sky bright

any idea?

2005-06-15T23:26:00.000+10:00

Would you ever write a poem with the line "not concerned about ever arriving" in it (we're talking a non-ironic sense here)? An American poet not much of my acquaintance, W.S. Merwin, did in the 6 June edition of The New Yorker (no, I don't subscribe, I got a good dentist).

And then there's this other bloke, C.K. Williams (what's wit the initials wit these guys, eh?), in the same issue with some lame poem about a tiny insect (a fly, a midge, I want to know) being compared and/or contrasted with Tsvetayeva's essays. Is this a cop-out or what? Isn't this so done.

The New Yorker is, like, a major player, an institution. They must have da money to pay for good stuff, not crapola. Please explain! Or are these guys the real cream cheese and I just don' geddit.

el culo de bettie

2005-06-04T18:21:00.000+10:00

Bettie holds up all she'll want, trunk and flowers
she’s bored by a doll, slip off the pretty
she sits on not merely her beauty

don’t pretend you’re in the long hall for peekaboo
forget it, she’s no ghost girl
but full of promises, all of those “36 Flavors” at once

taste the good side, that boop pose
her candy showing pink, a hold of each cheek
they speak to one another

seated in that good place
smoothed with the purple swells with doing
she’ll not surrender her back

says no, the one who does the choosing
she holds up there in abundance
no matter what language you speak.

Taking up Didi's challenge.

of further

2005-06-02T17:23:00.000+10:00

it's getting to the cold
but I repaired the truth of the cover
as if this excuses morning
in its fragile network
dirty mud, small wheels, obstructed rock

the horizon is snaky and green
you form clouds
it looks that smooth
my hand spikes the material
the zone extends the zone

blue could be finished
in the work of lightyellow
water introduces the edge to blur
folding the other method
the wing, the movement

rubber, tobacco
the other stench
the chilled dusk
each possible surprise
mine in the flight of order

not the facts

2005-05-17T18:12:00.000+10:00

data ignited its lagoon, flowers burnishing the delay
as if it’s never simple as this

fear arrived - don’t doubt the price
this is exact, ruins under scarlet & an efficient fist

when the smoothest languages will be carried out
which will be a garden?

too much is delayed to recover ours
& sequences?

this whole sensitivity was lost in the surface
in the shovel of pleasure

rage forms roofs, to persecute, decree models that sweat
& the wall, my winter

the morning was a time of patience, of my colours
the losses, only inclinations

to kiss them and not drink them, with intention
broad with the hour, calm, to be

is mine the fear, when the day goes external
part of the square

feeding material, packing and spillages of strength
in the tide

trees align avenues that wake up wide with distance
a taste draining detail

as if in a dream, a legend fainting amongst facts
or preferring duration

on practice

2005-05-17T15:27:00.000+10:00

and slow, mobile, practical
from land, the temporal

continuous exposure of natures
go and go

pages re-enter and speak equally
here, if they demand

extravagence in the body
amplitude of the a

poetries, no excuses
someone feels it in matter

which thing can form
words in blots

fish of Confusion, the cut and more
one old shape

all technologies modify
fragments recovery

more interesting
the intermediate bodies

the houses, automobiles
approximate lucent

which thoughts you speak
and speech be with you

hats poem

2005-05-16T23:20:00.000+10:00

Night extends to satisfy the sky
One night hotels excite themselves with argument

Oh, that it presses on my head!
not necessity but forms of presence

The space, the yellow dog, that one iron gate
the brim, a sliding terrazzo

Consider, it was interruption
surrounding time, a house, a dream

Prepare to face order, contact faces
what decree creates the hour, an hour that's whole and works

Days before days

If the confidence of the hour takes the stairs to return
and comes low, the end is average

And help, in my opinion
all these hats relate to something!

