Anth 74 Selected Poems

Selected poems: of appoximately 470 written more than 30 years ago. Some of these have been used and re-used in the anthologized writings and most were distributed on a CD titled ‘ALL THAT WAS, ALL THAT WILL BE’. These are collected here in alphabetical order by first line, not in order of writing.

a boy who grew up in a garden met a boy who grew up in a factory now there is a workshed in the garden and the factory is surrounded by trees

a philosopher in a library was working on a thesis concerning life and death but his work was interrupted when a book fell on his head

a veiled thought a hidden depth in the glance the reassuring smile * kiss of betrayal kiss of complicity * kiss of dishonour

all you farmers and geographers do not use the river to mark the boundaries of your land build boats and let the river carry you into the deep deep sea

all your strategems and plans cannot give your children sight yet the black swan on the wing can smell the swamp across the night

and suppose that one old and very wise fish as he floated slowly, suspended among the caverns of his life breathing oxygen freely given by the garden of moss and weeds, feeding on the bread that rained like manna from his fishbowl sky became aware, in the garden of his mind that every trembling, every darting fish however small, left a ripple on his soul, and the garden that fed him freely freely took the food he gave, till suddenly he knew he was only one small link in an everlasting chain and then with the glassy eye of age he saw the hand that dropped the manna from the skies what could he say to the suffering and the blind? what could he say to the dying and the dead? what could he say to the boisterous school of fish he ruled? I am old and cannot teach you how to dance I must do my rounds in the confines of the bowl the dancer dances to a song we barely hear

and then arose a mighty struggle men with their clocks and watches decided to imprison time better they had tried to chain a river down

as I lie on my bed the chiming of the clock reminds me of the hooting of the owl at night bird of night take me to your moonlit dreams take me in your glowing eye to where the pale moon guard my sleep

as we stood on the edge of the precipice a companion remarked how glorious it would be to take a deep breath and dive into the abyss my friend even as you straighten out into the dive proper already you are travelling at fantastic speed because of the special nature of the abyss your acceleration increases so rapidly that in an instant the speed of your dive has choked the minds scream into silence far behind the abyss goes on believe me my friend unless a greater hand than mine pluck you out you will never come out of that dive even if you know that hand even if it will pluck you out dont tempt it

before jerusalem the crowds had already been waiting for a long time among them were lepers children deformed from birth and some who were inhabited by evil spirits as jesus and the disciples came nearer a centurion knelt down offering to put his house and servants at their disposal but said that he was a wealthy man not worthy of their presence under his roof the disciples were tired for they had not rested or eaten for three days jesus turned aside and led them to the centurions house the pharisees who had watched carefully gathered together claiming that he was a false prophet and began to plot his death

dont pray loudly with impatience as if the lord be deaf in the mothers womb the infants bones grow silently

even now the eagles are gathering and my friend there is a certain austere beauty in the cruelty of eagles you may not suspect that in the depths of your soul you too can see that beauty the spell of a curved beak the hidden depths of a jewel eye can trap even you

here is a bird that has travelled three quarters round the world each year of its life it is black dying on the sea-shore in a town of tourists fretted with biscuits by children ignored by fishermen it cannot tell and you might as well not ask it is dying and that is enough

I am a sailor in the eye of a storm and in this stillness I listen

I am an angel I scream (angels are allowed to scream) I think that I am pity I am sorrow I listen (there is silence in screams) I laugh (angels can laugh too) echoes of laughter they agree the definition of despair is an angel

I clutch my bottle of whiskey close against my chest I dream of bootleggers I dream of moonshine I see bottles bubbling in the quiet, moonlight I build a little still in a valley by a river I sleep

I dont know if children are the most beautiful invention of god or if god was created by children

I sit and think but mainly sit thinking brings sorrow sitting is peaceful should I do more is there greater virtue in thinking than in sitting?

