SWEAT IS THE BODY'S TEARS
(Be advised that Jena retains all copyrights to
the following poetry.
Respectfully,
your webmaster, Springy B.)
(Jenanote: Springy
B? Respectful? Cor! NB! NB! <g>)
Away from the Pulpit
This man who
knows
The meaning of
integrity,
Humanity,
compassion,
Enduring:
To infinity.
Does he see how
these things
In our world are
spurious?
In most they come
and go –
Go and come;
But this one is
steadfast.
This is why this man
–
He once was a wino
Long ago, before he
went through
His fire –
Is not ordinary.
And now as she
walks,
Always she’s looking
Looking over her
shoulder
At Gerry Jampolski:
This humble little
doctor
Far away in America
Who saves people
others leave for dead.
The man who believes
He and all men are
brothers –
Our souls are
identical.
This beautiful man
This one she’s
always watching
Looking back at for
the rest of her days
Is the one human
being:
The only one who
could show her -
Not by writing, not
by talking,
By nothing but doing
By being what he
himself has learned to be –
That all humanity is
my brother,
I will never be its
keeper.
I wanted to keep it:
Wanted it to keep
me.
I’ve been there now,
Through hell and
high water.
Love is
letting go of fear.
That is not trite.
That is not
ordinary.
That is steadfast.
TGLOML
"Life" here, for me, meaning the
presumption that
every human spirit
should be able to soar...
attain happiness.
Furthermore, that in
doing so,
we are responsible
to the earth
and to further
generations of our kind.'
`The world needs great love'
Home (January...)
O love who points
the swallow home
And scarves the
russet at his throat
Dreaming in the
needle’s eye,
Guide him through
the maze of glass
Where the obdurate
cannot pass,
With your silent
clarity.
There where blood
and sap are one
Thrush’s heart and
daisy’s root
Keep the measure of
our love’s dance,
Though within their
cage of bone
Griefs and tigers
stalk alarm
Locked in private
arrogance.
Lay the shadow of
his fears
With the brilliance
of your light
Naked we can meet
the storm,
Travellers who
journeyed far
To find you at our
own doors,
O love who points the
swallow home:
Point him far
across the sea
Point him home, back
home to me.
Waiting
Spring it was,
and all was there
A fit culmination in
its beginning:
The world itself
sang of all creation
Even the willows
smiled as
Father duck beamed
at Mother duck,
Their babies waddled
behind
An orderly line,
perfectly schooled.
No wonder the koalas
laughed
And the kookaburra
fell out of his tree.
Spring it is: the
mire.
Freesias swaying but
how?
Up to my knees now
Dimorphotheca's
smiling but
What? Oh how?
Dragging my thighs
The forget-me-knots
whisper `Remember: be still.
Wait.`
Sucking, sucking
hard at my pelvis
The songbird warbles
dense in the foliage,
Not gone?
Tight on my chest
You asking, but
what?
Just wait.
Oh call on the
birds, seduce them out of the branches
Dazzle the green
ones, you know that you can.
Eros adores you, the
planet's on your side.
Use it. Be liberal.
Up to my neck now.
Please wait.
The Invisible
I forgot.
I most entirely forgot
you
No effortless child
in a child's eden.
Thinking you most
entirely splendid
(Eros was on your
side -
The planet adored
you)
I, entwined in your
million billion stars blinking
An innocence that no
evil spell could cross,
Thus entirely
entranced most entirely forgot
You a seasoned moon
gazer.
False tongues mark
all passings
Your ear lost its
origin
Swallowed up like a
wound
No word but its own
could mend.
I forgot.
I endowed you with a
clarity of form
Most entirely
forgetting
That all that can
perish falls apart
Long before it must
die.
And you as long cast
out of Eden
Forever lost for me,
as to you.
I forgot that all
who walk in the sun
Cast a shadow.
I forgot. I
most entirely forgot.
So now I will learn
the ancient art
Since time
immemorial
Of strangers
stargazing on that in which
They no longer most
entirely believe.
This world of
unmeasured shadows:
You lighting your
small corner.
I caught in a
landscape too dark for us to see
Will take my light
from this:
I can cast no
shadow.
Bite at it!
Bite at the core
of pain and crunching down
Find the world's
true sweetness in the savage tang of citrus.
Good as love
sometimes, drawing love's orbit through the mind:
Through darkness is
light revealed.
To beyond love.
Better than love. What name for this?
Through eclipse the
fountain of peace -
Search out
relentlessly mercy's echo through pain
That pain hunts down
fear.
I stare at nothing
and everything until they break into quadrants of truth.
My bone-bare stark
endurance strikes alien on the terror of fools,
But to the wise my
winter-landscape chords proclaim
Life's last and
death's first parable:
No commitment is
here – no balance - no song but to endure.
To look into the
face of barren truth – look squarely on, don't duck,
And endure is
all. In the core of pain will you find mercy's echo.
You were
brave. Therein the fountain of peace: just desserts.
Song
Who would call
his primal state a blessing
who would not
bite the fruit, and bear the change?
How could the heart
in an unprepossessing coma
of innocence
have shown its range?
Who in full
manhood would remain a child
in a child's
Eden, and as dumb?
And who on earth
would sing, if song were merely
an effortless
warbling until Kingdom come?
At your triumphs
won, and still to win
I'll stand
rejoicing, though I cannot say
What I owe, what I
would not pay
this man so
many light years away.
I grapple my own
night-watches with self-doubt
Unable to see
where I am wrong
Suffer my own
torments waiting for a phrase to heal grief
that can only
be resolved in healing song.
Accept here my
praise for your own true fables
your wide
open spaces for hearts celebrating
Youthful happiness
in human love;
but most for
the elected spirit recreating
From dream and
darkness through your authentic images
the
wing-flash of a joy that is no dream:
Dragon-fly light, a
moment motionless,
sometimes
brighter than daylight on the blazing stream.
Rawhide and lace
Rawhide and lace
Dappled sun on my
face
You rasp at my
throat I
Barely afloat
You bring me to this
I’ll go under.
You who brought me
to this
Must free me.
Sun on my face
Rawhide no lace
The fire at my flesh
Will consume me
Pick up and ride now
Drive with the gods
now
Rawhide no lace
Heat hammers my face
You riding my bones
Complete it
Before I die.
Gaia's Way
Does earth's
beauty mend all miseries of time
Or do all human
miseries in the end take their toll
Of Gaia's bounty, it
seemed without end?
In deepest solitude, may I reach another?
A man walking,
some density of being marked him
Bearing in gross
darkness some mortal loss.
All days end. The
world will end.
But for this hour, in deepest solitude, may I reach another?
As light enters a
room, nothing is asked, so may mind and eye together
See authentic
clarity of form, and fresh from rest may a heart
Now embrace the
stuff of which Gaia was always made?
In deepest solitude, may I reach another?
If I relearn my
heart, a poem, though words can never
Contain, as music,
unsayable grace undefined
Perhaps, like light,
it might leap from mind to mind?
In deepest solitude, may I reach another?
In quiet the
earth may seem to urge me on, thoughts moving in visions
Love answering in
the faces that I love and pleading, issuing their theme:
Let mind put off its
cloudy care.
In deepest solitude perhaps I may reach another?
In the plain
texture of truth its peace is found
Clear as a landscape
filled with light
Under this firmament
of Gaia's will.
In her solitude I may reach another.
GOLDDUST
(O, learn to
read what silent love hath writ?
To hear with eyes
belongs to love’s fine wit)
(The Bard:
23).......
Gaia.
Random and harsh as any carrion
Tearing at mortified
animal remains.
Random and sweet as
exalting human flesh,
Yet mortal in this
too –
From that instant of
piercing victory humbled
All we seek in a
loved other's hollows
Remains
unrevealed; returns to otherness -
Impetuous man
penetrates the womb but
None stumbles on
enduring grace.
And so from willing,
stormy flesh
o recalcitrant
shrouded brain...
Ah but I must be
absent from myself,
Must learn to praise
love's every waking face,
Raise this
unleavened heart, and sever
From my effective
life these ignorant sorrows:
They rest on no
Truth, mere truths and more truths.
Gross darkness
cherishes more than all plenitude
The hunger that
drives the spirit.
But what of a spirit
does a mind ever know
That has no eye?
Put off mind's
cloudy care...
Yes, in the dusky
shifting shrouds of postmodernism
Perhaps the light,
my love, we may wake to praise
Beats darkness to a
dust of gold?
Wings
You can lie you
down in my arms:
I will comfort you
with soft kisses
You so shell-shocked
tonight.
