Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Lizz Murphy — Poem 151: In the frame (with Sarah)


In response to Sarah St Vincent Welch's With Lizz



IN THE FRAME (WITH SARAH)

A long awaited coffee
splash of red framed by orange
Old time’s sake
precious writing mornings
What colour were the 90s

A scarlet man on his smart phone
The memory of a raptor’s hindquarter
framed in my car window
A hawk like torn tan bark
its catch limp-winged
The reflection of the barista

In the corner a chuckly breast-fed baby
Sarah is laughing I am laughing
her eyes searching out a poem
poking it into her phone
She thinks I’m writing about testicles
(honestly – they were kestrels)
Note to self: improve handwriting

She is serious now
hair hooked back
Concentration
The tangerine saucers walk me again
through 70s suburbs
Orange is a happy colour we agree
but I still hate those orange curtains

Susan Hawthorne #152 devining


behind the vines another world
a path through the rainforest
cutting the vine back with my hands
I look down on a forest of pandanus

the vine clings to me
I pull and cut and pull some more
some are as tough as old leather
other vines are thin as feathers

it's a hard slog sweat drips
down my chin my hands ache
but it's also satisfying to see
the light of the sea behind the trees


Sarah St Vincent Welch #148 With Lizz






still life
(a table of bottles merge reflect rub 
invite like a Michaela James' painting)
graffiti edge frame behind you
this could be an older style cafe
booths and 60s orange vinyl
(we date everything by colour,
Lizz and I)

here we are
not meeting virtually
here we are
being here together
a return of a history
of before work, early off
bus mornings
over manuscripts, fragments
spirals 

now I write on my phone
a poem a day wherever
on whatever I have,
you've got a notebook, I
point at my name in your words
push my fingertip on the S
(recognise it wrong way round)
I’m all over the place as always
not writing but reading yours
you cross out a word next to Sarah.
Goddesses, I’m laughing now,
I’ve got a kestrel and a testicle confused
in your beloved handwriting
I’m reading upside down
askew

we agree to agree
this shade is a better shade of orange
than in the 60s
lighter

Efi Hatzimanolis #115 Filling

our comfort
inside the day’s, 
shepherd pie



Michele Morgan #144 gnóthach




















check the postbox, do
the banking
quiz with finger food

Mikaela Castledine #152 Clear

We are reduced eventually
to simple elements
some days sad rain sighing grey
others an irritating wind
which blows us vexing
today the winter sun
yellows us with happiness
I love you she says
clear as anything

31.5.16 (#150) last day (of autumn) by Myron Lysenko

last day
of autumn
leaves in the bath

Red Cone (LF)#147- Dawn- last day of Autumn


Dawn - last day of Autumn


rising early
farewell autumn
welcome winter
wood fires
red wine
snuggling up

Lies Van Gasse #150


(dag 1-148)

Het ding is, ik heb een klein zwart boek
en er staat een naam geschreven op elke pagina.

Na een week stilte herlees ik de oplichtende namen:
mijn eigen naam, mijn vaders naam,





(day 1-148) 

The thing is, I’ve got a little black book
and there’s a name written on every page.

After a week of silence I read again those lighting names:
my own name, my father’s name,



Chrysogonus' Translation #65 - from Robert Verdon's "The Great Fugue"


kita mengikuti
lekuk tajam ujung kuku
lengkuk mentari pada kabut
di pelangi kematian putih
kapal megah melambat menyapu jatuh segala rupa bagai bola bowling,
kerumunan melompat bagai air hujan pada besi membara,
tirai terakhir yang tak pernah terbuka

biarkan aku bersamamu hingga tanah
menutup kita berdua
sementara
biarkan kita bernafas dalam detak
di fugue megah dekade terakhir kita
dua beo indah di tengah rerumputan

dua ngengat putih di hampar rosemary

we follow
the sharp arc of a fingernail,
the sun with curved fog rays
on the white rainbow of death,
the great ship slow but sweeping all aside like a bowling ball,
the crowd jumping like raindrops on hot steel,
the last curtain that never parts

let me be with you until the grave
claims us both
meanwhile
let us breathe with a skipping heart
in the great fugue of our last decades
two brilliant parrots in a wattle bush
two white moths in a taiga of rosemary

Béatrice Machet # 138-139 HEADQUAKE



It’s a headquake / faults in the brain / rifts at the bottom of the grey matter / and the electric power running through the eyes first then invading the consciousness extinguishes and the concussion grows stronger. 

It’s due to a temperament / always a kind of overflowing movement followed by remorse / dotted with splinters so as to imitate the hedgehog  / something like beneath a gruff exterior / so as to scratch letters / a healthy peeling makes skin flakes rain / dandruff are to words what scales are to snakes / causing the tongue to split


C’est un tremblement de tête / des failles dans le cerveau / des rifts au fond de la matière grise / et des flots électriques qui s’emparent d’abord des yeux puis la conscience s’éteint et les secousses s’intensifient. 

C’est dû au tempérament / toujours une forme de débordement suivi du remord / un piqueté d’échardes comme pour faire hérisson / genre ourson mal léché / afin d’égratigner les lettres / un peeling salutaire suivi d’une pluie de pellicules / les peaux mortes sont aux mots ce qu’écailles sont aux vipères /ça fait fourcher la langue.

