Performance - and the dishwasher poem

Do you know what I did yesterday?

Besides get out of the wrong side of the bed, snark at my beloveds, do the groceries and take more panadol than I normally do in a month?

I finally went to a local poetry reading.

See, the timing has been abysmal - in the nearly 3 years I have been here I have seen this poetry event advertised about a dozen times - 10 of those times, I was not going to be in town, another time I was flattened by a migraine - and I was darned if I was going to remain ignorant for another month about the possibilities.

My problem is not performing - heck, I have been known to recite to cattle while droving so I don't quake at being in front of an audience - I know, scary and wierd!

My problem is walking in to a room full of strangers in the first place.

But yesterday, walk in I did - and I am glad I did.

Although the crowd was small and very much "traditional Australian verse" poets, they did make me feel welcome and didn't boo the fact that of the three poems I did, only one rhymed and none had references to the olden days (unless you count the 1990s as olden). Some of those "Bush Poets" can be hardcore, but some are willing to deal with the bizarre!

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Here is the most racy that I did, however. As I had brought the median age down by a decade or so when I entered the room, I didn't think they were quite the target for Teaser.

ODE TO THE DISHWASHER



      I look at you and regress years.
My maturity dies,
And the desperate devotion
Of a teenager surfaces.
Illogical, but so in lust!

      Your eyes, surveying your surrounds,
That I have forced into,
Meet my face and pass.
I read a thousand meanings in that glance,
      My mind in turmoil.
Turgidly it fights for realism -
My soul destroys such thoughts
And builds a castle on this foundation.

      Your smile - so complete,
      So sexy,
Rips my resolve.
But it was for another
And I crumble.

      Sweetly secure behind the cake counter you pose.
I scribe my desire,
Hoping passionately you can read minds;
Hoping fearfully that you can’t.

      I want.
And my want is fervid.
The hormones rush and settle on fragments.


      Oh! The casual toss of a tea-towel
      over a shoulder
Takes the place my head would fit.

      Your hands plunge into the warm, soapy water,
Were that they were mine.

      I sit and stare.
Your hair! Your eyes!
Your movement a sublime ritual,
Your face in concentration
      Over a stubborn milkshake container.

      You turn.
I turn away.
My spying eyes burn in shame.

      But this teenage bout
Of lust a fantasy
That I fear
Would not sustain any maturity.

      So I sit
      I stare
      I dream
      I drool
Yet I realise that
If, and when, perhaps we meet
You shall be well protected
From an onslaught
Of ravishtation
By the tentative hold this woman
Has
On the girl within.

Copyright Sophie Jean 1993