I tell my dentist that he is wasting his time drilling holes in teeth all he finds is corruption and decay how much better it would be to drill neat round holes in peoples heads lift out the grey matter from the cranial cavity and into each one insert a queen bee and her mates soon people would be walking around with beehives in their heads they would always go to where the lovely flowers grow and all their thoughts would be sweeter than a honey bees oh death where is your sting? in my head I hold a thousand bees each with a mightier sting than thee

I thought I saw a hawk caught by the wind falling with tangled wings but my wife dreamt that I was flapping my arms like chook wings trying to fly down the drive

I told my neighbour who is a doctor that I had just written four poems about death I suggested that even if they lacked interest for him from a literary point of view he may find their subject of professional interest he said doctors were more interested in life than death but isnt it true I smiled that they know much more of death than lets say the man in the street for some obscure reason I then rambled on about traditional chinese medicine where while a doctor kept a man healthy he was paid for his services but if the man sickened or died then he or his relatives were paid by the doctor anyway while I was rambling on like this with my neighbour the man in the street was run over by a car and really did get to know a lot about death

I wrote six poems about death ranging from the facetious to the dead serious for awhile I behaved as if I was an expert on death as if in my arms I had long carried a dead child through swamp and desert forest and valley till finally after many years following a winding river and by now tired out with the burden I reached a village by the sea or perhaps more accurately a tourist resort there I laid the dead child at his mothers feet and as I looked at it I realized that it was no longer a child but had grown into an old old man

if someone tells you he knows all about the devils works it may mean he has been in the devils pit if he has been inside the pit he will not have left without a mark if you “look into an abyss the abyss will look back into you” if you “battle with monsters be careful you yourself dont become a monster” and since the prince of darkness often wears a cloak of light beware the preacher who is familiar with demons

if you can imagine a death that swoops on you out of a blue sky like an eagle and if in that last and frantic instant deafened by the beating of wings blinded by a rush of blood you glimpse the perfection of a curved beak the clear purity of a jewel eye so that in the moment of death you are still with the stillness at the core of beauty then perhaps you are ready to dance to the seasons

I’m sitting in a pub by a station in the country going home going home I’ve just come back from the outback where a black dog tried to root me in the night a black black night I’m a lonesome randy black dog better be ready with your pants down all night long all night long I’ll root your arse and legs off I’ll root your eyes and ears off cause your my love cause your my love the train doesnt leave till 10 to 5 and here I’m waiting at 10.35 I’m hard as a muscle but soft and gentle just for you just for you

in the city jesus came by two blind men the blind men heard from the noise of the crowd that the prophet from nazareth was near and one of them called out lord you can give back my sight and immediately he was cured the other man listened to the crowd marvel at the power and charity of jesus and he said to himself lord thy will be done and he remained blind and so it was in every city

in the music of your wounded hand I tremble like a bird

it has been brought to my notice by a student of nature that the portuguese-man-of-war more commonly known to beachcombers as the blue stinger actually consists of five different creatures which wander free through the oceans till in response to some secret code nurtured over billions of years in the inscrutable womb of evolution come together in symbiotic affection to find a singleness of purpose and design as a plague to all swimmers and in my conceit this has led me to consider that i too may be a subject worthy of scientific scrutiny my refrigerator might be my stomach the factories that process my foods do the work of the digestive tract the car is my means of locomotion the state library is my memory my conscience is my credit card my sting – the nuclear bomb i may look clumsy but if you have a mind to trifle with my ecology – beware

it is my earth mother of the poor father to the wild feel it breathe underfoot tremble with subtle pain slow heart of stone, dream of ages forgetting, forgiving, hidden it is deep deeper than the sea it has known everything and forgotten many times its tears are rain its agony the sun then there will be a dead rain a blind sun in silence

it is the whooping of cranes and the magpies fluted call which attunes your ear to a pitch of perfection that on a spring morning when the birds gather in ecstatic chorus you can hear in the silence between the notes the song of the mute swan

it took a billion years of drought and flood earthquake cataclysm and strife to form the intricate design of the petrels skull and beak found along the shore you wonder if its possible that so much terror and such brutal joy should be expended in evolving this one solitary bird and yet for just an instant in the history of his kind the petrel soared upon a shaft of air to hold entire kingdoms in his eye

let me walk along the restless shores the stinging octopus gives birth to fragile ships of gleaming white where from portugal a man-of-war trails his tentacles through twilit worlds some are made to dream others to explore

