Nell

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Todd Swift

When she took the bandage off her mouth
she found her lips in the mirror
dead as doorknobs, needing to be turned
but opening the locomotive of her throat

only sent certain crackerjacks out.
The truth when it spilled was white
like the ejaculate he had given her
as a present when she turned kind of four.

This was not the gift she had asked for.
So all the banshees that stuck
in her teeth like chicken, and all the lines
she crossed her arms with like noughts,

were so many touch and go bouts
of circumstantial evidence; or, straws
the drowning girl grasps for in the Pacific
when, having risen for the lucky third

time, she can no longer mime her furore
so breaks the silence like a biscuit in two.
And this new silence sounds abrupt
and is a siren call made only for you.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Silence

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Todd Swift

It doesn’t matter
And it can’t be done.

The way a wave
Won’t outlast the sun.

You see a word once
Then it’s gone again

Like wet paint drying on
A wall to be knocked down.

The songs are flashing
In a pond like signs, fish

Half-asleep until the ice
Is broken off.

It isn’t wrong to cough
When the big guns sing.

I had a vocation,
It had begun.

It lasted two weeks,
A vacation more than anything.

It gave great pleasure
To the lofty mice.

My silent words, O Lord, to you
Were offerings

Of sugar and spice.
By morning the platter

Was licked clean and bare
By vermin who had fed

On my adoration.
It had been bent and soft

Before then, then hard and coarse.
For once you care,

Care can’t be taken anymore.
You’re sent off course.

What goes is gone, what goes ahead
Is just enough to stay a hand

From making bad things worse,
Or worse, bedding things best left unsaid.

Undone is what all sheets were once,
On that occasion when they bled.

What lost its purpose
Was the poise. To clear

My heart my throat makes noise.
Above the ceremony

Good birds take wing
And in their leaving notify

The ground that soaring brings
A distance to be mastery,

In the new conjoining
Of thought and thing.

It wasn’t clearly meant
To be just above,

Which is why love always
Lies down in the end.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Hafiz: Ghazal 75

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Paul Kane

The products from the workshop of the universe, all of it is nothing.
Bring wine, for the goods of the world are nothing.

The heart and soul long for the honor of intimacy with the beloved.
That is all, for otherwise heart and soul would be nothing.

Do not, for the sake of shade, be indebted to the sacred trees of Sidra and Túbá:
when you look closely, O flowing cypress, heavenly trees are nothing.

Five days you are spared in this way station.
Rest easy awhile, for time is nothing.

O Saqi, we are waiting on the shore by the sea of annihilation.
Regard it, for the space between lip and mouth is nothing.

Wailing and weeping have sadly consumed me,
but to narrate or explain is worth nothing.

Fakir, beware: do not grow complacent in your zeal.
The distance from your cloister to the Magi’s tavern is nothing.

The name of Hafiz has gained honor in the world,
but among outcasts, the calculations of profit and loss are nothing.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Writing: Silence ::

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Paul Kane

To mark the surface
(in gelid depths trout linger),
to inscribe in point
(mordant bites into metal),
is giving voice to silence.

Etymologies
are wiser than our sayings,
or, distillations
of our perilous knowings.
We write, but we are written.

Long or short, our days
are numbered, start to finish.
We can count on it,
but it will seldom be real
for us, more so for others,

for others we love
as ourselves, in whom we live.
I sit and listen
to the last breath die away.
How quickly her hand turns cold.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

New Glass

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Sue Wicks

On the other side of the glass
the garden mimes itself; even the leaves
ripple without a murmur in the breeze.
A question-mark above the grass

betrays a cat, suggests what the cat’s after.
If a sparrow dies
it dies in silence. Passing schoolgirls’ eyes
are full of silent laughter.

Ambulances hee-haw past unheard.
A wheelie-bin that used to mimic thunder
belly-rumbles quietly under
wraps, while overhead

the planes come in, reflect a gleam
of sun, their homing engines nearer than they seem.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

The Snow

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Michael Farrell

Blue flakes are falling on the tents and the tongues
of the kangaroos. It becomes white on contact. It
becomes warm. It’s one of the magics of the Monaro
of Kosciuzko. My arm and hair are one with the
kangaroo tongues. The tents are dripping. The sky

whitens the land as the land blues
the sky. That’s the feeling we
have in the jeep. Flakes silt the
tussocks and yams and ash trees
they Xmas the briars, if you’re
that way inclined: Chicago the
koalas; well we make do with
possums. I wear a red parka as

