Welcome to The Baby Wants It’s Bottle Poetry Inc. Podcast, a creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. In this episodeI 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.
Thankyou for listening to the Baby wants It’s Bottle Podcast, A creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. This podcast is available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Welcome to The Baby wants It’s Bottle Poetry Inc. Podcast, a creative project by Martin Anton Smith a NZ based creative. In this episodeI get back to basics and read a poem I wrote today. It is essentially a sequel to another poem “Adventures at Doctors Point in Summer”. It’s simply a distillation of the thoughts I had on one of my many scenic and therapeutic bike rides through the countryside. Now lets get straight to the poem!
The “narrows” on the way to “Doctors Point” bike track Alexandra NZ
Adventures at Doctors Point in Winter Poem by Martin Anton Smith July 31 2021.
It’s Saturday, and as always the body is slow to get into gear.
The crawling feeling of low vibrational energy is a continuing story.
This of course becomes worse with winter dampness and low light.
The feeling can be reversed via physical activity or waiting it out till afternoon.
Today I chose the former, and so on my bike to ‘Doctors Point’ I did go.
The Bike is good but aging and is now only running on two gears instead of one-score and eight.
The Bike is an allegory for embodied life, and especially mine in the morning.
So down to the ancient-but-still-as-it-was riverway with it’s ancient craggy clefts and giant rock outcrops.
In a narrow pass I stop to allow another biker through as we both cannot pass at once.
“they don’t call it “the Narrows” for nothin’ ” I say, these days I sound more and more like an old timer.
The next two oncoming bikers career towards me with danger, despite being on a wide path with room to share.
And I think of a possibly wise but imperfect saying:
“Two people crossing in opposite directions on a path made for one, will do so easily, if they are self aware.
Two people crossing in opposite directions on a path made for many, will collide if they are not”.
In this case, less options – that is a narrow path – kicked two people into mutual self awareness and so well-being,
While more options clouded perceptions in the minds, and so led to potential danger.
I think we have been told more options are always better than less, this is an obfuscation.
And those doing the obfuscating I’m sure have been making a lot of money.
The beginning of the ride is to be aware of my weakness, my body machine has not yet overcome its low vibrations.
Half way through the body has recognised it has been asked to perform, and now the cosmic pharmacy is delivering.
I begin to feel how normal happy people feel like all the time – which I know isn’t actually true at all.
With western societal decline, deep down I know by now most people suffer from low vibrational energy.
How could we not all feel this way?
After all, we have all been swindled by city cubicles, screens, salaries, lunchbreaks and advertisements so as to deplete our vitality.
In the modern Western system, It is normal to feel abnormal, as the neo-feudal system needs compliant zombies.
I am at the apogee of the trail – I stop for the usual few minutes to try to channel & contact the supreme being.
The baron rocky canyon on the other side of the riverside shows its history by the words written in its many wrinkles.
It also functions as an echo chamber, and so of course I oblige “I am here, speak to me” I say.
I wait for a reply, it comes in cascading and regressive volumes, my now lowering voice is rendered by the rocks.
I half think that one day, a different voice will reply with something like “I knew you’d come looking for me one day”.
The outer shell veneer of my helmet breaks off, so I think of the world as a place of false veneers vs. hidden truths.
On the way back and the body machine has now fully prescribed it’s chemicals and hormones – I fly up the inclines.
And then a few minutes in, the answer to the echo experiment comes in – a pebble came from the sky and hits me.
I think it would be a wise system for the grand creator not to use the language of the lower entities but to instead use symbols.
Symbols allow communication-at-a-distance to those who are ready to accept that truth is always stranger than fiction.
There are two kinds of people in this world – people who ask ‘what’s beyond the cave’s shadows’ and those that don’t.
Did I really catch a glimpse of the higher plane of existence that exists outside the ‘cave’s shadows’ today?
I think I did, and aint that great that this happened on my bike at Doctors Point in Winter 2021.
I can already hear the placking of the keyboards from the heavily fluoxetined corporate materialist surface dwellers.
I rest easy because the Big Cheese would never hand the keys to unlock the mysteries of reality to such fools.
But then again could I be wrong?
Was it just a ‘bike ride’ or was it an epistemological infused natural chemical high on wheels?
For that, I will leave to the reader to decide, as I do not wish to court controversy.
I’d much rather sit on the fence, yell at the sky and wait for the echo reply
“Of course silly! you were right all along!”
End of Poem
Thankyou for listening to the Baby Wants It’s Bottle Poetry Inc. Podcast, A creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. This podcast is available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.
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