Snapshots, December 22nd, 2005
Idle Observation
From the sunny terrace of the Kew (Vic.) boathouse
we looked from under our café umbrella
over the Yarra with its flotilla
of various hired craft and geese
to where workmen in their lunch-break
kicked a football to and fro.
Soon it lifted through the trees into the water
near the bank, scarcely drifting.
The geese turned their backs.
While the men searched for a broken branch long enough,
a female threesome in their hired dinghy inched towards them,
tangled with the hanging fronds of fresh willow,
reversed towards their object,
and hoisted the ball out safely.
Distant sound of cheering.
The football game resumed,
the hired dinghy resumed its erratic zigzags,
the geese resumed their sedate cruise,
and we finished our iced coffee.
Sport, either doing or watching, is not for us,
but I realized I¹d been smiling non-stop for minutes,
while idly composing a running commentary
for my holiday despatch to PoetryEtc.
Just three shopping days till Christmas.
Max Richards
Melbourne
December 22, 2004
***
Yesterday
was the
shortest
day. Snow
came. It
silenced
us all.
I try
to hear
invisible
strings
vibrating
beneath
the snow-
banks,
or tiny
particles
bouncing
off of
each other.
I am
listening
very
hard.
I am
waiting
for your
voice.
--
Sharon Brogan
***
FOR EVER MOZART
[via Jean-Luc Godard]
FATAL BOLERO
over/after vacation
robbing stagecoaches.
Et les loups
very few people can see?
Et naturalement
responsible by excess for
movies
of expression and the trace of something essential.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 12-22-04 (12:53 AM)
In 2001 in Dublin, Fergus Daly wrote, "FOR EVER MOZART is the key to what
is new in Godard these last years; he has forged a middle ground between a
poetic and a philosophical cinema by marrying Pessoa and Kant (the AND
method so brilliantly isolated by Deleuze)." Le Monde called it "Godard's
most satisfying film in a long time" while Cahiers du Cinema deemed it
a "masterpiece". As has been my initial experience with virtually all of
Godard's "later" films, I felt I needed to see it again. But my
trusty "word net" caught some language which eventually I was able to shape
into a first shot at this 1996 film which I probably won't be seeing again
for quite some time. Because I also felt there could be some truth in the
viewpoint of one of Godard's staunchest supporters, Nicole Brenez, that FOR
EVER MOZART was Godard's "first and only bad film". This was the only film
so far in the National Gallery of Art's retrospective for which a printed
defense was supplied, and yet quite a number of regular attendees were so
put off by FOR EVER MOZART that they decided to skip the remaining "later
works" in the series.
***
SOLSTICE
1
The girl in the Bora Bora t-shirt
raises her muscular arms
ties back her hair
and eats a sandwich.
Bright sunlight slants in from the south
behind her. Midwinter
and the blinds are open
the park beyond
a mass of branches.
Leafless.
In the middle distance
cars, and an iron fence
the uprights black as the paint
promised, the sunward side
a blaze of light.
How the devil dresses, one might have thought
in a northern fantasy, when winter meant
remaining alert to the stoked flame
and the bitterness of attending to the milk and eggs,
nothing but rags for attention.
2
Winter vegetables
roots gourds and cabbage
toughness of fiber
domestication of scant forage,
skin and fingernails desiccated, breaking,
clawing at the frozen ground.
LOO
Rewarded, at the end of a long walk to the restaurant bathroom, by a single
seater,
behind the toilet, on the window sill,
a strip of plastic lace with colored flowers and two butterflies, on which
a vase of plastic flowers
and figurines of dogs and cats.
One tries to make things pleasant.
A RANDOM ACT
It's the bare tree and the birds that perch there make this spot
the last to be parked in. So he says, and a black splat
confirms his wisdom.
Mark Weiss
***
Set her!
Árni Ibsen
Engang du
lovret mig
En Hof
Eller Gron
Paa Stroget
Taenke ikke
At du skal
Slipper fra det!
patrekur
Look here!
Árni Ibsen
You once
Promised me
A Hof
Or a green
On the Stroget
Don't think
That you
Are getting
Out of it!
Patrekur raynes park 10-44
***
pale moon
hurrying by
mistletoe tree'd
holly
hanging bright in
berry
lake close by
iced ignescens
crystalled parish
cruxt of imaginary
structure
transcendant pre-dawn
yearning to write
wrongs
hedged by woundings hurts--
World of paradox world
of world
Gerald Schwartz
West Irondequoit, New York, USA
5:20 AM, 22/12/04
***
Self Portrait
Is attitude the question
or is "it" a question of culture?
