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AUSTRALIAN POETRY COLLABORATION
 
#18
 
SUNSHINE COAST

 

PREVIOUS ISSUES

 

This issue arose from a workshop that was part of the Noosa Long Weekend... 10 days of arts, literature, food & fun in June 2011.
http://www.noosalongweekend.com
 
 

 

Archived in Pandora

 

 

from Meuse Press –

http://meusepress.tripod.com/Meuse.htm

 

FEATURING

Hamish Danks Brown, Lesley Anne Christian, Geoffrey Datson,

David Hilton, Rapheal Prasetyo, Coral Sturgess & Bryan Ward

 

 

 

¯

Hamish Danks Brown a.k.a. Danksta Downunder

KEEPING A VIGIL ON THE POINT

 

Here willing to be among a moonlit presence

Nobody on the beach

The mountain reads over our shoulders

Semi-circular shore

Everywhere around and round this city

Vagrant gulls stalk over

Which ever way we walk

Dark and brooding rocks

All aspects of its peak right behind us

Immersed in the tidal floss

Overhanging our very steps

Beckoning the next hapless surfer

To solve the crosswords before we do

Out of all seasons and about

To find a bargain in the classifieds

To imprint another wound

To pick the winning team and the losers

Right through the wetsuit.

Give it up for the weather bureau forecast!

Landforms dipped into an ocean tip

Being ahead of us at the garage sale

Climbing down and slipping up

Casting its shadow across us

From out of the watery ledge,

 

The mountain moves in tandem

Flint blade barnacles to tread around

To the Births

Wax the body Deaths and

Oil the board Marriages.

Away with you and your unsmiling shore!

Glowing caramel coast

Sweet swivel through the incoming walls

Dressed in fairy floss mist

Leave land behind to fold into itself

Strip the layers of the headland cake

With any memory crinkling chips

Taking our attention and

Towing it behind

Clutch-starting it through ever higher gears

On the rhythmic violence off the sea

Revved up its eucalypt-sticky slopes

So heave to be stranded

Until after the next late news flash

By the left of a right-hand break.

The mountain swings slowly

While I fossick and forage

Closer against us

Through the whooping voices of waves

From it's eons hewn dome of

Epiphany turns rip rapidly to "Look! – No arms!" chair Wipeout!

 

Holding mute court above

The peace of pause before the splat strikes

All of us base and below

Unplug the swell and cleanse the swollen

As we pace our flat lives

Until they're mended to each and other

Backlined up and front forwarded

Once the sea rushes in again to wash

Beneath its basalt brow

Away the shards of self-consciousness

Wondering if anyone is

By deluging and delivering me

Ever apprehended by

Into the shallows of pale, pimply ghosts

Who dares to step up to it

Cloaked in a veil of algae

Only to be stared down upon

Stringy wings of jellyfish

As we are just

Afloat and flipped by forgetting

Barely making our way across the plain

To follow the foamy retreat.

 

The mountain has already read us

Again and again, way ahead of the

First word written and wrought from it.

 

EMJC I hesitate to remember you as I much as I seek to be jostled the throngs of recall propelling me towards stars no longer affixed in their customary constellations displaced by the risk of remembering you is the wish to be forgotten by you so why did you show up like that dressed as you did and what are you on tonight and who invited you here and who was it who told me all about you and join-the-dotted a portrait of you that in no way resembled the memories I'd downloaded of you and had nothing to do with rebuilding us from the foundations that we had tried to lay down that evening squeezed out of everyone's tube until all we knew was that we were blushing and bleeding into each-other like indelible ink staining through the interleaves of our lives curling us as a pair of dog-eared pages open to a story stretching and straining to hold us both together we collided head-on without any warning and both sides set ablaze and blistered with blame how it still smoulders even on the surface of my daily water I find myself trudging at least twenty years after your swimming wake around and around the same buoy blind with still seeing you not looking back along my tardy tack ticking and docking behind me as I lose my way home stuck fast to no-one since all distances to you are the same void so how do I hope to measure of the blue-through-to-black space that's replaced you?

 

The memory of you clings to one side of my raft, clawing at me to haul it aboard, waiting for what happened in our past to be rescued once more, while we bounce and bruise across an endlessly tossing triangle of denuded dreams, like a rubber ball slowly and inexorably losing its capacity to care at all if it's rebounding.

 

Buildings that have died

Demolished people

Two brawny brick townhouses

Squat and squabble amongst themselves

Where once a low-slung fibro and timber frame farmhouse lounged across the hilltop.

