Hayden & Langer: Open Slat(h)er

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Nick Whittock

the air is pretty
a bitten tune
scathed by the savant
with his big nails
a willow blade flashing
like an idiot the thing
has slowed now to
cremation pace single
handedly he wins the ashes
pashes the badge
we are not yet ready for his
silence castles are erected love blossoms 7
hours celebrating in the players rooms
long after the beer has washed the blood from
our teeth and the air
from the victory song

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Note to the Editor

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Todd Swift

This poem is from a much briefer series
on the life of the man who invented dirigibles
whose name is French, or Hungarian
I think. Dietrich Katona?

Please capitalize all the second and eighth letters
in this section. Note that
I am using a special font here – Strontium Victorian –
and you must make certain to keep the size at 7.2
and also capitalize all the names of fish,
except if freshwater.

You might be specially interested
in the following 1,368 rondelles
of which I am including a generous selection

The sequence on the invention of dice has been suppressed pending an investigation.

***

All the place names in the Confession Poems should be deleted,
to be replaced with Xs and long dashes.

Please fact check my biography.

Wyoming is spelled “Wyoming”.

“Hypo-allergenic” has a dash.

You might be intrigued to note that I am the winner of the following international poetry competitions and prizes:

1. THE WALDO VINCENT MEMORIAL HAIKU CONTEST;
2. MS. EUNICE HALIBURTON CHAPBOOK PRIZE FOR BEST FOURTH CHAPBOOK;
3. THE UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIAS INTERNATIONAL SONNET CONTEST;
4. UNESCO PRIZE FOR BEST VEGETABLE POEM;
5. JAKES AUTOBODY BIANNUAL FIRST BOOK AWARD;
6. DR. AND MRS. RADNOTIS ONE AND ONLY TOP POEM CHOICE;
7. DATGEISTS BEST, 1970.

The following poems have appeared
in NO POSSIBLE WAY; NEW AND FAIRLY RECENT LINES;
GODSQUAWK; ERGOMATIC; SUNSHINE STATE MARGINALIA;
CORPUS GUSSY; THE TROUBADOUR LIVES!; SKELETAL AFFLATUS;
BONGO CONGO MONGO; DELIRIUM TREMENDOUS; DATGEIST;
MR. FRIENDLY; MY NAME IS PETE AND I AM BI; ONLY TWICE;
LAST PETROL STATION FOR A HUNDRED MILES; ZOOMER.

(titles capitalized because I think it looks good).

You are welcome to choose any of the poems
but I would strongly suggest you choose the following:
i am not in favor of capital punishment; burning dolls, watering cans;
elegy for a dead amnesiac; seven ways of adjusting a corset;
the years following 1798, especially 1816, 1909 and 1972;
gadzooks! Why I Smoke Such Good Cigars and NO WOMEN CAN DO
THE DANCE LIKE A MAN ENTRANCED (please note the caps).

My name should be spelled in full, including all titles.
My photo is not included, but is available upon request
from the Department of Justice.

Thank you for your interest in my work, which
means a lot to me and my seven brothers,
who live near you, and are karate experts.
Dont be shy to tell me what you think.
Praise Jesus!

And thank you once again. This is the only anthology
I have been asked to submit to.
Submit is such a funny word, isnt it?

I hope the poems on the death of tubercular infants
do not offend you. My sisters had this disease
and it is based on actual experience “recollected
in solitude” but you know how it goes.
Okay, I may have made some of it up.
But the pus on the collar is actually true.
I saw that.

I think the name may be Dieter Kazner.
Ill get back to you on that.

By the way, did you have a chance to check my poetry
web site: www.allfatgirlsconstantly.com?
It is not a sex site, dont worry. He he.

I am very interested in the photographs of your wife
on you site. Is she really that size?

Thank you again and send me a reply in six to seven hours
so I can tell the people I live with all about it.
I hope I wont have to put my disappointment hat
on today.

Yours, cheers, all the best, thank you, felicitations, signing off for now, have a good week-end, and much appreciated,

Des Katboy
 
PS This is a nom de plume. My real name is different. It is Desmond Kattman Jr., but what do you think of Katboy? It makes me think of cats. It gets lots of “lovely ladies” interested at open mics.

