Sunday, March 31, 2019

Rob Schackne #919 - "Is it still"


Is it still
rusted from
the inside
surface glorious
all the books I read
autumn comes
the rain in stages

turn the page
a few drops only

Kit Kelen #1187 - tinder confession




1187
tinder confession

little arrow hit me
when I was just a kid

hit the bottle
and the bottle hit back
hit it again
went down

hit up
hit out

things were heavenly
just for a bit

hit a brick wall
steady forehead thump
called that a head massage

came away
best dressed
rolled on a coaster
coasted a bit

hit at
scored
hit after hit
hit the thing for six
could have been a little Hitler

but took a hit myself
very palpable

went down for the count
saw stars
saw sheep, saw goats
over hills far away

staggered up again

they said
have a laugh at yourself, won't you just?

red bull, will I?
that was the limit
hit out wildly

hit the roof
shook it
took off
sky was no glass ceiling
I was a rocket
reached for the stars

but I was a handful of dust
it transpired
weren't you? aren't we?
nothing breathing out there

then it hits you
the whole shebang
the Hittites knew
hid in a cave
took in the view

hit rock bottom

started digging
mattock then pick
some kind of jackhammer

so many of us here in hell
you know how I paved the way

down among the demons
and everyone’s a lover
it's so hard

after all that
in the parade
I was a hit,
single

might have been something I said

Anna Couani #230 Complex beginning

complex beginning

from the first beginning
before I have a chance to tap into the inexhaustible well
all the issues of daily life
sure they’re more intellectual than they used to be
too much reading already in the early morning
or maybe especially because of that
they crowd out the well
the opening of it 
the only hope is to observe the cat
who knows how to meditate for hours on end
follow her example
before jumping on the phone to discuss
further complex events

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Kit Kelen #1186 - what the war did to me so long before I was


1186
what the war did to me so long before I was
or
circumstance of flight


a swatch of light
call colour of the past

say what you don't know
won't hurt you

I don't know to name it

in those eyes
whose

though we be the biblical umpteenth
and I'm a kind of cutup

here's confronting justice
so much best never mentioned

all another world was gone
that's how we are here

it wasn't fate but hate
had them from me –
those whom I never met

still with us in our skins today
paint the thing over
as many seasons as days

as other skins
in other wars
worlds away as well

in a language I never knew
and won't have time to learn

heard them in my childhood
crazy dreams to be, to live

only a ghost comes this far
lore lost
and love
and all those objects meaning
to another fire

same sun
a trickery of reasons

hall of trophies
the ancestral loss

come through the wall and breathe

now all the agonies are mine
neither felt not saw

but eyes in which
my love was learned

all the past welled there

and the hand wound world runs down
still flickers

I take refuge in a song all out of tune
this is the past we're not to know

what did the war – so long before us –
what did the war take from you?

the war to which our weapons go –
what will it take from them?


Friday, March 29, 2019

Rob Schackne #918 - Ute (Snake Tanka)


Snake it out the brush
branches groaning in the ruts
dragged behind the ute

all that is contained inside
some lizards, beetles and ants

Kit Kelen #1185 - remains, not mortal


1185
remains, not mortal


tables we can't take

cigar box full of keys
(to nothing for a long while now)

the fridge apace
last chairs
microwave

dead aircon even

books no one can
or has the will to read

watches wanting batteries
but I don't think so

everything yet to be painted

came into the night
and slipped away

from dust
years passed

and the drinks go round
a speech is made

other centuries peer out of walls

where the slot car flew off the track

where dog bit guest
and tore down blinds

here sat by Rachmaninoff candles
and found the speechless world

house of echoes
like a death tried out

now the ashes
the Christmas angels are gone

draw back the curtains
day comes

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Rob Schackne #917 - "Trails of beetles"


Trails of beetles
the teams of ant
bodies will spread
maps we can't read


one dead creature
in the tall grass
putrid remains of
plans that didn't work


a pack of gods
enough concern
to exalt the second
that life gave up


evening comes
with a million sounds
it's small and slow
the thorns and glass

I get off my bike

I take the picture

Kit Kelen #1184 - little bird come

1184
little bird come

full of what’s
not speech
nor song

come
to the other world’s window
to wish

namelessly blue
and I know you

little bird
do you think
I am mirrored in this?

