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    MY POETRY COLLECTION

    (not in alphabetical order) Closely followed by some poems of my own

  • Michie, James. "The Poems of Catullus"
  • Ondaatje, Michael. "The Cinammon Peeler"
  • Thomas, Dylan. "Under Milk Wood"
  • Keats, John. "Lyric Poems"
  • Blake, William. "Songs of Innocence and Experience"
  • Blake, William. "Selected Poems"
  • Lawrence, D H. "The Works of DH Lawrence"
  • Plath, Sylvia. "Ariel"
  • Penguin Poets: John Donne
  • Penguin Poets: Rupert Brooke
  • Hyde, Robin. "The Book of Nadath"
  • Atwood, Margaret. "Poems 1965-1975"
  • Atwood, Margaret. "Poems 1975-1986"
  • Angelou, Maya. "I Shall Not Be Moved"
  • Thomas, Edward. "Selected Poems"
  • Shakespeare, William. "Complete Sonnets"
  • Chaucer, Geoffrey. "Troilus and Criseyde"
  • Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales"
  • Hopkins, G M. "Collected Poems"
  • Parker, Dorothy. "The Best of Dorothy Parker"
  • Neruda, Pablo. "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair"
  • Yeats, W B. "Selected Poems"


ANTHOLOGIES:

  • Voiceprint: An Anthology of Oral and Related Poetry from the Caribbean.
  • Classic Haiku: A Master's Selection
  • Poetry 1900-1965 (ed George MacBeth)
  • The Wordsworth Book of Love Poetry
  • The Calling of Kindred: Poems from the English-Speaking World
  • The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse


MY POETRY:

Here's a selection of some of my poems.

Snow

by dawn the sky
had wholly consumed itself
only a cold aureole
of sun remained

we trekked through quantities
impossible to measure
knowing each soft footstep
would be erased

then on the third day
Clancy discovered
something profoundly ugly
in the snow

Bannock decided
it was dead,prepared
his instruments
and pinned back the wings

on the sixth day
waiting for moonrise,
I missed Clancy and Bannock
slipping away

Morris and I lost them -
the snow was falling
so on the seventh day
we turned west, into the wind

eventually I noticed
that it wasn't Morris humming
and it was getting dark too early.
I began to run.

AM 1997. Published: Otago University Literary Review (Dunedin NZ)1997.


Yet Another Cat Poem

if some bagpipes suddenly
sprouted teeth and decided
to victimise the curtains,
you'd have a brother.
afterwards you'd both plan
armageddon for sparrows

I think you live
for plotting accidents,
like unwittingly unzipping
the pad of my index finger.
in future I'll refrain
from patting your stomach

admittedly you're as daft
as that fat Scottish instrument,
but I snicker behind your back
remembering your last plaything.
no-one else I know
toys so gently with vertebrae.

AM 1997. Published: Glottis (Dunedin NZ)1998.


Birds

coughing quietly
the wind stops, raises a hand
and slaps a sparrow

to illustrate you
my pen curves
fragile as a wing

a small piece of sky
falls among the crumbs
is quickly eaten

AM 1997. Published: Glottis (Dunedin NZ)1998.


Park St Nocturne the curtains I drew
over night's canvas, open
like a dark, wet wound

over the harbour, a dark sky hovers
listening with the finely-tuned
instrument of a neurotic
to the sea's heart-murmur
the pulse-lap of the tides

in sleep I tread the cusp
of memory's hinterland
awake with your heart's template
pressed into my palm

AM 1997. Published: Glottis (Dunedin NZ)1998.


Ironing

hot steel rolls over
the shoulder-curve
each fold lies
against itself

these white circles
caged your pulse
these snow-cave panels
housed your heart

here's where you reached
reclined, embraced, dozed
scored into the strata
of surplus seams

the iron was too cool, I think -
your shirt is still a cipher of
topography in low relief
I think I lost you in the folds

I was never
any good with maps

AM 1997. Published: Takahe 32 (Christchurch NZ) 1997.


Literate Bodies

Ah, how very Kristeva. I am writing on your body
With my hands - tap tapping a singular
Morse code into the curved places behind your knees.
Now I thump your arm fondly; hearty syllabics,
Or kiss in soft iambics round the curve of your throat.
Roll over, I'll inscribe a warm, lazy scrawl
Along the long, many-jointed sentence of your spine.
Toes twitch in relfex - sharp punctuation!
Bored with the script? wait! I have other fonts -
So much for theory. You were never a formalist,
Shrugging off my verbs, impatient with metaphor.
What have we left? Silences? the terse annotation
Of fingerpads on the tensile page of my cheek? Once more
We are blurbs, composed. Any chance of a footnote?

AM 1998. An assigned poem for ENGL 319.


Untitled

The floppy-haired blonde boy
(For whom sex is a wild-haired maestro
Conducting a flawed symphony to the stars)

The girl who, cupping herself
Round a guitar,
Skins each note and holds it up raw

The drunk youth
Who speakes in the tongue of burning flags
Whose every noun forms a fist

The child whose small body flexes
Like a rope swing,
Threads between us

They are all here by the fire.
Soon they will rouse themselves and walk
To that silver gap below the dawn.

AM 1999.


Sonova

Night in Sonova is broken by cacti
Flaring inexplicably in the dark
Perhaps some tourist accidentally spilt tequila
And then got careless with a spark

By day, downtown Hermosillo
Is clogged with vendors selling tiny
Burritto pancakes; unremarkable except
for the face of Christ - if you look closely

But by night Sonova empties
And along warm dusty streets
Walks a child like a cactus flower -
Beautiful, frail, complete.

AM 1997. Assignment.