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Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Todd Swift

All a man needs, all a man ever really gets,
is one chance: the one good clean shot
at the royal cunt between the eyes, the spot

that can take a mind off getting in your way
and make an opponent an afterthought
on the road to sweet acquisition, power

you don't even think of stopping. Minutes
from the border between Big Government
and The Get Away, the car handles well,

the box of shells jumping about like corn
popping on the bucket seat. Reaching over,
I feel my choice weapon, a Derringer.

I could go into details, but you're a faggot
and wouldnt appreciate the design's sincerity.
The history behind this piece of craftsmanship,

one of America's true glories, reads like a Who's
Who of what's extinct, from Buffalo to LA.
By the time you read this, I'll either be shit

for worms, or getting a BJ from a Mex skank,
fingering her pucker, sucking on a Corona,
fully enjoying my ill-gotten bank anti-deposit.

Escape has that nice divergence to it, pure
as poetry: you either do or you don't, are Major
or Minor, or a flower that bloomed unthanked,

odds I'll throw for any day. Risk is the trade,
where all the best deals are actually made. Consider,
I could still be a security guard right this instant,

jut as surely as you sit there and eyeball words,
like any armchair lifer who never plays big time.
Fuck information highways and virtual reality,

all that CNN-Time hype that lulls us to desks.
I am not virtual or informative to anyone
right now, here at this gateway where life is good.

I'm happening, honey, like a rape or flood,
with my own inner mythology. I rise and take on
the fluidity and force of a wild god, what goes

with me goes, and what remains is golden gravy
for the little guy who got gigantic with big plans.
Wild Turkey beads my lips like spunk juice,

Marlboro's cancer agents rush down my throat,
as I snake Virginia smoke from movie-star nostrils.
Catch me before I cool: a celebrity in the forming,

like something a satellite might see lights billions
from here, a nebula bursting like a crab from a shell:
Edward Huntly Dade's the name, to be exact. Never

forget, just because I grew up in a trailer, doesn't mean
I think ketchup is a food group; I'm smart, is all.
I can see them up ahead, the vehicles tight like wagons

circled against a Navaho wave, the daylight of their beams
red in the dust and sun, igniting the tips of their carbines.
I'm in range. Not much left to say or do, but just the same,

it gut-catches, the national anthem before the World Series.
I'm not alarmed. I've got three great things going for me,
each one my Daddy's bequest: alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

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AJ Weberman & the Trashcan

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Alicia Sometimes

in 1971
on MacDougal Street
New York
a 25 year old
          unkempt with wispy hair
shouted out the front
of Bob Dylan's house:

FREE BOB DYLAN!

members of a group called DLF
          (Dylan Liberation Front)
were upset that Bob
was too apathetic & rich.
they were amazed
that he had furniture
electric lamps & a bed
for sleep. (not just to write protest
songs on).

according to a friend of Dylan
AJ Weberman was
the kind of person
“if you saw on a subway you would
change seats”
he went through Dylan's rubbish & was
known to be the first garbologist
in pop history.

Dylan chased him &
punched him in the face &
          said
“what can you tell about me
from leftovers?”

i want AJ Weberman to come
& study my bins
he'd find soy cartons, too much pasta & a quotation

from the lips of Christopher Walken on TV
“i got a fever & the only prescription is
cowbells.
more cowbells.”
weird but trashy.

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Bankstown

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Ali Jane Smith

It's the Saturday morning fruit and
vegetable market in Berkeley, California.
There are trestle tables with artichokes,
bok choy, carrots, sugar cane, strawberries,
looking as though they would taste sweet, and a
stall selling organic sauerkraut.
It's not a big market, but there's a
kind of enthusiasm about it. The sight
of all this fruit and all these vegetables
makes me feel the sharpness of the distance
between me and my kitchen.

In my limited experience, when somebody dies
people have something to say about it.
That she was too young or he had a good innings,
or died well, or very hard. That
he was well liked, or she was always difficult
and nobody ever really and where were they anyway.

Bankstown, I like the sound of it. My Mum and Dad
grew up there, I was born there and we lived there for a while.
When my grandfather got sick, his last illness,
I went to see him. I took the train up from
Wollongong to Central, then out to Strathfield. Dad
picked me up from the station and we went to the new Bankstown hospital.

We could only see him one at a time. We walked along corridors
past the chapel, the wards, the waiting rooms.
He'd had a piece of his lung taken out and was
just coming out of the general anaesthetic,
the nurses yelling 'Wake up, Mr Smith,' the way they do it now,
but I couldn’t help whispering and
not wanting to disturb him. 'Wake up, Mr Smith,'
they said. They knew what they were doing
and I didn't have a clue.

