Tag: Gabriel Smy

Goodbye, few things

Top of the list is cupcakes. Does anyone
actually eat this sickly over-iced,
pseudo kitsch, toy food except perhaps
a few girly women who think having
a large shoe collection makes them maverick.

Big black pick up trucks as driven by men
whose default fabric is camouflage. These
swollen testosterone substitutes are
the automotive equivalent
of a liquorice flavoured ribbed condom.

PVC banners, those dingy oblongs
of bad computer graphics tied onto
every suburban pub, roundabout, school.
Usually advertising a singles nite
or fundraising fayre long since past, or worse
still, a carvery. Pop up anything.

The vaguely west coast stubbly check shirted
bloke who features in every phone, computer
and small car ad. You know the one
with scruffy hair and a retro t-shirt
probably designs apps that no one asked for
and fewer people need.

From The Pitiable Impossibility of Debt in the Mind of Someone Shopping, a blog post by the teddy bear Alan Measles. ‘a’ omitted from line 5, first half of the ‘swollen’ line removed and the remainder merged with the following line. Also, ‘that’ changed to ‘who’ and ‘less’ to ‘fewer’ in the last stanza. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

The moderate Finnish sauna


You should not slap
your neighbours without asking
their permission first.

The sauna is dear to me, almost sacred.
My father was born in one,
and his dying wish was to bathe 
in a sauna one last time.

Summer is the best time to go.
Strike a match, hear
the crackling of dry birch wood
as it is engulfed by the greedy flames,
then sit down on the steps
to ponder the ways of the world
and wait for the sauna to warm up.

Your body sighs with relief when the first
ladleful of water hits the sizzling stove.
The experience is topped off with a dive
into a pure, clear lake.
What else does a human being need?

Both the senryu and main poem are from a piece about saunas by Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner in charge of the Eurozone crisis. Omitted: ‘to the sauna’ (line 5) and ‘sauna’ (lines 9 & 14). Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales

José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales,
in a few short weeks it will be spring. The snows
of winter will flee away, the ice will vanish,
and the air will become soft and balmy. In short,
José Manuel Miguel Xavier Gonzales,
the annual miracle of the years will
awaken and come to pass, but you won’t be here.
The rivulet will run its purring course to the sea,
timid desert flowers will put forth their tender
shoots, the glorious valleys of this imperial
domain will blossom as the rose. Still, you won’t be
here to see.

From every tree top some wild woods
songster will carol his mating song, butterflies
will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum
happy as it pursues its accustomed vocation,
the gentle breeze will tease the tassels of the wild
grasses, and all nature, José Manuel Miguel
Xavier Gonzales, will be glad but you. You
won’t be here to enjoy it because I command
the sheriff to lead you out to some remote spot,
swing you by the neck from a nodding bough of some
sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead.

And then, José Manuel Miguel Xavier
Gonzales, I further command that such officer,
retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that vultures
may descend upon your filthy body until
nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-
blooded, copper-colored, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting,
chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering son of a bitch.

The sentence pronounced on a murderer by a federal trial judge in New Mexico, 1881.

You can say I am a hater

You can say I am a hater
but I would argue I’m a lover
I’m a lover of traditional families
and of the right of children
to have a father and a mother

I believe the earth gets warmer
and I also believe the earth gets cooler

is anyone saying same-sex couples
can’t love each other? I love
my children, I love my friends, my brother
heck, I even love my mother
-in-law

Quotes as they appear in Rick Santorum Quotes As New Yorker Cartoons posted by Jack Shepherd.

Shoreham harbour

In the harbour a single Guillemot
and two Purple Sandpipers roosting
with Turnstones on the inner wooden breakwater
and Peregrine sitting in the nest box
on the Power Station chimney.

Widewater; I searched the entire length
of the beach from the flats to the sailing club
without finding the Snow Buntings once again.

On the beach a single Rock Pipit
and twenty-four Sanderling, off shore little other 
than a few regular gulls.

From a Recent Sightings post, Sussex Ornithological Society, 12 Dec 2011.

The Passenger and the Privy

I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station
and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit.
I am therefor went to privy.

Just I doing the nuisance that guard
making whistle blow for train to go off
and I am running with LOTAH in one hand
and DHOTI in the next

when I am fall over and expose all shocking
to man and female women on platform.
I am got leaved Ahmedpur station.

This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung
that dam guard not wait train minutes for him.
I am therefor pray your honour to make big fine
on that guard for public sake.

Otherwise I am making big report to papers.

A letter of complaint sent in 1909 to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in West Bengal, via Letters of Note.

The Complaining Lunch Queue Riposte

However the children complain
that they have to wait
they are hungry
they have less choices
they should even not have to wait
because they have their own lunch—
maybe this is all done deliberately
maybe temporarily
in order to teach them patience.

Why not?
They are not starving to death.
Should everything be easy?
Life is not like that.

Personally I trust the school.

From a Google groups message written by a parent at my child’s primary school.

Chickens on bikes

Things like boiling water, lizard watching,
mosquito nets, thorns in my shoes, wearing
skirts and t-shirts all the time, waking at
five AM, seat feeling sweaty, hearing
spoken Swahili, admiring cornrows,
dirt tracks and colourful markets and snacks
that all seemed so new when I first arrived,
now just feel normal. Glass pop bottles, old
Tsh notes, mud brick houses, chickens on bikes,
Karibu, men at bus stations, heat, dust,
colourful buses and dala-dala
and colourful clothes, rice and beans, insect
repellant, hot showers heated by the sun,
watering the garden morning and night,
African singing, mangos and pawpaw,
taking antimalarials, buying
green vegetables for the girls low in 
iron, frogs, owls, feeding chickens … I got 
that challenged feeling again today,
of having practical skills to offer.

For those of you 
expecting a blog
on South Africa, 
well, what can I say?
They did show G.I. Jane 
twice in four days.

Sarah’s post from Tanzania, then her husband’s article from Johannesburg.