Category Archives: LoSoRhyMo

Today’s stanza draws on a passage from Middlemarch in which Ladislaw, whose hair is ‘not immoderately long’, argues the superiority of poetry over painting. The first two lines are almost a direct quote.

November verse 10: Pictures and words
Language gives a fuller image,
all the better as it's vague.
Paintings flaunt their frozen plumage,
stare insistent from the frame
in finished, silent imperfection.
Neither love nor harsh rejection
crease a portrait's botox brow.
No worm forgives the painted plough. 
Life as lived is full of noises
much diviner than what's seen
(or, on occasion, more obscene).
The air resounds with speaking voices:
one picture can delight your eyes, 
a thousand words can make you wise.

For decades newspaper cartoonists have laboured for metaphorical links between the Melbourne Cup and the US election that fell on the same Tuesday in November. This stanza labours a link between astronomical and political.

November verse 6: Eclipse

Here the streets were full of gazers,
faces to the shadowed moon.
No pyrotechnics to amaze us:
cosmic lightshow, gone too soon.
A woman said, 'It's good so many
came outdoors, when there's Sweet Fanny
Adams profit to be made,
just heaven's bodies on parade.'
But over there the lines of voters
braced themselves for Thunderdome 
(though far too many stayed at home).
The climate, SCOTUS, former POTUS:
stakes are high this northern Fall – 
this Tuesday’s poll could doom us all.

This happens every Tuesday, though the musical accompaniment is usually Latin disco rather than Glee.

November verse 5: At the Active Seniors Class

Meek we are, like lambs to slaughter –
not for killing, nor still young.
Lead us on, we say, no quarter,
keep us active, though we're bung.
A back, a knee, a frozen shoulder,
nameless aches from growing older,
long in tooth and short of breath:
we've miles to go before our death.
'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger':
that's the soundtrack as we squat,
lunge, lift weights, tighten cores, get hot
and sweaty. Can we last much longer?
Then it's stretches, brief applause,
and back to life outside those doors

No sooner had my last verse mentioned the joys of staying up all night than this happened. Please don’t read this as arguing that the solution to all problems is to call the police

November verse 4: When neighbours have a noisy party

I wake at two, hear thumping music,
sink back deep inside my dream
of old alarms. But meanwhile you stick
useless earplugs in, you scream
a silent (thank you!) scream, phone coppers:
Don't chase crime, be music-stoppers.
You pace, you read, drink water, weep:
the lads next door have murdered sleep.
And I snooze on, as some through warnings
scientists give on climate change,
through so much violence, so much strange
and deadly in our world. This morning
cops at last came, put things right.
Your vigil brought a silent night.