And not quite the
man I thought you -
We came from the
earth not your ribs,
And perhaps came
before.
My man.
My stupendous,
finely wrought, butterfly.
So before you go
back to your wars,
You’ll lie in my
arms tonight:
I will comfort you
with soft kisses
And come the dawn
You will spread your
splendid man-of-war wings
Wide again.
My mighty warrior!
Homesickness
I remember the
overpainted cheeks of the Madonna
The stations of the
cross and the bumbling
Good nature of the
old priest -
The essential
kindness in the mass and my
Devout and faithful
mother-in-law's tongue protruding for the wafer
- This is the Body
of Christ
Who takes away the
sins of the world -
Gingerly, so scrupulous,
avoiding the bodies of The Body's Bungs...
So many Wops at
mass!
(This is the Body of
Christ...)
I remember the ocean
licking at the lonely piers
Salt tang of the
spray astringent and balm
To my angry wounds
All grace till her
son bleated -
Scratching all the
while at his balls.
I can remember the
faces of fathers, mother, my sister;
With no tears.
I can remember all
the places that are not home.
And the tears.
America
They have taken
their briefs
Their griefs and
their faces
It's the end of the
day
And the President's
dick
Has retired.
Bent:
Beaten and withered.
They have gone in
the rain
With their talk in
high places,
Their missiles,
their fast flying salvos.
Their cares and
despairs
And their confident
phrases
Their compulsion to
explain the inexplicable.
They have gone like
the wind
With their griefs
and nondistinctions
Gone like a leaf
Or the voice of the
news.
Like death on the
air
With a rustle of
paper:
These arch
hegemonists of all time.
And so I am to go
there
Where I never may
breathe there
Twill be only to die
daily in your arms
In the rustle of
sheets
Buried in the scent
of my man there
Never will I come up
for air:
This delicate thief
Of love and
distinction
In the hegemon of
all worlds and all time.
Body and Soul
Do I give myself
to you utterly,
Body and no body,
flesh and no flesh?
Not as a fugitive -
blind no more,
Obdurately committed
to chartered terrain
- known peaks,
negotiated valleys -
But as a child
might,
Blindly, with no
other wish
Than to smile and
say,
Hello, love!
Yes, utterly.
Ah then shall I
bear you down my estuary
Carry you up and
over the waves
Down under the
oceans for you to
Soar and slumber
there in that dumb chamber.
Beat with my blood's
beat,
Hear my heart move
Blindly with your
bones
Riding my flesh
Dissolved and bedded
Through sightless
waves of the sea's Dreaming
To daylight. Where
you rest.
There you smile:
Oh how you'll smile
to say
Hello, love!
Lessons
In the time
before the time before
When sunlight fell
like cream
The days crept on
through summer haze
To a golden autumn
dream...
The hours were
ours and the play was play
And the days went on
and on
And the shadows fled
from our laughing steps
And returned when
our steps were gone.
And the green was
green, and the smells were rich
And the warm air
hummed and sang
And we thought we'd
stay forever
But the garden gate
went clang.
Now the grass is
merely a carpet
And we cannot hear
the bees
And the sun's too
hot to lie in
And spiders drop
from trees.
And soil gets
under fingertips
And webs catch in
our hair
And we can't see
those creeping things
From five feet in
the air.
The only game now
is hide and seek
And we've broken all
the rules.
And we won't find
our way back in
While we're
shambling grown up fools...
On His Frustration...
Is there such a
thing as
Despair in
moderation?
As well demand I
Orgasm politely,
Mute the music.
And not finish this
poem...
<g>
The Ferris Wheel
If he could
stretch his hand
Through the mists of
cyberland
He might touch my
face
Staring from this
alien place…
I fulfilled: he so
wan
May not find a
common tongue.
Strangers on the
ground we stay,
Waiting the judgment
day.
If could stretch my
hand
Through barren
cyberland
I might touch his
face
Staring from its
narrow place...
He fulfilled: I so
wan
May not find a
common tongue.
Strangers on the
ground we stay,
Waiting execution
day?
She Yearns
Let me be caged.
And so unalone, I.
The
camaraderie of steel,
The walls, the roof
of sky,
A keeper for my
friend,
The people to pass
by –
Cage me with alien
beasts,
So much more alien,
I.
The koodoo and the
grebe,
The aodad, the kite,
Each knows beyond
the pit
A comrade out of
sight.
The single animal
Fears fading light.
Cage me against
love,
The hunter in the
night
Savaging my raging
womb
From so impossibly
far away.
Let me be caged.
Unalone, I.
This Summer – A Story of My Love’s Sometimes Waking Face
How shall I keep
Every morning
Confronting the same
face in the mirror?
Anxiously peering,
Demanding,
Such intolerable
self-doubt,
Self-pity.
Hysterical and
without decency
Impossible joining such
a face,
That eats up other
people.
I do not want to be
this sort of cripple
In the world any
longer
Not for any of my
excuses for being…
To remain,
Not for any of my
possibilities.
I do not want to be
what I have been.
I ‘m woken here,
I would like simply
to fly away.
And live without
saying that I live
With me,
As the filament, the
grains, the sedimentary content,
The matter to be
taken into account.
And continue, but
without this continuing;
Certainly, not to
remain defender of such a proposition
Which, every next
moment, life is going to contradict,
And with the back of
its hand,
And with its fist.
When you are
suffering
And you want to be
free
Of that which
torments you,
It is not greed,
Is it?
This is something
more fundamental than that.
More basic than
The calculations of
thought.
And this is why I’ve
felt
It’s possibleT
To elude the mind,
Whose confusion has
continued
For too long.
The summer might
almost be gone.
The Tao universe is
self-existent,
In which all
particular things
Spontaneously arise.
The Christian god is
barren –
If Heaven had
produced its creatures on purpose
It would have made
them to love
And not to prey upon
each other.
All things have come
about through Transformation
Because they are
one.You do not find anything superior to things.
The Tao fire
consumes the fire, undiminished.
How could Heaven
have pity for that fate
Its nature brings
about?
Through all is
destruction and regeneration at once
There is
tranquillity in this revolution:
Tranquillity in
disturbance is called Perfection.
There may be ten
thousand thousand thousand things being transformed,
And the sage is
transformed along with them
Without difference,
without end.
Therefore, his
movements are effortless as water,
His stillness deep,
deep as the ocean bed, as to a mirror
His response, the
echo.
His rarefied
condition makes him seem to disappear.
He accepts his body
with pleasure,
Forgetting life and
death, dismissing the turbulence of trivia.
To him, there is
nothing in the world that is greater
Than the tip of a
hair
That grows in
spring.
When something comes
into existence
It is because of
conditions that are favouring –
All that is, being
interdependent,
Combines to call it
forth – combines to
Call forth its
answer: recognition.
Thus is nature good
to man,
Or at the very
least,
First man of my
world,
More favourable than
against him.
It is only
weeping, please weep, my love,
Which can make us
ever glad.
There is no
transformation for you to fear, no
Nirvana to achieve.
Just respond to all
things
While never being
caught –
Don’t even hold on
to your non-seeking as right:
There is no other
wisdom to attain.
Be still and be
fluid as you wait.
Count every breath,
hear every song
Beat every beating
heartbeat as you still, fluid,
Wait.
The Dreamtime
Before Dawn,
On the land older
than time
Sandstone and lime
The universe and I
The First Woman
seeing
The first light
liquefy the leaves
On every leaning
tree;
As thoughts of you
The First Man
Liquefy my bones, my
womb,
Me.
The land before time
Trembles beneath my
feet and
We, the secret
cohort
- Me, sandstone and
lime -
Riven with the
wonder of you
Who are everything
elemental to me
That is here
And not here.
Trembling I gather
myself
And along the grass
I go
Singing a song that
life may now be
Young and new in
this land older than time
With these bodies of
ours -
Older with time.
And I scorn the
mortal strain
Of impudent lambs
gambolling:
They would tell me
my song is conceit -
In vain.
I would you were
here,
My First Man,
To give them the
finger.
Sing me our song.
This Morning
Such early hills,
the snow-gum tree
Does it suck its
spare blossom from the stone?
From stone the
everlasting daisy does it
Look back in silence
at the moon?
In the flowering gum
tree the songbird does she
Ponder this human
theme
From one moment
motionless
Planted, now
swelling in my head?
And I, oh I, perhaps
the First Woman!
Bird, tree, and hill
with rioting chains of
Flowers sing in my
embrace.
