Kristen de Kline # 175 when we first broke up

when we first broke up

I’d only just make it home fall to my knees the cat would brush against my legs howl in the hallway I'd turn on the ABC news Charles Manson was dead the neighbour wants to borrow a Phillips head screwdriver David Cassidy's croaked it too a Jehovah's Witness bangs on the door offering me God, three cans of black and gold baked beans and a long-stemmed rose

when we first broke up

Kristen de Kline #174 Your arms

I
your arms   they eat away
at every damn poem

bloody elbow

stomps on the stanzas


II
that Honolulu hotel balcony
wrapping     your arms 
all around me   

like a spiralling sleeve
etching haikus

about
love     and us
and love      and us

into blood
& bone 

tell me, you said,
what scares you
the most


III
lying by the pool:
a copy of Less than Zero
and duty free Raybans

blowing
words

bent double,
palm trees

still your arms
warm, wanting

dead bark

splattered
palm leaves

your arms
that's all

Kit Kelen #698 - it's not too late

698

not too late

ear to the Earth

and listen

it's not too late

to let the thing alone

to be amended

silent sorry

to stand up

where they've knocked you down

to throw the lightning back

to thunder

to stop and think

to bring the brink back

into bounds

cup hands

catch rain

there's still a tree left

it's not too late

to stitch up time

to get a ticket

go

to be swayed

to lime the light

to glow

to be discovered

give short shrift

to place a bet

to unmake minds

tame beast within

it's not too late

to paw and growl

and pander when required

to get fired up

stoke institution

it's not too late

to stand corrected

to make it up

to pay the rent

to parley

to supersize

to say no thanks

to parapeep

think better of

to simply let the thing unravel

it's not too late

to stretch and yawn

and tuck back under cover

to call these ruins home

to put a shine on everything

to paper over cracks

tell lies

to umake minds

swing chandelier

turn champagne into beer

it's not too late

to hold the mirror up

dive in

find fish

drink with them

it's not too late

to sober up

to straighten

to save the day

to truth be told

to eke out ache

it's not too late

to come from scratch

the itch is everywhere

the appetite as well

it's never too late for breakfast

it's not too late

to throw the lightning back

to thunder

ear to the Earth

and listen

there's still a tree left

it's not too late

the damned thing

still goes round

Kerri Shying R # 364 - Breakfast for the ages

Breakfast for the ages

this cinnamon scroll   from Star Wars 

 look

 how I choose my food     post Paleo 

post ethics

 some dude said my pH must be

all the wrong  way round

don’t you want to put

 them in the ground

no concentration span

 just a feeling

takes advice

 from a bee

when the library at Alexandria

burnt down   bee said

to me

it ripped the heart out

of the ancient world

 then

there was no more

 buzz but peace

Rob Schackne #533 - "another note" (1)

another note
on the railroad
plies the country
tracks leading
somewhere else
where do you go
at dusk
so lawless
people singing
where do you stand
only lights
passing by
a truck stops
at the crossing
full of noise

Stuart Rawlinson #86 - Flying Tree

All around spores
weightless seeds
crevices and cliff-cuts

breathe in
let it lodge
in your throat

vocal chords
flesh flaps
of sound

helicopters
twirl
spiral rudderless
down

come to rest
on a new
unbuilt home

an acorn
ready to split

above, on a
mountain

dress it in red
call it Emperor

Kerri Shying R # 363 - Light Rail Trench

Light Rail Trench

pencil pine   a clutter

of umbrellas  upturned

pressing

at the sky

for juice 

the energy of blue

 sledded white

  the slide

 of clouds

no derangement

branches stand  unmoved

the roots that hold this

mast    vast  towards

the earth calling

for the fig

the gum 

amid the shudder

of the build

the railway comes

Kit Kelen #697 - the words

697

the words

some words were looking for me

I hadn't heard, I knew

they persisted

just had to be had

I'd gone into hiding

they'd come to haunt me

hard words with a mellow lilt

they were only the hope of a rhyme

I'd put the hours back into the clock

but those bastards were coming for me

floaters, phantoms, echoes all

I saw them cross the ceiling after

without my glasses on

the jokey ones and puns protest

I was on the pot achieving

when the lightning struck

it could have happened mid-fuck too

deflating scribble all in your head

'you have to get this down'

dull thud

come up the driveway

and one held the book

it was as if they were God's

so full of smug confidence

like in the beginning

you could see they were up for an argument

those bastards were coming for me

wouldn't stop at the letterbox

said they just wanted to shoot the breeze

I could imagine them brought by angels

in banners you see right through

just a chinwag

you don't want the Book of Job

the archaeology of me

all skin is shallow to

bie bagua -- you'd say in Chinese

don't gossip

or guan le mesi --

mind your own business, butt out

no way

they followed me up the stairs like groupies

like magpies in season aim for your head

hung out on a corner, waiting to score

these words were rats in the wall, sleep's enemies

like snakes, they begged for lawn to mow

trust me, they'd come for every occasion

I was parked on my magic rug, the red

blank mind, blank heart

they were speaking to me underwater

just bubble at a time

some claimed truth

some held hope

some locked up the heart in a feathery boa

and some would whimper whisper

blue as a sky

they'd come for 'soul'

some of these words were with a tune

tumble in a heap and hours

never come out dry

but always always intimate

best friends, heart throbs

all long lost

begging to lie between covers

sluts!

and who could see the big rabbit with me?

but down bright streets we'd go

days without my pills

they'll come

it's like collecting tax

once I built a temple to them

now where will I go?

