#577 - frogs are dying on the horse's birthday

 

1.viii.21

577

2.212

two poems

 

frogs are dying on the horse’s birthday

 

with a whinny and a neigh, nonny no

pinch punch

 

in Spring

(though nothing official as such)

met wallaby, threw shadows

 

surround myself with inkling thereof

consider experiments – little balls

(various), magnets, drugs

 

skin is their Achilles’ heel

ailing black shrivelled and dead

 

who needs slippers?

after a first thing organ recital

today I can make it in socks

 

horses are partying

in their green paddock

Spring!

 

frogs not so much

it’s Lethe

on the plonk

frogs forget

soon all must boil

 

‘slow sombre music’ it says

right at the bottom of the screen

 

I fold myself in two, in three

and the file the day away

 

 

 

 

once upon

 

time was in everything

            woke with it then

 

a certain bird told

      and here, steady up

 

come yellow, large

 

tail feathers raised

 

an eloquence

I was the silence

                   to watch

 

once midst of all

and read such signs

 

that had to be a beginning

#576 - you aint goin' nowhere

 

31.vii.21

576

2.211

you aint goin’ nowhere

a hic et nunc

 

not stuck but

get to enjoy being here

                with you

 

take calls, collect

come out to the mailbox

put the lid back on

 

everything present tense

 

nutters grizzle

far city pent

it’s round and round

in a tiny head

 

we could have ordered in

but everything was already here

 

not dressed up at all

 

but birded by a branch in leaflight

 

know

this is the place

this is the time

 

all grown up

could hop in the car and pretend

 

making the best use of luck

trying the best that we can

 

and it’s true!

suddenly we have time to be young

let in some new seasons, observe!

 

home is a place just discovering us

 

has never been properly explored

 

turns out was inhabited all along

 

book left open

and vanish there

 

thinking one day I might live forever

and this is where I’d be

am I blue? - some details for Angie

 

#575 - palette play

 

30.vii.21

575

2.210

palette play

first frost, late July

 

thermometer fondly

how long have I lived in this book?

 

and where on the wheel of light

the early kooka unconceals azure

 

come cadences and leaf

a new sun every day

 

all blank to this world

a series of nested techniques

 

sexlessly come play

have I been in this poem before?

 

have you? I dream

that I am waking from here

 

morning, all creatures

come from the grey

 

a day fills with words

like a tree to fruit

 

like a staff birds sit to sing

this is the page I am on

#574 - in pondlight

 

29.vii.21

574

2.209

in pondlight

(a picture of the times)

 

and corners everywhere

 

days longer

the hour collecting

 

fluster of ducks

wings to wash

preen glide

 

come by the tracks grown over

come by the tracks fresh made

 

all the valley’s sky fallen

 

last of day’s

to come apart yet

 

here traipse

centre self

on the view

#573 - what fits in a day?

 

28.vii.21

573

2.208

what fits in a day?

 

have you seen?

it is so many

set foot forth

note

a kind of scribble

so many mansions

one for each pillow

 

have you tried

nothing new under

to cram what?

 

in often bliss

woken to arms

you tell the dream

yet might return

 

take flight

let lust 

have I said song?

 

or let days breathe

be weeks, be years  

seasons come in so

 

all somewhere in the day too

 

pockets!

handkerchief world’s full!

day in the mirror’s forever of sorts

 

as the forest is tracked

so the day goes round

 

all bodies heavenly in conception

… come hither you

habeus corpus

 

paths cross

and often crossings out

kick the can down the road

make a list

doing and done

 

only human

to look for motive means

too human!

in day we creature it

 

a pocket for games in the which

then afternoon tea – brief lawn accoutrement

 

red letter

in a Sunday month

moon blue and bush week too

 

a world of fits

elements churn to make

green about

blue above

where we’re concerned

 

dig up old dinosaurs

make new

never knock opportunity

a jog trot keeping up with

 

run round the clock all day

[mind the while elsewhere]

in signatures of midst

and modest proud

come to the calendar then

live the booklight

 

as if to a mountain

they’ll say

that mob vanished in the day

 

hearth dance of the branches down

and treetops hold last sun

 

in no time we are dressing for bells

beaker, fatted calf

song and stare out the fire

with its far tales

 

moon-ding

a commencement of frogs

(personal message)

 

a place where all forever young

 

if there were more hours

      or say

a day within the day

we still would not touch all things

though the job might get us done

 

as ever and always guessing in words

 

poems and kitchen to cook

the garden makes us make the garden

who is it makes will be done?

 

over our heads

little round it with a rest

to be beyond ourselves

#572 - automatic writing

 

27.vii.21

572

2.207

automatic writing

 

here come the Corybantes

tripod sat, laurel crowned

 

a lion lost in the night

bird to chimney gone

 

here we go

from mountains ecstatic

come cadences

 

here’s shepherd from the Seventh Eclogue

a staff so twined

 

in New York, at the bottom of the dream

and it is quite a hill

(uncannily like the Warringah Freeway)

careering down

 

we are characters out of the movie

and there’s the Brooklyn Bridge, just glimpsed

as we go over another

 

this city a lot like Circular Quay

      and it takes in everything –

names, places, lives

 

one of those naked cities

where the night is lit with the day before

 

this is the first time – the three of us

foot of the stairs leading up to a tower

a roof, tasked to work out

film noir lit, at a certain hour

(or, moment, more precisely)

something will have happened

can’t yet know what

and that’s all we have

(in the dream you can feel this is enough plot)

 

if I knew how it was that I could be here

then maybe I wouldn’t be

 

here to make the difference

that’s what’s important now 

#571 - have you noticed the smoky smell of the world?

 

26.vii.21

571

2.206

have you noticed the smoky smell of the world?

honouring the five plus million people

who die from air pollution in the world every year

 

 

have you noticed the smoky smell of the world?

it doesn’t have to be a war

or somebody lit up next to a bowser

 

pack a day the world’s been quite some time now

light one off another and who needs to sleep?

 

a lot of it you can’t see

some of it can’t even be smelt

but it’s in every lung

 

big billboards to advertise the stuff

cow can be chimney too

and as for me and you?

pass it along, have a pension fund puff

 

some countries you have to smoke outside

it’s like that little room in an airport

where travellers practise for landing on Venus

 

but have you noticed?

the world begins to look like an ashtray

just here and there to begin

spaghetti freeways, stacks and stacks

it’s going viral

 

the temperature’s on the up and up

you can measure it with the sea

 

some say it’s just that this world’s smokin’

(it’s certainly whizzing around rather fast)

some say we’re just on fire

 

slaves in the pit can choke on the dust

 

even down here get a whiff now and then

like plastic someone’s tossed into the flames

 

one wonders how such a thing got into heads

 

can’t be from forgetting to oil anything

(industry’s wheels are well greased)

 

it’s not about money missing either

(it costs to pump this stuff out all the time

we pay the captains handsomely

and who wants to buy a fart?)

 

no

I think

it’s just that this clever creature’s

come from the ice

stamping and clapping

and rubbing some sticks

living in a sauna

still trying to keep warm