Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Gillian Swain - 20 - you look like a butterfly

"You look like a butterfly
having issues with
metamorphosis" said
the child to the mother.
Had you not been grown
I may have thought it sweet.
Instead we have the
new adult appraising
the not so old mother.
You grin
I  limbo 
under your gaze
still full of the undecided
narrowly escape irony in your voice.
We laugh in loud colour.
The bones of a butterfly
are only in the wings.

Kit Kelen #1035 - pick up lines


1035
pick up lines

 

make a map
of the fallen

flowers have

set sea
or cheese

the home
consisting
of wake up here

strung along beaded
shell for the shore
must have ridden in

of let's draw
close and parallel

signs to confuse
we selves

strung with wire
a little bounce

the blinds
horns
and bedstead
sly of wink

have to have
voted for this

life is at any moment
cut up
collage

thrown
blown together

in a tent of colour laid

cast out of shadows
and stitched

I want to invent a game
out of all things existing
to play just where we are

the elements
exposed to us
will never be the same

Rob Schackne #801 - Wild Henry #2 "Everybody dresses"


Everybody dresses
like themselves
happy Halloween
on that note
so much pleasure
one big cartoon
no good reason except for joy
simply transformed

a table of cutlery
into a jazz band
playing up a storm
and the spoon
doing the shimmy


Kerri Shying R #540 - I need all my strength to put a sock on


commence     in sunlight try  
the coffee out in terracotta cup
adjudicating impact   on flavour
none     yet it was delicious to hold
this object    warm in both hands

I need all my strength to put a sock on

perhaps   I didn’t have to choose
tabi      all the fiddling    a morning
orchestra of understanding  hip
and tendon  metacarpals   tarsal bones
my body clears it’s throat

Tug Dumbly # 42 - Three Degrees of Okay


Three Degrees of Okay

Old farm sheds
perfect parallelograms
leaning aslant
in a frozen dance
with the wind.

Evening clouds
a slow salmon
as you breathe through
the gills of the sky.

How easy it is
for things to go right
to let slip the weight
of expectation
duck the pendulum
of pessimism
let it swing into the shadows
like a slow swooping bat.



Gillian Swain - 19 - Before you go in

Before you go in
remember to crouch
down  put your palms on the dirt
say a prayer that's not for me to know
earth will hear  she is listening  knows
your voice as your blessing murmurs into her  she will
know you.

They're only people in there
sitting on hard chairs  legs folded on timber floor
and they want you
that's why they're here
hungry for  your voice
they want to feel it  seep through skin into bone
invite mesma let it 
carry  let them ride

Before you go in
understand it's a moment
an echo

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Clark Gormley #58 Cargo Trousers

pockets and pockets!
pockets galore!
hanging from your hips
they swing and rattle
with your stride
the dance partner apparel
who's guaranteed
to follow your lead

want to smuggle
some contraband?
you could fit a whole
orchestra in there!
brass in pocket
keys on the side
strings hanging
from the belt
woodwind at the rear

no need for a bag
when you can bear
it on your person
carry that weight
on your pelvis
and maintain
peak fitness
downstairs

remember
nothing arouses
like cargo trousers

Rob Schackne #800 - Wild Henry #1 "The fisherman looks"


The fisherman looks
at the town bookie
& the bookie looks
at the town butcher
& the butcher looks
at the town poet

who all look alike
yes yes it's true
they'll be as happy
as Eskimo kids

eating popsicles
but everyone knows
it’s hard to keep track

Kristen de Kline #233 - In no particular order

+
the gap between the
curtains, it lets light

in - party lines drop out -
chatter about elite school

head girl’s upper thighs
decorated with bruises

after she left [how many]
nicks in (y)our flesh, did

you slice, did it gush
run   clot   flow   drip

can I smear my hands in it
     over you?

+
where did you drop
the thousand kisses

I don't know if I'll see you (again)

when you cut     that
deep      does it hurt

that's life, they say
falling out and in of:

love

breath

words

in no particular order









Kerri Shying R #539 - Son


Son

remember  after my hysterectomy  you
were only 14   and they sent me home
after one day    to you   alone

we watched
The Human Centipede
together

bundled
on the lounge

laughing

surrounded by ice cream
caramel   biscuits   baci

bums sewn to mouths
seemed the right choice
for light entertainment

none of it seemed like it was
ever going
to end

Kit Kelen #1034 - the horse is falling apart



1034
the horse is falling apart
(some William Kentridge witnessings)


so dancing
fixed wing

if an aerial points
creak, spin

the world itself
on legs now

I climb into
a blur
to indicate time

fish march to the hook
bombs come down

by metronome set

a wind up geometry
with birds

thrown to sunshine

a caged sphinx
and a hammer falls

stars until the planets swim off

this is what the music shows

all that's sea is left

Tug Dumbly # 41 - Four Bits of Some Whole


Four Bits of Some Whole


1

Somewhere walk the world
all our unbecome selves
a half-done crop of little ghosts
a pale crying child army
we pass through
and our temperature drops
and you think ‘that was me
another me I’ll never be’.


2

She said 'my heart’s a beanbag
people crash into for a while
before getting up and moving on
rested, unscathed
dumb to the dent
they leave behind.
But you,’ she said ‘you I like.
You’ll never fully disappoint me.
You’re like something good
that constantly fails to arrive'.


3

Tightly bound the bloody bud
of my heart
a cupped candle in all these hands
and I have been loved
more than I have loved
and I have been forgiven
more than I have forgiven
and I have been so lucky to know
there’s no healing the whole
of our unknowing.


 4

What is this thing you say you seek?
this shy creature
creeping round the perimeter
this hart nosing blind
this animal gently scrabbling
behind a board
in the dawn kitchen

you get too close
and it stops.

It just stops
like a mouse
like a cricket
like a heart
like a clock
it just stops.

Even the fridge holds its breath
at that floorboard creak …

what is this thing you say you seek?





Monday, October 29, 2018

Gillian Swain - #18 - after the cups

Long drive home takes moments they
could do me for neg driving I'm
still with you  in that room  don't
want to leave  time between
getting back  too far from now
too far  too far

Rob Schackne #799 - "The greatest small things"













          The greatest small things
          waiting to accumulate
          words of passion, or error

          The madness of language
          carves from the same block
          some strange new shape


          You say what goes around
          comes around, a fallacy
          we repeat until the heat fades


          Try kindness, or peace
          those were the moments of grace
          that tried to oppose nature

          Emerson would put it:
          Dream delivers us to dream,
          and there is no end to illusion.



Tug Dumbly # 40 - All the Parks


All the Parks

Little German trench mortar
squats in the geraniums
of the Deloraine RSL, Tasmania,
a century since you burped a shell,
this long snooze suits you well,
snuggled little keepsake, greyly 
dozing amongst generations
of flaming flowers, keeping 
company a wee obelisk of the
district’s dear dead dairy farmers.

In Berry lies another of your kind,
under palms in a park, sleeping
the seasons by, near a wall of
fading names that won’t keep
open their eyes. And I think of all
the cannons in all the parks in all
the towns in all the world, all the
25 pounders and Ack Acks
clambered on by kids, dripping
sweet pigeon shit and icecream.



