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Snapshots, December 15th, 2005
CAPUCHINS
having watched
on television
the program
about capuchins
capuchin monkeys
he was starting
to feel an
inferiority complex
coming on
especially in the
D.I.Y. department
apart from the
visualisational
conceptualisational
and implementational
side of things.
pmcmanus n581
***
after the nightly train wreck
there's today's car park
decisions flake off the wall
pink plaster sticks to your sole
the iron's cord loops your throat
another stupid phone sings
it's hard to say goodbye
bye-bye-goodbye-bye
men in luminous yellow
bob on the verge
one line overtakes another
excuse dangle in the remote control
all of this doesn't recall
the sea or its skin
though its over there
past the hills and the fence
at least the wind loves you
after the thunder and the hail
you hope the dams fill
the sluices gush
a hundred year flood waiting
even the sky is streaky
and you can scarcely lie down
like a beast with need
Jill Jones
Surry Hills, 15 December, 9.35am
***
I am trying hard to be relaxed, organized, productive
I am trying hard to forget, immortalize and realize
I am trying hard to be present, attentive and lovely
I am trying to be aggressive, focused, totally on track
I am trying to read, not read, read again
I am trying to examine desire, be desire, love desire
I am trying to pinch, push, pulverize
I am not doing very good
I am doing very bad
I like the anxious feel of guilt
I like the feel of failure
I like paralysis
I like to dumb it way down
I like to turn on the television
I like newscasters that don't blink
I like punishment
I like to hear the count of the war dead
I like the long lines waiting for gas in Iraq
I like the boys and girls that are shot by mistake
I like Presidential, Pentagon and Home Security News Conferences
I am not doing very well.
I am afraid they are winning
I am afraid I cannot rise to the table
I cannot speak
I cannot praise, celebrate or charm anyone
I like surveillance, video monitors in the hallway, in my bedroom
I like Jesus, the Father, the Holy Ghost
I like Ronald Reagan, Jerry Ford and both Bushes
I still cannot seem to like Nixon
I am having a terrible day. The windows won't open. I can hardly breathe
I like old faded 1950's Marilyn Monroe Calendars
I like stories of the early, late and most recent plague
I like bridge movies where the train falls off the edge
I am getting too nostalgic
I am not doing too well
I am reading and not reading and then trying to read poetry
I am sick and tired of Elvis. I want to see Clint smile
I am tired of Lyn Cheney, Laura Bush and the Secretary of the Interior
I am tired of seeing the same street bombed in Baghdad
I want to live inside Google and count my PDFs
I want to be a search engine without a task
I want to pick up my life and put it in a compartment.
I want to sell the compartment to science
I want winter to be dark as can be and let it all be over
I want to be an ocean without breakers, without waves, without salt
I want to be one of the one thousand golf courses in Palm Springs
I want the gray sky to slit its throat.
I want this abuse - international, national and domestic - to absolutely
stop.
I want to wake up without a war, without a threat, without their dumb terror
I want the army, the navy and the marines to dissolve instantly
I want real sweat to come out of my body
I want real demons to come out of my body
I want to stop writing this poem. I want to get back to work
I want to stop being anxious
I want the private blood to celebrate the public
I am tired of public blood, the endless thirst for public blood
I wanted a complicated, simple life with plenty of roses
I want to feel great putting my shoulder to the wheel
I want your love and my love and everybody's love
I want to hate on the most intimate level
I want to dispel hate on the most intimate level
I want the full circus everyday, lights, camera, action
I want to dissolve the solitary poem into the grandest of actions
I want to stop saying want instantly
I want the lack of want
I don't want the lack
I don't want anything
I want to slow down
I want to slow
I want to
If you have read this far you have wanted too much
I want
I.
Stephen Vincent
***
Snaps: Three Nights in Sydney
The voice of the pilot informs us
Œthere¹s a lot of weather around.¹
We see it beyond the wing, storms as
vibrant as we are not, abound,
even to the Sydney tarmac
where they won¹t let us disembark
till after the weather flak.
A cab direct to the North Shore:
not via the Bridge, which we¹d prefer.
In the tunnel we raise
harbour memories
postcard-size Š
To Lindfield one night and day
for wife¹s professional purposes.
Sunday¹s work over,
a handy train to the city.
The harbour from the bridge
sensual curves remind us
of Brett Whiteley canvases.
The web-site promised us ŒL¹Otel:
a trendy boutique hotel
in fashionable Darlinghurst.¹
Its real address is Kings Cross
Sydney at its worst.
The meaning of Œboutique¹
is: hyped-up price,
a show of chic.
[Arriving with bags, Sunday morning,
(next-doors¹ church bells chiming, booming,)
I ask Himself at the desk
(youth of Indian appearance):
did he tire of them?
ŒOh, they remind me to be religious.
We kept for you the terrace room.¹]
Deferring the stairs till our evening return,
I imagine a harbour viewŠ.