I totter off into a forest of them

it's dark but sunlit wings construe

they lead me to a secret cell

where already I'm interred

you expect a well lit mind

cheer to the echo in there

they're trying to make sense of

bully, cajole

they'd like to freak me

leave something rancid on my lips

like I've been eating a dead thing

it's not that they ever said so much

but I knew from the pleading looks

they needed me

needed me!

to put them together

Shakespeare's words and the words from the Bible

and they needed me!

something smaller than itch

an ache's width, so many letters

and scrabble after as well

cryptic as signs augmenting event

it might have just been that

I was on my way to the poem

(a funny thing happened)

they pulled me up for crimes against immortality

decided to open the boot

always a tough one

always a soft

I was going from where to where?

why did I carry all this equipment?

sooner or later the names would spill

we could do this the easy way

they had come to me for fire

now I follow a trail of blood through the snow

so I'm a language all myself

and here's my world fence flat

let's have a stumble through, shall we?

we can still get away from these words

Rob Schackne #532 - "Amanita"

Amanita
love of my life
sweet ride
on an old wagon
a bucketload
of wisdom
what a fire bell
like her snake said
come with me
just one bite
my venom's love
just a little
let's go home
and write the poems 

Kerri Shying R - # 362 and the new garden goes in

and the new garden goes in

this time  passed   undented

on your skin   galactic  minutes

scurry

fast the beetles see the

lawn men

on approach

goodbye the red poinsettia

it’s time to plan anew

all growth lopped

back    bare to bone

fairer

than the fairest skin 

dark truths

left  congealed

            the meat

that held me all the winter

through        took shape

into this

my face   gazing out

at you

Kit Kelen #696 - a stitch from time

696

a stitch from time

in a fine mist falling

through first light

you won't make out a name

some certain stars

just now retired

no one will care

how we guessed each

said how far

gave puppy names

look up or out

a forest finds me

first by web

all indoors

falls to dust

later bitten

come, young bug

everything inhabited!

we can be no exception

and how many greens make day here?

it's not the kind of thing we count

trick a way into the trees

a fan of feather leads

it glistens

will we glisten too?

it's hand over fist

world wants

of us

we stop that at the gate

with habits of another place

and later begin

by falling down

a lazy veranda

leans to the all-day

afternoon

take a rise out of this sun

then you'll become the breeze

that blows

where my remains

are found

Rob Schackne #531 - "Make the universal veil a double" (after James Walton)

Make the universal veil a double
a death cap thanks 

a gin and tonic 
the disappearance

the orchards and the fields

what's first tinge
obsessed with a blue toy
goes to foul kitchens
Amanita what did you do
a half-moon emerging
a little stunned
stops moving the
same as the last one

Kerri Shying R - # 362 Agung goes off

Agung goes off

The second last line

of the story  was your

thirty thousand

bodies    brown

all tense

in shelters

 beneath the waked

 Fire Mountain

while hob-nobbers  cut-price

johnnies  ladies haired in henna red

over-packers  bargain-getters

pictured 

leaning     fingers out

on the counters

at the airport

look here

look here

the story             how

the white people

got stuck on holiday

when the ash flew

and the molten rock

began to inch

towards your

life   chickens  clothes

furniture

your school

was all above

your head

Kit Kelen #695 - buzz through

695

buzz through

because a window

either side open

as if lifted

from the dust

a risk!

someone crawled through

cartoon rigid

ten times the weight

on your back

and bearing of the breeze

sun came too

and a little cloud

hung out

it's all as much as summer says

everyone was heading somewhere

it was a getting on day

antechinus rehearsals --

a quick run through the thing

wing quicker than...

it's like the rainbow

shone in them

we won't know

as far as species

often a flight seems blind

can be hand over fist

sometimes you won't

even notice the motion

tribes travel through

in skin or orifice inviting

here's an ocean

through the hourglass

where had we been

to dream before?

we're all of a little tumble

through space

there isn't a god in it

it's namelessly

we will have gone

into the great scheme

Kerri Shying R - # 361 - Venus

Venus

you got disease fatigue  I say 

that face

 today I told you

I got one more   to add  

another on the pile

 of brooding   knick knacks

ripped from dictionaries

Ripley’s

 Believe It or Not with

an emphasis  on

 more often than

not  

 I get more positive tests

 than negative

go figure             the

spaces between them

shrink  I love it

when something common

hoves into view

I see in the paper rich

people put

died of a rare

cancer

like the ordinary one

was just

passé

there are ants in my bed 

I withhold   the fact that I’m

allergic  say aren’t we all

risking death 

this earth

a blue and umber

death trap

come to bed

get bitten

come die

 in someone’s arms

James Walton #84 Death Cap Ballet/Amanita Phalloides

The cruelest of assassins

rises in the best of seasons

allowing a rally near the end

drops from anointed brows

ease down gauze curtains

surprising medieval seers

with the wonder in recovery

later blaming the sorcery

of a gender’s intuition

as they burned and drowned away

the rise of early feminism

the stage for Swan Lake floats

with armillarian sheets

daylight and night partners

the unexpected noise of cramping slippers

so uniform on a parquetry of water

whiter than compressed purity

tutus sieve through a cotton day

by a pattern dreamed of hysteria

in a setting physique of training

thoughts begin to decompose

like a composer’s typhus

ice floes shunt organs brandish failure

rosemary and lavender mingle

in the priest’s wanton disdain

arms crossing breasts skilled feet bleed

the jester coaxes for applause

all the medicine of the modern world spills

unpackaged as fields after rain

useless against this primordial stocking.