Closing my eyes I
hold you there in my arms
As in my womb the
river leaps and I drown,
And in your face,
the face I see thrown back
As if to outrace the
sun, shines
The First Wonder of
the dawn.
A Letter
I take my pen in
hand
There was a paddock
Beyond the wood,
beside sandstone
Limestone, the
creek, behind a day spread out
Green at the edges,
dank at the heart
The dust lifted a
little, a finger’s breadth
The word of the
songbird travelled slow
A slow, dead pace
behind the tick of time.
To tell you I am
well and thinking the best things about you
And of the walk
through the paddocks, and of another walk
Along the pristine
piled ruin of the city
Under a pale heaven
barren of all but death
And rain, the lake,
stagnant beside.
It was a day too
long, no news. I have no news.
I put my head
between my hands and hope my heart will choke me
I put out my hand to
touch you
And touch empty
air. I turn to sleep
And find only
hollowness and fear. Despair.
And by the way,
still no news now.
A long, long
day’s journey into night
Because you have
nothing to say, nothing at all
Not even to record
your emptiness
Or guess what’s to
become of you, without love.
I know that you have
cares
Ashes to shovel,
broken glass to mend
And a tapestry to
patch before the sunset.
Write to me soon
and tell me how you are
If you still
tremble, sweat and still stretch
A hand for me at
dusk, play me the tune
Show me the leaves,
shake your branches, drop me your apples.
Because I always
need to hear of you.
And feel my heart
swell and the blood run out at the
Syllables of your
name said through the scent of the snow-gum
The river’s waves of
symphomy, the murmuring night...
I will end this
letter now. I am yours with love.
Always with
love. With love.
Last Night
(On reading
Graves...)
On evenings such
as this, night close furled
Above the cities and
summer a breath away
In thin white shift
ethereal dreams I whispered
Against my lover so
far far away as he lay:
Conceived to crown
love with wreathes of myrtle…
Ethereal still, in
my black shift, and not bitter
But only wondering
at she floating so light
Unable now even to
remember the face of that lover
The one who clasped
her so close, from so far far away
As the world spun
outward on the edge of dawn.
Be still, wait, he
urges, still so far, far away
It will come again:
To crown love with
wreathes of lilies?
Ah, man, lilies that
fester smell so far far worse than weeds…
Perhaps we should
stick to myrtle.
Today
Today,
self-interred, a spring day I
Autumned myself into
a winter grave.
I don't know if I
waited on the coming of a fit word;
A right smile.
Summarily deaf:
recalcitrantly blind
I took to the
paddocks
Buried myself in red
earth
Kicked with sullen
pleasure at dried dung
Odourless.
This too had no guts.
I yearned I believe
for some passion
|omething to
resurrect -
Lady Macbeth
perhaps.
Out! Out! Damned...
Some vigour,
something right,
Clear enough to
fight for.
Energy. A life.
An equal heart and
mind...
A bird, I didn't
recognise her variant but her call was clear,
Singing to her three
green eggs
Having misread the
time? Or Love?
But in her joyful
enterprise,
Guilt faltered and
forgot her phrase.
Grief drowned in her
own cadenza.
Lichen filled in the
red rock's lies.
My dank head, freed,
took up the songbird's praise –
And the quick heart,
from fear and time
Released, soared to
coach me in this rhyme:
The rhythm of my
love.
The rhyme of time
for my Love.
The paean of the
Equal heart and mind.
After You
A black hole of
grief
Leaking pain, raw
regret, self-contempt
As the end of summer
when a brilliant feather lies
Ragged, sodden in
the grass.
And the songbird has
flown.
Of such is the
kingdom of hell.
Torture, a
shuddering in the bones and yet
Last night the pure
moon floated like a leaf
Moist, pale, and
patterned in her familiar way
Between her stars
and clouds, the candid moon
Still anchored where
always
She was supposed to
be.
No mark of the
insolent dagger on her cheek,
No crimson kiss or
tears to show my wounds
She passed on her
dark acres to the deep
Green dank Gulf of
Day.
Oh would with her
passing my grief, this contempt,
Into some sort of
cave of some sort of sleep.
Oh would with dawn’s
coming
Some raiment of
artifice
Those spurious
feathers that now ruffle then settle.
Sorrows End?
Though I had lost my love,
The paddocks could calm me.
Deep in the applegum grove
No loss could harm me.
But when I went into town,
And saw around me
Lovers pass up and down –
Then sorrow drowned me.
Me and You
I made a heaven for you filled with stars,
Each star a song
Meant to give happy music to your ear,
Day and night long.
But in your workshop you are closed away
From my night sky.
Deafened by earth until you cannot hear
My stars that sigh.
And when night comes your sleepy eyes are blind
To heaven’s deepest blue,
That was a foolish toy, my sweetest dear,
I made for you.
Beauty
Beauty doesn’t walk through lovely days.
Beauty walks with horror in her hair.
Down long centuries of pleasant ways
Men have found the terrible most fair.
Youth is lovelier in death than in life,
Beauty mightier in pain than in joy.
Doubly splendid burn the fires of strife,
Brighter in the shinings they destroy.
My Love’s Treason
Had I had four white horses
Had I had four sturdy friends,
I’d have sold them into slavery
Would that have gained your ends.
I’d have sold them into slavery,
Had you so willed.
Thus my heart’s blood of the world
By your treason spilled.
Me and Him
My raison d’etre to
Rapture rekindle, deepen
Beauty by turning them
Into a song.
A song of liberty!
Not bound not by his rules:
No marble meaning’s mine
Fixed for a school.
My singing ecstacy
Winged for the flight.
He will hear differently.
But will he hear aright?
The Me to his You
Perhaps each year should bring
Little fresh songs
Like flowers in spring.
Now and then to deck the hours
For a brief while
And die like flowers
Flower like content to be
A mere sharer in man’s
Mortality?
On Shutdowns
Sometimes I think the happiest of love’s moments
Are the blessed moments of release from loving.
The world once more is all one’s own to model
Upon purely one’s own – nary another’s pattern.
Now each poor heart imprisoned by the other’s
Is instantly set free for splendid action!
For no two lovers are a single person
And lovers’ union means a soul’s suppression.
Oh, happy then the moment of love’s shutdown
When those strong souls we sought to slay recover!
On The Boy.
He looks in my heart and the image there
Is himself, himself, and than himself more fair.
And he thinks of my heart as a mirror clear,
To reflect the image I hold so very most dear.
But my heart is made much more like a stream, I think
Where my lover may come when he needs to drink.
And my heart is a stream that can seem asleep
But the sometimes tranquil waters run strong and deep:
They reflect the image that seems most fair
But their meaning and purpose sometimes otherwhere.
He may come, My Boy, and lie on the brink
And gaze at his image and smile and drink
While the hidden waters run strong and free,
Unheeded, unguessed at: the soul of me.
Me and Him
(Love is not love which alters...(Sonnet 116)
St.Paul (1 Corinthians) : Love... never fails)
When I was a child
I thought my Love would be
Noble, truthful, brave,
And very kind to me.
Then all the novels said
That if my lover prove
No such man as this
He had to forfeit love.
Now I know life holds
Harder tasks in store.
If my Lover fail
I must love him more.
Should he prove unkind
What am I, that he
Squander soul and strength
Smoothing life for me?
Weak or false or cruel
Love must still be strong.
All my life I will learn
How to love as long.
FUN??
Flat Chance
A huge, creeping
spider
Thrust suddenly into
stardom
By the flick of a
light switch.
I shuddered,
repeated the hectoring of myself
As always at these
times -
`He has a right to
be here Jena.`
Oh God but he's
doing it on me.
Twas totally by
accident,
But he was crushed
by the wholly inadvertent dropping
Of the Oxford
Dictionary.
And he never even
knew
He was an Arachnid.
Moral:
If you're content,
Watch out for people
who want to drop wisdom on you.
Down Below
We humans are
such gregarious souls
The proof is so
elementary.
Though distrusting
others all our lives
We cohabit forever
in the cemetary.
But we must wait
till we die –
Pursed lips force
the lie?
(Sulphur is gaseous
non grata.)
No. For we are also
at base alimentary souls,
Our idees fixed one
end, (usually t’other)
Be it to produce or
excrete, to love or erupt,
We’ll head straight
for up - or downunder.
So come on boys, let
it rip, don’t be coy, let it blast
We have a principle
here to uphold.
Pass the buck? Claim
your butt!
(On this one there’s
gold in being bold.)
Remember the rubbish
bins of the effete British rich
Smell far worse than
their counterpart poor;
For the waste of the
dinners on embassy row
Is shoved so
daintily out the back door
For the hungry, the
dero, to scavenge and ravish
A coq in the debris
of vin?
