One Seven-billionth...

...of an idea.

One Seven-billionth.

i've published a book of pomes.  here 't is.

if u want it, or if u wanna know more, here 't is.



...and the whole name thing?
i'll get to that a li'l later.

fragment from a handheld device #10

withal

she turned and walked away

fast

toes pointed straight ahead

chicken ranch

i planted another chicken today.  perhaps
a chicken-tree will grow.

eggfruit will form, and soon chickens
will drop

to the ground
in a consternation of feathers.

as the sun rises

i rise also and
piss like a horse.

it would seem i have
no other use for you.

i wish it were not so.  i wish i
could cover you, like a beast.

i would make your children:  so strong
and without thought.

fragment from a handheld device #8

(on the exquisite tortures

of public art galleries)

please

do not touch

the exhibits

remuneration

oh 3 shades of Christ
6 shades of perdition
i don't even know the numbers
 - are there numbers?
which delineate, propitiate,
and otherwise appease and
placate those whom we fail:
our humans.

oh the 7 veils of Mary
the umpteen Houris
and You, God
yes You;  empty-headed fool
all beard and robe and no
answer
no answer
even to the meekest and most  childish
question

oh by the 12 apostles and why
just 12, or why so many?
i will break my fingers off with counting
give up my my toes
and cast about for more limbs
be they mine or others'
to sacrifice

oh Rosemary oh burning bush
here is my firstborn.  Look:
all that i have, had, will have,

i offer up
to a wisp of sky, a plume of smoke
the scent of fat and flesh and herbs

are we permitted salt?   from any pillar?

these days we call it a pathology
all the counting and numbering
off
by the 10 judges of Hell
i count backwards towards the unreal
the anti-knowable
two, one

then begin again.


here is a step.  Let us
call it
the first.
i wait for the telephone to ring.

fleet air arm

fatherhood, you are reduced
to the status of Aircraft Carrier

your not-inconsiderable bulk and attendant
fleet so many enclosed emptinesses

in service to the planes
the planes, with all their takeoffs

their dangerous
landings

refraction

Too long it's been
too long
since i've been down
to this coast   and out
along the promontory where my sea bashes
pulsing
on my rocks.

Water-words nibble and worry and drip at
my soft sandstone underbelly:
phrases spinning on a wire-wheel wind
strip and shape my dunes,
and mountainous huge whole
weed-wracked poems bight
my continent in that part where, thighs
spread, things once borne under water
loll & roll in the muck
of an ebb tide.  My apostles, paragraphs,
erode erode
twelve, eleven...
my seven sisters six..
these penurious countdowns
toward some feeble sputtering
blastoff - five vowels
here, in the roaring four-three-two

    one

   more
ejaculation
should do it my sea
will cover my land.  splashdown -
there'll be no more walking then;   no
coast patrols..

for an epoch, needs must, i will swim

fragment from a handheld device #7

See how high it jumps:
the blood
before it dies away

fragment from a handheld device #6

mare's tails in the sky
who's gonna ride
these wild horses?

fragment from a handheld device #5

who would know better than we

to fear

the ones who come in boats?

oyster

(fragment from a handheld device)

these accretions

stronger than the rock

to which they bind

supposition

the air is surely thick

with the ghosts of birds

the air is surely coloured by arc and swoop

clouded by song and call

the earth is surely syruped

with birdblood

the earth is surely torn by talon and beak

and made ragged with soft feathers

the air is surely heated by their falling

and carcasses must nest

in the cool earth.

     and with every breath

most surely,  the ghosts

of birds

fragment from a handheld #4

how bright and quick

we burn

such brisance

Simply (the river)

 

(fragment):

      its water comes from the ocean
      travels across the sky
      leads to the mountain

the river is always and only

beginning

its water comes from the sky

its water comes from the ocean

its water comes from the mountain

its water comes from

the river

the mountain is

the mountain

the river

is the river

the sky is a cupped hand, palm

turned towards the ground

let us gather all our sadnesses

in that.

Arian Tejano is for me one of those poets whose work often provokes a powerful and immediate desire to engage and respond.

these lines speak directly to his poem Simply, at his blog ANoiseless Patient Spider

origami

these words
we fold into ourselves

from the broad sheet of all possible words.

these words
we unfold at night

on a tatami mat of  breath.

behind fragile
walls we fold
into each other.

Here.  Listen.

a thousand paper cranes

take flight -

.

fragment from a hand-held device #3

a memory came to him of swimming in the dams at the farms of his friends.  how the cold water lay eighteen inches or maybe years below the surface, and would caress the limbs;  stretching its hard fingers through the syrupy warmth to catch and clutch.  how it could tighten around the chest like a python, and squeeze breath from the body.  those fingers, that would sometimes steal a small child or a drunken man, and give them back empty.

those fingers.

that need.

fragment from a hand-held device #2

assuming the position

we practise stillness

in the same way.

with gestures too large for the stage

they also serve..*

  (a sonnet for Anzac Day)

With all the rest you stand and wave,

and from your summer dress your arm

exalts and lifts your brave

heart too, as striding down the palm-

strewn avenue they come to raise

you up.  With fluttered hand you bring

them on;  your fingers writing praise

and lifting voices up to sing.

You raise your arm to wave,

and in its secret hollow:  blue.

Still smooth from your last shave -

and this so very mortal part of you

just in this moment makes things good.  It makes things well,

and makes a lighter journey of the heavy steps from hell.

*from John Milton's sonnet   "On His Blindness"  

three sonnets on a theme

Lost (game, set, and match)

The games we seem to need to play,

with their profusion of costumes and tools,

do not raise us above the beasts, as some might say.

Beasts, when they play at all, abide by their few rules

of engagement, without recourse to the referee.

It’s we folk, in our queerness (as they say up north)

Who resort to the sly dig when no-one can see;

our disregard of fairness calling forth

a matched response from our opposition;

cries of ‘foul!’, and ‘just try that again…’,

inevitable recourse to greater ammunition,

and ignoring the ball, in pursuit of the pain.

Even the language of ‘lose’ and ‘win’

echoes the concepts of ’grace’ and ‘sin‘.

 

Lost (in translation)

All the edifices are erected:  neat,

with their separate garden plots and motley doors.

Terraced houses on suburban street,

and each frank face, each one implores

us look!  And look again - these are my eyes.

And there, disclosed behind the curtain-net,

this one irons and that one plans goodbyes,

these drink their wine, and others frig, or fret.

And in each room a television glows,

and on each screen a disembodied face.

And in each mind suspicion slowly grows

That by our separate-ness we’ve lost all trace -

All trace of individuation

lost.  Lost in the translation.

 

Lost (for words)

I don’t have a poem for her.  Words

like love, bled out in lead-hot shower

long ago.  Limbs severed by swords,

lives scythed down;  red poppies in the flower

of their youth, terminated.

Wounds picked at by clacking crows.

Life and Love and Breath abated,

yet still the cold blood somehow flows.

Oh, but I loved her.

To the depth and breadth that my soul

could reach*.  Lost her

and my self.  Stranded, drown-ded, beached, dead-cold.

We Enemies, hearing voices in the mist,

took aim, gave shot, and…  missed.

*with thanks to W.S.  If one must steal, steal from the rich…