Kit Kelen #989 - I was buried in a poem

989

I was buried in a poem 

 

no one would find me there

wrote the silly thing myself

like at the beach

when you heap the day over

so friends must dig you out with a beer

(all they have in their hands)

a moment there though you could

be left to the bluebottle tide

washed off like a message bottle

and read

like the far bloated

island of trash more than fish

set like a moon

like the stars

on dry land

I was in the papers – trail and pile

now and then caught fire

wagtail came to the window

but I couldn’t tell the time

had a sort of Sunday heart

sleeve hung

mouth of it there was

blue mooning

and Bush Week too

what I felt?

who could say?

your guess as good as mine

no fallacy intentional

but well there you go

greatness! so soon was I forgotten

words were away on the stone

I myself was weather in there

sport the morons watched

and then there were the times I drowned

took poison, bolt upright in electric chair

your hair on end everybody cared

it was tragic and you had to laugh

a little cough

the lights go out

there was a poem lodged in my brain

(that severed head with time for a haiku)

wonderful company there

in the poem

everyone you ever knew

every animal was calling

worlds were upside down or you were

there was affection of those times

and how we kept afloat

but the sun was always shining

that’s how it is to look back

mind righting itself

so the past adjusts

I had several lives in it

creatures were all made up

ready for the ball

and bounced along

and off the walls

if anyone asked –

because it’s a poem!

haven’t you been there there?

and what was meant?

who meant it?

how?

someone once peeped in

but they wouldn’t stay long –

some deficit disorder

it’s not like any other place

no one will find us there

Gillian Swain # 7 - Touch language and bad decor (draft)

They move in rippled shadow

women who know skin  how to make it 

goosebump

Velour wallpaper  lush limbs  velvet

fuzz smooths over ridges from

a day not worth mentioning

Tongue talks nape into  froward reach

smooth sheet  lighting that promises

to keep secret  the meeting

the preference  the fetish

They move  away from who they 

are to everywhere else

become supple in her fingers the

wrinkled notes stay

in the wallet  only card here

but which one

are you

today

Kit Kelen #988 - at a stretch (a day at home)

988

at a stretch

a day at home

one at a time

and this one today

the clouds I comment on are gone

stars while you watch blink shift

all comforts of

and awkward to be

making home

so as to

leaf by leaf

be breeze borne

stretching into skin

never quite fit

how small to this sun

soon swimming

trying to breathe

with the given equipment

through moonleaps

and a little pizzicato

I distract myself at it

with every adventure onto another

aren’t we just the map

time takes?

as in a golden afternoon like this

before the big wind’s upon us

choosing to haunt

say home

Danny Gentile #68 - Untitled

Crepe myrtle echoes in the yard

Go back, go back

To your filament

To the grain of paper

Where you gather the news

Go back to where the word

Is the figment of dry weather

And the sword streaks

Through the lantana 

At the back fence 

Where the water tower

And it’s compacted earth 

Are a simple division

Against some higher purpose

Gillian Swain # 6 Sky Closer -(draft)

Fog has the sky closer this morning,
that other house
and this
is all there is.
White ocean blanket
silenced the cacophony of rooftops.

I could be a hermit
at the top of this hill.
All the land around me
rolling out beneath the mist
unseen yet promised.

Tug Dumbly #13 - Funfair

I threw up on my  

Emotional Rollercoaster

after checking out the rest

of my mental funfair –

my Emotional Roundabout

Emotional Octopus

Emotional Cha-Cha

Emotional Ghost House

Emotional Laughing Clowns.

Then I find this guy crying

in my Emotional Hall of Mirrors.

I say what are you so Emotional about?

He says it’s not me, it’s you,

take a long hard look at yourself.

Anyway, we had a good laugh about that.

All in all it was a very Emotional day.

Rob Schackne #750 - "In the beer garden"

In the beer garden
out the back
enjoying the sunshine
like a trip to Bali
having a cold one
we got to yarning
so what is it you do mate
he said I write deathless poetry
so what’s that like I asked
it’s ice on trees for a million years
waving like little flowers
living down the rabbit-hole
always there for the good
anyway the skies are mostly blue
anyway he said it never dies
and what do you do
I said I’m a plumber too

Tug Dumbly #12 - Who Will Help me Plant the Wheat?

Most kiss the hem

of religion and rhyme at the end.   

