August Poem Dump

Wednesday is about books and writing. (And reading). Once a month or so I share the latest poems I’ve written. Here’s August’s…

In Poetry’s Official Uniform, The Canadian Tuxedo, for Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day, August 23, 2024 — Undercurrent bookstore and venue, Wellington

I seem to have started this thing where at the start of a month I share the previous month’s batch of poems. I’m writing them when and where I can, sharing most of them on this site here, although not often emailing them out to you directly, so instead I gather them all in a ‘dump’ here at the start of each month. Here’s last month’s:

That also includes a link to the previous month’s at the start of it. And so now let’s dig into what went up, in a poetry-sense, across August. I did actually share a few one-off poems directly with the app and email-audience this month, so might re-share some of those here again, and there was also a set of video poems, and a new live podcast from the Poetry Day event. All up, August felt like a busy poetry month even if I didn’t write as many new poems as other months:

GRASS TOUCHED:

I stood on the side of a hill for a day,
my phone in a bag below. I didn’t die,
no one lied — or if so, I wasn’t there
to read it. I planted trees, lived in

the breeze; felt the dirt with my
fingers and let the winter sun warm
my heart, if not my back. Good day
on the hill. Great day offline. The cat

memes and nonsense sat in a
temperature-controlled storage facility,
waiting; mutating. I’d post them all
the next day. Renewed. Invigorated.

---

HAWKE’S BAY IN THE 90s:

I saw Ray Charles when I was 17. It was
a very good start to the year. Although
the farmers on the hill did not like it much

when there wasn’t an encore. Someone
shouted, “Get back on stage you blind
black cunt” — and many people cheered.

I could see the limo heading down the
long driveway, out of the venue, and
though Brother Ray was tough enough

and must have endured so much more
than just that, I remember thinking,
“Drive. Just drive”, in fact, I heard myself

saying it out loud. The way he’d twisted
Eleanor Rigby into something brand new
was worth it all. I still think about that now.

---

REFLECTION — WHAT YOU ARE:

The dream was simple
and so is the song. It was
me and my buddy, singing

I’ll Be Your Mirror - to a
crowd of people in a bar.
And they were all singing —

they kept repeating the chorus;
so we kept starting it back up…
That was the dream.

Simple — like the song.
A great way to wake up,
to start another day.

---

WHY NOT BOTH?

I remember sitting in a room of young
working people, and I didn’t have a job,
so I thought they were awful.

You see, I had a purpose, and my
personality was completely separate
from what I was being paid to do

(and not just because I wasn’t being paid).
They must have been perplexed by me. I
was a young person at the time too. Broke.

And idealistic. Now I’m only one of those
things most of the time, though sometimes,
for fun, I can still do both.

---

NAUTICAL BY NATURE:

I spend a lot of time thinking
about the John Cheever story, The Swimmer
and its okay film adaptation, starring Burt Lancaster.

It’s essentially a retelling of the myth of
Narcissus, a middle-age journey into the heart
of darkness, that starts on a lovely summer’s day.

Neddy Merrill decides to
swim home, over eight miles away, and
across fences and lawns, as he moves pool-to-pool.

It moves from realism to
surrealism, barely taking a breathe,
as he freestyles home to find not much still standing.

It’s brutal and beautiful, and
you feel you’ve been swimming
the miles alongside the story’s character.

It’s so sad at the finish. His life wasted as he
wandered. I feel it describing my own early 20s.
I’m just glad I was a good enough swimmer back then.

---

THE “JOHNNY, NO!” MEMORIAL LIBRARY:

It was a set of shelves, down the back of
the class, some comics and books, a couple
of tapes and some toys; action figures.

And a sign made at woodwork with the
poker-work machine. All of it a tribute
to a fictional soldier, who died in a very

real war that finished before we even knew
what it was. But with 60s music back in
vogue, and our imaginations collectively

running, we paid tribute to “Johnny”, who
never should have run over the top. Even
though, of course, he never did. The teacher

let it happen — until it took over
the classroom, with parents reporting
their kids having trouble sleeping.

But Richard said, when asked, to “tell
that to Johnny, who will never again
have the chance of a sleepless night!”

---

NAUSICAA:

when i met you,
i was a burner of boats.

my own, primarily, but
but also most sailing

anywhere near me. You
pulled up alongside, swam

where the water took
you, laughed at my

arrogance, allowed me to
co-captain the ship.

which meant no need
for any more boat burning,

which meant actual
care and responsibility.

---

UNCONNECTED, OF COURSE:

I passed a guy on the street just now,
who smelled so bad I still have him
under my nose — reminds me of when

my mum would tell the story of how
the people in the local supermarket
would shout the smelly people soap,

only to have them return it and point
out they never bought it. My mum made
it sound like it was a regular occurrence,

but how was it that she happened to be
there every time? And did it even happen
once? I was gonna add, “typical her, on

the soapbox again?!” But that’s even more
on the nose. So I just kept texting back
to a friend about the weird things

we say in public sometimes.
Unconnected,
of course.

---

THE PRIVILEGE OF TIME:

A guy in an Uber says
friendship is over; outdated concept.
No one has any time for it.

I understand how truly online
we are, I have very strong friendships
with people I’ve never met.

My folks can never underestand that.
They met their friends pouring concrete
in the neighbourhood, making scones,

and babysitting. This would progress
to night-school cooking classes, dinner
parties, even trips shared overseas.

My best friends that know me to my core,
are people I’ve known since I was 14, or 12,
even four — in at least one case.

But I totally get that when you access
almost everything from your phone or
computer, you friend is actually the gadget,

the tablet; the people and services you
are connected to, just apps. That’s sad,
but also not unreasonable. The boomers

might tell you that you should be out there
making scones and mending literal fences,
but who has the time for that these days?

So friendships are outmoded — they
are a privilege, one we can’t always
pay for with our time.

---

THE USED TO PUT BELLS IN COFFINS, NOW THEY JUST PUT DOCTORS ON OVERTIME:

To be saved by the bell, was to be rescued
from being buried alive.

Medicine has improved,
even if bedside manner has not.

---

AGGREGATION:

The soul is our strength,
through its very vulnerability —
he was bulletproof, psychologically
bereft; spiritually bankrupt

writing emotional blank checks.
By the end, there was nothing left.
He was bulletproof, or so he’d
like to say, but his words held

no truth. His words were water
through fingers. His grasp forever
slipping. That sadness profound.
The madness even more terrifying.

His soul never present.
And never to be found.

---

POVERTY SPIRAL:

To be piss-poor was
to be reduced to selling
urine; they’d use it

to tan leather — often
used for whips, to keep
the poor in line.

---

So that was the ‘written’ poems in August. I also shared a video sequence of ‘Richard poems’ because I was too stupid to hit record correctly when I read them aloud at the open mic:

And I sent out a podcast — audio — of the poems I read as part of National Poetry Day, again a ‘Richard’ sequence. You might have spotted a couple of new Richard poems up above in the August dump too…

More on the ‘Richard poems’ soon — as we get closer to the book. It’s going to happen. Yay.

So that was August. A few new poems. Some you might have seen already, some new to you, a couple were actually very old, and reworked. But yeah, tell me what you think, if any of this interests you at all…or, you know, don’t! :)

That’s also fine. See you with another ‘dump’ next month.