Kerri Shying R # 189 - Choc

Choc

Enough  polite fiction in my love life   and

   at the polls   don’t let it seep   across

to boxing   have the punches  flat out   land  yes

 roll your words around your mouth   to

sing out  what you see    say clear    the way

 the whole thing  came to be    it’s called

a blow-by-blow description for a reason   yet

 whoever thought we’d  turn  to gloves to find

the last of eloquence    before the deluge falls,  of

glue.

Rob Schackne #233 - "Right upon"

Right upon the cusp
of the community thing
the sheep see horses

Kerri Shying R - # 188 - Give me Fever

Give me Fever.

stitched onto the sand   you were once a fever

of stinging rays     wide  underwater kites

with graceful flapping wings   apparitions beamed from

outer space   it always seemed to me    the end of all the

mysteries      my uncles   cousins  picking    stick thin legs

between the sand bar   and lagoon    Narooma

beach    afraid of electricity   surely coursing through the

long whip tails   devil-barbed   you swished you swished

patrolling    more sure than all the storm troopers  in the

Death Star   now to open up the paper     on a Saturday

find the stingray killing competition     see you there

all dead   in a patterned grid    speaks of no

imagination    barbarous-engined zombies  wound up set loose

human Pac men   stealing grace  and all imagination

nothing left but rot and someone coming by

to turn the sand    across a glut of bodies

Sunday  if not Monday 

eh.

Kit Kelen #396 - learning to fly

396

learning to fly

requires some height

(not stature, silly)

perhaps a push

what's this your skin's

stretched over?

gather to you all things lighter than air

this compels logic to your cause

but how the wind can bite!

so many little things

and wonder if you've got them right

it's fiddly getting ready

but you'll recognize a deep end

the angels for a pin's fee

silence is your power there

as in a meeting of the board

more of a knack

than a thrill

you cannot have argued a way to here

and yet your passage is deliberation

judgement's a moment-to-moment thing

into your head the clouds pour

no telling which decade's – which century's –

is which

it's every miracle upends you

the wax

and the sun

and the song in your ears

you have no fear of heights

the stadium rises to one cheer

for a moment they might all lift

you wake hard from that fond conceit

don't underestimate the gawkers though

is there another proof?

consider the loop to loop

advanced, yes

then you're a kind of canvas

updraft caught

the news breaks through

you fall

it needn't be that way

you know

stick with the lighter music stations

you fold away a world out there

set your own course

and dive

Reward # 61 Claine Keily

There are no rewards
for the dust she swept
out of houses
the only joy she found
is the belief
she had
at that time

Kristen de Kline - #58 - relatives not to ring after eight pm

after 8pm on a Friday night it's danger zone
she'll be tanked trashed blind
she loves to remind you
how violent your relationship was
how abusive your ex was
what a terrible environment it was to bring children up in
after 8pm she loves to tell you
that you shouldn't be sitting around writing poetry for weirdo blogs
there's all these full time jobs you could be should be doing
not just 9-5 but overtime shift work every day of the week Saturdays Sundays too
you've got to make big money     stop bludging
after 8 pm she loves to tell you in the one term he cared for your kids
what a fantastic job he did
how it's all down to him that things are turning around now
you'd taken the kids to choir drama basketball fencing swimming piano lessons
emailed the teachers for homework assignments
rung the school on speed dial
set up home laptops tablets desktop computers
you try to say: reality's a lovely place but
     I don't want to live there
but she says: you were in a such a violent relationship
     it was so abusive
you should have got out years and years ago
now you should be getting up at 5am 4 am 3am 2am
forget that: don't sleep
set your alarm clock     work like a dog     pay everybody back
get a haircut and a real job
clean your act up and don't be a slob
stop sitting around writing poems for random blogs
where's that going to get you
you never had a grip on reality
remember when you climbed on the rooftop
when all the laughter grew too loud
all you needed was a good shake
a few home truths     a slap in the face
stop bludging penning poetry sleeping in
where's that going to get you
get a haircut get a real job clean up your act don't be a slob
you stub out a cigarette on
the arch of your foot
reel down the blinds
let the phone keep ringing
sit there softly singing:
reality's a lovely place
but I don't want to
live
there
anymore

