may we all be heard
words are bells
let them ring!


Thom World Poet Austin, Texas, USA
Global Radical networker and activist for promoting the live Creative Arts,
at every possible opportunity, especially in his home-city, Austin, Texas, USA


Monday, March 28, 2011

AUTUMN RAIN HAS COME

to move this heat and high humidity
Cumulus/nimbus clouds bank liquidities
stronger than the Commonwealth Bank.
Wet pavements and roadways,sprinkled windshields
dark black this night with hidden stars
Even moon withdraws /slips behind shadows
Traffic noise seems muffled by these walls of drops
Another world now/rain to tears and back again
It is a time to be leaving/my mother's pain
stretched like a crooked back
No pill can ease these times.She moves slowly-
her face has lines.Advance weather warning.
Her clocks steal time back by moving forward
She will sleep afternoon siestas,knit socks and sweaters
make with wool and hand what is worn on feet and head
Clouds gather because they must.Who knows which is last?
Who will last a trick of time /a sleight of arthritic hand
Someone is always ahead of us down this road
When will she stop to ease her load?


when eye was young/old seemed so far away
moon elders staring down at microscopic me
now poles reverse/young stare up
with digital eyes and downloaded lives
distance settles in over time
bridges fall like walls
we send signals out to meet in deserts
discussing armistice

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Kookaburra

Go where jacaranda and tiboschina alstonville shine in colors
like those lili-pili berries purple to the taste
Watch for paddy melons twilight/early morning
(beware the cane toads and snakes)
Semi-tropical fronds and ferns stand
near ghost gums by the creek.Weeds rise up
original cultures .made of earth beneath
Rain has filled the flowing clear
heritage liquidity.Rich and verdant this soil
Keep the trees!Parrots gossip twinned in air.
Clouds hide stars in widescreen skies
Temporary as time/water/life
Visit -but you cannot stay
Before and after you-green Light!
Blue skies.Even trees
become fire wood.Ash in fireplace
Visitors to Paradise.Go now/drive away...

(just to be among the silence
just to be that silence)

KYOGLE

while the New South Wales government fell,
we were en route to Horseshoe Creek,where white waters
fresh hatched from Mt Warning spilled in to the deep pool
This was why they bought this green peace bush-
to repair when battered by city noise
to heal by waters and among trees
to sip silence as medicinal,and to sleep
relaxed by birdcall and treecreak
Two black cockatoos with yellow fantails close
one lizard leapt into the waters
Three leeches attached to us as we picked wild lemons
A shell snakeskin reminded us who lived here first
Time stopped and sat by waters with us
A bird in the heart and in our eyes
all green,growing,sweet and deep
as the pool that called for each of us to come
Now are we on the M1 once again
having detoured via Kyogle/Mullumbimby
City once again rains concrete poems
We hold green in our arts,and in our memories-
Horse Shoe Creek still runs,wild and white and deep

AUSTRALIA /AUSTIN(urbs et orb)

Camp by a water source."This will be the place for a village"
Town becomes city in time.Public transport.
My childhood trams burned down in the era of Clem Jones
whose name is on a bankrupt City Tunnel project
Hospital of my birth now snuggled among highrise
Every urban center experiments with values-
a free city circle bus loop
(Armadillo cut in Austin)
staged bus stops(to be copied)
use of the River as public transport(catamarans-
where landings were destroyed in Brisbane floods
Hike and bike trails by the waterside(ditto)
Parks and gardens where free entertainment amuses
Attracting high rise living back to the CBD
Now patches and sparkes of original planning
show parallel but not equivalent developments
(Brisbane has an effective train service/Austin none)
Public transport becomes a front line issue
when the call is for THE PUBLIC to vote-
but then again,it is compulsory in Australia
where FREEDOM requires all of us (every singular one-
to consider more than simply ourselves.)We are One)

