THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #21, NEW YEAR 2011 ISSUE

PAUL HARPER

TWO POEMS

*

country life

every evening the same story in silence at the windmill

no more poultry
until the officials bow to the river
on a morning the colour of train tracks
near the stadium where we had that mix up with the tickets

laughter in those twin cavities in a kitchen wall
& a shared taste in literature resolve so much

a watering can reminds us of summer holidays
small ferns beside a fence
concrete cool in a place of scant sunlight
mystery & solitude fusing with the smell of green

thunder or fireworks
on a sunday we can scarcely tell
transcription of the protocol proceeds languidly

for each stroke the lustre of banana leaves & the bouyance of balloons released


oOo

heist


in response to an official notice
a blue hound may be reconfigured as a playful black cat

letter about a coral tree may be classified
unlikely to be assistance

& the eight eccentrics encouraged to no longer linger in the undergrowth at dusk
marvelling at fighter jets

the centre does
however
recognise the attraction of such machines

their velocity

their silhouettes
black against evenings sapphire

in her classic of the inner landscape
our village elder speaks harshly of our recently acquired painting

our latest cargo plane escapes comment


-------------------------------------------------------------------

BERNARD HEMENSLEY


TWO POEMS

*

10-XII-2010

CANDLE FLAMES
GUTTERING
AS IF FANNED
OR IN
GENTLE BREEZE
SHETLAND'S AIRES
IN THE ROOM
HARP PIPE & FIDDLE ETC.
AH!
IT'S THE BREATH
THAT STIRS


oOo

14.XI.2010

CRACKED WINDOWS
RELEASE STEAM &
CONDENSATION.
CAULIFLOWER PICKLES
IN MORNING CHILL.
INSTANT MISO
AND STOVE
FOR WARMTH
WHILE POT SIMMERS
FOR HOURS.
B'FAST RICE CREAM
HEALS.
NO SALTED PLUMS.
SCALLIONS TO GARNISH
LATER ON.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BERNIE O'REGAN [1938-1996]

POEM FOR KRIS HEMENSLEY

Every day you wait for the mail
some times it comes late
ten years late
or never

just "one man's opinion of moonlight"
Retta is silent
you are talking

we go to the galleries
we look for delight
in front of Melbourne university
we wonder if we are getting old


oOo


[Jude Telford sent me this poem ages ago, typewritten on water stained A-4 page; salvaged from Bernie's papers, aftermath of his sad demise.]


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


NICK POWELL

TWO POEMS

*

MAAILMA

You say you 'love the song of currawongs
when they strike up their orchestra'.
Everything is tendrils, special tendrils.

Song is growth; no we are not spared
sentimental formulas
of minimalist photosynth-pop
and acorn percussion. What pomp,

twirling a pencil in the humble world,
or twirling the self, effortlessly.
Perfume on the pencil. Whose?

The future and the frond fan outward.

Maailma: World
Maa (dirt), ilma (air).
Marry me, broadly speaking.

oOo


KUMILY TO COCHIN


In the bus from the highland to the sea
garlands of bougainvillia and marigold
offered to Our Lady of the Highway
glow and swing through fields of tea.

as tired eyes yield to sleep of dream
of gentle scenes more puzzling than art,
so our bodies relax and are vivified
by faith in the invisible and unforeseen.

Looking back, many details are lost,
fine layers of experience shaded,
so that a scene in a life is reduced
to bas-relief: a road, foliage, a bus.

Smoke and mist in the ancient valleys,
your smile on seeing the wide white smile
of the Kerelan girl in the turquoise dress,
or the nun travelling alone. I find my keys

to the many sections of that hasppiness
overlap like clouds, everything touching.

oOo

[from the pamphlet, The True Maps;
horsedrawnpress@yahoo.com.au]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ROB SCHACKNE

THREE POEMS

*

TOWARDS AN AESTHETICS OF BEING HERE
for Will Knox


First, the tunnel metaphor will smile on you too
If the desperate sides be avoided, estrangement
From all that we were never invited to understand;
A sometimes unstately progress through not by
The myriad reasons we have for not being here.

Then, unwelcome, untie that hurt from our own hurt;
There is no minor skirmish that is worth the battle
That lost the war. Anyhow, we’re survivors, not soldiers.
Leave all battles internecine and your self unscathed
As you choose your way carefully through the night.

Then, untouched by insult, chicanery, and deceit
We will at last emerge to daylight on the other side
And looking back…but no, we will never look back
At the unhappiness we did not cause, nor the pain
We did not stop to answer. We were not saints.

(2008)

oOo


IN THE YEAR 2666
for Roberto Bolano

After three wrong turns, a tractor and a flat
You're at The House Of Vanished Writers
After all, that was always your destination
You park your unreviewed car and go right in
Sitting and waiting, smoking and watching
Joe, the Indian, who never could get started
Sophia, who once was beautiful, great shorts
No power to stay long enough on the page
Fred, whose fiction fried like a skillet, killed it
And you, who are merely visiting, get a key
A towel and the schedule of daily readings
Who are these happy people you are thinking
Why do they look at me like that? One part pen
One part the next event, one part is wind
Where did all the vanished writers go?
When did they write their perfect poems
Who said they'd had enough and could leave?
Your room has a limited view of the forest
It is possible the birds will sing there again
Second seating meal is vegetable soup with bread
Dessert is an autumn ice cream you don't remember
Afterwards the word games and the music upset you.

(2010)

oOo


EXILES

It took seven years to build the box
From discarded paper and dreams
As deep as it is wide, at times you forget
Exactly how you decided its dimensions
No candy store, no Chinese restaurants
Many a stained-glass window at the top
Everything is blue when the sun pours in
Deli, record store, a massage parlour
Open all night, oddly buzzing, no customers
There's a very good small library
Of books you always meant to study
Furniture copied from another tidy book
A fireplace that heats but doesn't burn
A few students were allowed in once
They dusted off their prints and fled
On the inside an ornate exit with a sign
That reads Don't Leave Till You're Ready
Next to it a fire axe, a cheap suit on a hook
Today that box is almost empty
Outside is a sunset and birds.


( 2010)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

PETE SPENCE


A GO BY, for Jack Collom


ute with 2 dogs
out back goes by

blue ute
with roll bars

2 birds go by
sans ute!

car does u turn

white car
white car
white car

flaming red flash!

turquoise station wagon
through the trees

the trees aren't moved!

floods in central N.S.W.
roads closed ac/dc!

how many ways
can you close a road?

Jack Collom goes by
looking for the elusive
red car!


oOo

PETE SPENCE/CORNELIS VLEESKENS

from The Glen Innes Collaborations

*

LADY DAY OR A MASS IN MORRIS MAJOR


no!
i don't
think i've met
Agnes Day!

but i know
her mum!
Doris.

didn't she
have a sister
Gloria?

G-l-o-r-i-a

no!
that's a burger
playing Tesla!

Kyrie & Kyrie!

is you lisping?

no!

ahhh! amen
to that!


oOo


THE JACK


figs can fly!

flush!

that's straight!

i have five
sad forests!

i'll raise you
ten matchsticks

must be a pyro hand?

C U

that's a soft bet

chips of down!

fold!


oOo


CORNELIS VLEESKENS

4 Poems

*

LETTER TO VINCENT
for Billy Jones

tiger tiger
old stone house
creeping vines
stony rises

floaters belch

keep those sheep
off the road Velsen!!

Livingstone stumbles
into the Stanley camp
grass orchids
open to the sky

as we cross
Mary Smokes Creek
a blue iris goes by

oOo


THE 98 FLOOD

blue heron out of his depth
egret pale and wan
weeks now and no let up

road closed

moorhen clings to her nest
as it bobs and eddies
(as in whirlpool)
ochre waters rage

road closed (bis)

high and dry
on the verandah
a cheese platter
dolmades avocado
a Chemin des Papes

red cedar floats by

dead cow dead cow
bloated sheep

oOo


JACK'S POEM

the kitchen midden
shows the remains
of a great feast

blood drips
from the seabird's beak
red cargo goes by

the ancestors smile

oOo


QUIET IN MY HAT


line dangling from my big toe
misty mooring dry red

blue whale goes by

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PETER (FREDDY) TIERNAN

Launch speech for Lee Fuhler's We Pale Inhabitants (Earthdance, 13 Jones St., Brunswick, Vic. 3056),
at Collected Works Bookshop, December 15th, 2010.

One of my many distinctions in the literary world is to be the first to publish a poem of Lee Fuhler's. That was in about 1993 when I was bringing out a folded double sided A3 of poems called Poetry on Paper. There were fewer readings then but with bigger attendances and I always thought they doubled as drinking clubs. Less so these days. Much has changed, many people alive then are now dead. Or not so dead but remembered and incorporated into our work, sometimes without our knowledge or permission.

I think Lee was off the sauce by then -- there was something about the intent with which he read -- so I approached him and, I think this is the technical term, solicited a poem from him.

I've brought it today to give back to him -- kind of like the completion of a circle but in a bigger
circle. Before the poems in this book, or most of them, Lee didn't write for some years. So you can get better, but it doesn't get any easier.

