judyanne
judyanne
Aug 27, 2012
This poem is part of the workshop:

Mindful Memorable Freeform: The Challenge

(Read More...)

tarnished dreaming (mindful, memorable freeform workshop)

bright red mortality
spews onto old-ochre dirt
as guilelessness pools
into the dreamtime drawing

black skin sweats tears
in the shade-less midday sun
while lean dusty limbs
are chiselled into the foetal position
in a paroxysm of agony and fear

the sugar sack lies open
its contents
innocuously white
mixing to a gentle pink
with the spreading tide
of crimson death

a station-owner’s gift
to the colours of the dreaming
arsenic’s metal-grey
effects its cause
.

About This Poem

Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back

Editing Stage: Editing - rough draft

About the Author

Region, Country: Western Australia, AUS

Favorite Poets: Favourite poets? So many

More from this author

Comments

China Blue

This is wonderfully descriptive. Your use of words is defined. It was so easy to visualize .
very profound writing

judyanne

thanks beau

back in the days when Australia was being settled by Europeans, it is a known fact that some station owners put arsenic in the tea and sugar that they gave to the aborigine who lived on their land…

and the dreaming i am speaking of is the aboriginal dreamtime

does the poem and the ending make more sense now?
I really appreciate your take on this write –

love judy
xxx

S

a bit of alliteration and a boat load of metaphor and easily understood metaphor at that. Hmmm... maybe say gradually or slowly mixing in line 13..................stan

weirdelf

rather than experience. Tell me if I'm wrong.

In that first stanza the use of the word 'vomit', why?

I don't know your experience of the outback, I have lived there, but this poem, though strong, feels like writing about what you don't know.

It's good, of course, you are good, but it bothers me in a way that would be offensive to describe.

Strong, perhaps memorable to others.

judyanne

jess I don’t really know what you are saying re knowledge and experience

if you mean I have seen the way an aborigine would look lying in the outback, 150 years ago, dying from acute arsenic poisoning (or anyone anywhere for that matter) then no – it is not experience.

the use of ‘vomit’ in the first stanza was to clarify it as that, and because I feel there is a violence in the word … on reading your comment, are you saying I make that clear with just the word ‘spews’? Anyway, I've removed it as i think i have made the more important point of the line more clear with the word change of 'guileless' to 'guilelessness'

That ‘way that would be offensive to describe? Do you mean offensive to me, or to all in general? lol – jess don’t stand on your hands if just for me, this is shark pool isn’t it?

love judy
xxx

weirdelf

as a white person writing, despite all your compassion, you don't know what you are talking about, and so I feel it doesn't work for this workshop.

judyanne

I’m not sure that that is a fair comment

it prejudices my right to write about the white/black problem because I am white

so can you tell me why you didn’t read the poem as perhaps the persona being a white person with a little knowledge of the aborigine dreamtime (white as that knowledge may be) coming across this scene?

can you see where you think the write went wrong there?

thanks jess
love judy
xxx

weirdelf

but I have seen Aboriginal "magic", "spirituality" work. It is real. I would never fuck with it. I worked on the movie "We of the Never Never" and whenever the white crew screwed with Aboriginal spirituality bad things happened. I am a complete atheist, but also believe in the power of the mind.

So when I crit your poem I do it from a belief that you have not seen terrible things happen when ghost gums were cut down to make way for a camera.