Skip to main content

Maybe poetry IS dead:Number three in a series

Here we go again, another quick one, this time from November 1998. This poem is a little heavy handed in the symbolism department, but I like it nonetheless. It rather depresses me that I play the 'homoerotic' card to shock (give that I don't find it all that shocking); but I figured that religious iconography, homoerotism and prostitution all add up to something offensive to someone out there. Forgive me, I was young...


Last night

i met Jesus

no time ago.

walking the wall

“Jesus!” i cried.


(inside) mine eyes

fell down

trouser level (the glory!)

Christ stood still

watching my every move.

Comments

Virginia said…
Kris,
How precious your children are. It looks like you are truly are enjoying while they are so young. The time will fly by and you will have so many memories to cherish.
I taught with a young man from Tazmania two years ago. I am curious if you know him. Email me.
I wonder how you assessed your poetry when you were "young." Is there a critique to compare?
Julie said…
Don't apologise in advance! No need to outline your themes. Rest assured, if it is shite we will tell you.
Kris McCracken said…
Virginia, I have sent you an e-mail...

Diva, I'm not sure. I know that all of the one's that I have posted to date are ones that I considered 'playful' and not 'serious'. I had a few published in small literary journals around that time, but I look at those ones now and cringe! They seem dreadful to the eye now, whereas then I thought them okay. I was always into prose and short story writing then though. Some of that I think stands up okay today.

Julie, I should hope so!
Kitty said…
love the b/w, especially.
wow. So striking.

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.