Thursday, November 30, 2017

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

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

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 

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

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

Monday, November 27, 2017

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.