my uncle who lives in a little almost unknown country has acquired over fifty years the best private collection of old manuscripts in the whole place when he dies he would like to be processed if possible into parchment we his relatives would file past sombre faced and with old fashioned ink plumes in our hands put our signatures on his dried out form then one of us would take that parchment and put it among the old scrolls and books in the library lock the door and throw away the key forever when I die I want to be burned so that once more I return to the ashes from which I was made but then I also want those ashes to be put in a hole in the ground and over them a tree planted as the tree grows its roots will draw nourishment from the cinders I will see and hear the world through the eyes and ears of a tree so it is some have the peace to seek death others seek to be reborn

my wife tells me that her cunt is getting old but as my cock has only one eye it hasnt noticed the difference

my wife said unless you take a good dose of sleeping pills tonight you will kill yourself through lack of sleep I complained that if I had taken my pills on the previous night I would not have written the four poems on death which I did write well she said youve got to work our your priorities is it so important to write poetry that you run the risk of killing yourself I pointed out pedantically that such a clear distinction between poetry and death could not be made I said poetry is my life or perhaps it is my form of dying I write a lot of poetry about death and with a note of drama in my voice: after all we are all dying in our different ways I havent decided yet which way to go

now Im going to demonstrate how to build a man the framework is made from petroleum extractive light and strong no tendency to go chalky as is the case with bone nor is it brittle like fibre glass and easy to mass- produce with available techniques it must be assembled carefully though specialist training is not required, each part is numbered a reasonably intelligent person can put it together by following the code a code-book is provided joints are not a problem as was the case with metal pins we use flexible swivellers of polyestered wood there is no corrosion refinements to the transistor and research on micro-circuits has led to a kidney machine smaller than a cigarette lighter held to the spine by a powerful electro magnet the aorta digestive system alimentary canal are made from plastic reinforced with vegetable fibre the colours are purely for ease of identification the wiring is highly sophisticated with an allowance for error short-circuits are eliminated by complete insulation we do have a problem with the heart though essentially a pump present engineering has not produced a substance which can expand and contract for a sustained period without developing molecular fatigue this is overcome by using the heart of a pig an animal of similar weight to man

sexual organs are immeasurably superior to anything our fathers dreamt of university research has produced a highly sensitised elasto-fibre

the whole kit is designed to make it possible for our model to copulate with himself vision is controlled by a Zeiss programmed miniscule computer shutter speed of 1 in one thousand of a second automatic adjustment for lighting and glare this man can stare at the sun without damage to the eyes needless to say the memory bank is perfect fully photographic stored on micro-file a short wave receiver allows communication at all times static is non-existent there is also a transmitter so he can give as quickly as receive in the unlikely case that servicing may be required the cranium cavity leaves ample room for access if he doesn’t suit your taste the package deal includes a reassembly tool kit at no extra price

on a sheltered island underneath some plastic palms the parrots of utopia dressed in vivid green dance in groups like clockwork toys they nod their heads and look so wise that no one dares to criticize

once there was a wise man because he had many treasures he installed all kinds of locks alarms and electronic devices but burglars came and stole some of his riches so the wise man appointed strong and dutiful servants to guard his treasures but when the servants fell asleep a very clever cat thief came by night taking many possessions finally after much thought the wise man met the cleverest thief he had ever known and to him he gave all his treasures now the wise man and the thief often sit together discussing wisdom and folly

one subject for conjecture was an ageless man who regularly passed through our town against his chest in a wire cage suspended by a leather belt from his neck was a small grey songbird each time we asked about the caged bird he would tell us with a note of polite amusement in his voice a different story : that it was a travelling companion and though it appeared to lack freedom and he seemed to have it there was an understanding between them or that it was in memory of a beautiful girl to whom he swore to be true but she left him then again it was a treasured possession of an old widow who took ill she asked him to look after it and it remained with him ever since he said the bird reminded him of us the cage was life, however far he travelled he knew to return once he told us how in a huge city he stopped under a bridge where two rivers met a river of oil shone like the rainbow the other was red with blood he was the only one in that city to wake to the morning song of a bird

our hearts are stone our love sand our dream an opal our spirit air our search is food we are rain we are flowers we are seed we stared at the night till our skin turned black we are night

perhaps life is a decision made by the elements of the earth to dance for a short season the inanimate planet clothes itself in a membrane of green to provide a stage for the dancer the child of the silence of aeons nurtured in the womb of stillness assumes a human form to dance naked upon its parent earth

