Clark Gormley #1 Print media

judging by the errors

in the newspaper

the subeditors

are as stretched

as the elastic

in my old underpants

calling into question

their ability to cover

the important matters

Kit Kelen #943 - to be secular

943

to be secular

I want to not believe in your God

so fanciful – how hard can it be?

that goes for your angels and prophets,

your devil – come as a job lot I believe

made everything your God

and he still blames you and me

audacity! what a beard, this one

He got such great discussions going

just by being the One

because he don't like competition

He was once mine, I believe

but somebody must have got over it

I know that you don't believe in Him either

but it's your God I want to not believe

in whom there is the art of heaven

comes with a lot of mumbo jumbo

though one must admit well said

I don't want to believe in the lot

those tablets, taboos, wacky commandments

none of those arbitrary ancient laws

the sexist stuff, the racist, murder-the-kids

because I said, then there's the ethnic cleansing

I want to not believe the whole book

though there are some beautiful bits

I'd like to argue with a rabbi

but will there be one to argue with me?

I want to not believe in your fluff

and – strike me dead –

I don't believe that this cloud collection

ever tossed a bolt about

was even a single word said

Kerri Shying R # 489 rubbed along the skin enough to bring

was it  red blood   that  called out Mars so close

or how my mother said     the scent    of

lemon verbena    loud enough to drown out

battlefields      mosquitos       the sound of

crying girls     one crushed leaf

rubbed along the skin  enough to bring

an army   sniffing round the yard   shields

round as wheels   dumped in piles under the gums  

Dad yelling out      get off out

the squeak of the screen door    while

the wall    got blood smears     for the pain

Kit Kelen #942 - everyone was God once

942

everyone was God once 

 

no names then

you just had to see

and it would all be

could make what you liked

tell whoever would listen

or no one at all

it was an everyday here-we-are making

a very reasonable thing

everyone was God once

that was before all the trouble it caused

no names

it was we ourselves resounded

you didn't have to believe in breakfast

it was a frugal time we all had

vanity!

everyone began making gods

and saying they'd always been

would forever

some of them looked just like me

just like you

there was listening at the door

but never heard the upstairs trample

we were named naming to begin

avatars of inkling fallen

no trouble at all

and time behind us, time ahead

everyone was God once

that's a story to tell

I make up all my own material

it's good to be God

in the poem

he said

you'll just have to

take that for gospel

Kristen de Kline #217 That was it.

+
At the door
where the dead men
chatter

her breath
slowed
down

the vagrant pineapple
hit the wedding picture

it toppled downwards
onto the sheepskin rug

she said something
none of us could decipher

That was it.

+
After three days
you all slept

I sat beside her
listening to her breathing

I could still feel
her lips on mine

you told me it was impossible
she had passed a day before

I watched her blow smoke
rings - her breath, laboured

Was this it.

+
The air was thick
under both my eyes

you said: it looks like
a bad mascara job

we took some laughing gas
returned to Faggot's Landing

you held my hand in yours
kissed the nape of my neck

then the ward
went very quiet

the duty nurse said:
you must get some rest

Gloria Gaynor was belting
out: I will survive

That was it.

Rob Schackne #719 - "let me bring"

                   let me bring
                   stormwater
                   to the party
                   with music
                   hear it again
                   all that was
                   sucked away
                   soak all this
                   let me bring
                   the damned
                   the drowned
                   the wet babies
                   hear it again
                   let's hear it for
                   all tomorrows

Kit Kelen #941 - Cy Twombly (ekphrastic)