Kit Kelen #1033 - whelmed over

1033
whelmed over 
 

bowled

held
and just this moment in

a breath

frozen
wilted

here's the weather

sweep of words
to which we're lost

starved
stuffed

called to the conversation

hug bears
take treetops

swing
wing
slide

with just what's here
the any order of it

can you hear the song of it?

neither seeing where we are
nor where the way is leading

your touch
as easy
nod

a simple flower to its sun
and all eyes up to be



James Walton #126 woof woof woof



at 3am dogs bark
for the bone of moon

words spinning
jacks out of the boxes

that coil beneath the bony lid

of the sleepless too
reach out
you can touch them

some are untied knots
daisy chains of Mondays

so wide that bitter swell
the surprising taste
of second street laneways

kitchens light awake
but no doors open

to the moth of sentence
a batter of intrusion
the slipped anchor scrapes

there was a dancing pony
one made of naphthalene
a cajole of wakefulness

one last wear
a lover’s parting gift

the last cold night of Spring









Jeff Skewes #51 djembe fola lesson


dun dun du
counting one two three
in 4/4 8/12 easy huh

dexterity rains on Fola
djembe big jam
slap tone bass we folla

mispronouncing lix
misspelling ancient song lions
African dance began it all

we tried so hard to stay on time but
double clutched far too soon
meshing mental gears it's carnage

gu gu gaku
gu dun dun
sublimity in some hands

us galloping in galoshes
rupture any chance of metronomy
in this deafening chamber of singles

still master's svelte rapid fire
never looked easier
her consummate contra chops so countered

carrying everyone into the elephant's groove
while we drumming underwater
in lead gloves dancing on the moon

smile






image j skewes water colour pencil journal entry

Gillian Swain - #17 - maybe this is the place to start telling the story



yes perhaps it is in the morning of silence
that we find ourselves lost
and in the 
mourning of silence  the
longing for noise  the sound of presence

maybe this is the place to start telling the story

companions populate our rooms
even when absent
some bodies and beings still one
it's getting emptier here
involuntary decluttering

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Clark Gormley #57 Walking Home Tonight

walking home
tonight past
Wickham Park
at dusk I
couldn't help
but hear the
call of the
channel bill
a banshee
screaming while
strumming the
guiro at
the back of
her throat with
a wooden
stick

a koel
then started
arguing
monoto-
nously to
point out that
she was not
the only
parasite
bird who could
make a damn
racket

then hearing
the kick drum
providing
a throbbing
techno-beat
coming from
the Lass O'
Gowrie I
suppose at
a volume
that I could
just about
feel in my
chest from two
blocks away

I at once
appreci-
ated the
beguiling
sounds of na-
ture



Kit Kelen #1032 - get

1032
get 
 

go get
get up
from the get go
get up and at
get around
get stuffed
get off
get out of it
get over the thing
get out of the way
get right at
get into
get off your spotty
get over yourself
get along little dawgie
get off me
get it up
get me off
get down
get dirty
get gone with
get to know
get it on
garn
get it
go on
get

Tug Dumbly # 39 - A Mad Stampede of Tongues


A Mad Stampede of Tongues

You get so sick
of having to put things into words
to conceptualise, make concrete
or concrete as words can be
as they pour forth
into the rough formwork
of sentences
so much nicer, don’t you think
just to let thoughts roam freerange
so much more natural and humane
to let ideas peck and scratch
about the yard of the mind
kick over an old corn cob
take a dust bath
graze the Dandelions
softly crop the mental acres unconstrained
by the electric fence
of paragraph and sentence
all that barbed wired
of bloody utterance?



Saturday, October 27, 2018

Lizz Murphy #377 & Michele Elliot SKYLINES 3



Remembering the moonlight   drawing on sea blanket

Michele Elliot

 



I travel
for the skies
draw stars

Lizz Murphy 

 

Rob Schackne #798 - "Is it my local sky"


Is it my local sky
it's all one example
watching the tankers
a Chinese white dolphin
counting the rascals
bearing witness
upon the surface
they've studied mirth
& the rigours of laughter
but exopsychology
no interest in my field
they're out of their minds

