Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Kit Kelen #760 - two rain related pieces


760
two rain related pieces

1
remonstrance with a sky

and you call yourself heaven?

to rain
would be the decent thing
one reasons with a sky

hoop holler for it
till blue
pray
and bluer
yet
and dance

so up insists
its true is pure

and in the not-so-noiseless bush
cicadas dust dry deafen

hell hasn't frozen
it's all boiled off

and we're still waiting
waiting for the rain


















2
drizzle into

there ought to be a word
for the beginning of the rain

lovely when we wake to it
still wondering for luck, wide-eyed
and grey all up

scan for a body of water
a puddle where like might meet
and not mosquito larvae

but something falling now

see lemon leaf waxed to grip

a game
like ping pong
on your stiff felt hat

daring these first attempts
to meet a roof in dust

that rain's a little pinkie run
to shelf and show disdain

yet to hear the echo tank
on not-a-solar day

but hush!
it is among trees now
late-Victorian elf about
and Hanrahan portending
gladsome!

look to it!
from somewhere
whether tears or sweat or
just cicada urination

brings a breeze
greys out the overarching

the rain begins in a faraway land

now we're across the border
you wouldn't know the place

it's all lull
and picks up
then forgets what clouds were for
not a lick but travel
and it might yet come again

cobwebs hold it for a bit

steadies on after a while
and we're in it then

the actual
that soaks the page
so you can't write
but stand under an awning
now
listening in the stuff

tries plainsong
and we hum along
having prayed for this

whose joints know of its coming
make sprinkle biblical

from dust to mud
in days of it
I have dreamt a place like this

never knowing which way
piano goes
but you can still
tinkle it round
till tune

let us not mistake
the roof drip rhythm
or second fall from
wind-shook tree

it has been spoken to us
told
noted
and
we'd like it untold today

for the rain that comes from nowhere
never quite gets going

it goes to mist and comes again

all shout out for heaven
is that the lot?
that's all you've got?

so you put on a load of washing
and some sun
takes it all away

Kerri Shying R #406 - Yarn Up


Yarn Up

yesterday   we were sat on the porch
surrounded by the bones

admiring   the subtlety of action
tenacity of tendons     milky  at  a few years dry

still with the movement in them   see
the variation  in the growth plates   know

why I must be careful
not to fall   

we found jacks
sat them atop lamb knuckles

drank the lemonade 
 all the schoolyard  rushing in  

here

we are women 
there is nothing   we are afraid to know




Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Kerri Shying R # 405 - Day Lily


Day Lily
 for Lynn

sat out   by the shed door
that breeze  whipping Buddha
on his curtain  
around your carer’s head
we eat  brie    and I keep thinking

how life  takes the shape
least imagined  the day before   and that
the more nooks
I set up round here

the more beauty
will fly in 
and land

Kit Kelen #759 - in treetops



759
in treetops

the reaching

sky touch

the highest of the song

plain air

and wings have this spirit

weather catches

stars come close

dissolve as mist
how cloud was

this is the place
someone came to the end of the twig
never looked up or out or down
and walked back home from here

Monday, January 29, 2018

Rob Schackne #574 - "No machinery sound"


No machinery sound
the grey clouds come
a few cold drops of rain
some errant birds snap past
the wind rises in a spinnaker

the big gum across the fence
a very mad electric dance
what the cool change brings
say what you like about beauty

I will bid you goodnight

Kit Kelen #658 - plinth


758
plinth
idyll summoned for the autumn moon


stairs of a tall wind

forest full of gopis
whom Krsna calls

the years in their after each following
breeze through a window first

stream and wheel
and water falling

sing skin

thunder
and then rain

slower
the turning
slower

a net of wires
clouds catch

tinkle where a goat is
and donkeys
fence tethered to a higher pitch

scythe, sickle
plough and
fewer implements
smoothed to time

clouds drift
like stone come from
shone mist

girls churning the sea of milk
shell to circumcise

the army of monkeys come to assist

come back to me
stars of a tall wind

this last night

footprint of the Buddha
shows what we deal with here

what but eye to climb?

all of a singing sky

a moment
and the Earth's moved

we're a long way gone

Rob Schackne #573 - Notes for Hope

Notes for Hope

Capacity for happiness
Cf. Capacity for unhappiness
The chance that poetry can
Complete a circle
Communication as a circle
Connected language
Cf. Prose
Alien
The Other
Fear it won't get better
Cf. Hope that it will

Kerri Shying R #404 - There is no death


There is no death

drying the winter melon
see there   falling
in  the sucked-up cheeks
of elders   reclining on the carport roof
in sunshine  

let the hard skin hold the seeds
  lubricious capsules

shrink   by the day
in those hours of the sun

held away
from the beaks of the teenage crows
the noisy gangs  of minors 
cracking safes  and pumpkins
through the autumn 

the winter melon   waits



Sunday, January 28, 2018

Rob Schackne #572 - The Sky Beneath The Stars In The Rain #15 (redux)

The Sky Beneath The Stars In The Rain


The notion of no second chance frets
the guitar, the history of Peter Pan
a treasure going forth to be lost.

Lessening of spirit? Perish the thought.
You and I have a few more chances left
in which, at any rate, actuarily speaking
more is riding your way than mine.

So now please let us not conflate
the fiction that we like to read
with fictions we like to make.

You will travel the seven seas.
A piece of weed, a piece of shell
a thousand sunsets will be different
in every one a restive breeze.

Faraway the future, a million dreams.
Ships underway, the holds are full
everyone waiting for the winds.

A song to ring your ears.
Mountain, anchor, whale
bird, water, engines.
Friend. Every heart.


