Dream Rhymes

We all have dreams, most of which we don't remember. Today was a chance to explore our dreams but with the added complication of a rhyming scheme (now I can't stop!). We tried the standard format of ABAB and AABB and a few variations ensued. As always the theme is a starting point for creativity. We found that it is important to read your poem as you go to ensure it has the right rhythm which seems to have added importance in a rhyming poem.




DREAM TIME

I am dreaming consciously of you
while the concepts flutter around my head
I know my dreams wont come true
and sooner or later I"ll end up dead
Although I know this poem is wrong
it encapsulates everything I think
I think I heard this in a song
This dream is driving me to drink!

Clutching at a straw
I fall hard
This dream's a bore
Alone in my room
That's like a junk yard
All my hopes and dreams
I must ignore
What you sow
so shall you keep
A tale of woe
circling around and around you.

- M.F.


DRESSED AS A POPE

The fish rode the bike
Along the winding street
It was really a trike
But still pretty neat.

Next came a cat
Skipping with rope
On its shoulder, a bat
Dressed as a Pope.

Then 3 dancing hogs
It's not as strange as it seems
For like the green dogs
They were all in my dreams.

- Christine Philp

The Never Ending Night

Today we had a record 11 people at Writing Group, if it get's any bigger we'll need an extension! The theme today is Antarctica and the concept of a never ending night. In winter it gets dark earlier everywhere, but in Antarctica it is dark all the time. Our first challenge was to respond to the idea of 'The Never Ending Night' with a poem. Next we assumed the role of an explorer or worker based in Antarctica and wrote a fictional letter home.


NEVER-ENDING NIGHT

Black canvas
Dark night
Starlight
Swirling aurora
Clouds obscure
Perpetually temporary

- Pauline




THE NEVER ENDING NIGHT

Darkness, sun hiding, people using artificial light,
indoors, outdoors, penguins for company.
A few people manning the station.
Antarctica in winter,
temperatures well below zero,
all day, all night.

Lose your bearings, day or night,
it doesn't matter, check the 24 hour clock.
Working outside by moonlight,
by starlight, doing your chores.

Inside the station you still sleep,
eat, play games, do activities.
Contact outside by satellite,
can't get through in blizzards.

A handful of crew for company,
hope that you all get on, tough if you don't,
you are all together for the winter months,
Vitamin D, fruit, veges are necessary for your health.

Artificial light is not the same as sunlight.
Snow mobiles, skiing, no more huskies at base, all electric.
No pets, no supermarkets, no children,
not much left, just survival.

- Gail




AM I?

Darkness
Everywhere
No light
No signs of life.

I am alive
(I think)
Or am I?

I must be alive
I feel pain
Physical pain from the cold
Emotional pain from the nothingness.

Is this some sort of purgatory?
That gap between death and whatever happens next
If indeed there is a next.

- Christine

EMPEROR

Hunkered down, shoulder by shoulder

Beaks low, eyes closed

The wind howls by as we stand en masse

and the darkness grows

Like one giant creature we flow together, Rotate

away the coldest point,  Stand in the lee

of our tight-feathered community

And about us only darkness

About, the gale whines and roars

Above, the blackest clouds

Around, the dark intense

And cold, and ice, and chill

- Kate Jenkins

ANTARCTICA

I was created in the darkness when there was no form,

The deep made me in the night,

When it comes to beginnings, I was first

I was a continent, a land mass, 17,000 years in the making, so I’m told

The structuring of my financial infrastructure, is my DNA

I was formed in the secret parts of the universe

Today I am still here

My name is unchanged

I am a famous landmark

I am ANTARCTICA

- Haki Davis 

NUMB ICE FLOW

I felt the ice

Fall off the end of the world

And the dark without light

fail

I saw the empty trail

Forests longed for

Up over the hill and down

to fetch the pail from the windowsill

Here such descriptions fail

The morphing of the unfamiliar land

And the absence of life seems to derail my mind

The curves support an empty nihilism

And ice

frosts over the water to stop people setting sail

This emptiness, this cold, seems a collision of ideals

Emotions in my mind

I feel the ice

It is not nice

There is no trace of mind there

And I think it’s only fair

To leave myself to space and fear

As a decision to confine myself

That I am here to remind myself

That ice and only ice

Is not existence but

a dissonance

Is felt

A sense of human fleeting from the South

Ice and only ice is there

- Dylan Anderson



A NOTE HOME

Dear ____

The sun has set for the last time. I will not see it again for another six months.
This feels very strange and I am afraid. Will I go mad? So much darkness surely can`t be good for one?! Six days seems like an eternity. An eternity of darkness.

