Béatrice Machet # 340 On January—the first second of … 2017 As a way of continuing Rob’s meditation…

# 340   On January—the first second of … 2017

As a way of continuing Rob’s meditation…

Dreams ahead    flashing

mere traffic lights or       rotating ones

police     ambulance     firemen’s cars        emergency dreams

                                              above

like stars in one’s head’s sky               dreams

                     they are your truth

don’t turn your eyes in resignation

                     they are true                  burning tools as laughs are   when

                     they're in tune with questions

                                          dreams

                                                it’s all about harmony

                           and songs

Des rêves au-devant        clignotant  

simples feux rouges         ou   gyrophares

police     ambulance     voitures de pompiers       rêves d’urgence

                                              au-dessus

                     étoiles dans la tête                 rêves

                     ils sont votre vérité

ne détournez pas des yeux résignés

                     ils sont vrais                     outils brûlants comme des rires    quand

                      à l’unisson avec les questions

                                          rêves

                                                il s’agit pour finir d’harmonie

                           et de chants

Rob Schackne #203 - "Is consent"

"Is consent"


Is consent

a form

of contract

the flower

and the bee

the norms

of power

the sunset

this small poem

and me?

Efi Hatzimanolis #276 still here

stoke and block
these unstructured feelings rolled in day's thieving ways
with bad nights
  pitching into fine mornings -
neither time nor space count
the storms making landfall today or the one wave
  torn off a resting ocean -
whether there's gristle
in your teeth or
a mouthful of thistle,
your tongue's a take away

Robert Verdon, #403, letters

letters

to the sea that we

do without, on a day sandbagged with

yellow cloud,

yucca

dropping one’s glasses in an empty park

flowers in dreams of balconies over perfect

city-states within states, hot

lines

of summer rain arranged like

antennae and tramwires and crosses on buns

letters

from the lens ground

underfoot

capturing briefly

what we have never known

we do without

letters

read when it is too late

to care

Mikaela Castledine #367 Crow Garden

Apologies, after peddling so hard across the finish line I have not manage to bring my conveyance completely to a halt. Not sure yet if it is an overshoot or a victory lap, time will tell!. xM

Crow Garden

Grow in my crow garden
my little loves
with your judicious teaching
of your child
this is the place 
they put the porridge leavings
here the water bowled
in thoughtful shade
be flighty fearful here on the ground
just in case
but you are quite safe

It is so hard to tell you apart
my loves
a little in size and one of you
I choose to say the father
has an identifiable limp and then
two of you have 
whitened your iris in wisdom
or for your blackeyed chick
to see you
in the night

Kit Kelen 367.1 - 2 - resolutions (publishable)

367.1

2

resolutions

(publishable)

be patient with my parts

do less

but with more resolution

52

and the conversation

the sundry list of novels, stories

paint when the spirit takes

likewise with strings and keys

theses and books of the others assist

remember to show up to class

get my grades in

brush my teeth

spare frequent thoughts for the mother monster

consider the garden from afar

witness

the wonderful world of atrocity

try to wish every Hitler away

keep the conversation going

listen as well as able

even in among the trees

lend an ear to elements

harness momentum

for best direction

and just occasionally

give it a rest

negotiate the best terms of surrender

stay well out of harm's way

and poetry!

buzz into

like a blowfly

through a screendoor tear

and not ashamed to say

this is inspiration

no problem if it hymns itself

you can hum along

who knows if it will be prose

it's always rising from the grave

it makes the spirit holy

to be gentler gentler

with myself

do what I damn well like

do it when it seems the best 

 

Kerri Shying R - # 175 - My Eggy ( New Years Day and six months)

My Eggy

We used to write bastard on the boiled eggs so we’d know

  this year that’s the resolution   that’s the change

here find the faces of the lost ones    who the bastards are

 that we’ve been writing up   down two decades

how simple it was to just go    you

 that  hard time scratching on the shell grit

compacted deep within    make us food   come now with

 softer days  make contact with the faces make

eradication   wipe off words  to favour

 eggless-ness   knowing what you know is

the furthest road to tread

 hide your faces still  the deed itself  be sure 

the thing it shows

Toasting the New Year - Day 30 - Sara Dowse

Yesterday I went to buy a toaster,

my old one died.

I had always bought the cheap kind

so it came as no surprise

that it bit the dust,

kaput, and gone forever.

In the space of twelve years

a cavalcade of toasters,

plastic, white.

Cheap ones as said, for toast

I thought was hardly worth

a big one, stainless steel,

for browning slices of bread.

I rode the bus to Balgowlah,

walked down the hill.

This time, I thought, I might buy 

a good one, to last me longer

well made, shining steel exterior,

to see me through my twilight years

though it was blazing hot traipsing down

to Harvey Norman’s and once there

I was salaaming for the airconditioning.

They have a way, our merchant lords,

cunning men,

they call them entrepreneurs

the kind of blokes our government adores,

bedazzling with their bright lights

and blasts of iced air

and so many benches of toasters,

toasters galore, that I bought one.

But another cheap one,

for what is toast but toast, and anyway,   

I’ve never much liked Harvey Norman.