mine is the pond stood up
nothing bends this beak

a hit!  see so much
in the rain’s round soul

all your angles, calculation
heights, swoop
pirouettes of air

for love, for a meal, for a drink

how alien and in I am
to your trajectory

no branch, no twig
sufficient
but to the tip
and past

because you’re of this atmosphere

instinct to work
so play this way

and sometimes curious
landed, peer

o nest of nests
so sighted pure

the inward shelter
gods perform this it
you’re here to see

come to the window to wish
as insect otherworldly
delicious

and I’m in here
with history

the plan to take the tree down
because it is the book

come to the stilled wind
is the border

not a scratch of this sky
but because it catches

to show the dreamland
here within

I wave away
but bird wants more
it’s as if truth drawn to

warm blood, flight feathered
can you not see me, under glass?

this wanting is a kind of prayer
do you not know

your sun is up, your day is out
the song is all in you?

you cannot sharpen
beak this way

terrible student I am
not to know what it is

you are teaching me
may I guess?

just this?
what mystery to each
we others always are 

Tug Dumbly - Oedipus & Messiah


Oedipus & Messiah

Oedipus complex
meets Messiah complex
in a shopping complex
they plan to marry, buy a duplex
have a son named Rex.
They’ll embrace anti-pasto
anti-freeze
and the anti-christ.
They’ll live the life of Riley
the real McCoy
be happy as Larry
with Hobson's choice
but Murphy's Law says
they have Buckley's chance.

They hail mary
hail caesar
hail hitler
hail a cab

they honeymoon and send postcards
of the big potato
big banana
big sheep
big prawn
till she finds
the small penis
and writes a haiku on it
and sends it as a postcard to her lover.

Cowboy lover unwinds in his chair
serpentine cool
hair-trigger smile
coiled to spring

there's a blue baby in the bath
there’s a body in the pool
and that’s the end of act 1.

Meantime, ‘small packages
come in good things’
screams Oedipus enraged
engaging in bedroom,
bathroom, bar and brothel rage,
staging drive-by shootings,
home-delivered hits, takeaway killings
without the messy bits.
He goes looking for himself
finds god in a garbage bin
and goes home homes singing
there's an itty bit a hippy in everyone.

Messiah, eyes all a glisten, says
well stone the crows
till the cows come home
you snake in the grass,
you vulture, you fox,
you shark, you weasel, you ox.
All is forgave, come here you divil
as she takes him in like washing
Oedipus nuzzles her fond,
says the gall, the nerve, the hide, the cheek
humanity is listing,
but least we have each other ....

it's a funny old world
there's a lot to be said
there's a lot to be said
it's a funny old world

jesus I wish I had a dollar
for every dollar I ever had.





Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Jeffree Michael #65 Teena's Cleavage


She came she saw
blundered then it got worse
who throws themselves under a bus

nonplussed unremitting
calculated kettle black
just dig in when you're under attack

to call them green on Q 'n A
was that irony pardon me
or comedy theatre slow burn

it all seems pure abc to me
only Cleaver & Co join these dots
taking pleasure raking over old coal

perhaps a spot on Cal McGregor's
after morning show where such a diva
be the wonder of the party... just sayin'

she stole it from Howard anyway ...
on guns control  that was our idea...
no need for egging self-rising souffles

but on tv
the veil slipped

still think politics not theatre


Kit Kelen #1183 - because I made the time


1183
because I made the time

every day it’s there waiting
has to be woken

the story in the stone
the voice from out the air

the poem

must be because I made an appointment
or called upon some other cliché

draft let like window ajar
a door to foot

press beyond the thought and thinking
it’s as if a dream were daylit

comes back

the voice from out the air
the story in the stone

neither wish nor skies are summoned
yet a life may point to this

because I made the time

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Rob Schackne #916 - Landing

Landing


You don't stop
on the road to
look for cars


heatworn highway
a chance of rain
watch that laugh

the clouds flat
the slowest river 
move above the valley


the baby tight
the seat up straight
prepare for landing

the conversation
comes 'round to
how much we need

my heart beats fast
I watch both ways
I will not tarry

 

Stuart Rawlinson #93 - Morning at Entretat

Monet, or maybe Elstir 
Fiction blends with fact as

Certainty bleeds on the horizon
The little band off camera

Quelling the incoming tide
The land. The limitless sea

We’ll see things more clearly
When the sun finally sets

Kit Kelen #1182 - how tall was your poppy? or the stupid entitled come in to vote


1182
how tall was your poppy?
or
problems with democracy 2
or
the stupid entitled find their voice


the stupid entitled
come in to vote

they have come into their own

the ignorant
and no respect
who trust the hospital to cure them
who trust the car to go

and no!
no one landed on the moon
or knows the cause of drought or flood
there never was a Holocaust
the Nazis – who were they?

they smell conspiracies of knowledge

the stupid entitled
hate anyone smarter
(that’s just about everyone)
hate anyone different
(and that’s all of us)

frightened
they watch the world going down

make us less to be who they are

they have a little something to add to the flames

gun in one hand
and herbicide
and pesticide
chase the living world away

and curse

they cast about to blame

blissful in hate
which is their habitat

they wash!
and they are always more!

so secretly they vote

jealous of our everything
and mostly of our luck

the ignorant have our attention

the stupid entitled
they’re scared
stand guard

shall we call them the neighbourhood watch?

give this one a badge
a football and a beer

it’s someone wants to take my toys
and someone tells me – ‘listen! look!’

but ‘I will never do it!’

in every language there are such

progress
the train wreck
shovel it in!

