Poem 330

This was a lot of fun as I decided to totally adopt the poetic style of David Mitchell whose only collection Pipe Dreams In Ponsonby is still a big favourite of mine … his ultra-stylised use of ampersands, dropped vowels, slashes, apostrophes, ironic quote marks and capitals to highlight words, short sharp lines and of course repetition is hugely self-conscious and pose-y and looks to US Beat and Black Mountain poets for its primary influences but in my early twenties I was very interested in what it was trying to do and how it was trying to shake up classic modes of poetry …

… although David Mitchell’s book was published in the first half of the seventies and was really a kind of holdover from the 60s, by the time I encountered it I saw the style as fitting with punk and new wave, I read the flensed syntax and poems tumbling down the page as being intended to accelerate the read and inject a youthful even aggressive drive and energy into the work … I was excited by the potential it offered to join the music revolution raging everywhere around me but in a literary way … then while still in Hamilton I got a record out of the library of NZ poets reading their work and was dismayed to find that David Mitchell read these ‘punk’ poems slowly, one might even say ponderously, the very opposite of the ‘flick of the wrist’ way I had been reading them to myself …

… hilariously, I opened Lana Del Ray’s recent book of poetry and it was full of these fifty year old ‘drop a vowel to make it look more poetic’ tricks …

( I like the title which is not intended to be the woman’s actual name but a name I give this larger than life flamboyant stranger with scarlet hair who is owning the street just by walking along it, bright against late-afternoon grey, the kind of person you turn to watch until they’re out of sight … the reference to sugar is intended to suggest pink candy floss but also the sugar and water solution punks used to jam their hair up … I like the intentional metaphoric disjunction of walls of th trees and the enjoyable way the coral image loops back to tropical waters … 
… the song is the Maxine Nightingale classic … )

Coral

she's going down th street
& it could be any street
anywhere
but it's hr street
& she's going down it
like live coral
flicking inside out
w/ a lash of scarlet
                                       (hr hair)
& th trees lay down leaves
because they're sick
& want to freeze
t'death
&
she's walkin on them
like she had a 'right'
& th sun's thinking
about setting
in hr hair
like sugar/ like jamming
all th ends together
injecting that tongue of coral
straight in th socket
&
she is getting
a succession
of small shocks walking
on th leaves 
                          wet paper
that won't stick
to th walls of th trees
&
I forgot t'mention
she is SINGING
                                 (under hr breath)
somethin like
   it's alright
& it's comin home
we gotta get right back
where we started from
               started frm
                       &
she is singin that again
(as she likes it)
& th cars
are all trying to pump th road dry
w/ wet tyres
&
succeeding
& she looks like sh belongs
in more tropical waters
w/ that hair
& th sun's going down
like an unknotted balloon
&
it's more like a parade
or some other kind
of attraction
as she steps off the curb
passes thru a gap
in th traffic
turns
          th corner
          of th street