13 KM TO NIMBIN

and 39 years ago,my public poetry career began
in the Buttery of this old dairy town/when the 1972 Aquarius Festival began
with painted murals and divergent lifetstyles imported
from all around a younger Australia/where "IT'S TIME!(for a change)
ushered in a Whitlam Labour Government with hope as its theme
and youth vote its demographic.I stood and chanted-
"This is your life.Don't waste the time.Get up and dance!"
in a verbal tape loop ,with musicians joining in
and people actually dancing to the words and music.
Post-Fest,to Melbourne's Commune in West Melbourne(inner city land)
Monday nights =POOR TOM'S POETRY BAND!
a  loose affiliation of poets and musicians improvising their lives
We lasted a year or three,until up to 14 folk joined the harmonies
split into smaller groups,with new words and faces
still improvising/@a POETRY GALLERY(where we sold nothing)
when Bob closed down the original Commune.
Returning via memories and gossip.Nimbin went
from marijuana to heroin,now handing out more needles
than any capitol center.Now i read the road signs and do not go back
As for poetry ,i am still waiting for you -to LEGALISE IT!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

original

fall of governments(card stock
dominoes/exposes/scandals/headlines
here we have an original-what am i bid?-
only slightly shopsoiled environment
lead skies/metal mud/choked plants/Chenobyle#2
Disaster economics scarcity scarred
Every body wearing masks
Powers greater than us/ask
what do we do with original cultures?
Burn down forests to make treehouses?
Cut roads through to speed crashes?
Symbolise value to exchange loss?
Buy the earth then sell it back @twice cost?
Cut moon by saying we are off to Mars
Privitise flight so rich see stars
Make Saints Angels sports team powers
What shall we do with original people?
Put em in a box with a continuous camera?
Call em HERO then watch them as celebrities?
Fantasize the Hidden law of Becoming
has become  the new Law of Attraction?
How about original thought?deeds?ideas?inventions?
What if we found solutions to problems?
Defined our Age via Manifestation
Abolished poverty via Prosperity for every one?
Focused upon caring for every singular original One?

LEARNING LIMITS
all these lines only while you are alive
and i am alive/and we do more than survive
Wind like a river round each snake night
Awaiting each New like the Dawn of Light
(but only while-we are both alive!

use these lines to scry(and cry!

please be quiet.walk slowly.here is your number
inside,huge white room with hundreds of wire coathangers
within,popsickle birdhouses.Around,with wings-tiny colored birds!

inside the swimming pool,you can look up at those photographing you

WW1 black and white explosions dispute the fables of literature

silver globes with black background.counted colored visitors within.

wish list ribbons.Take one,replace with your own wish scroll.

whales with songs hang suspended from ceilings like ultralights

Museum stagecoaches/airplanes.small ,handmade,homemade

Jeffrey Smart.Frederick McCubbin.Percy Grainger.Brett Whitely.

Hyperrealism appeals (more than photography)

It is the human condition to weep and wail for  human conditions.

Vietnam vets.Screaming during PLATOON.Life as art.

Iraq vets.Tattoed ,drunk.Wars within

Afghani vets-Russian,English,American,Australian,ongoing

Sit within a circle of poets and let peace in.

philanthropos(from telegraph to twitter)

Soros knows-the economy of orchards
when IDF bulldozes olive trees,it is to destroy the link to land
When China has to import grain,it boosts the price on minerals
More than scarcity economics is involved-in the Paris Commune,they ate rats
Horses went first,like those tales of mutinies @sea
drawing straws for who to eat next.Those blessed with crops
will be forced to sell them or be invaded.Water rights in Palestine.
War kills crops and starves civilians.Economies rot when the only sale is weapons
MacDonalds expands as a real estate Empire
Whole world is eating American(hamburgers)
Now the super rich are donating millions
They see beneficience in charities.
Perhaps micro-loans -more likely wells,livestock ,tools
For the Fourth World is hungry-they see the First
and want -cars,clothes,status.They barely own the land beneath
Will nominal philanthropy buy off revolution?
Or are these uprisings last attempts for economic justice
a democracy espoused yet unknown?

wealth(Banksy to Brett Whitely)