Or can it be just another
question of art that flaunts
one more rule?
You say you know me well -
so well in fact, you've painted
my self-portrait
on your headboard
and across your back
I undress
and pose your thoughts
but forgive me;
it isn't the slightly warm
cup of coffee or the dull,
steady flip
of newspapers
that, I am able
to dismiss
but the mile thick
assumptions -
how might these
be sliced and consumed?
Deborah Russell
22-12-04
Baltimore, MD USA
***
FLAMING ANGELS
Numbers.
March 25, 1911
146 women.
These are seamstresses,
sewing machine operators
floor sweepers,
remnant collectors
consumed by fire
or leap from upstairs windows.
The doors are locked so no one
can take a break,
leaning into a sewing machine.
Quality of Life means
quality of the absentee owner's life.
Only a few will survive.
This was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
on Washington Place and Greene Street
next door to New York University.
It is the Asch Building
and it still stands.
John Sloan the next day draws women
floating downward like ballerinas
toward the pavement
while a fireman covered his eyes
and weeps because his ladders
cannot reach the upper floors
In days to come these women,
martyrs, inspire a grieving city,
hymns and poems
English and Yiddish, Italian.
Survivor Josephine Nicolosi arrives home,
sobs ³tutti morti, mama, tutti morti²
like an opera, ma si, si, un opera del Inferno
and there should be Hell to pay
but not enough.
"Harris and Blanck, the Triangle Company, have offered to pay
one week's wages to the families of the dead girls--
as though it were summer and they are giving them a vacation!"
The owners are acquitted.
A plaque on the building wall reminds
the knowing passer-by
that on that day the Red Sea closed
and drowned a world not in water
but in flames.
Kenneth Wolman
***
How close do you want to get
to the conversation?
You might think it's better with the face.
Or your fingers pick out the code -
how clear : how clear - could it be?
Dark and pressure.
A woman peers around the men.
Do you think she was 'born authentic'
with only her eyes for cover?
The wheels glide into the blue seat of dark.
She could pretend it was all a gift
wrapped in gold stars.
The way is built into a curve.
What kind of poetry hides there?
The offer always ends soon.
Light forecloses. (How prescient is that?)
You're stuck out over the harbour on a rail.
It's a long way down
and a kilometre to cross.
The speaker pitches beyond
the frame and the column.
Neon is the most beautiful light you'll see.
The journey gathers speed and squeak.
You enter the halls, the cast, the struts.
All around extra specials clamp onto consumables.
How much icecream? How many lids?
Saddle up and swing the doors.
Here we make change.
Persuasion is the ticket in a lemon tie.
A message carries out into suburbs.
The angles change their colours.
The road stumbles.
You can see yellow lights around a field.
Suns and moons are out there.
Apart from feeling tired, the telling is delicate.
The night cries on.
Beside the track, the wire is silver.
Jill Jones
22 December 2004, Sydney, 9.30pm
***
not 'the tree with the lights in it'
not that accidental
not that arbitrary
gift of glory
seen once by other eyes
this tree of lights
electric signals
other possibilities
reflects
off dark window
various glass surfaces
effacing the hard work
of art beneath
for a moment in
time of winter
s deepest dark
that story
that disturb
ulence
Wednesday December 22 2004
Douglas Barbour
***
Christmas. Again.
I've done what I can
All year I've done it
and your year has brought its gifts
so bring out the champagne
bring out the chocolate
and bring the kids their lollies and presents
D'you know what I don't want for Christmas?
A CD (unless you know me)
A book (or do you think you know me?)
And please - no knickers, no knick-nacks,
no kitchen appliances, no cookbooks,
and please, no more placemats!
So what do I want?
A notebook computer and an ipod
(As if!)
OK, give me a CD voucher, a book voucher,
a scented candle, and a painting you did yourself.
Yes, some of those paintings, I can handle those.
Photographs are OK, too,
and any poems you may have written.
It's Christmas. For once
let me laugh through it
with those whose flesh is present
and let me soar through it
with those whose spirit is present,
with their benedictions -
everything I need, and never enough
Let me forget for a while the never enough
(forget? oh I'm scaring myself now)
Oh just give me a bit of your silent night
and not too much of that jingle bells, alright?
Janet Jackson
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