Thursday, March 31, 2016

Lizz Murphy — Poem 91: How's the weather in Binalong? (Plus quote)



Warming up ... we had a hailstorm yesterday 
and a drift of white remains on the doorstep. 
Temps are low but the sky is azure with 
thunderheads. How's the weather in Binalong?

Kathleen McCracken, Belfast, March 2016



My thanks to Kathleen for inspiring this piece (personal communication).

burke: SQUEEZE HARDER #

I take back everything
you ever said to me
 
silence
adds to the noise
 
chatter on
the wires
 
the box in
the corner
 
bark in
the dog
 
song of
a bird
 
in the bright white
of morning

Mikaela Castledine #91 Hunger Games

On fasting days poems are hard to come by
lean and unsatisfying
lines might be only 100 calories a piece
before we've reached the end the limit comes up tight
and we go to bed grumbling

Kit Kelen #90 - let them come


90
let them come


weather irrelevant
because they have the shape of it
and settle day ending


the trees of never a height arrived
the clouds among us
still never close


even breathing in the mist
we're green grass
blood sings through


I make a habit of this
sky up there for every mood
you couldn't call a quitter


it's just this one world
where we walk
we're the only ones who know


the gods are very far




Sarah St Vincent Welch #89 Trees of Northbourne




Trees of Northbourne

the road into Canberra
is lined with accidental trees
a temporary relief growing

river gums, not for streets
or offices or flats, cussedly
took root and towered

we walk their dusky length today
bitumen, weeds and potholes
the shapes of the trees familiar
long hanging leaves and bark
cluster buds on blossom brink

remember tall night shadows,
drunks faltering at our car
withered crash bouquets
murder memorials, talk of
election night women
flashing buses, sturdy bras
and modest knickers,
(must have won the bet
on Kevin 07) 

here protests gathered in the shade
we honked at climate change
driving past
the politician dummies on stilts
the sausage sizzles

today we touch the trees goodbye
count the notices on their trunks

traffic racket stops with the lights
a line of bikes crosses

we don’t know what to feel for progress
for the coming tram

feel the dark bark
the hanging ribbons of manna gum





Rae Desmond Jones #1



ITS FUN BEING A FASCIST

It’s fun being a Fascist & you don’t have to think –
You wear a pretty uniform the colour of ink

You're tough & big – as you march you twirl
& you are as pretty as a dancing girl

But no one dares doubt you are a MAN
With a row of clinking medals & a fine Sun tan

These days, you don’t have to be a Caucasian
(a big word that means – not Asian ..)

If you like to fight you get a bit of biff
& the blood makes your (little) prick get stiff

Anna Couani #88.1 chopped iris


Michele Morgan #84 i ngluaisteáin


















clouds behind silos
silverpoint
Hewletts Road traffic

Red Cone- day 87- Afternoon landscape

Afternoon landscape-oil on linen 2015.

Susan Hawthorne Freya's way (for Freya 2007-2016)



a short narrow path
between gardens
shaded by rainforest trees
connecting the worlds
garden and wild
like you bred shepherd
dingo wild
now truly free to roam
sky wilds under wilds
all the wilds of the worlds



Chrysogonus' Translation #23 - from Kit Kelen's "easter thought"

Pikiran Paskah

aku teringat suatu masa
ketika ayah lupa membeli ikan
untuk Jumat Agung

kau pasti sangat sedih
karena Yesus tahu
dan ia adalah orang baik

 aku tahu
yakin, hanya kentang goreng
satu malam dalam setahun
tidak ada apa-apanya dibanding dipaku
bersama musuh bebuyutan Romawi
dan memainkan satu
nomor kiamat zombie
tetapi Yesus! …
dan
Kristus di atas sepeda!

dan seterusnya

I remember the year 
dad forgot to get the fish 
for Good Friday 

you had to be really sad 
because Jesus got it 
and he was a really good guy

I got it ...
and I knew having to just eat chips 
one night of the year
was nothing to getting nailed up 
along with Rome's any old enemies
and doing a personal 
zombie apocalypse number
...
but Jesus! …
and 
Christ on a bike! 
and so on 

#86 Kevin Brophy 'Naming'

W. H. Auden reported he was told
by a friend to take up poetry.
It seemed achievable and mysterious enough.
It was a bit like falling in love with
the name of a rock, like zircon
or uranium instead of wanting to know
the rock itself. It was a way of keeping
in mind that ‘the child hiding in the
shadow of a house with a lizard held
loosely in his soft left hand’ is not a
description of something, it is the
proper name of that child and the
name of my experience of meeting him
there. When I asked him his name
he searched his memory and his
vocabulary, and looked down at the
lizard moving on his palm, and at his young
brother whispering into his chest,
and said, eventually, Dylan. Do you
live here, I asked him, or are you
visiting. Live here, he said. Do you
want to come to school, I asked him.
He looked at the lizard again, his brother
whispered up at him again, he looked
around at the grass, the shadows, the
desert beyond us and almost said yes.
His brother pointed to another pale
sightless looking creature in the grass
and they went away. Names float away
here as easily as days.