A bit of St Paul, the funeral poem …

No cold godless philistine

can stop friends cocking legs

to tinkle a bit of dogma and doggerel  

over his box, just a little

sprinkle to send them off

to – who knows? – perhaps

a nice after party with Jesus

jumping from a cake:

‘Surprise! Glad you could make it!

Hey, don’t sweat your atheism –

we’re all grownups here!    

(Well, apart from the kids …)

Anyway, grab a beer – got a  

thousand makes … salad, steaks …

Not too rough hey? …’

We’d all love to taste the bread

of the Little Red Hen.

Just not go through the hassle  

of making-believe the stuff.

Kit Kelen #987 - in all we've built

987

in all we've built

the gone were there

here-now minded

how we had been hoped for

some call was answered

arrows all ways

were page or picture

you decide

came to the window

and someone was climbing out there

one sat watching – that was a laugh

celebrated the snake in the wall

bon appétit

in all we built, close

and caught some pillow sun

frogloud in the months of fire

silly with endearments

the towns were there

for nails and such

and we worked up a sweat

there was nothing without words

and we had them with

squabble sunk at a touch

trees outside higher

and every time you blink

clock run away

some road was peering in

music of a world turns

but we were the ones evolving

the me-and-you and found advice

coin came and went

how lovely when they've left

ambivalence, contention

detente, denouement

a roof come settled

tin like wings

and there's the weather absent

then were the birds in the nest agreed

and in the bush as well

hand to hand jungle

and tuck you in of night

we wished till it was true

Lizz Murphy Poem #371 in the early evening skies

in the early evening skies

the star shrinks down to

leave the physical world

an elegant method of heeding

•

move relative to the stars

look for each moon

walk in the light

Gillian Swain # 5 - Got it

Way way below the base line
it's dark  it's cold
it's not empty
can't move
weight against arms
pressed

Take a breath
find voice
talk as though all is well
try hard to sound convincing
you might just convince yourself
veneer can be very persuasive

Clark Gormley #35 Decluttering

an assumption that
less is better is essential
or we won't get anywhere
and then an ability
to prioritise, to at least
make a qualitative
comparison, requires
a degree of detachment
and an ability to elude
the clutches of sentimentality

there's an uneasiness that
must be got over a concern
that one's judgement today
will not correspond
with next week's
or last week's
it comes down to how
malleable we think we are
indeed to the strength
of our sense of self
no wonder it's hard

once we make that decision
there's a sense of abandonment
that's thrilling
and troublesome
and freeing
all at the same time
that zen business of
giving it away with
all its paradoxes seems
to be innately worthy
being cleansed by simply
letting go

Rob Schackne #749 - A Reasonable Passion

                  A Reasonable Passion
                                             
                                        I.M. Ramon Loyola

                Swooping black & white
                the big rush of wings

                territorial imperative
                the terrorist attacks 

                respected or not
                I love you well enough

                look at all this poetry
                won't you love me a bit

                please dress my wound
                the beak was very sharp

                now where do we put it
                the spring magpie machine

                do we clear this mess
                does the fever ever break

                wait I’ll get the ladder
                wait I'll stick it higher 

                put it in the top branches
                of the pistachio tree

Kit Kelen #986 - a poet's comedy

986

a poet's comedy

(at Bunyah)

in words lost

and go for solace to

let them count us up

neighbourly

one valley to next

it must be spring

the mulberry comes leaves again

big lizards on the way over the mountain

once he told me every river needs a poet

and I could have the Myall

observe the unities of time, space, action

the nursing home smell spreads out from the house

one day could be worse than another

or he could always be pretending

but I know it's much more of a struggle than seen

the keys lie idle

hasn't all been said?

let me be offering and altar

'thanks'

now we are way past it

maybe he just can't behave

just can't say it

or perhaps there's one to whom, for whom?

and poem is prayer?

useless to go with questions

be bound

till sun through gumleaves

every chair's a throne

and every cough command

bow down

and let the mail be come

bring up the driveway

the keys lie idle

once was in China

and I said to him

I said

no... it's gone...

come down to this one anecdote

punchline gone

stage strewn with surviving

how the fallen are mighty yet

I am the messenger shot

Tug Dumbly # 11- The Girl With the Half-Shaved Legs

It irks me when a character leaves food and drink unfinished in a movie. There they’ll be at a bar or restaurant, or relaxing at home, with a nice steak or burger, with a cocktail or beer, when they’ll get a call, or get suddenly assaulted, or somehow otherwise interrupted and have to race off on something urgent, leaving all that nice food and drink untouched, or at best half toyed with. It sits an itch in my mind. Half an hour later they’ll be dangling from a helicopter, or beating a confession from a criminal, or having sex in a phone booth, and I’ll still be thinking about that frosty martini they left back there at the bar. I don’t even drink anymore, but to see it just left there hurts.

