some pictures from Whack & Blight

#247 - here’s the harbour and come across it

 

27.ii.21

427

2.58

here’s the harbour and come across it

a little bumpkin calculus

(as suggested by Slessor, Murray, Olsen and others)

 

over that brickmaze

tiled to the skies

edge up of steel grey

 

city is ringing

call klaxon

no one will hear

 

from a bridge, see bridges

fleet so many sail of the line

could ride … we fly!

 

elephants once! in the sixpence days

were there lanes to begin?

a penny drove sheep or the kiddies

 

high from the tides

and the mackerel smack

dark and deep, dissolving

 

all ghostly in glass

how the harbour grows back

a silent passage

 

girder up crane sway

some fog down

sandstone cut

 

flags fly

towers up out of cracks

the river cat wharves itself again

 

it’s only a moment over

cross head downwards

sunk in the day

 

all the world’s water

has been through here

me, you, too

 

in the window of a breeze hung out

chug chug of the tug

you have to imagine

 

every other bell as well

deep heaving ferry breaths

catch lights as you come

 

there’s nothing you can open now

world chokes

no soot flies here

 

in glass, and under, past

cloudhouses – Wynyard next stop

and come into the tunnel now

 

city is dreaming too

and bugger the moon

just a bit of graffiti

 

I’m over the bridge with you 

the craftsman gone (vale Desmond Schuller)

 

the craftsman gone

vale Desmond Schuller

 

(lantern day in the Oz Year)

 

a shoulder birded man at sea

and on dry land

a shed in the town of possibility

eye for timber sling

and kept a TARDIS too

 

bringer of wildflowers, dried flowers

trail of crumbs with the bird

 

one whose head spun

with great ideas

 

the maker

tradeless sailor

legless jokes

 

man with the chain

and the circular saw

 

ever wry, apt for…

of good cheer

courtly

and even attentive at times

(to patrons, never customers)

 

man in the detail

his way the highway

 

like that Black knight in The Holy Grail

a fearless cheeking gives

 

he’s rattling out the oily rag whiff

face to friend at the job

 

there’s that smile of ‘you can’t guess me’

some of the wheels come off

and so what?

 

there’s a track in your dream where he’s rolling along

next problem to solve

gingerbread gypsy

and yacht for fresh seas

 

much loved, and who’s not difficult?

you’d have thought that the salt would preserve him

 

I myself knew him only a little

but know

nobody got quite what they asked for

everyone was impressed

 

has he gone to a tiny house in the sky?  

spare me that kind of nonsense…

there’s still tinkering to do

 

Desmond was one of the miracles

I’ll just say goodbye

(some of Desmond's handiwork)

#426 - in the forever wet

 

26.ii.21

426

2.57

in the forever wet

(one of our great dooms)

 

waist high walking

watch everyone up

 

each leaf to tree

firmly affixed

get wet

 

so sun far

firmly under

 

insect cling

stickler

come for me spider

 

spill of creek roar

breeze brushed

high in

 

this the all inhabited world

 

o damp!

a flowering

and green

in the come again falls

 

genesian

you couldn’t dream

this much of the stuff        

 

and if the blue

by patch, a chance

 

such wings lit singing

other seasons where

(RAAF, for instance)

 

say I, the forgetting

and gone 

#425 - thanklessly

 

25.ii.21

425

2.56

thanklessly

notes for the gratitude brigade

 

trees up

train comes as per schedule

world turns too

 

walls for let the ivy come

 

for first light

all sorts of rising

 

animals of a particular place

accord to prevailing conditions

 

do wars begin end so?

 

gladness yes then treaty

 

thanks for the skin in the game

 

leaves fall golden

and the flowers blow

 

how I am taken for granted!

 

grief gets over us

we come from the scars

 

that old scare

odds are survival

 

grass grew, someone walked over my grave

just a saying

 

thanklessly love runs out

who will obey the signs?

 

idea came to me

vision in a thankless dream

and day tasks too

 

keep a grip

 

much suffered the generations before

and should they be thanked for that?

then what?

 

bowels open

all is expectation

 

some things make sense

and there are others

 

no one said sky

people just call names

 

point these things out

and no one will thank you

 

malignant is its own religion

but what for my lunch?

how about the sweatshop clothes?

 

and off my own back

 

thank the birds for singing, twit

like it was meant for you

 

much blameless

nobody raised from a choir

 

nor does this dent the magic

deny the mystery

 

I’d thank you for listening this little while

but nobody really does that 

#424 - ekphrastic for Margel Hinder’s ‘Man with Jackhammer’ (1939)

 

24.ii.21

424

2.55

ekphrastic

for Margel Hinder’s ‘Man with Jackhammer’ (1939)

 

little objects made of angles

and colour in shadows spun

 

and where is the state?

 

here in his box

this man is the millions

we know they obey

 

looks like an inoculation

out of Depression into a war but

 

hands bigger than the head we are

when once we could believe

stubby Stalin fingers

 

frame to prison alien labour

a shame all we lose along the way

 

an arbitrary making

bent to fit

machine distortion

 

I’d like to imagine a little perruque

the pawprints left in the slab

 

in timber

the flesh

made stone

 

this machine kills fascists too

and that is a relief 

#423 - TODAY - first microphone on Mars

23.ii.21

423

2.54

step on a crack

TODAY: BREAKING NEWS: FIRST MICROPHONE ON MARS

 

come through

all do

 

do it headlong

drag in the cat

 

grudge nurse

and get away with

 

be nether worlded

fold to fine print

 

sigh for up

that’s gone

 

keep a grip

 

spread superstition

stim

 

let me wish and why not

 

come clouds

catch on the way

 

go without goggles

be the trap yourself

 

am paid in just attention

 

it is a sort of sailing

demons come

with yo heave

 

you may have been deliberately lit

else smoulder, burst

 

who will you meet?

but

fall into a skin and feel it

take me too

for the sake of

 

it’s

adventure of a long way down

 

beginning is a apocryphy  

one must live the machine

 

ladder up later

thin slippered

 

race angels under

do it in style

glitter and frip

 

fall off the page

or hit the back cover

if that was your mission

 

do and enjoy

fill the hours with while

 

shall I spell it out then?

this is your permission

you can show teacher this note