I run at the barbed wire fence and veer left like
a boomer. And whinny in the confusion of the
metaphor party the weather invites. When I’m
older I’ll catch Istanbul sky in my hands like music
and wear a trench coat like an extra from another

era – of Sydney – where they
only know of analogies. Here
we have no light only pieces
of the universe and bread. The
tents have left. The gum leaves
are clean as rifles. When you
put that piece of Europe in your
hand it’s your hand. I ride a white

horse as well as a wombat; I drive a white car
like a Fred Williams dab. We’re running deranged
on the fields of Bega, little white-arsed flies for
the most part and I put my face in yours. The mud
makes us shitty/happy. You put your face up in

the air like a kangaroo with a flat
tongue out for sugar, their subjectivity
gone haywire like the time there
was grass in the chocolate cake:
we just wanted to make it sound
nice, like Berlin. Everything’s
dual, everything’s a Hereford.
A blue haiku sun shines down.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

The Navel of the World

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Shari Kocher

Lake Titicaca is a freshwater lake the island of Amanti our home stay terraced and peaceful no motors no lights no buzzing at all the lake is an ocean of lappings the pathways are cobbled the fields tilled by hand the walls made of stone are Inca the light is soft the faces kind the food is simple and wholesome vegetable soup fried cheese cracked corn yams and beans and chick peas the peppermint taste of muña grows wild along the walkways everybody walks walking is life everybody moves so softly i love how the day keeps pace with the body the passage of sun on eating and working i love how the language has lilts and lulls how hands and feet grow silence the loveliest sleep in the world falls here i wake to water sheep at my window chased by a granny on nimble legs who leaps a stone wall waving her stick whistling dawn on a donkey ears lit softly beans to be dried a net on the mend everybody’s up and working everybody works but nobody hurries it’s hours still before breakfast the bed the floor the sweet latch at the door all has been worn to smoothness time deepens its rings in my hands

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Travelogue through Time

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Shari Kocher

colours explode in fevers of sweetness
a llama springs tied to a tree
cactus pillars packed with water
wind song through cacti thorns

one red rooster an ox-ploughed field
the silence of the puna every fold
of earth speaking a different colour
catacombs of human bone boxes behind

brass lion doorknockers twelve feet high
for those who once came calling on horseback
walls made of sand bird bones seashell
riverstones lime and water outlasting

centuries of earthquake the sound of a river
coming up from underground in layers
a child in the shadow of a darkened doorway
rocking the passage of water and time

cracks in the concrete swimming pool
filled with paper barking dogs on chains
houses behind wrought iron gates on hilltops
cacti and locks someone welding at dawn

red disk on the horizon head torn open
pin pricks and holes in the hessian
she drinks the chicha she is cold exhausted
the altiplano air implodes her lungs

she sits in her grave in a foetal position
wrapped in cloth facing east
her breathing slows the impossible scent
of jasmine stitching the hills to the air…

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Listening for Charlie

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Barry Wallenstein

Enough about me,
now tell me about you.
[tiny pause]
What do you think about me?

[silence]

Listen: the 12 foot schooner out on the lake
is but a twig compared to the ship I sailed
as Captain Kidd,
an alias to hide a connection
with Lord Vicious – never my friend
but always close and a beauty.

Charlie, what’s that faraway look as I speak?
Some critique grown in your skull?
My speech is not about me but you and us all.
If I tell you what we ate and smoked there
on that blasted, shipwrecked island,
you’d love the story but be too busy or too cool to respond.

But if you go on about your essay on pathos,
and how this high-toned, well-known
and on-time journal is about to publish
and pay well to print your title,
“The Wealth of Feeling,”
I’ll surely stop you for the health of my mind.

Tell me more (you haven’t said a word)
about your son who fell off a wall
protesting something – your details were lost in the wind;
remember? we were talking in the wind
and soon it was to be my turn.
This much I heard: he’s OK, alive and behaving.

The winds have died down, you devil,
and since you haven’t answered my question
or given any indication of how I look
in your mind’s eye, I’ll talk to myself –
as if no one were sitting across from me
here on the patio, hands slack and silent.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Silence: An Anatomy

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Alex Skovron

I reach into you
the half-light drizzles
my fingers caress your thoughts

You hear my footfall
we trace another memory
my limbs enfold

I follow you my eyes
can peer into the hidden corners
of your history

Your future I see within dreams
that shroud my bones
dreams I swallow to remake

My bloodstream thirsts
for the throb of matter my sex
gives birth to your desires

I wrestle with each sinew
to breathe luminescent dark
into your strivings

Your heart is where my heart
sings but your words
are not my words

My words have no names
a grammar of the unsayable
gesture’s pure tongue

And should you lose your way
banish the old conceit of sound
and I will guide you home

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

lip

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Joanne Burns

the reticent comic sprawls
across the numb linoleum considering
a loud tennis career pow-whoosh-slam
but no one loves me anymore; delphic
teapots leak like hushed puppies who
believes in loud prophecies these days
mountain tops prefer to sleep like blank
cassettes would you want to wear high
heels into yodelic canyons better to consult
a squad of kookaburras with zips on their
beaks ―


[a riff on ‘echo’ from on a clear day by joanne burns]

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Morphine

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Robert Minhinnick

All that’s in my head is in my head.
Try to notice Neptune, the poet said,

but there’s a mist outside, white on a white sky,
warm air across cold sea, turning the world invisible.

