Pearly girlie plays with words,
sounds, meanings, structures
and arrives at intriguing
revelations or conundrums
that always go deeper
than you might first expect.
Work different from mine,
which is plainer.
I don’t have to be the same
to appreciate the juicy flesh
of a poem bitten into and tasted –
thrilling to its savour, inhaling
the lingering memory,
running my tongue again and again
over satisfying texture.
[Poem #55]
This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....
Friday 26 September 2008
Saturday 20 September 2008
Prisoner Poet 3: The Suicide
After 26 years and more,
more years than your life,
I can remember you
with joy exceeding sorrow –
though, as The Prophet suggested,
they’re sides of one coin:
always some tears,
a swift pang.
When your death was recent,
it was anguish to notice young fun –
pinball machines, amusement parks –
you might have enjoyed
if not for a youth in prison,
if not for your final escape.
[Poem #54]
more years than your life,
I can remember you
with joy exceeding sorrow –
though, as The Prophet suggested,
they’re sides of one coin:
always some tears,
a swift pang.
When your death was recent,
it was anguish to notice young fun –
pinball machines, amusement parks –
you might have enjoyed
if not for a youth in prison,
if not for your final escape.
[Poem #54]
Tuesday 16 September 2008
Milk Baba
I remember Milk Baba.
I saw his face tonight on TV,
but I recall the encounter in Nepal
at his small room opposite the Shiva temple
with the children surrounding him, peeping out.
A simple life. Then we find
he is learned, an acclaimed scholar
of that great scripture the Ramayana,
corresponding with people all over the world.
Thirty years of only milk, he says, made him pure.
[Poem #53]
I saw his face tonight on TV,
but I recall the encounter in Nepal
at his small room opposite the Shiva temple
with the children surrounding him, peeping out.
A simple life. Then we find
he is learned, an acclaimed scholar
of that great scripture the Ramayana,
corresponding with people all over the world.
Thirty years of only milk, he says, made him pure.
[Poem #53]
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