 

Last spring

Complained of some pains in the

Neck and head splitting

Soldier settlement blocks

Tearing the cottage down

Too soon

It was pushed aside and asunder

To the ground by a swinging blow

From the DA grasping fists of the service station next door

NOW THAT ALL THE REMNANTS HAVE BEEN CARTED AWAY

My family has been freed to recollect it

All four to the floor of us!

 

Nobody actually witnessed

What happened to him and/or her:

Police are still pursuing their inquiries.

 

I got a head start on taking

This former holiday cabin

Out for it's last getaway drive-by

Walking face first into the plate glass of its back door

At "the end of the grove as we know it" barbecue.

I merely gave it the lightest of nudges with my forehead and

The whole pane was reminded of how many times I should have fallen straight through it

And shattered into a cascade of glittering missed opportunities to impale somebody

Knowing that after tonight no-one would ever stumble home through that sliding door again.

 

He never said anything to anyone at all - no indication no note to explain why.

She walked into the sea as if she were a house that had been built

Too close to the shifting sand dune along a shore that had been whittled away

As if she had been eroded and he had been undermined

By an overdue storm sweeping out from within

 

Has the latest version of life already been purchased off the plan?

When are we to be pulled down? What debris will we bequeath to you?

This oft-cracked tile or that well glazed tale?

 

So we meandered along the restless edge of the arriving tide

And magged away for around an hour or two or maybe three.

 

Later I went for a second solitary stroll along that beach and clambered up the slope to some lookout for a view of the endangered fishing fleet and to watch its crew gutting and scaling their catch at a killing table just up from the Co-op's ramp.

 

 

Would you believe that he was there at the lookout too!

 

So we swam out into a somewhat deeper pond of conversation than I'm used to splashing my words in, except with people I've known for a very long time. Being with this Wyoming wayfarer was like being in the company of a slightly variegated and somewhat skewiff doppleganger. It could be said that he was a wowser but he wasn't a crank about it. He had this manner which made being teetotal and non-smoking and early to bed and no excesses seem like obvious commonsense, as if it was the perfectly normal way to be. He did not preach about it. Life was his laugh-track. That was simply the way he was.

 

So we played the refrain of our first conversation and walked around the heads as far as the caravan park where he invited me to continue on with him to the rock pools but I had to get back to town because the others were packing and I had arranged to catch a lift home with them reluctantly and what for? Why was I having to go home?

 

I should have just kept on wandering with him

However long or little time we would have had

Walking and talking in a bond right over the horizon

To be taken up by the current of a new life approaching

Either with the tide or the landslide. Whatever!

 

And I still want to take up this other journey and I do and I do not know why!

 

How to find or founder How to give these abandoned plans away

Where have we / where haven't we been and done with it?

What coast? Which riverbank? What is any shore for?

What has any direction got to do with it?

As much as any one of yours and / or mine….

The speed of dark

Our steps towards the house are the punctuated marks of

It could be, from your viewpoint sentences

That it is the lights of eyes which are beaming into yours except

What seems to compel you closer in trying to go from A to B to C.

 

In time and space and so on and so forth

We all know those stories we end up reversing from L to G

That have concluded as soon as 2 people then P, then M, then L repeated,

Start gazing, grazing on each-other's eyes M-squared, N, back to M

In an illogical order

In your eyes indeed shuffling, scraping sentences

Yet how much more quickly do /  don't seem to match the pace

We avert our eyes or the posture of our stopped up

Steppe-stampeding thoughts

And shun eye contact and like an overgrown dog that

Has suddenly pushed away to opposite poles pulled free,

Trailing a liberated lead behind.

 

When you and I look through While we sniff and let our tongue swoop to the

Each translucent other's lenses source of that enticing scent!

 

How time is arrested without bail like a child hurrying to catch up

Between all the alleged charges with an impatient adult marching in quick

As our two zones adjust steps to be heard once

Two sighs blend to a single space within the house

When we can't even face one another as an orderly and purposeful procession.

 

However it all becomes futilely full of some significance rather than all this

Frustration and we whip ourselves with why

the awkward, ungainly stumble

Asking

Why we even bother to be there where those within the house

With whoever it is already discerned who are all outsiders by now.

 

At night I imagine that these steps

Maintain a steady holding pattern of

All those distant spitting sparklers and the discourse of departures and arrivals

Whooping Catherine Wheels.

