Atomous kai kenon

---

Standing on the corner a-ringing a bell. And up stepped the sheriff...

How's it going he asked.

Just standing here, you know holding up the wall. Really there taint not much to report really. You?

The shoppers and the workers in town swirled and rambled all around and about us.

Got time?

For you? Of course.

Let's duck in this here joint get us some coffee. It has been a while we can catch up. And besides I am freezing.

Well, I said, as there is not much happening from my end I'm happy to join you in a coffee.

It was more than true that there was not much to say about my life, the last few months have been little more than the daily grind of family and work and all the forms of mental illness that come free with the working class loss of free will life style.

So we sat and we ordered a coffee each. I like to order latte because of the idea -- I think it was Simon Crean who put it out there -- that one can not be a good union member and drink latte. I wanted to prove him wrong. And a long black.

I saw Ian the other day.

Really and how is he?

Good, he was all excited, he had been to the poetry slam heats and later on he read something in the open mic section later. So he was -- yeah all excited. You know Ian.

Indeed he's a pistol. I thanked the waiter for the latte and played with the sandy coloured froth, distorting the intricately poured design. What did he think? I am sure he would have gone all ultra on their arse.

No he was cool. He was surprised -- pleasingly surprised - cause he reckons that the slam format is all male oriented. So he was sort of impressed about the fact that there was about half and half girl boy performers and two of the three finalists were women.

Yeah, well no, that is good. Ian is good like that. He has a, you know, open mind. Having played rugby in college, it has always struck me passing strange how something like poetry can become so macho. Some people just gotta get all competitive. Like those aggro cooking shows. But I think it must be the shirtless, arm waving, shouty-man performance aspect. You know the winning and the losing.

Sure - that is exactly what Ian was saying too. And he thought it cool the way the slam brings out all sorts of poets from out of the woodwork. You know there are heats all across the country?

Yep, and did you know that we were lovers for a while?

Truly? I did not know that. Makes you more attractive to me.

That lemming has dived off the cliff. I have lost all interest. I am pretty much asexual these days. Does not even enter my pretty little head. We all wear a variety of, various masques, do we not? LOL. et tu? And besides after 911 there ain't no need for performance poetry anymore.

I guess.

Yeah but you know I gotta force myself to jerk off at least once a week, you know just to maintain good prostate health.

So okay, whatever. Ian thought it was a good night. He is very political. Right? So he was, he said, he had been to a few slams over the years around and on the mainland and they never really caught his interest. At the heat last week he thought maybe it was you know maybe he dug it cause of the small town vibe of Hobart. People having to make their own fun and whatever.

At this point an earnest young woman, Iona, wearing a fourth doctor sort of scarf -- she told me later her thirteen year old niece had knitted a bunch of these scarfs for various family members -- ripped jeans and a leather jacket, and her equally, if more traditionally garbed beard and glasses sloppy jumper earnest brother Bloom interrupted.

Slam is the democratisation of poetry, of verse. It allows more voices. It may be macho at times and places, but at the same time slams allow different voices to be heard. The voices of women in particular. They may or may not win, that is not really the point. Poets get to perform, mind if I sit, and so by performing they get to build up confidence. What they do from then is up to the person. But lots of voices, of the marginalised and the ones who have not had the opportunity get to be heard. Did you ever read The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry? You should read it, by Somers-Willett - it is interesting. She is in US so she does not talk about the Australian scene. But she does talk about the divide. Poetry in the academy versus in the bars and in the alleyways. I will send you a link of a review.

Like Bukowski.

Or Ginsberg before. Whitman when he said something like, Great Poetry needs a Great Audience.

It is that DIY punk sort of a feel innit. The sum is worth more than the parts. The audience is central to the performance. Slam is the all night acid house dance rave party, the stage dive, slam is Shane MacGowan getting his ear bit off while Joe Stummer caterwaul strums what the hell is wrong with me? The Bomber boys who stole kit during the great blackout and went out to the street corners and clubs and puked forth grinding poverty hip-hop.

I lived for a while in Canberra, the poets there seem to do a good job of it.

Last century there used to be a cool scene in bris vegas based at the Storey Bridge Hotel.

Still your boy Ian reckons that slam is an inherently broken form, due to the idea of competition. The very nature of the slamming scene is broken.

By now we had repaired to a little downstairs hole in the wall jazz wine bar. Trading latte for beer and cider and cheap industrial port, not being able, no matter how ironically I tried, to abide Chardonnay. And conversions swirled and jostled for attention like bored children bickering in the supermarket trolley. Beer flowed like wine. This way and that way words flowed and swirled around all opposition and solid forms finding new paths and forging new channels. Ideas and flirtations. We all overlapped and argued for time and space around an unoriginal table stained years of excited bullshitting and alcohol. A small gang melded the group pushing the tables together, painters, dealers and stoned rappers. Ply upon sandy ply.

No! Slams are good they give people immediate feedback and if the poets or whatever listen and learn they come back and think about things and they can stumble about improve. Even if only in the sense of winning the twenty dollars at the end of the night. But it is all supportive. The old way of getting poems out there -- from entering the contest to getting final finished published book containing heartfelt poems -- could take you know quite a long time. Getting hooked into the slam scene one has a focus. Keep writing monthly new stuff. A monthly deadline. Asses must be driven, as the saying goes, to hay with blows. Or polishing up some piece they are particularly fond of.

It is the constant changing of styles and forms. And a bringing together of voices from all around the country, bush & city. Big places and small. The old and the young. The old hand and the tyro. Coming into being and passing away. The way certain groups, particular groups coalesce around their daily lives and so form particular styles. Meeting in cafes or pubs, sober or not or high as kites and sounds and voices bubble up and styles come and go. Some move on, most are like writers or visual artists just experimenting about or musicians trying out song ideas, or just drunken layabout no names ecstasy poets seeking to get some kicks and maybe laid. All sorts. Resorting to nutmeg. Which as it was the sailors high seems appropriate for Hobart. Eh?

