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
...

a sky poem

2005-03-22T15:36:00.000+11:00

falling
home is
burning too high

clear
is broken
light from oceans

crying
blue alias
ends in red

overcast
higher jump
limit for limit

now here's a bright sky

2005-03-21T11:10:00.000+11:00

but seriously, some great images posted by the indefatiguable Chris Murray at tex files. (Maybe the Texas air is better than the stuff we breath here where it is easy, so easy, to tire.)

falling in love with ...

2005-03-21T11:00:00.000+11:00

and forgot to mention this terrific interview with US poet Sheila Murphy on the new e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e v-a-l-u-e-s site. Again, a place that's building up lots of good stuff.

lovely as/is

2005-03-21T10:55:00.000+11:00

lovely poem from Jean Vengua on as/is, a site always worth keeping up with.

stormy sunday

2005-03-20T08:59:00.000+11:00

in
high the
storm bright sky

how
long run
the diesel gamble

taxis
down the
blue grey levels

all
morning all
round the bowl

this is nice

2005-03-08T17:11:00.000+11:00

... from Mark Young.

wandering

2005-03-08T16:57:00.000+11:00

sky bright has been doing some internal travelling, as one does.

Good to be back in the gleam busy air again even as autumn turns into shorter days.

Not chill enough yet in this city but the trees bristle with a cold bright.

I shouldn't worry about I but I do. Do I? What I can be done, is being done.

colours cloud

2005-03-08T16:52:00.000+11:00

all courses go to cloud
count the brightness of helium

rain is on the bank
backwards a bird

Certain days receive you
upright and travelled

initials are in buildings
a higher earth never came

ochre connection to yellow doors
call blue to tunnels

so fast within in red
the glance beige emptiness

speed whatever is cloud
is this?

a nice day

2005-01-06T10:57:00.000+11:00

There’s a lung in the corner
of the room, just behind me

The building lives
it’s not very good at it

Limps along corridors
pushing its glassy stare

It grows with us
we lie in its pockets

The carpets stain
and the teeth lifts crunch

We have spent a century
escaping the body

Outside is a fine day
if we could reach it

neru(nude)a

2005-01-03T15:18:00.000+11:00

This news item from Ananova has probably done the rounds, proving it's a mad world.

Women strip off for poet
Twenty eight Chilean women took all their clothes off in the middle of a busy road in Santiago to pay homage to a poet. The women posed in front of the house where famous poet Pablo Neruda used to live. Photographer Rene Alejandro Rojas took the picture, called Munvich, which means naked in Viking. [see the Ananova item for the photo] Mr Rojas told Las Ultimas Noticias newspaper: "We did not have a permit so they had to take their clothes off very fast and then put them back as fast."

I must speak to my Chilean friends about this one.

some lovely ...

2005-01-02T14:13:00.000+11:00

work from US poet Sheila E. Murphy. A visual poem which crag hill's site alerted me to.

is this a worry?

2005-01-01T18:34:00.000+11:00

How about Kafka: The Musical? No, it's not Hollywood, or even Bollywood. It's Zadie Smith (whom I've never read or felt interested in reading - a lesson here?)

haiku larfs

2005-01-01T14:21:00.000+11:00

Gosh, I'm not that bored with the web. I laughed along with Ron Silliman, reading about David McAleavey's Huge Haiku. A real nice paradox, amongst other things. McAleavey's poems are quite chunky, however, and a renga can be long. I like it that Ron laughed. He always seems so serious to me over here. Maybe I read him wrong.

Am I wrong, also, in thinking there's a bit of Japanese-ish about? A different head space, maybe. What the image means. When I think haiku, I think sound. I wonder why.

still grey

2005-01-01T14:10:00.000+11:00

I don't mind chortling alone
clouds change all the time.

Talking to yourself is the first sign of talking to yourself.

Moving right along ...

pink and blue

2005-01-01T13:50:00.000+11:00

The colours of jim behrle's site have changed since last I looked. Almost summery - but isn't it winter up north?

skybright always likes the blue
our skies haven't been
today hot and grey

methinks they protesteth ... it's too much

2005-01-01T13:47:00.000+11:00

I thought I'd become bored with the internet - indeed, still partially am - but some noodling around caused me to come across this review by Sandra Gilbert of a newish (yet another, sigh) anthology. It's British and apparently contains an editorial diatribe by Scots poet, Don Patterson, against the 'postmoderns' (whoever they are).