Today,the Australian dollar is worth more than an American dollar
and one must ask what wealth is produced by 24 million folk
as opposed to 200 million?Once,wealth was the hunt-
to eat and dance and sing a tribal way(not Rousseau's "Noble Savage"-
more a primal defined lifestyle governed by laws and legends
White invasion later-smallpox ,sylphilis,assimilation
a colonial culture imposed English upon 300 languages
Same as Turtle Island,but there they broke from English
and Spanish colonies returned in ghettoes of Independence
Gondawanaland lost speech,cultures,myths,legends-
absorbed alcohol,petrol sniffing,despair,suicide
you cannot mix ambulatory with sedentary
One becomes nostalgia(unless in Arnhem Land)
the other says SORRY and white ants land.
You cannot go back.Dreams,memories,documentaries
are histories(locked in time).Once we "lived off the sheeps back"-
agricultural,sheep,cattle-wealth from and on and despite the land.
Droughts and floods persist in patterns older than us
yet now we dig (a la Burke and Wills)beneath our feet
and sell uranium to savages.Great Green Ant Dreaming becomes a film
Only Benny Zable points out the cost of wealth.We are the world's quarry
Until we run out of earth to sell,we make plastic monies
Art represents but cannot defend.We war both on foreign lands
and upon our only borrowed one.Rich refuse Carbon Tax
Global Warnings flood and cyclone.Wealth is life
Until we listen,poetry joins Dreaming-ignored until
the land reclaims its wealth,and we are history.

1969-2011

 i point out holes where the Communist Bookshop was bombed
Hotels that are now porn shops/torn up tram tracks
Visible landscape scraped clear and clean
until only memory's dreams retain once weres
Walk along the Brisbane River /where floods rose to break banks
Catch a RiverCat until midnight/flash photographing highrise towers
Reminesce two story slow town brown buildings,rivers,police uniforms
Spark gridlock now where Town Hall hidden among office blocks
Lights and glitter among strangers.Seek out West End Cafes
Bent Books survives under different owners.Where is Bohemia?
Word was once and now just Cabaret.Ghost town skyline beneath
Above,the frantic building on clay foundations.All is ,not was.
They who have no knowledge of their past can forget
They who remember cannot move back.Time knows both
Only one is allowed in to 2011.The rest is history.Art.Nostalgia.
An 82 year old Hawke kissing a New South Wales pigeon.
Bye bye 1969.Hello 2011.

@20,coffee shops and dance clubs.walk and yoga and jazz trip
any younger is hearing without understanding
any older missed opportunities for creating/making doing
This is your town now.Make your mistakes before new young arrive
to dispute your presence in their streets.Make your mythos
while you have breath to steal.All days are numbered breath.
Every fantasy is real.

Floods changed us.Cautious now,we tax solutions
Seek to rebuild in a flood plain,with premeditation
Like San Andreas fault lines,we draw new maps
aware our occupancy temporary as time
and water.

Water defines us-our lack(drought
Our flood.Tears.River.Creek.
Life emerged from wetlands and such swamps
as fins could turn to gills.Dolphins/sharks/crocodiles
Ancient as change/snap us to attention
Rain(again)

your art life

when ages falter,art shivers
cold overcoat snow Napoleon's retreat
Temporary teardrops tap Nature unframed
walls make for hangings/replication /postcards
stain Pollock/aboriginal dot matrix/hunting game
Brownie box to black and white to color digital
childhood becomes antique Museums of Memories
Copperplate/boilerplate/mechanical age to virtual stage
Now metaphor resurrects new formats/"cloud"
Post info age where islands of State Secrets are wikileaked
Hackers work for governments and porn merchants
Nigerians in Amsterdam.SPAMillionaires.What lost finds images-
race,memory,demonstrations for emergent populism.Art allies
work stone to water,forest to woodcuts,earth to sculptures
We resemble replicants /robo creations.Cliches crowd us
in to Galleries of Retro/where sepia Civil Wars and war footage
become Libya ,Tunisia,Yemen,Syria and Egypt.
No Pharaoh gold mask,nor topless Pyramid
Continuous initiations /mass media input
GOOGLE digitalizes pasts /thereby owning futures
All that was fails to make new blueprints.Art needs  your support
by being creative/playing like Children in Palestine.
Unless and until your Inner Child can say the unsayable
all adults will be censored miracles/elder silences
Release all Dragons,Dodos,Dinosaurs!
All daubings make more dimensions.Open all doors of perceptions!
The way out awaiting yours.Imagine this...
YOUR LIFE AS ART/YOUR ART AS LIFE...
when ages falter,art shivers
cold overcoat snow Napoleon's retreat
Temporary teardrops tap Nature unframed
walls make for hangings/replication /postcards
stain Pollock/aboriginal dot matrix/hunting game
Brownie box to black and white to color digital
childhood becomes antique Museums of Memories
Copperplate/boilerplate/mechanical age to virtual stage
Now metaphor resurrects new formats/"cloud"
Post info age where islands of State Secrets are wikileaked
Hackers work for governments and porn merchants
Nigerians in Amsterdam.SPAMillionaires.What lost finds images-
race,memory,demonstrations for emergent populism.Art allies
work stone to water,forest to woodcuts,earth to sculptures
We resemble replicants /robo creations.Cliches crowd us
in to Galleries of Retro/where sepia Civil Wars and war footage
become Libya ,Tunisia,Yemen,Syria and Egypt.
No Pharaoh gold mask,nor topless Pyramid
Continuous initiations /mass media input
GOOGLE digitalizes pasts /thereby owning futures
All that was fails to make new blueprints.Art needs  your support
by being creative/playing like Children in Palestine.
Unless and until your Inner Child can say the unsayable
all adults will be censored miracles/elder silences
Release all Dragons,Dodos,Dinosaurs!
All daubings make more dimensions.Open all doors of perceptions!
The way out awaiting yours.Imagine this...
YOUR LIFE AS ART/YOUR ART AS LIFE...

