K.F. (Kevin) Pearson is a poet, editor and translator. He has published six
collections of poetry: Messages of Things, The History of Colour, Passion & War, The Apparition’s Daybook and Melbourne Elegies. He is co-publisher of the literary press Black Pepper. He is on the verge of completing a new book featuring his invisible hero The Apparition At Large.
A Small Ode To Soap
Green or cream or the stubbly oatmeal
soap will always abide
beside a west-facing waterfall compelling our hands to abet
an end to its finite life
but has given as many have not
(Milton Friedman I single you out)
a cleanliness to our lives and clarity to our skin.
And soap has been one of the media
that has made us witness, accomplice,
of its own diminution that it daily records
at our slippery hands
who will not hold on because
we will not know that what we hold we wear
down past original compactness to a bubble-ghost of
itself, to air.
Soap has gone over our bodies, nipple and crevice and hairline,
repeating ourselves to ourselves again and again and then
we see what we see in the west-
facing waterfall ourselves, our tiny companion become
less who had made us glisten,
new beings, we thought, like a wet cake of soap in the light
and as we go we too will leave just a little dazzle for
a while
From Friendly Street No. 8 and Tuesday Night Live
The Double World
I have thought of the word ‘corduroy’,
its piping and long indents between the piping,
how it fits a thigh or in a jacket
a shoulder and the slight rise of a breast
and realize it carries always the freight of what
it connotes, that a world of objects surrounds
our sensible life that brings home a double
meaning, the thing neutral in itself, the thing
desired or of memory. Thus is a telephone
cream and cool on a desk but you know too
that other nervy telephone you’ve sat by
minute by minute, quickened, awaiting its call.
I have thought of corduroy and thought of it again.
From Friendly Street No. 9 and Tuesday Night Live
A Sketch Of The Poet
In Oneliners And Metaphors
Impossible as the level walk of an acrobat.
Jaunty as an Akubra stepping from a bus.
Obliquely seen, a pacer of rooms and garden beds.
Quick and fierce in opinion and resolute at that.
As vague as clouded mirrors when the poem is on.
Intense as springs at tension-point, a desperate poor man.
A gazer at things about, this sharp curved brushstroke leaf.
An orange or a mango, the particular heightened flavour
a certain summer night.
A devotee of the laze, and of the steady stroll, needing
contemplative time.
A dull glass thing till the wind is up then a proper wind
chime man.
Great spade of beard that, freshly shampooed, curls like
the beards of Odysseus’ crew.
A disregarder of mirrors, an op-shop casual dresser.
Sound of a hose next door, sprinkling nascent tomatoes
at night.
The fisherman, net and the fish; the whistler, the tune
and the song.
Recaller of the off-cinnamon scent of a pink carnation
nearby.
When the rain is down of a summer night a likely fool
stander in the rain.
And patience his only Penelope where a coming is also
arrival.
From Friendly Street No. 11 and Tuesday Night Live