A view of Kings Cross traffic, it is,
and of diners next door at Govindas
(Œplease take our transcendent literature¹
Œsex,¹ I read, Œis the source of misery¹).
A chaste table for two perhaps?
and with Buddhist movies!
tonight 'Siddhartha'
another night, please Š
Down past the Cross
where the spruikers
want us to go upstairs
for something hot,
we find Mr Sushi Train
and plunder his rolling-stock.
Then back to LŒOtel
for rest in the cool.
5.45 the time-light shines
too soon to start
the second day of our stay;
the bathroom¹s an airless
humming box;
wife¹s breathing¹s steady.
Jot down words for postcards
to pass an hour away.
No tea-bags by the kettle
nor milk in the fridge
but the concierge of L¹Otel
pops out to oblige
and is back in a jiffy.
Monday one devotes to shopping
Sydney, so cosmopolitan:
the more we see the more
we fancy everything
in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art Store!
almost affordable:
Egyptian paperweights,
the Morris umbrella,
the Demuth watch,
the Tiffany tie,
the Byzantine cufflinks,
the Van Gogh music box,
the Greenaway doll;
we make do with the repros
of the Zuni spotted owl
and the Union Porcelain
frog bud vase.
Tuesday, the art-gallery:
we traipse dutifully
behind a veteran guide
who starts at the big Whiteley:
bluest of blue, erotic Sydney:
ŒThat is his wife¹s sun hat,
and in the corner, that would seem
to be someone¹s bare bottom.¹
'Interesting' is the word
concluding each spiel from our guide.
We leave by the shop where mostly
I fancy a dark blue cap
with white embroidery:
art critic (italics, bold)
Critics there¹s a lot of us around.
I buy a card of Ford Madox Brown:
Chaucer at the Court of Edward Three
interesting, vastly sumptuous,
but lacks the erotic afflatus
of our own Brett Whiteley.
I¹ll doff my disinterested
blue cap to Brown and thee.
Wednesday December 15, 2004
Max Richards, back at
Cooee, North Balwyn, Melbourne
***
The mouse, the nest. Tiny things in a big landscape. I focus on these, some
emotional scaling going. I am peering out of myself like a snail tentatively
coming out of its shell. The trees rise high beside me, the valley lies low
before me. I puzzle at the nest, its position here on the verandah, clinging
to a creeper. The little birds that flit between the verandah shrubs have
gone. It
is the beginning of summer yet not hot enough to have quieted them.
In the middle of the kitchen floor, a tiny mouse looks up at me. My eyes at
first think it is the shadow of a dropped utensil. Then I see it, a little
brown mouse, very clean. He turns, looks at me and doesn’t scare. He stands
his
ground, the kitchen floor. After all, where else would a hungry mouse like
to
go? The TV is of little interest, and the bed would be nice – but after
dinner.
Perhaps he has tried the laundry before – bad memories hang on his tongue.
The
study could be a last resort – a page or two if all else is lost. But his
ground is now at the heart of things – biscuits and a jug of cream, crumbs
on
the counter with raspberry jam. So sweet. He looks at me as I am
philosophizing
about his existence. He watches. I don’t move. Then he walks, unhurriedly,
to
the foot of the row of cupboards built into the wall and disappears.
and this, the morning after, I am still carrying him. He has eaten and
rested, and now looks to eat and rest again. I take my to-be-eaten-before-
breakfast-standing-up pill and philosophize.
Andrew Burke
***
THE FLOW
1
Sometimes an unnoticed secretion
acts as an adhesive, binding in place
a strand of hair to bisect
the opening, the stream deflected.
Which is to say,
a mess. And sometimes it divides the stream
into two parts, major and minor, tone
and overtone.
2
I was pissing in the garden on a sunny day
for the pure freedom, the flow
glistening like braided gold when a hummingbird
suspended on a blur of wings
its long tongue darting
beyond the double needle
of its beak stopped
for a drink and the day
turned to crystal. Oh please,
I prayed,
let it not
go for the pollen.
This happened to me twice.
3
There's a town in New Jersey called Piscataway.
WHITE STONE
"It wasn't a big stone," she said,
holding her hands as if molding it. The diameter
of a cantaloupe. It rested
on a large rock in the bed of the river.
Strange that it stayed on its perch through floods
that would scatter boulders. "That's how we knew
that it had the power. We would leave fruit and flowers
at low water."
WHAT'S LOST
We can guess at transformative processes
the glyphs formed of perhaps totemic animals. I call my childhood
snake for instance my adolescence snakeskin
and I've become a bird
an egg an egg
that a snake will covet.
The appearance of a system one would take for writing.
The point is that it can't be known
like the wind in a seashell
there's the sense of a voice
that will never be spoken.
GARDEN TABLE
Playing at human sacrifice,
first touch in the form of a slice
with the blade of a hand.
We could have fallen to it,
it was a near thing,
among the remains of roses
in the public garden.
A question of angle. Let me be
a sacrifice
or an offering.