Morphine is a sister, is a saint.
In our blood and history they’ll trace the taint,

while all I see is the needle plunge,
or the golden-green, green-golden

draught in the eye-dropper
turning the world invisible.

Now a waitress brings the tables in.
I ask her for a napkin

and she comes across to the only customer
talking to himself and writing signs

like the moon and stars, the comet’s lines,
as if they could light up the gloom,

or the churning fret that hides the Seagull Room
and turns the world invisible.

I’m just the latest mad bastard to make her day.
But don’t worry, I’m not going to stay.

Yet all this dark matter is in my head,
and Howard, now you are forever dead,

and morphine’s still a sister and a saint
and an executioner. Too early for a cool carafe?
Let this eye-white fog then be your epitaph.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Mute in the Corner of the Museum of Love

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Campbell Thomson

Victorine Meurent, nicknamed La Crevette
modeled for Manet in Olympia and Dejeuner sur l’Herbe
also posing as a matador and with an African Grey Parrot
they were estranged when he rejected the Salon
so she became a painter and modeled for Toulouse-Lautrec
living out her days with Marie Dufour
in the Parisian suburb of Colombes
of her paintings, only Le Jour des Rameaux survives

Do words have enough of the taste
and texture of a low b flat
the sound of green
or the perfume of the back of your neck
to resist the lobotomy of thump
and the onslaught of ideas?

Prisoners in solitary, long distance truckers
sailors in the doldrums, high altitude pilots
and mushers with sled dogs in a flat icescape
see symphony orchestras, UFOs, steam trains
weird sea creatures, and baritones singing Schubert lieder

The ocean’s breasts heave serenely
its hair caresses the rocks
and it rests its forearms on the wharf
saying what a vivid orange voice you have
and isn’t 87 a fat woman
with a man twirling his moustache

Ingres told Degas to make lines, lots of lines
Renoir said he painted with his prick
but if you attach a rubber hand to your arm
and put your real hand under the table
when someone caresses the rubber hand
you can get an erection
because visual beats tactile every time

I see this nothing and it is something
that’s where the trouble comes in
the girl without hands doing arithmetic
with her non-existent fingers
a phantom foot can have a bunion
a phantom wrist a watch

You see the earth give birth to the full moon
like a turtle laying an egg on the sand
but when our night ends
the bay swallows it whole in one gulp
leaving a folly of bubbles
inlaid with lacquer marquetry
with the poet paid to be a naked statue
mute in the corner of the museum of love.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

from: Zoo Birds

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Diane Fahey

Mute swans

form pictograms from
unknown languages; write with
mango beaks on lakes;
move at will from one kind of
perfection to another.

Meditation

Icons of the art
of now, of being nowhere
but here, they practise
pure stillness, freedom from thought.
Then hunt a little. Herons.

Macaws

A rainforest – this?
They congregate on dry boughs
under the vast dome:
bitter gossip, a cracking
silence like that of felled trees.

Rufous owl

In the night creatures enclosure

Her gold-circled eyes
become black moons when the lights,
on a time-switch, dim.
Still clear: grey beak, the striped down’s
unnecessary beauty.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

The Book of the Dead Man (Silence)

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Marvin Bell

Live as if you were already dead.
Zen admonition


1. About the Dead Man and Silence

The dead man has cultivated an alien silence.
Amid cacophony, his deepest ear remains at low tide, his insides go
quiet.
He has turned down the amp, curbed the snaky squeal of the mic, and
asks now a favor of the audience.
He asks the audience not to applaud early.
For he holds within him a solitude within crowds, a sanguinity in air and a
buoyancy at sea.
To have been this way when younger would have meant no schooling, no job,
no offers for his soul.
In geezerhood and beyond, the dead man has thrown a blanket over the
make-work dissonance of the national treadmill.
Humor in the face of the inevitable has been fundamental to an
Existential Absurdist like the dead man.
That, and earplugs.