When it’s eggs and
beans, cabbage, cheese and a beer
He needs for the
thrill – not elan! –
Of that epicentral
roll
Let’s face it – it’s
a fart!
Come on all you
Yanks, lift your leg, and break wind
(Then do one more
for the poor British man.)
Above in response
to the following circulated on the net:
1. The formal word
for farts is "flatulate." While the word fart can serve as a noun or
a verb, flatulate is a verb only. 2. Farts are a concoction of air, methane gas
and other gases. Because methane is odorless, it is these other gases that
provide aroma. 3. The unpleasant odor associated with flatulence comes from
foods containing chemicals such as sulfur. Some of the more notorious suspects
would include eggs, beans, cabbage, cheese and beer. 4. Men average
approximately 13.63 expulsions of gas per day. Women (supposedly) average 3.28.
5. The legendary "Blue Flame": 12% of men admit to having ignited
their own farts. 6. "Passing" the buck: 52% of men and women admit to
having blamed others for their own flatulence, suggesting that may be one of
humankind's oldest lies is also one of its most widespread. 7. When posed the
question, "How long do you have to be 'going out' with someone before
you'll fart in their presence?".... the average of responses came out to
92.77 days -- 62.98 for men and 149.82 for women. 8. Etiquette tip: If you
clench your sphincter while passing gas, tremendous noise will be generated.
Relaxing this muscle will result in a smooth, silent release. 9. Common terms
for flatulation: poot, blow, cut the cheese, rip/cut one, float an air biscuit,
blast, break wind, and lift a leg. 10. Some not-so-common terms for
flatulation: crepitate, eructate, kwatz, carpet creeper, spider bark.
Springy B and the Secrets of the
Sea
(for Marko)
I smiled as I
bobbed in the rolling sea,
For I had the
strangest notion
Just how many
ancient, long-dead souls
Had piddled in the
Pacific Ocean?
I looked about
me, sneaked a leak,
Giggling privately
at the thought
That they’d all done
what I just did
Yet not one of us
was caught!
Presidents, First
Ladies, remote and aloof
Had blessed the
brine with dignified pee,
The fish piss in it
all the time,
Like the Water
Board… and me.
In the shallows I
stood and watched the waves
My face alive with
glee
And my new knowledge
of the origins
Of the froth in the
foaming green sea…
When
(For Mark)
When you see
behind the eyes,
Under the voices and
clear through the smiles,
Far over the horizon
and beyond the evening sky.
When you thrill,
when you hurt,
And others don’t,
Then you must write
before you die.
JOHN
First Times
I’d like, just
once,
To fall over and all
over in love
Just once
With you again.
Lilting through
spring
Laughing on the
terrace.
New mown grass,
Ripples of diving
ducks in the Yarra,
Sun leaping off the
oil of the Nicolais
Shimmering cascade
The quicksilver
dance had always been there
But unfledged,
unwitting me?
Feathers now so new,
so unfamiliar
You so very brand
new
And yet strangely
familiar.
Kisses, kisses – I
soared on gossamer wings,
You trembling like a
schoolboy
Clinging to the
ground under your feet.
I marvelling that I
had any power at all
Let alone such
And laughed and
laughed.
Oh how I would like
Just once more
To be contemplating
that bridge of ours
- the byways,
shyways of love -
Before we let the full
fury if it
Come striding
through.
Never such Fun
Glancing across the
room I stopped and took you in.
Nice. Very nice.
(The English are
addicted to understatement.)
Laughed to myself,
out of my league I assumed,
And carried on
eye-roving.
Why did I look back?
I have no idea –
fate is a notion for less precision oriented brains than mine.
But I looked back.
Eyes collided, I
felt a prickling and
As I watched yours
came alive –
You positively
crackled.
Then tilted your
head in due homage.
Oh how I liked that.
I felt renovated, redecorated.
Then your eyes – oh
God –
Subtle? So slow the
inventory.
Down and up, down
again and -
My ankles! They
tingled.
Oh god how much
longer could you be looking at my damned
Ankles? How could
ankles be self-conscious?
I don’t know, but
I’d swear they were blushing.
Then slowly - so
slo-owly up again.
My toes curled.
Those eyes again
I couldn’t miss it –
`Come on sweetheart,
come on.`
I smiled. Shook my
head - infinitesimally.
One eyebrow lifted,
then you chewed on your lip.
Sighed.
Rolled your eyes: I
couldn’t miss it
`We can’t forego the
pantomime?`
I grinned.
`You’re going to put
me through the hoops?`
Nodded. `You bet
you, sonny!`
I laughed – couldn’t
help it.
I laugh now just to
think of it.
All this across a
crowded room.
No, it wasn’t love
at first sight -
But by God it was
hot, heady stuff.
Oh and then you
really smiled.
My belly - a new law
of gravity -
A crazy, lurching,
plummet to never neverland.
I can honestly say I
had never before and have never since
Been so excited in
my life.
My whole world
reduced to a crackle!
God you were fun.
And so damned
beautiful.
I would like to
say that I know precisely when
Laughing and crackle
transformed into falling in love
And when that crazy,
special
Dance the light
fantastic became such standing with love
As I came to
understand
How intricately you
understood me.
As I came to know
that you would choose to spend the rest of your life
Counting every grain
of sand on the beach
Than one single tear
rolling down this face.
But I can’t. And I
don’t really care.
I do know we were
friends that very first night:
Friends at first
sight.
Nightsky
Out there you
show me
All the cities of
the sky.
The moon shimmers
its pathway over the lake.
You lay the silver
universe at my feet.
I red and gold
A’flame for where
you’ll take me
Starburst with the
sky.
Girls
Wherever you
turn,
Shops, the park,
swinging across campus -
Girls, girls, girls.
So many
Girls, girls -
blonde, brunette, copperknobs
Everywhere.
Dewy blue eyes -
melting brown, the odd
Emerald sparkler,
soft toffee...
The world is a
lollyshop for men -
Jellybabies spilling
out of the jars
Boobs, boobs, boobs
–
Rolling over the counter
Insouciant some -
others lush and bouncing
- (succulent) -
Some tilting
sweetly.
(If I were a man I
think those are the ones I'd go for.)
Long strong legs
pathways to eternity
Sly knowing glances
pushing open the door
(Heaven is
accessible)
The bell jingles
heralding the juiciest,
Tastiest little
parcels
– (male mouths
water) -
Goodies.
Heaven is here and
now.
And my God – bargain
basement prices nowadays -
Some are even giving
it away on spec!
So lovely all those
girls
Swinging along
there.
How, why - every day
I think it –
Did you ever choose
me?
Slip-Sliding
Slip-sliding on
the tropic of your chest.
`Sweat is the body's
tears - weeping for love, `
I mused, not knowing
I'd said it out loud.
`You with all your
vast experience, ` you teased,
`What do you know
about that?` and tickled me.
Oh I knew about
that -
I learned it the
first time you kissed me.
Your heart hammering
its way out of your ribcage
And my heart broke
into ten pulses
Thudding in the pad
of each fingertip
And broke again with
the next
Slash of the surf
into ten more -
Thrumming through
each toe.
Lungs crashed with
the pulsing pieces of my story,
An outrage of
pleading between my thighs.
I trembled with the
first rivulet
Springing down my
spine.
And knew I was gone.
Had no idea what
would take my place.
Perhaps nothing ever
did.
But all over the
world there they all are
Still slip-sliding
away.
Sweat is the body's
tears - weeping for love.
The Piano
`You enjoying
this?`
Unthinkable to say -
I smiled and
endeavoured to look enraptured.
`You’re a pathetic
liar, Marigold,` you laughed.
`We could have a
game of poker -
You like poker.`
I liked you.
I doubt now if I
would venture with anyone else.
Love it seems comes
only with the
Blind practice of
familiarised fingers
On an uncertain
keyboard,
Suddenly it sings
because it’s known.
But what happened
when you first hoped I’d
Soar like Katchen on
your Emperor?
And we crashed on my
A flat.
Earnest ventures?
I’d rather smile and
remember
Your base enjoyment
in the ridiculous -
Me fumbling around
on your rondo:
You laughing all the
while.
Perhaps that’s
why your arpeggio
Blew out all my
strings?
Gluteus Maxima - A `Lady's` Downfall
`Take care,` you
said and
Dropped a kiss on my
forehead.
Innocently I smiled,
casually lingered,
Watching as you
began your stride down Elizabeth Street,
Loose-limbed, a
natural elan.
