the poetry of Mark S. LeabeaterFrom his new collectionFlash White vs the Bag of Nails(dadadata, 2005)
See also http://www.warr.com.au/mark/
SOME LINKS
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"Leabeater's poems blind us with their luminescence. He uses
every stroke on the keyboard to forge poems of great dexterity and inventiveness."
Alan Jefferies
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Flash White vs the bag of Nails or Leabeater’s 1st volume Prismatic Navigation can be ordered from Dadadata Press meusepress@hotmail.com
for $13 (AUD) which includes postage.There are 3 CD's available, each 70 mins plus, all up comprising the entire contents of the book Prismatic Navigation. "Lazily spoken psychotropical poetry overlaying soundscapes of unworldly ambiant, rock, jazz and sound effects from wildly ranging environments."CD 1 = Book 1: Metal Night. CD 2 = Books2,3: Phoenix Max, Freefall & Tapestry.CD 3 = Book 4: Posthistory.Each CD same as above price, or $30 with pris nav book inc. (or $35 posted in aust.)Pris. Nav. - the book alone is same price as flash white.
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Alive again,
"Now this is living!" i
remember saying
of the wireless life/
unencompassed,
as i flew feet first over
the sleeping town, the many
houses i had lived in,
the people there i knew, their
particular addresses,
their most natural faces
alive again
in our college days
when the wireless life/ was all
aspiration,
all good possibilities, none bad/
when any of every imaginably
desirable path
spread out all ahead fully
amazing/ly unencompassed/ that is:
exponential potential...
before reality
got in front of it all (as it must
do)
and here we come &/ there we
go again,
opening & closing/ doors so
long long time
no longer there/ go clapping by
under
my nightflying feet
feeling the warm dark, a summer
night
a diffusion of voices
through my body like Beethoven
music, and out through the top of
my head
the hours/ days/ the years flew
inside me/ shot right through
me
jet viscerally
through my years
faster
and faster
until such ever acceleration
tore the sail of the dream,
and the un-dreamer sprang
up
in/to (the rattling room) split
second before
the cyclone force 7
from heaven
exploded (((the window)))
and the glass between waking and
dreaming
intricately fallen &
windchimes to
so delicately/ this incidental view:
a sliver crescent/ moon slung
below
the star of mysterium (or i think
it's Mars)
out there beyond midnight,
and touchable/ who knew.
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Artist in the round
world
roundabout turning
only
to turn this rim world's local
& temporal
structure into truth &
beautiful
streaks of confluence
the It
the pretty amazing
Sitting in that old fashioned
X
legs
way
at the legless axis
of Eternity
until
don't
even say
a thing
until
yv got something to say, don't
put a fish in a tree or a
bird in the sea, that's
been done before
(reaches into the whirling mass of
skies,
selects a silhouette twig, and
on mirror coloured waters, draws):
"an uneven heaven not even
thinly disguised"
and by, and by
all this haven endures under human
picnic tracks,
so
if anyone should ask you what yr
doing/
said
nothing (as the easy river &
the breezes)
(as therefore also simply)
whatever i want to do
(and that's the why
the sitting here quietly
musing
this day & away,
anyway)
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wanted: laboratory rat
wanted: "laboratory
rat"...
may as well try for an interview
as any other of these
squares in the evening post
just make me feel sick
as a sheet fed machinist
or a butcher/ or a
plastic film extrusionist
or an
(arborist?) experienced person wanted to poison trees...
and i'm sure
all this planet needs
is another growth industry.
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THE HYDRA stared
straight at me and
across the many ways,
and said:
a symbol/ knew just what it meant/
said <<*>>
"Get right
inside the mythologies, Max,
feel like yr
going through
some changes?
you can
cut off my head
& i'll just grow another one,
cut off my head i've got
any many more;
head me off at the pass & i
know the other way, i'm
yr best inter
ests at heart, cruised in velvet
at the end of the bone bruising
day...
...you/ can
cut off yr nose/ to
spite yr face, you can
plead ignorance, you can
walkabout in grace/ & never
know it
yet
i'm yr many lives/ yr nexus wife
&
the ganglion of yr passions"
said the Hydra on the path.
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Satellite
modern pyramid
high the pinnacle
of a gritty swarming gridded world
glinted spacious a spire
yon charged
imagination on
telescopical spindle of fire
reached at least above the
stratosphere
and at best beyond expectation
in the simultaneous universe
a sensational aerial begins
transmitting
snapshot
photo imprints of 'something':
seamless
light from unhuman event
so far away, this light has taken
all of time to cross
the crescent of timespace/ the
simultaneity
> at the speed of light >
via all frontier/ out there...
(the techs gather around a
monitor)
could that really be ?
could that really be ?
'the origin of the universe'...
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Max's psychedelic dream
i see a living human undead
skeleton/ a vine,
mine own/ icon of
im(and/or)mortality, entwined~
riding high
on a heavingly ginormous slug. the slug is knowledge.
the skeleton's like of chrome,
or sometimes/ these wind chiming
bones
are transluscent, a wine
bright
like of glass blown with a
constant &
sweetly moving
warm internal light.
some other times
these bones are just/
are only a dirty
opaque decaying &
scar/red bundle not even white/
they're grey.
