early morning haiku

although technically it ain't a haiku - close enough for government work

---

the early morning sun

blushes pink cresting crashing

foam

Rock Pools

---

Hair heavy with sand and salt.

The swirling random patterns of foam
Leave strange shadows in the water...

As the shadow of the swimmer
Falls upon the sand and shimmers
The refracted fractures of sunlight
Upon the lumpy uneven sand,
So too does the prehistoric
Ray move a shadow across the sand
Graceful across the undulating
Echoed slowly becoming rock waves.

The flat grey sky falls upon the flat
Grey ocean, the flat bright blue
Sky falls across the blue vivid sea.

On the sand a small broken fleck
Of a scrape of purple inside
Mother of pearl mussel shell
Catches my eye, catches the sun.

More stars in the heavens than grains of sand.

In the rock pools starfish and urchins,
The strange marking of the snail glyphs.
The gentle flowing of the tide
And a torn jellyfish hangs the
Water column and waltzes back and forth
The tidal flow.

FILEREMOS

---

MONA FOMA 2013 or Why Theroy

Before we start I must say that I am a political person. I have a strong left wing bent to my politics, and this of course colours many of my opinions and much in my daily life. More than that I am of an old school of left wing politics. If someone held a gun to my child's head and I was forced to give myself a label, I guess it would be some sort of anarcho-communist, in that the end goal of all political activity would have to be the classless society. Many people throw up their hands in despair as to what is left and what is right, to me it is fairly simple. Each and every day we reproduce our daily life. This is done in the work place. If you think that the socially produced goods should be appropriated by the few, than you are what I like to call right wing, if on the other hand you think socially produced wealth should be shared socially than you are what we can call left wing. Much flows from where one stands on this issue. Art and culture have a special interest for me, as they are of vital importance in the formation of opinion and of ideology.

So moving along...

Had a busy weekend of art. Starting innocently enough on Saturday morning. The day was like most others. A morning I spent making breakfast and getting the children organised. After lunch I jumped into the car and drove...

Over cast with a whipping mirthless wind over hill and over dale whistling past overrun with wild thistle sheep paddocks faded golden and brown and wild dishevelled competing with mown grown fields of irrigation complex spray wasting water in every direction. A man made rain shower on a field of rising green shootings surrounded on all sides by the dry cracking brown blown on the wind broken grass and dirty dust. Cliche of a sugar loaf shaped mountain of childlike scrawling landscape and weirs roistering in the whippy cautioned wind along the cool coal river vineyard valley.

Cottages and old timey signs over butcher and baker and video and petrol shops.

Cold blow rode.

Everybody's talking about bagism.
Traffic jams.
Tennis games.

And fundraising Dunnalley skool lemon aid. Stately fowl march rowed tortured vines swelling bunches green and hard.

Headed up to the Museum of Old and New Art Saturday afternoon markets. In many ways the drive up to the MONA is a thrilling as the museum itself. As much as I love the artificial, even so do I love the natural. I effortlessly killed an hour or two as I strolled the grounds and stalls and spoke to some locals about this and that and a bit of the other thing. And the goal of standing on ones head. Far off, on the wind, I could hear the finger style playing of Richard Gillewitz. A guitarist from Florida. Sadly due to time constraining realities and the social blather I was not able to pay as close attention as I would have liked. Which is a shame as it is always pleasant to listen to someone who is able to skilfully finger play the guitar. This style seems to my untrained ear to bring out sounds and rhythms that are often overlooked in much guitar work, or used only sparingly. What I could hear blowing across the cloud chasing lawn wind was delicate and made me want to hear more. Which is the result that any artist wants, to leave the audience wanting more. And a man in a tent painted green and lounging and posing as a half man half amphibian beast. Between two worlds. Artifice and nature. Town and city. Male and Female.

So after whiling away some time at the markets I drove down to the Hobart waterfront. The clouds of the beach and the morning had been chased away, as if thousands of children sang sunny day rhymes all at the same time. And the warming sun was balanced by the cool damp wind off the river.  

I don't like driving at the best of times, it strikes me as terribly unnatural, and so with police cars about and roads changed and rerouted I took the cowards way out and rather than hunt for the perfect spot I retreated to where I knew there were ample car parks and waked the five minutes or so to Princes Wharf Plaza.