Afterwards Dad and I went to Freedom Furniture
and followed the walkways looking at arrangements
of loungerooms and bedrooms
and indoor-outdoor areas.
We bought glasses with detachable handles
that could be used for tea and coffee, as well as cold drinks.

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SuperX

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Ali Jane Smith

At the SuperX there are pro riders
in the demonstration events and local kids riding in the races.
When we first arrive there are bobcats all over the place,
they're still building the track.

It's exciting just watching the bobcats making the jumps and
waiting for the pro riders to come out and do their warm up laps.
There aren't any hot dogs left or pies by the time they start.
They ride around and around getting
higher and higher each time they go over a jump.

The pro riders how beautiful they look
up and down like dancers
or birds and
how beautiful they sounds their exhausts like a throat
and they smell good, hot small petrol engines
and the dirt they throw up
until it hangs in the air and then settles on all of us
sitting in the grandstand or on the grass.

When I get home it's a shock how dirty my face is
even though I stood well back from the track because
motor racing is dangerous, even for spectators.

The pro riders do tricks, they aren't there to race.
They take their feet off the footpegs and put them on the handlebars.
They do not fall.

In the breaks between races, two women wearing pink hotpants and
black t-shirts come out and throw merchandise into the crowd.
These women are the SuperX Hotties and they are
talking to one another as they walk around the dirt track
throwing caps, t-shirts and lollies into the crowd.

The local riders in the races crash all the time –
some get up and back onto their bikes and some
we see taken off the track while the paramedics walk over to have a look.
Time passes so slowly when you are waiting for an ambulance.

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Lithgow

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Stephen Oliver

One clump of dark green pine,
in coal country, behind the escarpment;
in a hollow, the other side of town,

along the Great Western, furrows
of coal-bits, drift of steam, state houses,
scattered about like spilled boxes.

One clump of dark green pine,
amongst tailings, by the pit-town that lies
low as a stifled cough, into the hills

black as tumours, into hill-shadow;
further on, Lake Windemere, half appears,
smudged hillocks, earth a dull yellow.

One clump of dark green pine,
nettles at the base, as thick as a door-mat,
coppery glow against the sun's shield

that drops over the Blue Mountains –
mining-town behind, slurried, on this high
dark falling off the rising ramparts.

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Letter to Milan Kundera

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Paul Murphy

Scent of Parisian Autumn blown in by the wind
A doorstep mottled with white and 'Prioritaire'
Inscribed upon the lid; I imagined him
Opening my message in the country:
An escape from the horrors of the everyday world
And other people; in a garden in sunlight
Sundials peppering the lawn, amber peacocks
Strutting in a cornucopia of light and shadow
And defecating on the roses, the roses which
Stretched in military lines through the garden
And beyond, basking in sunshine, my few words,
Hypocrit, I reader, my brother.

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Bottled Water

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Paul Mitchell

I like the tank tops.
And I don't mind the blue hats.
But why no trousers?
As if any of us
has something new to show.

Any one of us
might be pumped from a bath
or pulled down from a shower:
who would ever know?

Yet here we stand
for the Grand Door Opening,
the mighty hand that reaches in
takes one, yet leaves another.
As if there was some
difference between us.
Some truth to judgement.

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Equatorial

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Kate Middleton

I

Not really equatorial – in fact
not at all, but distinctly northern,
and seeming twice as close
as the city I call home, houses
weatherboard and colourful as beach
houses carved in the mountain,
sunset soon after 4
(being on the wrong side)
the smell faintly tropical-
the overhang a more sickly green.

(And the cat vomiting snake,
though this isn't really latitudinal,
simply a result of undergrowth.)


III

Road are like veins. That's
what they say, right? Like veins
that crisscross, that lead to and away
from the heart. Or maybe like stitches
instead. The roads are like threads
finely stitched into patchwork,
slightly frayed where different thicknesses
pull. The contours of roads
are like clues: tattoos on the body.
I piece them together-villages
strung in a row. Like a quilt
that unfolds (light fabrics only-
the heat leaves no need for
fireside quilts) it all lies
before me: the roads are like
seams too fine to unpick. Surely

someone went blind for this city.

