Along the Highway, 1999

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Autumn Royal

Written by: Autumn Royal
Sound production by: Daniel Jenatsch
Spoken by: Autumn Royal, Daniel Jenatsch, and Harriet Gregory

[audio:http://cordite.org.au/audio/Highway99.mp3|titles=Along the Highway, 1999]
Along the Highway, 1999 (7:23)

Sun sparks against the cold curve of moon,
sand returns to the colour red, threatening
the fading asphalt with soft invasion.

A car speeds into this beginning.


Driver

I had a feeling I was going to run into you.
I saw you yesterday at the Port Augusta servo,
standing under that yellow shell.

I was trying to work out what you were holding,
and then the petrol nozzle clicked full.

You’re really lucky, you know?
You’re like a mosquito that’s escaped a zap,
and I’m the one who’s given you that extra sting.


Passenger

My heart thuds louder than this rattling motor
which I thought would relieve my bloody blistering

ankles, my head aching from a three-hour stint
of playing the hitchhiker, roasting like lamb, and hanging
by the neck for the purr of a motor and a driver
with the decency of a pulse.


Fear

I used to be a scream, but now I’m a murmur
holding myself in for the fear
that no one will ever understand my impediment.

Everything I say is only a thought.


Driver

You looked at me for a reason, you know?
That stare of yours shocked my feet with electricity,
the static is everywhere, but nobody talks about it.
Maybe that’s why they call the eyes the window
to your soul? Our muted souls haunting our shitty bodies.

God, I hope you don’t think I’m schizo.
I’ll have you know I’ve got a knack for the wheel,
I’ve been up and down this highway
more times than the years I’ll bloody live.


Passenger

The craving for an escape drives my foot
into a tapping on the car floor.

I hate being the passenger.

The windshield is splattered the way I expected,
with insects. Boredom pulls the black belt
tighter towards my chest. The insects are crawling closer.


Driver

The best way to keep myself amused
is to pick up company when I can.
Insomnia loves meetings1,
it sniffs them out like a hungry dog.

I used to travel with my dog. She was a bloody
princess. I called her Joy after my sister,
because Joy went and got herself bloody killed
when she was girl, didn’t she? Well,

they never actually found Joy, but we threw a funeral
for her anyway. They say it’s the only way to move on.

Hell, just like this highway, straight up and down.


Passenger

It’s never like a Die Hard flick,
the logic to bolt doesn’t strike like lightning.

Nah, it’s a bloody low hum that only pricks
the neck at the last tick of the clock.

I’m just lucky I’ve good hearing,
moved through the door before it was kicked
into my face and locked over my jaw.


Driver

But I don’t ever want more
than one passenger at a time, you know?
That way you’re the only thing a person
has to focus on, the heart of attention.

It’s like walking into an empty house
and feeling free, but the freedom doesn’t last.

After a while all you want is for someone
to listen to you, even if it’s just putting away the knives
and forks. Each clink is a statement you’re alive.

Knives, forks, spoons, spoons, forks, knives.


Fear

I awake exhumed, my mouth
open and muddy. I cough up

my panic, watch it drip down
in a murky saliva rain.


Driver

I bet you’re wondering how I hang on like this?
We’ll, I’ve had to give a lot up,
but I can still make my own way.

See, when you drive, you’re actually travelling
through time. The sky and the road
eventually meet. I’m just a long way off yet.

I make my money by selling greeting cards.
I’ve got a whole boot full of Merry Christmas,
With Deepest Sympathy, Congratulations, and Blank,
ready to tackle the complexity of any occasion.

If you let me get a few things off my chest,
I’ll not only take you halfway to where you’re
hitching, I’ll throw in a pack of cards, all Blanks.


Along the Highway

The speeding car shocks
the flies from their struck kangaroo,
splayed warmly amongst itself.

There’s a space where the heat stretches,
down towards the back of the throat,
drying each swallow to a dead end.

The desert imagines nothing I imagine.2

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged , ,

Five Egyptian Pieces

Posted on August 1, 2014 by John Tranter

Alexandria

Think of the village baby.
A scene of adventure – the dream of Europe.
The eyes of marching armies fostered perplexity
that marred all its books and intellectuals
and opened their minds to the encyclopaedia of algebra
and carmine bear remembrances.
The tumult of the bears has maintained the fear.


Cairo

Ladies choose a country to call symbolic,
uncertain of which temptation to desire,
the theatre of maiming, the pain,
the poets, the verses frozen,
aware of the men and women of this road,
the cradle impossible to forget: our origins.
The Mediterranean exploits of Herodotus
spread to both of the memory vaults.
The stone murmurs our common heritage.