>> there's a canvas face glued on/ the death's head
darker skeleton,
and it's painted/ roughly
with the features of your own,
and always reaching, one boney
arm/
one hand/ one palm
stretched high & wide/
which like the face is tattooed
with all archetypal images/ of a
perfect life
imperfectly expressed/
reaches ungraciously
up & out, to outer space,
only as a significant banner
of the journey penetrating
into space,
or
the
ponderously slow motionly
joining up of the invisible
dots...
and the why? is completely invisible
too.
the landscape is the tangerine
empty
seething void of potentialities,
landforms shiftingly implied,
and the snail trail across it
is self evidently... the silver
thread... of what is actual
...is intersected/
threaded
with the trails of untold other
riders/ "all together now"
creating the whole ...wide world
of ...known forms ...as we go
...but we're also always/ leaving
the known world behind us...
the slug, the slug is knowledge
- a wild & difficult beast to
ride, in this dream -
with no saddle provided...
slimy & unstable, the slug
it knows no underlying structure
but what it
leaves behind it...
therefore
the slug is perfect/ adaptation
itself...
the godslug & i
only slither until:
to see what will happen, when
these bones finally, faithfully...
...these bones, it seems, (the
evidence: trails ending/ desicated
end-of-line meltdowns/ of rider
only, or worse; and trails restarted after the meltdowns are complete...) these
bones mine own & their
protean (eyeless, earless, why?less, origins unsaid) silent mount
are constructed of the same being
silver threads
as:
is the trail...
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Romance under nature.
~See saw & cycle clock
womb and fallow/ under night of
new moon
the closed flowers of the day
blooming tree...
~See saw & cycle pendulum
pea/cock hanging for action
struts right up to the saxophone
dawn blowing
frenzy/ the mind of a thief
crowing:
"the day will be ours"
in
the time being/ spring...
~See saw & cycle starchart
reasons spin the devices, see
the diversity of the seasons the
same & slightly
different every year, the swing
orbital
see saw & cycle
planet wound up to/ encircle
Inferno,
at the dawngate again of the first
day of spring
the feathered cloud human optic/
bursts into wing
soaring tropic: the stereoscopic
both eyes open
see by night &
see by day
the running empires over/ some
lost amazonia
sunning like all becoming, the
while
reverse swastika wheels within
sky of symbols within the sky
revealing
the cunning subplots under/
galactic laughter gunning
the insensible rush of the comet
on its
long, ineluctable ellipse
O grazed
the blue/black sky,
blazed
the obliviously miraculous
romance under nature
...mirabile
dictu...
un and even
(under nature) the ancient romance
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Star
flower,
*
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MYSTERY FLIGHT
Seated comfy in an aeroplane
cabin/ varnished woodgrain
cabinet, leather & silver/
an old world DC 3...
& there's me
sipping a martini/
dreaming reality~
~yep, that's me... apparently
traversing the Transvaal/ out
there/ down there/
or then it's the Nullabor
("very dry,
with an olive"/ghost dry
rivers. "Yes, wow, look at that,
and thank you, looks great, very
much.")
& I look clean &
...definitely going somewhere...
nonchalant/ly/ confident/ly...
(Hawaiian flower
loose tourist shirt &...
um, yeah...)
...until i realise/
freeze-frame-sudden/ moment-across-the-world/ that i don't know where...
like/ i mean, like no idea,
like: i don't know where i'm going
to...
...like there is no/ it's a blank
piece of paper/
there's no destination/ on my
ticket/ um...
...looking out again/ looking out
there... what's new? Looks like
some sorta/ anyway it's like never
before,
night & day simultaneously,
and like
it's ever new, like it's a balloon
expansion of the world i used to
knew,
like it's become the world at large/
galaxies are spinning catherine
wheels out there
beyond the naked eye, and
down there... down there...
sometimes great cities are uninhabited.
And the ants down there, i know
they can't see
what i see from the air, i see
the old cities below the new.
Sometimes... are you
seeing this? down there
the Himalayas are
blooming/ light & shade/
flowers (pushing up/ like people)
down there...
every! time i look/
an entirely different landscape,
down there/ looking up at me...
(dipper riding/ weaving via, now
monsoon/ season of drifting
islands/ towering anvil
cloud islands)
and i,
finally i notice, from this
window seat be/hind a wing ~
the wing/s are feathered ~
slow sweeping ~~~~~~~~~
they're flapping!
This bird is dreaming
(swooping low now, over tangled
green Ankor lost jungle/mpire)
anti-gravity feelings... and the
displacement spells me
i am here /so very
here/ this poem/ this fragile/ moment
before we wake/ following the
cracks
branching out from the primary
fractures,
surreal & jumble history/s
emerging
in rapid transit
= these mysteries in flight ~
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GREEN JESUS
Born from the bleeding wounded
green jesus
run between
the crossfire guns the shot ruins
the domino towers of material
fortitude
under sphere of the magnitude X
ink bleeds
cold designs from undone tomes
where no footprint
tests the endurance of the savage
steady rain
falling fingers
living running dying crawling
sprawling finger roots are prying
underneath the sullen black earth
the golden earth
digests
heroic blood & dynasty history
so softly so softly
away & away &
...low thunder:
kyrie eleison...
the incantation
of a rain spun bell.
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MEUSE PRESS
publishes this collection.
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