together and part

2005-05-16T22:35:00.000+10:00

if memory is an aversion of skin
its oil is a determined substance

if flowers are the ones you contact
they will have caused you more pain

were speech that mildewed
it explains the packing of the world

let the negligence in night
separate the dense sighs

what delays explain autumn
that you had been assembling so smoothly

chains

2005-05-15T15:09:00.000+10:00

chains
perforate fear
how they align

data
extended to
chains companies borders

clutch
prohibits repair
layers equip experts

where
substance ends
arrive, touch chains

it's
easy to
be executed, accumulated

inconsolable
the tangent
of a sigh

2005-05-05T19:08:00.000+10:00

whatever, night comes the cool and I hear the sound, travelling the rev, and I listen, but night doesn't listen, it is and moves until dawn. what if I whisper ... no, even that is not the sound, much too personal. the night revs and that's all ... speak into darkness and all that is is a sound after another sound.

whatever comes next

verso

2005-05-02T17:59:00.000+10:00

lines reverberate approaching the runway
lines pick free
lines are bored into extremity
lines speak of a modern remake
they are exhausted by regular features
lines talk bad

lines live not for hobbyists
lines look at serious crime
lines bring to the point
lines wind around corners
they lose it right here
lines sit hard by

lines revive what we are
lines are conflicted and nasty
lines loiter on the board
lines are addictive graphics
they are not always reliable
lines fill with complete disgrace

lines swim in it
lines fill to full
lines rush into disturbed areas
lines volley accusations
they pace about
lines make selves available

lines remember
lines bore
lines fear
lines die
they wait
lines spread out a long distance

lines put on company
lines clutch the forbidden
lines connect with the moving business
lines arrive
they require intimate journeys
lines decay with stuff

lines are touched
lines run softly in a collection
lines can be easy
lines grope for a tangent
they sigh to each other
lines provide uninterrupted service

april gone

2005-05-02T12:02:00.000+10:00

april crouches coolest
swings and turns
exists in my face
is troubled and undone
coming from a kind mouth

april is falling down
prolongs and follows
clutches
exhales and gathers
burns often bleak and grim

april has been on call
laments and expects
is enacted on by forever
hurries into religion
and peeps out

april swims in its stress
sinks into earth
flings and shouts
connects and departs
is wrought with call

april holds on to play
reverberates and falls
is gilded and dragged
muses upon the kindest
foresuffers

april drifts about fair and cannot say

what's really going on

2005-05-01T22:23:00.000+10:00

Not sure why I bother with this. There must be some reason. The yadda yadda over there never reaches us.

Perhaps because the people in the north think the real weather is there. Here, it's reaching winter and that's what's happening. Don't believe anyone else. Don't believe all that crap about April being the cruellest month and it all being about Spring. Bollocks.

I'm tired of the centre stuff. Tired and bored.( Just as I'm tired and bored of this slight society. Orstraylia. Trying to be Anglash or I-merican). Give it up! We're here, let's get used to it.

Searching for the reason. Weather weird. It should be colder - the swimmers say the water has become suddenly cold late last week. Only someone from the south will understand this. Still feeling the last sparks of summer. Phew-eeh. But at night the nippiest in the air. The moon is becoming a winter moon, cold and clear.

Nothing's reality. But the south is as unreal as the north. Don't believe the hype. We're as real (or unreal) as any. Strange rain, over part of city but still clear around here. I want the cold. I want another season.

been there, done that?

2005-04-30T23:06:00.000+10:00

If artists once thought they could make one with the universe, what happened to that? Drown in the stars.
What one, what universe - the cop out, the cop out.
Scared of beauty and guts (oh verboten, verboten).
All around me, a strange kind of bitterness.
In the grid of language, what surprise!

star sonnet

2005-04-30T11:57:00.000+10:00

thro' star catalogue numbers
we fly as guests
an extensive list
of rocks, and how they died

collected ink blasts
beliefs, quests, the lather
they say 'in the Stars'
broadcasts memory

the entire astro high
constellates its show
serving states of matter

it's an expensive game
3D sailing
through the Division

almost avoiding anzac day

2005-04-25T21:11:00.000+10:00

down by the bay
trawl of airport light

tomorrow a school day
two-up and club noise

full moan groaning
a drink then

home via traffic
walking with night

a sunny day

2005-04-25T11:34:00.000+10:00

Who couldn't resist this?
"Detailed book on how to have sex with any woman instanlty" from Reassessing G. Cuckold.