Same with shaving. It disturbs me when a character is half way through a shave (could be a woman doing her legs in a bath, but more often a man with a cut-throat razor in some old Noir movie), and the door knocks, or phone rings, and they get suddenly called away on urgent biz. The man will abandon his shave, hastily wipe the remaining cream from his face and race off. But I’ll be left stranded, still fixated on that unshaved stubble. Scenes later, I’ll still be searching his face for traces of it, maybe when he’s having a conversation with a girl in the car. Maybe the girl with the half-shaved legs.  

Gillian Swain #4 - Rather quiet neighbours

At work my neighbour 

is a mortician

Correct spelling keeps him distinct from beautician

and his fridge is bigger

than mine

He taps a gentle hammer

careful nails secure handles

She pulls satiny lining into just the right folds, shiny

braid to complete the edges

While I fill boxes  pack extra paper to limit movement

I think I'm bored as I pull tape  place sticker  check lists  fold

the paper  slip the label  He

is the beautician now as he combs and trims

fold the collar  slip the button  

finish off the finishing 

Through the doorway

sun pours onto the casket

gloss caramel and whitest white

Silver handles warm

like their touch

unlike their passengers

Their care sets intention

carries the pallbearers

The hearse will be washed and polished

and the mourning car

the day will come  as always

the show must go on

While I stack full boxes ready for the courier

they place bouquets  memorial wreathes

and kindness

Kit Kelen #985 - heart how many ways?

985

heart how many ways?

cannot be held

cannot be told

comes stubbornly to heart

where tears are telling

some have called it plasticine

and some inscribe the stone

make moon my destination

float some way across

steel coracle for

there are lands and seas and loves

the lungs are with or near enough

invisible

indivisible

heart no such thing

as such

and until desolation

it is divided

along lines of light

comes with thorns

pumps truth

holds tight

as ink where it pours out

monkeys can't get that stopper back in

terrible show off

so meek secret, sings

makes all the world its shower

goes in every direction at once

for breakfast for dinner

I like it for tea

certain colours come to mind

heart rings in the ears

takes off its pants time to time

just saying

you can imagine

call it my confusion

in a cosy corner sits

unravelling the kitten's stairs

you let another season in

someone is always at home

ever nagging a heart as if

it were ours to hold

how naked this bloodletting

heart can't hide

rhymes with itself

and best of all another

and others

mirrors all around!

it always points into the weather

it always points to home

Clark Gormley #34 Choice Magazine

criticism of
the consumer advocate
I just don't buy it

Tug Dumbly - The Cowering Plain

Worship her regime

the brutal cream

of her complexion, precision

of her construction.

Lies fall

as new-minted truths

from her lips

her tongue and hips

sway hardened sceptics

to her cause

she slides through the world’s bed

she kicks in doors.

Lackeys do her bidding

at the bat of an eye

lapdogs snap her utterances

like flies.

She tolerates no opposition

but crushes

and airbrushes dissidents

from the picture.

She excites the pretty

tortures the ugly   

cowers the plain.

Her images dispraise

from a billion screens

and magazines

her funerals are the front page

her corpse catwalks

your dreams

kneading madness

softening murder

seducing maggot

blind obeisance   

She lives embalmed

an embodied state

her subjects venerate

as they slave to sate

her appetite for adoration.

She scorns all borders and treaties

but holds the world encompassed

in the prison of her symmetry.

She is blessed, she is kissed

she is Beauty, she is a fascist.

 

Danny Gentile #67 - The Other Thing

dreamed last night

came back collecting thoughts

but letting them slip

craning my neck

out of this aspect

to be with you

all rough and particulate

like grit for

the mind’s eye

and wondering

what is that 

so crooked and myopic

the other thing

waiting generally reserved

for when daylight

is sipped through blinds

and watering rain

blurs it out

Kerri Shying #514- spinning in a private world all tinfoil

before  Isla Vista  got hitched to

Elliot Rodger   there was Edie

 in her tights   after the Factory

and new boobs   too close to Goleta 

too far from   the bright lights

spinning in a private  world  all tinfoil

spared the    dick pics   the swipes

right      the headless men  whose

pixels   swim   into the worldwide

slipstream    this FOMO  campus  

of  incel  strangers     still  juggling 

Kristen de Kline #225 I woke up this morning (thanks to D.G & Alabama 3)