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The Stuka Movement

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Ian McBryde

Furious birds, functionally ugly, the Stukas
wind down out of the sky. As they descend

their sirens are rising, pre-set to concert pitch,
a deliberate, death decibal A. Lean and

bent-winged eagles, they fall on an audience
of refugees streaming off the road. The sirens

have been designed to accompany the dropping
bombs, a visual symphony to grace what

looks like, from above, sudden classical flowers
blooming in a moving, human garden.

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Métro-Boulot-Dodo

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Tim Hayden

I am tired, and in a Métro car
accelerating 15 minutes of walking distance

So that when I brake from the seat
I read on the recoil:

Châtelet
Hôtel de Ville

and then listen
for the generator and coughs
Like listening for your parents through a summer's night
the stations are empty
but for the brakes' burn and every wooden light

I sleep
fingering that holed mosquito net.

 
–
 

Even in a tunnel you'll leap at a snap
Caring afterwards
whether you threw water on the barbeque
the doors' locks clacked
or if the remaining calf in the gully paddock is
wandering

to forget
How you saw the edits
and then slept through your stop.

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The Shower-curtain You

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Paul Hardacre

the dream of the river shark
with two fins guess it's one each
for soup & killing & this bleak fracture
of morning in a dish can't survive
unless tv spliced / the green LCD
of the clock-radio-phone like a
baby caught in flashbulb headlights
or photograph of a cracked head &
the ads up here are weird / best to
avoid or point to the nearest saint
even if painted & name him/her
now living in a bag & calling you
Bob Marley outside the casket in this
no-way Trenchtown of blackbirder
sprinklers & streets lined with card
tables & poofs hiding each other's
arse cracks / the queue to get flogged
in the unwaxed predatory man-shadow of
Castle Hill & these eggs remind me / make
our first morning in Agra all Dr. Suess in UP
you know? – green eggs & ham? – & I feel
as empty & sick except alone & surrounded
by Australiana bullshit & maybe it's this
morning & the desolation that has filled me
but I'm thinking so fucken what? about everything
in particular the richness & adventure of our
native land & the famous range of sweetmeats
that are wholeheartedly enjoyed by everyone & the
neo-American smile of Clancy & his ten-gallon
hat & self-supporting trousers with 'Tauttex' like
Bradman or bullfights / tits in your face & the Anzacs
hit Cairo hell-bent for tea-towels & dripping from
room service your voice becomes distant an electrical
hum & skin worn as sodium / a strange ominous streetlight
& the exaggerated movements of the poet exude
an anxious yet winsome charm / the odd atmosphere.
pick a day from the mojo calendar or night will find
me listening to Frusciante in the garage in the darkness
singing 'hey, the way go forward & the way go back' &
poncho/toothpick close-ups minus the spurs again the walk
towards Spring Street is quiet the air conditioner outside
the corner shop drips with insistence & heavy like rain
in Brunei where visitors stare from elliptical portholes in sheets
of condensation / as windows or Christmas lights / a city of
candles beside a highway & the smell of wet paper
perhaps currency? the sock-puppet/marionette children &
their coconut sweets pink bicycle mailbox on my tongue at
low tide & the shower-curtain you in the hotel like we said at the stairs
between drinks & organics / the smell of leaf litter / your neck

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Dorothy Porter’s "PMT" – 2001: 3 mixes

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Michael Farrell

piercing my turning piercing
pieno
pride my the pride my the pride
primitive more the primitive more the primi
nothing like a moon no
      like      moon no
gnat
it stares through it stares through

            stares
het het het het
like a mesmeri

la radio __ un
gos;sip; rubbish gos;sip rubbish, gossip
und gebrannte zucker und gebrannte
je macher
denken

mein lang
public met tattered
aber der mondschien aber
spla
life zinger king free war linger
icy corker hear dont bats
en arriere en arriere en

kaputt curzio malaparte

the postmodernist always rings twice gilbert adair
wising up the marks timothy s murphy
film at wits end stan brakhage

