Mimi on the Beach -- Jane Siberry

Guest poem submitted by J. Goard:

(Poem #1937) Mimi on the Beach I scan the horizon for you, Mimi, I scan for the both of us... I scan the horizon for you, Mimi, I stand and scan on the strand of sand, Stand and scan on the strand of sand... But first I'm sitting over here. See that gaggle of guys and girls? A typical day at the beach, Well, typical 'til I make my speech. There is a girl out on the sea, Floating on a pink surfboard, With a picnic lunch and parasol, Sitting there like a typical girl. Well, this is not a locker room, And that's a surfboard, not a yacht; The arrangement's not... quite... there... One girl laughs at skinny guys; someone else points out a queer. They're all jocks, both guys and girls: Press a button, take your cue. And see the girl with perfect teeth? She picks up lonely guys in bars, Then takes off when they've bought her drinks. "Don't you have money?" I ask - "Of course I do!" This is not a locker room, here, And that's a surfboard, not a yacht; The arrangement's not... quite... there... But the day was faultless in beauty, Pitched on tropical scenery Stretched from white sand up to the open sky Down to the shining sea again and then back to me... And Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach... Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach Mimi and me... I'm still sitting over here. One guy just got up and brayed. They wag their words - they're all in heat - I can ignore it; just don't steam up the view. Mimi's still out on the sea, Floating on a pink surfboard; She's checking out her arms and legs In case her casing's getting burnt. This is not a locker room, here, And that's a surfboard, not a yacht; The arrangement's not... quite... quite... there... But the day was faultless in beauty, Pitched on tropical scenery Stretched from white sand up to the open sky Down to the shining sea again and then back to me... And Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach... Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach Mimi and me... You don't know me but I've been watching you all day, And I've come to the edge of the water now to have my say. The picnic lunch is off. Throw your parasol away. Put your belly to the board, Mimi, and paddle out to sea, Then turn the board around, Mimi, until you're facing me, Then you wait for the waves to start building, For the valleys to deepen And the mountains to increase in height, And when the right time comes, Mimi, You grab the edges of the board with your hands, Lift yourself up and stand there And see as far as you can see... Stand up, Mimi. Stand up! I scan the horizon for you, Mimi, I scan for the both of us... I scan the horizon for you, Mimi, I stand and scan on the strand of sand, Stand and scan on the strand of sand... The great leveller is coming, And he's not going to stop to take your pulse, And he's not going to ask you why you're the way you are, And I think that's the worst part: You never get a chance to explain yourself. And he's going to take those mountains And shove them into the valleys Until there's nothing left except a vast expanse... And you'll float there, Mimi, On the flat Sargasso Sea of your soul... And if they pull you away from your bleaching pink surfboard And stretch you across the wind, You'll make no sound, Wet leaves on a dry map, Nothing, Nobody, The great leveller, or the great escape? But the day was faultless in beauty, Pitched on tropical scenery Stretched from white sand up to the open sky Down to the shining sea again and then back to me... And Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach... Mimi on the beach Mimi on the beach Mimi and me... There's a girl out on the sea, Floating on a pink surfboard. A parasol floats nearby. The arrangement's not... quite... quite... there. -- Jane Siberry

Jane Siberry (now, apparently, named "Issa") is probably the most
bizarre lyricist I've ever encountered, spinning dramatic monologues
that would seem too profoundly insane to be believable if she didn't
sell them so well with off-kilter rhythms and her quirky voice.  "Mimi
on the Beach" was her big indie hit from the early nineties, but I never
really registered its lyrics until recently.  I love this portrait of a
bitter wallflower -- or is it a homicidal stalker? -- fixated on the
singular importance of "Mimi and me", or, if you will, "me, me, and me".
"The great leveller is coming", indeed, but is it the inevitability of
death or aging, or the flatness of a "real world" outside of surfing, or
"me coming to kill you"?  (There is a sequel from a later album called
"Mimi Speaks", but I dislike its overly blunt attempt at resolution.)
However you hear it, it's a truly weird, cool song close to the heart of
"new wave".

J.

Untitled -- Michael Leunig

Guest poem sent in by Prachi Gupta

(Poem #1936) Untitled When the heart Is cut or cracked or broken Do not clutch it Let the wound lie open Let the wind From the good old sea blow in To bathe the wound with salt Let a stray dog lick it Let a bird lean in the hole and sing A simple song like a tiny bell And let it ring Let it go. Let it out. Let it all unravel. Let it free and it can be A path on which to travel. -- Michael Leunig

This is a poem without a title, by the Australian writer, poet, cartoonist,
philosopher, Michael Leunig. I first discovered Leunig about 10 years ago
when a cousin gifted me one of his books, I have followed his work ever
since and have always found it endearing and enchanting. Like this poem
here, he talks of simple things around us, within us and talks of them in an
amazingly simple and human way; and reading his work mostly opens a tiny
window somewhere in the heart.