Mark Weiss
***
Confessionals
there are no tears in your eyes
no small flame of emotion
that passionately burns
you want to read my poems
but warn you do not understand
the grandeur of this earth,
tragic love or poetry
eager to share, to teach, to show
I read verses to you –
but you are a blank page
even intense confessionals
do not move a line, a sigh
in mid-refrain I catch the rage
the spark that shoots
the singeing flame into my heart
one simple, political poem
that angers you - but you smile
and nod for me to continue
you are moved by greed,
power and domination
have lust only for control
and would deny my life, try
to bring about my
complete poetic silence -
you who would erase
the very meaning of my life
Deborah Russell, © 2004
8:32 am, 15-12-04
Baltimore, MD USA
***
SOFT AND HARD
[via Anne-Marie Mieville & Jean-Luc Godard]
So this game: impregnated by beauty
only humanity is divine.
Follow each other, but interwoven in infinity
the world of creation lies like an accident.
A phantasmagoria of crumbs.
Not at all.
Didn’t give them dialogue.
Have to show things.
And this is what showing?
Roughly understand the effects of internal and external analysis.
Don’t have the buoyancy necessary to stay afloat.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring MD US / 12-15-04 (9:57 AM)
My source here is a 47 minute collaborative videotape from 1985 with the
charming subtitle "A Soft Conversation On Hard Subjects" which I felt I
could write about because I knew in advance that Godard plays a version of
himself. Its echo of Ezra Pound's essay "The Hard and Soft in French
Poetry", whether deliberate or not, had also raised my expectations. But
the depiction of Anne-Marie Mieville within the videotape led me to revise
my original frame and give her lines. I'll let you guess the first three
letters of my initial title. Not until witnessing this tape had I
understood any aspect of the relationship (in particular their domestic
life in Rolle, Switzerland) other than the fact of their collaboration on
some videos starting in the early eighties.
***
with the US
government
hanging back,
the states are
rushing to fill
the void on
stem cell research,
turning soon
blue states green
--Gerald Schwartz,
Irondequoit, New York USA
7:45 AM
***
HERE WE COME A-WASSAILING
It's that time of year again
earlier and earlier every year
barely into December, and the doorbell rings
(first, in case I don't answer)
There are usually two of them
usually girls, aged around ten or twelve
giggling and elbowing each other
into the carol
which is always Figgy Pudding
We wishsh you a merry Chrissmuss
and they're determined to sing the whole thing
gabbling faster and faster
keep forgetting the words
change verses in the middles of lines
so it's always Figgy Pudding
By now, the tune has had enough
it slides out of key
sinks further down and down
desperate to slink away.
I must stop them and let it go,
put it out of its misery.
Twenty pee each for effort, I think,
wondering if the effort's mine
or that poor long-suffering tune's.
One year, I heard an angel-song
and opened the door to find
a five-year-old boy on my doorstep,
his father hovering discreetly behind.
The child sang solo, unaccompanied,
all three verses of Away in a Manger
with starry clarity, the purity of dewdrops --
the tune and his voice were in love.
I couldn't speak for the lump in my throat,
and I gave him all the change I had.
Joanna Boulter
Darlington, UK
5.30 pm
***
Nights expand to hold
the waxing moon. Fog
in the mornings, and new
snow on the mountains.
Days shrink and cling
too close together. Already
the clothes need washing,
cupboards are empty,
the cats' bowls bare. Dust
accumulates in corners
like growing shadows.
Didn't I do all this just
yesterday? Or was it
the day before? I close
the shutters against a bright
snow-filled night, but wake
to bare ground. Or was that
the day before? Didn't I laugh
just yesterday? This braid
has grown to touch my waist.
Sharon Brogan
***
BEFORE THE BANKRUPTCY HEARING MY LAWYER IMPERSONATES MY EX-WIFE
Everything but the tap dance.
Then again, never Astaire,
why wait for Ruby, pine for Ginger?
She never called me Dick Powell,
half his name was sufficient then,
revealed as still is.
My lawyer can do her voice,
my former's inflections,
and I feel like the guy
in Lawrence's "Piano" who hears
a woman's voice, sees himself
crouching like the child he'll always be,
for the lawyer is scarily on,
enough for me to step back
at her voice heard, appassionato
through another, in panic
that she will lose her alimony
if I'm discharged.
She will not, of course, but
she has thrown me backwards
even beyond herself, even beyond
the She I've heard impersonated,
into the merciless place
that is not then and is not now,
but is a badly-lit vampire flick
where the unliving and the undead
marry for eternity.
Kenneth Wolman
***
that objective observer
we dream on
somewhere beyond Pluto's orbit
wonders wandering
eye on Edmonton Alberta
the western edge alight
with the flame
of a sourgas blowout
& in the core
beneath the legislative dome
afflatus of the premier & caucus
yapping in
credulously / competently
against same sex marriage
which gas endangers
them more?
Wednesday December 15 2004
Douglas Barbour
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