Kit Kelen #1195 - navigating the dark

1195

navigating the dark

submergence

I call it

black armband view

a fundamental shift in the fabric

do you know this world?

how it will be?

how it can have come about?

has sunshine too

and rises where we’re sunk

subtle shifts you might not notice

in light, in the passage of time

no amount of attention would tell

the radio suggests

I too am progressing to nothing

give to you the secret

today in socks

and notice

water still runs downhill

it wakes you

like the moment of the face presented

something lit

now from the past

I know we will accept all this

uncannily alike

sunshine and trees still stood

not even a breath in the leaves today

always easy to understate

to over read

bees loud in the garden of the sun

you feel in the dark

not wishing to wake

anyone otherwise

everyday objects are something else now

other shapes to the touch they are

do you recognize

world of the home still standing

as if not a soul were required?

like lost at the Easter show

and a voice comes over the air

says this is how it is from now

your mother – all mother – is gone

but the callous rest won’t even know

get on with the maze to tread

it’s as if they never heard

always easy to understate

to over read

turn it all into words

and it’s gone

Kit Kelen #1194 - gone and nowhere now

1194

gone and nowhere now

mum that was

will always be

at the parting of the world

I celebrate that we –

the mum-and-me

instance

our time in the garden

among words

in argument

and in attention

in anecdote

and by the way

a tune

and take to task

my canary

track winding back

aeroplane jelly

mum’s troubles all packed up now

I live at such a mystery

of how is it

not to be

now, nevermore

I celebrate you were

mum that was

will always be

that which is not you

we’ll scatter and sink

salt of the harbour

who was excited to be here

puzzle of all ahead and me

whiff of the world we return to

now to be all that she

is was could

because the last is past

mum that was

will always be

first heart of mine

from whom life learned

precocious to princess

to tough old chook

with a pointing stick

watch out

and in between

here’s miss

miss can I go out, miss?

mum learned ’em good

if I remember rightly

mum stuck like a tune in my head

and multitude!

mum of the top of the stairs

mercurochrome mum of all remedies

St Mum of  perpetual sacrifice

hatted mum of the picnic sunscreen

kettle on, in conversation

mainly mum indoors

fit as a fiddle

and call her up from anywhere

character

a card

my mum

this world must miss

and mum is of eternity

wherever

whatever

however

that is

Rob Schackne #925 - Qingming

Qingming

Flies know it's dying

wasps know you're a can of Coke
sunlight sometimes helps
what it takes to keep going
a green & yellow basket
what there never was
how do you ever know
lie down beside me
hold me golden, hold me tight
time enough to let it go

Rob Schackne #924 - The Difference

The Diffference

The difference
between jam and jelly
trapped there
seen it before
immovable
can you decide
muscles don't work
although
seen it before
the sun is rising
over the rocks
there is stirring
in another place
seen it before
what can you do
there is work
to be done

Kit Kelen #1193 - mum died

1193

mum died

this morning

sleepless at four

and I was at the border

this is the one

beyond the world

thing I can do now

no one can find

upstairs and sniff

through the clothes

sort the pictures again

in the forest

in the sky

hide in the words

where death won’t find me

hide in the library

not my country

but I live it now

cling to make a truth

everyone comes

her his own ways

and goes as well

this is the most natural thing

there was

nothing official yet

the thing I can do

is listen and wait

look into the dawn

and the darkness is spread

grows now

from whatever it is

comes to light

mum died

this is the proclamation

she was gone already

why should I euphemize?

she wouldn’t

91! an innings!

unsuffering at last

and here we are after

something of her yet

the house is almost empty now

and soon they’ll come to paint  

no radio nor little bird tells

we’ll have to put it in the paper

her whole life a denial of this

mum’s gone

and not to anywhere

there is nowhere she can be

nor is this the world it was

her gospel I’m here to speak

this is the one with all the words missing

cosmos mum-less

you won’t cook up a God to cope

mum died

I was awake with it

this is the news today

a truck hit the turning world

do we each go to our belief?

and are we ended there?

catch myself breathing

how can that be?

5ʹ 2˝, eyes of blue

really is was

she

who heard me

and was my help

mum of the ballroom dazzle with dad

mum of the kitchen song

every little wisdom was

arms to cradle

here to heart

mum’s gone

and she was gone already

ye know not

and she didn’t did

that’s how it is with this disease

time had told her out

we need another tense for this

the still with us in hearts and minds

mum was already gone

no church of tricks got up from fear

will make her the less gone

mum died

there are no angels

except the nursing staff

I’m glad she never buried me

glad for her she can be…

not at peace… there’s no one now

and nowhere

there is nothing

‘thinking of you’

what else can be said?

mum died

and we are catching up

‘in sure and certain knowledge’

do they tell that for a joke?

of course think up

when everything is pointing down

how else is it safer

a hundred billion of us already in the ground

long lessening it was to her

were there a hundred billion griefs?

we are with her wishes now

soon these ashes

so the sky

over every ocean spread

what if there once were a heaven?