But this very diversity is as much about fragmentation and loss of community as it is about anything. It is one group seedling in and carving out and a liquidness that disbars other groups. I am not making myself clear. Like the way yon internet has a chat group a forum a scene for each and everyone for every sort of idea or kink you can think of and so people become more close, closer in fact, to some random cat two thirds of a wide and wicked world away -- round the world -- or even more better unknown just down the road. And so what ever you want to call it, skate punk XY youth label culture, or some sort of arty boho scene, or some inarticulate anarcho-dread progressive culture all movement it all gets sort of rutted on the ancient wallaby track and people get isolated and so isolate themselves fragmenting into every sort of fraction or clique or ratio group or faction that you could ever think of -- so by this fragmenting we argue and miss the boat the moment and while trying to become the perfecting ourselves change we want the world to be the bosses laugh all the way to bank. Their wealth is my death my life is being broke. Whoa!

Personally, to me it is the death of art, well maybe not THE death of art. This bunch of unemployed or under-employed or unemployable can never destroy art, not even poetry. But this entire American Idol, clap-o-meter idea. When the hurlyburly's done it comes down to me hating this pub scene poet scene the drinking the braking of glass and the nauseating sound of the cash register. Ugh - sends shivers down me spine. Like that inane Nokia ring tone. Makes me physically wanna be ill just thinking about it. But this venereal measuring clap-o-meter could never tear down art by itself. But it is the fragmenting the murdering of art with one thousand cuts. Bleeding it out. No not cuts -- how quaintly cliché of moi. Rather it is like the Cyberian reindeer in the thawing spring time tundra. So many mosquitoes. Fantastic clouds in number and in formation of the blood suckers like dentist drills rise up from countless small puddles and pools of melt water. So much so that some beasts perish with anemia. From so many tiny little bites from so much drop by life creating drop blood being drained. While others in the vast herds are driven insane and panicked fleeing and flailing about the reindeer exhaust themselves running this way and yon - not never being able to find relief.

No it is the democratic dubstep hodge podge of voices and opinions, a honing of ideas in a furnace of art and competition and sampling commerce. The free interchange market of twenty four hour party signs and signifiers of many voices striving for the one voice the way to describe what it is we have been thrown into. For if we be equal in one way, then we must be equal in all ways. Each of us should be expected to have something to say, and we should be allowed to say it. It is even our duty as citizens, whatever the hell that may mean, to speak our mind. Two thirds Rosa Luxemburg, one part Dr Suess. And the slam movement has wrested and extorted poetry from the Academy. Too too much poetry is controlled by the guild of English professors and those who having access and resources speak of the primacy of the written word over the spoken word. It is a silly argument to have as they are both of value. The best writing is best if it is closest to conversation. Even the old fashioned five paragraph essay form should be read aloud, if only as part of the editing precess. Slam poets are like the old beardy bards, like the rhapsodes of Homer's time.

No, not like rhapsodes at all. The name shows the difference. Rhapsode mean to stitch together a song or even better a stitching together of lies. Those poets would have to commit to memory scenes and phrases and what not so then can then, on the spot stitch together a song a lay. They were able to put theses formulas of meter and narrative together. Maybe in new and varied ways. But one big thing that these archaic poets would not have liked would have been innovation. They were very concerned with keeping intact the ideas of the cycle. And it was all you know religious and traditional and you know religion and tradition hate change. The word that Homer used was singer. And here you are right, cause the first duty of the singer is to sing, and the slam venue is just the place to do that. Again we have the idea of immediacy, of meeting face to face like minded people in your community. This is the power of the medium.

Immediate and democratic, and even if I do not agree with what you say, I have to go along with what Sylvia Beach said about Joyce -- he treated people invariably as his equals, whether they were writers, children, waiters, princesses, or charladies. What anybody had to say interested him; he told me that he had never met a bore.

The babbling pumpt of platinism

Yes well LOL sometimes it takes a bit of digging to find out the kernel of the poem or the poet that is any good, worth remembering.

I like the idea of the anti-slam, everyone gets how ever much time and everyone is given as a score a perfect 10. Performing is the victory. Like the Seinfeld joke, people would rather be in the coffin than give the eulogy.

But I guess that raises the question as to how to get an audience to attend what is little more than a poetry recital. Anyway it is getting late. I have to dreadful work in the beastly morning. Until next time, I said, putting on my scarf and overcoat, I shall leave y'all with Democritus, “The realm of the universe is atoms and space, the things that are, are custom. These universes are infinite and so they come into being and they perish.”

loquere ut videam te

...within his head many words, but disorderly; vain, and without decency, to quarrel with the princes. Iliad 2.213-4

I went into town last week. I went to the small hole in the wall smelling of thick rich coffee and of thicker and richer spices cafe -- Frankie's Empire. I ordered three well appreciated hot chocolates for the children, and a flat white for myself. Besides the well received drinks I was interested in see a new -- for Hobart anyway -- cafe poetry or to be more precise spoken word night. New to Hobart, but not a new idea. There are monthly readings (first Sunday of the month) at the Republic Hotel. I do not want to get into a debate over the merits of this event as against that event, nor do I want to get entangled with the even more ludicrous argument comparing the relative merits of the spoken word as against the written word. I do, however, want to offer a frail apologia for the will and representation of the spoken word, the open mic event.

