Dole / Dolour: An Allegory for the Fifth Corner of the World

σκότος ἐγένετο ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν γῆν

In the evening
after work,
shadows fall
across the world.
And the city quiets
And calms itself.
And now the city is ours
The weak and broken ones
Come out to play
Take over the city.

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Went to the Top Gallery in the Salamanca Arts Centre, a small room torn brick, convict sandstone, rough wood. A room that echoes the cries of those worked to death in the old days. Drunk and trapped. The scrap heap. Dolour -- endless unhappiness. This seemed an more than suitable place for these particular art works.

I went, as an invite to see an exhibit of photographs by Liam James passed across my facebook feed. The exhibit was called “Dole / Dolour: An Allegory for the Fifth Corner of the World.” I was instantly intrigued by the title, and normally I do not like photography as art. This is simply my hang-up and I apologise to photographers the world over. For me too often it is simple point and click, a mechanical reproduction of an object, allowing no understanding of the maker, of the ideas behind the work.

With this exhibit more was involved. Not simple happy snapping, not facile photoshopping. The photographs were all well thought out and the artist seemed to have something to say, and to know what that was.

These are the photographers of a maker, rather than a reporter, or a decorator.

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Don’t be told what you want don’t be told what you need
There’s no future no future no future for you

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Dole / Dolour, sorrow, emptiness, no future for you. There is a time, about the age of twenty five, when many us, (those of us that think and do not just follow) come to the conclusion that all the word worlds of teachers and parents -- that one can be what you want, that is just takes perseverance and commitment -- were no more than big fat lies.

Work will not save us, love will not save us, our future dream is a shopping scheme.

A future rolling forward of endless cycles of waking up, coffee, work, lunch, work, Friday nights drinks down the local, all leading to the goal of self imposed debt bondage. Marriage, house, children. And finally pointless, stupid, inexorable death.

Liam faces this future squarely, without flinching. His wonderful, well staged, well coloured, crafted photos bring these feelings of relentless boredom, of pointlessness to our gaze. His works shows how all this drabness is wrapped up with a system of objectification. And how it is that many of us desire, more than anything, our own slavery, fighting as passionately for slavery as for liberation.

The subjects of his photos aret mostly young men and women, and they avert their eyes from the gaze of the (assuredly elder, assuredly judgmental) viewers, looking up, down or off in the distance. Looking one thousand yards past the viewers into a doleful future.

When the subjects do look at the viewer, it is with irritation, with anger.

The artist, in his statement, wants to search for a new national identity, this is an important goal, as all around a reinvigorated national identity of spite and fear rises. This triumphalism gives birth to, and counters the art works, sets the scene, frames the works, and holds us in it's embrace as we step outside the gallery, back into a world of objects, processes, statistics, and prices.

This is an interesting and provocative exhibit. An exhibit which on first glance appears simple, but over the days and nights will slowly chew into your brain and make you question the world of objects.

Dole / Dolour: An Allegory for the Fifth Corner of the World is on display until the end of the month, until 30 October. You can visit a web site that Liam James maintains.

Election Day 2013

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On election day we went to the local school
To cast our ballot, to teach our children.
I struggled
To overcome the temptation
The upwelling urge to draw
A large cock and balls
Across the ballot paper
Or to scrawl Proletarian Democracy
In bold proud letters. Normalised
I voted. Formally and correctly.

And after we stood in the warming
Sunlight of the later morning
And chatted with neighbours
As kids kicked a ball round oval
And sausage sizzle aroma
Of caramelising onions
And public school desperation
For funds, overwhelmed us
And we, to aid the school.
Bought sausage and chicken
Kebab, one each and a cup of tea.

And we sat and ate and chewed
I mulled and thought. How appropriate!
Thin lifeless white bread,
Like the bulk of candidates.
And thin lifeless sausages
Ground snips and snails
Puppy dog tails. Or Bismark misquoted
If you like laws and sausages,
You should never watch either one being made.

War and Anti War

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I was reading an only moderately interesting book about the Trojan War. Among the cliches of a conflict of cultures and the battles of East and West, I came across some good quotes from out of Homer.

So like a good little geek, I had no choice to look up the original, and make a stab at translation. Mucking around a bit with what I ended up with, lead me to this two little pretend imagist works posted here.

These lines are Odysseus speaking to Agamemnon. Things are not going well for the Greeks. Odysseus lets his captain know that this is the lot of soldiers, and they will have to fight until they die. He seems to be pointing to the cruelty of the gods and their callous disregard for human life. Maybe we can see the gods as standing in for the historic and economic forces in our lives, and how it can seem to the unexplored mind that war is natural and a normal part of life.

When in fact we all know that it is possible to end war.

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(Iliad Book 14.86)

This Zeus has assigned.

We are to endure,
From insolence
Into grey age,
Painful war,

Until we perish.
Everyone.


In this second quote, Odysseus is even more clear as to who should wear the blame for the war. It is clearly the work of the gods, and Zeus in particular. He seems to see the war as a toy of the gods, and the death of the many as being of no importance to the deathless ones.

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(Odyssey 14.235)

Along this hateful path
Far sounding Zeus
Led many
Knee bent men
To their death.

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The image depicts the battle about the body of Patroclus, and is from a greek vase. More can be found here
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/Images/BattlePatroclus.jpg

Dioskouroi

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Homeric Hymn to the Dioskouroi

Bright-eyed Muses, fall into song
Concerning the strapping sons robust
Of Zeus. The Tyndaridai.

Born of fair-ankled Leda.
Beautiful shining children.
Kastor who overcomes horses
And Polydeuces,
Sea-green incorruptible.

Upon the summit of Taygetus
The cloud-clad son of Cronos
Mixed in love, mingled in friendship,
And she gave birth. Two children,
Saviours upon the mortal
Ones who haunt the earth,
And of the quick-going ships
That speed stormy winter winds
Of seas implacable.

And from their ships
They call upon, they invoke,
With white sheep, the sons of Zeus.
Poised upon the stern, upon the stormy sea.

With the strong gale and the waves of the sea,
The ship begins to slip under the water.

Suddenly! They come to light.
Nimble golden brown wings
Whirring, thrilling. At once the trials
Raised by the winds are brought to an end.
The squally waves calmed,
Glassy is the white-salt sea.

The signs are good, the toil is over.
For they saw, and they rejoiced,
Their sufferings are over.

Hail Tyndaridai!
Quick-riding horsemen.
Always will I remember,
Always will I sing.

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Kastor - the beaver
Polydeuces - very sweet

Kastor and Polydeuces - the twins. The pair that we call Castor and Pollux. Sons of Zeus, hence the name Dios-Kouroi Sons of Zeus. Brothers to the City Destroying Helen and Clytemnestra. Sons also to Tyndareus. Their mother was Leda, who spawned an egg and from this egg came the sons, one of whom was immortal, and the other was mortal. This leads to some conflicting accounts of how they shared the immortality, some tales say that they alternated days between mortal and immortal.

