Category Archives: LoSoRhyMo

Is it possible to make verse from the To-Be-Read pile? Let’s see.

November verse 13: To be read
I've counted ninety-six and growing,
lined neat on shelf and heaped by bed,
gifts, impulse buys, gateways to knowing,  
some I lust for, some I dread.
War, genocide, intrigue, corruption,
love, fantasy, delight, disruption:
you never know until you look
inside the covers of a book.
But if I read two hundred pages
(including pages filled with pics)
daily till I'm ninety-six,
obsessed but not, I hope, contagious
these unread piles would hardly shrink.
Oh well, it costs much less than drink.

This one uses the rhyme words from David Malouf ‘s ‘La Belle Hélène’, which I wrote about yesterday. It’s not the Onegin stanza rhyme scheme – sorry! 

November verse 12:
It's been a while since we've seen midnight
or, naked-eyed, pushed thread through needle,
decades since you've been a girl
or I a boy. No half-sane poet
would write of us as bête and belle,
yet here we are, alive, awake,
no cancer, heart attack or stroke
to force the point we're not immortal.
Though, always seeming as innocuous
as phoenix embers in the hearth,
these fleeting memories of youth –
when I had painless knees, and you
no back complaining when you rose –
hint darkly at what looms tomorrow.

OK, I’m committed to a stanza a day for the rest of the month. Yesterday I built on end-rhymes from a stanza n Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. Today, back to the source of the Onegin stanza: Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, as translated by James E Falen. The arbitrarily chosen stanza that supplied  the rhymes is in Chapter Two.

The verse picked up on my recent reading of some correspondence about Laura Tingle’s Quarterly Essay, Follow the Leader, and a conversation about the Extinction Rebellion in the UK.

November verse 11: On fair dinkum politics
The dream of being ruled by sages
is defunct. There on the crest
of Parliament Hill a wildfire rages.
No charm can soothe that savage breast
whose fuse is blown by power surges,
trust’s betrayed by carnal urges.
Far too many old white men
talk only to themselves and then
they watch Sky News. Is there a swelling
cloud to quench that toxic flame,
to make that coal-fired monster lame
and save our sweet blue planet-dwelling?
You want a hero? Save your breath!
It’s all together now – or death!

I’m running against the calendar if I’m to meet my goal of 14 14-line stanzas this November. Moving home does get in the way of meeting deadlines.

Rather than offering yet another glimpse into my mundane life, I started out with the rhyme words and went wherever they took me, which turned out in the first line to be a paraphrase of G K Chesterton’s aphorism, ‘If a things’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly,’ closely followed by Fred Brooks’s advice to software systems developers, ‘Plan to throw one away – you will anyway.’

The rhyme words are from stanza 5.10 of Vikram Seth’s verse novel The Golden Gate, the book that provoked my fascination with these Onegin stanzas.

November verse 10: Advice to myself
If it’s worth doing, do it badly
then make it good, or throw it away
and start again – not grimly, sadly:
ludic as a toddler, play
and laugh at failure. Hire a jester,
can the scripts that carp and pester.
Challenges aren’t meant for woe,
they’re the way we get to know
new skills. Scrupulous evasion
is no virtue. Be unclear,
but form rough words and plans, then steer
them on to clarity. Persuasion,
not coercion’s, how we’ve learned
to fan a dream until it burned.

November verse 9: In Newtown
Noon, Saturday. As I went walking
King Street South I met a flow,
a gaggle, not a troupe, of talking
mimes – youths dressed à la Marceau:
white face, striped shirt, a red carnation.
Cheerful, noisy desecration.
If mimes aren’t silent, what’s the point?
The times are clearly out of joint.
Then at the bus stop, here’s a scammer:
‘Hi,’ she says, ‘Long time no see!’ …
Then, ‘Would you like to come with me?’
She made no headway with her glamour.
‘Five dollars, then?’ I shook my head.
All when I went to buy some bread.

Verse 8: Moving out, moving in
Sugar-soaping, mopping, sweeping,
drilling, screwing, bashing nails,
flattening used boxes, heaping
rubbish near the balcony rail,
fix the toilet seat (if able)
buy a longer TV cable,
screw in half a dozen hooks,
unpack and shelve a thousand books
(give some away), fix vacuum cleaner,
phone about the internet,
the Council pickup, don’t forget
the neighbours’ names (Regina, Tina?).
Too much to fit so little time,
too much to squeeze into a rhyme.

This was yesterday:

Verse 7: Removal day
We rise at six. Van’s due at seven.
All 34 is boxed and stacked.
We’re bushy-tailed, all systems revving.
8.30, no van. Panic attack.
Six phone calls get the tragic story:
driver’s wife and something gory.
By 2 we’ve found another mob
from near Kashmir to do the job.
And so eight years accumulated
tables, books, beds, fridge, TV,
become backbreaking work for these
young men. By six, not quite elated
we’re sitting in our home-to-be,
all boxed and stacked at 43.

Getting 14 stanzas done this November is going to be hard: moving house gets in the way of rhyme, and we’ve been very busy getting ready for the big move, which happens tomorrow. In the meantime, though, the corner of my brain that still can scan (almost) and rhyme (just) has managed this:

November verse 6:
My Twitter feed was full of Bunnings’
sausage sizzle safety scare,
of mock alarm and gleeful punning.
I’ve never bought a sausage there
or been assaulted by fried onions.
Bunnings is the place that summons
me when I need pipes or screws,
drill bits, mulch or kangaroos’
paws. Temple of the DIYers,
initiates there wear high viz
or paint-streaked shorts. The glad fact is
I don’t go there for silk-clad choirs
or poetry, or barbied snags,
Who asked Ikea for hot dogs?

Verse 5: To be done
Moving home’s no roller-coaster,
no painful climb up, screaming down,
just daily questions like ‘New toaster?’
(answered ‘Yes’, though with a frown)
and wrap the artwork up in bubbles,
smash failed ceramics into rubbles,
organise a picture rail,
fix a redirect for mail,
fill a box with medications,
give away our potted lime,
dump the clock that’s lost its chime,
breathe slow when there’s palpitations
and so nothing will be missed
sit and write a to-do list.

Verse 4: Our new home, soon
Friday: day to take possession
(under licence) of our flat.
We got the key and in procession
took two chairs there. That was that
or so we thought. About 12.30
emails from the lawyers curtly
told us that we had no right
unless we paid before that night
a thousand bucks, and emailed paper
work we simply didn’t know
we had to have. To and fro
the calls and emails flew all day for
Friday. Solved by five! On Sun-
day twenty-box transfer is done.

And if that verse seems tortured to you, then all I can say is it reflects the process at least a little. In case it’s not clear, twenty boxes is just a beginning.