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POETRYETC  November 2009

POETRYETC November 2009

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Subject:

Re: snaps: breakfasts

From:

Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc: poetry and poetics

Date:

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:14:11 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Max this is more like an anthology than a snap !!!
Cheers P

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 10 November 2009 23:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snaps: breakfasts

Having recently concocted a verse snap called 'Immortality' about my
breakfast 
banana, I have now made it no.12, last in a series of breakfast snaps, thus:

Breakfast

1. Conversation at Breakfast

while tongue-tied from sleep,
need not be attempted, whether 
with strangers, colleagues or friends.

Family will excuse taciturnity,
having learned to distinguish it 
from later-hour sullenness.

Over mother's cooked breakfast,
a son at fourteen or so must 
resist the paterfamilias.
 
The morning paper offers grounds: 
those dumb politicians!
defend them, father, at your peril.

The lad's sarcasm sours breakfast,
invites expulsion. Eat alone, son,
abuse the morning paper only.

2. Breakfast in Bed 

First Mother's Day, then Father's Day,
gradual improvements on the tray,
till their thanks become sincere.

Then with partners, spouses, mornings 
postcoital, punctuated 
by reconstituting petting.

Later more like substituting,
if tea and toast and marmalade
can be erotic. For planning outings.

3. Muesli (1963) 

Fresh from New Zealand, where Weetbix was 
the breakfast for rugby players, 

I warmed to Scotland. A penny more, 
the milkman would leave not just milk, 

but full cream Jersey milk. Pour it 
sparingly on the muesli - that too 

is new - so dry I thought it had 
to soak overnight - now I felt

so northern, European, Swiss!

4. Porridge in Former Times

Poor students in Scotland, when 
their landlady's oatmeal ran out, 
walked home to the family smallholding,

shouldered their refilled meal-bags,
trudged stooping back to their studies,
seriously worth their oats. 

5. A Week in Ireland (1987)

From B&B to B&B six times, 
six Irish breakfasts: fried eggs and bacon.

Stagger to the car ferry, sated 
with landscape, soft voices, eggs, bacon.

6. The End of Milk

Full cream milk went out. 
Now to be in line with the fit ones, 
one must fill the fridge only with 
reduced fat, lite,
skinny, trim, low-cal - 
scarcely milk but white. 

7. Beach Breakfast

Complacencies of the peignoir - 
for those who have peignoirs.

Better bare-chested, bare-legged, 
with early orange juice and toast,
on a sundeck facing east

at some out-of-the-way Kiwi
or Aussie beach with a name like 
Omokoroa, Merimubula,
Kaikoura or Indented Head.

Up comes the sun to dazzle 
and be worshipped, 
the tide's up to suit whatever  
watersport fancy chooses.
 
Breakfast is downed on foot, 
heading for the sacred strand.

8. Corporate Breakfast

Sullen reluctant conscripts - 
nevertheless, name-tagged all, 
we file past the bains-maries,

sit with strangers, force food in, 
remarks out, hearken to the
'Inspirational Guest',

speak out as required about 
oneself, and slink off, 
networked out.


9. Hotel Breakfast in Tel Aviv 
[from M.Gawenda, 'Rocky and Gawenda', p.270] 

Pickled herring, schmaltz herring, 
olives, pickled turnips, pickled 
cucumbers, boiled eggs, 
hummus and tahina.

10. Wedding Breakfasts 

occur at any time of the day. 
Go through the ceremony fasting,
as if starving is part of the protocol; 
straight after that, the feasting.   
The licence, and then the license. 

11. Breakfast in the Air

Ten long hours over the dark Pacific - 
it comes as a relief, an airline breakfast,
though packaged, stored, now perched
near your chin on a narrow tray.

Land then at Auckland, queue for the flight
to take you home to Melbourne,
settle into your cramped corner,
and get brought - an airline breakfast.  

12. Immortality 

Peeling my breakfast banana, 
dicing it, sprinkling muesli on it,
I think of old Bernard Levin, 

Times columnist, insisting how  
those fibres between peel and banana   
he always removed, they were poisonous.

So celebrated in his time, 
Levin the columnist, how gone now!  
oblivion! I bring him back,

each morning, discarding those strips,
naming to myself his name, 
bestowing on it continued life!

Reader, are you with me? I feel myself 
quietly fading. Kindly commit me 
so to memory - Max is my name.

You could send me your name to say 
over quietly at breakfast,
reciprocal immortality.



       Doncaster, Victoria
       Wednesday 11 November 2009
       Max Richards 




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