An apocalypse, an uncovering. Slogans on the pavement and on walls. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Forgetting the parallel and equal Nothing is permitted, everything is true. Natural disaster settings and seats made of sand bags and old tractor tyres. A giant theremin made by Melbourne artist Robin Fox. And children ran about and up to and behind and giggled and ran some more as the pyramid installation made it's many strange noises. This amusing piece which allowed, even forced, the audience to participate was a big hit with this reviewer as well as many members of the general public. A piece originally commissioned by City of Melbourne. Later in the evening as the drink and drugs took their grip it was amusing to watch the midnight creepers and staggerers wander past the theremin and be surprised by the songs created. And once they understood what the happening the drunks and druggies (or as I like to call them my people) took to flying airplanes around, onto, and into the machine.

So I took my place in the long conga entry line of music hungry punters hipsters and groovers. Sucking a vanilla thick shake through a straw I waited my turn to enter into the Princes Wharf. I was ushered into this empty vast temple to a distant industrial past, into this modern temple to a technological future still be created. Banks of computer screens controlled lights, sound, images and more. Wires and lights and speakers and all array of electronic gadgets and toys hung over exposed girders and crawled along the roof.

In the first instance I was there to see Ben Walsh's Orkestra of the Underground Scores Shaun Tan's The Arrival.

Shaun Tan is an Australian artist, from Perth originally. In 2006 he made an illustrated book titled The Arrival. This wordless story won the 2007 "Book of the Year" prize as part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

It was by happy accident that Ben Walsh came across this evocative book. Urged on by the evocative images Ben Walsh created a score for The Arrival. The performance was a well produced production with all the various elements of sound, rhythm, image, light and motion working seamlessly. To the outsider who is not privy to the minor errors introduced in any live performance, the production seem to flow flawlessly.

One of the key aspects of this performance was the inclusion of a series of illustrations from the book projected onto screens behind the Orkestra. These dreamy, lovely drawings of half forgotten times was filled with strange amphibian like creatures and indecipherable swiggles and markings meant to be the foreign language refugees must learn. Amphi being a Greek word, and having at the root of the word the idea of 'on both sides.' (According to my (online) Liddell & Scott Greek–English Lexicon.) Whether by another happy accident or prior planning these strange creatures in a single simple image encapsulated the real life of the immigrant. That is the fact of being caught between two worlds, being on both sides of a cultural divide. Even the venue had echoes of this idea of being between two worlds. The old passing into nothingness Hobart and the new Hobart coming into being.

The crowd gathered and chatted and doodled with mobile phones and took photos and texted envious friends some sitting on recently installed bleacher seats some on giant hot pink bean bags some stood in the centre of the hall surrounded on both sides. The rising din echoed off the hard walls and was at the same time muffled by the soft humid crowd. Phones flashing children laughing. Out the open door the blue blue of the river. Warehouses along the waterfront and the low foothills retreating to infinity. And then the hushing anticipation as the musician took the stage and noddled here and there with their instruments warming up and calming nerves.

The lights fall and rise, eyes appear and fade away, rapid changes and snatches of folk music and others snippets of sound and sense swirl and build to a frenzy of faces and drums and horns and a take your breath away galloping flow. The music flows images fade and now we see fearful children under covers. A clatter of drums, wail of horns. Mystery and Threat. After the rapids a slow cool eddy.  It is easy enough to make a hash of electronic or found sounds into a piece such as this, but here I am happy to say that the various sounds added fit together fluidly. The gulls overhead and the waves splashing the immigrant ship only added to the soundscape, slowly fading away and I looked away to see the heaving river and could almost smell the salt air. Further into the maelstrom of emotions the hero of the book came into the city with a discordant resonating click clack series of sounds. And looking out the window of his railroad flat window, a fractal wall looking the same from any dimension, one could sense his isolation. A feeling of alienation and vulnerability. A longing for return and reuniting.

As well as the images projected on screen the lighting and effects for this piece were all very supportive and added to, rather than subtracted from or overwhelmed, the primacy. Which in this case was the music. Flashing red as things fell apart to wide spans of thin smoke glowing purple in the light, and the menace of blue as runaway children held hands amid the clatter of drums, the popping of hand slapping skins and wailing and crying of horns. All moved together as one relentless flow of music and art and technology and space and coincidence to tell a sparse tale which forced the individual observer to fill in gaps with their own life experience.