Kit Kelen #1031 - even moonless

1031
even moonless


even clouded

it’s a sky of trees
in the lower reaches

you can smell it first thing
branches, song leaning

as if it could be painted, shot
when no one ever touches

gods vibrating
all for far
as if the world turned here
right now

each leaf pointing
as if in trumpet tin

arcs, all asides, odd angles

you think you know the tune
but it’s different every time

as if these words held this one up

all of it yet dark

as if no one were here
when actually it’s Christmas crowded

everyone’s wishing too
as if in a window framed
as if the light would yet catch
where just this one star shone

Tug Dumbly # 38 - All the Times I Should Have Died


All the Times I Should Have Died

Four drunk young men
sooling down Bulli Pass
early Sunday morning
in a Morris Minor ute
two in the front
two in the back
when suddenly the one
beside the driver contorts
his bean pole frame
in the tiny cab squats up
on the seat pulls down
his daks and presses his
arse cheeks against
the rear window to chuck
a browneye fair in the face
of his mates in the tray
and any traffic following
all of them howling
tears of mad mirth
ripped back at right angles
across the cheek
like streamers in the wind
by the bucketing velocity
and the sheer joy of idiocy
as they wind screaming
like a bright red bullet
fired by the homicidal god of piss
down the mountain
with that little eleven hundred
wound howling to the max
gearstick thrashing the whole
thing clattering like a cage
of shopping trolleys
swerving side to side
bodies in the back thrown
like sacks of dead weight
hungry for the gorge
lurching screeching
into the curves with the
epileptic judder of a sideshow ride
or shot-to-shit Battle of Britain
Hurricane barely controllable
spewing smoke and oil
clipping trees trying
to make it back to base ...

though here that’s really not the case.
Just four young lairs
in a little red clown car
sheering a mountain, off their face
heirs to it all, ripping and tearing
the air to the future.

Friday, October 26, 2018

Rob Schackne #797 - "How fast you see"
















           How fast you see
           five birds fly overhead
           remember I couldn’t

           (this solid air)
           love all there is
           two circle back around
           not very far to go
           a feather and a hand
           the clouds roll in

Kit Kelen #1030 - mulberry time


1030
mulberry time
the season in a day

as a moon to its fullness
so this tree
in its cloud of bird
appoints the hour
all feast

Kerri Shying R # 538 cuckoos by the score take the falling calls of Koels


met the others at the coal face   went home to
living in a   human body  dump site  
activated  by the beeps   of the electrics
calling as the chirps of baby birds   from the trees
coming summer   come the  rip offs

cuckoos by the score  take the falling calls of Koels

as warning  what’s on offer   take that
tour  around the summit    of your hindsight
commence    the slow  climb down    more
people fall   descending     than looking up
clear the ground beneath your feet     to see


Thursday, October 25, 2018

Kristen de Kline #232 How many kisses

how many kisses
a million blown to

smithereens, another
slap on the cheek

it's all fleeting - you say
how we measure loss

and longing, five X's
on the back of a postcard

you say - it's all relative
what the hell went down

your hands,
I miss them

how many kisses does it take
how deep does it go

it hurts you know

blowing (not) in the
breeze, shadowing me

on the last mile home
stars in the skies, one

hundred lights in the bar,
waltzing: I'm not counting

what does it take



Rob Schackne #796 - "The children chant"














         
                                                                                                                     The children chant
         green & blue makes purple
         not everyone’s taste
         
the spread of trees
         the spread of heaven
         where the going's good
         
how is it my mistake
         the day wanders by
         an afterthought of colour


Kerri Shying R # 537 - Urbanistan


Urbanistan

we stopped off
at the corner shop  the grocery
at Carro    for the seedlings

made a pact about
them languishing
unplanted     forever

as if the porch had stood in
for Nauru 

when you left   exhausted
by another medication  change

  how many in  so few years
  is this  

I limped in 
took their pots

at least    I dumped
their roots  soil
on soil

the bureau says   sending rain
 
the small rosemary  that
replaces  the one
 I got when I moved in

 it lost sight of how to be
 a plant  
 when propagating

the mother died when
I gave
the child away