Saturday, October 20, 2018

Kit Kelen #1024 - let the yarn repair (for Kerri)


1024
let the yarn repair

a tribute poem for Kerri’s elevensies


the middle line’s the title!

elevensies!
like a poem you wear

and listen for flowers here
(you could be deafened!)

in the sunshine of it
of a midmorning

snout deep
in a cuppa

lollop of cow
once dozy
set sail

now a truce with daylight!
(that’s how bright the future is)

listen to and through the chatter
this is Kerri’s hand-to-hand combat

it can go all kinds of ways...
best deadly

woman on porch
jibe, quip and
(she is a humorist of note
and keen at repartee...

like my mother-in-law’s fridge magnet –
age and cunning will always defeat youth and good looks’

but Kerri and me – we’ve got the lot!
it’s chronic!

we had this epiph together

and it was simply this –
the middle line’s the title

or, to be truthful,
it might have been
the title’s the middle line

anyway, why shouldn’t it be?
the title in the midst
the name of the thing
for an either-end balance

in media res

why should the eye be governed?
and follow this to a logical conclusion
read in any direction you like

start midst-most though

I had a crack
but she is doing it every day

Kerri found the hexagram seesaw and sat
I feel like I’m still up in the air
held there by medical mysteries

and she keeps us reading

she keeps a room of wool
I keep it all between my ears

she keeps a shed of stuff
I have stuffed my shed as well

elevensies philanthropy!
that’s better than religion

nevertheless
heaven’s above
and don’t look down

Kerri is a woman of the big picture
wiggy prophet of the Next Testament!
there isn’t a picture big enough for her

you fall into a poem like hers
expecting a clock to sneak up
like something deliciously due
another pot of tea too

a windmill never sleeps
but mumbles on the nothings

both epic
and gastric
in her own prism
(of cuticle dawn-light)

in skin
let’s not forget – embodied!
all those years of it… it’s almost as if in

blackfulla chinawoman
welcomes us

and once you know the middle is it
streets are cryptic with find-a-way

think of a first prime minister
it’s everything mnemonics
else how are we here?

you know the waves ride out from this house
reverberate? that’s what they’re calling it these days

Green library
taste me

there’s nothing that we can’t discuss

the corpus asserts

a body of words
words of the body

and the stranger graces
trouble in mind

how differently we choose
all equally far from/ by sensation
the sky ...
of Mayfield!
Mayfield of the settled dust
suburb the city approaches
(with caution...

where substance of us is a poem
hence this form of words

or fall into rhyme, like error

all vanish in one so

then here’s the kiss returned

I ramble out formlessly
I am myself being rolled out
although I know

snout deep’s how to go

elevensie!
a kind of a jumpsuit this poem –
a discipline
matinee jacket for a grassy knoll

so seldom smile
and curl up warm

bring your own apology
(sorry trumps guilt every time)

poems come from the remains of poems
how sad would you like to be with the fact?

it’s must be tea time again
in Near Miss mansion
views expand the shrink wrapped world

long strides taken
hidden from the air until the moment comes

to breathe all
on our cul-de-sac safari
(reminds you of Jules Verne, that does
and down in the volcano…

[no bracket ever finally closed...

armadillo plates overlap
how the planet goes round

there isn’t shit to save you from the job you’ve left undone

sweet trees
sweet sea
sweet sky

philosophy!

bug impervious
launcher of little fur missiles

can’t have too many autopsies
as long as yr alive

tending to what needs we heal
and stretch to be
keeps ya goin’
it does

curtain eyerolls
handcuffed pulse

Wiradjuri wordworker
a pleasure to jam with
to riff on
to honour

great enabler
and listener too, teller of truth
I salute you
and I launch you
once more into community
into the breach!

and struth!

if you can’t hear me
even if...
sing out
will ya?

there’s no smile sweeter than now!

3 comments:

  1. for those who weren't there -- this was the launch speech
    so to speak

    ReplyDelete
  2. ANd it was even more beautiful to sit and take in from the tweed headed man himself. Thank you Kit, I am doubly honoured.
    It was yet another best night of the life. xx K

    ReplyDelete

  3. How lovely
    I wish I'd been there
    to hear yr poem
    & see Kerri's smile

    ReplyDelete

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