Béatrice Machet # 168-169 KAIROS

it’s a question of agreement

it’s a question of flow from lungs to fingers through blood

it’s a question of complicity between muscles and sight making possible some words to appear on a screen voiced by the tip-tap  typing noise

it’s a question of no questioning no asking anything

just follow the stream with launches some existential neutrality

no raw of ideas no semantic combination with syntax as such

no concept of formalism not even the trace of a shifting self

it’s a momentum to be turned into a calligraphic dance

it’s an insistent instance demanding to be in tune

it’s also known as Kairos …

get ready for the right opportune and decisive

moment of writing

c’est une question d’accord

c’est une question de flux entre poumons et doigt par le sang

c’est une question de complicité entre muscles et vue rendant possible l’apparition de mots sur un écran mis en voix par le tip-tap du clavier

c’est une question de ne pas questionner ne rien demander

simplement suivre le courant qui initie une neutralité existentielle

aucune idée en rang pas de combinaison sémantique avec la syntaxe en tant que tel

pas de concept pas de formalisme pas même la trace d’un soi déplacé

c’est un élan à transformer en danse calligraphique

c’est une instance insistante exigeant d’être à l’unisson

connu aussi sous le nom de kairos

tenez-vous prêt  pour le moment juste opportun

                                                                                                                                       et décisif d’écrire

Kit Kelen #186 - a gallerina sits

186

a gallerina sits

Glebe Point Road

day after the election

a poem for Anna and Hilik's shop

street of all passing

eyes cast in, cast past

cars pass

they are the age succeeding

and voices

a throw of shadows

leaves dried for the breeze to chase

winter

there must be somewhere else to be

cars slow past

they are the age

all this light cast

sunshine spilt

the colours drawn in doors

it's only the gallerina

watching the street

catches a glimpse of the sky 

Rob Schackne #4 - Stari Most

Stari Most


In Southern Bosnia
where I first knew you
where there was so much death
there was a beautiful bridge
you can't kill memory
where there is a beautiful bridge
this is a story about Mostar
a story about Stari Most
but no, it's a story about us
and the fight we had
on the beautiful bridge
and how I swore to you
we would both grow old
there would be no war
you didn't listen (I remember)
you kept on slapping me
we got home we didn't speak
we made japrak and chorba
we cried and held each other tight
later they tortured you
then they killed you
it was a beautiful bridge
all the water gone
of course I write this.

Susan Hawthorne #185 soma

Vedic poems about Soma
are peans to ecstasy
the drug pressed from stalks
brings the sun welcomes dawn
a bright drop consumed
opens the heavens
opens the eyes to perception
races like horses fire-coloured
all around the air is laced
with golden rays holding each
thing in its place pulsing with life

Lizz Murphy - Poem 185: Lilt iii. Cave Hill

Sarah St Vincent Welch #178 ice air

ice air breath hill crest
river gum eddies, we climb
looking for snow clouds

Kit Kelen #185 - election day

185

election day

reasons to toss out the Tories

we're not the haters

they hate that

numbers they live with

could be ours

however high you count

they count higher

ours, yours, mine, theirs

hard to call

those with more

are loath to let go

can you tell me which mob

stole the country? whose was it before?

It's just that I'm interested

I just want to know

and where are we, where have we put that border?

and how far are we prepared to go?

those gone in the bomb attack,

they were elsewhere, they weren't ours

we can hardly count them

can't identify the body

those people locked up on the island

let them swim for it

o cruel freedom

free country – you can walk away

from the dole

from the difficult dangerous job

from family and future

the past and the doctor

from the truth

from the facts of the matter

do I have feelings yet?

is it my turn to say?

how far deep down

do you have to know?

we're not the haters

and they hate that

two lines at the booth

and I vote for the sausages

I vote for

the moment to stop right here

in the gated communities

in the suburbs locked down

I'd vote for myself

I forgot to stand

they hold a camera to my head

I wince – I'm embarrassed

to get what I chose

another dose of collective hypnosis

it's the day after

and sunshine's the winner

it's ringing in my ears 

 

Mikaela Castledine #184 In the garden

Put your listening out the door

all is instrumental

rain percussive patterings 

birds stringplucking

flute spooling hollows and decrescending hills

brass blossoms blow in lip pursing blasts

streams strumrunning between tympanic banks

walk along paths woodwhistling

beat your heart upstanding

with your fists muffle bound and highheld over head

like those jumping drummers do

yawns are yodelling with throats come uncoupled

music all alive and humming

in the garden

Julie McElhone #5 An Odist’s Lament

There’s a vein of words in search of a poet

I told them I sang in their key

but they grimaced and grumbled chin-high to themselves

they were made for better than me.

Efi Hatzimanolis #139 Vote III

they can't just
say it, we stuffed up,
let them swing

Rob Schackne () Australian Election

Australian Election


I know how eternal hope springs
now 25 years without recession
a promise of a job or a decent wage
of no redundancies or cutbacks
then that premise of power
in the heart with no electricity
how a cat comes to you for warmth
a small suspension of reason
and how we shout and cheer
that hope will spring eternal
and a few asses in Parliament
and 12 submarines make a difference
in the election of fools no comment

Michele Morgan #176 Dul le polaitíocht

hanging's too good for
them, bring back
hung drawn and quartered

Robert Verdon, #194, Red Herrings

lint blows against the window

someone has left an old washing machine outside

no-one is picking it up

oh for twin-tubs of yesteryear

there is a chocolate smear on the soul of the invisible horizon

the world picks itself up like a fiddlestick for a breath

oh the groundwater as its granular manipulations go on

saving us we hope from

the fatalistic poppycock of the powers that be

in the interests of the great unwashed

the sky wears a medal like a long-unrecognised nurse

friends of freedom moan about reckless voting

kow-towing to the cleanly cowed

misery has the face of celebrity

the unknown are culled

red herrings are at a premium in today’s market.

