Tug Dumbly # 29 - Wombiverse

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Kerri Shying R # 524 - I am happy to set back

grateful rain     heavy   as a  body
giving  comfort      liquid
unfamiliar   fills  the
pots  piled up
for Spring           plantings

I am happy to set back

laze   reading through
the days          under
pour  and
rattle     siphons
renew

Rob Schackne #770 - columbus day the ships come in

           
           so poets are meant to be   like

           super   careful   with language

           all this open   twenty-four seven

           look   it was formerly a prison tree

           modern times   listen   let it go

           columbus day  the ships come in

           so what happened there   then

           what’s here now   the slavery

           how it plays   write this down

           when the tide goes out   we only

           want to know   they’re leaving

Kit Kelen #1008 - unbidden

1008
unbidden 





the poem grew strangely into itself
like a tree that stands where it will be
limb come back to the trunk

makes you look again to tell it’s true
that was the thing you saw today
made itself a poem

trapped here in my own rain
a bird still like bark in the branches
fallen, or arced in flight

in here
one thing’s another
nicely proportioned so

as if it always were, would be
but we had to think it up
once and never for all

ghost of the little man inside
I felt it for a certain light
it was the star I saw fall

nothing we already know here
come blank to be
the only way

the poem in itself
we make to understand
I myself will not know yet

tells who’s in the mirror though
when it’s right there’s
this little music we make

grew strangely
unseen till it was now in another not-forever
and just for as long as it lasts

Tug Dumbly # 28 - Black Sea

Black Sea   

You were a mockable gift –

thick Romanian impasto  

grouted with dark material

a case of pisstaken identity

too good to resist.

If we’d thought of it, we’d have

called our mimicry a loving thing,

though such love can hinge

on which side of the joke you swing.

And now you’re dead

my estranged black friend,   

and so I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.  

+

‘This is not an entertaining poem’.

That’s you setting up a eulogy

the night we met at my drunken gig

You serious man in a sea of clowns

voice shaking like paper

but the urge to memorialise raw

as you read your unfunny poem for

your dead friend with a brave quaver

that said ‘laugh at my accent you may

but some things won’t be laughed away’.

Now it’s my turn to say

This is not an entertaining poem …

And beyond that?

Nothing fancy or lavish, I’m afraid.

No fake flourish, or plunging

the bucket in plastic emoting.

‘You were here, who now are gone’

to pluck a cold phrase.

You had a quota of courage,

suffered, like most, in ways

unique and banal

the world rolled over you

people took you for granted

you were never recognized

had your talent hatched

or got your proper due   

(Join the fucken queue …)

You always gnawed the bone

of some project or scheme,

filmed shows, made websites

came to parties and gigs, and hey

and there are worse things than

‘he showed up’ to stick on a grave.

+

Peaty old Europe traced a vein

through you, plugged back into some                 

Cromagnon Balkans quag  

of race-curdled blood feud, drip-

filtered down through vampires,

dictators and orphanage

horror houses … yeah, ‘fraid that

accent came trailing clouds of gory

cultural cliché, gruelled ethnic stew

from the land beyond the trees …

But you did have some brutal cartoon

talk of whores and brothels and drugs

I read as a dark graphic novel

you used to colour yourself in with,

undercut only by the fact that you,

Eastern hardman, lived at home with

your old Romanian parents

in deep North Ryde …

Poor people. They got you

into rehab I heard.

I picture them hearing you died

+

‘Tudor is gone’. The message came

from a long cold source. Gone where?

To the old country? To the shops?

She meant your heart had stopped

in Greece, and I was forced to think  

about you like I hadn’t in a long time

like I wouldn’t have otherwise  

had you not gone early in this

haywire season of premy death -  

Candy, Chris, and now you

makes three in three months

dropped into Facebook plots.

Death is in the air

everywhere I look around …

But we’ll always have Spring.  

There’s that little shiver

of shameful joy you get

when you hear a friend has died:

I’m still alive! – Shhhhh!

They hardly resent it though.

It’s a little departing gift,

like they’d give at the airport,

to this life from the next.  

If you’re alive Tudor, your death

just a rumour, then take this as a postcard,

late, but with love, from the well of the estranged.

Clark Gormley #47 Murky Lyrics

Hours spent hunched

over record covers

lifting the needle back again

is that really what he says?

Mr Fogerty

your diction

is not as clear

as your water

Freddy I know

you would not have flown

quite so high

had you enunciated

Elton please

sing clearly

if not for your sake

then for Bernie’s

I understand

the audience dictates

that guitar and bass

must be high in the mix

I realise it must be

mastered by professionals

who know the taste

the contemporary market

its fine

it sounds great

it grooves

we all love it

just don’t try

to tell me

you had something

important to say

Tug Dumbly # 27 - A Haiku of Bashos Made Into a Ten-Part Netflix Series (for Rob Schackne)

A Haiku of Bashos Made Into a Ten-Part Netflix Series:
.
AN ANCIENT POND
A FROG JUMPS IN
THE SPLASH OF WATER
.
In episode 1 we open on a pond. It is obviously a very old pond. The pond has been here for some time ... [spend ten pages of script giving exposition and back story on the history of the pond ... etc]

Danny Gentile #76 - Untitled

1.