The pair had a special cult in Sparta, and some say this is the origin of the Sparta system of having two kings. This may or may not be true, it may be that Sparta came up with the idea of two kings and then looked for a religious explanation. Either way the sons were protectors of humans, and in particular they protected sailors, in the quick-going ships. This is the basis for this hymn. The Disokouroi protect the ship, arriving at the last moment in response to the supplications of the navigators. The pair are identified with St Elmo's fire, and this is how they appear in the poem. They calm the seas and the sailors are happy.

Amometos - Blameless, but here I gave it maybe a bit more, and used the epitaph given to Robespierre, sea green incorruptible. It sounded nicer.

Okyporos - The swift-sailing, or fast going. Describing the ships that the sons of Zeus protect.

Ameilichon - Implacable, or more literally, not gentle.

Echapines - Suddenly, how the twins appear to the supplicating sailors.
Ephanesan - To bring to light, to show, but also to shine. This sudden bringing to light represents the twins appearing at the last minute to save the sinking ship. It has connotations of an epiphany, in this cause the sudden coming into being of the power of the gods.

Chouthos - The colors yellow-brown, this describes the wings of the Disokouroi. It is also the word that is used to describe the bumblebee. Later it is meant to describe the thrilling, humming sound (I assume of bees). The twins are like busy bees flying here and there around the top most part of the mast, remembering how they were identified with St Elmo's fire. Here I wanted to try to invoke the bussing humming sound of the static electricity glowing on the mast in the storm.

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the pic is from http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/dictionary/Dict/image/dioskouroiLIMC.jpg

Book Launch - Margate Train

IP and the Train

Typical treacherous Hobart weather. Up with the rosy dawn clear and cloudless. The radar map showing a thin weak cold front moving across the state, west to east. The funny little book shop Freight Train Books on the Margate Train ran it's first event, a reading by three authors from Interactive Publications. David Rieter, Lyn Reeves & Anne Morgan.

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David chats with local art lover

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Each of the authors has recently published a book. David began the reading from his novel "Primary Instinct", a slice of life, fly on the wall series of satirical nuggets diarising and lampooning the educational system. With the problems of literacy in Australia and Tasmania in particular this is a timely nudging us into the serious debate which we desperately need. Not the periodic moral panic which masquerades as debate we usually have in this country. Rather a serious adult conversation on how this country (indeed all the Anglosphere) can reverse our current slide into irrational stupor. A debate as to how we can use education as an opportunity not just to create narrowly focused experts, but one in which children can be inoculated with the spirits of curiosity and imagination. Skills that will allow them to still be expanding their knowledge of themselves and the world well into their old age. The end of labour, to paraphrase Aristotle is to gain leisure and goal of education is to teach us how to best use our leisure.

And then from the third in his junior fiction series Project Earth-Mend. As if on cue wild wind and squalls raced down the mountains, horizontal across the wide brown-eyed cow paddock. And the site was lashed with a short sharp rain shower.

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Ann Morgan reads from The Sky Dreamer

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Glasses of wine on offer and local cheese and a score or so of children. Next Anne Morgan read "The Sky Dreamer", her moving children's story about the young boy Liam and his struggles after losing his big sister. Lovingly illustrated by Céline Eimann, and honestly written by Anne this little book should be in every school library and in as many houses with children as possible. Learning needs to be more than simply building a workforce as we move into a more technical economy. Education needs to be about how to deal with life and loss and sorrow. More than just school, more than the family. The social production of the individual. This aspect of education as something more than the three R's is behind Aristotle's statement that neglect of education does harm to the constitution.

Simple things sometimes move me, the simple sight of the young children listening to the author reading from her work, while the younger ones played game games as little ones will. I thought about all the tales and stories and life lessons spoken taught down the generations unrolling deep into the past in and around this small community. This tiny bay of meeting sea and land. Intermittent afternoon around and the mountains, darkened with mist with the rain clouds, hurl gloomy clouds and glaring winds. And I went a couple of days later, with the children, to the museum. And we stood silent, sad, scared in the exhibiting convict days gallery, and saw the displays of chains and whips and uniforms and all that went with the transportation times. I thought about the generations, about all the tales told in languages now lost. Then Anne reads her story and the children look and listen.

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Lyn Reeves captivates the little ones.

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Lyn Reeves tailored her reading from her recent work "designs on the body" for the large number of children around. And offered up her well moulded poems with rhythms like the squally afternoon, where the fast moving clouds race and the shadow retreats across the wide eyed cow paddock, flooding the wet grass with the energy and light of the sun, dancing and sparkling off countless raindrops on countless blades of swaying in the wind grass. Lyn read of dogs with funny names and of wing drying cormorants and of bathing her infant son. From "Primal Sense"

                         Vertebrae ripple
beneath my hands like birdsong.

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For the hungry artists.

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Books for children, and books about teachers and books by teachers and the opportunity to speak and talk, and for the children to be given the chance to grow and learn and listen. Both physical and mental there is very little more important than the education of children, so much so I can easily agree with Aristotle when he writes "Those who educate children well are more to be honoured than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well." Hopefully the parents will also be strong teachers for their children, this would of course be the best situation. And of course a time for chatting and for discussing the works presented. A glass of red and some art and cheese and fruit all on a squally typically treacherous Tasmanian Sunday.

Hoi aristoi kai hoi polloi

Friday was a typical indecisive Lower Derventio sort of day, sweeping showers chased off in the arvo by a southerly change. The clouds ran off. Replaced with a squinting sun and blue sky shy time. Pup deep sea diver footed fell cheap as poms bowled twisters and lobs. Pick pack pock puck. Lilbet street jags a cold syllogistic knife thrust from down below the water into past the townie hall and the Victorian mourning style layer cake GPO. Went on an art trail

Up the hill into the depths of the local cool scene side of town and lots of tidy little shops and cafes and wine bars commingling with the old long term time rickety shop fronts. The theme of our discussion.

For commerce and art bedded down strong in the old sleepy redneck imagined Hobart town. Diamond dogs barked by the river at the opening of the new gallery, at great cost, with an adventurous festival of art and music over the town ways. But we are not to concern ourselves with mona at the moment, for a more simple street art time was to be invented. Forty some odd shops up the mainline north south access allowagreed to allow local artists to decorate shop windows, to aerosol resolved neglected brick falling downs. Competing the smell of oil and burnt metal, of hot chip oil and curry and the grunt of internal combustion, and this afternoon sun squinty and crying. While down Bellrive Marsh and Bollinger set upon smacking a record ninth wicket partnership. A shout in the street, Stephen said, shrugging his shoulders.

It would be hard to do justice to all the various art works which were exhibited on this walk up window shopping front windows lilbet street. And with such a large amounts of work there was to be no arching narrative to unit all the works, aside from the obvious patterns created as the works are to be revealed in a serial manner. To the grand pattern making animal this is more than enough. I did not take down names, either of the artist or the works, this is only to be a collage of sights and thoughts which past as I walked the works.

