something like density

or was it thickness

palpable in the daylight

breaking through the window

as for saying a resonant good morning

something in the way you look at

the way you wait for

silent and contemplative

something motionless yet

causing your heartbeat to accelerate

because you realize this

something might be someone’s love

quelque chose de la densité

ou bien était-ce épaisseur

palpable dans la lumière

pénétrant par la fenêtre

comme pour dire un bonjour sonore

quelque chose dans la façon de regarder

la manière dont vous attendez

silencieux et contemplatif

quelque chose d’immobile pourtant

faisant battre votre cœur plus vite

parce que vous réalisez que ce

quelque chose pourrait bien être l’amour de quelqu’un

Susan Hawthorne #186 underworlds

everyone is looking for underworlds
all over the earth   but when it lands
on them they are not so happy

death is the key character there
and he is generally not a nice fellow
controlling and the heat is too high
or so cold your toes and fingers freeze
but death comes in female form too
usually cloaked for death is hidden

some underworlds come with return
tickets   Orpheus had one of these
but blew it as did Job   some of us
have multiple city round trips
but we never know the departure
or return dates so have to live
as if today will be our very last

drugs allow day trips to the underworld
like looking for a house to buy or rent
every location is filled with fantasy
and it all looks so much brighter
than the everyday mundane world

underworlds are with are all the time
we fail to notice their intersecting
presences until our number is up

Lies Van Gasse #183

(dag 1-172)

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

trekt een achterhoofd een zwart gat in de dag.

-

(day 1-172)

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

the back of a head draws a black hole through the day.

Kerri Shying R# 6 The Waterworld

The Waterworld

“This ain’t no Waterworld,”

 the hostess rang her bell so the faithful might worship

“you can only imagine the mere corner of the thing.”

“No”, you said to her, “no, that’s not it, not at all.”

 Bare-faced enough to bicker with her lover and

Next to me the husband,  silent.

I saw marriage, light as air

ascribe a parabola above my head.

Find another way,

resolve this geometry, back to square.

Stirred-up, elbows out at right angles I bathe in hunger- sawing this beast

– a Biblical beast that seems it could feed ten thousand - carefully

in case my cutlery escapes me like Basil Rathbone’s sword, and cuts out someone’s heart.

Nodding yes to another red

Acquiescence to a need

you are my lift back home

Obsolete and winded,

my veins begin a dull red ache

churning beyond capacity

face cannot be saved,

let alone the earth

Underfoot the young find the rabbit holes

beneath the dining table.

Our ship

 weak as wax

church candles,

overpriced at Byron

you insisted they be coddled in the centre console

then abandoned in the Beemer

melting down to nothing.

One more thing nobody wanted to bring in

After the long trip back from holidays

up north

Leave it, you said,

Get it tomorrow.

Her voice; it clung inside my head

I swapped pillows

 listening while we leaked.

The falling wind

our flapping sails

sag in a wet drunk sea.

Julie McElhone #6 Who’s Afraid of Anne Sexton?

Can you write if you grapple 

with nothing? You’re happy 

with sex because you can 

get yourself there 

better and faster than another 

could. Got tension? 

Not got tension. Not got words. 

Gimme, gimme. 

Point. 

I can point for myself. 

I can get for myself. 

Perhaps therapy would do it. 

Should anyone wish they were ripe for therapy? 

How tiresome to have to explain yourself. 

In the hope of a new romance. 

I’ll keep to my mousy self.
For the moment.

Red Cone(LF)#183-rainbow-3 yellow

rainbow-3 yellow

Sarah St Vincent Welch #178 Winter

dancing in foot hoodies

slinging back hot toddies

airing the uggies

pulling down the beanies

filling up a hottie

biting on a chilli

drinking hot chocky
grilling a toastie

folding down the blankies

Mikaela Castledine #185 Repeat

Sometimes the mandala of the days

with the intrication of the patterning

the fine powders of

each poured and measured minute

spins dizzy into one colour and one time

and here I am rising

from my nested sheets over and over

as every morning reappears to be relived

and cold tiptoed into

and night routines are made mechanical

around once more

finish your work write your poem brush your teeth

insert yourself bed warming into sleep

repeat

Lizz Murphy - Poem 186: Fifty-fifty (found poem)

FIFTY-FIFTY

fewer than one in five voters think

a looming dead threatens to erode

— random found text from SMH July 1, 2016

Efi Hatzimanolis #140 Cold Weather Cravings

I want nothing less than
cold weather poetry in a can,
marbled with the day's fat
of moist marrow rich happiness,
like the premium cat food,
all dogs love.

Michele Morgan #177 siocdhóite

I'm craving summer
the frost has
put it out of reach

Red Cone (LF)#182-Rainbow 2-orange

rainbow 2-orange

Red Cone (LF)#181-selection

selection

certainly not perfection
winter pink
reflection

Red Cone(LF)#180-Rainbow 1- red

rainbow-1 red

as alzheimers bites

just as you think you’ve clinched the clichés

the rot sets in.

you find yourself staring down the barrels of

some stray sharpshooter’s sex pistols

as the day punks away, roaming

in the gloaming.

time is not on your side

                                                 a  n  y  m  o  r  e;

that knout-like

snap, crackle & pop,

that used to be you

is some synapses gone

soggy; metastasised

crud in an upturned bowl.

and so it goes,

a craps lost tape

an estragon last tope

steering defeat in your face

as the final curtain

curtails you for good.

& all the clever-dick catholicons

in the world

just obfuscate you further;

         &

won’t aid you to

evade the next one.

Vaughan Rapatahana

4.7.16 (#184) politics by Myron Lysenko

politics

in Australia

please keep left

Robert Verdon, #195, The Opening of the Inaugural Speech of President Dump

My friends, there are those reading Vladimir Trotsky’s

‛ABC of Materialist Dialectics’ on the internet

while you are worried about pornography!

and China is building a bigger economy than the

failing U.S.A., right under our nose!

what happened to the keys to the gates of Heaven

that we always had in our safe pair of hands?

why can’t we even match the creativity of a 1950s

Burma-Shave billboard?

what is happening to the Right when we can’t even

keep a bonehead in power in Australia?

My friends, I say to you that we are in

decline, that there must be a way to claw our way back,

we still have the Bomb that we invented in Manhattan,

so follow me as I ride it down to victory!

(applause) …

Persimmon Tree

Persimmon Tree

Our persimmon tree in autumn

a declaration of beauty

turning yellow – gold – orange

right on cue

the leaves respond,

a sublime transubstantiation.

Just like the wheel of Dharma,

no one told the tree about changes!
Hottest May temperatures ever, 

Driest April on record.

The grandeur of nature survives

set backs, transformations, partial destruction

all will bounce back

after we have become extinct.

Michele Elliot #4 : collective anxiety (iv)

Notice how slow I go, how I don’t rush ... does it bother you? 

Some of them get really annoyed but I don’t care.

I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything.