Domestic Sorrow and Joy

Blind Boy Grunt used to write finger pointing songs. This is a self pitying song. Enjoy or not at your leisure, feel free to use it, add to it, take away etc. just link back to the original.

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I step into the velvet night
Biting cold slap across my face.
Lights of cars flash and reflect
Dust and home fire aerosol.

I step into the velvet night
And light up a days end joint
Far off an animal screams once
And is silent. Dew falls on grass.

I win, in my dreams, a trophy
Golden cup brimming luscious trifle.
I meet dream shades of long ago
Fumbling backseat inept lovers.

Old shoes tattered shuffle across
Well groomed rocking Zen gardens.
Is that old man me? In my dreams?
Endless sorrow gray wells up within.

Until our youngest, full of energy
And endless love and joy climbs our bed
And begs, her throat cut, for morning toast
With honey and apple juice and love.

Dantesque Hades

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An amusing Dantesque view of Hades, from the reactionary and
maculate Aristophanes. This piece is from The Frogs. Here Herakles is
describing what he saw in Hades, the suffering of those who have
violated the law. The reference to Morsimus being a fellow poet and an 'insipid'
playwright that Aristophanes did not have much respect for,
describing him with a flurry of insults in another play (Peace, if I
remember correctly) as having arm pits that stank like a he-goat.

I think the moral here is do not beat your parents and treat fairly your
rentboys.

Then comes the Earth moist
With much filth everflowing.
In this sewer they lie down.

Anyone
Who abused guests,
Or those who were
Roused by tender boys
And filched the small
Coin payment,
Or those who beat their Mothers,
Or smashed their Father's jaw,
Or swore falsely the river Styx,
Or those who copied out
A speech by Morsimus.

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image from http://imoralist.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/self-censorship-from-warhol-to-kylix-to.htmlhttp://kylieeastley.blogspot.com.au/

Open the Curtains

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Sure the gods can destroy anyone they wish at any time, but without devotees that gods become no more than a tale with which to scare naughty children at bedtime.

Open the curtains
Upon waking.

The children gently snoring.

The acute angle
Of the sun
Etches deep shadows
The covered with trees
Far off mountains.
Crisp cool moontime
Retreating.

Driving my love into
The city of work
(Her hell of alienation)
The overnight killed
Animals curl the warming
Blacktop - seemingly asleep.

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Around 300,000 animals are killed on Tasmania’s roads every year. The death toll includes 3,000 Tasmanian Devils a year. Roadkill is a major threat to the survival of the species now that it is depleted by facial tumour disease.
Save Our Animals

Many Pathed Gaia

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From atop the shallow rise
The road black and lean rolls
Down and out vanishing point

Here, on my right, knee high grass
Browns the paddock many pathed.
Wanderings of sheep. Thin clouds
Chittering rise hidden the grass
Flutter and sing and settle.

Introduced. And I am left
Dreaming vague discontent,
This landscape of signposts
And fences and bare hills.

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Why write a poem at all? And why this piece of crap, adding to the mountain of crap that is the modern poetry landscape. Boredom mostly, vanity - the foolish idea that I have something worth hearing, and of course compulsive thinking too much.

Euruaguia: wide street, or in this case many pathed. From the hymn to Demeter, describing the rape of Persephone by many named Aidas; the unseen, the all receiver, the host of many.

And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her...

One sunny afternoon driving home, I saw the paths made by the sheep across the paddock, and I thought of Kore being taken by Hades. And then looking out the window the starlings rose, hidden by the high grass, and the rest just sort of wrote itself.

Enjoy it or not, use it or not, but if you do please link back to original.

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