Gilbert says: "Paterson in particular is frank in admitting that the writers he and Simic showcase in New British Poetry are united by a commitment to what he calls "Mainstream practice" — a way of writing verse which he's extraordinarily anxious to defend against what he rather dramatically calls "the threat currently presented by the Postmoderns and their general ubiquity." Indeed, most of his introduction to this anthology is taken up with what he himself describes as a "badtempered" discussion of the kind of poetry — avant-garde, "Postmodern" or "LANGUAGE" poetry — that he refuses to represent in the collection."

I've seen this kind of argument before in relation to any stance that isn't conservative, and wonder why the mainstream, the Right, or conservatives (what you will), become so exercised (or 'extraordinarily anxious') by what they call, and clearly is, a minority. I could say 'save your breath guys and just get on with it' but that's a little naive. I could make a 'totally 80s' comment, 'it's all false dualisms' But, far more insidiously, it's letting the mainstream sloosh over anything else that's possibly more interesting, definitely oppositional, sometimes more silly, often more engaging, sometimes, well, 'different' (if not 'noice' or 'unusual').

By the way, I like some of Patterson's work. I don't care what stream he's in. As Gilbert points out, Coleridge and Wordsworth (and Shelley) got a right drubbing from the establishment a coupla centuries ago, and people were jailed for their opinions. Yes, dark political times! Which is the main reason I mention it.

what about white boards?

2005-01-01T11:37:00.000+11:00

Gotta be worried about those zombies.

what he said

2005-01-01T11:34:00.000+11:00

Mark Young at pelican dreaming.

re-posting something that got lost

2005-01-01T11:29:00.000+11:00

underneath rain

filmy days
unravel the vagabond
a thin winter moon

needing a place for repair
memory flocks
landscape is a similar

I never am
you are provisory
extremity, windows

stars can’t resist gravity
method is the question
exhalations in patterns

feel the countdown
smoke in the street
walk to the graffitied rivers

go ahead in spite of time
too many rockets
paint burnishes my eyes

drive straight
unpack ourselves
constitute our life

to the land of mornings
covered in song
I choose myself

stopping above
a thousand dark cares
a line burns

how to help

2005-01-01T11:20:00.000+11:00

Donations can be made to:

PLAN 1800 038 100 or http://www.plan.org.au

CARE Australia 1800 020 046 or http://www.careaustralia.org.au

Australian Red Cross 1800 811 700, http://www.redcross.org.au or post a cheque to GPO Box 9949 in capital cities.

Oxfam 1800 034 034 or http://www.oxfam.org.au

Medecins Sans Frontieres 1800 788 100 or http://www.msf.org.au

UNICEF 1300 884 233, 1300 732 240 or http://www.unicef.org.au

World Vision 13 32 40 or http://www.worldvision.com.au

Australian Foundation for Asia Pacific 1800 007 308, http://www.afap.org

Save the Children 1800 760 011 or http://www.savethechildren.org.au

listening ...

2005-01-01T11:10:00.000+11:00

A Silver Mt Zion, He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms.

I’m liking. It’s harrowing, so not ‘enjoyable’ in any happy sense. Haunting piano and strings.

bye bye VP

2004-12-12T14:03:00.000+11:00

Because things got a little blurry over the last six weeks or so, I've missed a bit.

Sad to hear Tom is shutting up shop at vanishing point. I'd grown to like the squirrels.

vanishing
points and skies
are relative blue

sky and earth

2004-12-12T13:56:00.000+11:00

It has been hard to post of late. Everything seems difficult. I'm not sure if it is the weather - which has been pretty hot here on-and-off - or the 'silly season' or some kind of post-election lassitude (OK, the election was in October, but nothing that has happened since, including the US elections, has improved the view).

Wondering where and how to go on. Is there too much stuff? Also, my head hurts.

I've been thinking about the word 'marginal'. 'Pertaining to an edge, border, or boundary.' is on definition the good old New Shorter Oxford gives. There's also 'minor importance', 'having little effect', 'partly belonging', 'barely worth developing'. Also, 'a feather on the edge of a bird's wing'. And, of course, there's the margins of a page.

