Snapshots October 12, 2005
Cruising and Checking
Walking early at Portarlington
you may check the wharf as I do,
peeking in the anglers¹ empty buckets.
One-man work-boats may catch your eye,
in the full gold of first sunlight,
cruising in - with their catch? -
not that I can see, but, looking beyond,
I realize these are mussel farmers
back from checking future harvests.
As for the lone yacht moored near the beach,
movement at its stern shapes to an inflatable,
putt-putting towards us as boat, man and dog.
Us in this case is me and my dog. In the shallows
the yachtsman clambers out carrying his dog.
Good mornings all round, human and canine.
Yachties¹ dogs, first thing, we see,
do need land for a good relieving squat
this time, between us and the No Dogs sign.
Yachtie and I enjoy a long slow yarn
about the water, weather, climate, skies.
Melbourne may be overcast for days,
while out on the Bay it¹s glorious and mild.
Better than racing is just cruising: at
Williamstown, say, you step from car to yacht,
consulting the breeze on where to head,
stepping ashore wherever you please.
They putt-putt away. The beach is ours again;
their image remains, our catch of the day.
[snapped in prose '99, pub in glossy local mag, Coast&Country, then with
artwork by colleague and friend Iain Topliss. His image we hope will be on
the cover of my imminent verse collection, so I've now rejigged old prose
into new verse]
Max Richards
Melbourne, 12 October 2005
***
Alexander Bookstore: Second Street,
Near Market, Downtown, San Francisco
The fire escapes me. Bricks
Are my pasture. A burnt pink
Is my memory. Stable I stand
Already witness to one century.
Books fill half my floors. Characters
Off the street pick them off my shelves.
I sustain myself upon their sale.
When I look out, vanilla bricks
Rise one wall above. A cornice
Is black. Today is a blue sky.
The architecture its clear
Articulation buildings in
Utter profile astonish me.
Stephen Vincent
***
Go-Go's Jigsaw (title)
Max said: old prose
> into new verse]
Young wife at the corner
of years and Robe Street -
go-go dancer free of her cage
who once worked with ...
she'd be lucky to be twenty
and the mini-skirt shows
her gams off well.
Daylight. Workers at work,
schoolkids at school. So
who's this guy in a Merc
who leans out his window
to ask, What time you start,
love? She is caught on
the backfoot of reverie
and blurts out, Nine, nine o'clock.
Okay love, he says, I'll be back.
She stops and stares at his car as it
drives off, image suddenly
interrupted by Luna Park eyes
and snarling mouth, a woman yelling,
Get off my corner, bitch! Ya hear?
This is my patch, not yours!
Fuck off, bitch, n' dun come back.
Go-Go squeaks out, What?
The ugly face leans in until the wind
blows her hair against the young wife's face,
Fuck off, ya mole. This is MY corner.
And takes off, walking like
her pants are on fire. Go-Go
stands and breathes deeply,
milk and bread anchors to
normality. She coughs a small cough
and walks on, head down,
to number 47, a flat in the back
where her husband will be stirring
on the mattress on the floor,
waking from nightshift at
the Police Academy where he cleans
black boot polish stains off
shiny wax linoleum floors.
It is like the wrong pieces fell
into her jigsaw - their own place
at last, and now this.
Andrew Burke
12 October 2005
Mt Lawley
***
Hills change in fire
Yes, even I have it
the flame in mornings
early and hard to resist
the later you leave it
My hand holds to match
lighting valleys
across my palm.
Dies in the wind
spreads with the wind.
What choices!
How long lasts
fire smell within
old memories, grounds.
It leaps days.
Jill Jones
Surry Hills 12 October 2005
***
DIVA DOLOROSA
[via Peter Delpeut]
did not exist without pain
in a matchless style.
"Venom of love once more poured into her heart."
"A thousand flames
deliver you,
overcome" by the double insanity.
Live
on. In you
recognized, it will break
"only in death--can we really belong to each other?"
Slowly "the pale of death passes over".
Allowed "the wind in her seven veils" to "sing a rhapsody of death".
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 10-12-05 (12:43 AM)
The Dutch director Peter Delpeut constructed his definitive image of the
dolorous diva from her embodiment within 14 Italian silent films. Although
silent films usually defeat my attempt to construct a piece of writing
during my viewing experience, there was a large enough pool of language in
the assorted intertitles remaining within Delpeut's final version for my
acrostic to flesh itself out.
Unlike the earlier "Forbidden Quest" (also constructed out of an almost
equal number of found silent films), however, "Diva Doloroso" lacked a
framing scenario written by Delpeut. I felt more of a need to distance
myself in this instance from the romantic diction selected by chance; hence
the larger quantity of overt quotation marks.
***
Hello out there? Are you all really bored, or what?!
