Perseus

This weeks poem is "Perseus", another short piece I composed roughly a month ago. The genesis of the poem is a news story from Turkey I found online about a woman killing and subsequently beheading a man that had been abusing her for some time. Despite the graphic nature of this story, it seems to me that this Turkish woman is extremely brave and the story immediately brought to mind  parrellels with the story of Perseus, which I am familiar with from the 1981 film directed by Desmond Davis. Enjoy...

 

Perseus

 

Those startled faces in the coffee house,

They only know the man at Halloween

Whose head is separate from his body.

 

Careless with his reflection,

And now at the butcher's back gate

A gray mongrel appraises

The dissembled corpse of Perseus.

 

Pitched in to the centre of the square:

A man’s head, pissing blood,

Pregnant like my belly.

Postcards

I made a promise to myself to add one poem each week to this blog. Here is the latest effort:

Postcards
 
I.
A moment exiled for exposure:
The wicker interior of an Italian church,
A moment exiled for exposure.
 
II.
I walked like a branch, because the sun
Had burnt my back and my shoulders,
I walked like a branch.

III.
You take yourself too seriously.
This folk stuff, fairy talk and fairy houses,
You take yourself too seriously.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. It shall be my aim and pleasure to post my poetry and hopefully many other interesting things here. I'll begin with this poem, "Crabbing", which was recently published by Miracle e-zine (website here: http://miracleezine.wix.com/miracle-e-zine#) in their sixth issue, though it was then called "Crab Fisherman" when it appeared there. Though it may really be an unremarkable poem, there is something charming about it.

 

Crabbing

He peers over the edge, measures out the line, then

lets drop his cloth bundle of bacon and trimmed fat,

and pulls them up, horned and furious,

two or three at a time, again and again,

their claws caught in his clever weave.

 

He carries them home for tea at seven,

twelve dancing crabs in a bucket of water.