     Giza

We know the imagination of letters,
the country of hanging gardens, this
speaks to us. We are bound by its women,
children play with hope. The transparent work
without play is reported missing.
The expert should like food.
Ladies are prepared to become rich
despite the clangour of morality.


Luxor

In our shelter, harm depends on a fresh chance
for decadence. We have toyed with nostalgia,
and vengeance is a blind alley.
Am I not ancient? We wish to spread
a host of luxuriant factors for play.

We need her rich experience and feelings of despair.
It intensifies the suffering.
There has never been such abomination.
Each road must be ripe for the sad future,
embracing water and the thirst for travel.


     Thebes

The joint will lend an ear
to the consciousness.
It would lag behind concrete,
for the sad future is embracing water
and the thirst for travel.

Act, think about the pool, these fields.
Relax: go further to the shore,
create a stimulant for our partners.
A high-level personality means breathing.
Our neighbours must be separated.

These five poems are derived from the official English translation of a speech by French Foreign Minister
D. De Villepin in Cairo, Egypt, 2003 (Visit to Egypt: speech by Mr Domenique de Villepin, Minister of Foreign
Affairs for France, Cairo, 12 April 2003: ‘The Mediterranean World and the Middle East’.) In the case of each
poem, most of the words of M Villepin’s speech were removed, and the remainder made up the poem.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Breaking Two Habits

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Cui Yuwei

I’ve been hooked on
Two things since I was
A middle school student
Thing one: I bite my fingers
Bit by bit
Till the nails are jagged and
The tips raw with
Blood and flesh
Whenever my hands are
Idle
Thing two: I tear the layers of skin
Off my lower lip
Bit by bit
Till it bleeds
Whenever my lips chap

Getting off bed this morning
I stand in front of the mirror
Gazing at the ghost-like
Reflection of myself
With tumbled hair, vacant eyes
Cragged fingertips and bloody lips
I feel so scared
That I cram the two habits
I’ve long possessed
Into a paper envelope
Fold it up and squeeze it
Under one leg of my marble dining table
The shriek from inside
Is also blood-red

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Position

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Cui Yuwei

The streetlamp casts a dim light on the ground, like a train trailing behind.
I’m now squatting down by a rocking horse, on whose back rides
my daughter, hands firmly with the handles in a wanton ride.
Her lips half asunder, a joyous giggling is unleashed; her eyes
grows invisible, the inky night enclosed inside.
Five meters away Mum sits in a rocking chair, alone. Her limbs
hang down loosely, with a serenity like a statue.

In a flash, as it were, I drift into a vision where I sit in Mum’s position
with the same serenity; my daughter squats in my position, regarding a child
on horseback. Mum is mute, as she is lying in a shroud exactly like how
Grandma is positioned at this very moment.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

binding

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Derek Motion

the intro credits font crumbles to a song
it’s a galaxy of concern, one wherein you
lack air. the scenery comes frosted. tell me
your times, specific bare feet on the floorboards:
locate it, see i’ve got you for real here. it’s always
sunset in a vastly specific landscape, sadness
expunged, actors squint-eye against kissing,
a skirmish of light & dust. in our pillow universe
my robotic arm reveals paddock whorls;
your July 4 stocking run is the sun, wan &
bullocky, softness country’s aura & astrological
guidance. waves roil all about, under the radio,
a bristly phalanx. there’s me! through the curtains
with specific flashback: in gaudy analogue colour
saturation – a milky additive – & we’re huffing
into a sense of parallelism (naming rights
go missing, ground to some militant pulp).
step into this pre-loaded career & come,
come further past altitude sickness, lost
in the routine of finger-spinning old records,
all things slightly small like me in a room.
my thoughts: everything. coins dripped
in a bucket atop a median strip. you’d
like that. this was shot generationally
or by degree, a quotient of time, drawn
up by the window with you excluded,
you emended from classification.
it’s systemic while we’re in transit,
all the feels at bay, distance-stares
sapped of flavour, winter watermelons.
i’m often on location culling friends. like you,
cold in the dew, middleground to crystal focus,
light behind, hair pulled specifically back.

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perfect teeth

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Derek Motion

filling glasses to an equal level, quantifying sex,
it’s harbour-life. when we walk we progress.

overcorrecting my hair for the wind
& you say ‘this flower smells good to me’.

my Melbourne-centric smile my pronouncements
more purposeful, fairness is the key to my mind.

cobbled transit disputes & i have so many red shirts. 
the minister pulls her suitcase on wheels as you’re

thinking tourism campaigns are always so needy:
like the average number of times we kiss.

but in all fairness: high frequency selection is the
default, an outlier clear-headed in a street-brawl,

worrisome with smiles. her fingernailed opinion on film
with bolshevik dreams & five dollar beers this parlour
 
sideboard, some curios & vanilla extract at hand:
the so-called rich! i am from the dried waterfalls’

valid swamplands realm. i am my own median
& fitness down here is fairness (it’s the key).

i’ll never write code now. nothing is appropriate
after strolling the gardens of the world.

