found poem: in response to carol archer’s aluminum etching ‘sandstone walk (after the fires)’
Poems
responding to John Bennett’s love poem
the legislators acknowledged at last
having expelled all thoughts of republic
peace declared universally
with every kind of song and dance
guardians tickled to a fit
esperanto
everyone listens
we take turns
money’s abolished
the budget is open
machines, but only if they’re fun
everyone will get enough
sleep, cuddles, sweetmeats, admiration
and every tree may grow
come koalas!
your golden age
the borders gone
Zeus patron of the exiles, cross-dressed
open to all suggestion
this is a world of infinite care
acceptance
or do as you damn well please
no one is blamed for what they can’t help
everyone held to opinion
do we need watches, clocks?
no crimes against humanity!
where no one will remember tomorrow
or read between these lines
all this is proclaimed – a NO year plan
must have been the way I slept
and those who believed in us
whom we loved
the dead shall rise
to our conversation
argue the toss
and call account
it’s all looking good from here
.
plus a haiku
the rain persisting here too
I take off my hat
unzip and join in
responding to John Bennett’s love poem Read More »
Love Poem
Love poem 13 Feb 2021
I am relieving myself, a natural start to a new day
over Japanese Irises, watching a low, sharp light
tightly focused by the foliage, solar rays must be photons
not waves. This red eye rising over the raucous ocean
gives us everything, even the BCC cut out of my back
a couple of weeks ago. I think of our garden, our love,
how I should write a love poem every day, tallying
the magic conjured daily, because 600 million years
away our star will discharge so much solar radiation
that silicate minerals (90 percent of Earth’s crust)
will rapidly weather recasting the carbonate-silicate cycle.
Carbon dioxide will fall below the level needed to sustain
C3 photosynthesis used by trees. Though, some plants
use the C4 method, enabling survival at concentrations
as low as 10 parts per million, but eventually plant life
will become extinct, leading to the extinction of nearly all
living beings since plants are the bedrock of the food chain.
I end my contribution to the nitrogen cycle, zipper up,
notice the ‘clumping’ Black Bamboo is starting to run amok
and stray into the Irises, Austromyrtus and Club Moss,
a fern that popped up two years ago. I should survey
our garden in days, and love in heartbeats, every second.
KING OF THE WORLD – ROI DU MONDE
Responding to Carol Archer’s Sandstone Walk
(don’k ask me how this « story » came to my mind !! I guess it’s a mix of testimonies and readings I’ve stored somewhere in my memory and consciousness…)
Delivered on the shoulder of the road
you tumble down a landfill
to end up in a lukewarm puddle of water
It’s summer
you have been spending two weeks in jail
By now the gibbous moon slides out of a stormy cloud
Even though treated as a burglar
while you’re just a beggar
trying to get out of the slum you were born into
you feel in the mood for dancing
It has been months since a single drop of rain
fell from the sky
it has been months during which flames
by the thousands
have devoured ground and forests
it’s a time for celebration
and heartfelt gratitude
it’s a time for ashes to slip from memory
and desperation
At this very moment
you’re the king of the world
wading in his golden bathtub(e)
Déposé sur le bord de la route
tu dévales un talus
pour atterrir dans une flaque d’eau tiède
C’est l’été
tu viens de passer deux semaines en prison
maintenant la lune gibbeuse se glisse hors d’un nuage orageux
Bien que traité comme un cambrioleur
alors que tu n’es qu’un mendiant
essayant de se sortir du taudis dans lequel tu es né
tu es pris d’une envie de danser
Il s’est passé des mois sans qu’une goutte de pluie
soit tombée à terre
il s’est passé des mois entiers pendant lesquels
des flammes par milliers
ont dévoré sols et forêts
c’est le moment de fêter
c’est le moment de gratitude sincère
c’est le moment pour les cendres de s’échapper de la mémoire
et du désespoir
À ce moment précis
tu es le roi du monde
en train de barbotter dans sa baignoire en or
KING OF THE WORLD – ROI DU MONDE Read More »
roadkill – responding to Sarah St Vincent Welch’s ‘the recent burials’
roadkill
responding to Sarah’s ‘the recent burials’
wallaby gone when we came back with rifle
so push off the tar
and days watch by, summer fast
yd hardly see the crows, or who were they (?)
driving by each day
dog of my childhood
in a backyard gone
and the time capsules (late sixties) must be there still too
damp mouldy remains of still live and breathe
important things forgotten now
but smell bad
and straight to the bin
sometimes you’d think the whole planet bones
sunk further toward the molten core
but some were smoke before
no one buried the dinosaurs
that was a sad sad day
roadkill – responding to Sarah St Vincent Welch’s ‘the recent burials’ Read More »
the recent burials
Inspired by ‘Is this the Azure Kingfisher’ Sarah St Vincent Welch
the recent burials
last year it was a friend’s dog
old fella still warm
her child’s best friend
one of her family
bundled and wrapped
we were weak
the soil clay
we smiled at just how weak
we were
my cracking body
could still pick axe
with a shallow swing
chisel head drag
into fractured rock
we made a superficial grave
anchored it with broken bricks
La Niña keened over Queanbeyan
we talked on the verandah
the wind rattled the carport loose
we remembered that a fox
tried to dig up the bird
that drowned in our lazy rain-filled bucket
the bird grave in our front garden
today a felled cockatoo
beside the road
her yellow crest still raised
we saw her at dusk
we dug by torchlight
remembered
how the cockies talked to us
when we visited this house
swinging upside down
us looking up to hear
just who do you think you are,
who?