I will attempt to write something...
too hair - never enough
too talk - sleep
too sung to wear
too music - never
too stare - scare
too many eyes too deep
one never-enough river is ever
enough itches, enough sketches, enough
stones. four stones are enough
because one is love
one two is walk
one two three is dance
and one two three four is everybody sing
Janet Jackson
***
DISMAYED
he was
dismayed
when his
carefully crafted
finely honed haiku
gradually degenerated
into a coarse vulgar
monstrous sodding sudoku
pmcmanus
***
{}{}{<><>++~++<><>}{}{}
gentle
orderly
aesthetic
punctuatees
brought forth
all ecstatically
from the hand
of your enamor
soon at P's door
omniplenipotentO
{}{}{<><>++~++<><>}{}{}
Judy Prince
***
Low sun slants over monitor onto men crawling through mud
on their bellies, malarial, cockpits of smoke, legs broken,
kite in the mud, two kills already, smattering of shells in the treeline,
death have faced: Grant at Vicksburg, Wellington at Talavara
a paper warrior watches warily from the corner of my bookshelf
Hand-me-down template of a grandfather
origami into intricate folds
dotted lines even-up, chest-out, fly straight and true,
an avatar to a funeral in berlin, the face of battle
come home on your shield or with it
anything but a male nurse's white uniform
with it's green lapels and fob-watch.
The warrior steels himself for death by scissors
a loose pile, fern-spike on my floor
a transit camp to MIND away from mind
a shedding this autumnal day
hard cold twigs, bare branches
kind earth breeding hawthorn
for the spring so once we hammered
stakes together in the earth
so now I see his eyes peer
over glasses slipped on his nose,
his face screwed up in thought
strong arms heft the bodies.
Roger Day
***
Iceland
(you have to love a poem
that starts with "Iceland"
rarely has a nation's name
been such a poem to itself
except perhaps "Greenland"
situated so conveniently next door
and with such radically different landscape
and also "Zimbabwe")
Iceland
spreads like soft cheese
east coast ever eastwards
west coast ever westwards
creating an in between place
where
the land cracks, no, really,
it does, long thick black streaks,
the running mascara of the
earth's crust, some of them
steaming even -- you can't help but think
"what if my foot"
"my toes could just"
like being five years old again
trying to get off the escalator.
(Greenland has cracks, too; in the ice;
beautiful and blue; but not steaming, yet.)
On either side of this plain
there are cliffs: Europe rises
to the east. America to the west.
The rock faces of continents,
fresh-exposed. Oh (yes, "oh"!),
to build a home on this nameless space
between nations, to cook food
and draw heat from its secret bowls
of fire, and then, after sundown,
after sundown...hell,
I don't know. Maybe find a place
with less ice in it.
Knut Mork Skagen
Trondheim, 12.10.05
***
TWOS
for Martin Guerfin
Twos are
not the subject
here. It's just
that their counts,
their curves, intrinsic
to it, are still
incidental. It's
their transparency
that shows us
how there is
something we know
there is although
it is never depicted
or even seen
despite some
clear allusion
in pure blur
and line.
--Gerald Schwartz
And you can view Martin Guerfin's work @
http://www.hogarcollecton.com/photography//guerfin_page_1.html
***
To the guy with his starched shirt collars sticking straight out
You slumped and bent to do your work
And now you look a proper jerk.
No doubt you think you're very smart
And hold your work to be an art;
You're diligent, you work alone,
You git 'er done, but you're a drone.
The company's your fold and queen
That bought your soul with gold and green
She likes it that you're unaware
Of collar points out in the air
Because it means no other fold
Will offer you more green or gold.
And so you'll work from eight to five
Imagining that you're alive;
And then, thank goodness for my rhyme,
You'll work your unpaid overtime.
So walk the mall to get your lunch
And get back to your desk to hunch
Again, your half an hour gone,
Go home and get back in at dawn.
Marcus Bales
***
There is something about the way autumn
light enters this room through the yellow
leaves of the birch. Low and soft, it pads
through this house;
this house with its masks and its china,
its paintings of horses and skies. It touches
my face in the morning. I know it is not you
that I miss,
but loving you, wanting you. Spooned mornings
and naked afternoons, running like children
in the grownup house. The waiting for you
to come home.
Sharon Brogan
***
There are many problems.
It has taken many animators.
The backgrounds are redrawn every day.
Historians rewrite the dialogue.
Diplomats reinvigorate intentions.
Morality is impossible. This is a team.
And we all need a holiday
Lawrence Upton
***
A Basic Understanding
There is an important
difference between
"a little" and "little" -
the same goes for a lot
though we've a basic
understanding of English;
the garage out back –
the scent of rain,
lots of undergrowth and leaves,
and words in our veins
(a few, more, each, every,
either, all, both, some, any . . .)
and there is a great deal
of confusion: how many poems
and, how much time?
though we serve
a modifying function
our language has no articles
We assemble a rather large
handful of possessive
nouns (the neighbor's,
(neighbour's), the grocer's,
the priest's, my mother's,
your father's,
our grandmother's, etc…)
and select certain pronouns
(his, your, their, whose . . .)
and tie together rhyme
and stanza - three articles
take form (till time indefinite)
and many an apple
has fallen - still, we will never weary
of dancing nouns, adjectives,
or creating a good deal of verbs
Deborah Russell
***
The sparrow flew into the hall, circled the lamp once, and flew out again.
"That's what human life is all about," said Caedmon,
"That's what human life is all about --
Once round the lamp and into the darkness.
Believe in the Christian God and you'll be saved."
some of us think
the sparrow
was right.
Robin Hamilton
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