Thumbs pressed
Against glass
Not the inverse
Print on
Condensation
But two
Clear eyes
Unseen through

2.

The crack
Of bamboo floor
Is weather
For light-stepped
Shoelessness
And the grass
Brush ceiling
Is breath
Into my hair

3.

Feel
The alimentary
Coil
Of a full meal
Eaten
At the season’s
Edge
To attain
The satisfied
Fringe
No more
Extreme
Than fingers
Reaching
For a taste
Of autumn
Sun

4.

Moonlight over
The land of yes and no
Palpable
As a heartbeat
Beneath the willow
A thousand streamers
Bend the namesake
Into a weathered hollow

5.

Contained in glass
But not betrayed by this
Visit a lenience
On the tangled message
So it may digress
Further
From the weather
Where it first formed

Rob Schackne #769 - "Writing a haiku today"

Writing a haiku today
brother Nick’s first sighting
of a brown snake on the farm

so that now it's spring
or the possibility on the radar
if you believe the pundits

the earth is kind
against the underbelly
the sun dries the grass

where that leaves the chooks
well it's anyone’s guess
except it left me here

several drafts later
the memory of a memory
of a memory of my friend

a heartbeat quickens
the first snake of the season
no photos taken

hell just one heartbeat
you’d think it would be
easy to get right

Kit Kelen #1007 - winter came back

1007

winter came back

there was more

than a cloud of it

an ocean over

silver in

come barefoot to

freezing

it fell

storm whipped about

till wind was all

whistling through the wall

a moment of the outside in

then one must imagine spring

and one fine day

Kerri Shying R # 523 - spiral through the garden greens

home and   on my feet 

the one week   that tree

of heaven   blooms   woke

to scented   warmth  

seed-headed paper missiles

spiral through the garden greens

like insects  on a final flight

slow ballerinas   dying swans

profusion   high above my head

in pale  caverns  chandeliers

October orchestra    our lives

Tug Dumbly # 26 - Human Beings are Trabants or Some Other Famously bad Communist Car

Human Beings are Trabants or Some Other Famously bad Communist Car 

Takes a stupid amount of water to make one silly steak.

All that sheer waste.

So much sifted, so little gleaned,

so inefficient our production means.

Ponder the great slag heap of raw data shat

from the bums of our skull jockeys, Sir Ebrum

and Sarah Bellum, before squeezing even one small ball

of knowing from the gum machine.

Then ponder what it takes to ponder just that 

all that fine Swiss fat greyly whirring

just to learn to zip a fly, or build a cheese sandwich.

All that neural language dribbling down the chin

like Heinz baby mash, just to drag your carcass

across a basement carpark, stretch up and hit

the lift button to the lowest level of the function centre,

the Protozoan Mezzanine, all of which itself is just a cinder block

beneath some indescribably more massively evolved edifice.

To know just that!

What’s a Time & Motion man to make of such costs?

Diabolical! A nightmare field of rocking horses

in a warren of rusty horror films, ridden by

an army of cymbal-clapping monkey-clowns. 

All that sleep and feed just to boot up the machine

for a few clumsy hours of charging and bumbling

and eating and polluting and offending

and miscommunicating through another day

of picking our dimple on the giant’s arse of history. 

No farmer would let an animal survive such inefficiency.

Like a dog barking at waves,

like going through a garbage dump

with a pair of chopsticks,

like combing shampooed entrails

in search of ever more pointedly pointless

meta-thingumies to paint the human conditioner.

It’s like we’ve been handed a whole sausage factory

of minced pig matter and told to remake the animal

… still fun making the links but.

Danny Gentile #75 - Untitled

I read things the wrong way
Consistently and there seems
Some strange purpose in what
Ideally would be straightforward.

There are words like clouds
Shifting the horizon and ideation
Is a haze filling the middle distance
With what is within and holding still.

Do not talk like longitude which
Cracks the map open and leaves it
Lying wounded on the table where
It bleeds advice and more advice.

Do not ask the staves of latitude
To hold the music of their weather
In a stationary field where blood is
Not sanctified in a dormant cloud.

This ardent repetition is not for me.
I lean over the atlas listlessly and
Every horizontal line holds a note
For me to sing in a vague rereading.

Kit Kelen #1006 - Olsen's 'Sydney Sun (1965)

1006

Olsen’s ‘Sydney Sun’ 1965

ekphrastic

I remember it

grass clippings and two stroke

same suburb

but who would have thought

Mr Whippy could come?