Any criticisms I could make would be only the quibbles of one with neither the talent nor the drive to make such an event happen. A few minutes knocked off here and there to make the piece shorter. A wider range of instruments could have allowed more texture and nuance of emotion to come through. As the number of makers in the Orkestra was only a cricket team the emotional range was limited by the tonal range of the instruments. I admit to feeling a bit churlish even typing these words as the piece worked so effectively, and opened another door of discussion in the topic of how we treat newcomers to our sun burnt land. So I will say that it is a shame that this piece is not performed more often. It would be a useful activity to film the concert for viewing on one of the sensible stations, either ABC or SBS, followed by discussion with various people involved in the immigration debate. For all the joyful, liberating power of music, speech is often required to fine tune the discussion. But again this is just my opinion, and opinions as well all know are like assholes, in that everyone has one.


If I had the power of Orpheus, O Father, to bewitch the rocks to dance with me by my song...
Iphigenia in Aulis 1212 - Euripides

After this show ended I waddled my self over to the Peacock theatre to see a chamber opera starchild by Tasmanian composer Dylan Sheridan. Knowing nothing of the composer, or of the piece, I had high hopes. In many ways it is best to know very little about the artist. Like the rest of us, artists are often selfish little jerks, and too know too much about them only opens a series of doors into rooms of doubt, fear and envy.

The Peacock Theatre was a very different venue from the Princes Wharf. The Peacock Theatre was small, Princes Wharf was huge. The Peacock is intimate, the Wharf is one of those spaces that makes one think of old 1950's tropes of the post Atomic Age, the lonely battlefield and the individual lost in the crowd. Coming into the cosy space from the late afternoon angle of natural street sunlight, it took a few moments for my vision to settle into the gloom of the theatre. As I adjusted to the light the stage and the many details came into view. This was a small simple piece, with only four musicians plus some electronics controlled by the composer. One singer and a child who sings a song at the end of the opera.

It was of interest to see how this could be done. The conceptual idea of the opera is in the idea of the 'far-off song' carried on the wind. The endless song of crying far off, unable to be touched or to even heard properly. Is this a better way to think about this thought, is there a better way to discuss the ephemeral and the ineffable, than by using the structure of the dream?

Three loud claps a drum beat, a woman's scream. And here recalling Finnegans Wake we fall; not however into shame and disgrace, but into a dream.

Like some dreams the scene was sparse, alien, with few objects and interactions. The small space of the theatre was used to maximum effect. The musicians were a part of the stage set. Obvious when one looked, but with a turned head the musicians seemed to fade away to became Satie's famous furniture, or like the Silence in recent episodes of Doctor Who.

Opera is in many ways the greatest of all art forms, in that it using all other art forms. Music, dance, gesture, speech, painting and more. This is not to rank types of art, but merely to point out the unifying aspect of opera.  In this production the scenery was sparse, but effective in all ways. A small table, a floor of artificial grass, the netted and muted coverts for the musicians to play. But all of this fitted into the dream state of the work. With a small, empty arena for performing the action it is important for the lighting to 'do more work.' In this case the lighting was able to texture the simplicity of the set design, revealing and concealing in turn, imparting a dream quality to the commonplace  A thin aerosol filled the stage so the lights could fell like solid cubist rays of pure fiery light onto the dancing place. This misty, obscuring light did much to reveal the mental state of the singer and to add a solidity to the nebulous world of the dream.

Like a dream the opera moved from a lighthearted confusion to moments of terror and panic. Internal questions unknowable seeped into the dream story. External stimuli imposed themselves on and were incorporated into the dream nature, be it the whistling wind in the background, the abrupt alarm clock, a far off laughing transforming into crying and back again into laughter, the branches tap tap tapping on the window.

And the 'heroine' sang of her and our confusion, like Gaugain, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?  Soprano Allison Farrow used her voice to tell the story to move along from one scene to the next. Her voice became another instrument, an extra layering onto the simple yet complex music created.

After a day of listening to male bands and male artists it was more than nice to hear a woman's voice being brought to the fore.

This was a lovely little piece and one I would happily recommend. I can understand some not enjoying the work, but to my mind it was a success. This simple short chamber opera was enjoyed so much that the audience seemed surprised and a little disappointed when it somewhat abruptly, ended. But this seems a good thing, surely it is much better to leave the audience wanting more rather than saying you have gone on too long.

Don't know if I should feel vindicated in my view of this opera, or should I think I am completely wrong. Seems the Mercury and I are on the same page, as it were.


Back to the Princes Wharf dark Satanic mill. A piece entitled No input by Scot Cotterell. This was pretty much what the title promised. The artist engineer created a no-input system. Or to quote the artist 'Outputs taken from an audio mixer are fed back into the inputs of the same mixer, creating a contained, semi-controllable feedback system,' he says. Like a snake eating its own tail. Sort of.