2

the moon is out this morning
full;

et le jaune et
de vieux denture de vieux denture
nada sejemante un luna na
adentro un delica
it stares
  shears
the mist the traffic
          half
like a mesmerising

     ri

het i road i dora si
gossip rubbish
     rub
et cara
pretty mean the pre
parecer a eso
princi

verse elect
tub het mono loom thing
splashes on my … dri
like
like
& i (count my (jer (
cards

the serial poem and the holy grail jack spicer

1587 a year of no significance ray huang

3

are dnno n
presents might to presents might to presents
ioc are wehhnb ioc are wehhnb ioc are wehhnb i
pray
rien pareils un lune

in a fastidious tang
gone its less
__ mirada fija por
het tims het if craft yen mind screw near red
htye i desdeltstou prthfhito htye

il __ __ e bosso di __ il __ __ e bos
unsstv lmfftsr unsstv lmfftsr unsstv lmf
anal camel car dram arm a

i chew on it i
  on
in knight o tuba thing kin u boat inking bath
my
my
over elect table south debt meal lobe select
pero __ luz de la luna pero
slap shes spy lashes ring
like freezing water like

    free
o cunt in key ad
bards cars bad cads war

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blue hills 1, laurie duggan: broken hills

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Michael Farrell

1

no drag phase
mal__colm frasers feet

epais fo
eelshaped reser(voir & ? visi
alors blanc nuage alors blanc nuage
nothing next 4hun
no hun
cricked pat apt a dick crept carpet dick

warm bread roll)
albicocca conser
noir cafe noir cafe noir cafe noir ca
avoid weird
ha
in thimble shaped container in)

dinoennen as lt
verschwin
blue mountains blue mountains
blanchir et
drehen in stumm __

then it clears
cheers

sep
hep

journeying nikos kazantzakis
 
 
2

dra…gon
__

set for

anguilleforme reservoir et
when hewn tithe
no right on
conti
he

chaud pain
abricot confiture en fueille de
clack off bee lack of beef bc flak
eviter surnaturel lai
en deforme boite en deforme boite en deforme boite

hos.tes
disappear in
wind
blue plates blue plates
whitens &
turns
turns in:to dumb) olitski.

hen tit

sep
sup

strawberries edwin morgan

 
 
3

dragone forma nube su il nazio
__ __ __ ca
blueeyed blond astronaut blueeyed blond as

anguilleforme reservoir et visible niegecasquette
then white cloud
then white
no night on slime limes 040
conk tin nous rick rip tad trick ticket

btrp fretc rihh bt
blue pomegranate blue pomegranate
negro cafe negro cafe negro cafe ne
blue
patrolling blue patrolling blue

patro
disappear into bom
ein sehr gross marke __ male
whitens & whitens & whitens
why
tour dans

allora il chiaro

september 198
ber

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An Amerikan Trilogy

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Brett Dionysius

Look away, look away, look away Dixieland.
-Elvis Presley

(i) Ode to Saphenus Ligation

Everyone in An Anthology of New York Poets
(Circa 1970) is ugly 70s vinyl ugly.
Ted Berrigan. Dick Gallup. Tom Veitch.
Bill Berksen spruces up the best, but even
his roguish good looks are unheard of in Oz;
land of paper tigers & the Emerald City scene
(Anna & Frank already four years dead).
A proskynesis of cool urban poetry
& O'Hara the Persian Alexander,
embraced this new Imperial role.
But after his death under Speedbuggy's
axiom of popular culture or some other
Amerikan big block cult irony,
this most influential of empires split & Oz
went to find our own vernacular wizard.
The Literary Enforcement Agency
(LEA) Frank propped up, collapsed
under the weight of his mythopoeic feet
& besides in the entire anthology,
theres only one female Big Apple poet.
At least Bernadette Mayer's work
stands up to the test of time;
the Munchkin's critical response.
 
 
(ii) ANZUS

& Oz, Amerika's odd little sibling
(so Malcolm in the Middle paranoid)
whinges whenever we lose to our big
brother & flips the level playing field over.
It takes about thirty years for ideas,
art, phobias, treaties & other signs
of degeneration to filter through
to Emerald Citys small 'k' kulcha;
& if it's from Europe even longer.
What we've done in Oz is sift through
the Western World's best urban legends
& appropriated all the razorblade in gum
slippery-dip superstitions.

Demonised everything that doesn't
wear a stars 'n stripes flak jacket
& watered down Reality TV's unreality.
The only Frank the populace of Oz
remembers is the Blue Velvet version
Lynch's amyl nitrate sniffing psycho;
a small town metamorphosis of perversion
buried too under Emerald City's brick veneer.
Oz had a good dose of 1950s/God Save
the Queen (she's not a human being!)
/ball-breaking bakelite social mores
but you, O brother sent us The Duke
himself whistlestopping across the East
Coast of Oz in 42, riding to our rescue,
opening literary saloon doors with his
emasculating toy six-shooters, a pale
rider imitation of the 88s that tore
Stalingrad a new winter arsehole.

