Friday, April 30, 2010

Empty seat

Empty seat

 ***+ seat empty +***
Seat sits empty
Seat sits bare
There is no one sitting there
Perhaps a stigma attached
If well bodied or physically able
To try sitting on that
As if to do
The first small surrender
To morbid thoughts of mortality
Conceding age and infirmity
Still the seat remains unused
Perhaps in sitting be abused
By another old and frail
Who is half as healthy and hale
Perhaps pregnant and large as a whale
Someone must more deserving
Of a place for posterior resting
Between those other people sit
While we stand and grip
Riding bumps with unseeing nonchalance
Never meeting eyes of other commuters
As if riding a train alone
Except for the shouting twits
Using mobile phones
Instead of sending silent tweets
Yet still does not explain
Why seat empty does remain
As with stoic faces we stand
Tired and worn by day at work
Even our feet are hurt
Yet no one moves to take the seat
We stand until our station reach
Then shuffle off to home and hearth
where we can our stoicism lapse
Make ourselves over comfortable
And contemplate over tea
Why no one sat when seat was free.

News Cycle

News Cycle

 +o.  News Cycle  .o+
The news cycle is not about
Sport or economics
The business deals of the day
Political interactions many
None may gain a mention
Unless the media is of interest
Peace brought to a troubled land
Less interesting than an actor glands
For actors popular are newsworthy
Stories a few news cycles old are not
Fresh perspectives and views
New angles of consideration
Even if the journalist does not agree
With what they write
How good the job they do
To make it interesting for you
So much by news cycles does not fit
In politics or business
Great disasters on stock exchange continue
Even after the news is written
Underlying fundamentals the same
Even if no longer stated
In the daily media round-up
Sets us into depression
Bad is always better
Heroism a troublesome trait
For move a few adjectives
And shining knight of hour
Becomes a villian to negate
Courageous becomes reckless
Without thought for own safety
Becomes a suicidial death wish
All you read see and hear
Discuss in morning or over beer
Has been written to sell to you
A commodity journalistic
Not written by those who know
Written by those who can write
The best expressions with prejudices true
To make you read and hear and view.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Bring them in

Bring them in

***  bring them in ***

Bring them in
Bring them in
With dogs or alone
Cows for milking
Need bringing in
They've been relaxing
Since morning milking
In the upper pastures
Another twenty minutes take
To bring them down
Long tails casting
To remove flies persistent
Hanging off the cows as if
Were poorer relatives on lottery winner
Just a boy and a stick
Perhaps a dog to hurry them
Tell those cows time to move
Bunch them up and bother them
Keep them moving with wide gait
Heavy udders swinging
To the pulse constant set
Of bring them in
Bring them in.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Cubicle land

Cubicle land

 + cubicle land +
Shrieks of joy
Children running
Kindergarten days
Never infect corporate maze
In company lands
A smog of disapproval
Smug snobbery towards fun
As if a smile costs
Or each moment might incite
Rebellion against the board
A potential ceasing of all work
As workers suddenly realise
More to life than this
Buttoned down and cubicled
Oppressed in permanent gloom
From morning to noon
A brief escape to breath
Air not by boredom saturated
Before return to corporate Alcatraz
Where warders have glass offices
To ensure compliance
With every rule and order
Captain Blighs numerous
Marinettes in suits
Ready with disapproval
For any leisurely pursuits
Afternoon a marathon
Minutes of plodding torture
Till Time finally expires
a jaunty dash for freedom
First breath of delight
The world has meaning new
Till next morning when must wake
And again the office chores pursue.

Poetry only read

+ Poetry only read +

Poetry is only read
By poet readers familiar
Those who poetry do not view
Never ever seem to
Becomes a divide insurmountable
Partitioning of knowing complete
Those ignorant philistines many
Who never near poems would tarry
Lumps of rotten wood for hearts
Heads empty of any smarts
Completely dead to another world
Less complete than a bridge unjoined
The flotsam and jetsam of the street
Never the twain seems shall meet
Words escape beyond their keen
Their world and poetry never together seen.

