Andrew:
We enjoyed it too
at the Beach Tavern Mullaloo.
Helen Hagemann
>From: Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: STIMULUS: POETRY AND FEAR
>Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 08:57:35 +0800
>
>I was about to declare myself out of this stimulus, when I remembered a
>most unnerving poem I wrote some years ago about the worst fear of all:
>speechlessness. My youngest son had been a gift - ten years after his
>brother. He was prem, and had problems, although you wouldn't know it now
>(he's 21 and a professional cricketer). As he lay in his cot, snoozing
>through a rainy night in the hills around Perth, I woke from a goddamn
>awful nightmare:
>
>_Nightmare_
>
>
>Time takes different corners
>in the dark
>
>I was holding my baby son
>he was smiling and I
>hugged him something fell
>out of his mouth I picked it
>off his bib it was his tongue
>Fear froze me I lost my tongue
>grunted in fear snorted holding it
>my head thrashing his face
>smiling his tongueless mouth open
>as a cave
>
>His tongue had come out
>bloodless and warm like a fish
>from the river-I stood
>tongue in one hand
>songless baby in the other
>
>I wanted to wrap the tongue in a towel
>but I couldn't move speechless I couldn't
>cry out he should have cried out
>his mother would have come if he had cried out
>He was smiling at me thrashing my head
>fitfully holding his tongue
>
>I wake and sweat
>I flick my tongue and hear
> frogs in
> the first autumn rain
>
>
>
>Andrew
>
>PS: When I read that poem in public, older people shudder, but little kids
>laugh and fall about. I laugh with them, and have fun, but all the time it
>shakes me up.
>
>AB
>
>----------------------------------------
>Andrew Burke Copywriting
>[log in to unmask] Creative Writing
>http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/ Editing
>----------------------------------------
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