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So around and about hung a loss collection of punks and teddies and hipsters and bohoed and all the other cliches hurled about. The sun was warm and in the shadows it was cool. The street itself as the gallery in the laughternoon setting sun and the songs of traffic and community as a undulating background musical hall. Diving right in. Playground paintings of the memories of long gone childhood. A good crowd showed and walked and talked and made a rolling democratic community. The surrealist walking about and chance juxtaposition. Water lilies cut and shape formed plastic recycled plastic cups vast waste of bottled water while the world dies of thirst Cornell style constructions of oddment boxes. Desire and Mystery. Sleepy record shop window diorama of sleepy eyes. Installations and ease on down paintings and drawings and cartoons and found objects and murals a fat and wide range of activities all resettled in a living breathing gallery. Locals wending the blustery change crowd of maybe 40 or more art types. Central Oz scenic splashy of bold colour orange below the strength sapping sun. Skate crowd shop graffiti art works displayed thin tiny splatter of dots creating a new life under the works. Lilbeth street rises from the water line to the ramshackle tattered all but falling around old curiosity shop old buildings. And a chatter of network. The steeple of the brick dusty church thrustpoints into the skyways. Acrylic computer screens and thematic human enthronements all in one way or another auto biographic splendour it all coheres pyre epiphany what we have built all about our selves and the way in which we iterate. A common element. Photosphere. The random groupings as ideas and concerning around come to the surface. Again I think of Nadja of the walk around. Cycles of decay and rebirth. Don't follow fashion hand made dresses watch the parking meters individual. Another form of making and of communicating colour line and all such like. Kelp instruments full ghostlier church, and the found the glanced at and found in the corner of the reflected glass or best of all reflected off the shallow side of the gutter puddle. And beauty resides in the accidental. One more vine rises from the floor an auto bio tile. County woman's gift shop. Naive displays of shop keepers and the curious jumble of this and that. Fine line paintings of birds and empty phonies bulky and mute and built area rounding. Built up worlds of imaginations insubstantial as a cyclone, naive as a child. Avatars of polly chars. Turkish daylight prison head of little guys in prison. Knives and Tats. Cardboard proscenium depths of city silhouettes. Cider gum print lavish french clocks. Nature nurture destruction of tas and tanguy biomorphic and all closed in antique seller. Imagined house of impassible angles. Stairs growing out of the rock the gallery of all outdoorsy becomes the art itself. Plasticine skull reconstructions. Carpet cop it shop photoshopped images and fish feet. Rock and roll blaring jokers beer garden. Graffito wall aerosol paintings quiet back alley parking lot midnight toking spot. IDE stripped bare. Found children wild uncensored genius drawings. Postered porn images. Colonials confronting tramping the bush twelve feet tall wall. Blood shot eyed and distorted cartoon pix of hot rod dudes. Painting the same image over again and repetition is to our age and apache hair. Reflections of images the images fractal sexuality repetition as recollection to the greeks half ten years after. Chronos and Gnosis. Jewels in choc shop winda rich lush flora tas in the bottlo. Reflecting dances of shards of light dancing across the sleek and smooth parked surface of the cream appointed auto. Reused fabric painted. Parthenon collage. Edwardian PO impossible paintings earthy yellow brown. Slipping into the early evening let us get our supper bartime.

This is no more than a quick overview of a listing of the many works of art. And any emphasis put on a work or an artist, or not as the case may be has less to do with my interest or enjoyment of any pieces of work , but more has to do with my agility to get a good look at the works, chatting, not being able to hear and the like. In all it was a splendid idea and one that there should be repeated. The walk, the series of chance meetings, and of the various introductions to the pieces worked to inspire imaginings. It is always nice to see art in the community. People are more open and accepting of art and difference than one may assume from the media. There are a great many forces at work in our age that seek to create division and misunderstanding. Anything, like this art walk, which seeks to combine and create understanding should be supported in anyway that one is able.

Where are the snows of yesteryear?

Another year over, a new one just begun. A new year of blogging and poetry.
As one gets older one gets to indulge in rounds of 'I told you so', as if
any sane person needed to be told that, for example, invading Iraq was not a good idea. And this rapidly turns into schadenfreude, or to use the term that the Philosopher would have used, epichairekakia. Yes, I do confess to a feeling of delight watching politicians and sundry hob knobs twisting in the wind of historical necessity.

Long term historical movements bring the greatest amusement, for example the turmoil of the Catholic Church, as years of abuse come to the fore. The long term 'blow back' caused by the US supporting Muslim guerrillas in Afghanistan. And then years later to see these groups fight the Amis to a standstill. This is the type of schadenfreude I enjoy. The unrolling of history.

Petty? Maybe.

Cruel and unfeeling. Never! Any feelings are always coupled with a deep sadness for the terrible loss of life. Any feelings always burn with angry at the terrible lies and distortions, the steady loss of our freedoms and rights, and the stupid complicity of all of us.

So I write poetry and do this and that about my life, working, raising children and so it goes. When a young lad I wished to be a published author. This would be a good thing, or so I thought. Now I look upon the rows of shelves in the markets, and at all the books published, I am glad I have never carried through with this dream. I can blame no one but myself for any failings, indeed I do not blame anyone for my not being a successful author. One would think that the sheer volume of works produced each year would allow for one more book of poetry, or one more small novel, and if I really wanted to go down this road I could very easily.

A half assed internet search gave me a number of over 500 000 books published in the Anglosphere, which turned out to about 1440 books a day, or one a minute! And so much just overwhelms and drowns us in a sea of market based editorial self censorship. Corralled into a particular form, typecast and constricted suffocatingly tight of mind forged manacles. Even the authors who are interesting and thoughtful, are they serving a need for the elites, acting as a 'safety value' of dissent?



Of course leads me into this blog. I have a need to write. It is almost like a disease. Even though I may not be very talented, and often I am unable to properly express the ideas bumbling around my noodle, I am still going to write. In this I want to follow a line of ephemera, which is why my external contact is via this blog and more importantly poetry (open mic) readings. This generates feelings and thoughts of immediacy and inevitable transience. The poem is written, and maybe it is read aloud and maybe deposited onto this blog, and then is forgotten as I and all things around me move, which brings us to this effort...

And so this poem is a welter of pretence and derivation. The title and first line allude to Villion, Shakespeare and Hopkins. Two sections concerning my back yard, nauseous with a sense of place. The first is daytime the second section is night time. And the two sonnets hinge on an unwobbling pivot, a half emerged quote from the Phenomenology, included in it's entirety.

Sense-certainty itself has thus to be asked: What is the This? If we take it in the two-fold form of its existence, as the Now and as the Here, the dialectic it has in it will take a form as intelligible as the This itself. To the question, What is the Now? we reply, for example, the Now is night-time. To test the truth of this certainty of sense, a simple experiment is all we need: write that truth down. A truth cannot lose anything by being written down, and just as little by our preserving and keeping it. If we look again at the truth we have written down, look at it now, at this noon-time, we shall have to say it has turned stale and become out of date.

Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

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Eager morning, wide couple colored sky.
Matrix of cloud and pure sun massy blue.
Sparse white cloud tea rising morning, my eye
Scans and prowls damp landscape of dawn break dew.

Shadows of clouds and glittering sunlight
Compete and tumble across the distance.
Dull shadows of gray clouds, of middling height,
Obscure ridgeline farmland of shadow dance.

Garish sun reflects the water surface,
Bouncing, redoubling the burning glow.
Ninety two million miles of empty space
Birthing energy so that all needs grow.

Write what I see just beyond my window,
Recording can not be, to truth, a foe.

Into the dark, past split wood stacked three tonne,
High pressure clear night, bright Venus shining,
Pouring ash the turned earth garden begun.
Sea birds and lap wings calling combining

Far off single dogs bark and howl, I close
My eyes and listen to the songs of the trees.
Grand murmuring sonatas. Winds compose
Long slow songs of history and unease.

Epics written across a thousand years
Sung one thousand rustling chorus leaves.
I listen the songs my eyes fill with tears,
The outer space wind, my heart grieves.

Everything. The Earth, the Sun, the Moon moves,
As careful standing on the one spot proves.

Away with words!

Went to the end of year event for the tasmanian writers centre.

Two writers read from their most recent works. Geoff Dean and Paul Tully.

It was a fun night and both artists read well, I wished the second piece went
longer, but nothing to fuss about.


These events are interesting to me, as for various random reasons I no longer read new works, so with book reviews and events I keep more or less in a state of misunderstanding the world about me.


Beyond the obvious problems of discipline, the pleasure of being autodidact resides in the ability to roam widely over the various spheres of human endeavour. I have been making an investigation into the ancient cynic school. The saying of Diogenes have been recently smacked into my brain pan. And then I stumble into this reading.


So I kicked around a bunch of impressions and crumbs of error.

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Night of Geminids. Iron duke rivulet under common concrete falling down and around click clack footsteps echoing slap upon the brink of brick pain mint. Pooring stream from down the dark clouds table top gathering of mountains. The rill is exposed just by the shop that sells shin splint gouging running shoes. The natural is made artificial the natural is carved and formed by the rent apart rational.

Silent over watch potion the entire history of this town. Long alone dead pale as white fellas ghost watch over the land. Endless tears fall and fill the lyre bird introduced gullies and tumble run down into the high street over covered tiny poxy sewer stream. Over and above nature the creek channelled and aggregate concrete made into the shape and plastic path and wonder wanted for the men of the purse tightening city and of only note counting commerce. Long away along dead spat upon sailors and looked down upon whalers and convict atains watch out over the wide estuary raising flags and firing cannons as warning alertings for again the summer run of flash rumpus core rehabilitated into characters of the new mythos and the city and smart smugglers and extortionists and this is what you get or need.

Night after Geminids streaking lines fine across the dark night sky long into the morning. Low Ligny roof wine dark down wooden walls and beams iron strong wood. Wit and running light touch along the wave splashing beach. Big crowd of many people and the low murmur of voices and settling into seats and tables and ability to hear. Rough Huon river pine valley. Hard to hear all the grunts and twitterings and choral murmuring.

Old blanket man poor on a park bench of cops and cars and this is the underbelly soft of church ill dreams, nightmares of the press ganged working people here and there and in all manner of nations far flung upon the sea side beech. Hunger - desperate time rewindings and bindings again. Trains tramline river bridges cover rhythm street thoroughfare. Worry. Security. Sniffing druggy headed hang dogs. Hang the Dawg. The sun and the air that is criminally vulgar. Blind man palsy sight.

Failed at strange unexpected as the same time twice only and not in any other way so to add it all up...

The voice of a woman. Fifty dollar note lady bluster. White light white heat golden frond. Money brings as much grief, as much mayhem as frozen down dead dog tails.

Under pass unable to tossings and turnings asleep newspaper doona. A citizen of the world self sufficient Malone and a crisis of faith. What is to be done? The essence of tragedy two ways both right both wrong both lauding death. No flaw, just the role of human, just a human choice over flowing with ignorance and the darkness. Or the muse to the Helicon rhapsodos 'Wicked rough sleeping Shepard, vile belly alone...'

Gnomic with gold rum glasses and a mirror shiny clean window reflection to see one's self as one really is, to understand. This is the foundation of speaking the truth, this seeing correctly. Poverty as the road is no longer the road to self sufficiency.

Ice popping glasses and the pouring lungfish of organic red wine, and then the next tale. Matching depression to second sight the poets dream of the seer. Full sight in the detail. Deep fried dog turd. Shocked turn away around a mocking modesty and dreamy visions of long alone thyme. Together book ends of dank under flesh like the grinding error of Cassino and the blasting destruction of civilisation; even the fear of the lord could not perturb the stings of falling tumbling earth shattering bombast. Pugilist aching rambles round and about home and dreams to the future. Freedom of the Press, freedom to speak all based on free from fear and favour on seeing how one really is to be and has been.
Dangerous muddy waters swirl rising and more than just a hard boiled roman a hiding a biography of Hobart in a time and a place no longer around. Again to this sense of place. Revealing a memoir. Bringing out the second site the unveiling of what really is, the struggle to speak truly. Wandering the city streets and back alley cop ways with a torch, a way of seeing and a citizen of the world weapon.

Thick lactix devil milk dripping and a brooding violence just below the poetic service before the stitching up of words and words are snitched together. Prologue of gaunt ten pound shop steward dripping magic molten metal flames and injuries. Night whores of ancient knee trembling tradies, apple cherries from the dark Stygian Isle of black war. Coal smoke and the hydro town mountain brooding above the surface of violence. Past town ingrained into memory and fleeing supple suddenness of a whipping gale.

And a slow descent into the dark and flashing light.

Eye Candy

I have taken lots of photos - digital cameras facilitate this greatly. I get bored and so I made some into a standard wallpaper size (1024x768). All of 'em snapped in tasmania.

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Orielton Lagoon

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Monogamy is a trait of birds and humans. Seven Mile Beach

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One of many rainbows, I guess if it rains all the time...

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After the rain.

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Kelly Steps - leading onto Kelly Street. Accidently?

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Wall of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

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A big introduced bee gathering from an introduced plant. - Where the bee sucks, there suck I.

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The Apple Isle.

Drifters Cafe & Caritas Poetry Event

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Sharp windy, slow setting night walking.

Saturday last, I went out into the city, to the Drifters Internet
Cafe. Nestled off the side street down stairs the market dock
Salamanca shade of Wellington side of town. A relaxed venue for
listening to a poet. Poetry for Pakistan, a fund raiser for the
Caritas Pakistan Flood Appeal. A series of readings had been organised
for the appeal, but this was the only one I could attend. I was lucky
to be able to make it to this reading. More formless than planned out
this document is my attempt to understand what I learnt about the
event.

