Welcome to the April 2009 poetry challenge.  Who knows, 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.  But right now, you can send in your poetry challenges for the April 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 April, you’ll find I’ve responded by posting a poem here addressing it.   Come on, give it a try. 

Here’s the poems so far…

ENOUGH, copyright Donna Williams April 2009

 

The sky it cried, over a land price tagged bargain of the week,

going cheap, cheaper, than cheap,

and only ants had found a home

in the darkness of its cracks,

beside the long lost signs of bushman’s tracks.

Grass it danced, it’s tango, golden dry,

out in a field, fenced

but neither witnessed, nor was evidenced,

imprisonment of wire spiked and warning

‘property’ lived in the minds of fools,

where enlightenment awaits the dawning.

The wind it sang, to Prozac nation,

tightly shuttered windows slaved to fear exaggeration,

complimentary with the nightly news,

nightmare tales of neatly packaged, biased views.

Once upon a rumble, the earth had moved beneath my feet

and out of territorial slumbers, neighbors poured into the street

to marvel at the awesome beast of nature in the rough

and somewhere heard a quiet whisper

that the earth had had enough.

WAIT FOR ME, copyright Donna Williams April 2009

 

Here’s the bucket, where’s the gore

the advertisers bay for more

the smiling perfect teeth convey

amidst moist lips

the tragedies throughout the day.

Roadside bombings, mass murder sprees

pass the popcorn if you please

For lunch we serve up mass starvation

For dinner, illegal migration.

For afters, get your just dessert

and count the numbers killed or hurt.

Is that all?  Yesterday was more.

God damn, who would have thought

we’d now be keeping score.

Happy happy, smiley face

Don’t bring me down, don’t lose your place

in the production line of tragedy

there goes the bus

shit! Wait for me!!!

SPIN ME SPIDER, copyright Donna Williams, April 2009

 

 

Spin me spider, spin my mind

round and round a thousand times

and every line and every lie

I’ll just give you big doe eyes.

Press my buttons, watch me dance

A corporate puppet, aren’t we all?

Clip my strings

and watch me, watch me

watch me….fall.

I took the soil in my hands

And ate the dust with gusto

just

because it wasn’t packaged

just

because we were

at heart still so uncouth,

and still… so savage.

You see, I’d missed the adverting

and devoid of all direction,

unemployed and in the queue,

I stood amidst the manequins,

awaiting my inspection,

exposed before you all I stood there nude.

WORLD TRAVEL, copyright Donna Williams 2009

 

Air con, air con, what a con

Seems years since these rusted windows opened

they circulate the air, you know

without remote control

without that hole in your left shoe

replaced in blink of time

with one more, new

from China maybe, or India these days

and food in tins, maybe ten years prison in those cans

before your hands, your hands

set them free,

where fish and dolphin caught in trawling nets

from mercury sea

are eaten on a cracker from Japan

world travel on the label of a can.

 

TIME TOCK, copyright Donna Williams 2009

Hands which never touch

A face that never smiles

A voice with just two notes

Rules us all.

The tick-tock time clock

Sits upon the kitchen wall.

 

TURNING 17, copyright Donna Williams 2009

 

 

Reality bites at seventeen,

No longer in a childhood dream,

I stood, half crazy, pills in hand,

with which I’d go to Never Land.

Or alcohol, like mother dear,

nature, nurture, both stood here

and hand in hand with fear

we crumbled as we rose.

And round the corner, who knew,

awaited change, a life anew.

For seventeen felt like the end,

a place of losing, not of winning.

Who’d have dared imagine, in my end

was my beginning.

 

SNOW IN MAY, copyright Donna Williams 2009

 

Snow, do you not know, these dirty hands?

This mouth of sewer words?

These feet have wandered gutters of such privileged lands.

But here, you fall upon me, clean and bright.

Your frosted lips they kiss away the footprints

of a thousand dirty nights.

And laugh, is all a fool can do

as you, ignore my inequality,

pretending like no humans do

that I’m in fact an equal

in this crazy human zoo.

 

MAKING THE EFFORT, , copyright Donna Williams 2009

 

Poor me, for I have chipped a nail,

zipping my designer boots

which, eww, I find have accumulated some

disgusting remnants of a snail.

Can’t stop of course, somewhere to be,

just grab the Range, I’ve got to be at the school gate

by half past three.

To collect my little darlings, child 1, 2, 3 and 4,

for with genetics such as mine,

one could always afford more.

We instil the finest values, elitist schooling can provide

and in environmental consciousness we take the utmost pride.

I’ve just enrolled in pedagogy, permaculture and astrology,

one can never use enough para-psy, para-site, para-psy-chology.

Even our poodle has gone vegan,

well one of us must make the effort,

and the rest of us must keep our strength up

we can’t all live in discomfort.

And I am yet to find a stroganoff without beef,

that still is edible

And in any case, I’ve heard that red meat

is now the new vegetable.