Anna Jackson - Catullus for Children

Who am I writing this poetry for? For the unacknowledged poets of the world you geniuses who speak poetry before prose, whose narratives incorporate vast geographies, whose plots can turn and stop like no earthly vehicle.

How can I think it is good enough for you? Its just fuel to pack up for the future with your mandarins and yoghurt there is poetry in the peel you toss aside, you have your own Catulluses already inside.

I found a couple of some feathers from a bird. I pretended it was a real bird. But we saw it was a pretend bird. It looked like a real bird but it was a pretend bird. So we put it in my breadbin.

It looked like it was a real bird. It was by the grass near the hole that we put the tadpoles in. So we put the breadbin somewhere else by the wall out on the front deck. And the breadbin was on the wood that was far up. It wasnt low down, it was up. Under the other deck, it wasnt on there, it was on the front deck, not the back deck.

We had two decks. Thats the end of the story.

Your mum and dad had to marry, to make you but did they at the threshold look back do you think, did they wish just a bit not to leave their childhoods behind? You would. Though youd throw yourself into your marriage, just as they did your mums great long dress trailing a silver trail, your dads face shaven like an egg, no a jewel And then home, where they get to work making each other happy till theyre worn out, and ready to wheel in your life.

You tell them everything they want to know about Hamilton the sparrows that ate from our fingertips and nestled on our shoulders, the house we lived in, full of temples and flaming torches and bronze busts, all held up by marble pillars, and the yacht we had to sail about on the Waikato river in. You tell them everything they want to know about the yacht how she sailed swifter than the wind, her ropes and boom and sails and things talking with creaks and flaps and that sort of thing in a language only you could understand. You sailed home in her, in fact, up the Waikato to Auckland, into the harbour and right up into the culvert behind our cul-de-sac, shes moored there now! Oh why do they have to ruin everything, asking to go for a sail? Why turn glory into dust? Have they no sense of occasion? They dont deserve to come even on your flights of fancy; as for sailing on your yacht, theyd be seasick the minute they left solid ground. Tell them that.

Theres this boy Rufus in your class and he is so cool, everyone wants to play with him.

Look at you, on your bed, listening to the Beatles.

Yesterday, the sun shone on you you knocked on Theresas door and she came running it was a good game you made up, and she wanted to be Bomber Stars assistant, yesterday. Today, she wants to play with this boy Rufus, and you wouldnt beg to join in for all the Pokemon figures ever catalogued, your tears wouldnt wet a bacterium, youre not playing with her till every grain of iron sand on Karekare beach has been washed away to America and back. Shell be sorry. It was a good game, Bomber Star. Shell be begging to play it with you.

Look at you, waging so fierce a war on this foe youd do anything to befriend. Out you march, iambics bristling! I cant print the things youre calling him, this quiet cul-de-sac has never known such a storm, you are thunder and lightning all rolled into one. No wonder Rufus is slow to launch himself forth, a lost and shaky barque to be broken on an angry ocean. Will he come out, or escape days storms by choosing everlasting night? Come out, Rufus, and fight!