So it seems that was the end of things, but then I thought over my past, about the many people who have been not supportive of open mics. The ones who have pronounced such nights to be awful, or even atrocious. And some seem to create a distinction the written and the spoken, and privilege the written. I have never thought that this was the right attitude. No sense getting into an argument here, but I will quote Swinburne and say that the first rule of the singer is to sing. Take this as you will.

Atrocious & awful, sure. But this is very nature of the open mic - poetry slam scene. But let us be generous in our criticism. Maybe not always possible, but in this case I think the thought of critical generosity should be kept in mind. My visit was only the third time this event (silverwords) was held. It is very much an amateur or DIY sort-of-event, in the sense of having no government or university grant money to support the organiser, but more importantly in the sense of being a labour of love.

Describing this sort of spoken word evening as awful shows the wrong attitude to have to open mic. Even if most of the poems were crap, the questions must be: did you have a bit of fun? did you get out of the house? did you hear even one line that was of interest? I have been wandering in and out of these sorts of poetry readings and slams and etc for a great many years, ever since I stumbled into the DC Space bar on a cold wintry night two generations ago. One of the things that I love about this open mic formula is the fact that all are welcome. How hard is it for the average person to jump up on stage and read a poem that they wrote?

Omar Musa, Brett Dionysius, Miranda Lello, Jared Louche, Rebbecca Edwards, are among the poets, musicians, artists that I have known, off the top of my head, who have toyed with the open reading format at various times in their careers. Together they have put out albums, books, blogs, journals and much more. While it would be foolish to say that spoken word was a main determinate in their work, it would be as equally foolish to deny the education of the open reading environment. Like Julia Gillard in her resignation speech, “it does not explain everything, nor does it explain nothing.” For open mic is primarily a way for people to quickly get feedback and encouragement for their work.

And here we have stumbled across the key word. Encouragement. Open readings offer the young, whether young in age or in spirit, player a chance to try out material, stances, vocal styling etc. as Adonis Storr, the event organiser said at the beginning of the evening we are here to encourage each other and love one another (or as Ted "Theodore" Logan would say, be excellent to one another)

Open mic nights show a type of democracy, a type of democracy that is messy, rowdy, uneven, but mostly participatory. In the second book of the Iliad after Zeus had sent a riddling dream to Agamemnon there is an spoken word, open discussion of what Acheans are to do. Even the lowliest can speak. Thersites -- whose name means the bold, the audacious -- was the only brawling belly-aching foot soldier, the only private mentioned by name in the poem, that spoke. Although he was howled down and beaten by Odysseus his speech is a turning point of the war; for after his speech the Acheans agreed to stay at Troy and not return home. But did he not speak the truth? Did he repeat what Achilles said, did he capture the soldiers demoralisation after having lost Achilles to the greed of Agamemnon? Did he not say what all were thinking, but were too fearful to utter? Did not this wretched, cold, wet, brutalised, foot soldier at once mirror Achilles' attack on Agamemnon and the established heroic order, and at the same time mock Achilles, being as wretched as the hero is glorious?

In this way we can see that the open mic, spoken word format is a type of democracy assembly; in the sense that all are equal, not in ability or experience, but in the ability to speak and take part. Indeed in the democracy of classic Athens one was expected to take part, and to speak well. To show a concrete example of this democratic spirit at least two people who had never read a poem in public before spoke on this night.

With no, or at best elastic, themes for these evenings the poets were free to investigate a wide range of spoken words; from dubstep rapping to Banjo Paterson.

And the hurrying people daunt me,and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

A young man sang to Jesus for setting him on the on the straight and narrow. Love songs hate songs tumbled some spoke political other declaimed apolitical still others in turn spoke fierce, calm, earnest, whimsical. If one wanted to quote Lenin one could use the idea of the joy of the festival of the oppressed

For who will make the poetical revolutions? The academics? The narrow professional literary journals? Any revolution, whether in art or politics, will be built by the broken, by the outsider (consider the 1961 Dylan unwashed phenomenon, or the filthy 1977 Sex Pistols or a world or two before the poverty stricken, rotten toothed 1921 James Joyce forced by need to accepting gifts of shoes by Ezra Pound.)

Looking back over years of poetry readings, it is these acts of self organisation that will advance poetry. Even if nothing comes maybe one or two people will develop a life long habit of writing poetry.

Some of the problems with the open mic include the problem of, at best, a patchy selection of poems. It is just the nature of the beast, as it is true for poetry journals and canonised collections. The idea is to allow new and unpublished poets the opportunity to gather and to share and read aloud. The benefit is to hear new voices, new ideas, ideas which are often not spoken, voices which often do not get heard. For example when I did a quick, non-scientific, survey of a noted on-line poetry magazine, I was impressed by the fact that the majority of artists in the journal were in the (mostly tertiary) education industry or entangled with the arts bureaucracy in one way or another. There were some poets, but not many, from outside these circles.

Spoken word nights may be insular, may be hit or miss affairs, may even be atrocious and awful, but they are also a cheap and fun night out, they offer that chance to hear some new poems, and they offer the chance to have some interesting conversations. But most importantly is the confidence that poetry slams can give to new players. For poetry in general, and performance poetry in particular is a ladder to be climbed. Spoken word offers much to be learned, as it is a skill and an art like others.

Do not take my word for it watch this video about the Canberra Poetry scene, built over over many years with a dedicated crew of young and enthusiastic poets. Or even better come along to Frankie's Empire on Thursday 4 July for a spoken word night, and then on Friday 19 of July come along as Frankie's Empire and Silver Words host the Hobart heats of the Australian Poetry Slam Contest.

Also the Republic Hotel in North Hobart was readings on the first Sunday of every month.

and the latin title means - speaks that i may see you.