3.7.16 (#183) hung parliament by Myron Lysenko

hung parliament

a hole in my shoe as I walk

in the rain

Chrysogonus' Translation #98 - from Barbara Temperton's "sopir taksi di pelabuhan Benoa"

seorang lelaki berjalan sendiri
di keliling sopir-sopir taksi
di Tanjung Benoa, undur diri
pada lembut kapal yang mengungsi

makan dan minum ia habiskan hari
kali pertama ia di Bali

Single man travelling alone,

overwhelmed by taxi drivers 

at Port Benoa, retreats

to the tender refuge of the ship,

spends the day eating and drinking, 

his first time in Bali.

Kerri Shying R#5 What it is.

What it is.

The birds still sound the same today

the air so cold still carries scent

dodging strings of clinker smoke

winter jobs wait patient

for foot-stamping me and the eight-legged entourage

to come bandicooting

poking where our summer hands don’t dare

the red poincettia,  set down a hemisphere about, cries

now

now now

to the false Christmas it feels deep down there

in the roots

we don’t tell it,  just in case

the whole atmosphere might change

(it’s a bract not a flower too

but no-one needs to know)

Past Fassifern the waratahs are out

up high where the muttaburrasaurus can’t get them.

Michele Elliot #3 : collective anxiety (iii)

I mostly know people from around the inner west, do you know where that is?
Kinda like Five Dock. 
It's mostly rich people there, where we live. 
I don't know anyone round here.

   

Death Prohibited

Death Prohibited

Can Pelicans read?

perhaps the seagulls could translate?

wonderful to see the elitist owners

Prohibit Death and Injury!

Bewildered at first I ponder,

WARNING!

I read the sign again,

I feel comforted to know

they know, I know, they care?

Yes the exclusionist elitists really care!

care their tenants live

(Lawyers told them to care!)

shame to use the jetty as a suicide stage

and drown in the PUBLIC waters,

the waters of the Commonwealth.

“For God and Commonwealth we bled,

now God and Commonwealth are dead.”

(Nietzsche told me!)

And the windsock flops

Impotent and flaccid.

Rob Schackne #3 - In Berlin Before I Noticed

In Berlin Before I Noticed


Because I would as soon
be in Berlin as be here now
don't talk to me from afar
about wingtip vortices

or the science of your life
that fractures the sky
or that birds fly like that
to reduce the drag force

that each bird experiences
compared to if it flew alone
because so now you know
because so now I know

but how they know
when a storm is coming
has to do with little changes
to the magnetic memory

it shears the speed right back
and informs your plummet
takes your motorized brain
and turns it into stall

one feeling lost wandering
suddenly in a forest of ghosts
lately full of small birds
waiting for collection.

Susan Hawthorne #184 election

having made it to tomorrow
instead of yesterday's poem
I despair at the meanness
displayed in a so-called
victory speech in which
uncounted ballots are assumed
into the entitled camp

by contrast from the other side
comes a generosity of spirit
hope engagement and energy
I know who I hope can form
                         government

Lies Van Gasse #182

(dag 1-171)

trek ik aan mijn wortels,
verspil ik mijn gezicht.

Gezichtloos aanroep ik de zwarte pagina’s,
gezichtloos verlies ik mij in een wolk van houtskool,
gezichtloos trek ik onbegrijpelijke lijnen,
gezichtloos doorboort mijn potlood het te zachte karton
dat mijn gedachten omhelst, ze koestert
en in zachte handen omdraait, maar zonder gezicht

(day 1-171)

I pull my roots,
I squander my face.

Faceless I invoke the black pages,
faceless I loose myself in a cloud of charcoal,
faceless I draw incomprehensible lines,
faceless my pencil drills the too soft piece of cardboard
that embraces my thoughts, cherishes them
and revolves them in its soft hands, but faceless

Efi Hatzimanolis #137 Vote I and #138 Vote II

Vote I: 2.30pm

I vote on
a beautiful day,
a desert of hope


Vote II: 9:15pm

Talk of a
hung parliament,
I'm getting excited

Robert Verdon, #193, Lost Coins of Last Summer

lost coins

in a pool of tadpoles

shimmering

lazy light

curling round a stone finger

hazy height, nape of the moon

humid doom, yellow limpet

lonely light in a honeycomb

of memories in a flummery of forgetting

bead dreams flickering in a steamer, eyespecks of

coiling persiflage, nimble dipsomania

wavering light

hungry for night

Kerri Shying R#4 Soft Landing

Soft Landing

Standing in the dim light

getting him a grooming

see the dog, see the cat

while I slept this pair amused themselves

the smallness of their motions holds my eye

smoothing back the roughness of my thinking

stacking up the breaths of calm

forcing open with petal tongues the welds of expectation

languor came home tonight

to stay.

Lizz Murphy - Poem 184: Lilt ii. Beehives

Michele Morgan #176 cois farraige

at Whakatane
the beach in
winter, buttoned up

2.7.16 (#182) a cloud presses by Myron Lysenko

a cloud presses
down on the mountain
polling booth

Mikaela Castledine #183 What is The Word?

That moment when it gives

the inverted sleeve to your dislocating arm

the tangled hose from its kinks

when the splinter eases from the skin

when the snipped thread tweezers clean from the work

when the fine fibre pulls clean from your eye

when the spindle turns and drops into place

when all is right with the smooth running

what is the word for that?

Julie McElhone #4 Journey Tide

A small stone

doesn’t move unless moved

            with all things around it

                      is lifted by a great swell of foam and salt

to be returned to the shore

smoother, further south

   when the moon’s pull

relaxes.