s n a p s h o t s   1 1 6

July 13, 2005


POEM IDEA

poem idea
buzzes
buzzed
and buzzed
all around
persistantly
insistantly
irritatingly
and totally
pesteringly
maddeningly
but
luckily
fortunately
had
spray
swatter
heavy brick
studded boot
and sledgehammer
readily to hand.


Pmcmanus early
Beeson devon
n659
having to send this early off tomorrow hols
dragged away from raynes park

***

London Calling:

No delight in the community

This is an airport, an international airport

One surveils is surveiled

A list of fragments is inappropriate

The clatter of feet is what one gets

Who may or may not carry the bomb, the End-Bomb

I cannot smile even though you arrive

Anxiety splayed as a broken fortune cookie

The parking lot is one dollar for each twelve minutes

A mother discovers and hugs her adult daughter

A brother and sister clap their hands to "Tic, Tac, Toe"

Each argues over the way it goes:

I am not alone nor plural

She is the many among the isolate

No one knows the way London will purge itself

The empty arcade monitor deserves a new release

Each face a potential scaffold into which one reflects

Hair lifted, tied, bound, a form of topiary

"Hip Hop Don't Stop" a black girl's T-Shirt

Green lace, dark jacket, she arrives

Gratefully.

Stephen Vincent

***


Pain in the Night


In the dark bedroom a darker pain
attaches itself to my hip.
What have I done
to deserve this?

Decent quiet-living pensioner,
I spent all yesterday
doing good deeds,
in moderation,

moderately ate, drank and exercised,
avoided the dangerous exertions of gym.
As the pain fades,
so does my resentment.

Only yesterday by her hospital bed
I heard my wife¹s mother say
OI¹m used to pain, but this
from the knee surgery...!

- well, the nurses believe
in the painkiller
and they¹re quick.
But the nights are long.¹


2pm, Wednesday July 13, 2005

Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne

***

Writing myself



This book is a burden
Weighing on shoulders, doubling spine
Pages dog-eared,

dark with oil of other lives
Unsure narrative
Obscure rhymes

Simply shelve it
Or trudge on
In spite of it

"But I want to know how it ends."

This character
Resolute
Full of possibilities

Oblivious, in signatures, paginated
Neatly trimmed reams
Already catalogued





Peter Ciccariello
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
7/13/2005 12:41:53 AM
http://invisiblenotes.blogspot.com/

***

Window

During the last weeks
I've come to a summary
to think more at surface
or under possibles
at this end to information.
And then what continues
the way one crosses
wafts of the system
a long door and corridor
condition of the air
sea, offices, that brain of night
far-seeing darkness.

That one writes broken but equal
that something must survive
as many things read me
my destroyed impulses
though I leave judgment to tracks
or stay at the present window
its birds, black crystal
or a flagstone, the one
slating the eye in a flash
this ulterior morning
of clouds and metal
pieces of automobile.

It always continues
in proximity
therefore I crawl same
in tracks, contentions, flares
with them
as do with me.


Jill Jones
Sydney, 13 July, 2005

***

I have watered the garden

within the lawn it shines

in the early morning glare

of sun pushing tempratures

to 89 (F) at 9:20 AM the waters

shine dripping on the dark

leaves of Buddleia daviddii as bees

and yellow-jackets go up

and down each bloom one and

then another I can almost hear

pollen scattered becoming

airborne and the waters shine

seeping off the wide petals

of Echinacea purpurea down

the juttin spires of Ilex glabra

dropplets bundling on the tiny

flowers of Spiraea x bumalda

Nothing here glitters coldly

though all seems lustrous

alien

--Gerald Schwartz
West Irondequoit/ New York/ US/ 9:30 AM

***

I dug this out this morning. I don't know what made me think of it. I was so angry. Some chain of association. Of course, you don't know. I kept pacing around. I kept trying to think of trying to find something to take my mind off it.

It's not important. It's been set right. I'll tell you about it later. But I was thinking how I could cut the bay tree back. It's got so big; and indeed it kept me going all day, except for the hour or so when Jane came round and we had lunch together. Nothing much, you know, just bread and cheese; but really good bread, and a salad I threw together. Jane was saying all the right things, how it was balanced perfectly, and then saw me coming from the kitchen with more tomato to throw in! I didn't tell her I was cross. By then, of course, I was tired. I'd had to go up that damn hill to get some heavy duty secateurs, huge ones they are, well they're still there in the fireplace, look at them.