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The Master

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Luke Beesley
after the 2013 film by Paul Thomas Anderson
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the seain PT
The colour of cabbages & the sea
in PT
& the colour of cabbages
& the sea
& the colour
& the cabbages
& the colour
& the sea
& the cabbages of colour
& the sea
& the cabbages of colour
& the sea
& the cabbages
& PT
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the sea
Cabbages & the seain PT
The colour of cabbages & the sea
The colour of cabbages & the sea
The colour of cabbages & the sea
in PT
Colour of the sea & then the colour of cabbages
Colour of the sea & then the colour of cabbages
Colour of the sea & then the colour of cabbages
& PT
The blue green sea & the blue green cabbage
The blue green sea & sixteen minutes later
The colour of the blue green cabbage
The blue green sea & then sixteen minutes later
The colour of the blue green cabbage
in PT
After that wild scene strangling
The cabbage of the round married man’s portrait
After the twisted scene drinking fuel &
Twisting nipples on the beach in the navy
Sea bitten the sexing
Garments sales lady in the dark
Room falling sea asleep later at dinner
At the cabbage Near the habit
At the cabbage Near the habit
At the cabbage Near the habit
At the sea That sandcastle lady &
At the sea That sandcastle lady &
At the sea That sandcastle lady &
The colour of aftershave & the majority of blue skies on cloudless
Cabbage coloured days & the sea infused beaches &
Cabbage coloured uniforms & the sea
Announcements & cocktail
Colour of the sea in cabbage
Colour of the sea in cabbage
Colour of the sea in cabbage
In the cab
In the cab
In the cab
Paul Thomas Anderson &
Philip Seymour Hoffman &
Paul Thomas Anderson &
Philip Seymour Hoffman &
Paul Thomas Anderson &
Philip Seymour Hoffman &
Paul Thomas Anderson &
Philip Seymour Hoffman
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand
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War Horse

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Lisa Jacobson

After ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ by Jacques-Louis David (1801)


Napoleon was a small man who did big things
many other small men wouldn’t dare to do.
But sitting for portraits made him fidgety

so we don’t see much of him here.
This painting is all horse and Napoleon
a mere emblem of ideal leadership,

when actually, he rode to this battle by mule,
not the fiery steed he requested here,
rearing high on meaty haunches.

One thing’s clear:
if great men die with ceremony,
not so their horses.

Just this bulk smashing into hard earth
and the belly twisting piteously
as the battle continues on.

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Nightside

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Stu Hatton

(a cento, for/after Jill Jones)

hours may not be to scale
as when there becomes
here & stars reach

output’s end the stadium
birds equally bluffed
by meteorology could you

understand breath
as a casting of doubt
now the bottle’s hardly

night-deep a river city’s
water moon pretends
to purity where water’s

a pilgrimage the gods
look a lot like clouds
stranded without motive

Note: Includes some words and phrases from Jill Jones’s book Dark Bright Doors
(Wakefield Press, 2010).

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Paraphrastic

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Patricia Sykes

“collaboration does not yield”
“as deviant as it is circuitous”
”you wander off”
“curve your thinking to each other’s”
“ideas without getting”
“manipulate them like phenomena”
“secretively…she conjures”
“the private oasis where”
“needing to adjust”
“quotients of form”
“the enfleshed”
“made plastic”
“by shifting illusions”
“the ecstatic violence”
“a tremor of anticipation”
“the music is written”
“lustres and scars”
“my printed text floats”
“of 35 minutes, converse duration”
“the unwritten so far in the background”
“our fledgling ellipse”
“nurture and destruction”
“(but) I did not create…vacuum”

Acknowledgement: The lines in Paraphrastic have their origin in my article
‘Radieuses Ellipses’, published in mouvement: l’indisciplinaire des arts
vivants 36-37 sept-decembre 2005. The article was commissioned by Chief
Editor, David Sanson. Its subject is my collaboration with composer Liza Lim
on Mother Tongue, a piece for soprano and fifteen instruments, which
premiered at the Festival d’Automne, Paris, 2005. Liza commissioned me to write
the poetic text for the work.

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Discourse on the Poetics of Beauty and Truth as Revolutionary Practice

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Ronn Morris

Ern Malley Addresses Vladimir Ilyich Lenin:

We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden,
– Joni Mitchell, ‘Woodstock’ (1969 song)

I remonstrate with you mon frere, mon petit,
Comrade, when I recollect that stray remark of Keats –
Spoken as the shadow fell, spoken as the vision of alveoli
Blossomed in the coral garden of his brain,
As their red bloom brambled and rose
To form gleaming threads of scarlet upon his lips,
Binding him ever more brightly to his eclipse.
His words fell, as oaken leaves became a crimson couch,
As the nightingale sang of surrender sweet.
Never, he said, Let your heart ope with the spring flowers
An inch of love is an inch of ashes.