Kit Kelen - #395 - time (a meditation on what's lost)

395

time

a meditation on what's lost

all that which is dearly departed

must have slipped by somehow

like a noose over

push up

bucket connects

never the one event

you wish the damn thing would run down

it's only measurement gravity drags

like limbs to next engagement

let the compost darken

to next year's crop

let's be soil ourselves

from one week to a next

ye know not

the music runs on

and the parcel is passed

be carnival

be Bachanal

it won't catch up with you

but the mask dissolves to hours

this is the wheel on which you break

quickly quickly catchee

here are the rosebuds

here's the sun setting

snarling thing

and it rounds on you

the grass grows over

just thinking of it

just how pointy?

grimace for a needle

lean into the bends

time gives you the treatment

it has a signature you know

the asteroids make meteors

we each become a map to read

less of the journey to make

no respecter of age or beauty

the cars keep flying off the track

gravity is time's pet

a cough becomes a new career

a cruel interrogation

and in the end most will say 'rosebud'

though some are silent to the grave

and some first learn it there

pens down!

then we're well tucked in it

and one day might be found

James Walton #33 One eight six

One eight six

She likes the sandwiches cut in triangles,

vegemite and butter and I’m lithe with a knife

an even spread sculpting the edges.

Though it goes against her pride in doing so,

I help with the shoelaces that slip undone

our kitten fighting every finger.

It’s a special ordinance rope I carefully plait,

we have to be certain that all the measures

height and weight and drop fall are right.

I don’t think about any of the noises now,

rudimentary skills are art for the initiated

and the sounds of death are swift.

Awkward glances tarry over the hood,

there should be a handkerchief in the satchel

if it’s taken we’ll all know where to look.

I worry over grated knees on the rough bitumen,

holding breath to that blanking point of release

a great gulping sigh knowing you’re alive again.

They’re singing belief on the other side,

the bluestone fish scales in indifferent chorus

hums through the pauper’s turned soil.

Recess bells meet the silence of this forlorn attire,

palms still itching from the Particulars Handbook

scribed with the details of death by fracture dislocation.

Again I wash my hands for cooking dinner,

distracted how potatoes are like the taut of a nape

and that a heart can beat for three to four minutes.

The cat can sleep on her bed tonight when she asks,

in the knot of her thankful innocent arms

my day breaks like a thousand dry plates.

.

186 is the final entry in the Victorian ‘Particulars of Execution Handbook’ held at the Public Records Office.  In it are described the details of each execution carried out by the official Victorian Hangman of the time.

186 was Ronald Ryan hanged at 8.00am on February the third, 1967. This was last exercise of capital punishment in Australia.

‘He stood quite still and was cooperative with the execution. As he fell one heard his neck break. After fall no movements. Heart beat for 3 to 4 minutes. No breathing. Cause of death Fracture dislocation of neck consistent with judicial hanging.’

Kit Kelen - #394 - do you remember

394

do you remember

the moment when time was discovered?

it sounds like Julius Sumner Miller

but it's long before that

no school ever taught us to breathe with the clock

or know that the heart hammers under

do you remember hearing it first?

