Hey Andrew...I was going to reply to your post on Whittington but had nothing more to add. You got it, you get it...
Who amongst the young would know where rabbitoh came from? ( A club both my father and his father played for: Catholic, working class, government employed....)
Even durry (my good friend Kate Sieper has corrected my spelling) is the short forearm of Bull Durham. So the text becomes global again.
Cal
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Andrew Burke
Sent: Thursday, 16 February 2006 12:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: a poem almost
Ah, yes, Caleb, the shortened word ...
In an earliesh poem I have the word 'bottle-o', meaning a man who comes
around to collect the empties, mostly beer bottles for which they once
received a penny each from the brewery and gave a halfpenny to their
customers per bottle. Today's young people (anybody under about forty!)
reads it as a bottle shop or the man at the said bottle shop. Luckily it
doesn't deflect the meaning, but it certainly showed me how quickly language
changes (the famous slippage of theorists on a blatant scale).
Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Caleb Cluff" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 6:34 AM
Subject: Re: a poem almost
Hello Patrick...thank you for reading the poem. It requires work and more
thought, yes. Sorry, I should have provided some clarity. Yes, the milko is
the milkman. Some Australians have a habit of cutting the ends of nouns -
garbo=garbageman, barbie=barbeque, Salvo=Salvation Army member. It's a
strange linguistic economy...
A durrie is a cigarette. The Darebin is a creek and region near Melbourne,
once orchards and semi-rural, now inner city and much degraded, tho' efforts
are always made to revive it.
How does a snapshot work?
Caleb
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Patrick Mc Manus
Sent: Wednesday, 15 February 2006 8:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: a poem almost
Caleb thanks milko is a milkman? Durrie his cloth for wiping can??Darebin a
place/river not Durban
Liked the unfolding here -all time is borrowed seems (to me to be implied
does it need to be said?) looking forward to the next one -how about a
snapshotplease
Patrick
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Caleb Cluff
Sent: 14 February 2006 05:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: a poem almost
This is my first post... very unsure... is this the right way to go about
it? Posting I mean, tho' I'm not sure about the writing either sometimes...
Cutting the old man's hair
'Can I borrow some of your time, young fella?'
and I know I must go, jump the fence and go
to his land, to where
sit his low table and his chair.
Hands me a beer, and the shears are there. This slight ritual takes small
libation.
We begin our assignation.
Neat towel around the shoulders he's boxing clear
of our time, and on the Darebin again.
'Had my own chickens, ducks there too, and sold the eggs.
Played all day on the creek, no worries and when
I worked on the Council, the trucks, the fittest man, no fear.'
No fear.
'And Mum was tough - the milko ashed into the can. She knocked his durrie
from his hand
into the street...'
pausing briefly for race three
'and poured the milk out on the ground. The bugger never made a sound.'
Now silent as the clippers glide, the hairs on his neck briefly rise, in one
deep pleasure rolled inside.
Take the straightedge, cut these clean. The lines, like creeks white against
the tan, run long and flow inside the man.
Flicking the razor clean again, I drag my fingers on his skin. Somewhere's
my father, deep within.
His mother's in a nursing home...
All time is borrowed, I suppose.
I stroke the cut hair from his clothes.
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