These Flying Islands Blog

these flying islands




these flying islands

 

gone like a cool breeze

 

frisbee free

strophe propelled

canvas a range of opinion

idea thrust

 

pastoral comical tragical

 

hello

find you here

in if you like

a conversation

 

that’s it

lean in with

tip till

keep a grip

 

let the string out

breeze take

beats tap

rarely rhyming

 

who will have the tiller then?

call a tug-o-war

 

climb!

take in and trim the cat

watch while

we let down ladders, many

 

sometimes it seems like a pile of islands

lift let

and there are becalmings

latitudes for donkey

mule

 

a prize

for the most beastly behaviour

allowances age made

here are the ruins

and blow me down –

the annual awards!

 

on the carpet

or took off by rug

come from the rope

and ever enough

down for the canvas count

won’t you look up

 

kilting

trapezoid!

Saturn high V

 

one bean for a cow and grew to this

pitch a tent skyward

fee fie on’t

sniff

 

not for profit

so let’s swap

I’ll show you if you’ll read mine

 

Louder

damn those hornball cicadas

 

islands are all second guessing

they are the dead flock

each go alone

above my nation

 

bombers have held a fete

 

call glissement

a capture of say eau d’imagination

or not

often as slap in the wet belly fish

come catch and toss again

 

time wasted!

not me off the hook

 

sail on!

and then the thousand years

sail of the line ride finest

 

little books for a world come ever smaller

pack fairytale

they’re seasonal

 

cast like coins two up

friends in the head

and many the tricks of presence are

wrought for the warmer world

so

blow me down

then a line gets out

sticks for instruction

mantra or an admonition

self to self

go go

 

toys and islands

in the bath once

was the whole of a harbour

storm safe

in the aeon till everything begins

 

you can take the machine apart

islands flutter by mechanical

wound as the heavens once must have in

 

a twinkle up for stars

never the same together but twice

 

see under them the workings

flowering all

come in a burst of cloud

 

propel the self as if by fart

 

or the how-they

pulleys sprockets

cogs rags oiled

toes grip the rung

 

slippery devil

then float free

 

ringside for angels falling

lit

and every weather

 

dance up in the air like this

others clear blue

and Christmas again

the Sunday month

 

I’m opening a door here

part your own mists, will you, won’t?

 

make births as from the undersea

and who will say volcano?

 

from all walks

many more in mind

 

sunk ones too

and islands down

 

someone hid a sneer behind

soon outed though

and back to task

 

we better a world as we go

make it up as

we’re here

we’re gone

ready or not

loose

and here we come

high as fast as who can fly

 

as is the leaf uplifted

a vapour trail and gone


 

these flying islands Read More »

Poem written on the back of the boarding pass

 World Poetry day today

‘It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.’ WCW

Flight QF 2101            8.3.2021            Extract  

                                      Poem written on the back of the boarding pass

From the air, creeks reveal themselves, dark veins
draining the landscape, wandering uncertainly
a brief revelation before we climb into ribbons
of grey-white clouds, the horizon smeared pink.

Cloud free, the rivers and creeks are painted
with mist, some dendrite sharp, others languid
snaking. There’s so much water floating here
on the edge of the driest inhabited continent.

Now the sun positions himself to show the creases
in the wooded mountains, the land buckled,
tempting the word wilderness, but down there
lie scattered ruins of old tracks, rock shelters, sacred
trees, ceremonial sites, hunting grounds that look
so far away from up here. A wide valley spills sour
milk everywhere, small white dots, tombstones
are cherished homes, sheds or barns, fragments of
our immense footprint on the planet hard to realise.

And your absence is almost visible.

 

~

We were close to flooding our ground floor on Friday. Natural disasters focus you on the news. I have just read that people within low-lying properties in Bulahdelah have bene told to evacuate due to the Myall River rising. Thoughts go to Kit and Carol and hope they are secure in their beautiful property.

 

Poem written on the back of the boarding pass Read More »

the Clive Palmer Monument

 

the Clive Palmer Monument

 

will be smaller than life

and careless thereof…

 

it fronts the museum of

where the workers were never paid

what they are owed’s colossal!

 

some say kitsch and some grotesque

something for everyone

dinosaur bones!

