Monday, April 30, 2018

Kerri Shying R # 447 - all your gumption dried caked chipped as a cup


vanilla ice cream and the tic tacs
Andrew gave me   tasted  unexpectedly
nice   on the day Heidi came to take care
of my healing up old bones   see    when
the  people paid to do it  stop  you stop too

all your gumption dried caked chipped as a cup

it takes that friendly fire    richocheting
about the lounge  across the tops
of boxes  furniture  through the open doors
and sheds     the tic tacs  spring out
live and fresh wakening  my rip van winkle heart

Red Cone (LF) tossed #343


tossed

words
tossed away
with disdain

not caught in
flight
nor grounded

words and thoughts
not stolen nor
bought
the trace of
brush or pen
is fraught

a mangled tangled thing
images
words
invisible
on wires and string

placed on  paper
more solid
than now
where words
winged up high
whirling
crashing
where meeting
or fighting
over and over
like Sisypheus
the day begins



Kit Kelen #850 - morning, is it?


850
morning, is it?

in song
in flower
where sun snuck
bee because

a world all doors
turn to the tune
all open by light
for colour come

everyone once
its own dark

all now
looking
up

James Walton #97 A gleam in resolution



late, late evening

I’ve cleaned the trough
of branches and leaves

up to my elbows
the soot of lived things

fresh water hisses
dances a spilled travel

horses prance over
curious as the way of cats

I turn around

let them drink of nonchalance
a colt snuzzles my neck

places a chin on my shoulder
reaching an arm back

scratching his cheekbone
watching the red moon winking rise

one lateral to the setting sun
each of us thinking

on this day that was
 




Sunday, April 29, 2018

Rob Schackne #643 - Outlaw's Honest

Outlaw's Honest

                       for Kris Hemensley

Give us a call orbit
slow me mine now
whistle does it love me

ah rock was young
time & space waiting

these poets reading
dreaming of their turn
twenty-four hours thirty-six
don't hold your breath
utter delight don't laugh

the spin barely works
probably your turn next
left home this afternoon
did you hear the coppers
it all drops in autumn
bicycle tyres are to flat

the long road ahead
it be my turn soon


Thirty Summers # 130 Claine Keily

I came here to name my demons. To see all the poverty around me. To pay witness to it and to examine the lack of ache to end this in all the bureaucrats around me. I decide to displace it with a brimming joy that is needless.

The winter descends. I watch the Brush Turkeys move in closer, hungry perhaps as there are now no longer available all the ripe seeds of spring. I anger to find myself still teaching and decide to find a new path. I decide to talk to people of their anger rather than still it with the threat of detentions or failure in the classroom.

Kit Kelen #849 - remembering to breathe


849
remembering to breathe

so simple
words are the tune

in the little bird
a tree

time grown to be
so still
so hard

till day upon whom?

a self beside me
in the mending

from light to light
trained up among
the seeking leaves

the poem littler littler

turned up in another life
is how you have me here

open my eyes to the dark
where the apprenticeship
goes on

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Thirty Summers # 129 Claine Keily

It is May here in the tropics. This is the month in which the brooding seasons find they can no longer play. Night falls more quickly than before and I am caught out, riding too late on horseback. I enter my garden torchless -my blood still heightened by summer- remembering that death adders do not move if you approach them. Only last week there was a snake before me at night that did not move despite my stomping.

The river thins and loses the muddy hues it acquired in the monsoon. The trees are now bare of mangoes and the grass aches with one last burst of life, throttling me with its vivid green.

Kit Kelen #848 - draft of a dance of it


848
draft of a dance in it

is someone nesting
where the tree is lit?

the garden light
the moon song
and often in a trick of which

a toe tap to begin
as if an itch set off
the all around and up

facing on tip toes
till the storm

such as this mist
or round the face
a twitch

in the blood and carried
because we live this love
it's all got up, was primed

each one is a journey
and sometimes it's
as if to pounce

drift from this into other arms
this rapture yours in only
like letters on a page
make war and treaty too

wraiths do it, all souls do
please whisper as you pass
shake a leg at sea

it's in a song as well
sprung from stretch
a roof holds on

and like nobody's business
all attentive, all attuned
come so very still

Friday, April 27, 2018

Thirty Summers #128 Claine Keily

I sleep deeply now, like a teenager come back from the beach. In the afternoon I sit on the steps of my house with the forest so close it touches me. I know that soon I will have to cut a pathway through the bush or become enclosed by it. But I laze before this task, having spent decades living on dust in waterless paddocks, so as the trees, now before me, appear as something out of a fairytale.