Theyre fine there! I never light the fire now. That's why the cornices are all so clean even though this room hasn't been painted in 15 years. I think it's 15.

Then I had to go next door and ask him if he minded bits of the tree falling into his garden; and he said no, it was all right and I could even go in there and cut from his side; and I said, thanks, immediately because it was so useful. But then I saw how good it looked from his side; and I'd thought he seemed a little disappointed. From here of course it's much better. I haven't done the shaping yet, that's an easier job, physically, which I have put off till the morning - and probably most of the afternoon.

I know what it was. This picture of the horse. It looks as though it's laughing. I took this as it brought it's head out of the hedge. Can you see? I don't think it was the bay tree was it? There it is, then though, obviously, very small and round. I'm going to try to get it back like that. But I was thinking of that. They come up from feeding and they're either grinning or thinking very seriously. That's what I thought. And I used to love it that horses are in it all with us; I mean they're so beautiful. And then we were down at Lizard Point for a week or so about ten years ago; and every morning we went past a field with a horse in it; and this horse used to get special oats or something in a bucket. When the bucket arrived, it pigged out; and then spent the rest of the day checking out the bucket; and I realised then how stupid they are. And the grinning and the thoughtfulness is just the way its face is and not a real expression at all.

Lawrence Upton

***

 

Fishscale armour weighs his shoulder
his knees grip the back of a pregnant seahorse
They shimmer in the half-lit grotto
skeins of light skimmer across forebrows
TVs tuned to the same channel
congealed blood about her tail
dark, pliable, hardened, slightly green
they silt themselves gently in a recursed recess
blood spurts in clear white blooms
filaments cut through clean white flesh
exit wounds shower blood
what kraken wakes?!
Pain flared broods, bitter seaweed beds
all dead, all dead, a bell-bruised sea!

Roger Day

***

my kids just say I'm repeating myself...
Frank Palmer


in the evening light
my son bowls at the nets
at a single wicket.
i've had to retire hurt:
elbow and leg bruised.
if i squint i see me at
his age, in the backyard of
a house since remodelled.

my daughter lies inside
listening intently to
Cypress Hill. she sings
loudly over the
naughty bits. i stall
in the hall to hear
Django and Louis and Bix
with me on drums.

the Commodore whirrs
late into the night. my
eldest son runs the presses
for his 'Rap' newsletter.
he hates jazz and poetry
but i hear them in
everything he does.
Oh, play that thing!

and now they are stars
in their own skies
travelling to conferences
doing exhibitions in
lands I've never been to
asking my advice about
things I've never seen.
I whistle, You'll be

sweet sweet sweet
if you
repeat repeat repeat


Andrew Burke, proud father
Mt Lawley
14 july 2005

***

I wake in pain, enter this day in pain. Young
osprey circle above the swallows. A man
in the park paces under the trees, swinging
a metal detector. The tables have been moved
together into one open space; a herd of picnic
tables, green on the green grass. Heat. Bees
hum in the foxglove. This garden is tired. Rose
petals litter the ground. The lilies open,
beautifully. Why do they not move me?
Why is my heart not pierced?


~ SB =^..^=

***

the bodies pile up
one by one by one
there he is pushed beneath the ice
in a northern Saskatchewan lake
there she disappears
into the last great chat room
this entrance in Edmonton
oh, these will die on throughways in Calgary
& this old fisherman
lies on the rocky shore
of a northern Ontario lake

we hear of each death
deliciously
satisfied & noirly pleased
between walls filled with books

a way to forget all the real ones outside
far away still most
& also the ones down the street
unfictional

Douglas Barbour
Edmonton Wednesday July 13 2005

***

Small Green Apples

I read and write without rest, moon-faced -
eyes mixed up with luster and conversation
Caught up, my hands full of rhyme...
On the front walk, his steps cinch the heart
A door flung carelessly open, shuts -
snaps like a twig beneath his feet
His dark fingers rake raven hair,
a few complaints of tangles...
In the foyer his ear rings gather brief notes,
sunlight through apple trees
Caught up...Caught up in his arms, his eyes...
A small wind chime spins out from a leafy sea
For this, and so many other poems, I am not
responsible and neither for falling in love
My hands do not rebel against this - the soft
nest of his face, there is no other lover with such
Caught up, this breath like kid skin, smooth, warm
and moist like Indian summer, waiting for
the first blush of small green apples
and a harvest of red and yellow leaves

Deborah Russell
Fort Collins, Colorado


***

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