Perhaps I was feeling as if what I'm doing is barely worth developing - it's a fair point, there's a lot going on, who need's more. But perhaps better to feel like the feather at the edge of a bird's wing. Rather fly, looking skyward, and let the air run past. Or play around the page. You see, skybright doesn't want to moan or worry about the centre. Stuff goes on everywhere. Go stuff!

I know people ask 'why do you blog?'. For me, working at the margins (see any definition above), is part of a freedom (realising 'freedom' is a debatable concept) to allow the marginal work a space. A blog is a social space. Something might happen. It's obviously an ego thing (to quote that very 70s band, Skyhooks, ego is not a dirty word). I'd be a bit limp without my ego.

Skybright is looking for a bit more earth to stumble around on.

sky bright a bit dim

2004-11-30T19:47:00.000+11:00

Over on Silliman's blog, Ron S is saying he's up to 400 in his blog roll. No sky bright there yet - maybe Australia is too far away.

And, yes, I've been busy away from the blog. Last weekend was too hot to think let alone write anything sensible - or nonsensical. The weather does have a considerable effect on writing. I know of Sydney writers (not poets, mind) who have claimed that, come summer, no-one can write in Sydney. A large claim but the heat and humidity can be draining. But folks keep on writing in the tropics where the weather varies less, ie. it's always hot but sometimes drier than other times. I wonder if it is hard to write in the cold. It never truly gets that cold here so I have never tested it.

loose ends

2004-11-30T19:38:00.000+11:00

look, the world is near
its twilight skybrights
horizon encounters
loose ends in the supermarket

but what of grief, indeed
the laws against sadness

if it can't be use
or value
don't look sky
or reflection

and near
always near
but no entry
no bounce

that box of a year

2004-11-19T22:30:00.000+11:00

in trees a problem
emits burning

propped up grass
cleft between colours

the shutdown life
another way round

varied, when questioned
the yellow calls

outside answers danger
black to the rim

oscillate

2004-11-19T08:32:00.000+11:00

I go to sea
I go to star

a memory of one
arrested
by the future

sea admits time
piling up
and return

what is left
star distant
oscillates memory

dissolution

2004-11-16T21:58:00.000+11:00

underneath the star
to smooth the low point

you also went away
some attack in you

in the lobby?
to be this open

green continuous lives
errors written in movement

accumulated, forgotten, occupied
repair the cover of days

the times the city forms
whispered a project of dissolution

this oscillation delays
the low point

goes cold
to derive itself

excess to move through
birds, the trees, the barrier

around the blue time
an interior illuminates

at points of zero
the work takes with I

'i don't like it'

2004-11-16T21:35:00.000+11:00

Eeksy (Malcolm) is going great guns over at zotz doing a wonderful number on The Best American Poetry 2004. Check out the commentary on Billy Collins by the top team of Hedgehog, Visitor, Guppy (or maybe thousands) and Carp, who sounds like our own Pauline Hanson ('I don't like it'). Not being a fan of 'best' things, it tickled me, it did. We're beginning to have 'best' things here in Australia. Always trotting in US shadows. Shame, innit. Best is a pest.

six o'clock

2004-11-16T18:07:00.000+11:00

gull struck sky rather than flag distant bridge

more hay(na)ku

2004-11-16T17:04:00.000+11:00

light
hangs
a stony line

bronze
fern luminous
bathed in seconds

cramped
skeleton disposed
in the door

arrested
in rock
oxide and flower

raises
abundant walls
of refugee dream

transport
the door
where words fly

transference
robbed sea
commerce the surface

anchorage
bandaged eyes
the remaining day

shout
towards outside
to continue being

new form for me

2004-11-15T14:45:00.000+11:00

I came across this form - hay(an)ku - and so went for it, as you do. I suppose everyone's been doing it for ages but thanks, Eileen.

hedge
fragile white
in an easterly

point
beyond me
and for which

tall
strong outside
as if enough

tinder
touchwood dry
tender would touch

tell
reproach from
making a mark

exhale
pitch block
rage the risk

ChilOut

2004-11-11T13:25:00.000+11:00

Children in immigration detention
latest stats, rally next week:
16th November, Canberra, lunch time

There are 101 children in Australian immigration detention as at 3 November 2004. This is a disgrace - there are 41 children in Villawood alone, including an unaccompanied girl. The Iraqi and Afghan children in Nauru have entered their 4th year of incarceration there.

If you are in Canberra on the first sitting day of the new Parliament lodge your protest.