There is little time to stare at the trees and flowers. The school calls me back and I am expected to rein in the cruelty of children who test me out merely because I am a stranger to them and because they fear I will expose their lack of a measurable skill.

Kit Kelen #847 - the bush is faster than the garden


847
the bush is faster than the garden

for Sarah St Vincent Welch



see how it takes us
and then a leaf along
in the glisten

with eyes up
ears in
whiff at
all to know you are

in rainlight

call shots
and set the dog on pig

here - levitate this flower

measure the gully in lantana

mat
patch
prepare the harvest
let's all go to seed

show the scent around

our book is all the crossing out
and garden for a soul

grows up around
just where we've been let

as if known by heart
and taken to

a beckoning for sunshine
a bucketing in rain
it's all of a delving to be
nothing literal

has its own treetops
makes soil from the falling
the fallen get a leg-up

how where the weather went
and it takes us along

vaster than your pardon

we hear the music of the spheres
ache to go around

time more than stars
and further
though nothing will unend

it's like you could bend the whole piano
trick yourself!

the garden imagines a treaty was
the house cannot be far
goes over hills and all away

once there was nothing named here
and took us for a dare

the tune of it is trackless
brings accidents to

bush everywhere
garden in mind

swivel to till
bend ages with

like breakfast in the branches
where three fountains flow

and equally beyond the map
with sky as guide

you're in the tree
in the stars

come to the carpet slowly

the bush is faster than the garden

can't we just be lost here?

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Kit Kelen #846 - ANZAC Day


846
ANZAC day


in a trench of rain
saluting death
an out-of-empire experience

the day is local to us
otherwise, how here?

shall we nostalge a war then?
wrap me in this flag of theirs
where we believe we are

'emotional and moving scenes'
was this not upon us?

but no!
it comes again!

service for sacrifice
for just-like-Jesus
you won't know who did

blood in the trench
are ghosts to drink
it was for king and God

the zombie limbless of us lost
ghosts on the march
for one more day

in a week of rain
with bugle
send me a biscuit, that's all

breast pocket bible
tobacco tin
life saved

who's a statue now?

digger!
a baptism!

it was like this when a first sky fell
we gathered the stars to be

there's profit in this reverence
how politics is left

across the wide frontier
who lost?
who has a hundred years?

send some George or a kangaroo
to show we know you care

wounds are well beyond the grave
takes a minute the silence

then let's pretend Australia
that it's a common wealth

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Thirty Summers #127 Claine Keily

My mother phones. She speaks of carpets cleaned, clutter moved then moved again. She urges me to sweep my fingers over floors even when I am sleeping. It is your job she says to lift up the dust the instant it has settled. When she asks about the weather, so as not to make her jealous, I lie and say the skies are grey.

Kit Kelen #845 - in the madhouse


845
in the madhouse 
 

here's shit woman
always offering

go out on something soft you won't feel
into a box in the ground

here's the screamer
and the one who scolds
the one who'll take your food

sullen nurses are all the world come
because we placed a dollar lovely
in this trap
wars are to flee, you know

you have to have wished a way here

we are only visiting
we're a silence

none will remember my cruel remarks

the only test is the code

we're only visiting

like truth to its acre
far far off
the better things we do

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Kit Kelen #844 - people of the book

844
people of the book 
 

take pages from the dictionary
so that those things are gone

the one with the aeroplane
now all wings are birds'
and less than them
and angels

all affection is out
aestheticism
the whole affair

we were once
dwelling in this thought
that was an inkling us

things are true because you dream

tunefully, that was
in hours before beginning

comes like a wound truth
crackle comes through
the who-we-are is deep down

scratch it comes off
shines medals
flies a flag
salutes

and forward!
with the ways about

as if it all once were written
so that is the why

in back and forth time
like stars to a darkness knit

we know ourselves full of light

Monday, April 23, 2018

Kit Kelen #843 - west, pinking for it



843
west, pinking for it


lovely in the last light
April all around

warm Sunday
in the after falls

and grey
so lines have drawn

the light that lets
the yellow in

the light that lets
the brown

and all around
the forest green

this is the garden's
beginning on me