I am steadying my hand now after having gone all shivery.
The sun is out and it's a fine day here in the world.
Although I'm reassessing many things
every spelling error sparkels.

the paper thang

2005-04-24T11:36:00.000+10:00

Gosh, there's a lot of poetry books around. That paper thing still happens.

I love paper. I'm a stationer's delight. I thought of making my own little book, just for me and a mate or two, but my printer re-e-e-ally didn't like double-sided printing. I think there's too much humidity about.

Also think maybe I shouldn't make a book. Because there's too many books around, too many good ones.

beckett and tabios

2005-04-24T11:21:00.000+10:00

Tom Beckett at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e v-a-l-u-e-s has been busier than me. (See his comment below.) His latest interview is with ms chatelaine, ms hay(na)ku, ms very busy, Eileen Tabios.

Eileen talks of being attentive:

"I don’t think poetry begins (or ends) somewhere or sometime. I think poetry exists all around us and my job as a poet is to be attentive enough to recognize its facets. For me, this is the difference between a “poem” and “poetry.” A poem is a snapshot, a manifestation frozen in time. The poetry experience -- as in the engagement with any one poem -- continues beyond where the poem (if it’s a written manifestation) ends on a page."

My thoughts, going in other directions:

If I am not attentive here, I'm attending some where else.

How does one keep the balls in the air? Yet, that isn't the point.

An old saying, 'be here now', in language and weather and the events that pass for, in, through history.

There's a temptation to mix up attention with intention. But they are so different, especially for the poem.

extremities

2005-04-24T10:10:00.000+10:00

the end comes around, simply and directly
eyes on obscurity dream more of something

change masses on a mark that colours the edge
nevertheless, a fog offers the coast its rhetorc

form is given a lucky discovery
nucleus of the machine, conduits of dark

an old abundance after sex supression
we’re gone, we don’t create desire no more

courtesy of flight, vibrating spiders
pulverise the earth and its noises

you are proof of a learned Baroque
conveying models of the other

a question

2005-04-24T10:04:00.000+10:00

if identity is identical ...

who will identify me
at point of sale

2005-04-24T10:02:00.000+10:00

I am my own phantom.

later

2005-04-02T23:38:00.000+10:00

there's a rumble
and a shine
tonight
if not anxious
night
if not dark then
night
what do I
want to
listen to
the light and
tiny insecting
slips between
house and air
and land and
stir ridge
shoulder
heart
hall walks
and the shrug
of old TV
preparing
morning

this afternoon

2005-03-23T17:54:00.000+11:00

head aches into
grey hatched
skies

moving
it all
from any thought

that becomes fashioned
around poor
time

wished
I could
buy it once

looking to big weather

2005-03-22T16:51:00.000+11:00

Emily Dickinson

1581

The farthest Thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the Sky
And rumbles still, though torrid Noons
Have lain their missiles by—
The Lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself—
But I would not exchange the Bolt
For all the rest of Life—
Indebtedness to Oxygen
The Happy may repay,
But not the obligation
To Electricity—
It founds the Homes and decks the Days
And every clamor bright
Is but the gleam concomitant
Of that waylaying Light—
The Thought is quiet as a Flake—
A Crash without a Sound,
How Life's reverberation
Its Explanation found—

sky ... from someone else

2005-03-22T16:29:00.000+11:00

an extract from Nazim Hikmet's Things I Didn't Know I Loved

...
I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves ...
they call me The Knife ...
lover like a young tree ...
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
to a pine bough for luck
...