Poppies

Poppies... Poppies.
Poppies will put them to sleep.
Sleeeeep. Now they'll sleeeeep!

---

Three days of rain, off and on, rain
Ulster exploding green bloom rain
Tank filling shower easing rain.
Driving the windy scenic road
Hand free driving, half joint lighting
Winding bogged culvert verge puddle.

Poppied rows roll up over hill
Waiting the man card in my hand.
I dream as I in the wet wait
Dreaming naked dear heart running
Wild dog free the rolling poppy.

And we arm in arm bed tumble
Licking nuzzling sticky warm
Gummy opium sweet dreaming
Sunlight warm belly legs arms heart.

Sweet dreams a raft the rolling sea
Entangled embraced we sound snore.

Homer Vomiting

---

So we have seen squalls all day, in between moments of bright sunshine. I took some time off from the family to read a few paragraphs of Charon by Lucian. When I got to this passage a wild storm rose up. Hail banging on the roof, the windows shaking and rattling with the wind and rain. It was quite a tempest. An example of a recursive incantation? A Homeric recital that caused a storm in Dodges Ferry.

First a little background; Charon has come to Earth to see what it is that makes the shades weep so, when on his ferry. He comes across Hermes and Hermes agrees to show him about. But Charon can not see very well in the bright sunlight (he lives in Hades after all.) Hermes chants some lines of Homer over Charon and he can see! Marvellous he exclaims! Shall I tell you what I know of Homer? How do you, Hermes asks, now of Homer. Charon is insulted and says:

For I was ferrying his shade across the river,
He would not stop reciting - I listened
And I remembered. Even when a storm
That was not trivial overtook us.
When he began his chanting
Not everyone thought his song
To be of good omen for the journey.
He sang of Poseidon gathering the clouds
And troubling the waves. Like when
The cook uses a spoon to stir soup,
So did Poseidon's trident trouble the sea
Great gales he roused and much else besides.
Foaming the seas with his poetic words.
And for a moment I thought our ship
Would be overturned. Then the poet
Grew sea-sick and vomited up his
Recitations. All about was Scylla,
Charybdis, and Cyclops, and many more.
It was not hard for me to gobble up
Some lines from out of the mess.

Magic words that bring on the storm!

Pedesis

---

This is not any sort of a critique. it is impressions and thoughts and feelings over the course of an evening. i was lucky enough to see Televison play at the Void Bar in Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art.

Pedesis, or the night I saw Television.

Down distant shadow extending
Mountains to the flat marshes below.
Egyptian valley of the dead kings
New Yawk art dirt scene garage.
Dug and torn limestone walls
Hand sharp scraping nails
And the light and the colours emboss
Expose surface weird shape faces
Billion year old dead ocean floor
Catacomb tunnels, a history lesson.
And always falling slow below
Rain - democratic rain of atoms
Swerving Brownian epicurean rain
Sewering onto the gluttonous mire
Maladetta, fredda e greve.

And the light!
And the light!
All things are built light
Rolling thoughtless waves
Fade away and radiate.
Long tunnel building light
Sex cramped sardines. Alma Venus.
Dancing billion year dead abyss
Falling rain of generations of fish shit
Tiny calcium carbonate exoskeletons
Patient rock cliff gouged hand and mind
Falling rain like the atoms and swerving
On the heads of the many onto the floor
Of the insatiable sea.

Harsh camera flash belch -
Acid turning oceans
Tiny shells corroding
Not forming - like an atom bomb
Lisping fractal recursion, play old man
Old man, too late, ah christ be double fucked
I am discharging. Cicadas on tree branches
Climb and sometimes sing.
We gather bars, talk endless.
Solitare joy of pure thought
Contemplating pedal steel
Endless rhythm building
Climaxing disorder of sound
Ah! Tis a pretty death!

Band art Faraday cave cage.
Cool outside away night air embrace
Smoking assassins, scientists, and artists.
Old friends chat, new ones stumble.
The celtic bard opines advances moots
Looking at his watch “There was a time
I would not be drunk enough to go out
This early.” Monads muttering
And stuttering, sweating, anxiety
A chance remark serviles me
Battered I fall rain limp,

Atoms in the void,
Unable to catch each other up.
Contort yourself one time
Turning pleasure into fear
Society into isolation
Contort yourself two times
Vortex of anxiety and self-loathing.
Bright police lights
Terror driving home
Country star exposing dark
Unloved unlit country roads.
And high beams make wallaby
Shadows of road side shrubs.