& we're all on a hospital list now
waiting for our veins to be stripped
the saphenus ligation of Oz literature,
even though there's not quite as much
pill-popping in Emerald City these days
& even fewer Puerto Rican girls.
& why O my brother, do kids in Oz
still read To Kill A Mockingbird
in high school; stifle a yawn.
Your Boo Radley lung clot
cultural tradition; a death
sure as express-post anthrax.
Give us a break, Amerika,
& remember, don't open
those suspicious emails
in your Godhead.

 
 
(iii) Apokalypse Now

Amerika, it's not just
'Death from Above' anymore
but death from underneath too,
(Una Bomber, Tim McVeigh etc.)
painted there just below
Kilgore's Iroquois windshield;
the crossed swords air-cavalry
symbol looking more like an X
as in ecstasy the love drug.

Make Love Not War someone
whimpered from 50 metres
beneath the Nevada desert.
Amerika, haven't you got it yet
or are you still ruled imperiously
by that other reactionary credo;
Duck & Cover?
That worked a treat.

So many Death Stars to construct
& so little time. The only Emperor
is the Emperor of Ice-cream, right?
Einstein jotted Roosevelt a quick memo,
but he died before he could read it.
Amerika, they still call you Trinity, don't they?
Besides the Emperor would've been freaked
out with just a demonstration & surrendered
anyway, but as Capt. Willard says,
I needed a mission & for my sins
they gave me one.

 
 
(iv) Poet in New York

Lorca went to Amerika
& it polluted his soul.
(Oh, sorry mate comes the apology
from a fellow Oztralian as he
crushes some poetical feet).
Lorca should have come to Oz, instead.
Then 'Poet in New York' wouldn't
have been so scary because it would
have been called Poet in Emerald City.
Nothing too heavy, just poems about
the sun, surf, golden beaches & bikini clad
meter maids saving motorists from the real
axis of evil council parking inspectors.
At least Lorca didn't grow a beard
or appear in any poetry anthologies
where they fuck elm trees.
 
 
(v) Why We're Mad at You, Amerika

& besides, we're only mad at you
Amerika because one of your famous
New York school of poets told our local hero,
John Forbes to Fuck off in the 80s.
Dunno, it might've been Dick or Ted
or Bill or Bernadette, but it was
definitely some intertextual power
play of Frank's from beyond
the remaindered bin.

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Songmoth

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Tom Clark

Dhe songmoth had u mikst pyoupaishen, biset bii feet uv bigu thingz; stil, daiz wur waum, dhu skii wuz kleer, dhaer wuz mutc tou lern.

Ov krisulis it sed: dhis wuz byoutifool, but it rikwiird kurij. Ii kept louzing thingz. Bits uv mee dropt of liik roted teeth. Heer ii lernt dhe tuf stuf: fiind yur vois, wen your louzing dhu saondz uv udhez, groewing faintur and dhen noe maur; enjoi dhe nyou sensaishenz wen dhiy oald ur sliping aot uv ken, u sofend finggutip, u myouted haun, u ciild wuz swoloed and reebaun. In dhaer ii sau moements uv tranzishen.

It sed: u ciild had been swoloed, dhen it wuz reebaun. Iiy am nao strainjliy gaujus bikoz uv dhat. Ii kraod dhe flaimz uv yau waumd eevning, am dhu soft wing dhat brushez paast yau niitceer eer. Wen you heer meey, iiy am isrufel aur aufiyoe. Nao wen youw eet yaur supur iim un iidul distrakshen, niidhur fooliy entutainment nau fooliy pleezing tou bihoald. Iiy am moestliy jentliy wiild.

Dhis, it sed, iz dhe waiy its tou bee: you shul see meey in evriy songmoth, and youl shoew it yau best welkum, fur yaur luv uv mee. Dhaer shul bee noew end tou dhu baontiy uv yau daiz, naur u limit tou yaur soroew. In dhis, you shul bee liik dhiy oeshen – but dhat iz unudhur song; iil sing it toumoroew.