Omnia sunt, lumina sunt

The lair of light soots efficient metronomes into the yesyokes. Like the arrival of the 456. Omnia sunt, lumina sunt all things that are, are light. The promotional literature, Let there be light -- Trite Cliché Immature -- takes away mystery, leaving all things created by god. All things are light. Why? How? Is the mystery not that all things arise from nothingness, that single infinitesimal moment of radiating energy and inflationary expansion. That the word world is nothing but the many billion years old hydrogen atom combined and recombined and fused and torn asunder and vomited out in mindless explosions of mind numbing power set hurtling across the random swerves -- until one fine morning the atom rearranged asks why am I here? Want is light? Why are all things light? Why are there things rather than nothing at all?

“The light & heat of the sun; these are composed of minute atoms which, when they are shoved off, lose no time in shooting right across the interspace of air in the direction imparted by the shove.” Lucretius De Rerum Natura

No god - no mystery - just intergenerational long fears. Light is real and subtle and it is the mystery. And when I look around all the green and all the flowering birds and animals born of light. Color and sound and life non-existent without light. For light is Eros, first born from out of the yawning emptiness, from the gaping nothingness, the generative spirit. Light is constant, the inescapable, the massless quandary. For we can go no faster, the light chases us and we can not flee, we can not outrun.

From my backyard the pillar of light rises over the neighbours house. Only certain places, one must avoid the street lights, one must avoid the light falling from windows. And the matrix of cloud and night sky tumbles and rumbles and turns this way and that, so the column appears and disperses, comes together and falls apart. Blasting Loretta Lynn as I drive into town (40 kilometres) the light glows and stakes shape more solid as I move closer and over the bridge and into the city. From light to stone.

So I wondered and wandered and went down across the wide Derwent estuary to partake the opening night of Sound to Light -- Crossing Borders (STL). As well as the exhibit I saw some audio/visual performances. STL is described as a dynamic, playful, chaotic, experimental project. A social art project that seeks to transcend boundaries between disciplines, but more importantly -- and something that can only be done at this time in history -- seeks to transcend physical location. This could not have been done before the invention of high-speed networking. Like the ancient shamans who could be in two places at once, nowadays artists are able to perform this miracle of bi-location. Optical fibre being part of the infrastructure of modern shamanistic practice the name of the exhibit takes on a special meaning.

Up Woobys Lane, through the courtyard, into an industrial revolution rabbit warren of an old warehouse. Low skeletal ceiling, silver insulation skin exposed. Rendered sandstone, convict-hewn blocks, photographers moving about for a better composition. Pale smart phone light, apparitions in the crowd, petals on a wet, black night. Electronic equipment humming, buzzing a series of sounds and beats, screens projecting the present and past in various combinations, strange generated life forms dancing and swirling. Art, as Andy Warhol said, is anything you can get away with; and everything we do, as John Cage said, is music.

Beyond the large performance space, a series of connected rooms of various installations. I would suggest visiting the soundtolight.net website to get more detailed information about the artworks. I can only describe my impressions, and what I saw. With much happening not everything could be given the attention required, and not everything could be properly critiqued.

In one room amplifiers, wires and a small wooden table. On the table Oscar Ferreiro & Heath Brown assembled small pieces of bone. The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone (well as a Dylan freak how could I pass this up?) Small electronic widgets attached to sawn and white scrubbed clean bones. The small motors recorded, and the manipulated sounds filled the little room. The natural and the artificial, prehistoric flutes made of bone and the most up to date technology. Further on a stand in a hallway a simple music box, with a twin in Melbourne. The pair move so slowly that no eye can detect movement. Played back as a time-lapse video the movement becomes apparent, the structure and the music is revealed.

Like Chinese guerrillas amid the peasant class, like fish in the sea, we move through light and sound. Moving from room to room. Agreeing with the Joycean poverty atmosphere of old warehouse art gallery was a room designed by Dylan Sheridan & Laura Hindmarsh. This was a flickering magic lantern room of images thrown onto thin screens in the darkness. This created a melancholy feeling. The impression of being a young child, a poor Edwardian urchin, sneaking a peek into the fabled nickelodeon. Take me away from all this death.

Chris Vik, of Ethno Tekh played his Kinectar. He has written some software to interface with the Kinect sensor, allowing artists while wearing special gloves, to create music by gesture alone. A very cool idea indeed, bringing sound to the language of gesture.

If Sound to Light -- Crossing Borders was meant to be a dynamic, playful, chaotic, experimental social art project, then one is forced to admit that they have succeeded. This type of technological art, this type of social art, this type of shamanistic bi-location will only extend and grow over the next period. In the way that the continual revolution of capitalism is threatening many old style business models, so too is the industrial scientific revolution forcing us to revalue art and the production of art. Recalling Socrates and his contrasting writing to the living word of knowledge. So we must ask if technology, as an extension of writing is not as well a pharmakon. Is technology a remedy, or is it a poison, or (most likely) both at once?

The boat of Ra-Set moves with the sun "but our job to build light." Ezra Pound Canto XCVIII

With one child just minutes away from yet another hospital visit,pale gray and listless from asthma, and one child on crutches with a broken foot, I can be forgiven for missing the unveiling, unleashing of Ryoji Ikeda's Spectra light tower. But I had an opportunity after the STL opening to wander into the domain, near the empty tomb to see for myself up close. Judging by the crowds and the traffic and the families and photographs this was a big hit with the locals. And why not? 'Tis a beautiful thing. Tall and proud and silent the beam of light rises up to the very heavens. All sorts of images and thoughts rattle around my noggin. Storming the gates of heaven. An echo of the blitz. Sublime Rothko silence and religiousness.

Only when I leave the car there is this noise of sine waves that fills all things, and to me subtracts rather than adds to the art work. I wanted the silence to stand and stare and wonder. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts with my own head.

