Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three November-December 2024
Aotearoa Poets and Writers Special Edition
Parnell rose garden, poems by Arthur Amon.
Parnell rose garden
all in their neat patches
like rival gangs
bristling with organised intent
all bite
the bark lies crushed
in immaculate undergirding –
no weed stains that sterile bed,
so civilised and virginal
it’s a floral zoo;
these lame animals need no cages
they mutter against the breeze
rage in their genteel ghetto
so it is that he approaches:
inserts his nose into Dame Cath Tizard
or the Princess of Wales
and the sudden jerk from plaisir to jouissance
an epiphany of danger,
ecstatic rant against order
right there in that climactic odour
everything else fades away
all that glisters is on hold
he noses another:
from throughout history
every sensual caress slaps him sideways
give them an inch
and they’ll take your family farm
in broad daylight these hustlers
blaspheme the orthodox sedation of their pens
burning down the house
smirking leafy at the mown suburb
I was anxious enough
to be quadruplets
when you left, I feared being alone
when you didn’t call, I worried by the telephone
your slender legs twitched my arachnophobia
your catty comments furred up my ailurophobia
you took away your embraces –
it gave me a horror of open spaces
a fear of birds, metaphorical
brought me these questions, heretical
my neuroses of frogs and dogs and logarithms and night-clubbing
handbags and man-bags and sandbags and flooding
I emailed you regarding my deep affection
you shunned me; I grew nervous of auto-correction
after several grammar-fuelled catastrophes
I developed a terror of possessive apostrophes
when you woke me in the morning with a loud noise it alarmed me
you brandished the kitchen knife and disarmed me
you left and turned out all the lights; now I dread the dark
you demanded your money back with interest, igniting my fear of the shark
but the thing you gave me that put me into a frothy panic
was your frankly terrifying love of rhyming couplets…
“I’m not so much a cat person myself”
(a report from the house-sitting coalface)
I do not miss Miss Brodie’s brood
White Cat, Minx (the Manx), and Tabby Cat
there was a lot of action when I was there –
cat action
I kept certain doors shut
to avoid confrontations
(don’t open the portholes – you’ll let the tide in!
it was a ‘them versus me’ situation).
Tabby, a stately gentleman,
left his mark in the bathroom
several times,
otherwise avoided me;
White Cat and Minx were more personable
the owner wrote me a note:
‘water pistol on kitchen table
if White Cat should get on the bench’
imagine her: gun in hand, after her cats,
her child substitutes
(the little squirts)
© Arthur Amon
Arthur lives in Sandspit, near Warkworth with his wife Miriam and step-dog Lottie. He has been writing poetry sporadically for nearly 4 decades, fitting it around his mathematical modelling job and his sculpting. This has resulted in two books; the most recent of which, safety matches, was published in 2003 – a veritable publishing phenomenon, and his website hasn’t been updated much since then either! Thank goodness for Instagram, where you can find him (and some of his poems) – @amon.arthur