 

Have our steps already tripped us over or are we drawn instead to a crease in the paper or the vacuum to which we all belong a warp in the woodpile or stopped by a superstition about liking the dark to lighten up in stepping on the cracks after all we had hoped for a blank sheet dancing to the Springsteen-stencilled dark to reach out as fresh as the song goes and sings along to shiny black sea shoes instead of barefoot blackout in a maze with a loose heel and holes in our unpaired socks because by walking we could see once again two again creased over and tucked in around a whisper and a wriggle all the more untamed the feeling that we have trespassed against the partitions pitched below above and between the echo as we get closer to the house.

 

How ever many uncounted steps (39?) to walk one word let alone each and every letter (26?).

 

Let us lettuce lest us leapt thus slept us kept unkempt plus bus fuss us pepped prepped crept

piped us abed aboard.

 

As the foreshore flung to the right we could see the lights of the town

Luminously sprouting over the supine slope

A flock of neon flamingos with antenna ruffled plumage wading under the leaf coated hill

Scales of fluorescent storey upon story reflected in the sea

For every house and home for miles around had been gathered up by the beach

While staked blocks of land slaked their thirst for water frontage

A driven dervish of headlight toting insects beeped and braked down the pass

Honk-honk huddling in between the hovering houses

Bumper to bumper barking and parking snuffling and snorting at each-other's tailpipes

A siren sounded summoning a siren reply for a false, true or don't know alarm

A passing rumble from a commuting worm

A bursting tracer of techno no no

A mobile phone tree

A cut and pasted announcement

Approaching footsteps and then voices and then

Faces closing in from along the fading path

Faces blooming and budding

Into the foredeck of the pickets as fire and wood lamp glow

Faces filling in the cactus-and-pallet

Flapping canvas rimmed sky

 

Faces forward fastening with their here we are and now here (hear hear) right here-ness

And the anxiety dispersing laughter at meeting

A changing of the shift's gear shaft

 

One more episode savoured and safely spoken for at the handover of duty for the next while

A while (and maybe a whale will surface whence cruising by)

A brief glance to check the roster stapled to the trestle-table

A shortbread conversation fulfilled by your replacement

Famished by our relief.

 

The country we've kept calling out to, in beseeching it to please come back

Yet we have somehow turned ourselves and returned again in spite of

This thriving, writhing, throttling, bloating town closing us all in and clearing us out and about

As all for and from that

We've all been speedily, greedily, freely, finally

Released to tag along with levelled spirits any way in, to and from, and out.

 

¯

Lesley Anne Christian

GRANDMA'S LOVE

 

"Grandma,you have a funny neck don't you?"

"Grandma, you are old aren't you?"

"Grandma, will you get old like Nana?"

"Grandma, will you die like Nana?"

 

"Yes Libby, I will get old like Nana and

yes Libby I will die like Nana but not until you are a big

lady like your Mummy"

 

"I love you Grandma"

"Don't you hate it when people get old and die Grandma?"

 

"Yes Libby I do"

 

"Mum, will you get old like Grandma?"

 

"Yes Libby I will get old like Grandma and hopefully as old as Nana"

 

"Mum will I get old like you?"

 

"Yes Libby you will"

 

"Oh no mum, don't you hate it when you get old?"

 

"Yes Libby I do"

 

"Grandma"

 

"Yes Madison"

 

"Where is your boy Grandma?"

 

"I don't have a boy Madison  will you be my boy Madison?"

 

"Yes Grandma I will be your boy"

 

"I love you Grandma"

 

 

The words as simple as the emotions complex

Feelings leap like deep flames

There are no fire breaks between generations

¯

Geoffrey Datson

What Thou Art

Time line, 1977

Spring I guess

Sunrise on Black Mountain Road

the air a-pulse with incandescent wildlife

Hello universe!

 

Imagination

it’s a field of abandoned cars

Native tobacco, and ferns burst through rust

Oxidation

We’re all on the slow burn down here

 

So, to the floor of a fifty-seven De Soto:

discarded tools, feathers,

crushed beer cans, greasy rags

and a message from the out-lands -

As without, so within

 

And I’m hearing Patti Smith and

I’ve been reading the symbolist poets and

I’m fairly pretentious

Another lonely boy

out on the weekend

 

But, it’s a big land

and given to dreaming

Through the windscreen

the morning clouds pile up

our heaped canopy of joy

 

 

And fearful

that my head will explode

from too much cumulonimbus

out and spinning, spinning

Spin the world

 

Slow

till racing backwards

retreat into our own eternal sunset

Hey Sheba, hey Salome, hey Venus

eclipsin’ my way’

 

And a quarter of a century later

I dreamt of this same morning

crouching in the wet grass

hugging myself hysterical with connection

and voicing all time

 

in the wet grass

¯

David Hilton

The Touch

 

It happens in a moment,

that brush with the Divine,

the sudden warm embrace of the Spirit,

unexpected, affirming, chastening,

like a light, friendly hand on the shoulder,

a subtle presence, radiant, pure.