And standing, and walking around I am breathless, but then from nowhere, from deep recesses within a nagging doubt arises. Why? What of this tower of light? Is it more an attempt to control and dominate nature? Is the empty night sky full of wonder and the cold wind of outer space, not enough? Is it not enough to point and say this is art? Like the gardener who digs up the native plants and replaces with roses, or the surfer who sees the ocean and demands to run on top of the waves to control and so dominate the sea, or the matron who see the fox or minx and wishes to flay the flesh as fashion; so too does this installation seem to want to control and dominate the landscape the city the very night itself.

A wonderful art piece to be sure and like all large scale public art, it is more than art. Rather a victory of technology of harnessed nature, of money and power, of government and business and bureaucracy.

Or is it more like the green blades of grass struggling to the light from under from the cracked concrete? The light life force, the will to power?

Or maybe a sound and fury signifying nothing, an insult to poor and voiceless in our society? Spectra must be all this and more. I think the artist said it best when he spoke of this work (like all art works) as being something different for everyone.

Life Within

---

Three tonne of wood delivered
Warm tightly stacked nest for mice
Bought early at the best price.

And in the wind whipping afternoon
Faded flannel well scuffed shoes
Dirty hair muddyshit stained jeans
I lean forward, as if throwing the heavy
Log splitting metal point. Exploding
Along the path of grain. One into two.

And alien worlds unknown are revealed
To me. Entire worlds in the cooling
Afternoon. Paths of nests and trails
To food bored out burrowed
Secreted in secret silent lives
Passed without sunlight. Insects
Scatter as the axe head splits the wood.

Crackling fireplace throwing light and warmth
Children and dogs huddling the screaming
Popping sound of strange life ceasing.

Night Lights

---

I go outside
Into the night.

To doormouse feed my head
And relieve the black dog

Black black sky peppered
Countless twinkling stars

Look into the darkness
The emptiness, I can not
Even see the mountains.

A car, alone, a single car drives
Down the highway, out of the
Small town, heading inland north.

The trees the sided of the road
The fence posts occult the lights
Of the pitching rising car.

The head lights throw a flickering
Shadow pattern onto the bricks
Of our house.

On the next night
I come home late
The sun has set the darkness
Has settled over the wide slow
Ancient old valley. The whips around
My face is stung the teasing
Mist of rain.

On the autumn rain sidewalk
A single red maple leaf
Introduced.

entha kai entha

---

The sky father and pregnant bride
Rule the ebbing summer.
Hand in hand the upper ether.
Two outsreched fists reckoning
Some twenty degrees above
The horizon. 
                         A plane flies
Shrinking, to the northwest.
The sound waves move away
Further apart, engines become
A dulling and lowing lament.

The yellow and black honey bee
And the white winged butterfly;
Old man tattered, wings painted
Two small black full stop spots.
Hover and alight the same yellow
Weedy, boney, will to power 
Struggling  cracked cement
Verneal flower.
                             Of a sudden
A gust of wind whips across 
The parking lot and blows the 
Frail away. A child's soap bubble.

Here and there.

I walk the green fast growing
Daily sprinkled town water
Grassy church park. Four large black
Yellow paneled cockatoos 
Screech unworldly. Buffet and spin
This way and that, fighting and then
Catching the wind full speeding away. 

This is just a bunch of random images/thoughts jammed together. Ply upon Ply and all that...

Dantesque Hades

---

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.

---

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

Open the Curtains

---

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.

---

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

Postponer of old age

---

Hymn 10: To Aphrodite

I will sing Cyprus-born Cytherea.
She gives to mortals tender gifts.

Upon her lovely face, ever smiling,
The mischievous bloom of beauty.

Hail Goddess of sweet-tiled Salamis,
Ruler over sea girt Cyprus!

Grant me charming melodies.

Your song sung, I shall
Recall still others.

---

From Canto One by Ezra Pound
In the Cretan's phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite,
Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, oricalchi, with golden
Girdle and breat bands, thou with dark eyelids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicidia. So that:

Aphrodite the foam born goddess, rising from the severed, flung away
genitals of the God Ouranos. She arose from the ocean Chaos, and
danced across the foamy salt sea waves, grasses and flowers grow where she steps. Born fully fledged, she never had a childhood. The cuttlefish and the sea urchin are sacred to her, for even down to our so called enlightened times many of us still think of seafood as an aphrodisiac. Myrtle, roses, poppies, doves and swans are also sacred to her.

She has many names and functions, many more than the concise, accepted
into polite company versions of her myth are able to encompass. Some
of her names include; The Eldest of the Fates, The Black One,
Man-slayer, and Aphrodite of the Tombs.

In Sparta she is Aphrodite Ambologera, the postponer of old-age. Also
we see Aphrodite Morpho, the well-formed, here she is in fetters and
wearing a veil, a vain attempt, an altogether simple-minded plan to control the goddess. Another temple is Areias, meaning warlike, or devoted to Ares. Sexual passion and the blood-lust of battle both being seen as impetuous, as action without thought. Unlike Athena, the Goddess of Strategy in War. In commercial Corinth, as well as militaristic Sparta, she is seen as a defender of the city, as a warlike Goddess.

Like all the ancient gods the tales of Aphrodite a mass of contradictory stories and attributes. She is ready for battle, she is beautiful, she is cruel and she is sentimental. Like all things she is a mixture, and when the stew is no longer stirred, it will separate, and separation means death. Copper eyed Aphrodite, the laughter loving goddess with quick glancing eyes, riding on a swan across the sky.

the pic comes from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aphrodite_swan_BM_D2.jpg

Helios

Hymn 31 - to Helios

Begin your song of radiant Helios,
Muse Calliope, child of Zeus.

