumstances surrounding their creation succinctly, and, while twelve years is a long time in the modern world I think this poem still has very much something to say.

Thattered Scoughts

The rain pelts, heavily upon my architrave
I wish it would not so...
I scream! but still the giddy knave
Bombards my woodwork etc.

Shun ye the hellhound's rainy ranks
That endlessly pour forth.
They rain on cars they rain on banks
And also noisome Geriatrica

Yea Geriatrica I say to thee
They live upon the hill...
...and piercingly glare down on me
Whilst I prepare my famous curries

That issue forth with fiery glee
E'en after they be consum-ed
A ring of flame that's hard to see
by all but those famed contortionists

Who with the fabled toasting chant*
To the rain to cool the scorch,
And skyward Cyclops' faces slant,
More soothed than if they'd used Optrex.

I think there is a message in there for all of us, don't you?

* "bottoms up"