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Two Poems from our Narrative Poetry Collection
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| DRUMMING THE GROUND |
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| Author: |
Fiona Marshall
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| Poem: |
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aboriginal dancers
flabby kangaroos glistening on stage
nicotine paws jutting behind for tails
pouches aflop, panting at the seaside air
their sand-dry lungs unaccommodated to its damp.
Aboriginal dance – they panted - comes from the
wellspring of dreaming – huh, huh -
and is rooted in the – huh - core
of our spiritual life and the renewal
of our Mother Earth –
They were the genuine article,
pausing frequently for swigs from a
clear bottle they joked was water:
authentic, middle-aged, near naked,
drably smeared with dark paint,
they hadn’t planned to sing for their supper.
The people sat like trees listening,
alive, but wood, eyes glinting like leaves
on a still summer’s night
Tim and Elaine Cramp, offspring Nathan, Ruth,
and the incredible zoo-wonging woozonging of the
didgeridoo set all those houses
vibrating into the English Channel,
a fabulous priapus to summon and unmake,
to raise the quick and the dead,
and still they sat
while their homes crumbled like the chalk cliffs.
When it finally ended and the town
had all slid down into the sea,
Tim Cramp stirred, blinked: It was all right.
Quite good actually.
Outside after the performance
dancing away barefoot from the Broadstairs earth
as if it were red hot
their wild leaps and circling
signalling lets get outta here,
fags frantic to mouth, hair dowdy
guts lipping over their loincloths,
planning their getaway. The torchlit procession
lumbered down the high street without them,
its billed leaders, the stars of folk week,
they speeding back to Sussex in their van.
Shame they didn’t stay, said Elaine,
mind you not too fit were they.
Nathan Cramp, straight from the 17th century,
the type of lad not calculated to make it into adulthood
holds a magnifying glass to lamp post
to see if the sun can burn a hole in the metal.
His shout floats over to our garden,
Dad Dad I found another mouse, yes a dead one,
here Dad there’s another mosquito on your face
keep still Dad! - Gotcha! And Tim,
reeling with his whacked cheek:
Ow! Was that really necessary?
Did that really happen? Or was it
our restless imaginings through the garden fence,
marsh lights flickering over bog graves,
seeking to boogy them alive? - As the dancers
drummed the seaside soil in vain,
the sensitive wrinkles on their soles
unable to feel a pulse
from that limp earth; one dead
mother lies beneath their leaping,
their hard-mudded, tender toes.
For all their whisky and cigarettes
the extra stones they carried and the years,
they knew a defunct land when they trod one.
Buttercup, Tim’s tortoise, an antique soul,
almost a father to Tim
same cross, fixed look,
a wrinkled, limp erection of a head
a smile like a snake’s
peppercorn eyes uncannily like its owner’s
and an inhuman habit of getting lost
in the garden undergrowth, driving people
in torments of picayune anxiety over fences,
tearing their feet; dripping red from their soles
on the return across the spiked divide between
gardens; what would the Cramps say
when they came back from Malta? yes,
we were blooded at the bootless task
of finding Buttercup, sitting snugly
by the dandelions all the while.
I witnessed Elaine cry once,
reached across our neighbourly boundaries
to put the common arm around her shoulders:
She didn’t make it, my mum,
she didn’t make it – her heart -
Her lisp lost in husky tears torn deep
Through her throat. I cried too,
And for that moment we were like anyone else
Watering dry dust.
We moved soon after
Unable to dance ourselves any longer
To pretend we felt a flicker of response
Tickling up from the shale and chalk beneath
To our weary feet
That were twitching for another country.
Rumour had it the Cramps won the lottery.
But they were last seen standing
at the side of the motorway
beside their battered red car
necks craning like lost tortoises
towards their rescue.
ends |
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More Narrative poems |
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| Purple Prose |
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| Author: |
Asfihani Kamarudin
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| Poem: |
Purple Prose |
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Lines Fused together To make symbols and characters That carry meanings Expresses feelings Defines the essence of emotions Words Flow gracefully from the hand That writes passionately with the pen But has no control whatsoever On the world now or forever The man, he writes on Why do you write, oh writer? Can it be that fame and fortune Is what you are after? Is that not the want of every man? To be rich and renowned throughout the land Words may or may not, make the world better When it touches the lives, of one man and another That is my opinion, on what makes writing matter So here I continue To pit purple prose Against aesthetic subjects That cause endless rows Attempting to justify A meager existence Answering life's challenge Trying to make a difference
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