I woke up this morning
got myself a gun

Clark Gormley #33 Early adopter

she caught the first Paywave

while we fumble for our Opal cards

she’s already tapped and gone

and while we rode our dragsters

she passed us on a segue

cottoned onto lycra

way before the Tour

de France was hip

in 1986

she owned a cellphone

the size of a brick

used it for weight training

somehow upgrades

the operating system

of her smart phone

before the release date

and bugs, she loves them

like an entomologist

doesn’t complain

but identifies them

and notifies

the manufacturer

with the zeal of a Hansonite

dobbing in a terrorist

wore a nose ring in the 70s

tatts in the 80s

was eating quinoa when Gorby

brought down the wall

smashed avocado

during 9/11

while we were peeking

at the girl next door

through the crack in the fence

she was flying

drone mounted cameras

for her surveillance

company

she stopped using

plastic bags

in 2007

and for some reason

a long while back

she left her beachside

apartment and moved

to higher ground

Danny Gentile #66 - Minimalist Blues

i woke up this morning

Gillian Swain # 4 - Skin like slippery ideas

The house is quiet

humans and dogs sleep  

mostly

late night tidier

moves in grime with 

Tom Waits egging her on

tap drips on the Pollock of plates in the sink

child sneezes upstairs in a bed that really

needs the sheets changed

a new tide of dust

Insomnia the poet

keeps scribble for company

cricket imitates spider

as it plays her ankle hair

tickles tired skin like slippery ideas

it's late

words slide off the bed

lost in the crumple

of clothes on the floor.

Kit Kelen #984 - paradoxes of home

984

paradoxes of home

one must wake up slowly to this
as from the thorough dark

the more there is that's done

the more there is to do

piles! like gravel, books

and I still have to write

to scribble, to shovel

trees and there's sky yet to reach

down with potatoes!

to every little shack its tank

one must wake up slowly to this

garden is never enough to drink

because time is free

there are not enough hours

when the block was blank

truth of the place shone through

and now the past is borne about

in barrows, by wire, feet fray the rug

it falls to me to care

for all these branches, leaves among us

gently and gently

in to myself

heart left everywhere behind

one must wake up slowly to this

enough must grow to more

grass treasures

I myself creaking

already buried alive

in ramshackle order

paradise of all here at home

contracted thus with world

so many wings here

must be from far

blowfly blows in

just to say spring

my own face bright

as much as home

Tug Dumbly - White Wednesday

Nanna called them locusts.

People say they ‘croak’

or ‘sing’.

That’s not a cicada.*

Think sprinkler

rattlesnake

castanet

cabasa

tambourine

glass beads poured

in splendour falls of

broken increment on

snare drum speeding

perforations meeting

intense ball gown swish  

unchained ball bearing spilling  

bead shower curtain frothing coffee

machine gun pot perking zipper ripping   

seed sizzling ecstasy strewing  dervish frenzy

ZZT ZZZT ZZZZZT ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT …!

This is a cicada.

*The numerous breeds of cicada make numerous different sounds.

The White Wednesday has a very particular ‘waltz’.

Clark Gormley #32 Polaroid Glasses

put them on
tilt your head
and notice how
the brightness changes

when it's just right
set the position

a sore neck
is a small price
to pay for
the optimal outlook

Gillian Swain # 3 - Give thanks to the jeans

The people in this street are the beautiful ones

I blunder along the path among designer fitness wear 

flat stomachs and firm calves

perfect proportions cause me to reminisce as they laugh by

I hear my silvering mane sigh with resignation as

salon colours streak past   mingle and bob politely in time

with well stepped joggers  and

I cant believe how far it is to the shop

the maybe one day cars rest smug in 

clean driveways and slippery wax  

these women as smooth as the duco  

their wax reaches places

the car wash guy only dreams of

Imagining I too could be one of the shiny people

I give thanks to the jeans that hide

my furry legs  resolve to keep

arms at sides and

felted armpit secrets

to myself

Kerri Shying # 513 - better posture makes the boobs look higher

he never was my   sunk cost

fallacy   in too deep    to cut

the ropes   that dug into my

wrists        always   get tied

with your hands behind your back

better posture    makes the boobs look higher

everybody needs a friend

like that     for the whisky 

for the   loan of fishnet tights

to feed  and house  and clothe

him   when you’re done