 

both thumbs up

loves a lie

things he touches turn to shit

 

the Clive Palmer Monument

features the pineapple’s raw end

it is less than a lawnmower    

or see-through Anzac

 

man that is cut down like a green blade

in his prime…

 

here’s not the Brahman bull

but steaming product thereof

served on billboards

 

and – while misboding – here’s

the missing pizzle part

(you’d need a microscope

that’s how fast he drives, flies, litigates)

 

really it is a hole in the ground

plenty of poison for everyone

 

the Clive Palmer monument

is being erected by the legal profession

(kind of a thank-you note)

 

It’s where ‘Midas has ass’s ears’ is buried

and there to this day the grass is singing

it’s all about Clive – always was and always will be  

 

trunkless              

makes great

the lone and level sands stretch far from…

 

General Clive’s drive

by the church called Saint Clive’s

statue of the sleeping Cross-Bencher

 

Clive is a one man rotunda  

a sun comes out of his nethers to shine

best of all

Clive is still alive

 

what a rascal!

delightful mischief!  boys own

takes so long to wipe up there

 

the tropics their own monument

why try to make any sense?

 

the Clive Palmer tribute is something

not quite biodegradable

was thrown from a car with much deliberation

a kind of minor trumpery, before and after that avatar

there was a time when you could vote for this

 

and because you ask me

I can confirm

yes this is all personal –

we call the highway Bruce


 

the Clive Palmer Monument Read More »

4 bits that may or may not end up going somewhere

 

Goths are having a séance 

in the Cubby House at Bunnings.  

There are Skinheads in the Potting Mix.

Hipsters cook cow penises

at the sausage sizzle. Lowest

prices are just the beginning.     

 

*

 

Epistemological, Ontological …

I look these words up

every six months.

But I still don’t know

what they mean, not really.

Couldn’t define them if asked.

I think it’s something like

How do I know

that what I know

is what I know?

I dunno. Maybe if Noel Coward

turned it into a song  

I’d start to understand.

 

*

 

Her poems are never ending

compendiums of comparison,

like pin cushions for similes.

 

Yes, it’s a nice poetic device.

But you don’t have to detonate it,

like a cluster bomb, at every line

 

*

 

There’s a hobo living in the Big Potato.

They can’t evict him,

though it’s made of asbestos.

But he doesn’t care about OH & S.

Someone’s sprayed a dick and balls

on the big prawn

the big banana just got smaller

the big koala is angry

at the crowds drawn by

the big lump of coal

and the big jet ski

and the Big Clive Palmer, with

the café in its head, is looking shabby,

its eyes chewed out by cockies.

 

 

4 bits that may or may not end up going somewhere Read More »

good old summer

 Kia ora ki katoa [Greetings to all].

Cornered by Coronavirus here in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wonder if any other Flying Islands contributors are Kiwi and might wish to share a reading, even if it is via Zoom…? Looks like we will be here for a while, despite escape plans being drawn…

Meanwhile a poem to warm everyone up, eh.

good old summer

summer

came back

with

a  HUGE  grin

s  p  r  e  a  d  e  a  g  l  e  d

all over its face;

a panjandrum

paintbrush

of lucent hues

imbued

with emollient

flourish.

 

its chortling

prodigal sun

flayed us all

i

n

t

o

happy    submission –

skin peeling,

smiles reeling,

balmy healing,

    &

a sort of

ubiquitous

mellow cadence

crooning through us all –

that winters’

frigid

casuistry

had  forced  us

to  forget.


                                    My daughter Pauline Canlas Wu – in Hong Kong – is the artist.


Te pai katoa [All the best].

Vaughan Rapatahana

good old summer Read More »

standing still the trees: works on paper by Carol Archer

 

Archer’s drawings and prints celebrate the sense of immersion and wonder one feels when standing with trees. Meanderings near the artist’s home in the Myall Lakes region of N.S.W. and further afield have moved the artist to make these pictures. A preoccupation with light suggests the ephemerality of human perception. The viewpoint, towards ground rather than sky, underlines trees’ resilience and rootedness in ancient earth and rock. 

More about Carol Archer at www.carolarcher.com 

standing still the trees: works on paper by Carol Archer Read More »

myth of a-semism

 

myth of a-semism

 

there is no mark without meaning

neither made nor found

 

try to make nonsense

go on

 

those who set out

do just that

they have tumbled an ark into stone

they this that

here’s the picture of nothing at all

 

it’s tinkle whiff

the chimney slept

the life raft leapt

 

like lightning spread

clouds gone from the page

 

one day some one will cypher it

one day someone will know

myth of a-semism Read More »

Rob Schackne #3 – The River

The River

Today he wrote a river
its eddies wore strange marks
on a flowing page, boulders
semi-submerged like hymns
the banks were huge, the plains
went on for miles of words
oddly discernible, then not—
balanced an enormous sphere
that was empty of meaning
overseeing the asemic, but
not nothing, not nothing there
a peace, a better silence
we wrote it together.

Drawing “Oggi ho scritto un fiume” by Enzo Patti (2021)

Rob Schackne #3 – The River Read More »