(Tudor song of the jolly wife-i-cide)

That Hillman was a minx

religion

a struggle uphill

you could measure in horses

and don’t know how I get home

look – no seat belts

column shift

kerb and gutters

red roof dripping

Qantas bad was a kind of maroon

and you could be jealous of that

or clutch pencil

there wasn’t any darkness or winter

this was all close to the chest

a hoist outside to sing

elsewhere the little bombs are falling

here?

life brighter than a thousand suns

the hottest hot hot hot water you’ve ever seen

and still

seas run dry

no black stump here

though there will be a chain of them yet

then something split level

all fits in a school case

Globite – that’s a whole world in

fire edge of elsewhere

a map begins to appear

still on a sheep’s back golden

with wheat stalk still

slouch for hat

and burnt

till cancer come

ache

M-E-N-T-H-O-I-D

£ l d would change

into something

rich and strange

bindy eyes

cracked lips

and zinc

you could park anywhere then

you cann hanna man a granna spannah

see faces from a dream

has whiskers

and the thing is signed

tentacle city

the bush retracts

still bites where you will

they say you shouldn’t stare into it

I see teeth too

someone lost with a bottle

a little lie down

for

backache, rheumatic and muscular pain

will not

and will never be undersold

don’t wait to be told

and I stand in time too

before such an outpouring

numbers in paint

he’s still wearing it

you know you’re soaking in it

can’t shield the eyes anymore

and on the sunny side up

dreamt all

like the sails of a singing house

waiting for decimal day

Clark Gormley #46 Knots

the rabbit goes

over the mountain

under the bridge

through the hollow log

across the field

around the bend

up the main street

behind the hospital

inside the disused factory

between the dumpsters

across the comatose junkies

and down the hole

There are people who

with a few flicks of the wrist

can origami a rope

into a work of art

that will withstand a cyclone

they have an instinct

a knack

a gift

I am not one of them

in order to secure

a mattress

to the roof of a car

and cognisant

of my limitations

I purchased

a few of those

ratchet strap things

which in my hands

turned out to be

as useless as

a ratchet

to a rabbit

after perspiring curses

and bellowing sweat

I jettisoned the ratchets

and randomly flung straps

around roof racks

with the logic that

if it went around

that many times

it couldn’t possibly

come loose

it turned out to be

barely adequate but

I’m afraid that my rabbit

will die in the hole

Rob Schackne #768 - "Chinese sailor"

Chinese sailor
a message a bottle

I will love her forever

China's ocean
take my message

How kind she was

float me off
this fucking ship

I can’t forget her eyes

tossed overboard
I'll never get it back

Let me find her

what a cliché

Rob Schackne #767 - No Title

No Title

Photography
I think of Zen
I think point & shoot
you could do it with a pen
or a cup of tea
letting the mind roam
looking at the rain

a door slams

Rob Schackne #766 - "On one condition"

On one condition
the road diverges
and the two signs
point the same way
on one condition

east or west
this won't upset
your destination
past the river
going downhill
on one condition

to the sunset
west or east
to the sunrise

back uphill
on one condition
keep walking

how time will tell

Kit Kelen #1005 - tinnitus

1005
tinnitus 


in a stillness
all between
no one lifts a finger

past Sunday
here we are

just the moment stood
below the wind
and not a tune

listen!
and hear just your head

a crackling like static
no snow falls

glow
as the blossom
stood the rain

as in the sunshine stands

no drumbeat
a little wrestle with myself

and every elsewhere with us now
that’s the world turning
loud and clear

like the needle come down
Dolby off, Dolby on

stepping in and out of mind
the bluest blue is all above

in my afterlife
this art

in between us
still

James Walton #120 atonement in a carmine morning

it might be ice

broken glass rises

from the camber

sharp as a walled camp

aquaplanings

locked treads

in counter curve

lose their algorithm

a condolence of wattle

the forensic lumen black

where primary colours meet

something darker rises in me

leave things be

let the blackberries renounce

the cock’s thrice summons

on one arm, mother

the other triptych, fucker

head forward in a gymnast’s pose

I make the call

the patrol officer

is younger than my daughter

a first death stalls in her throat

a gasp of brandy catching

broken rifles kindling on the slope

atonement in a carmine morning

Kit Kelen #1004 - I have piled up

1004

I have piled up 

 

I am here and there

paint in layers

words lost in the bath

I am to do

I am the list of lists

was taken for edifice once

but I am the raw material now

up to my armpits

up to my ears

tricks are up to me

I am in the accumulation phase

still

took mystery for miracle

tablets for commandment

I was lost in the treasure

I forgot the one word

do I want to talk about this?

there could be an archaeology

like the unconscious

a toe to test

and tenderly

gingerly

monkey come after

piled up to the trees

truth you sift

and are we not loved

all over the place

trapped in the scurry

of heap to heap

heavenly bodies all ours

clear a space

there was urgency to it

to have things out of the was

the way

a pile of to-remember until

waiting to come alight

wanting to wash away