now that heaven’s gone

Rob Schackne #923 - Book (Food Tanka)

A train, a woman
devouring a book
Entrepreneurship
I start a conversation
with the bloke across from me

Kit Kelen #1192 - fake

1192

fake

he made up a story

that it was all a story made up

he, they or the machine

made up such a story

lied that the others had lied

the sky was falling

so we build a wall

you know how that is

he stole from you

said the others stole

I’m telling you this

I believe you’ll believe

when I tell you it’s true

I’m telling you

I know you know who you can trust

who you can’t

all a story made up

he, they or the machine

made up such a story

white

and brushed under

it was a burnished lie

triumphant

one for the mantelpiece

no one would know

the lie in plain sight

lied that the others had

lied

and the lie got bigger

sort of thing would set you free

someone come to tell us

lied the way an animal would

the way God lies to His chosen

He made up the story we are

that we’d made up the story

that all it was was a story made up

that all of us were liars

he worked out

what money can buy

that’s how he bought us off

honestly

(that’s how I always begin)

he, they or the machine

made up such a story

no one will ever know

truth was an idea in God’s head once

(here we flicker in a cave)

God filled up with the laughing gas

and God has drifted away

Jeffree Michael #67 Dream for John Lennon

You might think

I wouldn't wait

but this routine

and the day before

same old meme

don't doubt

we'll dance

the two-step

once more

and dream

Rob Schackne #922 - Teeth

                Teeth

              To rusted wire

              broken connections

              all we lost

              this laughing place

              What else to see

              but delinquence

              in sensitivity

              to nothing

              In broken mood

              my back is out
              ground in sleep

              the teeth don't fit

              Try to whistle

              somewhere safe

              in the solitude

              shouting as it wakes

              No case to answer

              the 2+2 together

              what you see 

              what you get

              Look, to collect

              an instance of weeds

              trembling for 

              imagined flowers

Kit Kelen #1191 - the tasks of my dreams are too great

1191

the tasks of my dreams are too great

for Sarah St Vincent Welch

after reading Open

with some velvety

in my invisible cape

shut eyes

so no one sees

Hercules and Harry Potter

I set down the river in there

up through sunshine

saw the leaflight

in velvet sleep

music follows me some night

it’s a piano chasing

must climb where

I cannot connect

I know them all

can’t name them here

have you noticed we’re standing  in water?

a very common thing  

in here it’s time come to the garden

meaning a dance under the sprinkler then

how rusty our sources of light all are

where everyone believes

I do the superhero changes

some will hear a mouse squeak

in velvety sleep

some half under a rhyme

and all the world’s to do

will know the many creatures that I keep

along of oars

and tell the tune

phone booth to the past direct

with Button A and Button B

the ISD birds sing

a radio tells peace and war

in here

in time come

the boulder with my name

and I get to the top to be gone

in the garden

sweep at the dust

but the dust remains

here’s the meal I can’t eat

bitter, don’t know why

closer and closer

the dawn day world comes

shut eyes

turn to my chores  

Kerri Shying R - # 612 Frayed

Frayed

nothing is forever   not computers
not the love   we told the world we’d

suffer  through together    the hell
the high water   line    washed

us like a Kelvinator  on a big load
it was all   a drudge   baskets   too

heavy for lifting     the slippery grass
the mozzies   biting from the late rains

of the summer that couldn’t get it together
to just end  and get it over with  sweating

over soups  like some voodoo might
bring down winter close the doors

let the clothes horse over heaters
change the  timbre  take our minds off

all the words that fray

Kit Kelen #1190 - blasphemous - Ford Maddox Brown’s ‘The Entombment’ 1870-78

1190

blasphemous

Ford Maddox Brown’s ‘The Entombment’ 1870-78

ekphrastic  for godsbother

see death

it’s here

the rodent taken from the trap

the painted thing

it’s the colour you

thorns for a crown

gouache and a Hebrew lintel

so far foretold

have to work for suspense here

whole faces

wiped away with tears

forked beard

hands to cup a world

eyes in cast

mouth beyond the meal

this ecce homo for a lesson

the lamb’s head held to show

days on the cross

and not quite gone

needing a little lie down

a few days then fit as a fiddle

there’ll be a countenance like lightning

that’s till the end of the world

so much to do

some say that understudy twin

was a whole life waiting for this

but it’s the bliss of the everlasting

he had a lamp earlier on you know

could have been a podiatrist

flow of garment and limb

and all that mid-Victorian hair

three power poles unstrung

(the end times)

gold for a halo

gold for a frame

could be a sun stood behind

forty days

the alien craft comes

throws down a beam

jaws set

and the earth might open

none of these ghosts give up 

Kit Kelen #1189 - Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Annunciation’ ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’

1189

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Annunciation’

‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’

ekphrastic

deshabille

this any girl

called from the pillow

a teen!

