Snaps September 14 2005
Pigeon Feathers
Conversation spun with treads -
threads of art, poetry; love of nature,
wildlife and humanity . . .
Art pops out of the landscape
Eyes pull in abstracts - pigeon feathers
at my feet (old coffee, in my hand)
Foothills, foothills, foothills
Arts agenda -critique, who's who?. . .first,
second, third and ...honorable mention?
She said, We have art in
Loveland, Longmont and Boulder . . .
Art, for goddamned artsakes?
The numbers names that uncomp
compositions (does anyone commit?)
Docile docents volunteer
(do it for free - one paid employee...)
In open space, bold face this: my doubt
about Art - Where(in the name of God)
are artists compensated?
Structure, structure, structure...
sunless, moonless views - no energy,
no spirit, only this decomposing . . .
What is the date, of late?, I ask...
She raises a brow and says, September 11th.
Deborah Russell
***
Late trains drift from bedsides
where specimens in glass remain
unresolved
like a virgin or the unique
can only be erased once
unlike the many - again.
Tendencies soften and paunch
the mantles covering the dead
the suspects, the all.
How, ultimately, to purge weather
the terrible suns
in which, half-held
is the question to the answer.
What is not obvious, is.
So, where's the adhesiveness gone?
With mud and slake?
It was latent
but now annealled
in the open and eligible - again.
In this there's something of spring
white bud, dark branch
and the disregard above
of bird and windrush.
Jill Jones
11.30am, Surry Hills, 14 September 2005
***
Breaking News
Mid-evening we hear
named on t.v. our suburb -
police report how a father
returning home found
his two sons dead in their beds,
his wife with lacerations
wandering the house.
The street then named -
just round the corner.
Late evening news -
house seen from the street,
between two expensive
fortress-like new ones,
a small older weatherboard
with lawn and picket fence.
I pass it every day with the dog.
We know their black dog, keen
to protect its turf and folks.
Neighbour tells the camera
two good boys, often saw them
playing. Busy family.
This is the quietest street.ı
Morning paper, front page
(above a Citroen ad) -
mother former nurse,
medical condition.ı
Two schoolboys dead,
could not be resuscitatedı,
mother in hospital,
serious but not critical,
not under arrestı.
I pass that way with the dog.
Channel Seven is there,
man with camera on shoulder.
Woman with clipboard,
straight blonde hair.
Dog takes a fancy to them,
they to her.
They have their work.
Other morning paper,
front page all black words, and -
her sister arrived,
said ³I knew it. I knew it.²ı
Midday news:
police take woman
(her lacerations listed)
from hospital to interview,
ask for DNA samples
from under her fingernails.
Local primary school principal
says he has many counsellors
in the hall and in classrooms
helping distressed parents and children.
Driving in our midday break,
we detour round their block.
Channel Seven is there
in force with now a truck with tall
pole topped with transmitter gear.
What can there be to see, to film?
The news is being gathered.
Itıs still breaking news.
Walking the dog towards sundown
I see Channel Nine
has joined the stake-out.
Its transmitter truck has a pole
even more tall.
At six Iıll see maybe
more of the tragedy.
We have a right to see,
donıt we?
At six across the state was seen
news-gatherers hustling
police car, a sketch of her
huddled under a blanket,
her lawyerıs concern,
naturally sheıs suicidalı,
her husband grim-facedı
being driven somewhere.
Sheıs in secured care.
Two brothers, mere photos
fading from our screen.
Their black dog - no-one left
to protect - is no doubt with someone.
Behind the picket fence
with its bunches of flowers
waits the old family car,
or former family car.
The former mother,
sedated, secure, gives up
to police her DNA.
Her sisterıs cry resonates -
I knew it. I knew it.ı
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
14 September 2005
***
WHEEL
when he
complained
that his great
wheel of life
had stalled
got stuck
she suggested
oiling it
or at least
clearing out
from it's path
some of the
accumulated
rubbish, detritus
trash, swills, residues
clutter cobwebs
scum, off scourings
and other discards
and leftovers
and handed
him a spade
and a shovel
and a very
stiff brush.
pmcmanus
Raynesparkuk
***
white, fat, thick,
slid down to eat
lumpy, slack; spits;
nonce gulls
congregating
at congealments
Lawrence Upton
***
-ESS
(from Erica Jong through Mairead Byrne through UBU...oh, who cares?)
For my generation (which graduated from college in the
mid-60's, before the 60's became ''The Sixties''), poetry
was a mandrake root-male, a large gnarled phallus buried in
the earth. Pull it out. Its virility was unmistakable.
Female writers didn't exist on our critical radar except to
be mocked.
Jong and I must've gone to some of the same schools.
We were all caught in that Men-Women thing back then.
Even Paul Simon who wrote about Her with her Emily Dickinson
and Him with his Robert Frost: it was like Dick Benjamin
and Paula Prentiss with a really crap attitude.