Cow eyed Euryphaessa
Glorious child of Gaia
With starry Ouranos.
Married Hyperion
His own sister.

And she brought forth
Beautiful dear ones,
Rosy armed Eos
Fair haired Selene
Tireless Helios.

Resembling the Gods,
He brings to sight both mortals
And the deathless ones,
Mounted his horses.

Terrible the glance
His eyes from out
His golden helmet.
Rays radiate from him,
Radiant, glittering
Hair falls his forehead
Gracefully captivating
His far-shining face.

Beautiful clothes
Delicately made
About his body
Shimmer the breath
Of a breeze.

With his stallions
And his chariot
And golden yolk
He established
From Heaven
To Oceans edge.

Rejoice Lord!
Of your own will
Bestow to me
A life welcome.
Beginning with thou
I celebrate with song
The mortal race of demigods.
Whose deeds the goddesses
To mortals pointed out.

---

the photo is from http://www.theequinest.com/horses-of-helios/

---

Selene

---

Homeric Hymn 32 to Selene

Sing Muses of the broad winged moon
Sweet sounding, song knowing
Daughters of Zeus, Son of Cronus.
Her heavenly radiance from her deathless head
Encircles the earth, as her golden crown
Gleams upon the gloomy lower air.

When she rises from Oceanus river
Bath dripping wet her flawless skin,
She dresses in far shining garments. Divine Selene.

She harnesses her radiant neck arching horses,
She drives her impetuous full maned foals.
In the evening, in the fullness of the month
The full moon becomes as it must.
Her beauty increases as the glow waxes across
The firmament. A token and a sign for mortal lives.

Once upon a time, the son of Cronus mingled
Her bridal bed, and she conceived and brought
Into being a daughter, Pandia.
Most beautiful of the deathless ones.

Rejoice queen! Pale armed divine Selene
Cheerful and fair haired. Of you and your
Tidings I begin. The deeds of divine
Heroes I now celebrate in song,
Pupil of the sweet mouthed Muses.

Ambiguous

---

Dawn the thin twilight
Naught as night, not yet day.
Transported by dreams
Shaken false awakening
Half awake half asleep.
Clouds half cover the sky
Torn gray smudges interact
With the new gathering blue.
Low air and thick and heavy
Water vapour mingles.
Quilt covered body parts
Warm, exposed is to chill.
Merge we two into one
Side by side.

And birds start to chorus
And the child sings
Made up songs in bed.

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.

---

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.

Poetical Manifestations

This document is not a well thought out plan or campaign. It is not a
critique or any sort of guide. It is a ramble shambles, a sort of
hobby horse of the kind one often finds drunkenly stumbling along the
queen's briar patch of a highway. It is at best a handful of poetic
fragments that vanity wishes to be recorded. It is at best derivative
and repetitive, and yet...

The revolution MUST be made by the shattered scattered broken remains
of the present capitalist militaristic system. Peace is not the absence
of war, peace is no longer opposing the progressive.

What the thirty years since the Thatcher Reagan era has killed is the
very idea of cooperative spirit. Substituting a broken down ladder of
aspiration.

And now our society is made up of monads randomly colliding the void.

---

1. Sound over Sense. Meaning is lost and disjointed. After years of
writing technical documents I have learnt that precise language is
no stop to misunderstanding. Why bother. 'All things counter,
original, spare, strange;'

2. History states what is. Poetry shows what should be.

3. Fear not contradiction. The small petty minded feed upon tiny
glitches, slips of the tongue. Ignore them, they are of no
consequence. 'The wise contradict themselves'

4. The pedant abhors errors. The seer adores error. 'Errors are the
portal of discovery.'

5. Aspective not Perspective. Hills mock the straight line.

6. History is the contemporary. The Ever When. The All at Once.
Economics is home-life. History and Political Economy must be
the domain of the poets. These things are too important to be left
to historians, or even worse politicians. '...a higher thing than
history'

7. Reserve the right to use any word needed. If the word or conceit is
archaic or poetic, so be it. If the reader needs to consult a dusty
old reference book, how can this a bad thing? Art should allow,
should force the reader to make links.

8. Think not of Euclidean lines, but rather the Mandlebort set.
Think of frost crystals forming on the window pane. (How long
is the coast of Tasmania?)

9. Creation is the tension between what the author meant and what the
reader understands. 'I go back to the top of the slide'

10. Truth is always progressive. Art is always progressive. Beauty is
always revolutionary, as Beauty must be the truth. The truth is
constant revolution. 'The cold knife thrust of the syllogism'

11. Socrates knew only of Eros. The great daemon that conveys and
interprets. Old the creative, the vegetative urge that comes
before and causes all things. The lighting that steers all things.
Plato is fit only to be mocked.

12. DIY becomes Do It Ourselves. We must band together. For protection
from the capitalist culture mongers, to extend experience and
knowledge. Truth is always social. Beauty is always social.
'O Multicolored mind, deathless'

Reticulum

Into the Heraclitian fyre. Reading a book on microbiology, specifically about the structures within cells. It seems the endoplasmic reticulum has taken on more roles than when I was in high school; well it is good to see talent rewarded. Reticulum is defined as from a latin word for network, more poking about gave other meanings and uses of the word reticulum, including the stomach of a cow, a constellation, even a snood. So I jammed all these fragments into a notebook poem. Entered it into a contest and did not even rate a mention. So here it is...

---

---

Upon false bridge, above the bloody sand
Trident fisherman taunts and turns vaunting twists
While sea monster fish men fight clumsy.
Thrown, the weighted net expands and flies
Across the distance, bringing victory
And defeat. The one event contrasting.