Efi Hatzimanolis #275 New Year's Day

undrunk and inside
the slenderest of skies
returning stranger

Kit Kelen #367 - 1 - Groundhog Year

367

1

Groundhog Year

rise and shine campers!

this is the year the world

stuffs itself with cream puff

drives over and over the cliff

scoffs at best advice

because it knows the blizzard is coming,

knows because it's been here before

let's see

in January – Hitler's made Chancellor

that was some fancy footwork

in February – the Reichstag Fire

followed the day after by a decree

puts all the communists in gaol

(leaves them on the ballot paper for March though

that makes them easier to find)

you see how quickly things unfold

in America, FDR is sworn in and the New Deal begins

King Kong premieres in March

the Nazis win the Federal Election with 43% of the vote

then that's it for voting in Germany for a while

in April the first laws against the Jews

and the Nazis begin with a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses

in April the Gestapo is established

you see by what easy stages things may quickly unfold

Trade Unions are banned in Germany in May

massive book burnings begin

in June all parties other than the Nazi Party are banned

you see how quickly the world is changed

July – in India Gandhi goes to gaol

Germany begins forced sterilizations on eugenics grounds

in October Einstein arrives at Princeton to stay

November – Duck Soup is released – everyone sings 'Hail Freedonia'

I won't mention the years that followed

just to remind

K Mart shoppers

it's true that every American wins a prize

two cars in the garage

and now the old factory shines again

how glorious the past of our glories

isn't it great to be great again

tautology's too long a word for me

what year are we living now, history buffs?

hold onto your hat and see!

Béatrice Machet # 339 last words before 2017 and Project 52

# 339  last words before 2017 and Project 52

Could every single word you act be a verb?

If so

Is it therapy to you? To me?

From cut and puncture wounds in the flesh

screens and pages as plasters and bandages

emerge … could that be real?

One doesn’t fear bleeding neither words nor verbs

if it allows the puzzle to be assembled

in a blazing meaning that would melt

questions with answers

and all wars would cease

and the wind bit by bit

would lift eyes and faces

to welcome the new sun

the new year…

Est-ce que toute parole en acte est un verbe ?

et si oui

est-ce un remède pour vous ? Pour moi ?

De blessures et de plaies taillées dans la chair

des écrans et des pansements

émergent ... est-ce bien réel ?

On ne craint pas de saigner mots et verbes

si cela permet au puzzle d’être assemblé

en une signification aveuglante qui fondrait

les questions avec les réponses

et toutes les guerres cesseraient

et le vent petit à petit

soulèverait yeux et visages

afin qu’ils accueillent un nouveau soleil

une nouvelle année …

Efi Hatzimanolis #274 drawing ahead

it's too much
pressure for a snail
then and now

Hydrotherapy by Emma McKervey #16

Hydrotherapy

It is a very specific sound when a bone snaps, a live bone that is,

still couched in flesh, tendon, blood, sinew, these various things

which bind and flow and articulate a self. I wasn’t there to hear it

but I heard it all the same in the telling, the dull and brutal snap;

the dog which should have been on a lead but wasn’t, who leapt

from the high beach wall and landed wrongly on a protruding rock.

Its leg and possibly some ribs were done in, stove in for the ribs I guess,

and the snapped leg unable to bend in the right direction or take weight,

unable to bare any load as the owners scrabbled down the steps

to its side.  We supposed later, after the telling, that it must have been difficult

to find a vet so late on a Friday, so close to New Year, and were unhappy

with how the story ended; the owners gathering up the broken dog,

shuddering in its padded coat, carrying it across the sands and back to their car.

It is only a single day later but I choose to think of that dog poised

on a treadmill in a pool, pain gone, buoyant in the water, as I had overheard

the Lecturer in Equine Studies offer to her own father in the hospital

the other day.  The dog would be paddling madly with its nose pointed upwards

and its eyes fixed on a single point, at the memory of that littler dog it had launched

itself downwards to chase maybe, and each bone begins to knit, to realign with the gentle use.

It must be what the dog owners bent down to describe to the young girls shocked

near the fall as they passed by, that near future told to them to reassure

on that long retreat from the awful scene.

Susan Hawthorne #369 new year

on the beach
drumming and
fire twirling

even the fireworks
are organic
no wild explosions

to scare dogs
cassowaries
wildlife

I hope this
bodes well for
an organic 2017


Thank you to everyone who has posted and responded and inspired. It's been fantatstic. Remember some of us came to January because we are in different time zones :-))

Lizz Murphy - Poem 366: Head XLVI - On the guilty pursuit

And one more for the road ...

Medium: Oil pastel & found text on paper. Size: 30 cm x 30 cm.

ON THE GUILTY PURSUIT

Back at the wharf,
on the guilty pursuit
I sallied forth
With the sun dipping low

Each time, the story deepens,
"Older thinkers had been wiser
Myth was no mere
stoush

Mystically I offer
years of human history
suspect of sins.
handle it.

In my life, I have had opportunities
"I am very grateful for that."

                         Several steps more

 
--
This is not an ending, this is a beginning. Thank you Kit Kelen and all the Project 365+1 contributors. It's been wonderful - even the days that had me cursin. Happy new year.
 

Rob Schackne #202 - O Cantador

To paraphrase JG Ballard, the best time to re-write history is when it's fresh. So...yeah.

O Cantador

                 for Elis Regina

Like a lover
I turn my pockets out
then I find you
you were always there
so let it be me
the sunset for an hour
butterflies everywhere
like a lover
I walk for hours
vaguely in the direction
of your heart
mine is beating wildly
let it be me
like a lover
who sings of perfection
how the world fades away
when you're in my arms again
please let it be me
let it be me

Claine Keily #21 The Mango Traders

There was a simple
party menu
stars
stalks of incense
and the menagerie to stare at

At home
things were darker
the tenants who
traded mangoes
-shipped them out
to frozen countries-
bathed until
there was no water
lit up the house at
obscene hours
cooled rooms
they would not
return to
until days later
when their business
was over