And out of nowhere,
hypnotised,
The ripples had me -
Oh, how they had me.
There was never any
question that I didn't notice,
Hadn't always itched
to crawl all over
Your butt.
It was the third
thing I noticed.
(That, believe me,
is an accolade -
Usually it's the
first.)
But this was
lunchtime
We both had to work
-
And I should have
been used to it by now.
(I'd considered it
exclusively mine a fair while -
My own personal,
beloved architecture non-pareil.)
And I was supposed
to be satiated:
You most certainly
were.
But it had me -
Oh how it had me.
So clearly could I
envisage,
So immediately
recall those
Fantastic bloody
maxima
Pounding me into the
mattress
Rock hard and
Banging me into such
obsessive, helpless erotica.
And I was instantly
drowning in lust there on Elizabeth Street.
Oh God.
And you turned.
Why did you turn
just then?
You really had to
turn, just then?
I clenched, crossed
my legs and
Instantly uncrossed
them, shuffled from
One foot to the
other.
Thanked the powers
that be I wasn't a man -
How do they manage
it?
At least, with luck,
you wouldn't be able to pick it -
If I played my part
very, very well.
And you came back,
smiling quizzically.
I loved you
- Doted on you
secretly -
And wished you a
thousand miles away.
My beautiful, funny
man:
Such a gentleman you
were -
...Out of bed.
`You look flushed.
You all right?`
Oh God.
Sarah Bernhardt take
a bow.
Swallowing
frantically,
Still smiling
innocently – me on your pedestal –
How much longer
could I stay up there?
Those cossetted,
rarefied heights -
Your little
Anglaise.
I saw her so vividly
then -
My mother, the
Dowager,
That eyebrow
lifting, informing me
So drily, I was to
be a
Lady at all times
...Out of bed.
And now look what
they'd reduced me to,
Those damned gluteus
maxima -
Drowning in lust on
Elizabeth Street
At 3 on a Thursday
afternoon in November.
True Believers
At the going down
of the sun …
We will remember
them.
Lest we forget.
They said that.
They said it again
and again
And they're still
saying it even though they've
Forgotten because
they're still doing it
Again and again and
again.
Leaving the
cemetery - thousands of small white wooden crosses
I was appalled by
the crunching of my heels, gross heathens on the sad
Dead gravel of those
mothers' desecrated boys.
Your arm tightened
around me.
I saw it then as
a bright, blazing miracle
- a great shout for
the true believers –
That we two with no
innocence yet deeply clean eyes
Had forged love on
this hard internecine earth.
I knew it when you
said have my children
And have them soon.
I knew straight away – but said fiercely, but
Not sons. Don't ever
ask me to give you sons.
Your arm
tightened again.
You understood. I'd
come home:
My true believer.
Everything
You were to me
Everything elemental
that is not here
In Custody
It’s been
something of a muddle you know.
When they brought me
the news I discovered while
Pain may well be
coloured blue,
Agony is a raging
red inferno.
It took too long but
the
Rising of the sun
and
Setting of the sun
gradually did its work,
Monotony set in, the
maelstrom faded, and
I was coloured
beige.
The Priest,
avuncular to the end, had suggested
I should bear in
mind that you were watching over me.
(Heaven, you know.)
It’s been rather
wonderful many times -
My higher court of
appeal.
I could slip in and
out – private discussions -
`What do you think?`
I’d ask,
And a moment later
know to smile,
Perhaps decide,
`That’s not bad` or
To raise a quizzical
eyebrow and, sometimes,
Just get out of
there.
It hasn’t always
been comfortable though.
You’d sneak in
uninvited.
I’d feel you wince -
and I’d cringe.
I think often of
Jesus
-`Suffer the little
children` -
And, thinking of
them all,
The battered
children, the starving waifs
Huge brown eyes and
bloated bellies,
I know, if this is a
viable proposition
- this heaven and
this watching -
Not a day goes by
that He doesn’t weep.
And you.
If you’re there too,
Have you been
weeping?
Your little
Anglaise.
I can live with
that.
It’s the notion of
your cringing
That I can cope with
not at all.
The Rainbow
They say there’s
a pot of gold to be found
Where the sunlight
and the rain clasp in alchemy.
The river glinting,
plunging,
Foam streamed down in
white water frenzy;
Cockatoos
everywhere.
And the kookaburra
there in the Nicolai raised his head, cackled
Long, loud and
raucous.
He knew it all and
you my all knowing guru
Knew nothing.
You lifted me off
the sand burning into my soles,
Swung me round and
around,
Inscribing your
crazy circles in the air,
My skirt lifting and
whirling.
Laughing with him
what did you think?
To make your lover
so giddy with love she’d say it?
`Your thighs,` you
said. `Surely a girl
With thighs like
yours should believe she can own the world?`
Thighs, thighs… My
teeth gritted.
`Say it,` you
laughed. `Say "I… love… you…"
Say it slowly.
Practice. You can say it and you’ll survive.
The earth will not
cave in.`
The sand burned
again under my soles
Sinking, caving in
as
Laughing again, you
set me down, held me away and said
All certitude still,
I remember as though it were yesterday,
`When you are old
and grey, wrinkled and gnarled, my Marigold
With eyes so blue,
your heart so true
Your head such a
crazy cobweb mess,
Then when I’ve been
loving you what will seem all your life,
Then do you think
you might say it?`
You smiled. Pointed
to the rainbow arcing over the bridge.
You hugged me –
fierce suddenly - then said
I had no need of
crystal alchemy, you would be all my gold.
It should have been
as we first set sail,
Hurtling down the
stream of your quiet endurance,
Gliding over your
rainbow.
Love of my heart
around the years.
Friend of my head
down into forever.
My beautiful, my so
funny man.
I said it: the lone
marigold looked odd, out of place on the coffin.
Not lovely. Swamped.
But I said it then.
My head is still a
crazy cobweb mess.
Alone and dross
without you.
OTHER
Courting
Kisses taste the
sweetest
Where the fruit
still clings to the vine.
Lips come redolent
with honey
As the keeper
refrains from the hive.
Never doubt the
feast’s true glory
Nor think him to
love in vain,
But the dew dries
fast on the bud once cut -
The sheen of
innocence will not come again.
And there be
times when the winds blow hard and cold,
Worse, may blow
dust, come arid;
Such times draw
their toll, a man feels so old,
He needs memories of
days that were avid.
And nostalgia
loses some flavour,
If courting’s not
paid its full due:
For he loses the
beauty of the river,
Who sees it with but
a pilot’s view.
(With thanks to the
Marks – Kaminski and Twain)
Images of Love
She, shy now,
Stepping from the
shower, hurriedly
Swathes to the nose
in thick blue towel:
She, undone in
sudden notions of modesty.
Is she cowed by
perfected variations on the theme?
Embedded images of
hackneyed celluloid
Have they forever
spoiled her for all that is
Here and now and
true?
Does she shame the
fruition of her body
Hiding behind this
large, damp blue towel?
He with no more than
the royal images of love
She drew in his
mind.
Betrayal
Young as a child
almost,
Yet old with despair
From a love she
could not declare
I saw her naked in
the swift waters
Sitting on my rock
there
In the most private
of all
My proud
sanctuaries.
Outraged - their
betrayal compounded now -
I saw the same fish
nibble at her toes
And the same
butterflies preen at her shoulder;
She reached out and
a shaking finger plucked at my pebbles,
I saw now the
desperation as well as the lies.
And as he joined her
–
My good friend’s
husband - I saw
What courage dared
this other one here,
Heart in her hand.
Saw too the
tenderness in his fingers
Winding through her
hair.
Love would have its
hour in my clean rapid waters
I gave them that -
But yet defiled
them, courage, tenderness or no.
Ours had left no
other bodies in its wake.
I melted into the
bushes and would not go back.
Again
I see the
warnings all
around
I hear the
whispering grow
To a roar: a shout
to drown every sound
But the chant that
echoes `No!`
It taunts, it
mocks, it delights to jeer
At this old,
familiar play:
It splits its sides
to see me here
Retracing the same
steps on the way.
The rivers of
Venus overflow tonight
With the blood of
lovers rejected:
Stained crimson, the
old eternal blight
On the dreamers who
once elected
To give it a
whirl, give love its day
They thought they'd
reep blessing on earth;
Delving deep into
hearts, they'd look and they'd say -
Repeat the old
hackneyed words.
She believing she
meant it, he convinced he did too.
By God I think none
there were lying;
But girl, sooner or
later, one of them would rue
That such love could
turn faithless, dying...
