Between Pillows

I slipped my hand between your pillows to see
if the experience was the same as when I did with mine.

The space between your pillows

was smooth and cool. Between mine, the cotton had become
rumpled and hot. The experience, having manifest,

wandered off into memory
looking for a job
as a metaphor.

Cam Black, the inimitable host of the Dan O’Connell Poetry event, asked me for a copy of this poem just recently. Not having had a look at it for a while I thought I might put it up here. Enjoy!

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I wrote this series of poems a little while back, ask me about it if you’re interested. I suspect far too many people have heard me say that at open stage gigs. Anyway, a discussion came up elseweb of pantoums and I thought I would post this one as I’m fond of it.

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I saw a news article last night where the inventor of the CD has admitted that it is now obsolete in the face of USB drives, iPods and DVDs. It got me thinking about this, which I only wrote a month or so ago.

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I attribute the following quote to Christine Hamm, English lecturer at Rutgers University and author of The Transparent Dinner.

“The reverse poem exercise consists of taking a poem, breaking it down line by line and trying to write the opposite of each image and word. After you’re done you can play with it anyway you want.”

Suffice to say I’ve had far too much fun doing this. Beneath the cut is one example I’ve been working on.
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Thanks to the fine folk who helped me out with Mokita. I’ll withhold posting it at this juncture as I’m submitting this one to a certain ‘zine.

In the meanwhile, I’ll be reading at the memorial gig for Ted Lord which will be held at Spinning Room (@ 8pm, ET’s Hotel, High St, Prahran) tonight.

Technorati Tags: gigs, poetry, news
Listening to: “Dreadbelly” – Billy Bragg (off the “England, Half English” album)

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Wrote this recently though I’d been working on the idea for a while. I have been interested in the idea of concepts that the English language has no matching word for ever since I first read the Neal Stephenson book “Snow Crash”. For those who haven’t read it (or can’t remember), the protagonist muses on the Japanese word, zanshin. The nearest meeting point in English is “emotional intensity” but it’s not quite right.

Mokita has a translation that has a closer meeting point, but English still has no matching word. Mokita describes a situation wherein everyone is aware of a topic but no one will discuss it. It’s not taboo, though a taboo is often the reason for mokita. I think the closest explanation I’ve encountered is a friend telling me of the “White Elephant” in a room that everyone is desperate to ignore.
Anyway, this being one of the reasons I have this blog up and about, feel free to read and critique.

Mokita

There is a word I cannot say.
It is stuck to my tongue
Trapped amongst the silent k’s
and unvoiced vowels that languish
in the hollow spaces of my language

A word is trapped between my teeth.
Like a mouthful of paint,
it stains everything else that I say.
Leaving me desperate
to give it a voice and an exit.

This word is replacing my silences.
It is the worst kind of secret,
one that everyone is keeping from each other.
Barring itself from discussion.
Festering in the dead air it creates.

Tags: poetry, critique, mywork
Technorati Tags: poetry
Reading: The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry
Listening: “Domestic Harmony” by Do Re Mi