SNAPSHOTS 2

so little time  
            so many infinities

A PoetryEtc Project:
Week Six:
Wednesday June 4th

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

'5.30' gleams on the bedroom clock.
Flick the 'lec-y blanket switch full on.

Feet find slippers, shuffle to the bathroom;
an old man's attenuated pee.

(Watch in case the kidney-stone passes,
warned the doctor recently. No sign.)

Grope back through winter cold, insert
body under quilt; sense full-length

the warm wife; twiddle one's toes:
they're cold beyond the blanket's

southern limit; sleep delays;
lie still and make sentences.

Time streams thinly;
most things pass.

Max Richards, at Cooee, North Balwyn,
Melbourne 8.00am

 

AKI K(aurismaki's) ARIEL

Anyway, if they won't stay,
Koff
in a convertible.

Knocked on my door. He asked

at the docks if there's anything.
Result was the same: he died.
I won't last 3 hours without killing
echo.
Let's go.

ARIEL

via Aki Kaurismaki

at the dump (a package for you),
rainbow. Way
I heard:
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .

AKI K(aurismaki's) JUHA

"Arrest this man." - Sam Fuller

As children.

Barry Alpert, Silver Spring, MD, USA, 6:45PM

all day - no sky
tables across tables
clouded heads
talk is good- and on
tables across tables
a wish outside
talk is good - and on
exits glowing
a wish outside
feathers - inscription
exits glowing
actions hurt - good
feathers - inscription
the figures - proof
actions hurt - good
looking out light
the figures - proof
clouded heads
looking out light
all day - no sky

Jill Jones, Surry Hills, 4.55pm.

 

Let in the morning light.

That chattering sparrow's either full of life or
tweaked by the selfish gene, marking territory.

Either I'm full of it or I get tweaked.

No choice. Sit up.

Let in the morning light.

Norton Hodge

trusty bike leans
outside window
fairly ready to go
a workhorse
willing but
rather tired
covered in rust
some paint still
bravely showing
elegant chrome
all eaten pitted
knocked about
sloppy rod braked
long dead dynamo
long lost original saddle
as are pedal caps
definitely prewar
like me.

patrick mcmanus, raynes park,
uk 9am

to the rabbit

i want to play
this game of words
ferreting out some treasure
from the depths of dailiness
of midweek where
stranded between a sunday

that while pleasant i could not
put one noun behind those vague
adjectives of past pleasurable

and the arrival of the sixth planet
but alright i am cheating tuesday
night, in flannels, in june

i wave, you are there first
across the finish line at the
start. virtuous and safe until the next
week’s rumblings surface
on schedule

Deborah Humphreys,
Newark (NJ) 5:55 am

 

Trees
the doubts
the feathers

tested on ground

wet and
the present
shine moon
night

translucent
turn
the corner
and step

Jill Jones, Marrickville, 8.10pm.

one more hidden
moment
to curl
up round listen
to birds
hopping talking
their day a lot
less
hectic
than mine

heidi schaefer
sheffield UK 8.30 am

Come out! Come out! The
insistent scent of summer
is here! Walking along the
path by the brook, soiled
by 'the human pledges', I
realize summer solstice
is only half a month
away. Come out, I say!
I can already smell the
crowberries growing, even
the bilberries, and we will
eat them in autumn, the
remnant of this summer, and make
ready to plunge into darkness
with their darkness inside us.

Árni Ibsen, Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland, 11.30 a.m.

Romance recalled of the wet pavement
after a rain we never see,
Tavernier's Round Midnight, Dexter Gordon's
dark tenor curling like Gitanes rings
hanging in thick cool air.
All one.

Wet pavement during the commute,
New Jersey downpour, five days in a row.
"Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us."
Cigarettes are a dirty habit.
Dexter Gordon drunk, passed out
on the hood of a Peugeot.

Kenneth Wolman, Princeton, NJ

Upgraded to a faster,
bigger box, called
FATBASTARD
on the network, and
MR TURING'S MARVELLOUS
MACHINE to its friends.

Today I put it to its first
substantial work:
playing Flash
animations of Teletubbies.

Dominic Fox, Leicester UK 2:36pm

where was everybody?

rising tone of enquiry
emerges from the radio

Edmonton Art gallery's big show
of Post-Impressionist paintings
never-before-seen in our town

and only half the project
ed turnout

people on the street
are sorry they
were planning on going soon

but 'it was the largest
show we've ever had'

do Edmontonians in general
fear even this art?

the question hangs in the air

(the two Cezannes especially
glow in my mind's eye still)

Douglas Barbour, Edmonton,
Canada 07:45

 

Viewer

The knot has been tied.
No drums beat.
The marriage is of missiles,
cruise missiles,
and the masks on the faces
are not from Commedia dell'Arte.