all white with a ghost float

to lily gift the lamb

this angel

telling how it’s to be

doesn't even bother with 

'trust me'

girl’s bothered

and fear to the fore

virgin half cringes

far from the winged one

gets the drift

a godfuck slave

you have to know how to read

you’d have to have been there

to see how it was

light of the world

tossed off

Stuart Rawlinson #94 - Picking Leaves

Tuber in the dirt

root of all evil

scrape with a knife

twist the cells

           I felt 

a twine 

cracked fibres 

dried up vessel 

liars in the grass   

           pull taut 

lift up to the light

sight through 

motionless veins

the leaves don’t drop

            not here

bark peels 

strips clean

dead skin for the heap

Tug Dumbly - A bum plays Flight of the Bumblebee

A bum plays Flight of the Bumblebee

on a street piano near the station
and Rasta Man, with the amped up didge
and FX rack, joins the jam. They’re hitting 
Rachmanioff, Beethoven, Bach – Fur Elise,
Anna Magdalena, then The Entertainer …
the man’s childhood repertoire on this
out of tune wreck of a piano, outside the
chicken shop, full pedal down sound
rolling over the bipping Friday afternoon
traffic vivisecting Newtown, the sound
reverberating rich, with the didge barping
and honking like a goose on top 
as Rasta Man chucks his dreads and spare arm
about like it’s a baroque rave, and waves
of commuters shoal up from the afternoon trains.
I call the piano player a bum, but that’s
a cheap shot, he’s just a man, one of
the street irregulars who gladhand longnecks
in brown paper bags outside the community
centre in the square, close by the pub, police
station and courthouse, with hospital, rehab
and funeral home within a spit ...
it’s like the set of a toytown village, with life
laid out neat like clothes on a bed, go to woe,
a Truman Show in a Salvos Cheers bar where
the cops all know your name and everyone’s
stamped In Transit, as flocks of released schoolkids
screech past in a Lorikeet identity parade.
I like sitting afternoons on the stoop of the old
Hub porno theatre and seeing it all. It’s like a
duck hide from which to watch humanity pass by,
free street theatre, no two plays the same.
I meet my boy’s bus and we head home,
Beethoven reimagined for didge, incongruous
cuz to a piano that melts into Moonlight Sonata.

Rob Schackne #921 - "I'll take the shot"

I'll take the shot
of a pebble not
from my hand
the sun makes shadows
what isn't quite right
it could be aliens
on the verge
of understanding
what they hoped
they think I wished
to smoke the sky
and make it rain
the missing colours
pinching salt
one foot
on the ground
at any time

Clark Gormley #101 April the First

when scanning the newspaper

for the implausible

every article

looks a bit dodgy

‘a frog that gives birth

through its mouth’ a contender

except that I know

gastric brooding’s a thing

when spoof-spotting

some are obviously off-limits

‘worker dead in scaffolding collapse’

nothing whimsical about that

‘September 11 link’

way too grim

leave it to the morons

to dispute that it happened

‘reshuffle senior bureaucracy’

far too dull

‘tax relief in tomorrow’s budget’

too predictable

even the self-evident

is under scrutiny

‘Trump cheats at golf’

surely that’s not news?

‘Nut rage on flight’

and ‘Chinese censors

blur male earrings’

turn out to be true (I think)

and just when you’re

running out of energy

we’re saved by ‘CSIRO’s

Electro-Voltaic potato charger’

https://www.drive.com.au/news/csiro-reveals-radical-ev-charging-technology-121080.html?trackLink=SMH3&utm_campaign=tile-4&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=smh

Rob Schackne #920 - "Sunlight through"

Sunlight through
a white bird's wings
where I am right now
the sun is setting
the radio has news
torture & indifference
my heart must shift
to make some pasta
drink the wine alone
the poems in my head
black pepper & salami
are you a little hungry
all switch the station
it's almost ready

Kit Kelen #1188 - at the well

1188

at the well

following Anna Couani

rain all fallen

light beat us here

at the well

ask the way

cup hands

take the sky

every animal is with you

some have seen only the organs

some the shell without

and in the skin you are

gossip gathered

all animals till this

you are

in the salt sea to ashes

so far

a rumour

hands hold a world

guessed together

in the deeps

imagine

steps down through a spiral

to source

the bees louder then

look up from

into the eye

cup hands

take the sky

at the well

ask the way

a moon there too

swim in it

Jeffree Michael #66 They wash

Slowly but surely 

they arrived
in fews at first
procreated 

not quite noticed

under the ol' ra dar

spilling vitriol
ole

networked phlebs
and pop-up tyros

influencers treaders signal
more likes than likely

from hard madmen underbellies
it's a race to the middle ground 

conspiring 15 minutes of fame
another pseudo culture genre

democracy is now hand rolled
a big and smokey plurocracy
cavernous sanctuary
a veil for screening trolls

while tides
come in even higher

they wash

as you say

the great
unwashed

away

Rob Schackne #919 - "Is it still"

Is it still
rusted from
the inside
surface glorious
all the books I read
autumn comes
the rain in stages
turn the page
a few drops only