Kit Kelen - 757 - I like to go nowhere


757
I like to go nowhere

stand further off
and wait for it

how anciently I am
stone tombs it

I might be like weather coming

a little hard to see the time
here under my own terms and conditions

and crawl into the conversation

a woad splash
come by coracle

they won't be looking for me here

in a jungle of myself
oboes tympanic
ikat in shibori

and stretch a tale till tall

it's death by shoe for the spider

kept safe from toil
by sweat of brow

it's such a world, yes folks

let letterbox be mute
here in the tangle of notes

breezily grey

each day heavier this burden
to call my life

I like to go nowhere
are you coming?

must make the difference now

this going on forever
really was never a plan

still you have to admit
this world could have been different

and so it will be

Kerri Shying R # 403 -Newcastle Sunday


Newcastle Sunday

today I’m reading 
Andrew Burke then a river
sings tales of the village  
winding the stories  of China
back into my magpie  garden

picking up strewn bark   toffee
from the tree   to pile for skinks
leaning forward

I am a word   keen
for the rangy son
who visits
in the cool

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Kerri Shying R # 402 - high summer hums


high summer hums

my garden   all green and pink
hums with the engine of  industrial refrigeration

I get this headache    they are ships
in port   engines on

ready to depart
not quite here

I imagine them    the neighbours
cold slabbed   like the importunate

in Goodfellas
locked up against the summer   

packing heat  into the future
when we fall

Kit Kelen #756 - anniversary poem


756
anniversary poem

30 years home
wherever we are
but happens to be here

as built with much longing
and salting away

our four hands
and many hired
and finally unfinished

as in
what would you expect (?)
the vision was an argument
continues to this day

30 is nothing
the metal not invented yet
though there'll be asteroids to mine

or are all elements known already?
our weight will never be atomic
yet we have that glow of finding

five years past the silver
shine without the polish
who would have thought that a sun
could be charmed so high, so still?

would we have believed this now
the Easter of the rain?
(and thought there was no end of it
so we made forays from, collected)

you drew
and I was scribble

first blissed
and knew this view then
let it grow up and out

all that was portable in the picture
long since to the tip
except of course for us

we made tracks
and thanks to carbon footprint
gathered the trinkets of far

all these healing years to a workaround
ever hard at it

made a maze and we came out

I love the idleness yokels see
we taught a way to here
and emulate their pace

it's not a place this moment
except for in the sense you see

take turns to conduct breezes and trees
to water and to sweep, wash up

you build a home to hide away
all gorgeous in the tower
and goes around in seasons
dark and light as well

an ant makes me a mountain
and I quake to shake it off
undug

we wave legs and arms like crazy bugs
desperate with what soon won't matter

there'll always be something more to frame
crows' feet for a good hard look
kiss to show you care

the forest we have grown around us --
just by not being here

death is a fire
is a roof overhead
is a tune to whittle away

you pull the blinds down to dream
I draw them up of a morning

and the ungendering goes on

we play
until the webs come sunlit
and a very important question
okonomiyaki please!

to office then, and easel
and swim between the flags

at a certain stage easier just to keep going
that's when one needs a good shake
kind you can only give yourself

it isn't heaven nails us here
hello in another day
look to the blue's eternal now
and character for rust

30 years
whoever we are
where the young us must beam for pride

with big ticket items
like here we are

if I don't remember the last things
then something next is on my mind 





 

Friday, January 26, 2018

Kerri Shying R # 401 - today in January


today in January

I want to pull the world over my head
close the curtains   on the get-togethers

while I spend another long
weekend   in silent  contemplation

be my  carlessness   my lack
the income    lost    un-agile frame

the ticket  to the game   my head
so full of disagreement   unplay

my record      here    there is the scent
of double lotus   unwashed wool  still
on the card      snoozy  animals   

every  minute  goes undrained  unpinned
from that board of aspiration     all bulbs
all day   
sucker   it’s just today  

Rob Schackne #571 - Australia Day

Australia Day

Riding my bike
down a country road
looking at the clouds
water in the creek
thinking about
listening later to some Masekela
when I'm overtaken
by a white car
a cigarette is thrown at me
from the near side
shouts of you cunt!
they speed off
three weeks back in Oz
just settling in
I hadn't thought
of them for years

Kit Kelen #755 - fairweather (ekphrastic)


755
fairweather
(ekphrastic)


in a maze of faces
all under

like a ladder stood to show
a house has only so much hold

time touches
and then time sets free

a web of thatch
a grove

the streets in it are dust
but lean to frame a window

you won't see the island's edge
sea still standing squared

there isn't the alphabet for this

it all rings flickering

we're bung







Thursday, January 25, 2018

Kerri Shying R # 400 - The White Album


The White Album

there are some people mourn
dead singers  with such passion
see

they don’t have enough  horror
in their lives    Lynchy   today  he
fell
he broke his last leg  

it’s another
hospital  for him   we talk  about
shrinking up our tumours
using apple cider vinegar 

how the dogs are fretting   we
sort out lifts for those
who need to visit 
I was just thinking
of him too   

Rob Schackne #570 - One Imagines


One Imagines

             for Bernard Hemensley

                 
                       As the pain that can be told
                       is but half a pain,
                       so the pity that questions
                       has little healing in its touch.


                             Edith Wharton


One imagines a winter night
a fireplace, and a hundred sighs
between the thought of a question
and the thought of an answer
why did you even want to do that
please tell me what you were thinking

the gathering of words surprises
you listen as you too will be listened to
one summer, years from now
when tears come from the past
what were you looking for
please tell me where you're going
rock paper scissors snake
now we collect the poems
the roar and crack of fire