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Snapshots April 7, 2005
a creaky old floor near the harbour
stop-start heavy equipment
the grazing window picks up dust on the table
port light and stormy mountain
the rattling of offices, drawers and clicks
the silent bashbashbash, as if it's important
an odour lingers somewhere between
sandalwood, farmyard and small smoke
and time goes floppy around lunch
after the disagreement on the stair
even normality is hard to jolly along
tempers of an early century are catching
baby birds squeak in a cavity
the trashy foreshore is worn with a muddy green
it's not pretence but years make it a bit scabby
and rightly so after all that work
Jill Jones
Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, snapped 4 April 2005
***
is only one death
numinous no
mention of but one
even as so
many others die in
other places & do none
remember them or
inflect remorse
as if before death all
memories reach equally out
Wednesday April 6 2005
Douglas Barbour
***
He is working hard and working fast. His executive hands are disappearing.
The right is blurred. It hovers indeterminedly over a large book that the
soft pale left is holding successfully. One computer speaker has fallen.
He's having fun.
There are too many things; it is too cluttered to be readily convincing. His
reference books are out of date.
Lawrence Upton
***
Long Past Death
It is not just because you hurt me till my bones
cracked, shattered, crushed and spun into particles of dust
Lies singe and I'm still on fire – burning enough to last
long past death… About what you did and where
you'd been? I'd pretend, pretend and pretend that love
would win (in the end) like on a wide-screen, tuned
to the happy-forever-after channel, I shake awake,
like a horse, pace in a race - cool off, smoke rises from
my nostrils and eyes - my breath is yet, a dying flame...
Sure of everything, I gamble my addiction - went down
so low, I had a predilection - Found it wasn't only you
to blame, I'd been cheating on myself, I'd become an
adulterous fool, denied myself a home, family and friends
all this; foreign and unknown And I, as your wife, your
perfect little wife, was it just to decorate my ear, to
pant and beg for you to mention I was, “your better half” ?
Your poisonous dose was my damned, self sacrifice
and nearly became my demise; I became a book
and testament, a thick and toxic substance, unfiltered -
oozed out of control cast aside poetic notions,
you had taught me well, to settle for less - less happiness
and much less love and kindness than I'd ever known
I convinced myself, if I were mute and never mentioned
how many times I wished you'd brush against my breasts
(like you did with those strange women) it would be
for the best, yes - be for the best and I could ignore the rest
On the edge of that long, hard road I held poems painted
with Magritte lines...they float away like me, in shadows
(I could still see you taking me for a ride) Remember the day
I was struck down by the sixteen-wheel truck in your
imagination? You - washing dishes, at the kitchen sink…
What a frightful, bloody mess, I'd become right before
your eyes Afterwards I was merely something you
stepped over on the way to the office. What does anyone
know of love anyway? Not I, no - not me, not me have
no degree and nothing to claim or declare. I'm but a painter
of dreams and you (even as a child) never dared to dream… you
were told “Dreams never come true , don't waste your time son!”
Was I just a painter to you, whose brush is a slight brush
of destiny or the dreamer that dreams like a fool? I spent
years waiting for the day you would turn around, with starlight
in your eyes, and say, I love you am a painter of dreams, yes,
filling space and time, so don't count on me, don't count on me
to be the source of light in your darkest night
Deborah Russell
***
a flicker notched
on April's rugged edge
hangs
taut mid-air
poise of hunger's mark
aim for something
up ahead
as a day rises
in a slow shower of light--
the sky (for once) empty
and eggshell blue
--Gerald Schwartz
West Irondequoit, New York, US
7:35 AM
***
EPIC
the two
great warriors
mighty muscled
heavy thewed
epic gigantic
met on the
field of battle
for her favour
their weapons
smashing resounding
through the valley
rending the heavens
raising hell incarnate
with
their swords
their shields
their zimmerframes
enmeshed interlocking
like giant stag beetles
locked in conflict
such death scenting
mad old beserkers
beserking.
Pmcmanus
Raynes park london
***
Wednesday, Good Friday, April 2, 1999
On C-Span, the Serbian National News Service: an interview with a farmer in
front of the collapsed roof and walls of his house, the building a victim of
an errant NATO bomb. Switch to a hospital: room after room in which the beds
are full of burn victims caused by the flames of rockets and bombs. Switch
back to an open field found filled with several unexploded bombs and
missiles. Grafitti scribbled by American airmen on the curved, gray metal
surfaces:
³Ha Ha Ha Ha²
³This One¹s For You.²
Etc.
High school bathroom graffiti ,or worse. As if this war is led by
extraordinarily well-armed juveniles. Our young.
Switch back to CNN. Images of Kosovites crossing the Macedonian border: A 95
year old man wrapped with blankets, pushed in a wheel-barrow. A teacher who
speaks English describes 3 black masked Serbs who invade her house, put a
gun to her stomach and demand her money, all of her money, that is, if she
wants to leave town alive.
Scenes of horror. Absolute disgusting horror. Each sides media displays the
horror of the other. This is Hell. Christ. Yes. Christ is dead. Dead many
times over. Or, to ask from any side, ³What vision of redemption can be
drawn from any of this?²
This morning, unmediated cylinders of tar in their broken paper rolls at
rest on Vicksburg.
To do someone¹s roof. Sitting there. Sitting there in wait of fire.
*
From ³Crossing the Millennium, 1999 (Project)²
Stephen Vincent
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