Ghosts of the Galapagos; the poetry of flight. A series of new lyrics
by Paul Healy. Fog lifting revealing panta, revealing all things, the
picton bridge, the blue heron. I arrived late, mid poem, and began to
quiet sit and poured myself a glass of water. And set myself to
listen. And ordered a cup of chai, frothy in the modern style with a
shake of cinnamon on top. High vaulted and perfumed poetry.

A simple quiet venue, with a small attentive crowd. I was at once
swept up with the flow of the poets words, his skill at 'making', his
simple and confident reading style. As advertised the poetry was a
series of lyrics around the theme of flight, about bird flight. This
ordinary, everyday idea separated itself and allowed multicoloured
ideas to flourish.

I was, with the poem about the lame gull who was able to gain the
choicest food, struck with the scientific cold harded factual manner,
in that compassion may not be the best reaction in many a natural
relationship. The human desire to place our values, and with good
intentions to intervene is not always the best course of action.

Songs of loss and desolation, of joy and astonishment. A dialogue of
nature and a lesson in what is being done in our state. A tale of
chemical warfare in the forests and Tasmanian devil facial tumours in a
poem called simply '1080'.

Everywhere images of the wonder and of the erotic generative spirit of
nature. Will to Power, nature struggling to create and manifest across
many forms. From the rushing diving collared sparrow hawk making a
kill, to the blue heron still on blue rock shading the water to tempt
the little fish, to the unlikely pigeon in some plot of dead land
neither bush nor city highlighted in a ray of setting sunlight, to
clinking currawongs in the Styx Valley sounding like far off church
bells, the images of flight blended with a scientific understanding of
the environment, and created a strong series of lyrics.

The poet confessed his surprise at some poems which seemed to come all
at once, as if formed from the ether. This is of course the result of
study, and practising technique. Leave the reader hanging, the poet
offered as advice, using his own work for examples. Add a strong grasp
of the English tradition, and a love of the classic forms of
poetry. The comparison thoughts that sprang to my mind while words
described the spine tailed swift flying 5000 feet in the sky and
'rides the summer thunder wall', of course was Hopkins, followed by
the ol' Will-of-Wisp Yeats. Scrambled into the forgotten linkages of
the Heraclitian Gyre.

A poem about the Pied Butcher Bird described the harmony of white and
black and gray camouflage colouring, there is a unity in
diversity. Pied Beauty and a similar eye for natural detail as
Hopkins, and while I can not agree with the poet's program of reviving
the classical forms of English poetry, I will agree that the study of
poetry is worthwhile as an end in itself. A rigorous understanding
and appreciation of the various forms of poetry, allow vast fields of
poetic imagination and inspiration to spring to life. Ripe fruit for
the poet to feast upon. Even for the experimental poets it must be
accepted that 'no verse is free', and for all poets that creation is
social creation.

So while there was a strong spiritual element that I could not agree
with, I am only too happy to quote Lenin, “Intelligent idealism is
nearer to intelligent materialism than is stupid materialism." and
leave the subject closed.

Listening to the ABC local radio in the morning, I was at once struck
with the passion and pleased to hear the poet speak of the importance
of supporting young poets, and the need to create a space for young
poets. This is to me very important and if I can add a slogan to the
argument, it would be 'More mentors, Fewer English Teachers.' While I
readily accept that poetry comes in many shapes and sizes, and is
indeed a raw creative purgation involving language, practised by a
wide and diverse section of society, I do find it amusing to hear
academics discuss other academics as having a 'demotic voice.' Allow
me to step off my soap hobby horse box, and commend Paul Healy as a
poet, and even more importantly as a mentor.

Place and Experience

Last Wednesday went off to the Lark Distillery to hear some writers addressing the theme of place & experience. (Experience being the name we call our past mistakes.)

Whipping windy rain and whipping wind I potted down the hill from North Hobart to the coitus centre shore line. Having a few intrudes to slaughter I wandered around the docks and parking lots and slipping away alley ways. Thinking of Dr Swift and the rain shower over the city of Stella and their pet sweet sick letters, I wondered about the city centre and more and more killed time, feeding my door mouse air plane head.

Went up to old Jam Factory where once upon a time over one thousand people worked. All that is over now. The needs of rationality destroying the local and the particular. The docks once busy with whores and sealers and whalers and sailors and drunken colonial triad sons thriving and molesting the colony.

The walking tide slapped and swirled around pulsing the estate of marine cold timey milky making critters. The wind whipped nano-shards of slushy ice all around and I was only to happy to get to the wagram unwobbling pivot warmth of the dark wooded lark.

The University of Tasmania had run a poetry contest themed place and experience and the winners were to be announced. Four poems were read; three from out of state - so proxy's spoke instead. Jillian Pattinson won the prize with her poem The Still Point. The title of this poem inspired by Eliot.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.

Stillness and a search for answers for something that shall remain, I could see why the judges awarded this poem the first prize.

A found poem based on diving instructions which was amusing at first and then to my tastes rolled down into not so amusing territory. I did not take notes so I can not remember perfectly, but one poem, as introduced by the reader, used white space to denote pauses and so add musicality. The poem was well written, but in the end no more than a catalogue of the images the poet saw while walking in the bush.

So after a bit of minor disappointment, I was thrilled to hear Robyn Mundy and Danielle Wood read.

Robyn Mundy read of her experinces in the Southern Polar Regions. The excerpts from her novel 'The Nature of Ice' were beautiful and terrible at the same time. The blue ice of the Antarctic, the raw bleeding feet of Douglas Mawson. I was inspired to investigate more the ability of beauty to exist in the most terrible of places and times.

Danielle Wood then read from 'The Shack' a charming bit of work investigating themes around development and change in a small Tasmanian sea side town. By coincidence I had just visited Opossum Bay recently and my partner had remarked how it looked like there used to be a bunch of holiday shacks and now it was cheek by jowl with Mc Mansions. How could I not enjoy this reading which spoke of the very thing!!

And then I won raffle! A bottle of gin, which was nice as it was my birthday! All in all a enjoyable night.

200 Decades of Poetry

---

Recently I went to a seminar organised by the tasmanian writers
centre, 2000 Years of Western Poetry, given by Christpher Wallace-Crabbe. a few days later i went to a poetry reading at The Lark Distillery. 2000 years from Homer to Beowulf all the way to Les Murray, as dizzy as a ride in the tardis. Seamus Deane described Finnegans Wake as 'a transcription into a miniaturized form the whole western literary tradition.' With this permission i conflated these events and threw in some personal stuff into one (hopefully) rhythmic layer cake piece, not so much a review or critique as an impressionistic or maybe expressionistic diary note.

---

---

Prospect of princess parry and den mark it well while southern
whales wild in wide oak leaf shadowed river valleys give sea salt
birth and eye hugger-mugger torque haysi cosmic fantayzee jive time
hobby hobble horse down wide fit for governor boot blacking venereal
log truck careening one up one down roads to marengo darkened stolid
timber beamed low head bending hougoumont dripping blood dropsy hell
o' beans joint old fashioned counter turn and her long blue thin cold
in the night wooly ursula taperings.