Measure by incremental measure, I, like you,
Am steeped in this life too deep. I wade a wash
Of carbuncular sea. I have inculcated
Constellations of tubercle bacilli with verse,
And worse salted entire potentialities
Of Truth and Beauty with my tears.

O my impossible, incognisant, apocryphal love!
I have always distrusted your Apollonian speech.
You were to be Epoch Maker
Instead, you became he who does not mean a thing.
Autumn leaves decay as nightingales decay.
Poor Fanny Bawne, and her many sisters, wither
In the timeless flame of your disregard.
My voice peals out Bounty, Youth, Beauty and Truth.

Dear friend, this is how it ends, you sealed like
Sleeping Beauty in your mausoleum of glass.
And me, I’m mired in earth.
Here lies one whose name flowered
But briefly, in dirt.

CODA

Is it Keats who calls?
Ernest Lalor Malley, come on down
And down and down and down I came
Falling like floating.
It was like hitting the sky backwards,
On this my return to the garden.

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Dropstitch

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Nick Hadgelias

Dropstitch


Once, I took up knitting.


When I was finished


I was 1,000 years old


there were 10 billion people on the planet


3 corporations owned it


I’d dropped 5 stitches


no one used Twitter


and I’d forgotten why I’d started.

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finish

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Peter O'Mara

finish1








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All is conversation, all is network.

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Szymon Dorabialski

Pages: 1 2
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Be Wrong Doing

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Leticia Parish

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

from The Tolerance Project: Poem 40 – American Picture

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Rachel Zolf 
Some words are tasteless

The dog accepts no treats from “Obama”

There’s no 13th floor because their God is a prolongation of ego

Founder of the little-known group known as “The Family”

Only turned up as “solid” in the denial column

What are you saying, Bob? 

You are breeding from the lower side of the curve

Something American, Canadian, or viscous

How would you like to have a magic mirror?

Joan Retallack begins with geometries of attention

The class of mediocres has the right to an epaulette of red wool

I am the swift uplifting rush that happens once duration enters

The turtles speak to my bele chose

In order to distinguish the pictorial object from a readymade

Each participant reads their Behavioral Self-Portrait aloud 

This is not to say that people with accents are haters, of course

SOME PARTS HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT, AS YOU SEE (pointing)

My body is on the chair. I don’t shave my legs. 1 is already a stand-in for 0

This is a real-time engagement with form

I will never stop praising my Lord for this prosthetic 

You’re branded by the objects you love 

Everyone has one special sensation

A Neighbor is the one who by definition smells

Kyle, you have to keep making your macaroni pictures


‘This isn’t Whitman’s country anymore’ (390.586). New York City, 2008. R. Kolewe

‘American Picture’ was the last official poem written for The Tolerance Project, the first collaborative MFA in Creative Writing ever. ‘American Picture’ contains poetic DNA traces from several Tolerance Project donors: Rob Read, Jules Boykoff, Abigail Child, Joel Bettridge, Laura Elrick, Anna Moschovakis, Kevin Killian, Sarah Dowling, Bob Perelman, Susan Schultz, and the Office of Institutional Research. ‘American Picture’ is also a response to the photo, ‘This isn’t Whitman’s country anymore,’ as commissioned by photographer Ralph Kolewe for his InfluencySalon.ca section, Frames.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

A “Nearly” Thought, A Charming “Picture”

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Terrence Chiusano

Here’s something: a first
whir, the next step…a few

feats more. I’ve “already”
retched…reached, I mean;

taken the jump so to speak.
It seems right. And so

the so-called story as it exists
in the so-called here-and-now.

•

That to mount his defence Sidney should with one hand palm like a little oiled apple
the pommel, so to speak, of one of Pugliano’s stabled stallions (besaddled “I knowe not
by what miſchance”) while with the other (polite nod, heel-of-hand-to-face, downswept-

doff-like-wave) announce himself logician first (“peece of a Logician”—crumb enough
of one, syllogists being a sort of dry biscuit, to’ve resisted the temptation to wish himself
a palomino or Percheron, the captivating flame of Iohn Pietro’s equine ardors aside:

the tear-stained hay bale homilies (…and whilst lifting to the lips of my beloved Lippizaner
an infusion of honey and essence of orange blossom in a little silver finger bowl once
owned,
as it chanced to happen, by her ladyship, the Duchess of Malfi…), the vivid troughside