perhaps it is too pedantic to discuss whether object causes motion or the motion defines matter is it the wind that shakes the branch or has the branch given life to air is the flower beautiful or did perfection form the flower can you see the dancer or is the dancer hidden in the dance does the dreamer dream or has the dream possessed the man did the flute produce the tune or has the tune been waiting for the flute I don’t really care about the answers but the spirits that I talk to all claim in their conceited way that it is they that speak to me

planting flowers mist bleeding hands too clumsy the flowers dont grow

remembering that like wood I am made mainly of carbon when I die process me into a piece of foolscap and on it write these words here is a piece of paper with nothing on it but some foolish words and if you multiply the words by the number of lines divide by the number of verses and add one then you will have a good definition of a fool and if the cap fits wear it by the way the number is 460

the doctor pulled out my wisdom tooth and told me I’d be none the less wise for it. furthermore, he said my children will have no wisdom teeth at all : the environment of modern man leaves jaws insufficiently developed for wisdom teeth. nor will they be any less wise for the absence. but I wonder how carefully he looked inside my head; perhaps there was nothing there as wise as my wisdom tooth. perhaps that’s what he meant. I am further confused by the suspicion that without my wisdom tooth I lack the wisdom to understand the situation. even the nurse disturbed me when she told me that the doctor had his pulled out long ago.

the king has died deserted in a distant land inside his rib cage two crows dance one that struts and strops his beak says I dance like this to honour death the other shuffles his wings and nods his head I dance for you my empty friend to introduce you to the night

the local alley cat one eyed prowler in the night was killed this evening by the headlight of a car with the silent instinct of generations of his kind he writhed and cartwheeled into a neighbours yard to die or to enter another one of his nine lives perhaps the curtain of night has been rent to admit him finally into the paradise of prowlers

the monkeys in the universitee do not read my poetree like the crackpot of the city I am let to wander free but in the corners of my mind I hatch a furious plot I will build a giant bomb to disintegrate the lot so perhaps they have their wisdom let me cackle to my tomb there are many reasons why I wither in my room

THE OLD LIBRARY perhaps it is right that the custodians of this library which is perfectly round should be inefficient when it is transferred into the new building instead of the perfection of circles there will be glass rectangles and the new custodians of that new library will be models of efficiency and our most regular customers from the derelicts home who come here because there is a touch of eternity in this room will have nowhere to go ** one reason why the derelicts will not go into the new library is because it will be carpeted they are used to hard and resonant floors to them their footfalls have a hollow ring they have grown used to that ** another reason why they like to come to this library is because it is old

they have no community of worship in this world but long long ago somewhere in the past it was different and so if we do provide them with a service it is only that we rescue the past from the present ** in the mirror on the dais at the centre of the perfect circle of this room you can see that the old man at the table is no younger than the oldest book the boy on the excursion feels the dust along the shelves all pasts and all futures are only reflections of the present ** have you noticed how frail the old men are their hands are clumsy like the hands of children the books that they read are the books that children read books about war kings and other lands

** and perhaps some of these old men have no future just as some have had no past in this circular tower, a dead architects imitation of a mystery that he could only faintly glimpse, these men guard the eternal present all others must humbly wait outside ** buildings are haunted by the souls of those who have used them the alcoholic, the destitute & the agitated come here to sleep guarded by ghosts from the past **

the other day I met old father time himself instead of wearing black he dressed in shimmering white I’ve always seen the scythe before but never seen the hour-glass he tipped it back and forwards like jewels in a vase

the plover calls at night to tell us that the night is life and at night the fox comes out to pluck the sleeping chicken off its perch as he trots towards his lair bloodstained feathers sticking to his fur he listens to the plovers call he wont tell you what he knows you creatures of the light listen and be warned

the song of god is the song of the mute swan his body is made of loneliness his limbs are made from pain and yet he has a human form dressed in the rags of a beggar he knocks on every door blind and feeble he holds out his hand for alms look closely at that hand

the soul of a clerk is made of filing cabinets and pigeon holes one day he found the cabinets were full of birds and they had nestlings in the holes

their hot and bothered faces cooled by seaside spray the tethered people look towards the distant boundaries of the sea their tired minds are filled with clamourous seagulls screeching overhead

there was

a man in the suburbs who prayed that he be a sailor and his mind became an ocean the shimmering fishes were its cells then he knew that life was governed by the surging of the waves