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Life thoughts

Life thoughts

 + life thoughts +
Distant winds leaves disturb
And careless thoughts wander
This is the world into which born
A life to live or squander
Out beyond the ways of children
In adult world so dark
Struggle forward in dull jubilation
Alive and taking what we can take
Greedy thirst for Time and living
Madness beckons ever onward
All the genius money can buy
At your materialistic disposal
Break chains and allow links to fall
Continuity disrupt completely
Tomorrows crop consume today
As overclocked treadmill surges
All the hopes on display
Prayers of rich or poor
Begin to fade in brightest Sun
As world exhausted seizes up
Grains in eyes from lack of sleep
Crusade a series of individual fights
Night brings terrors not relief
Children in their beds crying
No escape and no compassion shown
Succour in short supply
So dry your eyes and celebrate
The world was always thus
Reform those parts you can reach
Believe you of importance are
Live your life in joyous exclaim
For the fact you live at all
A miracle beyond compare
How many cells to make a single hair
Triumphant ever set your course
In smiles relate journey's woes
The worse can happen is journey end
The best continue on
So set your heart towards horizon
And venture ever joyful on.

Friday, April 23, 2010

that ANZAC generation

that ANZAC generation

 +-- that ANZAC generation --+

Living examples of fame, flame and hell
Heroes of bullet, bomb and shell
Shed their blood in now sacred places
Where Nature labours to remove Man's brutal traces
Of the battles once there were
No living voices left to refer
To the boundless horror of those days
How nightmares remembrance sleepless night flays
Seeing friend and foe obliterated
Not knowing for whom next death was fated
A survivour-guilt riddled generation
Seeing in their children hope's regeneration
And twenty ones year later
Just after keys to door celebrated
A fresh and cruel inhuman war
Stole children and friends from the door
Another generation to fight bullet bomb and shell
Die or earn fame, flame and hell.

To avoid Shank's pony

To avoid Shank's pony

+ To avoid Shank's pony* +
Goats are not horses
A riding you will not go
And yet a donkey slightly coarser
Than a horse would ever show
Belligerent gray and unworthy
Hair bristled stiff and low
Always walking like an old man
So cantankerous and slow

Will at a pinch provide
A form of transport quadropeded
A slow low swaying braying ride
Take you from where you are
To what other place you wish
A donkey is not a horse it's true
But neither are a hungry beggar's wishes fish.



*Shank was allegedly a man who hired horses, and by the end of they day the last horse left was his pony, a broken down decrepit creature, so bad it was said walking was preferable. Thus when the locals might decide to walk at the end of the day, they would say they were taking Shank's pony. Shank's pony also alludes to the fact your only choice is none at all - to walk or walk being your alternatives.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

To a daughter

To a daughter

 + to a daughter +
Crush you in my arms
As if you were a garlic clove
So all know you are loved
So you know you are loved
Protected and considered great
Inside bosom of your family
A star brightest in night sky
Yarn ship wonderous upon the sea
So much life to be lived
So many places you can go
So much inspiration show
Always knowing no matter miles
No counting time or distance gone
You are always truly loved
Deeply sincerely completely
In loving embrace of family.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Commuter

Commuter

 ** commuter **
Battered to work
Commuter fatigue setting in
Have the six inch glare
Unapproachability of a veteran
Ridden these rails and tracks
For a good twenty years
Seen trains empty and fill
The lean times when seats hard to find
Contrast with school holidays
When those martyred parents
Escape with squealing brood
To some affordable tourist mecca
Providing more space for those who remain
Battled strikes and service failures
Know the timetable by heart
Which side of train to stand
For a fast departure
Or which end of train to board depending on station destination
Seen storms and night and dawns
Drunks preachers beggars readers
The weary never conceding commuters
Riding the iron horse twice daily
From and to the CBD.