941

Cy Twombly

instructions after the event

(ekphrastic) 

scratch at

tall stairs

in a storm of roses

soundtrack untitled

seems all left hand

I am climbed

cake is candle

scribble spare for

pour like a fountain

flow spill sign

fall through

funnel to map

pay no attention where

by means of stray inclusion

not a moment's rest

keep loose

scatter snippet

line must be from somewhere

symmetry would kill

something solid may be beaten flat

there will always be children for laughter

world merely of objects afloat

no light stopped

this is a sky full of boats

and gone

fare over the edge

here borrow my frenzy a bit 

Kerri Shying R # 488 - plastered in the sky you blood red moon

eating the soused plums from the ume shu

in bed  licking the science from my wrist

thinking  roasted pepitas   spicy  for the soup  

         who    perfected   directed   that 

 I woke early   looking for my awe hit 

 plastered in the sky    you   blood red moon

hiding tidy  in the cloudbanks    there goes

my weekend           nothing’s mystic

unless I see it         please don’t explain 

my dreams today     how the coffee bean goes

from green        to    what it means to me

Rob Schackne #718 - "Sitting in"

Sitting in
the tropical hills
watching a peewee

eating
the afterlife
follows life
in this one
or what
precedes it
much of a muchness
if you
haven’t been
paying
attention
or if you have
much of a
muchness
really

Kit Kelen #940 - victims of instinct

940

victims of instinct

cosy up with to be more

and do the inside out illusion

love to be loved

and that's a song

sometimes we go upside down

top to tail in out

or round the tree

believe me

and I know you do

it's just this once I cannot lie

here hold this while I come for you

and sing so no one else can see

it's deep in the eyes we love

skip with it step sprung

led by the moon

by the nose

by the way

I am a crocodile sometimes

moat my whim

and dress the part

often begins with conversation

and must be only half at bay

you'll get a glisten after – love that

though there could be grumble up to

or even a cat attacks

once swan swam or rather glide

and all anticipation

that's when walk on air

dream dark in the belly

till rub tug – rude enough for you?

have we the skills, the nous?

you always come to me as a question

and you can call me tiger, do it

when any word would break the spell

faster, slower, further, less

you wouldn't think a body could

but then a body's done it

how much of each does other know?

the heart is listening here for us

and sometimes waits as well

we call out heart to heart all soulful

have a mind to it

you'll lose your head

and you could give

call deed and it can come with title

there are vast estates in skin

peasants have suffered from

and sometimes they have overcome

indelicate these manners

set to sea hammock

slow motion in whale

elephant so

out of the bath

sometimes weakness overcomes

it only helps me to be creature

hello you

well oiled machine

and beautiful music

we cannot keep

pitter patter

snug in sack

with steady rain

and in another skin altogether

I have instincts

of the victim

cringe when

out of the egg

all leap

Rob Schackne #717 - "As unlikely"

As unlikely
as I will
stay up
till 3:00am
to watch
another
lunar eclipse
is alien life
on Mars
in an old lake
underground
so too bad
and well
not guitars

Kit Kelen #939 - my father (who art in heaven if you like)

939

my father

(who art in heaven if you like)

Houdini he

managed a complete escape

chased a ball around the world

and almost home again

not quite

he escaped all kinds of things

words stick for years

but he got free

he ran out of his own head

he got away from words

found words

he actually escaped from himself

you can give one away you know

a country

a language

a tribe

a class

vast estates he was freed of

so much history he shook off

my father forgot

who he had to be

he was like Jesus

and did it for me

and he forgot to tell me too

he remembered to forget 

comes to me in dreams 

he tells me all kinds of stories 

in heaven if you like 

there's an art to being there

Ken Trimble # 48 No ones perfect

The older I get the less I know
when I was young it was the sixties
and I ingested all the rage and wildness and
all the fuck you I could muster.

My old man would say
wait till you get to forty,
well I've passed that, and I'm
older than him now.

I'd argue just because I could,
if the sun was up I'd say its night .

Then that security blanket
called family dies or disintegrates .

Your on your own and you know
this world ain't no Disneyland

though some think life is one
big cartoon.

I don't know what it takes
to be human, I mean is it to
live as long as possible,

have a nice job, house, wife,
kids and car, is it playing by
some rule that some other
prick made up just so you
don't ruffle their feathers.

This stuff doesn't define me,
writing, its a tiny part of
who I am but who cares
to listen.

Nobody's perfect,
everyone suffers,
rich and poor,
the powerful and the weak.