Light and Grief

Lights here cost $3000.They are made of art-so we watch SBS

MARIA FULL OF GRACE
Columbian drug mule.Pregnant.Watches her friend die
Was it white powder condom broke within her?
or the idea of freedom in full flight?

MADAME SATO
True story of Rio De Janiero bisexual mulatto
whose costumes won Carnival
Whose jail terms punctuated his life

FOR SHEILA(who made a difference)
Everyone who knew you
was affected by you/beaming bright
through personal tragedies/your daughter dying
divorce/now death
stealing away a life force that none can replace
This is an eulogy.Paen of praise for your rightness
Thank you for every moment shared with we poets

BANK OF GRIEF
has liquidity(of teardrops
Withdraw as events arise
Deposit new tears as life allows
Unexpected as burglars
cat grief is shock and loss
Death,pain,operations,friends(gone
and then the unexpected..
Always naked in this world-
storms,tsunami,floods,hurricanes?
Tears rise up like tidal waves
Bank upon this happening again
Surf emotional rises and fall
tears dissolve words,
all we can do is...

Thursday, March 24, 2011

morning meditations

cobwebbed and dilatory,snail worm sleepy
emerging slowly from the web of star night
birdcall morning,cracked egg dawning
time advancing like troops of light

whether ready or no,a new day show
means that we must change our clothes
whatever happens next will be unexpected
stumbling labyrinths ,oranges,rainbows

break your fast,coffee blast
add your energies to show
one more birth,another death
onwards in to the unknown!

MORPHING
message stick becomes mobile
woomera becomes rocket range
piccanninnie becomes minor
re/turning to the australian.

THE HISTORY OF PIES
Mutton scraps,kangaroo,horse ,donkey
Feral wildlife imports within our system
to resist extermination

SEA FOOD WORLD
Seagulls sport above sharks
Dolphins dive in to soup blue waters
Penguins rehearse HAPPY FEET in living 3D
We get wet on a Viking Valykrie ride
Tourist Zoo.

Q1
77 stories in 43 seconds
what a view!

SURFERS PARADISE
Rips,curls,funnels,tunnels
Pacific as Oceans,we surf crowds
shopping centers.

Most of what says MADE IN AUSTRALIA
is actually MADE IN CHINA-
Goldfields to sweatshops
Only accents change.

FISSION CHIPS
Fish stocks depleted
I eat history

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

SHORT SHORTS

ON THE POINTED TIPS OF PALMS
thin bird became a sculpture
until wings

COLORS AMONG GREEN
Flowers?Birds!

Water waits for us to finish
(She has appointments,too)

MORETON BAY FIG TREE
fills one whole city block
Unreal estate/willed in perpetuity!

