Valence

This is a 12-part poem that I am putting up section by section over the next 12 days.

Valence
1

all day long the gods have been screaming
their prevalent song of war and pre-emptive strike
war leaves you gobsmacked words slaughtered in the throat

Elephant cow

When I wrote this poem, I was thinking about the family of elephants - and this family is made up of the matriarch, aunties and a child. I visited South Africa in 2006 and saw this group of elephants in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve. The elephants have been here far longer than we have been and I expect they'll be here long after us - and having an elephantine memory - well you can see where this is headed. Mahadevi means the great goddess and in India she is very much alive.

Cellist Jami Sieber has composed some beautiful electric cello pieces which she plays in the presence of Thai elephants (I don't know if Thai elephants are any different from Indian elephants.) You can see her video at http://vimeo.com/channels/jamisieber#10832421

what Queenie says about Mahadevi

Mahadevi elephant mother smelt
another being in the world
she said to her friends
it’s time for us to walk the world
and so they set off with Mahadevi
in the lead they walked across
the African veld

they walked
across the seas to the hot lands
they spread out all across
the tundras in the north
crossed land bridges and
waterways an isthmus or two
snow capped mountains
some of the time they carried
thick fur on their backs which they
shed in the desert lands
eons went by as they walked
seven times around die Welt

and one day Mahadevi said
it’s here where we started
now I know the common smell
those small four-limbed creatures
whom we’ve passed in the latest
circumabulation the hairless ones
there is something about them
that worries me

and as she said this
a group of these small wiry creatures
came over the hill and stared
they formed a circle around
the calves protecting them and sent
out a low call to others that rumbled
seven times around the world

earth dragon

This is a NASA image.

I've been looking at images of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano and this image came up after I'd written the poem, it seemed to find me!! I might be being melodramatic, but why be a poet if you can't do that occasionally?

thin skin of the dragon

the thin skin of the dragon erupts
in pustules sending out plumes
feathers of air that trail the skies

the thin skin of the dragon rises
this sleeping giant moans
rolls over spilling earth’s blood

the thin skin of the dragon paints
the air green its breath as hot
as stinking sulphurous ash

the thin skin of the dragon sleeps
no more she keeps watch
at this wake for earth’s death

Tongues

A week after I took this photo in Chennai last year, I was running aerials workshops for actors. It was the day before my birthday when the three classes had come to an end. We went to the restaurant outside which is this small altar. In the time between arriving at the restaurant and lunch, a birthday cake had been organised and materialised on the table. It was luscious and we all licked our lips. After a fabulous four months, I left India the following week.

In February berni janssen ran a wonderful series of talks and performances and brainstorms about tongues. It was called the Tongue-atorium. Poets, musicians, artists of all kinds came together. Everyone brought along a contribution, left a poem, an image, a sound - or several. Musician and composer, Ros Bandt and I were on the same day and it was a great remeeting since we hadn't seen one another for more than a decade. This poem was one of my contributions to the day.

what she says about tongues

these words are worn
utterable like the tongues of poems
there are no confessions
we make our own quilt of guilt
paranoia is hermetic
sealed as only a mind can be
unutterable like the tongues of poets

Published in Melbourne PEN Newsletter, April 2010

More on cyclones

Litoria infrafrenata, the green tree frog you can hear on the recording.


Ex-tropical cyclone Paul is currently working its way out and bringing bucketing rain to Far North Queensland following on the heels of Cyclone Ului. Tonight the roar of rain was mixed with the screams of green tree frogs. I couldn't tell if they were screams of delight or of terror!

To listen to the sound of green tree frogs and cyclones, as well as poems about Category 5 Cyclone Larry (20 March 2006) you can listen to the podcast of Poetica based on my collection, Earth's Breath (2009).

cows and myths about cows

The cow has many stories about her. The following picks up on some of these, but also incorporates stories about other animals including snakes and a tortoise. The stories in this poem come from India, Australia, Mesopotamia and greece. The photo is of a wooden tribal altar that I saw in Rajasthan.

what the mythmakers say

Queenie was afflicted with post-prandial drowsiness her four
stomachs all churning together Queenie is no fool she’s been
around for a while since the beginning of time who else spilled
the milky star road? who else set the galaxies spinning?
it’s Queenie who taught us how to make butter and ghee
the churn her very own invention take one stomach fill with milk
stir with a wooden stick until the cream separates move
to stomach number two turn churn spin and stir watch it clump
and cluster look a little longer until the buttermilk seeps out
in the third stomach knead and knuckle make it smooth and firm
the fourth stomach will heat the butter and turn it to ghee

in another time a later time when gods and demons had
forgotten how to be immortal they joined forces to create
a nectar of immortality these boys took their time they carried in
Mount Mandara turned it upside down placing it upon the back
of the tortoise demons one side gods the other each held the
world snake and twirled the mountain top for a thousand years
back forwards back forwards again and again and again
even then the best they could manage was deadly poison

in the great south land the snake laps up the cow’s spilt milk
this one swallows all the girls and women swallows the bleeding
girls the pregnant women swallows them and makes them dance
their insides begin to churn no one can hold anything down they
vomit they bleed and they are swallowed yet again by the snake
who suffers from indigestion the girls and women beat their fists
against the stomach walls when the next full moon comes round
the world snake regurgitates the tribe of women

in a garden between two great rivers a woman encounters
a snake she is impressed by the colour of its scales green
she prods it with a stick and the snake turns blue in rage
the snake is wily knows better than to broadcast its thoughts
pulling its head in the snake offers her fruit from the tree
this woman is nothing but naïve she takes it bites it with her
giant teeth scraping them along its flesh she’s not impressed
with the sour fruit tosses it over her shoulder and walks away

women tossing apples cause strife they distract contestants
in races incite discord among the in-crowd separate
the sheep from the goats and in innocent looking ways
begin wars beware women bearing ripe fruit

dugong

If anyone has a dugong photo to share here that would be great. They are beautiful undersea cows who graze on seagrass. In Australian waters they are under threat - especially from developments like unnecessary marinas - plans for which are forever cropping up along the coast.

what Queenie says about the philosophy cow (1)

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-philosphicus.

what is a cow?
an animal
a symbol
a statue
a vocalic
a smooth surface with all the hair going the same way?

an economy
a religion
a politics
a mysticism
an experiment: erste die Kuh, dann Du?

a love object
a lesbian motif
a good meal
a mother
a milkmaid’s best and only friend?

a danger
a lover
a droning sound
a-um
an ocean of milk for all?

a cloud
a constellation
a herd of stars
a word
a voice heard?


is the cow at the limits of my thinking?
what sort of cow am I seeking?
the native cow?
the underwater cow?
the marine cow?
the unseen cow?
the sea-grass eating dugong?
is the dugong a cow because of its shape and size?
or because it is a herbivore?
what happens to dugong dung?


what of intersecting worlds?
the moment when I see the centipede
pulling its hundred legs
over the rim of the wall above my line of sight
ein Blick of another world

the moment when I hear
unspoken histories
genocides
eliminations of the unwanted
every rewriting of history continues that erasure



Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1974. Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. Translated by D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuiness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.