I take the dog for a run in the dawn
Twilight early morning and the red sky
Burns and glows the bodies of sinners
Stoking the deadly judgement fires
Beyond the obsidian smooth lagoon.

Shallow filled of the retreating ice,
More ten thousand isolating years ago.
On the shallow ridge line to the south,
Red lights blink automatic guiding planes.
Surrounded always a thin spiders web
Network of roads and highways of commerce.

The brush again and over again rolls
Thin net long hair covered for service.
The tides roll daily back and forth gentle.
Hungry and exhausted flights of sea birds
Rest rare salt marsh fringed glasswort and pig face
Winged far Siberia. Calling in the night
Feeble and tired and the tiny sea star
Ejecting live surprising birth only three
The entire world and across the waters
Low and flat toxic algal bloom lagoon
Ignoble west flank black line barrack causeway
Blinking away dreamy sleep lights Sorrel.

Low in the south west sky the rhombus
Thin hair cross hairs of an eyepiece.
Cattle low and wander the green pasture
Eating and fourfold digesting unknown
Cattle thoughts as myriad folds catalyse
Blind countless transactions and combinations.
Endless the surface. Wide transformations
Are performed and the suns energy released.

Waking the first light frost of morning
I arrange the kindling and split logs,
And touching a match bring warming fire.
On the pitted surface the suns energy
Forges frothy warmth and cosy home house life.

Driving visit historic Richmond gaol
And the rooms of punishment that brought
Civilization the land without the fall
And the wrist binding tripod cat o' nine tails
Extended the love of Christ and the shorn
Hair of the women fleeing rape and the coffin
Sized black rooms of silent aloneness.
The children are too fearful to enter,
After almost two hundred years of silence.

Gallery Opening

Echoing church bells clang out five
End of work week ending the day.
Out they pour from shops and walls,
Work sites, to queue the pub bars,
Cash point, hole in the wall.

Daylight of children
Wide parliament tour
And museum wanderings.
With the setting of the sun
With the rising of the wind
I wandered old shop town shore front
Factory warehouses transformed.
Flowing tide climbing the stairs.
Old grain silo segmented homes.
Working harbour view. Side step
The head feeding night dark park.
Splashing beef blood red wine entry.
The newly moved gallery home.

And an exhibit of two young local artists was being opened at
the Colville Gallery. Still new to town, I thought it worthwhile
to investigate. And I am glad that I did.

Aquinas taught that art must have three elements to be
beautiful, Integritas, Consontia & Claritas. These are sometimes
defined as Wholeness, Harmony & Radiance. Wholeness and harmony
seem to be easily understood in relation to a work of art, and
it is Claritas - Radiance that is more problematic. Claritas
must be the ineffable and must refer to something internal
and organic being emitted from the work under consideration.

This construction seems however to lead us into a circle of
confusion. To be beautiful the work must radiate. But what
is to be radiated, and how? Maybe we can find a more easily
grasped concept in the works of the Victorian English critic
and oft named hedonist, Walter Horatio Pater. For in his
masterly work on the Renaissance, besides leading young men
astray, he used the concept of a 'lovely strangeness.' After
the storms and stresses of modernism, our age should not find
the idea of strangeness in art to be too confronting. Beauty,
after all, will be convulsive or it will not be at all.

In the works on display we can get an idea of both the
strangeness and the loveliness. The works of Matthew Armstrong
were all landscapes of our naturally artificial world. However
none contained any images of people, only the tatters and
droppings of humanity. All of his works were set in a twilight
atmosphere. These two facts worked to inspire a charming feeling
of wonderment in the viewer, raising questions rather than
offering boxed answers. Is this meant to be set in the rising of
dawn, or the passing of the day, does the lonely country road
beckon one forward with the sky glowing home fires of love and
affection, or does this road and this sky lead us into certain
oblivion? This allowing and encouraging the viewer to supply
elements to the work is to me an important element of any art.
For to tie up all the loose ends and offer up final denouement
is the work of a mind too caught up in the dominant bourgeois
shop keeper error, where all things fetter under a certain type
rational control and all stories come complete with closure.

Turning to the other wall, we see the works of Chris Bennett,
again a young local artist. Chris' work does not have the
metaphysical twilight blue palate of Matthew's work. But
his works equally emitted the lovely strangeness, were
equally concerned with light and tensions unresolved. In
contradistinction to Matthew's Chris' works all included human
figures, with most of his figures questioning the viewer. In
'The Lull' a couple sat together and ninety degrees apart in a
room lit by an external light. These paintings for the most part
were works of the inside, of humanity's built environments. In
'11PM' a questioning face appeared as an apparition from a
darkness vaguely reminiscent of Rembrandt shadowy world. The
'Indistinct Horizon' was almost a fugue in in black and
white, an individual sitting on a public bench looking over
an endless sea and sky pregnant with pure white nothingness,
while a silhouetted trash can turns into a possible momento
mori tombstone.

Both artists had very solid technique and understanding of
composition, so the elements of wholeness and harmony can
be easily seen, whether in the rich dark green detail of
the obscured row of plants in the foreground of Matthew's
painting 'The Domain', or in the slight and powerful blue
brush strokes touches on the bottom of the lamp post in the
'Indistinct Horizon'. The question than revolves around the
idea of claritas, which we see that both artists were able
to radiate a lovely strangeness, charming and compelling the
viewer to engage with the works on display.

In all I can only hope that both artists have long and fruitful
careers and I will look forward to seeing more such pieces.

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.

Alchemy

Thrice great Hermes - Linear B from Pylos - TIRISEROE - Magic is closer to science then religion is. And fairy penguins rule.

---

Magic investigates the world
In a way the religion does not
Alchemy transmutates Chemistry.

Naked they worship transcending
The fleshy world of the sinner.