The student poet before whom all were bound to worship
was first Leonard Hirsch, then John Allman (who
I think still teaches in upstate New York)--
and then the mantle fell upon Penelope Weiss, yes,
Penny Weiss, unspeakably lyrical, and I of course
like any man would love to describe her, whereas
Hirsch and Allman just needed to shave more often.
Penelope read one Frida afternoon in a social room,
it was part of the regular English Department series,
and she held us: good reader, better poet, we were
enchanted...and then the bubble was pricked (appropriate)
by one David Gordon, soi-disant Lawrencian
from the Jewish side, no doubt, of the Wilmot family
that produced the Earls of Rochester, though all
David inherited was Glens Falls.
David shaded his eyes like a Varga model
and pronounced Penny's work "Good woman's poetry."
See...Penelope Weiss was a subspecies.
She was a poetess. Poet -ess.
Roll that one around on your mental tongue
And even then some us wondered "What's the difference?"
Odd that the distinction stopped at poems.
Nobody thought Porter was weird or O'Connor
(well, she was, but professing Catholics
were thought of as weird back then).
They were women who wrote.
C. S. Lewis wrote of women who sought
ordination to the Anglican priesthood
as would be Priestesses. Priest -ess.
A man too smart not to know the overtones:
I'm a priestess, a ritual whore, so screw me
but leave an offering.
-Ess.
Some months later I think Penelope kissed me.
I'm not 100 percent sure, we were both drunk,
it was her party, it just seemed like a nice gift
and if it happened it was. The hollow of her mouth
was warm and sweet from wine. It was an exchange
of graces, present and futureless, and if there
was sex involved, gender really didn't figure into it.
Kenneth Wolman
***
From the "I Want" series:
I want to be a sledge hammer.
I want to break through stones.
I want to break through fear.
I want to run a Presidential Election.
I want to nominate the Chief Justice.
I want to sledge. I want to sledge.
Hammer to the core. To the very bottom.
To the place where Earth meets Water.
I want to meet the place where
Fire meets Earth meets Water.
*
Midnight Blossom
Love deep Raise your Willow
Shine a Harvest low rising Moon:
What goes Heart goes Swoon.
Stephen Vincent
***
Across from me she wears her eyes
a calmer blue than blue that speaks
a clean blade that reflexively
takes care of everything in the way;
she talks a quiet trusting talk,
I hear the generations mildew
by the wayside when she lets the layers
slip and there before me is a better family
portrait than before, a child of three
when I was twenty-one. Now she is
beautiful and knowing, and I cannot help
my awe at her escape from branding
deep into the psyche all the scars of
either/or mentality, those bedfellows
we shared, I cannot help the humbling feeling
that protection I was given and resented
was protection, nonetheless, that I was loved
with layers around me, that I was kept safe,
if not from hurt, at least,
from being broken to the point
of never being wanted anymore,
but she is stronger, having been
taken by surprise, but more than that,
betrayed, by people who would rather
brush away the crumbs, the shells,
the friendly fire itself, and say
it never happened, excuse
manchild of forty-some for scarring
this girl of fourteen who should have after all
acquired the faculty of forgetting by this time,
but she is sharp as the division between
health and every tired commitment to degrade,
for one can always count on degradation
to be right, if not now, later, when
amnesia starts the slow progression
of contagion, and the bonds that make no sense
between those bludgeoned in common
far transcend the bonds between oneself
and one's own flesh,
the child who never knew her youth,
who had to find it later on, when everything
around her might be safe, and she could hope
if not believe, that someone she had found
might be a father or a safer uncle
than she had, and people might be taught
to know the truth and even speak it.
sheila e. murphy
***
tales untold
waver hover
above beyond
The Tale
told tolled
inscribed perhaps
in the earth itself
'Where are the bombs?'
'All the Americans have done is bring the tanks'
in the haze of
dust smoke smog
fall of all
before the telling
details march through
Douglas Barbour
Wednesday September 14 2005
***
IT'S BEEN A LOVELY DAY
[via Jos de Putter]
They all think it's a sport. [They can do it.]
Say such a thing ("connoisseur") about oneself?
Big difference
everything is done with machines now.
Ears,
now they're not hanging out.
Always go on.
Liked the work.
Otherwise would never have kept it up.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 9-14-05 (11:58 PM)
Written during my first viewing of the first film by the Dutch documentary
filmmaker Jos de Putter. Though the advance program notes had led me to
believe there might be a possibility ("The film poetically depicts a year
in the farm's life cycle . . ."), I was also worried that I might have seen
this film previously without being prompted to write. Turns out that that
was a French documentary with a very similar subject matter. Since
the end of an era theme was more compelling for me than the particulars
of farm life, I believe I must have interfered with the chance composition
and the revision process to achieve a final version in which the presence
of farming may initially be virtually invisible. When the film concludes,
we understand that the filmmaker's parents will retire without an heir to
run the farm which their family has operated for more than a hundred years.
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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