And does it now
seem that I am returning
To this well-known,
much rehearsed play?
Am I to be open,
fair game for a spurning?
My God, you'll
regret it some day, my girl,
Oh God, I'll regret
it one day.
Ballade
And it seems an
eternity has been and long gone
'Ere those days that
I thought me immune;
Where I thought me
that love was a far away song
That I'd sung for
the last time in those dunes.
For the lessons
I'd learned then were galling and bitter
I thought them I'd
never forget;
Lodged deep in a
heart that would ration and filter
To keep me unwavering
yet.
I did all the
things that those lessons had taught me
Scrubbed my floors
and tended my brood:
Swept side with
impatience the gifts new men brought me
- entirely mistaking
my mood -
Where I measured
my heart in the voices of children
Who'd run to me for
lemonade:
Then smile at me
shyly, throats cooling, bellies filled
And run back to the
wattle's shade.
But I am a woman
and at that not a cold one
That long drought it
did take its toll;
I grew restless and
chafing, did fret 'neath the sun
Knew me too young to
be living so old.
Then he happened
by and I knew 'twas all over
My heart broke its
chains and flew free:
Right out of my
chest to the sky there to hover
And wait while I
wondered how long it would take him
To know that he wanted
me.
It took him a
while - he seemed not to notice -
A shy man, from the
chase he'd retired
So I schemed and I
plotted, I flirted - then courageous -
Knew I'd lose
nothing of me with my pride.
Ah, but little
did I know then what it was I was doing -
I'd been in the
shadows so long;
I'd forgotten the
glory, the sweetness in wooing
Oh so badly I had
this song wrong.
For I thought me
my heart now a canny creature -
A frugal hoarder it
seemed;
I thought I could
take and indulge in some pleasure
Spending but a
little of what it had gleaned.
But love is a
rare one - it won't pass lightly over -
The heart soars with
each day, with each hour;
With each smile and
each look, with each soft, fleeting gesture
Love engulfs even a
miser most sour.
And I was never a
stingy person,
I gave all or
nothing at all.
Which is why for so
long I stayed locked up in the garden
And refused to go
over the wall.
And he is a rare
one, the fruit in the orchard,
The flower in the
overrun weeds;
And I love him well
for I find him quite awkward,
No polished, nor
scattering his seed.
And the rustling
of the creatures down there in the gully,
The gleam of the sun
on the dew;
All joined soft to
whisper that I was at home here,
I could breathe as I
felt me so new.
For I sat 'neath
the tree at his feet and I rested
My head at home on
his knee;
And I knew it quite
safe for such love to be vested
In this man who
would take care with me.
I could
relinquish all need for avowal - no chart
I could follow him
then without a care;
For the cynic went
out of my troubled heart
With the touch of
his hand on my hair.
Gifts
Every whisper
gives the story:
Like to the
Songbird’s morning glory -
As to the eucalypts’
glisten and shimmer,
So she now gazes
with pride and with laughter in the
original mirror of
Spring.
That has left
behind the mediocre
Which reflected that
state - not one iota
Of joy or question
or thought for the future,
Just that dull, dank
pall that sets in in winter,
Bones old.
Now renewed,
there is life, there is vigour -
Old forgotten
questions spring alive with new rigour,
Demanding response
to shine silver with truth
Answers come clearer
with the cavities of youth
Long gone.
This Spring has
such warmth now, it enfolds her and calls her
To bask and to ripen
like corn for the reaper,
This time is a gift
to cherish - to treasure,
To give to this man
- with all the love and the pleasure
In the world.
Pigsty
Sweet and sour my
guru finds me
With the emphasis
resting on sour?
The news continues
to haunt me –
This was not my
finest hour.
Lust unbecoming
in a woman.
The sow tramples on
Dresden yet again?
She lumbers around
now – heavy, coarse and ungainly
Her reflections all
rendered vain.
The conflict
that’s left is a shambles – a pigsty –
She is dirty, she is
lewd, she is crude?
And for such a boor
she is curiously frightened
The pain in her head
now too rude
To be ignored. It
is persistent and growing,
It is stripping the
meat from the bones
Laying bare – well
that is the question
Why the gifts that
she offers turn to stones?
Enough! (Or, Not Enough)
Get you gone, old
man!
Be out of my bed,
away
I’ve had enough of
this dull pall
My set is not for
ennui.
The man for me
will be laughing, warm -
Droll, a wicked
gleam in his eye;
He’ll not think a
lay
A hedon waste of a
day
He’ll come to my
bed with but one intention -
To pound me to
glory, to drive me to freedom,
He’ll not get up to
run round the mountain:
He’ll be up to be
jogging me!
The Family of Man
You tell me sex
is not important to love
Get you gone, man,
get you gone!
You tell me I’m
young still,
I’ll get where you
are
In another dried out
decade.
I plant another
tree.
Its roots are
avid:
As too are mine,
These burgeoning
gifts of the earth.
Fruits of the vine,
food for the spirit,
Seeds of the flesh,
lush to the core.
O alive, alive is to
be!
Ripen is what I
will.
I’ll take life
and comrades, lovers, dance,
My children will
thank me one day.
Life is for the
living, loving, laughing
Deep bellied,
full-bodied:
The generous way.
I shall have a
man’s hand cup my breast
Circling round,
To say,
This is a fine, a
necessary sculpture, yes,
This is a thing of
beauty.
I shall have a
man’s shoulder to lay my head down
To give me my rest
To lend me his
succour.
It can be a cold,
hard world out there.
I shall have a
man’s hand to my belly,
Warming round,
Know the shiver of
truth in the fire,
As he traces my
thigh, moving up, moving in
To the deep of time
and dream.
And I shall give
to this man every gift that he asks
I will lie down only
his to please;
I will deplete all
my strength in his secret places
And no place will be
forbidden to me.
I will drink deep
of his wine,
Immersed in his
musk,
And his sweat will
be a river in which I drown
As I lie down only
his to serve.
I will honour
this man.
I will yield to my
man
As he burns his way
through my womb to say
Woman, you are and
I, we are Alive.
We are a part of
this earth
And its fruits
And in this flame we
are renewed.
Again we are made
whole.
And I say to
every man in this family of man
Now stand up and be
proud to say out loud
I am a Man.
A man of the earth.
A man of flesh,
muscle and bone.
A man of salt, of
sweat, I shed tears, I know joy,
I labour, I rest,
I feed my own.
I am a man of my
time, a man for all seasons
I dream dreams -
I know when to let
go.
But this one I hold.
I hold fast to my
mind, I hold under my arm,
I keep close to my
breast, this Woman,
My dove, my own.
She is my gateway to
the soul.
You say to me sex
is not important to love,
I say to you man,
still your tongue.
Think again, look
around,
Think on it now and
know.
Man doth not live by
the spirit alone,
Tis the flesh, not
the music, feeds love.
And whosoever
would not have an honoured body to hold
Is a denial of all
things cherished on earth.
Whosoever does not
have a loving body to hand,
Stands betrayed by
the family of man.
L’envoi:
Get you gone, man,
Get you gone!
Horticulture
Carpets of
spring,
Oh you needed
Or so you thought
Laughing low in the
sky suns
Convolvulus spilling
down the walls
Sollya springing out
of the cracks
And so you rained
all my summer,
And now yearn for my
autumn.
I never promised you
my marigolds.
But I picked some
daisies for you and
You grasped them
with hot greedy hands
And proceeded to
strip them
Petal by petal
Did you not?
Sucked my stems,
Prevaricated, and
then
Spat out yesterday’s
compost and
Didn’t like the
smell.
Yet you’d give away
every springly seed in your garden
To bask in my autumn
would you not?
Man, horticulture is
not your forte.
Letter to my
Daughters
Resign yourselves,
yes, but don’t ever
Entirely give up on
the world shaping vision of your youth.
And to all those
who will undoubtedly try to tell you the
Whole love shebang
thing is myth:
Know that this is
the myth of the walking wounded.
But know too to
smile and tread gently,
Such scar tissue is
likely thin -
(Probing can have
old warriors ablaze with pain and
It is a whole world
easier to do hurt than to undo it.)
And whatever you
do never dissipate your giving -
You are not Jesus.
You cannot feed the
five thousand and come out of it whole.
Take it from me –
I am your mother – I know
The love affair to unhinge
continents is around the next molehill,
But the thing is you
need a whole mountain of grace
To be able to reach
it.
And most men are
two-sided coins:
One woman’s knight
is truly another’s monster –
I’ve seen it time
and time again.
Know that the
grace of a woman is a non-renewable resource:
Of her initial
endowment, with every eviction from a monster’s bed,
It seems she leaves
a good ten per cent behind.
I love you –
And down through the
years given freely to your nurture
I’ve had your voices
ringing in my ears:
`Love you, mum.`
If it was true,
then of that love,
There’s only one
thing I’d ask of you –
Take all the care in
the world with yours.
And then show
this letter to your daughters.
Some things, I know,
will never change.
Letter to a Friend
Age to age and
youth to youth
Have a certain fit I
envy.
The one honed
mellow.
The other blissful
ignorance of an issue.
Whichever - whatever
-
They both yet have
that
Certain fit I envy.
Nowhere’s a lonely
place it seems.
The head knows the
calm
And looks back with
a smile
As though that time
were all over.
But the rest still
watches the
Young ones swing
And in spite of the
head
Wants to copy.
And watches her one
Who seems more of
the one
And wonders where it
is
Is it there? To be
found?
That certain fit I
envy.
My Malua Boy
Straw-coloured
country,
Those airless nights
-
Deep fetid pall,
Southern Cross
vanquished.
Nothing moves
These dead nights
lie empty -
As we two.
The old girl
downstairs
Never bangs on the
ceiling.
The cicadas
committed suicide last week.
Dead heart of the
world,
The moon's left her
station -
Yesterday's
riverbeds,
Brown scorched
earth:
Our bodies arid.
Sweat tells no story
the neighbours
Could never share.
Ah, but Malua -
Malua Bay, my boy,
Do you remember that
night?
Ocean's roar
And Orion in ecstacy
Dancing there:
Galactarian
foreplay,
But Venus -
Cowering in shame:
For your surge
with the foam
Set the sharks to
flight that night.
The dolphins in awe
Performed triple
somersaults!
The minnows took
fright -
Trembling as one for
my bones.
The salt on the tide
-
The musk of our
ardour
The lamps from the
harbour
Shone on never such
lust
And glittered,
Then froze
As we two:
Oh, with Love we
tore the planets out,
With kisses drowned
the sea.
And struck jealous
moon clean out of the sky
You old devil -
My Malua boy.
Marigold
We lay in the
long grass,
And even this close,
The shell-pocked
villages of my love excited me.
I lapped around his
funny tower,
The leaning Tower of
my very own Pisa
Limp and plain
tuckered out.
And loved him
And laughed and
laughed -
Buried my face in
his hay
Fuzzy and warm,
The Welcome Inn of
my Lord.
But I trembled
with the ferocity of it
And was astonished
that he couldn’t glory
In my high soaring
vision,
That I had roamed
and seen
Top to bottom of
him.
*
My song.
I wish now I’d sung
it -
True and clear as
all the bells of heaven
Over the Dandenongs.
But so new was I, so
sure
That the tune of my
idolatry of his flesh,
The notes of my
infatuation with his bones
And the low vibrato
of his laughter for my pleasure were food enough:
So replete was I, so
sure
That, his woman
tucked under his arm,
The sun, the heat
and the rustles of tiny creatures in the grass
Could fill his mind
with anything he’d ever desired
If I couldn’t.
And you - barren
and lost in your rich man’s citadel -
You poor old
mercenary:
You’ll go blind,
man, digging into your arsenal
Blundering around my
cottage
Agnus Dei, qui
tollis peccata mundi
Miserere nobis -
My candles shed no
light in your citadel -
Agnus Dei, qui
tollis peccata mundi
Dona nobis pacem.
The Lamb of God
didn’t approve?
He was secretly
jealous
Of my earthy revelry
in my love’s villages?
Give it up, man.
Always, always I’m
out there
Singing my song -
The bells of all
heaven:
Perhaps the Virgin
sees,
Sees only never such
love:
Now that she can
approve. She smiles and lends her woman’s breath
To my candles and
With the Holy Mother
beating the winds
Whipping up the
skies
I can indulge my
light fancy
That my song can
Carry to the
Dandenongs.
There’s nobody
home, man.
I’m out there in the
fields -
The other one’s
marigold.
Perhaps
Perhaps he still
remembers the first time they kissed.
The first time she
hung frightened
On the edge of it
all
Hoping his lips were
stepping stones
To the kind of
centre she wanted to be in.
Perhaps that’s why
he can still
Bring himself to
try.
Mediocrity
(For Peter Shull)
The icon of the
post war 20th century:
Guaranteed
politically correct.
But when mediocrity
rules
Excellence is not
fixed in a high place
Nor even defined,
But juggled about,
dropped,
And trodden upon by
the great, celebrated majority who
Look only straight
ahead,
Never upward.
Mediocrity:
In the vague,
spinning spiral of aspiration
Hope is converted to
contempt,
Faith becomes a
musty, quaint ideal
That fades into a
nervous fantasy,
And trust is a word
that has rusted.
Raucous voices echo
around the spiral
As the lone silver
splinters off lone men and women’s dreams
And spins off into
the dreadful oblivion
Of lone men and
women’s brief eternity.
While floating in
the spiral
Are the individuals
whom mediocrity consumes
With bureacratic
banality.
Safe from the spiral
are the rich, who smirk,
The LA famous who
pose and prattle of Love
(Of which they know
sweet bugger all)
The insane, who
laugh as they dream on,
And the dead, who
sleep, in defeat.
Never call it love
I am the
universe's lost child abjured.
Swallowed whole my
own unique creation
In Lucy's mutated
mitochondria.
Yesterday's vision
the dead
Grey ash of
yesterweek's dreams
Dead stories of what
it was to be me, me, I
Shrouding these
hunter-gatherer bones.
Yesteryear's
fragments importuned
Lovers, oceans,
symphonies, poets
A clamouring vessel
of nothing to give, nought to take, save
Yesterday's
atavistic propulsion
No dream now...
Eros bow down
Shake you never so
hard each and every rosy apple
The bough trembled
in no garden.
As new wise men give
fantasy shape
To old illusions the
light dims around us
In the zoological
jungle
Does mind not beat
on necessity?
Necessity!
Will being unborn
learn to bear?
What then the
rapture?
How now the
savouring, sucking surrender
Breaking the cavern
of mortal song
Into haunted
cadence, shattered slivers,
No dying cries of
pain -
No shining to be
summoned from unfathomable darkness:
No renewal here to
rock classical harmony
Into loving primal
sleep?
Lovers who beat to
creation's dance
Logical sinew
pumping out Darwinian mathematics
No metaphysical
ballet, no unique form, nor original feature
Mere A, C, G and T:
No question, no
call, no answer -
No love.
Never call it love!
Nucleotides... no
cone of light shimmers on the sea
Only the deep, dark
Stygian depths
Of nihilism for all
but the gene.
Nibble at space you
will never taste stardust
Your image is
deformed.
Waxing has made,
waning will end
And if darkness is
generous the most granted can be
Another Lucy
look-alike
To dry your womanish
tears
For what is found
not to be lost
It was never found -
Not in greedy flesh,
not in yearning souls,
Flesh, flesh, flesh
and
Heart, heart, heart
Still, tomorrow and
tomorrow is but
Yesterday, yesterday
We can never call it
love!
Art may call forth
the phantom –
Music may speak with
gathering energy, falling grief
And the poets answer
with passion and refinement
The fire will never
cleanse.
Towering spirits
caught in elegance and wit
May streak and hunt
the moonlit shore:
Race the rapids,
grab at the firmaments -
Yet with calm and
indolent judgment
All this the man of
science knows
And knows but this:
Gaze on the
starfields all you will
The changing face of
truth is the mockery mask
Of A, C, G and T.
The joke is on us.
Listen and you will
hear all the jungle laughing.
Our minds may beat
and beat
On necessity, yet we
may
Never, never,
This side of
eternity
Call it love?
For Love of Stew
`Tell me what you
like.`
The skin on the nape
of my neck
Screamed alive in
protest,
My face flamed and I
looked away quickly -
Such a fool -
Desperately envying
the wall its anaemic anonymity.
Undeterred he
grabbed my jaw and yanked it back around.
I swallowed, had no
choice but to meet his eyes -
Smiling he was –
questioningly –
Obviously waiting.
Somehow subtly I
managed to retrieve possession of my face.
I discovered a new
fascination with the ceiling.
`Well? Tell me what
you like.`
I swallowed again,
took a deep breath -
Like?
I yearned to be
home.
Oh God! Three
hundred kilometres away.
Speechless, my body
stained
Crimson - the waratah
on the hotel bureau -
A dull thing by
comparison.
Tell him?
Words. Words. I
smiled brilliantly.