The beach surf fisherman pulls in his line
Thoughtless the hook snagged a fairy penguin
Struggling bird reeled onto the cold wet sand
Dear children distress animals in pain
We hurry along smooth stones to gather.

On closer inspection the surface
Is covered with countless
Cratered a miniature moon
Pitted with thousands fine
Three or four larger
Diagonal scratches.

A monkey quails.
I fall asleep
The living room
Floor my daughter
Thumb in her mouth
Special corner
Favourite blanket
Rubbing her face.
Eyes shut.

The trees have eyes and the trees are dancing.

Rising falling Doppler car pitch
The constant roar of waves
Crafting sounds pencil on paper.

Strange broken sleep
In strange bedrooms
Loud whirring and humming
Trucks and cars and trains
In new bedrooms.

Just past the round about
The War Memorial
Crows squabble the eyes
A dead kangaroo.

A fine mist
A dead cockatoo
On the traffic island
Mist fell on his face.

Can one die of mediocrity?
Is such a thing even possible?
To die of commercialism.
His cigarette hissed
Contacting the surface
Rain gathered puddle.
Mist beaded into drops
Grey flicks of his hair.
Whiskers on his face
Constant fever thinned.
There are flecks of mud
On the hem of her white
Muslin skirt. Black blocky
High heeled shoes.

Misty gum flat ridge lane
Woolshed community hall
Thin windy weedy mist
Reedy creek snow gum motor
Cycles thin misty covering
Mountain top hiding between
Here and there. Twenty dollars
A week at least on postage.

Green wide valley spread out
Beneath rain soaked hill rounds
We followed emergency crews
For miles in the rain the sedan
Into the guard rail the ute
Into the tree. Small crowd gathered.

I write for myself not for publishing
To arrange a range of thoughts
To formulate and experiment.
To publish to repeat is in a way
To ossify mind forged manacles.

Yellow plant stacks railway sleepers
Shadowy ghost rodeo wind turbines
Far off misty ridge line water tanks
Shades of green after drought breaking rain
Outcrops of rock moss and lichen growing
Orange bright cuttings.

Cosmonauts

Packing up the house. and the process of making live a poem. the external to the internal and then externalised again.

---

---

I guess Amy Winehouse will not
Sing for the returned cosmonauts
No! No! No!

Clear night dropping down high pressure
Shimmering Scorpio. Orion,
The Southern Cross. Too soon to see
The Milky Way. Wrong time of year.

Rhodomontade - vain and empty
Vaunting over perfect morning
Giggle & Hoot; Bubble & Squeak
Boasting Faustbuch. Many colours.
Hunger eased. The Waste of the West.
Western waste. Rapped up ding shan tithe
Wise she undresses the shower.

Close a wasp flies. Far off a plane.

In the mornings of plane delaying fog
The mist rolled blanketed smothered closed hugged
The land frustrating false public servant
Passengers. Come the forenoon the fog rose.
Dreamy blue sky. The scattered staggering
Line of plants spread and arced to the Eastern
Sun rising light and warmth. A single rose
Red at the summit a purple collar
Flush of leaves. Shocked red stain. Jangle of green.
Symbolic fraying and browning edges.

Too am wake up calling standing
The back yard steams of breath fading
Thin clods mixing to dissipate.
Old bills old receipts warranties
Household product old purchases
Old cards and paper mementos
Acknowledged measured examined
Sundered unto the steaming tip
Heat generating money mount.

Repulsive gnome faced polyp want
A croaker gargoyle champagne
Add victors vomit froth misery
My telly lie box bone dig it all
Sex set tip top. Elect trickily.

Meandering Shelters

selling packing the house - delving with lawyers and banks and agents and all sorts - it's a bourgeois town. got a copy of 'The Golden Bough' for the trip. so we are almost there - just a few days to go.
this is, like all poetry, an autobiography. the last few days in a few lines.

---

I - Rex Nemorensis

Early Morning
Patty cakes &
Car tunes
    Slight aroma
    Burnt edge
    Burnt toast
    Butter Honey
        Thick rich scent
        Coffee's on 
        Blurry growl
        Opens her eyes
        Closes her eyes

Kookaburra sings
Chattering braying jackass 
She holds enfolds the snake 
The serpent in her strong beak
Breaking bones upon the branch

Deep dewdrop night
The trees show 
The first blush
Of autumn

Butterflies spread
Their wings 
Warming
Themselves

Chauntering 
Chattering 
Singsonging
Obsessions

The dog sits
East West Axis
Sphinx wise

EMERGENCY ISSUE RESCUE FLAGGED

No scanning of prison staff
And they are calling all the time
To see if we are okay

II - Laughter none

Puddles of bubbles and sinks
Of slops of last nights stew

Dreamy blue sky 
King of the wood
Runaway slave
The mirror lake
Mortal combat
Forest husband

The purple bloom of Iola
The crimson crush of rose petal
Spilt blood and fleeting beauty
Point to an ancient 
To a deep sorrow

A sad philosophy
Goods of the spindle

III - Violet Stained Dawn


Admixture is more everyday than Purity
Purity is blockage a dead end
The way of death constriction
A closure a resolution
    Purity is a narrowing
    Purity is delusion
Admixture is the everyday
The contact which brings 
Renewal

Thin clear night wine stars electric sky
Sparkling

Overnight 
High Pressure System
Clear clear jet clear
The earth gives up heat

The hollowed out immature dragonfly
Hangs Christlike across the fine
Lines of the spider dew drop web
Early morning low angled sun
Refracts the drops of water
Forming spherical rainbows
Around and about the corpse
    Regeneration
Allowing the spider
To live another day

The light and the water mix
And rise and form a billowing
Blanket over the creek

The night time gentle weeps
The crimes of day light.