Efi Hatzimanolis #114 Walking in Wollongong

rain and shattered glass,
my morning’s
acres of diamonds

Michaela James: #31 Norwegian Landscape – glaze on ceramic tile.


Thank you Kit for inviting me to post on your wonderful blog for the month of May. 
I am signing off with a work I did on returning from Norway in 2012. 
I wanted to find an alternative to painting to express the landscape. 
I used ceramic glaze on ceramic tile – the image only revealed itself after firing in the kiln.

Anna Couani #148 material

this green
called lime green
in the folk taxonomy
isn’t the colour of limes
the fruit
and I ponder the
efficacy of using
lime green net
that beautiful pale colour
as a book cover
the stuff with sparkly bits
probably used for tutus
if it’s possible to
make it stiff
with iron-on interfacing
and in the process
realise that japanese
book binding
is only suitable for
soft cover books
doesn’t quite work
with a hard cover binding
so walk around the streets
with processes merging
thinking about material stuff
meaning material
not material the category

Anna Couani #147 rain



the hard rain
leaves small
pricks in the
water on the road
framed by the
telegraph pole and
frangipani
still with leaf
but as a photo
glows white
with light

Anna Couani #146 Pacific

swimming on the edge of the Pacific
from the headland above
a smooth cream curve
with the city behind

thinking locally
then submarinely
your eyes stingingly open
the sandy water churned
by the rolling breakers

scanning for the next wave
even seeing a curvature
salt-like grains of sand
whipping past in time
outgoing swell
thinking
Pacific

a vast concave bubble
a big brain

body surfing beaches up and
down the east coast

swimming in the balmy transparent
waters
of Oahu
watching the hotel lights reflected
in the waters of Waikiki

Queensland
days and days of beach
and a million conversations

walking through the rainforest canyons
the beach where the forest
meets the sand

up beyond Cairns
near Cape Tribulation
the Daintree as seen by Jeannie Baker
her collages dense on top of the scene of
the lighthouse
the swirls on the sand
from the crocodiles that come out at dusk

the artificial lagoon in Cairns at dawn
silvery and aqua
lit from within
up there
foreign and still familiar

our Pacific, natural, opalescent, southern
mother to islands
glittering in the sunshine
framed by palms

the cities
twinkling
San Francisco

I stand in my classroom
looking into the faces of
Pacific people
talk question debate

Guangzhou Shanghai

sit on the step
with the teacher
from Macao

chat

here we have Port Jackson figs
gigantic ficus
holding the shore together

Robert Verdon, #159, Future Privatised


walking up the peeling bare flagpole
of the shut-down state school
the fly sees many schools

through its compound eyes
the ones that might have been
and might still be, the schools

(or hospitals, or scientific
institutions) that might improve
our short lives on this earth,

or even lengthen them;
of course, the fly fails to grasp
the significance of all this,

as far as we know, and is soon a-buzz
within the house of a local worthy
whose maid swiftly sprays it stone dead.

Béatrice Machet # 136-137 Game Point



As if. Silence. Indoor but a light swish. Disoriented wings against a window pane. A farce played by life. A mute screen. A couch. One sleeps and the other watches. Game point won at the net.
The windows. Is it a question of shape or of opening or of separation. As if. He sleeps. She’s got her suitcase ready she postpones her departure letting it be at the mercy of the match result. Tie break.
Living room coffee table. Two empty glasses and a bottle of fruit juice. A bunch of lilac. Daffodil’s time is over. One must go from yellow to purple. A rainbow exercise. The storm will have burst after having rumbled for a long time. Ace.
He sleeps. Wings at rest legs as squiggles on the paper.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.
Winning serve followed by the smash of the fly swat.  Silence for real.


Comme si. Le silence. Indoor mais le bruissement léger. Des ailes égarées contre une vitre. Une farce de la vie. Un écran muet. Un canapé. L’un dort et l’autre regarde. Balle de jeu remportée au filet.
Les fenêtres. Est-ce une question de forme ou d’ouverture ou de séparation. Comme si. Il dort. Elle a sa valise prête et remet son départ à la décision du match. Tie break.
Table basse. Deux verres vides et la bouteille de jus de fruit. Un bouquet de lilas. Le temps des jonquilles est fini. Passer du jaune au violet. Un exercice d’arc-en-ciel. L’orage aura éclaté après avoir grondé longtemps. Ace.
Il dort. Les ailes au repos les pattes sur le papier.
Je ne sais pas si je reviendrai  jamais.
Service gagnant doublé du smash de la tapette. Silence pour de vrai.

Monday, May 30, 2016

30.5.16 (#149) frosty footpath by Myron Lysenko

frosty footpath
even in long johns

my legs still cold

Susan Hawthorne #151 speaking otherwise

speaking otherwise
it's what you do in a poem
telling stories from
another point of view

speaking otherwise
a view from below
or sideways
the work of poetry

or philosophy
in a Socratic key
it was the muse
Kalliope in charge

of epic poetry who
took on philosophy
as well    poets as
philosophers of

the world both
speaking otherwise
allegoria mythic
ways of seeing

Sarah St Vincent Welch #147 Lost



lost the message
the house rings
the sky, walls 
lost the keys
blade and bow turn, jangle
yours in my pocket
let me in
lost the pen
a pencil hides in the eaves
lost the border
the road has not been built
lost weight
between the days
lost hair
in grief
lost bone
in years
lost jobs
in unkindness 
lost fear
in practice
lost pain
in care