AUSTRALIAN POETRY COLLABORATION #18 SUNSHINE COAST
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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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Coral Sturgess
The Miners
A mining town, ’bout nineteen twenty,
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 flowin’ ag’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.
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MEUSE
PRESS publishes this collection.
All work © the authors.
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