Monday, April 19, 2010

So like you

So like you

 + so like you +
Lies so become you
The little ones primarily
Sizes of clothes in your wardrobe
About the colour of your hair
The years shaved off delicately
Makeup covering up the wear
Those lies inconsequential
For why arriving late
The ones used when returning
An unwanted gift
All these little threads
Black furrows in field of white
Changing our perceptions
Of what is truth or what is right
The lies might grow a little
A country membership not city
Your records are wrong
Bills definitely been paid
Cheque is in the mail
Or an extra dent for the panel beater
Repair costs picked up by insurer
No one is really harmed
The big corporations feel not the prick
Of these almost little lies
And the corporate profit makes us sick
Is enough reason to misdirect
You rationalise and reason
Even as with each passing day
And every changing season
The lies grow larger still
Fed on diet of untruths
He is just a friend
This mark on my neck a rash
My cold is the worse form of flu
Can't make work again today
The carriages take them to workcamps
Governments alway know what's best
And each lie is silently tagged
By the people who you know
Keeping personal private count
Of all the black threads which fly
Closing off their friendships
Exiling the lair and the lies
Whose lies are growing bigger
As to own delusions you succumb
Thinking everything is fine
Not noting integrity in ruins
Blaming them for not liking you
Seeing all others through the lens
Of a constant stream of lies
You have now made true.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Finishing Touch

Finishing Touch

 + finishing touch. +
Maybe you will see something
Find someone
To bring the final touches
To canvas that is you
All the confidence denied
Delight unshared
Love locked away
Find the something someone
Special unique treasure
The tipping point moment found
Balance where all follows
Everything accrues to you
All the losses wiped clean
This is the point to be found
Beginning you never had
With all the world onside
And true love by your side.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Melbourne Shine

Melbourne Shine

+ Melbourne Shine +

Tell me of the Melbourne
You hold clearest in mind's eye
Is it St Kilda Road apartment towers
Viewed from Dockland boulevards
Perhaps the strange righteousness
Of Paris end of Collins
Named so for a shop
Which is no longer going
Could it be the scene
From Jolimont railway station
Staring back across the lush green parks
To the towers of city commerce
And turning look at the MCG
Bastion for the sport so tribal
Perhaps is alleys walls and malls
Where baristas and fashionistas dwell
Hidden in the squared off CBD
Or copper sheen of Shrine at dawn
Flinder Street station facade of imperial might
This is the Melbourne
In Autumn or in green
Whether city streets are baking
Or winter showers misery making
This is the Melbourne true
Melbourne in tram rattle heartbeat
Melbourne of my soul
The city placed against the bay
Rent in two by Yarra's slow brown flow
City of my night and ever joyous day.

Nearest and dearest

Nearest and dearest

 +++  Nearest and Dearest  +++
The words come out
Lines are drawn
Tired and frayed
The war declared
Nothing of import
For which we are fighting here
Just your tiredness
a lightning spark ignites
I am the conductor
Against which lightning strikes
Expected to stand and allow
A burning at the stake
Cannot have my pride and respect
Against insensible demands
There are no arguments left
No borderlines declared safe
A barbarian's mercy shown
To pillage burn and destory
Leave barren in the passing
All friendship and amicability

Your words are snares entangling
Sentences death magic frightening
I try and avoid the fight
Inexorably drawn in
As with a giant whirlpool
Speed of conflict intensifies
No way to paddle out
Caught and pulled under
Emotions drowning rational thought
Two blind clawing biting beasts
Doing worse can do to each other
As if we will never meet again
As if this fighting will never end
When the facts of the matter are
As the bruises deep begin to scar
Fresh hurts upon older grievances stacked
Tonight together we will sleep
A truce for bed be declared
A moment of reconciliation
Until the morning arrives
And we shall once more find ourselves
Deep behind the enemy lines
Of our own sorry bitter making
So lost and forlorn cannot find escape
Cannot even see what form escape might take
Instead we turn with poisoned barbs
To the pryhric fight always lost
Safe in embrace of foe
The nearest dearest spouse we will ever know. 

Professional

Professional

 * professional *
I watch your face and wonder
What do you think
Of love and lust and life
Are you desperately sucking marrow free
Or drifting completely aimlessly
Have there been loves caustic
Scarred and bleed your heart
Is there a special one somewhere
With whom you can safely lie
Catches tears of lifes frustrations
Able to remould your lips to a smile
Set free laughter deep inside
Make each breath loose and clean
Engender thoughts the world is yours
Together all yours alone
A magical place of love and hopes
As if life a soaring note
Held by a singer wise and strong
A song to which you can singalong
Are these your thoughts as you sit
Shirt buttoned up
Jacket corporate neutral plain
Atop a skirt just to the knee
Hair in a tied down bun
No smile upon your face
A stony faced professional
As if you never had any fun
Where is the girl there was
Of party skirts and joy
Or the one who sang and travelled
Instead this barren smile have
A vacant predatory stare
And a sense you don't care
For anyone outside your job
To succeed and do nought else
Till to the palace throne accede
And discover no one else is there
Alone forever grieving be
A King Midas in a golden palace
Cold and rich and sterile.  

Marsupial courting

Marsupial courting

 ++ Marsupial Courting ++
Ever hear the Platypus
Singing for a mate
A song of longing deep
Sung upon the creek
Calling for life companion
Marsupial wives be uncommon
Shy and fey and hidden
Only rise when bidden
By courting mate's sweet song
And when finally discover love
Love long and true and deep
As the song which first called
Mate to mate's true view.

Stories short

Stories short

 * stories short *
Tell a story shorten
Epic make two bit
Novel make novella
Succinct is best bitl
Give story all the glory
In a space confined
Restrict flow of words
Create details bald
Do not hair and feather them
Metaphor or analogy better them
Let the story stand
Less words than you plan
Collapse chapters on themselves
Shrink or minimize
Cut back and down
Prune the vines
Dig out new growth
Frown your favourite lines
Hold them under till drown
Submerge every thought
Every line of exploration
Leave story short
Leave story raw
As reader's feelings be
When your story read.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Woodland saturday nights

Woodland saturday nights

 + woodland saturday nights +

All of the weasels
Heads spinning on blackberry wine
Shot through with white hot joy
Swearing and having a raucous time
Music beat is thumping
Weasels dancing on the tables
Kicking over chairs
Setting fire to rubbish bins
Weasels back in town
Here come the badgers
Heavy and solid set
Trucheons at the ready
An affray to de-abet
Swinging wildly striking
Weasels angry retaliating
A rain of rocks and bottles
Battle completely joined
Denizens of the woodlands
Shocked such horror in the copses
From owls overhead transmitting
Images back to television sets
Where quiet squirrels sit sipping
Acorn tea and buttered walnut scones
Faces twisted in revulsion
At the actions of rampant weasels
And the brutality of badgers
Appointed to protect everyone
The dawn finds woodlands quiet
Weasels laying low
sore heads from wine or truncheons
Neither injury bodes well for future
Badgers lie deep asleep
A job they state well done
Order has been reinstated
Arrests have been made
The woodlands paths are safe again
Owls at roost are slumbering
Nothing to report
As squirrels waking put on sunday best
Spend the day nut gathering
High above human thoughts.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Snowdrops in May

Snowdrops in May

  # snowdrops in May #
Snowdrops in May
Trumpets of change
New days dawning
Warm seasons warning
Raising of skirts
First Springtime flirts
All world is changing
Sweep clear grey thoughts
Summer Sun soon be nesting
Crowning blue skies
Birds are returning
Brightly they fly
Fresh song is sung
Northern Spring is begun
Welcome the traveller
The jester and lover
Welcome the opening
Of Winter cold heart.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Home encounters

Home encounters

 ** home encounters **
Greet me at the door
A question in your eyes
Without any clothes at all
I admire your pluck
Your enthusasism to converse
In perfect naturalism
We leave our imprints on the wall
My clothes strewn down the hall
Bag kicked into an empty room
Create a bundle of fusing eager life
At every pausing in our journey
Meld our lips and breath
Draw lines on each others body
Take nectar to our lips
As each in turn in delight shudders
Confirming union of souls and thoughts
Trusted friend and companion true
Arriving home to always you.

