Sunday 22 January 2012

Envelope Pension Poems

Yesterday, while dinner was being prepared at my sister's home, I started doodling on an envelope lying at the table, addressed to my grandpa who is now in hospital suffering very late stage Alzheimer's, but somehow still managing to channel a grace towards his family. I sketched a truly awful visual poem and a couple of tiny texts, then my sister added this, which I rather liked, as it reflected the way we were going to eat dinner:

tray knee trainee

The best of my own efforts was probably this concrete mini:

pin

pen
pense
pension
tension
tense
ten

tin

Not very good but still reflecting the content of the envelope, information regarding my grandpa's pension, with a rather pretentious nod to the French "pense" - "think".

There was this too:

"pense yawn"

and a lot of other punny poems, again with a nod to the pension and the dinner being prepared and the family gathering around us.

What mattered was the collective input while the more important task of food preparation was on the go. A kind of poetry cook show. And of course the meal itself, which I don't have any photos of, was delicious, all the more for the words which surrounded it.

Later we wrote a play, a male equivalent of The Vagina Monologues called "Penis Patter - Practise & Malpractise, the Ins & Outs". It had everything - politics, religion, sex, laughter, conflict. A true gem!

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