Bombs burst, flares rise.
Smoke forms yellow foams of fire.
TV viewers stunned
see beauty on the screen.
(Ambiguous is the image.
Numb is the viewer.)
Hell becomes flesh.

It is Apollo again,
anguished, lonely.
His footprints mark his rolling tank.

Harriet Zinnes, NY City, USA

 

wasn't caravaggio caught by the highest fevers

in his delirium preceding his death

or pasolini beaten to pieces

in the heat of his blood shivers of pain

the more you crash against life

sometimes you can reap

a word a stroke the one distinguishing you

with that brush in your hand a keyboard a pencil

stunning are the times in which you rest

your eyes wide fixed on nothingness in which you are immersed

liquid-blue-green transparent yellow light almost amniotic

mimetic symbiotic symbolic of what

deprived of caffeine the usual amount of nicotine & smog

your body revives

i remember now, how the same sweat was beneficial

with a cigarette in my mouth and a pot of coffee on the table

anny ballardini, bolzano, italy, 5 pm

Reading:
All day long the battle of Left and Right.
Oliver James 'They F*** You Up'
undermining
Steven Pinker's 'The Blank Slate'.
Baffled but believe in Winnicott etc.
Matt Ridley's 'Nature via Nurture '
Must provide the solution:
"environment switches on genes
and
genes switch on environment"
But it is a bloody battle.

Douglas Clark, Bath, UK, 8.06pm

In the park it's raining,
only the dog walkers are out.
I follow a rainbow umbrella,
the ends of my jeans getting soaked.
The sky like a lid,
hot, heavy, grey.
A storm would be a relief,
but instead this insistent yearning,
a mist against my face.
The air tastes wet,
and hungry.

Aoife, Ravenscourt Park,
London, 9:30am

air breaking from left
to the right in the auspicious
sign of the babylonian,
I hear through
the broken computer
of my own head
the stirring of wings,
the soft alighting
of two morning doves,
one in the branches of the green
ash, the other in the peach,
and turn to the black
fingerprints on
their wings, that
ember eye, where half asleep
or half awake,
the air holds them
in its arms, that
kiss of sky upon their heads

Rebecca Seiferle, Farmington, NM, USA 1:28 pm

of fear and the boar

eat like monkeys, like Tigers do humans.

sometimes together

sometimes love,

Wild in far love is

coniferous perfumed widespread dreams

of deer hunts, pounces wild winter whims

on snow banked birch trees striped

solitary capable enjoying

Wild loves, roar

Siberian Wild roar roars

far more mild nothings sometime

together sometimes

in fear, the Boar dons nothing but sleep

Geoffrey Gatza, Buffalo, NY, 4:00 PM

Rucks of paper,
tide wreck of being
determined to learn.
Sheafed layers
of the last desperate week,
abandonned.

Knowledge is now used up.
She is off with the shouting boys,
singing with the other girls,
filling the street with raging noise.

Liz Kirby, Macclesfield, UK, 4pm
(six hours of exams in History and Chemistry)

fingers hitting the keys
constructing words
to drop into the cyberdream;

little mouse words that criss-cross space
insinuate.

then thinking of the dream breaking,

my fingers

freeze

on

the

ke

Robin Hamilton, Loughborough, UK 10.45 pm

 

Been at work

Just returned
Too late

Must Sleep

Roger Collett, Seascale
Cumbria 23:15hrs

Frost on the rotted dinghy, its oars
heavy like the mud that welcomes
ducks on the first day of hunting.
He replaces her eyes' absence with the sky's.

His window does not look but fronts the river.
She was the patron of his faith, of his loss
of faith. He was not looking -
the ducks, the hunters were there

anyway. By noon the frost was gone, he
launched the dinghy like a Victorian
in order to dredge his face from the ripples, then
reassemble a carnivore. Eat.

David Howard, Avon River (Christchurch), NZ

5pm's flat cottony
pollute, the lungish air

all pink brown glisten--
a lake of parking lots

oozes more heat
for the mirror of sky

scraper. Texas heat
never tires of its could,

its asthmatic events
& presidential chemic--

there are special properties
& oil here

Chris Murray, Dallas, USA, 10 pm,

 

days

you open more letters
and there's nothing going north
no new car passing on the inside
of life, no way to re-fashion skin
when the chips are blue
and there's no way of flying mother home
even the back door has a verdict
like a highway of broken sentences
still, you pull back the curtains
make arrangements with yourself
replace anger on the hot stove of your meal
watch the sun wing silver spaceships
to your room
faceless names on the happy bus
honeyeaters germinating
your flowered proprietary

Helen Hagemann, WA, Australia