ON THE FREE INNER CITY BUS
us.

how to edit

Select the most juicy parts-add these to your stone soup
Stir facts and fiction freely into a slurry of truths
Seek ingredients both wise and deep
Experience selectively.
Stone ground walls into garden mulch
Make every thing in to food for thought
For every lost,there is a path.Lose it!
Swing from the trees like our origins
Make sure they are real trees(not imaginary)
Once trees go,there goes our canopy
Elders they are.Let them be.(they are good company
Imagine what it will be/when all your dreams seek each other out
Midnight to dawn a Provisional Republic.
What is left and discarded means more than most
Jewel is a dewdrop at dawning.
Now do not stop to itemise all you are
fits in the pin in the head of an angel
If you hear sound,listen longer
There is a silence follows after

it will happen(you will grow old..

and as you enter your Dream Carriage
you need decide How To Ride-
will you Work @it?-persisting in pushing
Tantalus rocks uphill?or roll with the waves
into Oceans of Silence?Meditate on Change
Watch as the Young Grow So Distant
(you were young once-but that was different)
Elders above you with Wisdom and Violence
now you must choose between Speaking and Silence
Friends around you pop out of their skin
@alarming  rates-they leave with no explanation
Selection is Natural at all ends and beginnings
editing life experiences your Reader's Digest.
Is your Universe Anonymous?Is this Personal /Experience?
Are you Linked via Love or Art or Life itself?
Will Time tune frequencies into harmonies of heavens
or beat and batter your Tsunami defences?
Are you separate/apart?or United/Whole?
Ready to Release or Control?
Each Intersection of Thoughts and Emotions
challenges Rebellion /Reaction of Devotion
You are always @a Crossroads every Midnight
and you must ask-is it my task
to understand or overcompensate ?
Will the passge of time reveal all?-
or are words wasted upon the young who ignore them
and the old who ,simply,in time,
fall?

so-
will you be
bird in tree?
tree root deep?
or wings in flight-
as free as you dare be
beyond your span of wings?

Mavis

We met via accident-i was staying with her neighbour
when they first moved in next door
Courteously,they asked me if it was OK to park
"Of course!" said i(so generous with other people's space
and so they moved from canal life to a cottage in Wyke
Soon,by annual moon,i would return to blessed Bradford
either staying with Lynette or sometimes overnight in Wyke
as Mavis played piano ,and Geoff brought out his  accordian
She shared her book of poems-the ones she loved by others
with pictures carefully placed next to them
It was an act of love of culture like no other-
bright and cheerful as we ate English food prepared by hand
and plum pudding and custard later,
would repair to catch up with our year.
I stored excess poetry books in their church loft,and forgot they were there
A treasure trove of words was able to be re-shared
when Geoff climbed up a narrow ladder to retrieve what was there
Lynette moved north(near the Scottish border)
I visited and stayed within her caravan in rainy nights
Geoff and Mavis were my lights in Wyke
They still are-by love bound,by smiles known
by true English nature kind and open to a world
that closes down before it opens.This is a memory shared-
more virtue lives there than can be documented
Kindness,generosity,hospitality-all three combine-
they beam -these lights of Wyke -over all time-tonight.

catdog

recently,i have been meeting dog owners
and their dogs(my sister has a huge woolly mammoth
whose curly coat reminds one of  a pile of abandoned fur
She is of such a size the world shrinks around her
adept,she pounces and rolls around
 in grass stained by previous dog adventures
Now-please note that i am a cat
and that all this dog talk bores
The point of mentioning dogs means more
than their taking up literal space.The metaphor is war
It takes our earth and burns its worth into scrap metal
The dogs of war unleash within us
Our "no-fly zone" around and within until cool cats (civilians)
lose their jazz space and cannot sing
Moon above,earth beneath
Cats need more than catfish
to play with.
(KITTEN,PLAYING WITH THE MOON!)

portable paradises

2 rainbow lorikeets flash chirping overhead
exchanging Tweets

Dripping saved from the fat and grease
aha!Toast with grit!

Free Bus circling Inner City
Filled with Asia

Moreton Bay Fig(huge as a house)
defies skyscrapers

Being in the Pacific Ocean
becoming waves

stories shared among those who care
enough to stop along the way

Our old home(sold!
Now we must move on

Gecko upside down on the lighted ceiling
Visible,inedible

Needle deposit tin in public toilet
Locked.