sermons (…with but a tin of custard and these two tiny castanets, in a little alley behind
a public stables near the docks of Swansea, I once soothed a skittish Andalusian, bless
her dear sweet delicate soul; she belonging to the captain of a Spanish schooner (la belle

of the lot!) I’d met that afternoon over a game of draughts in a booth at the back of The
Poop
& Rudder…), the tender tack room recitatives (…and now, if I may, my first eyeful
of an unbloused bosom, that of my boyhood milkmaid Genevieve gigglingly bent to groom

the foreleg of a big bay mare (or was she a chestnut?) with a Grecian loofa and mohair
brush, grandfather seated before her on a little wicker chair grinning ear-to-tufted-ear;
I having one rainy summer Sunday by chance chased from the barnyard into the stables

a pair of fatted hens only to behold there the pater of our familias (humming all the while
an old sea shanty of which he’d always been fond) extract through his undone fly the
entire
pink mass of his privates, select the chief part, and in full view of that poor unknowing

animal start to rub his glossy shaft like Aladdin his magic lamp (soon abetted, no less,
by our befreckled milkmaid! the little German hands of whom had, like the gentle jiggle
of her name itself, worked their rhythmical magic on every udder in the barn, a simple

fact the sobering significance of which I fully grasped (Gesundheit!) in a sudden flash
a decade hence, upon falling to the floor of a brothel in Hoofddorp, overcome by madam’s
house specialty: with one hand “the fist of ecstasy,” with the second “the fist of bliss,”

a nifty twist the like of which is seldom met with, I can assure you), the scene then ending
with a snort (grandpapa? horse?) and two laughs (mine of disbelief, Ginny’s whinny-
like titter, of surprise), the one, as luck would have it, in chorus with the other, and so,

gift of that timely eclipse, I remained undiscovered (hidden away between a forsaken
horse blanket and overturned handbarrow) and with me the secret shame of my own
unsaintliness: how my innocence was lost that day, taken by my own hand, as it were,

atop a pile of hay; stirred by the leathern frankincense-like fragrance of bridles,
nosebands,
browbands, saddle pads…provoked by the sight of throatlatches, breastplates, halters,
whips, crops, girths…inflamed by the calambac-like perfumery of dry straw, turnip tops,

fresh dung, horse sweat; “…the ill-effects of an unfortunate fall…” (per mother (stage left)
atop a taboret to assembled servants in the hall, she being but the height of an ornamental
hedge of holly) summoned, as it so happens, my dear nonno that very noon to eternal rest;


The wisest men do not lose their
jest even in the hour
of death, so let us be merry.
For here lieth Lorenzo beside
his beloved junipers, done unto
his end from excess joy.

his pale, dimpled, plump-faced playmate (an orphan from…Strasbourg, if memory
serves) I saw again only once, softly singing to herself at a little table beneath the kitchen
window one morning wearing only slippers and a bonnet arranging poppies in a vase,

whom soon after which was sent to a distant cousin’s country estate (near Padua? Pisa?
Parma? somewhere beside the banks of the Po deep in green Piedmont? no matter)
where she disappeared one winter whilst crossing a frozen pond to deliver a basket of eggs

to a neighboring farm, departing behind a clump of rushes into a cold but colorful coda
by way of an angler’s innocently un-marked hole in the ice…), the enthralling little patties
of horsy hyperbole placidly pinched off atop a pinto or painted pony while roaming

shamrocked pastures, little green paddocks, long country lanes (…how now! to tame
an Appaloosa with a tambourine is but the work of a wet nurse…), the somber soliloquies
delivered in the midst of calming a finicky filly, fawning over a colicky colt (…to “marble”

at one’s misfortune, as if to pulp oneself into the endpapers of a bad book, may we presume
to know better…) or hissed through a split lip (…for surely this is but love or friendship,
or merely a ray of sun that gleams in the eye of this beast…) while fending off (…not ill will

for me…) with a horsewhip (Fermo!) and suddenly headless hayrake (Attento!) the wild-
eyed kick (Ecco!) of a foaming Arabian), poet second (“my vnelected vocation”), so too
I’ve “ſlipt” (whoops): having “this”—say, bamboo bookmark, fauxly kanji’d to boot, iron

weathervane in the shape of a pair of napping loons, split muskmelon, lettuce leavings,
moldy bolt of muslin, chisel-and-wooden-mallet’s phit-phit-phit, little blue dish of caraway
pips—as much a delphinium or daisy or aster or asphodel its turning-toward-sunness.