On further reflection, there is still much to explore in the dark. It will be an inward time of eating, sleeping, staying still, writing. Finding the limits and the freedoms within and hoping not to go mad in the process.

love from ____

- Pauline

LETTER FROM THE ICE 

Hi Dan

One month gone and ok so far.  There’s only 8 of us here this season, and Scott Base is locked down. 

Bernhardt is a bit of a nutter, keeps everyone else wound up.  He has a permit for taking atmospheric measurements and insists on going outside to take his own instead of using the digital data – on low-med wind days at least.  He barely makes it back in the doors sometimes.  One of these days he’s going to collapse completely; we’re all hoping he doesn’t do it outside.  He’s from CantyU, one of the geophys lab lads; from Austria originally.

Dom, Mike and Barry pretty much keep to themselves.  They run the particulates lab and have been getting exciting results.  Their exterior sampler has stood up to the wind gusts so far.  They should all last the distance.  Working with Prof Thomas from Geology.

Cam seems to read the old newspapers all the time.  He’s some sort of psychologist, here to study us rather than the penguins.  “Professional Isolates” is what we are apparently.  Can’t help it that Antarctica is days from everywhere.  He’s ok to chat with though; a cricket geek, knocked up his first 100 in Feb.

Benji and Marko do ice studies.  Race outside when the weather is ok, grab a bit then off into the freezer room to look down their microscopes.  Warmer in there than outside.

I’m off to check over the radios.  All working ok so far but some of the batteries need replaced, the cold can kill them bloody quickly.

Cheers, Steve

- Kate Jenkins

To whom it may concern

I feel as you yourself may, an absence.  Something that was there or perhaps wasn’t.  It might have been, had I stayed, something cold, something obliterated.  Something.  Your love.  Yes, that’s right, I do believe I was searching for your love.  Yes, your love would suffice.  But had I found it, a cruel fate I might have suffered.  A sting in the thumb, paralyzing, so when you lay there tonight, as you do, cling to your pillow, feel something real.  Exploration hidden only reveals that not hidden.  So feel driven to love, to lust, accordingly and morally as yourself.  And feel obliged to do what you do.  I know now, that miles away, my spawn cries.  And wails through that lovely nighttime estate but be not ashamed for everything in your life has weight, to reach out.  So reach out as a lover, feel something, but make it loud, and feel.  Feel the wind and take the clouds, for ice right now is only there, for me.  And accountable is only darkness, so why not feel and be ecstatic.  To whomever it may concern, feel pain.  To whom it may concern, be the woman I knew, that lived and loved.

To whom it may concern,

forever

feel.

- Dylan Anderson



To my loving wife,
This is my last diary entry
There is not enough food
And sombre is the mood.
If we are to survive
my dear wife,
it will be
without me.
My next step may help my crew
We are so cold we're turning blue.
These are my last words,
said with a forced smile.
"I'm going outside,
I may be a while."

- Phillip Porteous

Te Reo Poems

Today te wero, the challenge, was to use te reo Maori in our poetry. We first brainstormed all the words we could think of (which filled two A3 sheets!). We then created a poem in English incorporating some of the Maori words that we had written down - as many or as few as we wanted. Taking it to the next level, we attempted to write a poem entirely in te reo Maori. Some felt whakama/shy about putting their work up here but some great work was produced. Kia kaha!


FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The kupu of the pukapuka is like kai for the puku
Haere mai, haere mai
Like waiata to the rangi
As tamariki running along the whenua
Etu toa
Become tapu, become mana

- E. T.




IN THE SHADOW OF MOTUTAPU

Harekeke flapped in the wind
Tui chased korimako as
Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa gently
crushed shells to sand.

It is a lonely place
Its name a warning
- Murdering Beach
Now Whareakeake
where empty cribs live.

Where the birds say -
Whakarongo ki te Tane
Whakarongo ki te moana
Whakarongo ki te Rangi
Whakarongo ki te wairua

The beach waved haere raa
And washed our memory
from the sand
But the stories remain in
the shadow of Motutapu.

- P.S.




Whakarongo wahine
Tamariki puka puka
Iwi kupu
Tangata aku
Tangata whenua
Tangata papatuanuku
Moana kakariki
Maunga Otepoti
Wahine toa
Hoha ka kite ano

- M.F.