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Snapshots 122, August 23 2005
Describe in single words only the good
things about... your mother.
My mother? Yeah.
Let me tell you about my mother.
[Shoots him]
stooks catch fire at mere look
voight-kampf tests fern-spike
glacial melt
cool collection gone
his badge worthless
he raves in the dark for Gilda
her soft dark eyes gleaming
a gun in his hand
a body at his feet
a knock at the door
Europe set ablaze this cold dark night
white towers licked with flame
steel girders claw skywards
wrapped in smoke eat desire
attack ships on fire off
the shoulder of Orion C-beams glitter
in darkness near the Tannhauser gate
tears in rain
time to die
Roger Day
***
that these photographs all
ways political
would remind us that
war never does good
any nor death how
the darkness slow
lies treacle flowing
out from body by body
across floors mud
or fires take away
flesh or steel walls
no enemy sees or allows
as if to signal something beyond
words cant contain
that long ago shadow burnt
unsaid untold incised
Douglas Barbour
Wednesday August 24 2005
***
exasperanza
plunked into the quartzsite of our middleage,
this nullandvoid approx- of *what's new* to each and
ez-[stet] one of us
is clumsy, oxish, lowdown, laden,
post-prim(ate), or
fully chosen.
THUS it is
a braindead deadpan pandering apres-midi,
when quarks are all pacific.
it's a mountain we are feuding
with and only
wantonly the forked tongue one cries
to be young due-to
is rusted.
we might have talked were it not for your untimely
constant in-absentia,
and I'm casual with what
you causally have infringed upon,
so all this racket of my voice against the obstacle
retorting hymn lines as if
something might break
through to my capacity for functioning
"you don't say" I repeat
unto your liking, and you look at me,
I think, from everywhere but here
it's that kind of low-grade aftermath
one used to term, after a fashion,
an afternoon the kind in which
one made a day of it.
sheila e. murphy
***
dew on the grass
frosty windscreen
twas a cold night's coming
I had of it
leaving with a kiss
foreplay for
nights away
a maidenly nod
I dreamt and sped
through just enough
traffic to
slow me down
New Work
No Lines Marked
that's the way
my dreams all unfenced
at home in
my suburban flat
I speak to you
across an ocean
a desert a forest
even the hours
and temperatures
are different
yet here am I
whispering
in your shell-like
instead of hers
Andrew Burke
Mt Lawley
25 August 2005
***
Have you ever wondered what a Byzantine civil servant did on a slow
Wednesday morning in the third century AD?
Wrote poems.
Some things don't change.
Paulus Silentarius (Paul the Usher):
from The Greek Anthology, Book V, No. 264
Sod that bald patch fringed
with grey, and leaky eyes --
I'm 25 inside.
I blame you, my wrack of love:
scabs on the scars your kitten-claws carved.
I'm gutted with insomnia, double-
chinned before my time.
Your fault:
the more I love you, the faster
I use up my store of days.
But change your pretty mind, say
"Yes," and in a moment
I'll be tall smart and handsome
&
25 once more.
Tr. Robin Hamilton
24/08/05
***
i should have in mind
these images, surround myself
with the memories
of other dry spells
not my journeys to the desert
which seems to better accommodate
adverse conditions and scarcity
with a unique beauty and tenacity
but on an late august day
i cannot conjure, connect, concoct
create something new. i want to believe
simultaneously in transformation and simplicity
take this sycamore leaf, press it into my commonplace book
open it another day and sing
Deborah Humphreys
Newark, NJ 9:12 am
***
cold hits out
lashes my back
does its circuit
of the room
we say oh
no more cold
it goes on
the snap shut
get up go
for a walk
sister sun love
my tired back
the long flex
to the ground
lift flaps open
we go then?
all along the street are the glints and greets
out here you can feel the hinge of new spring
out here you can feel what leaves you sweet
Jill Jones
Surry Hills, 22 August 2005
***
Standing in the corner of a field,
those who have not harvest-laboured
celebrate the end of necessary work.
There shall be other festivities.
There shall be bread all year.
But these are islands in a drowning.
The roads have been half submerged
in mental and temporal putrefaction.
The past passes our understanding,
bits and pieces which might buoy us,
if gathered and banged together somehow;
visible, and yet quite out of reach
on a current progressing otherwise.
"I 'ave'n", one yells out. Untrue.
Lawrence Upton
***
Night Music
Wešve been joined in the house
(my wife, our dog and I)
by a chiming clock.
With a strong gong on the hour
and half hour it makes
its presence punctually known.
In the night, should you have woken,
enjoying the silence, comes soon
a clang from the far end of the house.
Was that one ošclock? Half past something?
Stay awake another half hour
and you know. So the night passes.
Last night as the word insomnia was
just coming to mind, my wifešs soft breathing
turned towards a gentle snore.
Rude music - soon I felt driven
to lash out - a brief arm
movement silenced her.
But she spoke: did you hit me in the ribs?
Oh dear, Išm sorry. I meant
to touch you gently. You were snoring.
Silence fell, modulated by two sets
of heavy breathing. The clock struck seven,
released me from my bed of shame.
Dawn birds sang, kettle whistled,
toaster emitted toast and percussion.
Dear - your ribs - no repercussion?
Max Richards
Melbourne
Wednesday 24 August 2005
***
STORMS
In the
storms
great storms
poetry storms
in the seas
vast oceans
inside his head
he soon realised
had no illusions
that it was
just the
and only the
flotsam and jetsam
that finally
ended up
stranded
bedraggled
on his page.
pmcmanus early
24-Aug-05
Raynespark-uk
***
"The coldest winter I ever spent was an August in San Francisco." Mark Twain
At five o'clock the "backs" back off
Riddle the sky, throw blank stares at each other
We don't know why we are here
Your ennui not more valuable than mine
I dream my heart through roses
It's August in San Francisco
The fog grips the psyche like an iron vice
There's no use to cry "Uncle"
No one except the advent of blue and sunshine
Will lift one off the mat:
It's winter. There's no way out
You better die and die a little more
If one breathes there will be relief in September
Or, head to the high country
Give in to neither bad politics
Or bad - we got tons of it - weather.
Stephen Vincent
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