 And it was spelt old fashioned - but pronounced abomination.

    Plink pop now the tide is turning and the light is failing and the
hosts of invading star fish are hidden from view divertimento river
knowing the matzo flat salt marsh islands of north west bay will
slip slide away under the lapping wave waters and the hurly burly of
pellmell havoc and arriving on end of lines reef fish into the oak of
oath value of no more tears and then thick rich aromatic tieing shoes
inventory of pockets and history of pens and pencils and lint and
little balls wadded of paper more now than at any time and an old
woman walked up the tome staircase and a young family huddled and
conspired and smoked the giant chess board fountain square never made
it to the nor'west passage never at all tried but was too old and the
snow and sleet ice blizzard were too numerous many to be over came.

    Whippington of all whipping wind end of winter winds tumult the
streets and i look down the park done the stairs dun the street to the
low heavy arcola door and the invite of grain based drip droppings
after the sundry all dawn intensive at the trumpet blowing bugle song
slow and of dead comrades legacy history of fangled metric readings
(to break the pentameter, that was the first heave) of visions
transferred to ten many add the rise of capital itself and the rise of
the city and the poet could be that one that wanders around to explode
the city in a constant new appraisal of constant new engagements.

    And the satyrs and the sibyls all siren faulty attempts at candour
and of the cloud burst over above around the city streets busy with
the pleasing hum of 'em of gossipy gossiping old Irish washerwomen one
each side the river and gossiping and wagging overt the fading of hue
of light and the rising of the bats two thousand aeons of poetry and
rushing and wild riding past the makaris and buoys and gulls and
outhouses that glide us on our ways names rattle and hum and a helter
skelter treasure hunt of voices all at tumult once clam bakerings and
clamouring for attenzione multitudes within hoboken leaves of grays
hobart both without space and across tim tam time tinny more as a way
things be done than as a tink inna itself.

    Poor potsherds of poetry grand sweeping and the rise and break
down of the universal synthesis distilled into a few short paragraphs
like archaeologists digging and calm breaking in and out of diggings
to phyre inspiration and research to imagined readings for if the
first duty of the singer is to sing the urevent is to listen.

    Cups and nut blank note books of chai verde and penciled middlings
and scrapings and lite sandy bay which ways with fruit and various in
a rend about way the sundry attempts at legumes and all the things
that could be wanted - food drink and made comfortable.

    Mea cuppa daze latter atom upsy duke of work neither up nor down yon
hill wise way and the plank and the frog and toad and the one that
goes dawn with the growing drawn of the sun and the old bone budding
grove jena wise grain groan graven impalage holds all of our absolute
rattle tattle freedom and absolut freedom and terra hazy daisy i
enter and drink and raffle and sit myself down.

    Many times with two poets reading it becomes like a contest a two
house raze and peepee come up to me and they expectation plead wonder
ask how 'twas it? how 'twere it? lah lah eh and i chaw out me pierce
and that be that. 

    And then (sum say) - so if you speak highly of poet A- ergo all
that twerp nite means you did not like B-.

    Disb NOT the case.

    Simple minds nourished on the lies that piss for culture in this
our age can only see competition and dichotomy and difference and all
your san franciscos will fall into this error but we should understand
that one thing does not negate the udder.

    Sarah Day generated a charming solid suspension with her poems a
feeling was generated while she was reading of time moving slow of
folding vast distances and ages even across language failures simple
and with an eye for the imagist detail light and luminous.

    Christopher Wallace-Crabbe spoke second and spoke well clear and
with the light touch with a seurte as one would hope to hear from a
poet who has published over twenty volumes of poetry in a career
running since 1959.

    Both poets wended their way across border lands of the particular
and to use this as a jumping forward base for wider explorations all
the poetic fames including love & death and the endless cycle of
rebirth and transmission across time and space generations both poets
spoke to and from a deep educating understanding of traditions of the
storms of yestertempest of the leaves that wither weather the
superstitions of birds that migrate the changing seasons.

    Tight control of language of the words and the why and wherefores
simply used and with no flamboyance political without militant fist
clenched marching. Questioning and slicing doubt and no overturning.
Compassionate.

    And after all this afternoons of wild squalling spittles and of
sugar dusty mountains and afternoons of rainbows and child delight and
sally forth to sea froth tidal salt shallow splashing as spray the
causeway.

    -- and so ends my catechism.

Devonport - Deloraine - Conara - St. Mary - Bicheno

Driving through the North East side of Tasmania. Too many of these poems end becoming anti war poems. It sucks that I have to do this rock drill anti war thing.

---

Early mourning shill
Scent of wood fires.

Meander on the Liffey
Bloom home steam Manchester train falls.

Counting the possums split open
The green verge of black road.

The influence of the city extends
Into the smallest one dirt horse town
A smut on the graph of the highway
Out here Coca Cola rocks the forest.

Salting about juice annoying each other
Mother confused by friendly service.

Ravens feasting the spilt open devil
Thin black ribbon between train tracks and river.

Strange distorted faces out the rock wall
Fallen over trees dressed in raggedy moss.
Green blue waves glimpsed random holes of trees
Alongsdide the ocean Break o' Day.

All these hamlets little towns we pass
New South Victoria Tasmania
It matters not, we see the same stone ghosts
Pale and cold. The sorrowful digger rifle
To the ground slouch hat head down grieving
Immense chasm of grief a generation
Lost or more accurate thrown away.
Est e Forge. How can we? Remembrance.
We do not even remember the whys
And wherefores. Knee deep in mud built trenches
Alongside a young man his bottom jaw
Torn apart eyes rolling in terror.
Epiphanies staring across a chasm
Of grief and sorrow. Fourteen Eighteen
A generation slaughtered as if the world
Is too small to share. Sent home to forget.
As if one can forget the brave young ones
Shrieking in terror in the mud and lies
Entrails spilling lungs searing of poison.
Home to a lack and shell shock and the dole.
Home to the same parties and policies
Home to the pimps and whores who grew so much death.
Lest We Forget! There is not enough to share.
War to build more more war and more destruction
Greed and cynical anti communism.

Into East Devonport

---

Into Tasmania, looking around East Devonport

---

A pot of beer
A pint of port
In this old port town.

Gusting shreds of rain squalls
Round and round breaking the quiet.

Beach of rocks and rain water flowing
From the streets across the sandy flats
Constant rattle hymn of ocean waves
Teen age lairs of empty condom bottles
Three yellow black cockatoos mock ignore
The two running screaming laughing children.

Cement factory looming and noisy
Fright herds in away the capital
Engorging never stood and never will.

Staring dog on a leash blinking blackness
Quenching ocean constant thrilling roar
One two ten seconds one two ten seconds
Repeating red warning lights charnel
Estuary beckoning beacon sign.

And the ship as tall as a carpeted
Apartment building as wide as a parking
Garage lifted and lofted bounced about
The humbling power of the ocean
Scouring the shore land mixing vital
Minerals into the vast salt soupy
Briny krill wash of the great sweet mother.