Somehow I found some
- ` Why
Don't we just do
what you like?` -
I nodded hopefully -
`I'd like that.`
Nodded again,
enthusiastically,
Inexpressibly
relieved. A solution.
My smile relaxed, I
breathed again and
Rediscovered
affection.
Men are easily
pleased are they not?
That should work.
Shouldn't it?
But, no, he didn't
like that idea.
What a hero. The
patience:
`Jena, how am I to
know what you like if you won't tell me?`
Out loud?
They flashed before
me in technicolour -
Purple prose - or
pristine clinical - whichever,
Me white now, the
bagged stone walls doubtless looked positively
Lurid by comparison.
My mouth was so dry.
I gazed, speechless,
My heart was beating
so fast
I could actually
hear it drumming in my ears.
Words?
Dizzily I confronted
my own foolishness
Reflecting with such
clarity in his eyes.
I wilted –
Entirely forgetting
what my gut knew all along
All those words so
raw -
Stripped bare of
affection.
(I challenge you to
write down every one
And find a single
loving character.)
Meanwhile all I had
was mortification stripping every bone to its
Humiliated marrow.
Whatever happened to
tenderness?
Manuals.
Bloody geography -
Got to know where
you're going,
Only one possible
destination here.
South a bit, west a
little
When it should have
been
North and east?
Got to have good
directions in your pursuit of the Big O.
I resigned myself to
following the dedicated trail of the
Small O - what a
thrill -
Thinking privately
even that would take a
Huge miracle now.
Perhaps the ceiling
took pity on me?
Inspiration. Such a
relief!
It came out as a
squeak - but
Still wasn't any
good.
All women, I was
informed, are different.
They are?
Bleakly I hoped all
men were too -
Please let this one
be unique?
He was still
waiting.
Well, I ventured, I
probably wasn't
That different.
Oh God. He thought I
was a freak?
Suddenly I wanted to
laugh.
Surely there must be
Something, I thought
wildly. Just anything
That could be
sufficiently within this
Expert technocrat's
efficient repertoire that could
Get us through till
morning?
All women?
Of them all why had
he chosen me?
And why had I ever
thought it a wonderful idea
To be the chosen one
of this one?
He was American.
He'd read all the
manuals.
I closed my eyes.
Wondered sadly if that
Goliath of
Reconstruction had entirely given up on Twain:
`He loses the beauty
of the river
Who sees it with but
a pilot's view...`
And perhaps they
don't go much for stew in America.
You have this
specific mass of flesh.
You roll it around
in seasoned flour -
Who cares how much
flour, for God's sake?
(Excess will just
fall off:
Doesn't do any harm,
after all)
First time you throw
in some basil,
Maybe a bay leaf. A
few peppercorns.
Some vegetables –
carrots, onions, whatever you have.
Then you cook the
thing
A fair while. (Got
to break down
That connective
tissue.)
Doesn't taste bad. But
you think -
Next time I might
add a touch of oregano.
A couple of cloves
might be good too -
And maybe an extra
half hour could have
Had it positively
melting in the mouth..
So - pretty good,
yes.
But - a bottle of
claret
Would have surely
given it a lift.
Right. Plus a
spoonful of tomato puree would
Probably top it off
- and a sprinkling of sugar...
By God. Fourth,
fifth time around
That's a pretty
bloody good stew!
Does me.
But then I'm just an
enthusiastic consumer,
Not a purist.
One day I
experimented with cinnamon.
Don't know what made
me think of that
- Just a whim -
Fucking inspired it
was!
(But I love stew)
Phoenix - or, Taking Care
If my thoughts of
you were mistaken,
This last tilt for
grace mere self-deception,
Where then will I be
down the road?
What then is this
balm?
This innocent
healing,
This helpless
affection that,
Resisting all
contenders, keeps its vigil
Despite the cold
winds of reason
They blow, blow, icy
and lucid,
Blow, blow, back and
persistent,
Buffetting love away
with the tides
Clean off the edge
of the sea.
Don’t ask to know.
I dream you soft,
Would clothe you
with tenderness:
The mauves of the
heather under the dew of September
In the Highlands,
the cool lands, the ethereal dawning -
The Lakes through
soft gauze, Windermere, misty,
You filtered on my
mind.
The clear rippling
view of the river and the backdrop
Rising mountains,
lofty and still:
Contained in their
grandeur as the trampling, the guns,
The dogs and the
beaters fade now for the drums -
Your fingers begin
the play:
The thudding beat of
your rhyme.
Inflame the other
loving, not quiet now, compulsive,
Steaming out of the
pores,
Streaming down the
raw nerve ends
Riding clear off the
planet,
To crash on the
precipice of being.
Skin sliding on
sweat.
Salt vanishing old
scars.
Plenitude: the
sweetest gift of the act.
Our bed draws you
kind on my mind.
Still, the gifts you
are offered will turn to stones.
Your tongue the
whiplash on my heart;
This heart, the
survivor,
One obdurate
contender,
My heart lying full,
with the helpless affection
That called you
back:
One more time.
Oh man, tis as
well I am some kind of strong,
They transplanted me
these many moons ago.
Oh man, you get at
me where I live.
But these natives
have nothing on me:
You singe, you can
burn,
You do roast me
alive.
My story, my own,
will fly off to the wattle
To grieve, perhaps
ever unsung?
But then again, a
new dawning -
Sun laughing
mightily -
A morning chorus to
riven the sky
As I rise from the
ashes:
Emerald plumage
exalting and crowning
The sapling that it
is to be me.
So if you could
translate this morse of mine,
If you could rise to
my story,
Reflected in the
love of our daughter perhaps,
Shining in the eyes
of the baby.
My pleasure, my
treasure - my life and my lands -
All there in the
fingertips tracing your bones,
For I’m thinking the
very last time.
A smile goes such
a very long way, man,
Just one smile
lights a whole day, do you see?
I could carry you
away then up over the sky
Up over the gums and
the kookaburra’s joy would
Ring in your ears
His laugh full bore
as he sees:
That at last
You understand -
That this woman
at your hand
Even as the land
Is yours in borrowed
time.
No more no less than
the soil am I.
As with the land all
over the world -
A good woman is much
as a good plot of earth:
You’ve got to look
after it.
The Paris Tunnel
I fall in love
too easily
I fall in love too
fast
Fat moon in her
virtue
Sweet tendrils of
fidelity
Clothing men all
velvet of tenderness
Women stripped of
their hubris.
Oh yes I fall in
love too easily
Just a turn, just a
catch of a phrase:
A waif with huge
eyes
The wheel of a
swallow
Scent of the
lavender
Crowning all now with
all glory
And I drowning in
love again.
Oh I see the mire
too easily
The locusts swarming
the lies
Mars flames the
planet
The jackals, the
carrion
Rivers of betrayal
Just a sneer, just a
slick-oiled phrase
And the humming, the
buzzing
The great orgiastic
frenzy I
Sunk in the mire
again.
But I'll still fall
in love just as easily
The only way I know
to make it come:
The day all say they
dream of,
The dawning some of
us yearn for
The day we can
rewrite the song:
Only the bad die
young
To Henry Thoreaux
One who lives
drawn by his own skill
Has the whole world
in the palm of his hand
All there for the
grasping.
Detached or
entwined,
Remote or engaged,
He can ride it, walk
round it,
Glide under or
through it,
It will bend and
accommodate his will;
Or so it seems.
Not that it matters.
If it snaps he’ll
create another to his liking:
His inner resources
sure guide.
To be envied he is
this inimitable draughtsman.
His horizons are
generous and clever.
(Though knowing and
frugal
He has none to
squander)
He husbands while
other men fritter and worry
Their allotted
portion away.
Buffetted and tossed
in a maelstrom of trivia
Swept up with the
tide of some chance fleeting grandeur
Unable to
distinguish the one from the other,
Washed up on the
rocks of their own inner chaos
They erode: they
diminish
And lose what they
yearn for -
The whole world just
a whisper away
From the reaching
palm of their hand.
Those Fields I Left Behind Me
(For Peter Shull)
I suppose the
alfalfa still springs
Fresh, violet faces
each year
In the fields I left
behind me;
And I suppose the
same children
Slide like furry
mice down the stalks
Of those long
stemmed autumn sunsets,
Stealing a last
quick run before
Dark and, oh God, I
suppose that
Same fat balloon
hauls up the same
Moony crew of
star-eyed lovers
On their nightly
trip to ever...
And I suppose its
still the same
Big sell it always
used to be -
In the fields I left
behind me.
© Jena Hamilton 1999
<updated in November>