Poem 436

The novel was Diesel Mystic … Greg’s poetry had knocked me back and put a dent in my own ambitions when I first read it, I loved the vivid imagery (usually supported by his artwork) and read and reread his first collection Location Of The Least Person much of which featured his son Jack Marcel as a baby … so this is me writing a bit of an homage and enjoying speculating about what we might expect from his upcoming novel …

( … I like the rhyme on dishes/delicious, chicken foot as a description of how Greg drew eyes, the repetition of Jack Marcel’s name which is a sideways glance at how often he is mentioned in Location … the Z’s of cartoon sleep turning into propellers … and the way the whole poem gives a sense of one of Greg’s crowded hyperactive drawings … )

Greg’s Novel

Well Greg O'Brien has gone
      and written a novel
will it have bicycles and dancing women
will it have fruit in dishes and the delicious
fingers of Catherine Deneuve paddling
           amongst them?

it will have clouds for sure
                                                      rough
cut and pastes middle-aged men
     floating through them
with noble brows and chicken foot
eyes

it will have children who are not
like children at all
                                     aesthetes
on tricycles Jack Marcel
swimming down a carpet sunlight
sticking to him
                              Jack Marcel
in the ascendant and later the head
of Jack Marcel going behind
the hills

it will have many fine gradations of light
    rare colours mixed in the margins
if there are people sitting down to dinner
something gorgeous will happen
        outside the window
        or on the other side of the Earth
before they're finished

                                               Catherine Deneuve
is tickling Jack Marcel a cloud rains
into a cup of tea
       the dinghies and the yachts and the sea
bump about the eaves
                                                Gregory sleeps on
his typewriter spilling out Z’s
       that tangle in the curtains
       or rotate like propellers
into the corners of the world