The experience is not to be conjured up,

for it is a gift.

 

This heavenly embrace, like its earthly counterpart,

brings two hearts together,

exchanging warmth, feeling and intent.

But why should the Creator wish to commune

with so miniscule a member of his creation,

the all-transcendent being with the earthly clay?

It is a happy mystery.

 

Would that these moments were not so fleeting,

but continued on to glorious ecstacy.

Yet we should give thanks

for a glimpse of the possible, a brief taste of heaven,

sustaining us through life, its joy in happiness, its joy in loss.

 

But how to place ourselves within the Spirit’s sphere

that he might touch us?

It is when we treat the gutter-dweller as having dignity,

reach out to the reeking old woman as if she were steeped in the fragrance of roses,

spend ourselves in the cause of the world’s poor,

or hold the hand of a dying friend.

It is when we acknowledge and love the Creator,

have the grace to see an echo of Him in the unlovely,

or generously forgive the mongrel that robbed us.

And I am in that sphere when, in adoration, I survey the stars,

gaze in awe at the beauty of a sunset,

or look lovingly into my little grandchild’s face.

 

It happens in a moment,

but when and where?

A happy mystery.

¯

 

Rapheal Prasetyo

One More Chance

 

I pulled the fungus and mould infected ply board

from its swollen back

The flood had been too much for it,

I could not bring it back.

 

Yes I could still see it’s potential

In the colors and lines

but the mould had taken over everything,

and now it was the time.

 

I had to face the facts of life,

I could not mend it

It was beyond repair, there was no way

I could tend it.

 

I had wanted to kill the infection, restore it,

repair and renew

But facing the reality of all the flood damage,

I could not see it through

 

As a symbol of my adventurous life

Of all the places I had been

I wanted to give it just one more chance 

to be healthy and clean.

 

But the infection lingers for a reason

It’s too strong to be cured.

Attempting to save the damaged

Is how the weak are lured.

 

I know I can’t keep going back

Trying to revive

All those things from my life that are

No longer alive.

 

Sometimes I just have to let them go,

Have to give them up.

Relinquish the urge to come to the rescue again

And just pass them up.

 

So on the fire heap it landed

Burning door by door

Leaving white coal ashes and soft dust

drawer by drawer.

¯

Coral Sturgess

The Miners

A mining town, ’bout nineteen twenty,

Tasmania’s west, bled its rich, red vein

carted by rail, to ore ships aplenty,

sold to the mainland, for all they could gain.

 

Boys became men, legends were born.

Poor as church-mice, some high and mighty,

in leaky old ships they ’rounded the Horn,

often in chains, came out from “Blighty”.

 

Bob, born in Tasmania, a Tassie, true blue,

stood six foot four and nearly as wide.

Worked at the mine, with number one crew,

Picked not a fight, nor from one did hide.

 

Second in charge, was Hank the Yank.

Tall as Bob; but lean and lanky.

Hands big as plates an’ strong as a tank.

One look said, don’t make ’im cranky.

 

Don Miguel de la Rosa, came tryin’ his luck

Spanish royalty, ’e said, coughin’ a spit.

All just called him“Lord Muckety-Muck.”

There’s no room for toffs when down in the pit.

 

Big Kev, Welsh miner, was one of the crew. 

Sixth sense ’bout pending disaster.

Tells ’em move it, trouble’s starting to brew,

all ran like hell, where once was laughter.

 

Two brawny Scots lived near mountains so fair.

Close, wild heath, wild weather and mist,

small creeks, craggy peaks, and pure fresh air,

just like the highland, homeland they missed.

 

The Russian, English good, but accent strong,

Ivan was always good for a song, loud and stirrin’;

Who cared? Free grog or eleven, all sang along.

Words didn’t matter when all words was slurrin’.

 

Paddy and Mick free settlers they told the team.

Dabbled in politics coloured orange and green.

Boyos they played with played dirty an’ mean,

an’ why they needed a quick change of scene.

