Month: October 2021

Near the tidal river

For my friend, N.

brotherfriend, she met him near the tidal river, where the jacarandas break their bloom.
he sang her Presley and Sinatra and told her of the fall-
skull-side, Broca-Wernicke side, 
brain space where words are born
after the fall and his syntax silenced and 
morphemes 
meandering.
he couldn’t speak but could sing Summertime, 
because you always remember your first
song. 

brotherfriend, she met him near the tidal river, where the terriers piss on her
buttress root stage, and the magpies munch worms in their paperbark stalls.
he watched her from his Tarago, 
but it wasn’t that sort of watching
and it wasn’t that sort of van and he chose his words
as though tasting, moving from mouth roof to tongue tip 
to lip so she caught the words in her eyes long before hearing
sisterfriend with the fiddle,
I didn’t want to disturb.
brotherfriend, she said, I was born disturbed,
beneath the sclerophyll sky, 
the air here is free
take a seat,
sing wordless for me.

brotherfriend she met him near the tidal river, where the mangroves swallow 
second-hand breath
he used to have nouns, 
abstract, 
proper, 
collective 
they used to hang from him and slide slipshod into speech. 
clever was a mask made of words, quick as the blue tailed wrens,
brotherfriend he sang to the aged, 
the dopamine deficient/ amyloid plaqued
brain dying,
-I bought him this before he passed. I can’t remember its name, three strings
 I’m leaving Sydney soon and I’d like you
to have this-

sisterfriend novice fiddler, joy junkie (connoisseur)
sisterfriend she walked from the tidal river, where the wordless gather in sound
because the jacarandas break their bloom 
and the terriers mark their trees 
and the mangroves gift them air and 
sisterfriend she walked towards heavy heat and bitumen boiling,  
a dead man’s dulcimer speaking
simply 
against her
sweat coated skin.

Not our 9th symphony (apartment clang)

For Jaki

Listen neighbour friend,
Not our ninth symphony but a song cycle,
Where the whimper becomes a roar.
You bring the wind and I’ll bring the string. 
Come dance a jig, waltz, Charleston,
move slowly, move quickly, just move.
Play andante, allegro, just play
in time or out
Off-key or not-
don’t stop
don’t stop.

Come neighbour friend,
You bring the wind and I’ll bring the string. 
Rouse the feline chorus with a disquieting whir. 
And we’ll play as we dance over moss coated pavers, 
spring planters and silent doors. 
And if we fall let us rise, 
If we can’t play, let us sing.
If we can’t sing, let us shout.
This is not our 9th symphony so
let our whimper be a roar.

Like that, neighbour friend.
You move the wind while I move the string.
This is not our 9th symphony,
And our whimper is a roar.
Two four, three four
four four-
Keep playing, keep dancing.
Drown their war words with soul song.
Drown their shatter words,
their bludgeon words.
All those weapon words that fracture the air.

For more poems from The Fiddle Series, please see the Poetry tab on the left. https://word-upon-word.com/a-cry-for-help-unsolicited-poetry/

On friends and creative symbiosis

So I have finally finished a full draft of my second novel. This has been a ten year process, and the concept has evolved quite a lot since its inception. Also, a lot has happened over the ten years, and as I have matured, so has my writing.

Writing, more than other creative pursuits, tends to be a solitary endeavour. It is more common for visual artists and musicians to collaborate as a matter of practice, than it is for writers. This sort of isolation for writers is both blessing and curse. We need to be alone with our thoughts, and venture out only to eavesdrop on the world to gather more material.

Writers are like rag and bone men, but we collect our detritus in the form of ideas, observation of our fellow human mammals and conversations overheard in public. Alone we sift through the rubble of stolen and recycled thought. Alone when I am writing, I like to pretend that I sit with the ghosts of Toni Morrison, Dickens and Steinbeck (a weird combination, but it works for me). This solitary part of the process is essential.

But it is not the whole process. I wish that it were. Factor in crippling self-doubt, self-loathing and shame. Add in the nasty gnomish voices in your head which form a chorus to eviscerate everything you write. Sometimes I wonder how many half written novels, memoirs or books of any genre there are in the world.

I wouldn’t have been able to get this current manuscript to this stage, were it not for a group of friends encouraging me along the way. In my experience, creative support is essential to the writing process, in order to move through the crippling self doubt. A word of caution- it is important to choose people who support you in your vision, even if they do not understand it.

I still have more steps to undertake before this becomes a reader’s draft. But I wanted to share this on my blog. This time last year, I didn’t think I’d ever get here. So here’s to friendship and creative symbiosis! I would like to share an amazing TED Talk. For anyone wanting to achieve any goal, creative or otherwise, this is a must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2rG4Dg6xyI

Circus human

So, you want to write words that move,
scrawl sound upon the stratosphere,
and stop the earth from dimming in its fumes?
So, dance circus human, dance.
Let art be the boat that you drown in.
Make art that tears muscles and breaks bones,
stitch syntax into skin and graffiti your mind
with stolen syllables and
a masterclass of madness.

Dance so bone shoots from socket,
But shatter nicely girl.
Make a nice sound, a nice shape, a nice story. 
Break and break again. 
Stretch viscera from pole to pole,
burst life from caged bone and teach us to cry. 

Break circus human, break.
Break nicely.
Break utterly.