Welcome to The Baby Wants It’s Bottle Poetry Inc. Podcast, a creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. In this episode I read two of my latest poems “Somewheres Nowhere” & “Sugar low Cat”. I wrote these two poems very quickly and off the cuff in about 30 mins a piece. This is mostly how I write for short poems. I guess the ideas come from my unconscious mind which resides somewhere I can’t yet begin to describe. While writing these poems, I was at home, and in a contemplative mood. This mood was a little different from usual, as my brain had been juiced. Juiced no not on drugs you fool! My Brain was juiced from following the incredibly interesting events coming out of the middle east – namely the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. I don’t want to talk about this here, as the poems I have written are not about that story at all. I would also rather be partially uplifting in tone for this awesome episode. I will say just one thing. On the themes Afghanistan now forces us to acknowledge, I can only pray that good people somehow some day are rewarded and that those creating pain have their powers diminished by a higher loving forces.
Now let me talk about the poems. For “Somewheres Nowhere”, I started writing this with not any ideas and all – I had a blank page and I just wrote the first line. The rest flowed. When I wrote that first line (Which was originally ‘ On The Road to Nowhere’) I couldn’t help but think of the great Talking Heads song from long ago in the 80’s. I guess my poem has some similarities to that song – it’s really about meaning in life, and the poem is about someone leaving what they see as an unrewarding joint for brighter lights and greener pastures. Of course the change the character seeks could represent a change of psychological state rather than just their physical location.
This protagonist also talks of someone else or maybe just their alter ego. This is that who is staying behind with what they know best, imperfect as it may seem. I think this is a slice of reality, when you leave somewhere you are also going somewhere else, but there is always going to be a ghost of that place residing deep inside. Try as you might, you cannot forget the past entirely. I think everyone eventually learns this fact. You must one day reconcile the past as the alternative – that is to bury your past – is a growing hornets nest of psychological pain.
I guess the ‘somewhere’ in this poem is not just anywhere, but is a place that has defined the protagonist in some way, at some stage of their life – maybe a hometown for example. Their is a conflict between the ego that is staying and the ego that is going. The ego leaving arrogantly assumes they are growing wings and that the ego that is staying will be far worse off. Of course this poem is deciding one sided – and the ego staying is left hung out to dry by the adventurous jet setter off to conquer the world. In this poem their voice of those left behind is not yet heard. As I write that last line, I thought of the Afghani citizens and trapped foreigners desperate situation and I wonder if this was the unconscious motivation for this poem. We must ask ourselves why it is that the most vulnerable people on this planet never have a voice, while the privileged voices have an entrenched system of amplification.
This poem also reminds me by the age old story of the young adult leaving home as per the post industrial western age “right of passage”. I guess it could also be described as “modern day exodus”. This (in the secular orientated industrial west) is always assumed to be a good thing (to flee rather than stay) however our current times (financial decay/pandemics/civil unrest) now seem to be actively pouring water on this right of passage or Big OE.
Of course this poem is written to be generalized, and thus can refer to anyone leaving something/someone they know or what they see as a ‘new start’. I think these days we are having circumstances force us to rebalance our expectations in regards to materialism and carefree attitudes. These are the myths that have been pushed so heavily in the Western world since the 1960’s.
The other poem – Sugar Low Cat” is a more intentionally positive poem and written as a bit of a laugh. It’s really just a diary of what my cat was doing around the yard yesterday. He’s an expert bird hunter, and our house has many plants and trees which give him great cover to engage in guerrilla warfare tactics vs those little flying dinosaurs. For the record the cat is called Squeeky, he is 3 years old and of the Tortoiseshell variety. I do not have children, and as I age I guess I treat my pet as a pseudo child (how sad). Cats are far easier to deal with than spouses and real children, though I know that having a cat instead of a child will only make the western civilization fall that much harder and sooner.
In closing I will also say that the use of the term “Sugar Low” is inspired by my mother who used over use this term in my childhood – “I was Sugar Low” she would often say to explain something away (It is very amusing looking back on it as an adult). I should also mention if you go to the transcript link in the description, you can see my cartoon sketch I drew specifically for this poem. Well that’s enough of the intro’s lets get into the reading the two poems I’ll start with “Somewhere’s Nowhere” and end with “Sugar low Cat”.
“Somewhere’s Nowhere” Poem by Martin Anton Smith Aug 2021
Nowheresville
On The Road to Nowhere
Where Nothing Ever happens
And Nothing Ever Will
You Try To Leave
You Try To Hide
But You Belong Nowhere
And That’s Where You’ll Reside
And When You Die
You Wont Be Free
You’re Stuck In Nowhere
And That’s Where You’ll Be
Don’t Wait On Me
For I Cannot Come
Somewhere’s Calling
So Fiddle Dee Dee
Don’t Get Me Wrong
For Of You I’m Fond
It’s Just Nowhere’s Somewhere
Where I Cant Belong
So Brace Yourself
And Hunker Down
Nowhere’s Not Fun
And You’re times Not Done
I’ll Let You Know
When Your Times Near
When Nowhere Transforms
To Something You Can Bare
Adios Farewell
Sayonara My Friend
My Heart Is With You
Till Your Bitter End.
End of Poem
“Sugar low Cat” Poem by Martin Anton Smith Aug 2021
Because my cat was sugar low,
he leaped for birds flying low.
He remains sugar low,
& the birds are flying high.
Now he comes to me,
because he is still hun-gry.
Yes, I’m his fallback solution,
so he’s fed without commotion.
The birds did chirp and sigh,
& radioed a fly-by.
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