•

Like this, and I would put up not down—not
because of tempo, because of sound—a map
of my own movement: from a simple journey
a few stone’s throws away to what shapely
manifold of dovetailed doublings and wrinkled
rabbets, dadoes, mortises and miters I fantasize
the so-called trek might knit me into if only it would.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

World’s End and Gadigal

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Meredith Wattison

I share a café table in Redfern with a young man whose bitten nails are lacquered scarlet, or Hunter’s Pink, like a London bus, then roughly scraped at by his teeth. Let’s call him Dorian. His hands are large, pale and beautifully formed, their squareness implies both invention and practicality, his alabaster thumbs arc like Bacon’s. To him it is androgynous transcendence; to me it is purely transport with poetic nomenclatives, Monopoly’s real estate; the stuff of desolate, historical novels. It is Dickens sending his sons, cruelly burdened with ‘potential’, to Australia, Austen on A Mystery Tour, the Brontës looking for a rough gypsy or two. It is Blyton’s imperious ‘Parp-Parp’ taxonomy, Potter’s Puddle-duck’s paisley shawl. (The 328 bus to Chelsea, World’s End, ran aground here, its deluded shoppers shuffled through The Sales without a purse, or benefactor – but with grasping hands. Some unleashed their European grotesques – the less callous amongst them surprised themselves.) A man with cerebral palsy has fallen crossing a lane and crawls into its gutter, a local man helps him to his feet, leans him against a wall to regain his balance and checks his forearms and bare legs for injury. He hugs his rescuer as though he has pulled him from the sea. Heathcliff breaks from the man’s embrace, glowers and strides away, wolfhounds at his heels. Dickens’s sons gather after the fact. Dorian and I agree on, among other things, Plath’s delusions (her anglomaniacal brown study, sodden sheep, errant cottage garden romanticism, for which I too have a propensity) – how unfortunate they were for her, and how crucial it is to find someone with illusions as real as your own and make them flesh. (Vivienne Westwood described her 1965 ‘meeting’ with Malcolm McLaren as him being ‘a one-off. He was fascinating and mad, and it was as though I was a coin and he showed me the other side.’ Its thrall lasted fifteen years; at his 2010 funeral she wore a Gold Label headband, re World’s End unisex accessories, which stretched ‘Chaos’ across her forehead, re his mantra re cash, re her lost protagonist.) Dorian hints at a discreet deep disappointment. (He and his full-lipped, saffron and chrome-haired girlfriend parted two months ago.) Dispossessed urban seagulls levitate and resist above us like metamorphosing plastic bags and our other side’s intertwined other; mine has the blond shoulders, the flaxen fusilli, of the scrapped buffalo nickel, ‘Liberty’ on his flip side. (Horses bring their satin musculature to him, as I wake weighing words.) A worn meniscus rim, his proud man’s good soldier’s skin, flare at the Elysian edge of these feathered eclipses on Regent, just off Cope, beneath 2012’s Transit of Venus, re her night-sweat fevers, Westwood’s divine bustled cellulite, our hearts are high
and rocked silent.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Reading the U.S. Constitution

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Paul Griffiths

1

in a
second
the
branch
in the
December
secrecy
of the
water
will
have
found
its
way
under

2

all
shall be
in
the
state
of
a
thousand
vacancies
when
Monday
business
at the
office
shall
raise
its
engagements

3

sitting
in the
peace
of the
house
I will
be
writing
the words
of their
first
meeting

4

their
first meeting
had
been fourteen years
before
by
their
records
which
they
questioned
for
some
reason
or other

5

to
be
or
not
to
be
that
is
the
question

6

for that
time
returns
when
vessels bound
for
foreign
lands
found
the territory
of
Wednesday
and the
things
of
next
year

Note: Each column is a reading of the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments, leaving out approximately 99.8% of the words.
Of course, many other such selections might be made – or, indeed, in some cases have been made.
Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

The Redactions

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Les Wicks

2014 intercepted electronic communications, DOD…
aphorism identified as a threat to national security.

The aphorism envies the novel,
the novel, of course, envies the haiku
and the haiku envies the brief life of the leaf.
– Gen PJ Burke, U.S. Army War College
Authority is the kernel of riot
– Prof Emma Burg, LSE
War and Peace?
– Leo Bradley Tolstoy, Christian Agent in North Korea


1. The Department of Sand
Cpl Raymond Sands to Anthony Sands (brother)

With my surname, of course the bastards sent me to Iraq,
every leader leads to defeat this war
that “finished” years ago the green zone
glows in the dark we are the aliens.
The sky is falling… those habits of our hats
I have a life back home.
Failure is a sun.


2. The Department of Grease, MCB Camp Lejeune, NC
Pvt Peter Pitz to Terry McAnulty (high school auto teacher)

Thought the Marines were a real big deal— I’m not
some kind of hero. I fix cars. Always thought
you were an idiot. You said
every soul needs a plumber. I know
you can’t stay mad when you’re never hungry
but the walls expand to fit one’s waistline.
I’ve maybe had enough.