Christmas wouldn't come

though you couldn't have put it this way

at that point

you're sure that you'll live forever

and then we come to say the hours

colours, seasons, inland rivers

it's all forever named

the world's as flat and still as looking

then someone says it's round

you never need to mention language

it's a word for each thing at a time

three is yellow

four is green

and five of course is blue

no one's mentioned mystery

but it's up to you

existence is an opening

the whole world's onto then

so I suppose the soul's considered

it's plasticine and Perkin's paste

the dinosaurs dance

see the skeletons under

later there's the Mercurochrome moment

bit of bark off, knees are skinned

see then that healing's a kind of forever

pick at it, pick at it, slap

tie your own laces

the Mőbius instance

once known – forever done

and so one recognises that for our purposes

time has neither beginning nor end

but we come along

slipped somehow into the running stream

and that's life... it goes on

and it runs on

into the afternoon so

odd moments out of need and want

as suited to reflection

let's say a certain sunbeam

with dustmotes

or you know that everything is atoms

then you take that not for seeing

but for symptom of the truth

dreams bubble up

and you must guess

that they were always dreamt

so play with yourself as much as allowed

we come to the Periodic Table

ogle after

or you're sought

take turns

you learn to tie

you pick out a first dress

and now there's Keats and Mozart, Rembrandt

Rachmaninoff not yet

the names fall on us like confetti

there was a time you could shrug them off

but the radio insisted

there's a moment – and a good long while

you know you're loved and needed somewhere

just for a self you are

and sometime then some others die

who were that way with you

a funeral first!

you the see the stream can run to dust

in a certain summer

that sun's a bastard then

still the rains return

for we who remain

who are here to run with time

we're grateful for a roof

and solemn

we have a Bible of words for it

time's stuck fast in them

and guess at the rust we might outlast

guess which tin lengths see us out

or should

on the wall we stare it down

some cynicism kills the time

watch how top of the clock it comes still

train still maybe a minute away

but then you notice the acceleration

the hundred pockets of the day

bulge with all to do

the year of resolution flounders

then years, then resolution too

it's like the map's rolled up behind us

how did we get to here?

you could curse your choice of century

long as a wingbeat

tombed with time

how we have wished

and wishes won

this is the prison

we build from inside

all at it headlong

grey rides back like a moon-tugged tide

then in the mirror you'll observe

that we're the wrinkled sea

there's a moment you look forward to

when you know the end's not far

and wonder how your world adds up

and how you've added

how it will be when you're not

there's a moment you know

you'll never know

and so that's it for certainty

then time lies curled around us

for a question

we're naked in

right now

Rob Schackne #232 - "People reading them"

People reading them
a few are mad or sickly
some almost like me
(lots of strangers go to work
dreaming a poem every day)

Kristen de Kline #57 - not earthbound

she always says she dreams
in her mother tongue
     "tema emakeeles"
speaks in English but
dreams
     "unistused"
in Estonian

'not every notion translates to another tongue'
they say it almost gets there
but just      misses the mark

what's the word what's the word?
"mis see sõna on? mis see sõna on?"
how you say it in English?
"kuidas seda öelda inglise keeles?"

exile
it's the first word we learn: "pagendus"
but we can't translate it, know it:
those first weeks in September '44
hours, days, weeks of uncertainty:
"Will we all be slain or deported?"
I saw it all, she says,
the train wagons, the trucks, the despair
     suspended
my family didn't sleep, I was sleepless too

The occupation was far more horrible than Hitchcock's movies
     he says,
The Birds, do you know it?
Watching that was like a children's game
     not horrible at all
but what happened there, in our country,
     "meie riigis"
what happened there,
     that was really horrible,
he says...

Blood-coloured horses
trampled the earth     scorched,
trees     burnt,
death-ticks
invaded      forests
water clotted
     streams
the earthbound weight of the
hollows     emptied out
into our hearts: hunted     haunted

they took it all into exile:
blue moods not-sleeping moody blues
with the sun     setting now
on a foreign channel, an unfamiliar language:
"what's the word, what's the word?"

days and darkness     shadow-curves
swept
across the
hungry earth
you drank wine, too much
and ordered Estonian rye bread from a bakery
two and a half hours away

when they left their country
they carried their Nordic gloom
like a prize and a curse
they looked towards the sun
setting      in another place     a different fashion
in exile they knew never to look back
but still they came undone
their rolled r's starched op shop suits heavy European accents
betrayed them    

