Poem 101

As the title says, a few disparate images that appeal to me … adding up to a love poem of a sort … the chimpanzees sent up in the early space programme (still up there?) set against my observation in feeding deer that even when the ground is covered in deer-nuts they still prefer to take them from some people’s hands …

… I showed this to a poet in the Psych Dept at Victoria who told me there was a rule about metaphoric verisimilitude – eg that a rivet penetrates where a kiss doesn’t, so my image didn’t ring true … I’ve remembered that but it’s never made me change a word of anything … 

Favourites

I like the idea of the little astronaut
  the face going old against the faceplate
  all the monkeys in space in their steel bananas
  look so wise - stiff chimps
  star children furry moons
  with wrinkled faces …

I like you
  feeding deer down here on earth
  sexual mouths lipping nuts of compressed meal
     from your palm
  sharp feet picking a way through a carpet
  of the same
                you're so successful

I want to be there
  to put the hair out of your face every time
  you turn a page
  to turn and fix my kiss to your shoulder blade
      a benign rivet
  as light falls like a sheet of paper
     between the curtains
  as dead monkeys shoot out
  into the new dawn …