A flat out experiment in questioning music, an attempt to find new ways to make music. With the smallest amount of input Scott was able to create beats and sounds which filled the Princes Wharf and vibrated into the space between the diaphragm and lungs. With the limitations of the task Scot set himself it was difficult to create more in depth fields of emotion or discussion. What was apparent was the deep evocation of the memory of the industrial proletariat. The deep rumble and machine like rhythm brought me back into the many production line jobs were I spent many mind numbing, soul destroying days of my youth. Speaking to a random concert goer the image that she had was of being within the bowels of a great ocean going ship with the massive engine burning and churning through the water.

Unfortunately for me, hunger over came me and I had to sneak away to find myself some food and a cooling soda water.

Graveyard Train are self described as six men playing men's instruments just as men were born to do. They played a frantic, powerful sort of foot stomping, hand clapping, sing along music. Which the crowd enjoyed immensely. The use of the screen to project film of the band playing was a nice touch, but it made me think of Dylan's comment about how he should not be on MTV, because people make horrible faces when they sing. Passion and the power, as it were.

The projecting onto the screen allowed the audience to get close and to see how the band played and smashed the nine pound hammer all night long. In an age of mounting catastrophe, of ever rising tensions and threats, it does seem to me that Graveyard Train would be the perfect band to make a new protest music. With their relentless driving rhythm and ability to involve the crowd with their singable lyrics they have the perfect engine to play as men were born to do, that is to break the chains. Rather than singing of werewolves and ghosts why not change a bit and sing about hunting down the bosses and the landlords and bankers who work to keep us down. With the poor boy look and sound rather than whistling past the graveyard, why not attempt to storm the gates of heaven?

This type of music would fit nicely into a more political stance. Why sing about fanciful zombie apocalypse, when we have one facing us in the prospect of the Tony Abbott led LNP government?


And so being one of the ones who the state government likes to call the toxic dump opposing uneducated hillbilly mobs I wandered my way back to my home in the bush fire ravaged Southern Beaches district. High beamed driving tailgaters followed me from the airport roundabout to the roundabout at Midway Point, where I was able to make a discrete turn to free myself from the great white 4WD that turned the cabin of my car into a scene from Close Encounters. Dark roads and a half moon, car headlights flashing the shiny gold green eyes of feral and native animals. Possums and pademelons (Thylogale billardierii: the smallest of the macropods), feral or domestic cats attempting to cross the road, or attempting apparent suicide. Slaughtered animals on the verge.

After a fitful sleep I was able to spend a good part of the day at the local beach playing in the relentless, powerful mosh pit of the cranky waves of Frederick Henry Bay. This, while leaving me battered and bruised put me in good stead for the David Byrne & St Vincent mosh pit. Which was more a happy go lucky ball of humid bodies eager to dance and catch a glimpse of their heroes than the life threatening mosh pits of the mainland festival circuit.

The band made less use of the feast of visual tools and toys at their disposal. Rather than projecting onto the screen behind the band, they seemed more interested in using their bodies for visual excitement of the audience. After each song the lights would fade and the band would rearrange themselves and change instruments. The lights would come up and the band would waltz or square dance or quadrille themselves around the stage. This gave an odd feeling to the show and turned the band into a mixture of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, an old timey revival meeting all overlain with hyper-American marching band styles. The various influences and styles were all tied together in the slightly stand offish manner of the artistic professional observer.

With a very horn heavy sound the band played something that was not rock and roll and not quite jazz or funk either. Something old, something borrowed, something as usual in the career of David Byrne unique.

I do not have the album Love This Giant, but have heard several tracks on Radio National, so I was anticipating a good show, and I was not in the least disappointed. I greatly enjoyed the way that the band worked and moved on stage. I have always liked my art to be ritualised and this show fit into my conceptions of what art could be very nicely. David Byrne had always been an artist who relies on gesture and movement to both conceal and reveal what he is saying. This was true when I saw him way back in the late 70's with the Talking Heads, all the way to this most recent work. The band also seemed to bring to life the idea of Andre Breton that if you are going to do some strange things, it is best to wear a suit and tie. I assume on the theory that it would make it seem stranger.

So happily and with wort cunning I was lightly tripping, wrapped up in my own cocoon while the speakers pounded and every stomp on the bass drum threatened to lift me off the ground, while the each breath into the trumpet was amplified by electronics until it blew across the sweaty heaving mass like a crossfire hurricane. Shadows jumped and jived as the lights pulsed and the shadow of the trumpet player glowed golden yellow like the apparition of an angel on the wide white wall.