Posted in 11: COPYLEFT | Tagged

Skag vs Schizophrenia

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Shane Jesse Christmass

One.
We exchanged cigarettes
smoked them ourselves
and quietly sized up
our thoughts on each other.
She spoke
with immense moments of compassion.
She told me how she's an addict
and how she owned two houses
but had blasted them two houses
into her vein.
She'd saved 250 thou’
and she'd blasted 250 thou’
into her arms.
Her brother had taken her in
but her brother had taken
her credit cards off her
so she wouldn’t be able
to get monies.
When that failed
her brother
tied her to the bed
to stop her from going out
     to score.
She'd managed
to free herself loose from the shackles
her brother had enforced
and did go out
had scored
did overdose
and had ended up here
     talking to me
a guy who thought
there was no effort available
in rallying against
any old motivation.
 
 
Two.
I delivered
immense moments of compassion
back to her by saying
something about her brother
something along the lines like
every being will be redeemed
from having hatred as their hero.
She asked me
if having a million bucks
would solve
these problems I currently face.
I said my problems aren't
just
your strict
junkie
supply and demand type problems.
Monetary value doesn't suffice in my domain.
I asked her
her birthday
and she told me
     22nd of October.
I was furious
for who had told her.
What gain would it be
for her to lie about having the same
birthday as me.
I asked if the doctors
had revealed
that information to her.
She said no
     honestly
that was her birthday
the same as mine
'cept she was 33
and I was 23.
She excused herself
kissed me on the cheek
graced my hand and left.
I was at once scared
repulsed by her
but totally enamoured.
Things were looking up
and things were looking down
at the same time
all together.
I was just waiting
for the motivation
to come back to me.

Posted in 11: COPYLEFT | Tagged

Like Ginger Root

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Janet Buck

Two months beyond the scar of grave
we could be mad at messes you left:
bags of flour roaming with bugs;
tarnished silver, geyser gray,
tea cups with their handles loose.
Bedroom slippers quick as mice
reminding us who owned
the corners of this dark.
It's time to go back and clean,
my sister said, as if she were
boxing alyssum tears
that crumble from mistaken touch.
If we scrubbed with the metal of will,
the bourbon of grief would leave —
we did until our palms
went raw and bled on lace.
Found burlap bags of tulip bulbs
the sun had started on its own.
Cobwebs and clumps of Persian hair
were tropes with a fabric of past.

We brushed and mopped
as maids erase some crazy night,
shake their heads at semen pools.
Uniforms of stoic bras with metal
in their sagging circles weren't
enough to hold a tomb with stinging rocks
that multiplied like winter hail.
We shook out oriental rugs —
hyper kids we meant
to settle down for bed.
They followed, clung,
they wetted, screamed
in margins of our memories.
I guess your stain deserved to stay.
“Out out, damned spot”
never worked for heroines
in Shakespeare's velvet tragedies.
Fruit stand gone, but still we knew
an Eden once dripped cherry juice.
Rooms still bore your fragrances —
glued to meat like ginger root.

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Thump

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Joanne Burns

bright flag of
insincerity
wearing your
speil like a fake
bow tie who ever
wrote your speeches
pigged out on the
punctuation we
pause we pause
we pause twiddling
with the hearing aids
seems the way to go;
bibles are being yanked
from top hats like
rabbits but look
it's only chocolate
that last messiah, bring
on the cheer squad
barbeque tongs twirl
above the watchtower
hear them squeak

Posted in 11: COPYLEFT | Tagged

Mallography

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Joanne Burns

this is the bookstall
proud as a plaza
for people who
don't much like
books but find them
easy to gift wrap one
hundred and fifty
risotto recipes fruit
salad around the world
poodle fun and head
ache management tomorrow
the stall will be stacked
with bath towels and
aromatic door bells next
week then gardening
with worms the hot
ticket specials novelty
make up purses designed
like encyclopedias are
bound to be stars o this
trestle economy
ready to elope
through the car park
at the first tremble,
of a second thought

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Bug

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Joanne Burns

take it from here: the sky
and its rattles just amnesia's
litter the three day order
waiting above the cook top
essential ingredients lost
to the pen's failing muscle:
negotiations for an egg cup
of freshly squeezed ink never
seem to accelerate beyond
accidental squander
how many mistook the pedestrian
button for a peppermint tic tac
it's no longer chi chi to count

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Ken Bolton: "the ice in my glass"

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Ken Bolton 

    the ice in my glass goes crink!
as it adjusts to the tequila - keying in
that sophistication - or the feel of it - associated
with these tall buildings, a bit of the
skyline of New York I envisage,
important to me for many years -

or if they weren't, they stood for the idea of importance
an imaginary number filling out
an order - of which the others were a part,
the finite Melbourne, Sydney, Glebe,
& Fitzroy & Bega. Did I think about it?
And it became less important - & then, almost by accident,

I visited New York & saw it - specific, real.
Impressive - & loveable, surely - but less impressive
than the rarely summoned abstraction. Strange,
& terrible, to think of it threatened,
New Yorkers frightened - as the city's image
draws retaliation. Clink, the ice again, settling.