Details here: www.chilout.org/activities/canberra_convergence.html

We need to put compassion on the national agenda. This is an issue of human rights, not party politics.

Please ask your organisation or party to endorse the Refugee Charter, launched during Refugee Week by the new UNHCR Regional Representative in Canberra, Mr Neill Wright.

You can find the Refugee Charter at www.refugeecouncil.org.au or contact Refugee Council, 02 9660 5300, to sign onto it.

To see some facts and to compare us with the world, check the link:
at the Refugee Council website.

mud and rain

2004-11-10T11:37:00.000+11:00

there's no middle of the road

2004-11-08T15:25:00.000+11:00

the energy of deferring meaning is the poem

between love and trees

2004-11-07T15:37:00.000+11:00

I, on the other hand, go to the crossings.

What clue gives form to the world
one that’s a virtue? Must I be sincere?

Is my wastefulness complete?

Under the colour of lorikeets
a green bulb of sun
in a car with you at the edge of the sea.

A cloud of resistance
to the movement next and behind
a type of tonality.

At last you sing to the dream
a halting lateral type full of a whole underworld jargon.

The sun’s under time.
What are the colour of stars this month?
If it’s cold how much is within the work of ice?

The cliff is damaged.

In a parallel system would it be the way of the dog?
Younglings, clouds, position in sky.

It’s the danger brain, the handspike’s emission
the mine report and its ratio
dance of structure to an edge inside changes.

At extremities of skin
television is the colour, a clear blue cold starts
to level slowly without pilots.

With your handguard
make the end circle my extremity.

Efflorescence traverses the window
and a horizon of axe shavings
after steel at the rock.

Go among the coils.

david gitin

2004-11-07T11:24:00.000+11:00

Here's a sky bright poem from American writer, David Gitin.

White on blue

birds

in

formation

one

straggling

tail

empty

sky

heart

2004-11-05T10:37:00.000+11:00

the world really has been slighted
its luminous conservatories enclosing dust
in circles of skybright
ventricles of whales are blue
under the chugging ocean

examining my heart
as its effects ignite in morning
well-being leaves its marks

2004-11-05T08:56:00.000+11:00

Thanks Tom. You're already on my list.

And commiserations for the recent black day.

Hold tight world, uh-huh!

something for today

2004-11-04T18:54:00.000+11:00

"5.
Power ruptures at a thousand holes
Leaking the ancient air in,

The paraphernalia of a culture
On the gantries

And the grease of the engine itself
At the extremes of reality

Which was not what we wanted

The heart uselessly opens
To 3 words, which is too little"

- from Power, The Enchanted World, George Oppen

recollections in the stairwell

2004-11-02T13:52:00.000+11:00

I found you in a bar
where you found me among
volumes of scratching amazons
their alto pitched at sky openings
where condemned jets sounded
dum-doom doof-dum
and speakers rippled the floor

there was a degree of dark
for giving transactions
that led to aerosol delays
and cool dismembered afternoons
in the blue style
we were scandalously sleeping
amongst the silver dust

meanwhile, the stairwell resounded
between two zones

australia goes to the races

2004-11-02T10:51:00.000+11:00

thought of the day:
do I bet on the mare?
mare is the favourite.
how about that!

Everyone in Australia is talking about the track in Melbourne. What about the track this world is on? Firm or muddy. We might know about that soon, as well.

sticky memory

2004-11-02T10:22:00.000+11:00

Lovely 'sappho' poem on Stephen Vincent's blog. I liked these lines - and the last word.

"...

Certainly, she says
I am your memory
What is old and ugly between us

As if surrounded by weeds
The stickiest burrs
Will be torn out, taken out to the dump:

..."

good night

2004-11-01T22:37:00.000+11:00

sky bright sleeps
as night wakes morning

2004-11-01T22:32:00.000+11:00

Maybe pelicans dream of sky bright.

Happy birthday for Sunday, Mark.

a question

2004-11-01T10:58:00.000+11:00

Are you my intruder, reader?

details, details

2004-11-01T10:56:00.000+11:00

how to choose the significant details
the associations which are latent

metaphysical realism?