And then in this ever rising tide of bliss Annie Clark introduced the band members, 12 or so talented musicians. One of the horn players was a young woman. And as she was introduced some lads felt the need to wolf whistle.

And like the poet who notices a mote in his eye, notices the minor inconvenience which changes and deflates their mood; in a flash the two days of music and art crystallised in my mind. It was a big old sausage festival. Of the dozens or scores of artists I saw and heard in the two days only a handful were women. This may or may not be the fault of the festival organisers. To my mind it goes deeper than the tastes and desires of the organisers, it seems to be a deep seated problem across all the various forms of art these days. 

This is why Guerrilla Girls ran a bus advertisement noting that only 3% of the artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC were women while some 83% of the nudes were of women.

This is why in England there was the need to set up the Orange Prize and here in Australia, after the 2011 Miles Franklin Award had no women short listed there was a need to set up the Stella Prize.

To my old fashioned mind this directly comes from the fact that the people who run the large museums, that run the publishing houses and recording studios are in the main men. Sexist or not I will leave it to you to judge, but we can at least say that like goes with like, and if men run things they will obviously see things from a male point of view and will agree with what their other male friends think.

Some may say that for music and art it does not matter, what matters is the art produced. But of course in this situation we are not only not getting women artists and musicians in the fore front, but we are not even able to understand what we are missing with so few women. For like all things art is political, as we must agree with the old feminist slogan that the personal is political, here we must agree that art while maybe not political on it's own, and much of what is art deals with issues not often found in the mainstream of political debate, we also have to see the importance of art in the creation of opinion and taste and the way that we look at and interact with the world.

While on the one hand we have to congratulate the organisers and staff and al involved in creating a rich and full program that ran over several days with few hiccups to upset the punter, we can on the other hand ask them to look a bit deeper and maybe even think about having another festival, maybe a MONA FEMA (Female Extravaganza of Music and Art) festival, or setting one day aside for only women musicians. For I am not one of those who think that a special festival for women artists would be a bad thing. While we live in an era of gender separation we must do all we can to overcome this divide.

Others may this is not needed, we have a female PM these issues are in the past. Other may say that a day set aside for women artists would be no more than a token effort. Some might even say that it goes against ideas of equality. I would say that we are already in a situation of inequality. This was highlighted by the annual Australian of the Year awards. The award has been awarded every year since 1960, meaning there have been 53 recipients, 11 of which have been women or some 20%. Including joint winners and the Seekers (who won in 1967) it is more like 60 winners of which 12 were women, or 48 have been men.

As women hold up half the sky it is rather glaring that only twenty percent have been so awarded.

To me this shows that gender issues are still important, and then the problems are systemic. This is not to specifically criticise the organisers of MONA FOMA, as they did a great job with the logistics and organising the event. There is much that happens away from the public eye, and the most important limiting factor would have to be availability of artists. But on the other hand it seemed to me a topic that had to be raised.

My warehouse eyes

---

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums.

The pied oystercatchers hunt haunt the shore.

In the morning I drive my daughter to school.
In the car, on the CD player, on repeat
Two times exact we hear Sad Eyed Lady.

We drive along poorly maintained regional roads
We drive along the thin single dual carriageway.
Bedad, it's for him that will always employ.
Curving and up and down avoiding the hills
Green with spring, Donegal green, bogus leprechaun
Green, emerald green, new life growing green,
Algal pond scum green, too many whiskeys green,
Wizard of Oz city green. And the bluest sky.

Glancing up side streets to Peloponnesian bays
Grasping after and eroding the island.
The constant slapping roar of the ocean
The pebbles rushing up and down the sand,
Loud calls of circling gulls and terns islands
Grow out from the flat restless blue green ocean.
Thalatta! Thalassa! The sea, the sea!
Rolling out to the great southern ice kingdom.
Like plump dactyl jangling Mulligan I seek
To Hellenize the island as I drive dream thin
Gray dark hard highway a scar on the landscape
Thinning winding its way past the houses and small
Communities. Past vineyards blooming green new growth
Past orchards wearing fairy flossed tiny flowers.
In the distance, across the water looms
The great Cezzane of a mountain, Wellington,
Table Top, Kunanyi, false reconstructed name,
Cloud gathering mountain dominates the south east.
Names are power, show imperial ownership.