2. More About the Dead Man and Silence

To the dead man, silence is the norm, interrupted at intervals.
The dead man listens for silence while the earth rumbles.
He hears the molten lava churning in the planetary core.
He registers the interruptions of wind assailing the trees.
He does not seek it in the traffic of the ether or in sleep where the
machinery of ears makes dreams of bees and swordplay.
To know pure silence, he will have to stop his pulse, neutralize the
magnetic pull of each particle in the universe, and just stop.
To just stop will mean no more swish or fizzle or bubbling, no delusion of
an interval.
Then, the music.
In the meantime, don’t ask, he won’t hear you.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Earplugs

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Marvin Bell

The din of leaf blowers recalls the promise of jetpacks
and the wide-eyed at space launches.
Progress has boosted the noise level so high
I can’t hear myself think. I can feel my brain sliding
from the impenetrability of man-made clamor.
Our minds have become echo chambers of man’s refusal
to stay put. Scientists are making noises about Mars.
They have sent back space art to amplify
the thrumming of expectation that lies dormant
until we are shown something at a distance.
Here comes the thunder. Run run run. One-thousand-one,
one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, turn to see
the lightning. We sketch the stars. The quietude
of distant conflagrations in dark matter
amplifies the intrigue of light rays from before time
buzzing our rooftops. What is hope?
It’s a backfiring existence as we brake downhill.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

A Capella: On Hearing the Tallis Scholars

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Rose Lucas

Wild bird
in your cage of rib
and lung,
I hear you break
into open space
daring
the high and unmarked air
surrounding stone,
startling the dusty film that settles
across the rafters –

untrammelled soprano reaching above
a mesh of voice,
where human bodies
attuned
play their notes of breath
pouring
(we were thirsty,
dying
for want of this)

streams of falling light
swoop and
we ride the textured wave,
braving rapids of prayer –
so many hearts’ ancient longings –
trusting to this crafted
ship of sound,
its promise of quiet water.

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

Sendai

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Nicolette Stasko
I

Leave me
I am late in my life
and have seen many summers
my mind now is only wreckage and waste
once houses stood and people teemed
a busy anthill watched over by the quiet dead
rice paddies glowed emerald in the distance
and the sea rolling
gently onto our shore
brought us fish and abalone
seaweed in abundance

now all is mud and stinking
death falls from the sky like rain
that once brought us clouds and flowers
fruits of the cherry tree and almond
rain that gave us washing water bath water
the wooden tub I bathed you in
our garden lost to me as you are
the ancient gods are angry
our ancestors have deserted us
stay away
and let me love you
with my last breath

II

Our futons
make a giant quilt
a pattern of fields growing green
and lying fallow collage of what little is not lost
these two metre squares we will share forever
nothing has happened before this
not the birth of my daughter
nor the death of my father
not the joy of early morning
crisp purity of air and bird song
persimmons in a bowl

we kneel to try and feed our child what
has been given us by foreigners after
standing for hours on ice
even the temperature has turned against us
I try to keep my feet
within our space
there is nowhere to go nothing to do
I teach my daughter
how to fold a paper boat
notice my grandmother’s
fine stitches
have come loose


Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged

Tide Edit

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Gig Ryan

Encumbered, embarrassed, he turns day to irony and spikes
each word onto the carpet

One come-down itches another, and perpetrates
its dreams of ghosts, haloed in gold

that black and white day ignores
The Academy turns opinion in its kiln of instructions

Show your merch. to the phone and pass over, trolls and summits
Temple of Heaven screws into sky

citations buttoned down a chart
whose copyists swirl

Downstairs pervious voice glasses the phone
Go out into the ute-green world, gleaming and catastrophic

Swift wind absconding time
now another April’s toasted sunset extinguishes its screen

Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged

Waiting

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Jane Gibian
at night the traffic lights change rapidly almost erratically / cars parked 90° front to kerb their noses grazing the nature strip in a mizzle of rain / it’s autumnal when your taste for news peaks in the morning / then descends sharply through the day until the 11pm news break is sickening

corals speak unambiguously of climate change / why is mars so lopsided magnetically / the broad three-dimensional webs of st andrew’s cross spiders straddle telephone lines again / in the space of waiting created by a knock at the door is autumn / the platform rushing up towards you as a train slows

a desultory cloud trail sits like a smudge of dirt on the horizon / at the end of a song your mind plays automatically the beginning of the next before its first chords sound / in the five previous known extinctions of all life / coral was the first to die / your eyes meet again in the rear vision mirror

Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged

Metamorphosis Drumming | Tambur Metamorfosa

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Dorothea Rosa Herliany

Metamorphosis Drumming

let there be a river
let there be a rock
let there be water
let there be earth
let there be a fish
let there be light on the sea
let there be a ripple
let there be a current
let there be a flood
let there be a scream
let there be a tree
let there be a root
let there be a leaf
let there be a quivering
let there be a falling
let there be a season
let there be a decay
let there be a forest
let there be a shout
let there be a song
let there be a lament
let there be ash
let there be a body
let there be a bending
let there be a dance
let there be a shadow
let there be a swaying
let there be a finger
let there be a fang
let there be a waiting
let there be a garden
let there be a lamp
let there be a shadow
let there be a fear
let there be loneliness
let there be a whisper
let there be a wound
let there be a gaze
let there be a sigh
let there be a darkness
let there be a silence
let there be a mountain
let there be a time
let there be a promise
let there be regret
let there be a curve
let there be a direction
let there be a tear
let there be a spirit
let there be god
let there be everything
let there be a ripple
let there be nothing
let there be sometime
let there be a question
let there be a window
let there be me
let there be emptiness
let there be an echo
that defeats the mind
dulls the pain

Tambur Metamorfosa

menjadi sungai
menjadi batu
menjadi air
menjadi tanah
menjadi ikan
menjadi pendar
menjadi riak
menjadi alir
menjadi bah
menjadi jerit
menjadi pohon
menjadi akar
menjadi daun
menjadi getar
menjadi gugur
menjadi musim
menjadi ringkih
menjadi belantara
menjadi riuh
menjadi lagu
menjadi ratap
menjadi abu
menjadi tubuh
menjadi liuk
menjadi tari
menjadi bayang
menjadi lenting
menjadi jemari
menjadi tusuk
menjadi tunggu
menjadi taman
menjadi lampu
menjadi bayang
menjadi takut
menjadi sunyi
menjadi bisik
menjadi luka
menjadi tatap
menjadi tiup
menjadi lamat
menjadi diam
menjadi gunung
menjadi waktu
menjadi janji
menjadi sesal
menjadi liku
menjadi arah
menjadi renta
menjadi ruh
menjadi tuhan
menjadi segala
menjadi riak
menjadi lenyap
menjadi bila
menjadi tanya
menjadi tingkap
menjadi aku
menjadi kosong
menjadi gaung
melamat kalbu
setumpul sembilu…

Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged

Companion Poems     from the French

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Tracy Ryan
apricot asparagus
baba bald man in a polo neck
basket bamboo
boutique bar
bean
blind man on wheels
bonhomme
brackmard
brush snake
cat cigar with a moustache
crackette crossbow
custard puff pastry
daisy dart
earthworm
fig firebrand
grinder/gripper
hot water pistol
Johnny Baldhead
lake little broom
letterbox little brother
lettuce little tail
love-tap
mintie
mound
mussel
Parisian river
pussy plough-blade
rollie
sewing-box sabre
slot Senegal butterfly
slobbering clarinet
smuggled salsify
treasure chest third leg
tongue
tool
undie eel
windsock
Envoi – inside & out
bonbon
button
cli-cli
cliquette
coffee-bean
praline
raspberry
trigger
bearded man
chimney-apron
lawn
tuft
watercress

Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged

Found Names

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Ingrid de Kok

The police called her ‘Precious’,
acid burn on her skin,
long drop toilet, Humansdorp.

A nurse named her ‘Vicky Unknown Monday’,
rubbish dump, Lotus River,
March 2010.

And ‘Moses’, on the banks of the vlei,
‘Valiant’, who was covered in sores.
Never ‘Baby X’, never ‘Baby Y’.

For those who find infants
know they must be named
to properly be saved,

to survive, to be recalled.
We want to remember
Agatha, August, Adamastor

when we tell the stories of
cold, cords, maggots, rags,
the foundlings without cauls.

Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged

from _Memory Cards_

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Susan M Schultz

A thin black hand, a white ham hand. Confucius with a typewriter. The poem loses history, like the small stuffed animal we left on a Madrid subway station bench. I went back on the train, but it’s been lost again since. Ads for Valentine’s Day feature enormous stuffed bears, strawberries drizzled in chocolate. Consumption insures object-loss. She cut me into ribbons with her questions, then asked if I was angry. I would have liked to have heard Mandela, says Father Bob. You have committed crimes against humanity, and we forgive you. Mostly, we forget. He had not consumed his rage like gristle, spitting it back. On the bus, someone spat at me, Petra says. After her soccer team lost, the tall girl spat at my daughter’s shoe. We spit at, but the and is arbitrary, knows its boundary, releases it.


–for Petra Kuppers
–14 February 2014
Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged