My Talismanic Object
I have many talismanic objects in my life. It’s the joy that comes from being such a superstitious person. But the one object – or rather ‘objects’…I have many many pairs of these, such is the joy they bring me – that I love the most are my winged sneakers from Jeremy Scott for Adidas. Yes…sneakers literally with wings on them.
Not only do they look super cool, but they remind me of my childhood, as you’ll see in my poem here, talaria. The title comes from the Ancient Greek name of the winged sandals that the messenger god, Hermes, would wear. As the poem states, I’d ask Hermes to grant me the winged ankles of his Talaria, so that I could run faster and faster. I guess, more than anything, the effect was psychological rather than magical, but you never really can tell…and yes, I’d usually place in the top three every race.
As you’ll notice in the structure of the poem, I’ve tried to conjure the power of going faster & faster not only by invoking those words as a refrain, but making the lines run on & on at each turn. And the really obscure looking words in there? Well, it never hurts to write a poem with a thesaurus handy, but just make sure you use an online program to give you the pronunciation of any obscure words you use…that way, you can figure out its sound and then what rhymes can be found.
talaria
when i was a kid, i was
always conscious of my
feet…weird webbed toes
- yeah, i know…so when
it came to running races i
always feared those last few
places. that’s why i’d make
running fly by, calling on high
for hermes winged kicks & over
grass skip like a stone across lake’s
placid drip, a blur going faster & fast
-er. now, as #adultkid, i sing for what
orphic hymns can bring, present myself
pennate pumps that let me lift aloft, jump
footpath frost, capture childhood lost, ankles
alar like slick sports car taking the corners of
the world faster & faster, avoiding disaster, paws
without pause, swagger of rock star, as limbed in
quickening as a feather star, going faster & faster &
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Scott-Patrick Mitchell is a poet engaged for Red Room Creative Learning.
His poetry has been described by Bold Monkey’s George Anderson ‘as one of the most diverse and original emerging poets working in Western Australia today’ while John Kinsella has described his work as being ‘new ahead of the new’. SPM recently performed his new one man show THE 24 HOUR PERFORMANCE POEM at Crack Theatre Festival while his latest collection – inner pity poems – was released through Department of Poetry in 2016... read more »
Follow him on Facebook » www.facebook.com/scottpatrickmitchellpoet
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To find out more:
The Red Room Poetry Object »
Red Room Poetry Object is a poetry writing competition inviting young writers and their teachers from across Australia and New Zealand to submit poems about 'talismanic' objects that are special to them. Red Room Poetry Object is open to students in grades 3-10 and their teachers. In 2015, Red Room Poetry Object linked over 160 school communities and published 2560 student and teacher poems.