‘how did we get here?’
they’ll never ask

but run the thing full bore

the truth is chocker with this type
and you can’t say their minds are made
when there can be no argument

accelerated mutation –
they forgot which story was
won’t admit of species

no one tells me anything
a smirk for all learning
back of the class

don’t know what age it is
how clock?
they dare not ask

it’s them with their ways we blame

history thought to safely forget
in such a place as this

greed comes
crooks a dirty hand
who’s that?
all innocence and smiles

don’t you dare the deity

someone is taking their something away

when I come for them
they’re scared
and something sacred touches
they wrap themselves all up in a flag
how tiny then they are

blindly, how cower
and strike me dead

do they know time will wash them away
will rot the very fabric?

how sharp the saw
fuel burns
make mine tree
and chip it

they are fearful
of how they have felt
fearful how they feel today

slip a hand under your skirt
no one sees

the ignorant line up
it’s their right
and they always are

imagine their no heaven

gullible, so led
they see a world
as little as themselves
as narrow

I curse
they curse
we’re all cursed

they vote for the end days
kingdom come
for the Golden Time
that’s known
cause gone

repeat themselves
they’re our… what was it? – I forget  
and this is the same day again

come into their own
the stupid entitled

the Nazis – who were they?
there never was a Holocaust

and no, no one landed on the moon
or knows the cause of drought or flood
the forest? – where was that?

the ignorant
and no respect
who trust the hospital to cure them
money with a bank
who know the car will go

they’re scared
wherever we laugh

of our knowing and not
and weigh the facts to reason

that is something they can’t do
they’re frightened
of everything they can’t admit
they won’t!
damn you

they are necessary

curse the rights their mothers’ won
and fathers too

jealous of the spun world
see the injured eyes

the stupid entitled find their voice
they have nothing to say

they vote

no use bemoaning
we can too

once they held a blade in hand
once they were emperor, king

Kerri Shying R # 611 - The Volcano at The Mater

 The volcano at the Mater


I visit the vent volcano     every time I come    the dino’s
who lived through everything but some comet

they are the patients in the halls   levelled
by internal explosions

drink my coffee in the loggia
waiting on the bloods

noise bounces    from nurses
from glass to beams   off and into starred

space   radiating to rooms where silent
cancer opens  a flowering doom

Tug Dumbly - Like a dog a retreating wave

Like a dog a retreating wave
the world I chased
to myself retreat
as the world returned

Anna Couani #229 shop window



shop window

sounds in the background
the out of focus doorways
multiple with steps
lift up to focus
then the sunlight 
from the front
and from the back
focus on the pink door out the back 
the burgeoning ficus
mound of sand

the lettering from the shop window
thrown across the floor
sunshine
a date a time
gates open
door closes

signs 
sighs
big windows
an eye on the street

the quiet for a moment

Monday, March 25, 2019

Kerri Shying R # 610 - Call home

Call home

pumpkins     always
running to the east

can’t you dissuade
such lack

of the stuff      that won
the wars

give passionate attraction
to the west

at the going down
of the sun

we shall shout
what the hell

do those pumpkins
think they’re

playing at

Kit Kelen #1181 - live to the magic of next


1181
live to the magic of next

for Anna Couani


the poem
someone I don’t know
comes at an appointed hour

as dreams will tangle
lost in days

you’ll need a moment
thoughtless

I have arranged it so

and look!
no capitals
no full stops

scratch at any surface
see how the pigment pours
sunshine
so digression

who can tell
what ghosts of the street?

another poem
as fresh sky laid
a new world every day!

over the tomb
of words where spoken
this now never said before

my poem
lost moments
bob in reverie

dodge
and weave the words

I wrestle myself to write
and often on the floor

see sprung fully armed
fresh warriors I must despatch
they’re one at a time
home on their shields

no flag to wrap

every technique is magic
a clockwork heart
this image is

because
who knows
I cannot tell

my home is full of mirrors
an open door
you call a draft

and even in winter
tight as a drum
the locked up head
lets in