 

Members of crew number one, each man worked,

to the benefit of his mates, all sharing the loot.

Angelo slowed an all knew he never once shirked,

All just added a bit, saved him gettin’ the boot.

 

Charlie, cockney, played pianna, on Saturd’y night.

Got many a grown man dancin’, all booze fed.

Can’t get serious angry, singing with all yer might.

Stopped many a fight when full-grown men see red.

 

Billy, all of sixteen, tried to pretend he was twenty.

Caused trouble taunting the crew of pit number three,

He swaggered and swore; thought it sounded manly.

‘Can’t mine!  Sheilas, who sit down to sit down to pee.’

 

Bob, winked at Blond Kate, could see trouble brewing. 

‘Charlie; keep playing ’ta keep יem all calm.’

Kate pushed Billy up stairs, all his hormones stewing.

‘Take it easy boys, no cause for alarm.’

 

But, Black Jack could smell a good fight.

‘Bloody kid, ruinin’ the name of me crew.’

They won’t insult me, it just isn’t right.

So he pulled Willy’s long plaited queue.

 

Willy, team cook, saved the money he earned

to buy “Chinee” market-garden, maybe even a store.

Those who teased him, they very soon learned

Queue, no disadvantage fightin’, nor pyjamas he wore.

 

Black Jack, reputation to make, serious eager to do it.

’Who‘s top miner?’ He shouted, soundin’ downright mean.

But he overlooked Willy, his ability to kick and hit.

He stood tall beside Bob, who’s lookin’after their team.

 

When Black Jack pulled Willie’s queue, bar went quiet, all knew;

It’s on now, for sure, many brave men now ran for their life.

Barman grabbed glasses’n grog, before round the bar they flew.

“Get the coppers!” An’ his lad scarpered ta stay out of strife.

 

Jack pushed Willie’s chest with outstretched arm.

Nose dripped. Breath ragged. Eyes open wide.

He stared in wonder, then screamed with alarm, 

couldn’t believe the broke arm loose at his side.

 

Two of Jack’s mates jump in, revenge in their rage-glazed eyes. 

First ran in for a head-butt; but speed only hastened his fall.

The second soon learned fightin’ Willy, weren’t really too wise,

pain searin’ an’ eyes tearin’, he slowly slid down the wall.

 

Another one faltered, wasn’t too sure, shaped up, showing his fists.

Willy with one flying foot to the chest, another one under his chin,

he downed the bare knuckle boxer, who stared off into the mists.

Three men down, Willy looked ’round, see if any more wanted in.

 

The pit one fellahs was cheering, coppers stormed in, lookin mean.

‘Seems a fair fight, I reckon? So guess we’ll call it a night.’

 ‘Not you again, Willy?’ Copper smiled, an’ looked at the scene,

‘Stay out of trouble you lot. Clear up this mess ’n stay quiet.’

 

Soon the bar’s jumping an’ the grog’s flowinag’in.  

I’m shouting.”  Bob yelled, makin’ the old barman hear,

“Give Willie a drink; don’t care if it’s whiskey or gin.

Willy smiled and scoffed down a cold ginger beer.

 

Lookin’ all sheepish, downstairs came Kate and the Kid.

This brought great howls of laughter. Billy’s face turned red;

‘Miss anything, while Miss Kate, showed me sketches she did?’

The smile on his dial, lasted more than a week, so they said.

 

Like to’ve been there ’nd meet those men bold and free.

Who carved out this country 'nd did it tough as can be.

Left environmental problems, they could never foresee;

But their larrikin ways brought wealth for you and me.

¯

Bryan Ward

A Low Dim Wailing

It seems all beauty is gone,

Soaked deep into the sand

That now dries in the sun.

 

A pinpoint of sound envelops my head

And flattens to a thin,

Infinite line between my temples.

 

This continuum of sameness confounds me.

Delivers a madness over and over.

Delivers lessons barely learnt.

 

A low dim wailing

Speaks of unspeakable desires

In this baffling composition of life.

 

In a split second’s reprieve

A bridge holds back the downpour,

And while we pass I see tomorrow.

 

A powder blue sky holding no water.

Wind exiling clouds to another place.

Our bodies reclining on the hill.

 

An arch of branches reaches over the water,

An iridescent turquoise that plunges to unseen sands.

Your lips are at my ear.

 

The sand is damp under us again.

A winding thread of footprints leads away.

My arms fold you into me.

 

¯

¯¯¯

 

MEUSE PRESS publishes this collection.

All work © the authors.

 

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