I hope everyone enjoys this!

Prachi

[Links]

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Leunig

Leunig's official site:
  http://www.leunig.com.au/

The Armful -- Robert Frost

Guest poem sent in by Pavithra Sankaran

Something Genevieve Aquino said about packing and putting things away [1]
reminded me of this quiet gem by Robert Frost:

(Poem #1935) The Armful For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns Extremes too hard to comprehend at once, Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load. -- Robert Frost

A graceful, calm poem about clumsy, inadequate but all too human attempts
at gathering and keeping everything that matters. As I grow older and watch
others a generation older than me fade into their sunset years, I realise
unhappily that neither the human mind nor heart really have all the space
we imagine (and hope) they do. But if there is indeed a way of stacking
memory and other love-tinsel in "better load", would that I learn it one
day!

Pavithra Sankaran

[1] see the comments to poem #1935:
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minstrels/message/2018

Against Entropy -- John M Ford

Guest poem sent in by Zeynep Dilli

(Poem #1934) Against Entropy The worm drives helically through the wood And does not know the dust left in the bore Once made the table integral and good; And suddenly the crystal hits the floor. Electrons find their paths in subtle ways, A massless eddy in a trail of smoke; The names of lovers, light of other days Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke. The universe winds down. That's how it's made. But memory is everything to lose; Although some of the colors have to fade, Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose. Regret, by definition, comes too late; Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate. -- John M Ford

As sad it is to become aware of the main mass of the body of someone's work
after his death, that pattern is repeated again and again, and here's
another such case.  John Mike Ford, whom I knew mostly through his comments
on the weblog _Making Light_ and two other of his poems, "Troy: The Movie"
and "110 Stories", passed away last night---the morning of September 25th.
Those who had read more of him made the rest of us realize what we missed.
Much more can be found starting at this weblog entry:
   http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html

As for this particular poem, two things first caught my eye: The
English-sonnet rhyming scheme, and the last line taken together with the
title.  "Against Entropy: Say what you mean.  Bear witness.  Iterate."  In
the era when mass-scale language manipulation is an art form (even in the
way Orwell had foreseen), that reduction of Ford's call has its own urgency.

But the poem's point doesn't need to be taken at the level of politics to be
taken seriously; it's something one needs to remember in day-to-day life.
We'll forget things, and not only things we want to forget.  Things will
change.  I can't say it better than the third quartuplet of the sonnet, so I
won't try; but for things we really, truly care about and we really, truly
would like to keep in heart or mind or in physical reality, we should be
insistent about keeping it---write, tell, note, make it clear.  On a very
personal level, maybe the best argument for keeping a journal that I've
seen.

The language of the poem is driving, and on a meta-level, demonstrates its
own point as clearly and starkly as possible.  As the lines progress,
there's a shift from even the simplest of metaphors and illustrative
examples to outright "Say[ing] what [it] mean[s]." On that note, I've
babbled on too much already.

-- Zeynep Dilli

[Links]

Wikipedia entry:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Ford

Where Lesbians Come From -- Jan Sellers

Guest poem sent in by Aseem

(Poem #1933) Where Lesbians Come From It is true that lesbians do not have families; we have pretend family relationships. We do not have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters; our sons and daughters do not count at all, having no families within which to rear them. And our lovers - there's nothing in that but something mocking truth; for you know it's true that lesbians do not have families, like you... We emerge, instead, complete from some dark shell, beds and beds of us (like oysters, what else would I mean?) sea-born on stormy nights with the wind in a certain quarter. We rise and wiggle, all slippery and secret, curling and stretching and glad to be alive, untangling our hair from the wind and salt and seaweed. We steal clothes from washing lines, and once it's daylight, almost pass for human. Glowing into warmth in the sun or a hard north wind we lick the salt from our lips, for now. And smile. We live for a while, in the light, despite your brutal laws and your wish that we were not here; we return to our beds by moonlight to nurture and foster the sweet salt shells that give birth to our lesbian futures. And there we plot, in our dark sea beds, the seduction of your daughters. -- Jan Sellers

A marvellous poem. The mocking tone is done just right - funny enough to
make you laugh at the absurdity of it, indignant enough to make you realise
that it's not perhaps quite that absurd. The truth pushed just far enough to
make it satire. The poem works because underlying its ridiculous narration
is a deep sense of alienation, of feeling unwanted and other in a world
where choosing to live out your sexual preferences makes you sub-human. Plus
there's the deeply erotic oyster / salt imagery, of course.

I know practically nothing about Jan Sellers. The Virago New Poets (Virago
Press, 1993, edited by Melanie Silgardo and Janet Book) from which this poem
is taken describes her as a "part-time adult education worker, full-time
lesbian and intermittent performance poet".

Aseem