Scorpio descends uncoiled shiftless clouds
Binary night of day long showers.

Long low sorrowful bass wail blast
Of industrial ship rugged up against
Bracing blasting wind cold ruggedly
Merchant sailors rough rugged hands calloused
Torn knuckled and Bolsheviki hands
Arthritic and abused and thrown away
Aside hands. Maritime Workers Union
Hall monument to past away sailors
Sufferers chapel. The first radio
Southern hemisphere transmission.

East Devonport Bowls Club painkilling
Into the night innuendo laughter.

Flashing tough spectacle images
A disordered mind remote control
Lumping from scene to scene advertisements
Con you into thinking you're the one
That doesn't smoke the same cigarette as me
Drunken druggist compelled control
Mod urn of piled spectacle over priced
Vaccination and accusations
Hung parliament of transported agreement
Let all parliamentarians go hang
That wing should only exist to support
The out in the street wing not the back room
Loitering wing of well paid communions.
The disordered mind twists and mash up turns
This is our left wing wight sad to say.

The young boy toss throws one eon smoothed rock
My young son into the shallow puddle
And the dog chases pounces upon
Unable to purchase a bite smooth
Worn rock over time and he struggles.

Piddle paddle puddles reflect
The incandescent houses the city.
Long low stentorian great ship groans
Thunder heave hoes into view and I watch
As it sail shudders dissipates long way
Into the jet ink black cold uncaring
Night of enhancing jet black ink cold night.

The wind rattles and rustles and whispers
And thistles the aluminium frame
Skeleton plastic construction work place.

Bonza bait for sale
Lapwings chitter chatter
The golden rain night.

Bairnsdale - Sale - Traralgon

More travelling through Gippsland Victoria quiet and nightmare dark history and i can never wake up from. like a vampire it infects me and slowly drains me dry. from a letter written 1846 by a squatter Henry Meyrick. the quote was found on wikipedia.

The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They [the Aborigines] will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 450 have been murdered altogether

---

Gloaming growling wind
Grey oligarchies
Solitary

Barnacle sale paragons

And what is the great bourgeois dream?
Nothing less than something for nothing
Gold from death from tossed aside lives
Sleazed extorted used discarded.
The great alchemical dream of gold
From base nothingness. As the chairman
Of the Chamber of Commerce admitted
In the Fin Review, I chanced to glance
At one pot clouded Friday afternoon,
In fact we resent paying wages.
Worship of the criminal
Of the strong man who takes what he wants.
Something for nothing. To diddle
Staff out of money to offer poor
Service at best to place the onus
On the outsider the customer
Anything else. Enterprise translates
To pure theft and nothing else no honour
No social good no care no forward.
Something for nothing. Something for nothing.
The bourgeois dream taught to our children.
Climbing the ladder of aspiration
Living the life of ownership
We have lost more than optimism
Grasping after wealth after things
We have lost the cooperative
Spirit for the home owner lives in dread
Fear of it all failing crashing down.
And this fear makes all weak and confused.
Something for nothing. Responsibility
Falls to the individual
While producers laugh cashing cheques
The hungry are allowed to starve
The weak are thrown aside those who are ill
Deserve to die they are not pure of heart.

Asbestos lead cadmium coal
Let the workers chew on that
Let the workers spit out gold.

Is this how we are to teach our children?

Compassion suits the poor
Greed is the strong Christian man.
The world is too small to share.
When uncle Toby was vexed
And his dinner spoiled
From a simple fat buzzing fly
He let the fly out the window
This world surely is wide enough
To hold both Thee and me.

Misty foggy clean evening tide
Osiris to my right hand side
Saggy telephone lines beside
The wide highways black glinting
The oncoming car headlights.

Slack sloughing Orion to the front
And off the my right side.

Mimic English names Avon River
And you can guess the rest.

The telephone is out of range
The petrol stations are all closed.

Late rising lazy old dying
Crone wan moon mother sickle.
And then I read Malcolm died.

Into Gippsland - Orbost - Bairnsdale

Further the trip from Canberra to Hobart, crossing Gippsland Victoria in the night. Nothing, empty rolling hills and trees and road trains.

---

Nothing Really Matters.
    Burst into tears.
Beautiful.
And the children.

Thermal wing spreading 
Slow circle raptor.

Flattened tree artefacts 
Of previous weather.
Flash flood knocked 
Over down the trees.
The small river bed.

Man's calming hand
Of productive rolling
Distance.

Sapphire Coast
Cherry Lane
Old Dam Road
Yellow Pinch Dam
Cabbage Tree Creek.

Tin woodman rusted solid
Wise old timey farm
Machinery. Engine.

Pink rock face cutting
Burning orange scar
Eight hundred and fifty
Million years ago
The iron rusted out
Of the ocean
Deposited here.

Bald Hills
Gipsy Point
Sandpatch Point 
Pambula
Mallacoota
Glissando.

Clichéd looking
Fishy typecast
Matey crossing
The pub side
Of the road.

Dead fox. Clues of ocean
Gaps of the forest trees
Quarantine Bay 
Thirty thousand dollar
Fishing contest.

Constant changing sand islands
Mouth of bay river.

Two ravens shiny
Fly lazy over the highway.

Falling over porch
Verandah house
Faded peeling.

Park mocked outlet
Bored youth tedium
Rural life boredom
Idiocy. Past Bombola.

Constipated olive drab pained
Tanks burnt up strictures
Off the ground.

Timbillica dark lyre bored gully
Dreamy blue
Gray and white
Rapid change
Settling son.

Spit and instinct mortared
Ant hills dart dash hilly
Road side radiant city.
Hobble muddle this dance.

Kangaroo & wombat
Yellow warning sign
Dinted and abused
Teenaged air guns
Fifty kilometres more.

Victoria Empress of India
Queen of England, this exotic 
Land named. And Canada
And Africa and gentle they 
Lived a land without religions
A land without ownership.
Hard and even brutal but 
Never in gathered mobs 
And given weapons and told
To kill or be killed to make
Greater wealth for the already
Wealthy well to do well off. 
Not the lash nor the stock
Nor the gibbet nor the court
Nor the brothel nor the clap
Nor the bible nor the bottle.
Not even influenza. 
And so 
Defenceless gainst gammon veterans 
Of gaols and ships and wars
The brutalised the psychotic
The rational the learned 
The hypocrite the religious.
Naked against the white man
A tragedy still not acknowledged
Naught but jeers and contempt.
A nation afraid to look 
Into the mirror called history.

Farmers burning heaps.

Genoa
Mallacoota
Wilderness Coast.

The GPS says the next turn
Ain't for some 180 kilometres.

Century old trees burn
Infected injured crying out
They are weakened and so 
Fall over scattering younger
Trees levering out root balls
Exposing to the light and air.

Here the fires were more recent. 
The earth is still black. 
The trees are still.
Still whimpering in terror.
If one is quiet one can hear
The silent fear as the wind
Rustles the leaves.

Axeman's track.