The paddocks dotted with the bright white new lambs
Frolicking and gamboling besides dirty
Brown gray hairy tired constant chewing,
Weather beaten out in all weathers baaramewe;
Or the new born cows, calves lolling and mooing,
Until lying down the green grass as if drunk
From the warm fresh growth giving mothers milk.
High necked horses standing noble and silent.
The pecking clucking chooks drunken walk for food.

The little communities, the tumble down
Fences and old farm buildings, traffic slowing
Tractors putting and snorting diesel fumes.

And lurid yellow signs of council elections.
Vote for me and I will set you free. Yellow
Signs of those who lack imagination,
A council that can do no more than sell out
Local business and endeavour to large scale
Multi national commerce and restless greed.
No idea of the future now called the knowledge
Economy, no nothing for the young slowly
Moving away and leaving the district for
The old and fearful those with no ability
To see past the next quarter. Mean spirited,
Denying innocent bright eyed girl guides
A hall to call their own, but happy to build
A new city hall millions spent and no idea
Of what the future will be, no connections
To the world being born. Hanging on to the old.
Holding tight and so we all suffer as result.
Only a tip a dump a cell for excreta
Pouring out the arse end of industry
And forced upon consumption, planned obsolescence.

Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you where the dead angels are that they used to hide.

---

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

Fish That Fly

An old poem - a response to the idea of the of Intelligent Design. there are atoms and and the void. the world is matter in motion.

---

& sum creatures
Look about the world
One thousand loveless eyes
& sum creatures
Without effort
Effortlessly
Turn shit to soil.
And some creatures
Grow larger fabled
Unforgiving elephant.
Rain forest of love.
Fish that fly birds that swim
Ours a remote world is.

& she spoke her building hands
Spreading across the table
Each of us we age we grow

And the infant desires to nurse
And the infant desires love...
Love a rain storm of love
Now clear clear jet clear
Night is upon us.

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.

Port Melbourne - Bass Straight

Crossing the Bass Straight in a big old boat. Closing in on our goal.

---

I knew we were meant to be together
For we, know what I mean, hate the same things.
Timidity of the capitalist class
Fearful any changes to the flow of cash
And yet rushing salivating to follow
The path finders pushing to over
Produce then equalising back to fear.

What is rational for the individual
Becomes irrational for everyone.

As the down steady rain pelts the earth
Bogging the grassy dirt and sliding off streets
Of hand made bitumen tiny rivulets
Form and all find their way to the rivers
And creeks and streaming brooks embracing filling
The ways of water and constant the water
Rises and over flows the normalising
Banks the constraining banks the confining banks
Slowly at first cautiously searching for low
Spaces to explore and exploit until
With an unstoppable rush the water
Overflows and scours the riverbanks
Filling all depressed places eroding
The sides destroying humbling all
In the path sapping houses and neighbourhoods
Entire towns tossed apart and denuded.
Even so does the capitalist class
Rush into the low places where money
Can be found where gain is to be made
Regardless without thought irrational.

Pretence of inner city living
Gazebo in memoriam ANZAC
Bronze brick subscription great war diggers
Home to homeless barefoot avoided
Encrusted black single feather headband
Failures of our rulers. Discarded
Cast aside abused ignored soldiers
The incurable widows orphans tossed
Onto the pigsty scrap heap the shadow
Of fabulous wealth of endless theft.

After two hours or more crossing
The calm wide light encircled bay
Dreaming of maybe ancient encampments
Forty thousand years ago and the Yarra
Slowly meandered a flat dry plain
Hunters and small gorups built and spoke their tales
After the ice age after the ice melted
The sea rushed into the rip filling shallow
The land hiding the encampmetns the middens
And the meltiung ice caps the rising seas
Recalls Utnapishtim or Noah's flood
The strong waves of the ocean bob cork
Towering ship large apartment building.

Black sky black ocean cloudy starless moon kiss
Pitching and yawing yawing and pitching
Slow and anaemic steady breathing rolling
In unison sympathy with the gentle
Sleep rhythm breathing of children snoring
The slow tidal rhythm of countless lunar
Cycles the long sonorous song calls
Hiding massive southern right humpback whale.
Dread the fear that any time I would be pitched
Off tall second floor scuppered bunk bed.

Hiding in plain site thick working class beard
Searching out quiet herbal smoking dream.
Saints win clinking glasses and television
Sing soggy scraping knifes and forks on plates
Slave coast titans claw back a surprising
Come from behind win o'er the southern storms.

The black dog alone in rowed kennels
A middle aged dyed blonde women sings
Popular disinterred love silly songs.

Shuddering ship
Vibrating engines
Resonance
Shuttering ship
Radiant children
Dissonance.