Jigsaw

Sitting in a King's Cross gutter
chewing gum stuck to my arse
living the line-
good night, another bad morning.

Like an abandoned toy

I'm broken

I don't work!

Somehow this piece
seems to be in the wrong puzzle.

Rain starts to lick my wounds so I head home.

Another jigsawday
hoping no  one notices
I am that last frustrating piece that does not fit

and i left, discarded in the box.

birds of sorrow

This art work is part of the work I am doing in my Fine Arts course at Curtin University. I had to choose a material to create an artwork, based on its properties, and linked to a proverb about said material. I choose hair. The proverb is
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair.

Review -  brb(be right back) by Maree Dawes.

The phrase ‘nowords space’ has definitely been entered into my long term memory since reading Maree Dawes’ verse novel brb ( be right back). I will see images of it everywhere, images that I will try not to capture with the written word.

Dawes’ novel explores the whole idea of the world of fantasy, available to us in cyber space, versus the tactile, olfactory, messy world outside of the computer screen. It is this dilemma that germinates and generates action in Dawes’ writing. brb got me in on the first reading but having never used a chat room and having only limited experience of cybersex, it was the re-reading that made me appreciate the subtle seduction Dawes works. A clever writer, Dawes slowly lets her reader, even the Luddite, become comfortable with the chat room scenario.

The verse novel format is a perfect idiom as the line breaks involved are just like those on a computer social media page. For those unfamiliar with computer talk and fashion of the day, this piece of writing might be off putting. However, I would invite you to persist and re-read. It is well worth the effort.

Dawes masterfully takes us from her concrete world

my neck sinks forward/and I am full/of the scent of us/together.

to the chat room world where ‘Boadicea’ experiences the intimacy possible between strangers

                I want to hear your day in words/then I know you and the day.

Dawes’ novel is more than just a means to get you ‘hot and bothered’. It plays with the whole question of the imaginary world versus the world of sensory reality. Boadicea goes through all the euphoria and exhilaration of infatuation to the soul searching, self-justification of her actions. Finally, of course, there is the addiction to this new personal life created, a life where one can be the ‘hidden’ person that friends and spouse will not let you be, do not want you to be. The part of you squashed out by life, its obligations and roles.

Dawes switches between the worlds. The descriptions of life are in fact more powerful then the erotic writing, like her description of the music teacher playing violin

                It is hard to watch his joy/such a private thing/he closes his eyes to feel it/ I close my eyes so that I do not

or her description of the teahouse

                I am in Indiana’s teahouse/worlds are spreading out/I can see the ocean/and swimmers/ dimensions cascade/from my table/to the horizon.

But rest assured her cyber space eroticism is up to par.

Even between her two men this polarity is explored. With one she can feel that burl in the smooth flow of flesh while with her cyber man, his voice his words/somewhere we are together.  With one, it is all words on a computer and the power of those words to excite and stimulate. Whereas in her other life she gets to experience nowords space.

 Will she give up her cyber lover? The title suggests not, but the postscript will definitely leave the reader guessing.

Janette Dadd is a NSW south coast writer. She has two books of poetry published with Ginninderra Press, Eve’s Tears (2000) and Early Frosts (2013). Her work has been published in various Australian anthologies. She is an Australian Poetry Cafe Poet.

                 

Thermals
 It was all thermals with you
caught in the updraft
of loss and isolation
and desolation of soul.

All thermals
as we fed each other
the quivering elixir
of the other
'till addicted,
we could not get
enough!

On the escarpment's edge
energies collided
with a violence
that greened skies
and shredded foliage
so it became too hard
to hold on.

It was all thermals with you!

Disagreement

There is no aspect of driven snow
                                             in me.
                   It is more a coffee coloured mud puddle
                              of emotions, views, theories, testimonies.
Just as I settle and clear
                  someone walks through my
                                      equilibrium
and muddies me with a slant on
                                      an issue
that ripples with credibility
stirring me to the depths of my
                                       muddies mind.

I am not isolated on a mountain top
where purity is driven to rest
by querulous winds.
I am on the street
where people walk through me
and curse when I leave
splotches of muddy intrusion

on trouser legs.

hello out there!

Here is a poem from my book Eve's Tears. It is about dreams and about dreaming of houses. Hope you enjoy!

                                                       Houses
To dream of a house is to dream of yourself.

She'd dreamt of houses many times.

The first was a chimney
       standing still among charred remains.
And she was travelling away
      from its sad epitaph.

Her houses had a myriad
rooms
                    some
sheek and complete
                   others
dark and menacing
harbouring ghosts
of despair, traumas
impeding completion.

Houses where the door
                  was opened
and she could not halt
the flow
of people

filling the halls and rooms
that travelled on forever
with words and actions
she likes
                 does not like
but she is just there
host to it all.

Houses in the country
semi-detached in the city
gardens neglected
or radiant in bloom.
All these houses
a reflection of herself.

Her last dream left her calm.
She dreamt again of a house.
This house one of love
and she its centre.
Japanese rice paper
home looking for
its place to rest.

She woke happy.

Time to put up a new poem. This one is from my book Eve's Tears. Synopsis - a poem about lonely people searching for love  and hoping that one night stand will amount to something more.

                                                           Desert

In desert's shrivelled wilderness
there is no room
for supplicating humanity.
From Phoebus' scorching eye
its dwellers adroitly conceal
their vulnerability
becoming brave only when darkness
shrouds their urgency.
The sand's malleable contours
mould gently
as lust's thirst is quenched
- the heat of its rasping need
meeting the frigidity
of its callous design -
yet grains cling stubbornly
to sated skin.
Morning reminder
of dark night's sin.
And traces left
etch away at
solitary fortresses
so in the season
 of rain's fecundity
when sweet drops
of affection fall,
the elusive wildflower
germinates.