Sunset stop.
Truck stop.
Truck driver coffee 
Slop shop selling bait.
And for the truck drivers
It don't have to be nice.
Just get it in ya
And back onto the road.
It is a form of rationing.
Not like the coffee 
Served up in fine china
For the lawyers
Or accountants
Or doctors
Or politicians.

A pair of eight pounders
Desert rat sandy drab
Lest e Forge 39-45
 
Xmas decoration
Road train lit up
Articulated trucks
Power hurtle highways.

Bonang
Marlo
Newmerella
Andante
The Snowy
Swan Reach.

Kioloa - Bega Valley - Eden

---

Moved from Canberra to Midway Point in Tasmania - wrote a series of poems about the move, thinking about Ginsberg's Fall of Ameria - Poems of These States So I called them Songs of This East Coast. Not as good as Ginsberg but hopefully you will like 'em. This was updated and extended. Maybe for better, maybe just to be more pretentious.

---

Kioloa - Bega Valley - Eden

Sunny days and half moon nights
Redundant tree left on the flank of the navvy cut
Bright iron rust red wound wound scar rots and crumbles
Into damp dust bits of chiseled hand. Slowly eaten 
Slow death realizing life of moss and lichen and fungi.

A thin new young shoot struggles to the sun
Smooth young growth raises holy sun embracing
Tendrils twisting out dread stump dead heart
Magical wood over full vigorous life force.

Young big capital town couple exorcise
Annoying cash card buying and celling
Love new day sun dog walking dawn and dressed
In like mien them that weak heard parlay hard
From top to tail poseur. Two flitter boys scouting
On by past and stop. Query and examine
Mob of kangaroos round floret emerge.
And the locals despair mostly their need.

Black burnt slated serried gum trees 
Resting cows black on curds and whey grass
Vine and creepers out of control.

Day dream word flow spewed disorderly mind
Too too many as that possum would say 
Adjectives to disturb flowing ideas
Allowing gain of prizes and praises
Pound for pound swimming burnt and piled high
Slabs of ply upon ply interconnected
Images punning on board joke grouchy
Variety. Disoriented mind.
Accreted images growing coral wise
Turning back upon itself again again
How long the coastline? How long a piece of string. 
Constant flux and change the coastline moves each day
With the pulling shape of the sun and moon
With the winds and waves. Pointing peninsula
All islands and blocks of land in constant
Change and constant growth and regress. Even
The way to measure changes the shape and size.
And the mountains erode and the hills erode
Turn into sand and dirt and rolling down 
And the waves scour the shore and tree fall
Into the tidal swaying sand rub forming.  
One connection to encounter one more
Firming tap turning of random collage
High speed global digital network village.
And then back home to begin again again.
Forced mental state transformed into a lie.

Corrugated chicanery runs
Schoolboy sick from calico visioning.
Mottled cows knee deep mottled weir
Brown and white. 
                 Knee deep of beer stained ochre
Hathor desirous of killing all
Drunk with slaughter too drunk to stand
Sun encasing horns murderous mourner.
Drunken mother sleep. Rainy sun showers.

Uterine matrix of land and sea.
Oyster farming bogs knife sweep scuttle.
Egrets mating plumage white brown regret.
Fiddle pint roofs. Dust clods destroy weeds.
Old propped up frame farm buildings fading down.

Bell miner chiming forests.
Temperate rain forest.
Turquoise water menstrual mud flats 
Interzone play of here and now.
Puddle of ponds. Ducks and bitumen.

Patterns of leaves through light
Falling seizure on dot and dash
Drowsy and nauseous afternoon
Rain eroded flanks of hill 
Gully scars smoothed over time.

Infinite perspective
Objective scar high tension
Lines receding vanishing point.
Retinal eye burning green. 

Disappointment

Capital tends to corrupt and demean all things - in this we have sold our house to get away from the ownership society, which was nothing but a right wing con to take our money from us, and to make working people too fearful to revolt, and to try to make the concerns of the ruling class the concerns of the slaves.

---

Death comes when the tide is low.

Morning of disappointment and delay
Family sorrow and disappointment.

Mud babies made mawkish delays
And confusions of names 
Placed into the homeless
Busted penniless womb.
An embryonic effigy.

Child of placental error
Mother of freedom.

Always must one smooth away
Impressions left of sleep
And never musty messed up
Pick up that which has fallen 
Nor shall one ever eat any beans 
Or pulses or expose irrational numbers.

One must break from heartier costumes.

Disappointed at the flooding 
Of the tides 
    Pit of the stomach
    Homeless
    Helpless.

Living in spare rooms
Living on kindness.

Diptera.
A large black fly buzzes
Erratic kitchenware.

A wilderness of disappointment
With the present state of affairs.
Disappointment with the sexual act
Disappointment even with the ocean.

Tiny fish school 
A stream and flow
The tidal pale.

Washed up 
Vomited out
Ejected the sea
In her smooth white hand
This white smooth piece
Of pitted whale bone
Vertebrae elaborate 
Of design and texture.
Pouted sand pitted a silent
Terror of months years decades
Held cold dark pressure.

The tiny child hand
Reaches the wet sandy
Beach explores both
Nose and tongue.

Loud lout snore thing 
Shifting of gears
Top to bottom 
Snoring snares 
To catch unawares.

Fancy 
Dreads dance up on
My mind creek 
And crack dissipate.

Tinkling stars of spirits
Annotated parade of tourists
And their dogs.

Metal Box

Packing the house - and just the general day by day. things come into being and then pass away.

---

The metal box pops and cracks
Early mourning son warm wealth.

Disturbing dreams. Injured children.
Black night black dog slaughtered
Sacrificial meal.

Nectar gathering bees buzz hum
Pleasing flowering vines.

Mislaid keys hiding keys
Dog harness whispering.

Belly bulging moon mother
Mother to All of the Gods.

And needless they support the troops arguing
That freedoms are advanced by murder.
No No No. For that thank the dissident
The ones who stand up and out, who face jail
And worse flying the face of the old ways.
Where were the soldiers of 1967?
Where were the coppers the Day of Mourning?

Squat brown and black gargoyle beetles
Meander and plumb the extravagant
Exposed floral genitalia
A new bud appears. Faint crimson hint
Held tightly folded protective embrace.
The wide brimmed artichoke leaves wilt and droop
The worrying, the eviscerating sun,
The corrupting sun, the humiliating sun.

Black wound licking dog. Crone aware black dog
Howling meating place of many roads
Grandmother of the threshold, the crossroads,
Protector of pregnant women. When black dogs
Bark and wander the night, she is close at hand.

A raven verifies from north to south
Vision and fast and low she flies
All the while imitating the cries
Of a nearly born infant.

Before sunset - before night falls
The bulging moon smother.

A tiny leave falls, or a piece of a leaf
Falls transforms into a butterfly
Or a moth and the fantails piccolo
And posture display shattered clods move
And expose the expectant moon.

Harsh the echoing house is empty
Quiet is the clanking clattering kid sounds
No more are the triggers to memory.
The house is empty.