Pretend what you like: they never fitted in
I could hear the English words the neighbouring children spoke:
gobbledegook gibberish wogs refos gobbledegook
they didn't know they were laughed at
but I wanted to slap them, the Aussie kids
tell them the only thing my mother had of her fathers was a ring
and a last letter from Siberia
show them the packages of nylons biros Levi jeans shampoo wigs we'd send to the Baltic States
and how us children would have to add the four letters the adults would refuse to pen:
-U-S-S-R-

Pretend what you like: during the war they were
illegal aliens
displaced people
Pretend what you like: assimilation never bloody happened
their English their spirit their sleep was
     broken
they drank too much red wine
ate too much rye bread
rolled their r's like madmen
their hearts prized open, cursed apart
drinking eating rolling in the gutters
looking up at the apocalyptic sun
setting     on another channel
a different coloured sky
coming     undone
with the letter 'r'
rolling off the page

Kit Kelen #393 - I set out to find my readers

393

I set out to find my readers

always knew they were out there somewhere

(a boutique group, albeit)

looked under stones, all turned already

I looked through a glass and darkly

(poets lurking there in wait)

I burst into classrooms and churches

as any masked gunman would do

but no, they were reading some boring guff

bank balances and excel sheets

often enough

they hymned themselves off

I combed the libraries and schools

all at the shelves of 'practical interest'

thinking ahead to meaningless toil

out in the playgrounds

anthems were sung

all I could do was jot notes

then up the garden path

among the hearts and minds

even those very few who read poetry

each had something classic to hand

you had to be dead to get in

tried radio

but they wanted either to sleep

or to bang their heads

only the news between

so I took to teaching

wrote the textbook

I made them read my stuff

but it wasn't the same thing

the soul may not exist

but you'll notice when it's gone

I had all but given up

trying to find the genuine reader

when one day I saw stranger on a train

holding my book open

(oh and I'd tried trains and buses before

I'd had my poem up on the walls there

at an angle no strap dangler could hope to avoid

but it was advertising to them)

now here was a stranger

reading my book

rhythm of the wheels go round

rhythm of the tracks

I could see the words getting out

tangling with a willing mind

was that sub-vocalisation I caught?

it might have been a lip twitch, still...

of course it was tempting

just to strike up a conversation

after all it was clear

we had something in common

but this stranger's face

was a fascinating study

a poem in itself

how could I break my own spell?

I took a vow of silence then

I had to resist this temptation

(and I've stuck with this

ever since)

I had to get off at my stop

the train went on

and that stranger

who must have found enlightenment

has never been seen again

such little things

we let sustain us

in this our chosen life

Rob Schackne #231 - Becalmed

Becalmed


He becomes a writer
a thousand years waiting
and for some reason

for a harmless detonation
wants to write odd poems
of hearts and souls

(by all means, sweet love
transfer those cultures
Astérix to Astro Boy)

he starts off on the Mekong
a thousand years waiting
for the wind to pick up

a kite gets caught
between the gust & the air
and falls at the border

he watches a boat
by a slow silver river
play an old game in the mind

the inklings to scatter
from blows and the hot wire
sparks fly off the thousand words

the kite goes as high
as it can, one eye spotting
the dangers below

looks like soldiers
in a thousand fields sow hearts
marked in land mines dark

a poem comes grudgingly
like a body pulled along the ground
and silent people stare

School Yards # 61 Claine Keily

She did as told
lit the candles
beneath the ceramic saints
then hurried home
to where the whole
house sparkled

Tomorrow they would shop
for vinegar and treacle
then she would return
to sleep beneath a plastic model
of Christ crucified
glowing a green in the dark
that was meant to be golden

Then she pretended to do
what her mother told her
as she watched her
pray for parquet floors
and wide bay windows
and school yards
where there were
no migrants