You wonder what happens to poets when they go home -- if they get to their desks -- how they drive their minds -- if they can reach into their hearts -- what they can face -- what they can't -- nights alone -- reading poems out of a book -- or dreaming at an empty window -- it's so slow and the notes are so far apart.

The first line of the first poem Lee gave me was : "your heart it is a thief". The final line of one of the poems in this book is "we're only poor tenants and here for a while". I did like that first line but these days he writes fuller, with more depth like the stones are watching. With these poems you can read a line and see how strong everything is, what things are invested with -- you can see everything in the light of a huge apricot -- the man who's wrestled with his blues can split the wind

-- everything is burning -- we're losing it all
what can we do but sing.


[at Collected Works Bookshop, December 15th, 2010. Other poets supporting Lee Fuhler, reading from his new collection, were Ian McBryde, Lyn Boughton, & Lish Skec (who also read for Kerry Scuffins who couldnt attend).]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CYRIL WONG


Excerpts from Satori Blues

*

What fails to be reined in

pushes out, freezes, breaks off—crashes.

No telling who might place a chunk

in their mouth. (Who wouldn’t pay to watch them

taste it?) Some protrusions merge with air, but

not before melting a little, flowing everywhere

within the self, hardening in places it never

meant to make a home.


oOo

Fields of emptiness between the wild arc

of electrons and every atom—a vacuum not

nothing after all, but the purest form

of something like compulsion that fixes

us into being, stopping the self from

coming, no, flying everywhere apart.


oOo


What we talk about when we talk about loss

are the catastrophes: walls collapsing

and the terrible flood. What we forget is what

we fail to detect: the line opening like an eye

from one end of a dam to another;

a startled look and the averted vision

at a wrong word at yet another wrong time.

Loss is an ever-growing thing. The same

is true of how we win.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Typed-up the 2nd & 3rd January, 2011. NOT the Boy's Own Edition of Poems & Pieces, simply how the pieces fell together at this time! --so saith yr holidaying ed!]

oOo

CONTRIBUTORS :

PAUL HARPER, a friend of Collected Works Bookshop, has poems recently in Roomers magazine (Melbourne).

BERNARD HEMENSLEY, previously published here; has revived his Stingy Artist small press (85, Goldcroft Road, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 OEA, UK) after many years hibernation. Hot off the press are a bunch of ephemera including a Franco Beltrametti fold-out. Welcome back bro!

BERNIE O'REGAN, fourteen years since the photographer/super 8 filmmaker/poet died in Melbourne. See index for Archive of Miscellaneous Critical Writings #11 (7/4/07) re- K.H.'s Introduction to the Archive of Enigma screening of B O'R's films (June 15,'98); also Archive, #10 (24/6/07) re- K.H.'s Words for Bernie : Eulogy... (15/11/96)

NICK POWELL is living in Brisbane after some years overseas, mainly Finland. In 2007 his chapbook Of Fallen Myth was published by the Poets Union (Sydney). The poems here are from The True Maps (Horse Drawn Press,'10), mostly written in Finland.

ROB SCHACKNE born in New York, came to Australia in 1971. We made his acquaintance via the Bookshop in the 90s. In China for a decade, currently Shanghai, where he's published a couple of collections; Snake Wine ('06), Where Sound Goes When It's Done ('10). His self-portrait reveals, "He listens to The Grateful Dead. He claims that he can read Shakespeare in the original. Some days he thinks there is nothing easy about the Tao." His blog is The Tao That Can Be Named, www.borisknack.blogspot.com

PETE SPENCE & CORNELIS VLEESKENS have appeared in Poems & Pieces before (see the index). They're both active in the Mail Art internationale. Their most recent publications are (P.S.) Sonnets (Footura press, Germany) & (C.V.) Divertimenti (Earthdance, Glen Innes).

PETER (FREDDY) TIERNAN is one of the Melbourne scene's true gentlemen. Co-edited with Rex Buckingham, From the Rochester Castle anthology (1988), and his own Poetry on Paper (1989-93). Included in Raffaella Torresan's Literary Creatures anthology (Hybrid Press, 2009).

CYRIL WONG lives in Singapore where he edits Soft Blow poetry journal. One of a group of Singaporean poets who've made substantial connections with Australia over the past 10 years. Has published 8 poetry collections & 1 book of tales. Co-authored with Terry Jaensch, Excess Baggage & Claim (Transit Lounge, Melbourne, '07). Satori Blues, from which the poems here are taken, is published by Soft Blow (2011). Website, http://www.cyrilwong.org