My New York - the notional one - is the city of poets,
of art. I met one poet there - 'perfect' -
urbane, bohemian a little, worldly, smart,
immensely intelligent. (The art was in galleries
& historical - great, but not like the poet.) My
second time I met rich people - the sort the terrorists

think of: people congratulating themselves on
the world & their ownership of it - deals, leverage,
new fields, salaries & investment. We were on a penthouse roof
near the UN building, looking out over the water
(towards New Jersey? - somewhere) for
the fireworks of July the 4th. The same UN building

as in James Schuyler's poem, that moves slightly in
the wind, the light, or has that building been torn down & gone
& this is a new one? This is the New York I like,
personalized, romantic - about which I know a great deal
in detail - things that have happened there, what one poet said
to another (at Gem Spa, at the Morgan Library), the

books they read, thoughts they had: unreal again,
a fabled, picturesque locality, of thirty years ago.
A little like the Sydney I now visit, which I left
in the 80s & in fact hardly know - can scarce reconcile
with the site of my former life there: where X said A to Y,
where 'L' lay (or sat) & wrote "Sleeping in the Dining Room",

or A began, "Saussure! Saussure!" - where I lived, round the corner
behind the Max Factor Building. I didn't meet the rich -
tho Sydney has them - resembling New York's probably & voting
just as vociferously to support war on the Afghans.
Frank O'Hara, a hero of mine - a one-time hero, a hero still -
mixed with the rich a little. But as was said in his defence once

recently, he never owned more than two suits. He was not of them.
I don't like the Sydney rich for wishing to be interchangeable
with their New York counterparts. Which is as I fancy them.
Tho as it said on the Max Factor building below the name -
"Sydney London Paris Rome New York" - & I aspired
in my own way, too.

Funny, all the papers have pointed out
the Auden poem, "1939", has been much quoted -
& some Yeats? Would Rome or Berlin - Paris even -
have sent minds to poetry? It is the enormity of the act -
New York as symbol - & as never attacked before.
I wonder if it is a new era? You'll read about it elsewhere -
not here. I might look up that Schuyler poem, "Funny

the UN building moved / & in all the years / I've
lived here" or something - or find the O'Hara one
in which he stays up late trying to select his poems
thinking, good or bad, he did it at least.

Now I've found out what I think. Very little.
As I might have guessed. An event moving 'under the skin'

away from words - becoming attitude.

                                                            Events
will be bigger than me. Having ideas about them being
almost irrelevant. Though I have them: none helpful or
resolvable: that the New York I liked, even then, came
at a price, that today does, & that I don't pay it.
The free ride you complain about - would you get off?
So that the exchange rate dominates the news again -

a cargo cult - & the dues you pay are servitude -
so you can hate yourself, or wonder merely
at the duration of the ride
Posted in 11: COPYLEFT | Tagged

Philomela Knight’s Favourite Part of the Week

Posted on September 24, 2002 by Melissa Ashley

the symbol for you was a wandering spirit
in a book of enigmas
– Jorge Luis Borges to the nightingale

Philomela Knight's
favourite part of the week
is Wednesday morning –
just before her Dialectics
Tutorial meets. [Gk. dialektike:
Plato: art of formulating ideas.
Ln. dialectica: primary defn.:
art of discussion & debate.]
Behind a plastic sheet, while
rubbing a compact moon
of tangerine flavoured soap
along the length of her arms
& thighs, she recites (out
loud) broken pieces of
the textual curricula:
The sublime object
dissolves in the raptures
of a bottomless memory.
Wet-hair deltas conflate
like pleasure & pain in the centre
of her back. Larval white foam
accumulates at her knee-pits.
The rhythmic chora of her lips
in rehearsal unlaces sutures
at the junctions of in-terior /
ex-terior. Braids together
suppositions ethnographically
far apart as Canada and Paris.
Emotion is a liquefying
substance which pours into
a person and dissolves her.
Her cortical appendages
beginning to flex.

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