Have you ever listened
to ordinary, its not so
bad.

Washing dishes is ordinary
and it gets your hands clean
at the same time.

Compassion is listening
to the suffering being
part of it.

Someone said when asked
about life do you only choose
the good bits.

The answer came back, no
I want the lot with my hamburger,
every fucking thing,
the wars, the horrors, the sex,
the holy, the Gods , the laughter,
the sadness, the pain and the joy.
I want it all.

Rob Schackne #716 - Bush stone-curlew

Bush stone-curlew

                       for Jenny Thorley

Nocturnal
groundbird
the weelo
teaches
the chicks
to freeze
motionless
in long grass
do not move
till we come
back for you
you’re never lost
but wails
and keens
and wanders
the streets
in mourning
for the first man
a scream-fest
a full moon
eclipse tonight
not carpe diem
or harbinger of death
(couldn’t care less)
but are dead
and wish to be alive

Kerri Shying R # 487 - it's been put out to be taken

some things   turn out to be  the opposite of

lightning strikes    that day you got the moon

for me   wrestling the white iron seat

into the back of your small car   you said

are you sure

it’s been put out to be taken

I said yes   but you    ready to knock

in case we were just stealing    arranged it

 in the front yard    talked about cushions

 I see the world    that wide disc   

watching over me     for free

Ken Trimble #47 Passages

In the mirror you see your face
but you are not there
You have gone way past sixty
inside the child still cries
You watch a film on the screen
that has already passed
You attended to her grave
she has already gone
You watch the closing night
It's already light.

Kristen de Kline #216 Another vagrant pineapple

+
another vagrant pineapple
sits on the retro coffee table

you gave it to me
as a birthday gift

but I can't tell him that
some bits of information

have to be edited out
what we think we know

melts like all that is solid
I'm onto the third wine

buried under Home and Away 
his outbursts evaporate

+
your one from the Sunshine Coast
that plastic Big Pineapple

it sat on your wooden bar
adjacent to the beer bottle collection

we all wanted it when you died
was it seventies nostalgia

or a piece of you
the green leaves faded

to an off-white lime
and the brittle yellow shell

bruised with minor dints
from being thrown across the living room

that was all we talked about
when you died

that bloody pineapple

Kerri Shying R # 486 - kicking out her legs in need

three pair of my pajamas   hung to dry 

I’m bored with wet pants   back to wearing

nappies   good mother  to my child

within   now she is shown

to be   alive    still

kicking out her legs   in need

exhausted    by surveillance    the mast cells

known by name   seeing  the Professor

more often than  my Mum   we chart

the good  we note the rest    watch

while  I dampen in the dusk

Kit Kelen #938 - putsch

938

putsch 

 

begins in a beer hall

but it was always there

drunk idea

fire a shot into the ceiling

nobody leaves

it's all on

begins with grudge

or disillusion

quickly come to vermin

to face of the earth

never goes well

this kind of thing

a lullaby hush

and you're gone

to make pure

to settle a thing

once and for all

get dizzy with it

never goes well

take drugs

dream it

all the thousand years

become a victim

you'll need big boots

a good grievance

then operatic

always a sound track

can involve old gods

they come for me

just an idea

then haven't a home to go

minor chords

and dischords

I'm a book to burn

technical knowhow

follow a rule

alternativ?

stabbed in the back

sold down the river

it comes again

so drunk no one

remembers the place

digging this sky out once more

comes as a master

ashen and gold

till death delighting

all agree or else

enthusiasm

this our forever misfortune

until forget again

all to burn

a lullaby hush

and you're gone

Kit Kelen #937 - the keys

937

the keys

to houses long gone

are passed on from parents to children

as if there were a hope of return

when there never was a country

and now that country is gone

half a century more

since the bulldozers

since thieves took the whole quarter

the village, the suburb, the town

and they have better bulldozers now

can we ever come back?

return to the land?

here are the keys for another world

to where time stood

you have to imagine the doors

and the dinner, the children, the telling

the truth of who we are

which key for which door?
who will remember?

there never was any water here

but we could always find it

always like this

a stoop in the still

then the big desert winds

village swept off

town over town

a city then empires

each from another's dust

and the key to the house

to the country, the heart

can't remember if I turned off the stove

can't remember if the door was locked

that's what the key is for

their houses

their country

their hearts

their keys

a pile of rust

in our hands

the past will always return to you here

that is the curse of the place

Kerri Shying R #485 - all heaven upside down

We’re waiting for the rain waiting    for the

fat  washed dock cranes

to run with silver

oceanic

water

all heaven  upside down

the river

forms up roads

tidal  running in from suburbs

hurtle   with the full moon and the king tide

meet  up   point a finger   dirt brown  far out into  sea

Kristen de Kline # 215 So many dreams (thanks Rob.S)

So many dreams
land with a thud
in the safe house
where I woke up
we speak in tongues
I lose my mind
outside the waves
crash hard
break against
the sea wall
what am I trying to say
you order a third Margarita
trace the salt on the glass
so many dreams
another Margarita
what was I thinking

James Walton #107 Blow your trumpet, Gabriel

The wind here peels skin

hones out the truth

birds stall in the veracity of physics

dogs smile after farting

knowing the full irony

of a mad obligation

last night I dreamed

of the mounted police charge

that long leap at Olympic Park

the final tide of conservatism

washed away we thought

leaving the river turned out

stench of mud howling condoms

dried out take aways

look to the south west

where the clouds churn for hail

prepare to scrape calcium

make cheek bones of panther

the unbroken gather there

an exhibition curated

by a jigsaw of lives

survivors of age and penury

and the small people

flecked at by society’s tail

smile at what they can

Government should fear us

not the fleeing immigrant

one day a gentler hand

may arrange the pieces

patch the dreamy enamels

float the bottle into each House

rub the sides in new earnest

whisper a downpour of votes

if you stand into the gale

all it takes is breath

Ken Trimble # 47 The Hope trilogy part two

There was a secret in this man's life that gave him a brooding look, somewhere he got lost. Hope thought of the first time he won at gambling and the rush it gave him. The noise inside that windowless mausoleum reminded him of a dementia unit at dinnertime as people laughed, cried, screamed and died all for a game of dice.  Strung out zombies in the big kahuna. Before this there was no gambling, he was safe, and because of that, there wasn't a need. It started when life got unsafe, that's when he decided to take risks.  He got swallowed by the whale and tried to savage his way out, and all around him were the fallen angels of Shanghai.  You lose your soul and buy a ticket to hell. Your life becomes a shotgun breakfast. Hope remembered his friend who told him, junkies never take holidays. Why he'd sell his own mother for one last crack at the prize.  He wondered why the Casino had no prayer room because he saw people on their knees begging for a win . It was the full catastrophe as the clock chased midnight. Outside the young were making out by the Yarra and the river was alive with serpent rainbows from a greater God. Inside Hope sat numb, losing it all, detached like a Buddha, and all around was this terrific noise. 

Rob Schackne #715 - "And sure I"

            

                       And sure I
                       never knew
                       he said one night
                       it was even there
                       like a dentist

                       in a bad part of town
                       the dirty side
                       of enlightenment
                       where the bacteria
                       hungry maggots
                       and rats race out
                       to clean the mind
                       a good point
                       this lawless land
                       but first I want
                       another beer

Ken Trimble #46 The Hope trilogy part one

Hope didn't want want religion, philosophy, a car, a house, wife with three kids and dog.  He didn't want a good job, position or respect. He didn't want work full stop. He didn't want honourable things, he wanted a woman. Anyone to lay down with, brunette, redhead, blonde, it didn't matter if she was a beauty or not, he just wanted to talk, to touch, to fuck in anyway he could. He would haunt those streets of hamburgers and cigarettes with its multi-use layered cakes of Italian, Greek, Australian, Slav, Maltese world of rambling good nights and hellos. He wanted nakedness. Wanted a woman. Love paid up without sentiment. Love without love. Love without suffering. He wanted love anonymous, he didn't want names, histories, songs, and poems. He wanted to walk through the darkness having women when and where he wanted. No attachment, he just wanted to feel alive. The streets walked crows and gropes as the night blasted out moaning from some cheap burger joint between the smack and coke. Down the road dust rose like an angel greeting him as the sun rose over the apartments. Above him glowed a clear blue light.

Kit Kelen #936 - Job rules OK? or lovely to be chosen

936

Job rules, OK?

or

lovely to be chosen

(notes for a children's picture book)

why some may have wanted out of this deal

plagues of warts, spots, hives

then aches and bones break

all inside on fire

till at death's door

and you think it can't get any worse?

well then

a funny thing happened

I was tortured

I was gassed

I was burnt at the stake

garotted, drawn, quartered

had my dick set alight

stuffed down my throat

had my head chopped off

throat slit

sometimes simply choked

(much effort but cost effective)

more often I was hanged

(rope still good)

or there were bullets in the back

(one to the neck does the trick)

some slow convulsions for an end

when I was not quite dead

and let's not forget I was betrayed

informed on, reported, turned in

a certain amount of spittle

if you've the means of wiping away

a church bell struck

or some sun rose

and there was an end of me

threw me in a pit to rot

I'd given up the ghost by then

do you think that would stop them?

lethal injection

beaten to death

always new technologies, fads

skinned alive

experiments!

they tried me without blood

then without organs

then no skin

flogged me within an inch of life

(but on the other side)

they buried me alive sometimes

just to see how long I could last

never say martyred

it was just bad luck

divine inscrutable will

they made me a cannibal the once

I tried out for every new lethal disease

and all this while

time stood with

the miracle was me

still here

hardly know who I am

or what to call myself

you've got to laugh

or cry

but softly, softly

that's a good tribe

trust me, friends

you could be next

curse God and die

that's some advice

how's that going for you?

Kerri Shying R # 484 - things they glow just to be seen again

we cut the long jute threads   eventually  the green beans 

 fell out   into our hands  not a wisp of smell 

 so far from coffee   as it sat inside the  pink  60’s

 canister     you said    how life has grown

 so calm  the place is shining 

     things   they glow     just to be seen again

free from time spent weeping

below the porch boards    in the clock

where all the keys  were set to live

no matter  where the lock   that fit

sat     waiting to be turned

Ken Trimble #45 Night of Shiva

Lost in the bardo
between existence
and extinction
I kept remembering
back to school days
of that lost and lonely
childhood mumbling
many amends along
the way.

Clouds of obscurity
cover me like a veil
between sky and earth.

Wild dreams come with monks
performing rituals-
I am beckoned to the altar
surrounded by a bunch
of Whitely Streiber freaks.

I'm surrounded  by water
and as I bend down before
Rinpoche he gives me a new
name Samdup Djore
becoming the fulfilment
of one's wishes,
a lighting bolt of wonder,

and at that moment I saw
a double rainbow over
hills and I thought,
wow, who needs drugs.

Strange moments haunt
me watching the holy mountain
of Arunachala as it

turns to fire and there a thousand
bodies prostrate to Shiva
as I stand watching my apocalypse
now .

A woman rushed towards me,
her eyes wide and deep as
a black moon falling, twisting
and screaming to the ground
collapsing exhausted by her
ecstasy.

The night of circumambulation
begins as the seething mass
are joined by the spiritual
madness of humanity's cauldron
chanting songs to God.

And just then I felt I was going
to fall, and as I was about to,
I felt a hand grab mine, looking
at this strange figure,
I realised it was my own fallen
angel.

Rob Schackne #714 - "Almost voted"

Almost voted
for a pubic hair
when I was sixty-four
then I wiped my face
and found that it was yours
no curl could ever run for office
or set loud agendas on TV
I stayed in
I swept the floor 
of what went before

how silent are the good old days
now that you still love me