Welcome to the June 2009 poetry challenge. You can send in your poetry challenges for the June 09 poetry jam. So off you go – feel free to send me a TITLE or THEME to write to in the comments section and up to the end of June, you’ll find I’ve responded by posting a poem here addressing it. Come on, give it a try. And don’t forget, any of you coming to see us at any of the upcoming gigs for Donna and The Aspinauts may actually see some of the poems performed, complete with gestural signing and characterisations. Here’s the poems so far…

MY HEART by Donna Williams June 09

my heart is a patchwork quilt
left threads on the shore of a hundred wars
left dye on the lips of a hundred whys
left filling with the pillows of a hundred beds
left warmth to fill the coldest corners of the stray cats’ sheds

my heart is a garden
of weeds that found home
a place in the corner where the dust gathers
a bathtub of suds which have washed away dirt
a girl trying to smile in a pink mini skirt

my heart is a fire
for the orphans to warm
for the fingerless gloves
for tinned rain in a storm

my heart is a window
with small hands on the pane
and a view on a world
where the logic’s insane.

my heart is a cat
which purrs near without sound
which sees into your soul when there’s no-one around
which lives on the hopes and the dreams others shed
my heart is restored from a girl left for dead.

PAIN DOESN’T STOP by Donna Williams June 09

We get a body,
off we trot
and fill the beast with lollies,
orange soft drink
from the local shop.

We watch it starve, we watch it fatten.
We feel it waken wanting sex.
We watch it develop habit patterns.
On immortality, we place our bets.

We watch it wrinkle, watch it fail.
We drown it in toxic cocktails.
We love it now, but then we hate
its failings to be our best mate.

We get a mind,
and let it soar.
It kites to heights beyond our dreams.
Elasticised, it ends in screams
or manic squeals of glee
upon a roller-coaster without end.

Or a life, like flattened river pebble,
so barely there, we never knew.
Or so preened and tidy, an anal thing,
a cardboard box, a fish-line string.
Or broken like a Grandma vase
and glued with cheap child’s glue.

We get a heart,
and give it out
to strangers at a bustop
and the dangers make it beat
and say, yeah, I guess I’m still alive.

We keep it safe under a bed,
and watch life whizz past
like a fast car, like a missed bus
and all the words that we had never said
are told to candle flames for ghosts
of times now past.

Oh save me, save me, from all pain.
Find me a role or drive me sane.
Insure me from all and sundry.
Keep me home from Sunday to Monday.

I’ll kiss a thousand crosses, not.
I’ll take my chances with what I’ve got.
For pain’s a teacher of brighter days
and a bus which sometimes fails to stop.

EARTHWORM by Donna Williams, June 09

Squidgee, widgee, slinky wiggle.
Ten year old hand, yet to see a wrinkle.
A shoe box filled with snails and slaters.
And soil which holds a world unseen.

Dirty nails, clutch the earth
For treasures of a child’s world.
You feel the light and air and squirm
Like mad spaghetti in my hand.

Worms have five hearts,
they’re boy and girl.
What Lewis Carroll, built your world?
“Go screw yourself”, the humans say
but you could do that any day.

With five hearts one might never break.
You’d never know the weight of having just a single one
to mind, and nurse, to delight and curse,
to tell the shithouse from what’s worse.
To bliss out just because the sun had kissed your face.
To measure time spent as a speck
amidst the fools of human race.

IN A FORMAL ANALYSIS by Donna Williams, June 09

In a formal analysis
of surrealist randomology
there’s an imperial remainder
of the appropriate chronology.

T’was a manufactured protest
in a statistical arena
which derived belief
that one could speak linguistic ballerina.

From a misleading piano
came an auditory cloud
which had activated touching
amidst a versatile crowd.

As I sat with cosy backbone,
within an antiquated garden
a merged honesty erupted
as the farters begged a pardon.

VOMIT LAMP by Donna Williams, June 09

Around redundant streets the bothered were wearing
mobiles at their ears
in unnatural submission to the sycophantic crowd.
And a drunk in the gutter awoke somewhere in intermission
in the atheism show on that potted cactus day.

Some initiated goldfish who’d been going ’round in circles
had emerged from his sect on account of thankful rent.
And somewhere whilst he was awaiting more than apathetic feedback
smoked a stone in the hope of getting arrogantly bent.

Then a gasp, sure but faint
came from down a cobbled laneway
where a green, somewhat fluoro jellied thing had come to camp.
It had been surely departed by a derelict stray zombie
and was soon to be patented as an Australian vomit lamp.

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.Ever the arty Autie.
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com