3. Naval Intelligence Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti
Lt Margaret Tannis to Cecilia Breen (wife)

Joy rationed is hungry. I have a job
because I have a language. You said
the light at the end of the tunnel is the way in, not out.
You said the future is always knocking down the front door of the present.
But there are oceans, not doors between us.
Tight focus on a loose shoreline, the bay will have its way.
But the way is away.


4. ICBM silo Great Falls, MT
Pvt 1st class Danny Thompson to Clarice Thurgood (girlfriend)

Your feet leave the ground when you dance
in the shit again, (embarrassment is the source of all bravado)
— fell asleep during a 12 hour shift (over there is your enemy)
and left the access gates open.
To see you again last weekend
to leave you again last weekend. Oxymoron: man kind.
About that fight, don’t worry about it
hate is too much like factory work.
I love you Clarice, we habitually pluck, tie weights to ankles —
yet are not birds.
I love you like walking
though those words are still plumage, this man’s music
the old avian strut about the concordat of hens.

You see, war (love) brings out the poet in me
for the poets are still wildly read
even here in this tedious purgatory.


5. Langley Air Force Base, VA
Col Jason Driggton to Emily Driggton (daughter)

Don’t trust the faith of those who failed to falter.
Your decision to leave university
(every single nothing matters)
worries me deeply,
your note Stop collecting. Now. Seems to be just nonsense.
I have been where you are.
Have we managed the past?
Where there is no certainty you have to pretend.
Love isn’t the answer, it was never meant to be.
Love
Dad


6. Greensboro Vet Center, AL
former Cpl David Alborsen suicide note

There is a sanctity in our best defeats
all my friends out there (Forget your education!)
that’s where you stayed so
get fucked. The story of your life will be that it ended.


7. Washington Navy Yard– Community Relations, DC
Senior Chief Petty Officer Rosa Trejos draft valedictory circulated to colleagues

25 years expertise is your enemy.
I have lied with a careless grace
for truths that barely matter.
Wisdom is a tribe that demands regular sacrifice.
I have forgotten how to look back.
Never judge a word by the company it keeps.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Riposte

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Pam Brown

Coming back to their neck of the woods,
a shout was as good as a wolf and a basket

as full as a boot full of tarnished medallions

and useless keys, pugnacious as costume

on a moonlit patio, swilling prosecco

in the face of a woofer meltdown,
the Pixies Doolittle undermining

their security and ripping through

their smokescreen, they linked arms

and tumbled headfirst into the black

ink of their future depositions, laughing

like whales at their idiotic prospects,
reminiscing over the glory days

of their addictions; some strange

archaic pleasures, white drawings

on the fragile weatherbeaten wall,

hessian curtains with macramé tassels,
vases with cracks sewn together

with lines from the Old Testament

making them crazy: the lord raised up judges,

which delivered them out of the hand

of those that spoiled them, and left

them stranded on the banks of their own

satisfaction. Really, their pleasures

were of the most fleeting kind, so
they faced up and said, ‘damned

if we do, damned if we don’t’,
and didn’t do anything to correct,

construct, console, constrain or

contribute to the future prosperity

of their grand project, though they

played out their ebullient narratives,
and folded up their origami verses,

took to the trombone and piano
with gusto, and uttered a rousing

chorus to all and sundry.
the next day, they were arrested

in their development towards spiritual

affirmation, a transparency attractive

in its embrace of optimism’s anodyne argot

though their youth lay dead as springtime

it was late in the hour of burning reason

and enlightenment overkill, thus panhandled

they stepped out of the limelight

and took up Pascal programming 

insisting it was neither an imperative 

nor blast from the past, always slinking
into their nesting

procedures to put everything

into structured subranged enumerated records

before they opened the business door
to uncultivated beauteous genius;

for, you see, they knew (or know)

their territory, their competition,

their enemies; experienced
in an exquisite tai chi

they quietly folded backwards
as some roaring ruddy raider
bellowed and screeched wild calumny

at their retro costumes festooned with flurries

of rapid eye movement, privately aghast

at their charismatic choreography

and lush sampling of his aggro compendium;

in their neck of the woods, a shout was as good as

a promise, a promise as good as a fistful of hemp,
a fistful of hemp as good as a hit

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Royal baby has first play date

