at the Flying Islands showcase/booklaunch at the Maitland IF Festival this last weekend

 

PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL (FLOWER OF KENT) by Béatrice Machet

 

 Answering, or rather echoing Kit Kelen's poem    #510 -- edge-phobe's (things fall off)        ( The DailyKit)

 

[after an older version posted on 365+1 project ]

 

  PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL

 

It’s no myth. Flower of Kent is an apple. It could have been a name for the Full Moon if Newton had been a poet. Poets, but not only, see attraction as the ability of falling. Thus, call it collision, gravitation, or not, living on earth one must accept that it entails the process of falling. Alive or not, “things” and people fall.

It’s no surprise. It’s always possible. The phenomenon repeats itself billion and more trillion times a day. This rule is said to be universal.

Logs fall and it’s a matter of sleeping.

Breads fall for butter’s sake.

Stones fall which weigh depend on rage rather than decay (-decline  -degradation  -downturn  -disfavor -disgrace … won’t be studied here).

Fallen people may be lying and resting in a tomb—from the French noun tombe itself being  derived from a verb: tomber. Meaning to fall. Whatever -diving               -stumbling   -tripping up or over is performed. Whatever -blow  -bomb  -imbalance    or  -shot    is the cause.   (delete as appropriate).

 

You fall  -at  -away   -back   -behind   -below   -beneath   -between   -by   -flat   -for   -from   -heads over heels   -into   -off   -on   -out   -outside   -over   -prey to   -short    -through   -to   -toward   -under …   -within…

It might concern -hurdle   -holes   -traps   -cracks   -stools   -wayside   -bonds  -job  -hook   -line   -sinker   -grace   -love   -heir   -heap   -line   -illness   -power                             -clutches   -disuse   -place   -hands   -eyes   -clouds   -trucks   -laps   -map  -wagon  -sword   -ground   -feet   -knees   -hard   -times   -face   -bed   -favor   -spell   -bits and   -pieces … -floor …

It’s important to have it free.

Never forget: the bigger they come the harder they fall.

Provided you can read I don’t mind this to fall on deaf ears.

 

poem in the fridge (for Sarah)

 

poem in the fridge

for Sarah St Vincent Welch

 

things opened are in here

the can of worms, the ointment fly

stool samples, acid trips, specimens

 

all sorts, oh and did I mention dinner?

voice says ‘we are your dead in here’

the feast preserved , slow cultures

 

cut off from nature

thing that could bite once

‘we go through your guts in time’

 

each packet bears its epitaph

and one day rise to justice?

dark thoughts when the door is shut

 

so all we meat must fear

actually I lived here once

just because you ask  

This your Life? Or not?

Standing there muttering on the phone, mattering as if you do, buses rattling and squealing, drills and picks demolishing and constructing who knows what. The din! Dusty umbrellas line the market lanes where granny shuffles past scraping her feet- not really meaning to be here. Frowning mothers drag their skipping, dancing daughters to lessons on how to do this, this which will no longer apply.

insistent announcements, overly loud but no one listening- another scarcely profitable sale. So many here do not belong to this place the trees landed blind like everyone else forlorn, twisted, stained, exhausted while their roots crack again the pavement.

Rob Schackne #8 - Insomnia

Insomnia

They walk at night
in this old cottage
above in the rafters
a ceiling of riches
below the floorboards
where it wasn’t buried
they whisper in the wall
it was taken from
some call them ghost
or possums strolling
the length of the house
north to south and back
ask if they’re friendly
the hurt feelings
all in a dream
what do they say
I listen to them chatter
of poison and regrets
it was a gold town

Sarah St Vincent Welch magnetic fridge poem in New Zealand vernacular with husband's mug shot a yoghurt smear and a baby photo

 

one of these days we'll be discovered

one of these days we will be discovered

 

little corner, too much information

then it will be as if we were sought

though that cannot be the case

 

some ones will come here to this place

which isn’t one at all

and ear to the soil of our saying

 

one of these days we’ll go through the wash

come out gospel clean

sleep like babies in there

 

it will be a small day

smug rounded for glory

some call triumph too

 

the day of vindication play

like Jesus on the water always was a bird

like sesamum Buddha

like Bouraq for a Houyhnhnm 

and we’ll be Struldbrugs then

 

it’ll be on POET’S day of course

sometime and soon

with a weekend lovely looming

 

cheese and chalk

a toffeyed nose

tricks of all along the way –

the cheering we’ll begin!

 

we’re building our pyramid

inside out, top down

bit of a leap and it’s a pyre too

 

the universe is closing now

time is almost over

but one of these days we’ll be discovered

we’re the team coming out on the pitch

 

everyone will join in

ring to the echo

 

we’ll find ourselves of course first

work out who to be

 

till then my humble hunch is

it’s safe for us in here