2004-11-01T10:54:00.000+11:00

"the rhapsody of things as they are"
- Wallace Stevens

but nothing as, is ...

a promise as good as a wish

2004-10-31T17:56:00.000+11:00

apprehensive to the point
of mystery
throwing up sensitivity
stars of the close dust

everything in traverse
skirts wishes desire
rolled inside
a flower

disco music isn't the end
even hard of heart
but what is the point
of snow?

don't promise the blue
or return
satin leaf
to the fickle vase

jewelled beasts

2004-10-31T16:08:00.000+11:00

wild beast jewellery
voracious
infringing clown cups

fecund magenta terrace
trespass
filament threadbare unoccupied

patrol plum composure
coax
attenuating insomnia sacrifice

microscopic thumbnails tackle
rudiments
harpoon rawboned plumage

twiggy cough spitfires
wintry
jade wobbly unleashed

dewy marbles jazz
threads
tug woof reptilian

nowhere forehead sapphire
petrified
roccoco clipping legend

transact laquered pyjamas
blankets
courageous stagger formation

banked gaberdine motorbikes
demolish
spied bloody discomfort

rotting gown deluge
stems
nectar retreat azure

parting communion puncture
arsed
cylinder squirt buckling

pollen goddess panning
holy
eyeless martial stealth

cellophane steeped detectives
knuckle
nocturnal tangerine surveillance

tremulous handcuffs determined
undercover
passionate bluffs toppling

bleached mica underworld
hatching
circumscribed abyss weir

trellis bones flourish
writhing
ineffable surface moss

bringing up the dead

2004-10-31T16:01:00.000+11:00

green window flakes along grain
a thief’s hand takes earrings made of stars
an absence in your life

old home's sweet smell
time runs off the suburb’s glare
above a ruin of atmosphere

a quarrel amongst doors and voices
another country talks hope
the dark enough familiar

traffic spits against old walls
whispers learning in half-lit corners
the future was felt before

in the box

2004-10-31T15:56:00.000+11:00

colour
wind

perfume
sun

sound
trees

missed all these

shut away
buzzing box

traces flicker
busy screen

This is no way to make a fortune

2004-10-31T15:05:00.000+11:00

To be a diviner, twisting the rod.
Afternoon falls into a room
with its silver webs and bright knowledge.
The grid of bricks where words could
chase along the passages.

Sitting in a van, weeping for time.
Which always scoops away.
Stacking boxes of unread schemes
in the garage was the beginning
of a bad week. She didn't need
a sign or a reading, or bent lipstick
to prove this. Mondays lead to
Sundays in every inevitable way.
You'd go crazy examining motives.

You'd start wallking away.
You'd slip on the cracks.
A barking dog and summer flies
would mark you for irritating.

Football commentators could weep
with season's end.
Everything ends. Just as it goes on.
The show, the fancy dress
the active persona.

Flipping a phone
the world's full of messages.

daylight saving

2004-10-31T14:46:00.000+11:00

ground slant to the slide away

welcome mat and the grasping knock-on

wood dead paper lying and blowing

the other valley the clear sky

gone peripheral

2004-10-31T14:41:00.000+11:00

time to the fear pulp rag
grasping birds and garage bands
the alien friendly
chug-chug

caved-in country that can't read
another perfect day stroke
suntans
and bling bling

'without action' 'without words'
grazing on peripheral vision

highway game

2004-10-30T17:52:00.000+10:00

highway ploughs old paths
flat out speed takes further
from what’s forgotten

climate broken leaves once story
hunter and hunted together
swift/ slow without rush

smooth black bitumen
beauties travelling metal
teeth mark rubber

air

2004-10-30T17:20:00.000+10:00

cold air from the south
leaves rattle the yard

bored with the aliens

2004-10-30T17:19:00.000+10:00

As they take the city
the music is what
angers you it’s
obvious isn’t it

big Armageddon
a screen full
of searchlights
and squelching

but emotionally
there’s something
not right.

rites tides

2004-10-30T16:51:00.000+10:00

sandhills travel below sky
beach flat horizon runs edge/edge
the lagoon is clear in shallows

a ritual before the elements
their due, sand, weed given
a brown, dirty hue

keep close between flags
water chills, shouldering away
the low pull

in summer’s self-content
dig and stumble
fossick the surface

in a millenia of molluscs
sticky common silica
remnants cling skins

truth rocks/ tide’s disbelief
ducks rise in formation
bank off to a place near the bridge

far out is green and choppy
expect the beyond
immersed or running from wash

scoops shells, pink brown zig-zag
tiny bowls emptied pools
grooved on one side, wide and flat