Posted on August 1, 2014 by A J Carruthers

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

When Did You Find Out

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Andrew Phillips
I don’t remember
it’s not like
a birds and the bees talk
it was a gradual kind of knowing,
sort of
(felt like I was carrying something)
It wouldn’t make sense to say
I think it’s something you slowly
wake up to
wake up to
wake up to
wake up to
wake up to
wake up to
wake up to
wake up to
It’s simple
[talk over]
maybe we’re past that now
this place is scraped knees
and bleed onto the pavement
placing history books into boxes
I didn’t care where they went, I mean
it’s a shame but we’re all good now right
we’re concrete, steel and ashphalt walking up
roller door driveways
a gradual kind of knowing, it’s like
finding out your family has hidden a pile of
bones
you could throw a rope
still, you couldn’t reel back the loss.
[count 2]
But I didn’t know what to…
—
awkward silence
—
What did you do?
choke on sadness, I didn’t
brew a pot, I didn’t
seem too bothered, I didn’t
say a prayer I didn’t
hear voices I didn’t
have anywhere to go I didn’t
and then the colour of the grass made sense
I think about it a lot
I don’t
think about it a lot
at migratory birds and
native birds and
native birds fight with
migratory birds and
soldier birds squawk while wagtails work
kookaakkaakakkakakaka
(silence)
how do you feel when you walk barefoot
I wonder where we’re going
is it we
is it us
I can only I
(increase in intensity and volume)
where are we going
where are we going
where are we going
[native title section, kind of talking over the
top of one another]
The Australian Government has acted to protect
the rights of all of its citizens, and in particular its
indigenous peoples, by
(3a) to rectify the consequences of past injustices
(3b) their prior rights and interests, and their rich
and diverse culture, fully entitle them to aspire.
a special right to negotiate its form, must be
provided to
rejected the doctrine that Australia was terra
nullius
Justice requires that
Justice requires that
Justice requires
Justice requires
Justice requires
on a granite rock
basalt
it’s simple
sharp to talk about
my son watched sorry
and said
‘that man sorry’
I move:
a new page in Australia’s history by
moving forward with confidence to the
future. the laws and policies of
successive parliaments
the removal of
We the parliament of Australia
respectfully request
this new page in history
this new page in history
we store history books in court houses
I stop at the lights
I watch a teenager
being spun in a shopping trolley
It’s complex it’s
I didn’t choke on sadness
I don’t think about it a lot
I wonder where we’re going?
I don’t remember when it was
or taught in school
probably doesn’t matter anyway, I just
suddenly felt like I was carrying something.
it was on a ‘Tuesday’
It wasn’t there before
maybe it was there before but
I hadn’t been listening.
hadn’t wanted to hear.
hadn’t wanted to see myself in that story.
It’s complex
[talk over]
Maybe I was too sure of myself
All straight edges and upright
I never knew I could dissolve like that.
then I felt like a stranger inside my own skin,
as if
I’d given up my body,
falling through time.
the landscapes
I recognized before,
blurred into a sort of ache.
It didn’t overtake me, I mean
You wouldn’t know anything was different
Perhaps the sun was hotter, and the wind
colder.
back as far as history,
still, you couldn’t reel back the loss.
[count 2]
But I didn’t know what to…
do with it.
—
awkward silence
—
I don’t remember. I know I didn’t:
ever cry, I don’t think, I didn’t
talk for days, I didn’t
plant a tree, I didn’t
feel sick straight away I didn’t
pack up and leave I didn’t
want to walk away.
and I couldn’t watch the story the clouds
played out in the sky (anymore).
I look at things differently
I don’t
Look at things differently
fallen feathers and
patterns of flight
fallen feathers and
patterns of flight
they are scavengers in the suburbs now
(silence)
through the forest?
I’m a ghost, but I don’t know whose.
is this the track we should be taking?
is it they
is it you
no we can us
(increase in intensity and volume)
where are we going
where are we going
where are we going
[native title section, kind of talking over the
top of one another]
(2b) held that native title is extinguished by valid
government acts that are inconsistent with the
continued existence of native title rights and
(3c) ensure that Aboriginal peoples and Torres
Strait Islanders receive the full recognition and
status within the Australian nation to which
history
Justice requires that, if acts that extinguish native
title
Justice requires that
The needs of the broader Australian community
require certainty
The needs of the broader Australian community
The needs of the broader Australian community
The needs
The needs
once I sat on a rock for days
on sandstone
metamorphic layers of meaning
It’s complex it’s
sharp to talk about
the wrongs of the past
profound grief, suffering and loss on
children, communities and their
country.
acknowledging the past
acknowledging the past
acknowledging the past
the moreton bay fig sends earthquake through
the pavement
there are tracks below this street
hosting footsteps to bunya festivals
it’s simple
a gradual kind of knowing,
I can’t watch the story the clouds play out in
the sky
Perhaps the sun is hotter, and the wind colder.
you could throw a rope back as far as history
still you couldn’t reel back the loss
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We Bury Not Burn

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Chloë Callistemon

Please allow a few (or quite a few) moments for this film to load. Vimeo buffers at varying rates depending on where you are on Earth and when accessed.

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