they say Hitlers scientists discovered a cheap method of making paper out of jews on that paper some good books were written but they were anti-establishment so Hitler had them burnt it was a-round-about way of burning jews however the ashes were scattered in a fertile valley and from them grew a great forest which Hitler ordered to be chopped down and made into paper-backs the paper-backs consisted of progaganda so Hitler forced all the german libraries to keep it on their shelves the americans bombed the libraries turning them into heaps of smoking rubble and if there is a moral to this story dont ask me what it is

they watch the white birds stoop through mist and spray beautiful as a dream it makes them think that they are near the sea they wait to soak their withered hands in salty water once again

time waits for no man and no man waits for time the best thing to do with clocks is to play with them my local watchmaker says he is too busy to read my poetry because he hasnt got the time

2mni Ntrlir - ... 2mni blz; 2mni suevnerz, 2mni pnoekioez; 2mni Via Cavourz, 2mni Przr Garibaldiz, 2mni Porte Romane; 2mni jpsez bgn nchrch stps, 2mni indinz sln sunglrsz, 2mni blak mn sln h&bagz, 2mni talin mn fingrn fliez. 2mni rnunsiaeshnz, asnshnz, kruesfkshnz, rzrkshnz. But nvr 2mni FONTANE (spshli liek th vecchie fonane nSiena & San Gimignano & th groetsk fontane n Prtsr Annunzirtr nFIRENZE) & nvr 2mni krnlz (but 2mni gondolerz & gondole). Saluti da Venezia!

walking down a summer lane you may not notice the shadow of the crow flying overhead

what is the storm which cast the soaring bird down to the dying earth and whose the pain that raised the ageing hawk again on pinioned wings into the air

when finally the house has been made clean and tidy the devil goes wandering around desert places for forty days and then he comes back with seven other devils, each more powerful than himself and finding the house clean, he says let us enter here on that day make sure that you keep the window of your intellect shut for it is through this window that the biggest devil of all attempts to enter

when he saw that they had turned against him and were practising every kind of perversion he sent an angel to punish the people for six days the angel strode through the land pestilence in the left hand a flaming sword in the right till half the people broke out in boils and sores so that even little children were covered in pus the other half he smote with the sword so that the earth was awash with blood on the seventh day he saw that his bidding was done and a voice echoed through the heavens this is my body this is my blood

when I lay on my wife her stomach heaved like an ocean and I was on the waves knowing that life came from the sea

when simple simon met the pieman it was the pieman who was going to the fair simple simon was on his way home from a psychiatric institution as soon as the story about the incident leaked out they promptly put him in again anyway the pieman made a lot of money at the fair and they both lived happily ever after

when the lord knocked on my door I said sorry I havent got the time it is exactly twelve he said the last hour and I assure you my watch is right I’m sorry sir I said no disrespect intended but I mean I’m busy I’m in a hurry dont worry he said it doesnt matter I have all the time in the world take as much as you need

when the multitude had eaten he was asked by one of the disciples who would look after the people when he was gone jesus who had sought refuge by the lake saw the crowd in the distance and said when I leave brother will fall out against brother son will disown father bread will become stone even the marriage wine will turn into vinegar and yet if they are to enter the kingdom of my father the restless will not find peace and the starving will not be fed

when youre dead and buried and at last you think youve found some peace now that the procession has gone home and your funeral suit is baggy with a loose collection of your bones you grin at grieving solemn friends calculating what youve saved you may not think it so funny when you see the raven strutting on your grave

with the price my hairdresser charges I expect to get a crewcut a shave a vasectomy and a frontal lobotomy

writing an obituary requires some talent not everyone has sufficient rapport with the dead to be a professional obituary writer requires talent indeed to be really good you must be practically dead yourself the only one who can write an adequate obituary for a dead obituary writer is the owner of the funeral parlour who having previously employed the writer in a professional capacity also sold him a life-insurance policy which though it kept him poor just covered the cost of his burial

you are a master of disguises I slash through them as through so many sheets of tissue and I still dont see you you have shuffled the deck so well that king, queen, jack, joker you yourself dont know who you are

you whose lives are governed by the clock remember that the swelling of the tide and the bleeding of a womans womb move to the rhythm of the moon at night the farmers dog will howl in the city the lunatic will dance