the recent burials Read More »
BE-FORE — AVANT
Responding to Brian Purcell’s “in a time of lockdown”
Before by Béatrice Machet
when it doesn’t mean in front
when it doesn’t show ahead
when it looks back towards earlier
these « before » times
were they more happy
the before masks
the before
not only perinatal and neonatal asphyxia
but also before
premature
and globalized suffocation
before main streets were emptied
before roses and princes lived apart
on faraway locked down planets
because of covid zones
before half of the population was turned into beggars…
Before
belonging to the past
it points out bewilderedness caused by constant belligerencies
beyong believability
before loneliness is the norm
these « before » times
were they more free
Not being owlish but nevertheless aware enough
I assume
before human kind becomes wise
simultaneous bewitchments and benevolences will constitute
the « between » times
before an harmonious now begins
so we can simply be
Avant
quand cela ne signifie pas devant
quand cela ne montre pas l’en-avant
quand il regarde en arrière vers plus tôt
ces temps « d’avant »
étaient-ils plus heureux
l’avant les masques
l’avant
pas seulement de l’asphyxie péri ou néonatale
mais aussi avant
une suffocation prématurée
et mondialisée
avant que les rues aient été vidées
avant que roses et princes soient séparés
sur des planètes lointaines confinées
à cause des zones covid
avant que la moitié de la population ne devienne mendiante …
Avant
appartenant au passé
il souligne la stupéfaction due aux constantes belligérances
au-delà du crédible
avant que la solitude devienne la norme
ces temps « d’avant »
étaient-ils plus libres
N’étant pas devin mais cependant consciente assez
je présume
qu’avant que le genre humain ne devienne sage
les sorcelleries et les bienveillances constitueront
les temps « de l’entre »
avant qu’un maintenant harmonieux ne commence
pour enfin seulement être
destination Belanglo
destination Belanglo
responding to Tug’s
the Belanglo joke: coming through the forest at dusk, the hitchhiker says to Ivan, ‘it’s getting dark and scary in here’. Ivan replies, ’You’re scared? I’m the one who has to walk back on my own’
it’s always coincidence brings us
atoms to the cell
moments pile
the girl in the boot on the highway
the narrow escape of her friends
have to imagine thrust and parry
the bundling in
and that these people were, not of their nature, newsworthy
some will say good as she got
warrant outstanding in a twist (interstate)
was this an over-zealous citizen’s arrest?
a knife for compliance from the dream kitchen
so many known unknowns here
and so on, vice versa
narrow, lucky
dizzy in the dark, forced
minus meds in there
though bloody and still bleeding
could poke out a tail light
wave a truck down
would no news have been good for them?
had she gone quiet?
was it all screaming?
so many questions the courts are for
and can have no doubt this was justice
lurid albeit
once were like sisters
and some sisters are
merely acquainted
but you cross a line
motives still under investigation
we do know
it was her own car
destination Belanglo Read More »
Suitcase Found
Little box of bones
raped and smothered
(if that was the order)
packed in a suitcase
like a ventriloquist doll
left by a desert highway
a thousand miles from home
a little mummy ripened
in sweltered undiscovery
years longer
than your life had been.
No one missed you.
Raised and used like veal.
Your mother no help.
She dead already in a forest
by the same lover
who stuffed your mouth
with a tea towel
like a washed-up glass.
‘He sat emotionless in the dock …’
Sorry little box
we’re not all like that.
You just have to catch us
on a good day.
For Khandalyce and Karlie Pearce-Stevenson.
in a time of lockdown
Brian Purcell
in a time of lockdown
I walk out in clear air
that moments ago was filled with rain
catch a face at a window
filled with terror
streets that were jammed with cars
now empty
neon lights of a café closed for weeks
beat ‘open now’
a shape moves between pillars
of the locked-down care facility
distant skidding of a solitary car
I cannot turn around
to watch it pass
light and darkness beats
words fill pages then empty
now that rain no longer falls
reasonable ideas
dissolve in mist
the woman returns to the window
her face calm, the horror departed
she searches the streets
she looks right through me
my steps land on tar
the brittle surface no longer holding
I think of your lips, so far from me
the calming words that are now meaningless
and possibly always were
but there are colours and shapes
and memories that cannot be removed
by solemn gentlemen in long dark vans
whose faces always
tilt to the earth
in a time of lockdown Read More »