Talk

Talk

 + Permanent Conversation +
 
Your words are breath
Essence of you escaping
Vibrating through air to my ear
As familar as your kiss
The inflections and accents
How you prepare to send them out
Those emissaries of speech
Can pick them out
In a crowded cafe
Be lulled to sleep by them
Catch them as my morning bread
Luxirate and cleanse myself
In stream of loving vowels
And when the words pause and stop
When exchange of precious words
Says less than needed to
Say what must be said
Our lips together bind
Share breath more intimately
Feel blood's heat so close
A pulsing river beneath your skin
And together fresh converation partake
Without a need for words or grammar
To which we need not ears to hear
Instead our hearts capture
Every loving inflection perfect
Of this conversation never ceasing
Between our conversational souls.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Inevitable

Inevitable

 + inevitable +

Lost yards of youth
Yellow straw dry grasses
Grazed knees on hidden rocks
Summer grey dirt rising
In those energy prolific times
When so much time to burn
When running preferred to walking
And every new face a new friend
How different now
Upon bench sit
Hiding eyes from Sun
Counting hurts left from sleeping
All the world moves faster
And I move so much slower
The friends are dying off
We drift apart and change
Links of loyalty and honesty erode
So many masters for our time
And we slave to all
Grown smaller with each solstice turning
Our dreams and hopes ground flat
A slovenly rut we grind
From bed to work to home to death
Every day becomes another week
All weeks combine to years
And before we knew it
Before you will know it
Here sitting on this bench
Waiting for something to happen
Even though you no longer care.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Darker halls and worlds

+ darker halls and worlds +
Seen darker halls than these
For in every coward dwells
Places where light does not shine
Nor by conscience would be directed
Those places black where decisions made
Thoughts and opinions formed
Which in a braver light might
Be disowned or dismissed

Those darker halls subterranean
Inside depths of our souls
Of which we dare not speak
The cellars of our self worth
Where prejudices lie lightly
Those things we would not usually say
Slanders and hurts loosely leased
All the ignorances we might convey
Kept ever so daintily at bay
Until an incident or word results
In an uncovering of the pit
Deep and dark and feral
Within which those fears repulsive sit

Those darker darkest halls subterranean
being so human in form and yet not
Heirlooms passed down by ancestors
Fears and bile and hate and slime
Of eels and snakes and rats
Diseases which make you blind
Vampiric they sup so deeply
On humanity and kindness sweet
Here irrational rantings obscene
Twisted logic here refined
All the past lashes scars and hurt
In this darkest place still exist
Take us from culture to animalistic state
Those halls so dark makes us quake
The subterranean other world
Twin to this in which we exist
The other world we seek never to admit.

Regime change

+-- Regime change --+
New thoughts
Not the old thoughts
New regime in place
New opportunities presented
To the same populace
In the same country
Part of the same world
How much can be changed
How much should be changed
Open the doors and declare
No corruption and nothing hidden
Elected representatives to do the peoples bidding
Yet all clowns are strung
Puppetmasters play
Their influence colours
Erodes and displaces
Better newer thoughts
All power begins corrupting
Some things fail and so
Safer to retain status quo
Hold those changes for a while
Announce reviews with a smile
We are not forgetting
On promises not reneging
Just ensuring best care taken
With new changes making
Then days turn to years
Best intentions paralyzed by fears
The new regime become the old
Tired corrupt and never bold
Clinging to power using every trick
Laid some foundations but no brick
The whole disaster sinking deep
A regime at wheel asleep
The people seek new life
An end to the way it always is
A change of regime
A new regime to rise
Bring change and a new world
The constant regime changing blur.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Last Twilight

+ last twilight +
Twilight breaks and cracks
Flaws electric build
End of the day
And end of Earth
Final horror story dawns
In climatic moments of dusk
Atmosphere shed
Unbelieving we observe
All prayers and lamentations
Equate to less than zero
A spinning orb losing traction
All contents dispersing
The Earth our home decompresses
Panels of plates rise
Atop the molten core
Earthquakes of immeasurable magnitude
Death of all
Silence of all
The Earth become a gaseous smudge
Floating in the galaxy
Seen as a rain of meteorites
On Mars or Venus
A once was home to life
Ceased abruptly and completely
At point where
Twilight broke and cracked.