Floods and storms had stolen plastic walls
so we shift to adapt

High rise inner city
evicts poor universally

Dolls house she sells on ebay
You could stand up in

4 ducks honk
at we pedestrians beneath

Semi-tropical flowers burst
with colored laughter

where you are right now-
see?Flowers!

i am listening to my only mother

she goes back to 1949
post war poverty Army Camp/Housing Commission
every memory in photograph is black and white
Shank's pony/bicycle/horses in the streets/cars infrequent
public transport meant trams and buses
stories she tells me of work and army
hand to mouth /six children(all healthy)-she
smiles when she remembers my time of birth-
10 to 7pm -to fit in visiting hours
(they gave her castor oil to induce my birth
i was slow in arriving-but now her stories are smiles-
"beautiful child".Five later,treadmill thin
working all her life to make our life worth living
Now in pain and eighty cycles fragile
steel will and cigarettes/and more stories to guide me
into a future with no guarantees.She will see specialists(advisedly)-
rejects those who treat her generically.We
share lives now more than when i was her first born child
and see how black and white colors all our memories...

your inner circus is prancing

elephant clouds and ringmaster glitter
sparkling hoop dancers welcome your morning
open the cages!let the wild tigers out!
clowns with no safety net laugh at Death
scoff @Pain,make fun of Duty and Work
they laugh for a living,live within wildwinds
whirl around when dervish devotions demand audience!
Sawdust droppings from horses of high leaping
Acrobats of Emotion swing from High Platforms
Huge Mirrors reflect from your Big Top
You can see all the action!LIFE NEVER STOPS!
and whether we sit,or stand in the stalls
whether we move to applaud with our hands
whether we dare to take our stand
This circus is here tonight.This circus is our life
And we demand  that fun be allowed,and indolence
slowness,levity and wit be unleashed upon a dulled populace
so the only war will be between comedians
who will laugh with the lives we present
This is our only Holy Moment.Here we OOH! and AHA!
Spectacle may often seem miniature
We are Blessed to BE WHO WE REALLY ARE

burning outside WINDOWS

attention to world movies screened-
war movies in Libya
civil rights movies in Bahrain /Yemen
disaster epics in Japan
we do not need subtitles-nor special effects
These are bigger than 2012 or ARMAGEDDON (or THE DAY AFTER-
reality TV pumped like Tsunami into our information superhighway
Meanwhile ,our little lives attend to floods and furies-
winds that detree ,waves that wash our rivers away
Turn away from the TV.This is happening inside
Those conflicts allegedly religious are power struggles
for internal territory and mind empires
Every thought is a prayer/petition to powers
asking to be set free from tyrannies less obvious
than tyrants and dictators ,potentates and popes
Habit kills us via repetition/rote dullness dumbs us down
to enacting scripts less worthy of the acting.Fresh experience must wait
until the Rolling Stones stop touring,or Paul McCartney finds another wife
Celebrities distract us from Narcissus.We are made less when we adore their images
Cast your craven graven poster pinups from your walls of eyes cameras
You are being monitored and surveyed to extinction
The little world within calls for your immediate attention
Inside,calm,Lotus,lake-reminders of who you really are
when you let go /of all you ever thought you know.

recycling weddings

thom woodruff
 to marjorie

show details 06:43 (16 hours ago)

your great grand parents may remember the Prince of Wales
or(if younger)the Coronation of young Queen Elizabeth 2
her Royal Marriage to the (Greek) Duke of Edinburgh
perhaps that jovial Queen Mother who lived so long
she saw her children both marry and divorce
The whole world remembers Lady Di-
popular and populist,for orphans and clearing land mines
until that Paris smash that brought Harrods on a collision course with Royalty
and now her children are of an age
they can embrace the massed media
in a replay of Women's Weekly and Women's Day
Headlines of wedding dresses seem like deja vu
They will be entombed in the same public view
wherein and whereby we the paying public
get PAY PER VIEW.We will stare at her hair
and wonder at his resemblance to his father.
Gossdip columns will bulge with diet information
and every personal detail will be shared(at length (but not depth
as if anyone really cares.Leave them be
They are as antiquated as Royalty
A private function in a  pub-honeymoon in Australia
would be a worthy start to a post -colonial FACEBOOK virtual world
They do not even have to marry!Di had lovers ,so did Charles
Let them be free to be contemporary!
Who needs a public spectacle historic as World War 2?
i know-you do!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

BOY MAN

at his age,one would think..(he does not
know how to be a parent..he has the attention span
of a small child/distracted by bright lights and movements
At ease with children(he is one!)-he watches children's movies/television
where special effects and adolescence coalesce with happy endings
to make comic book Marvels superhero status
All those comedians live off his foibles/they represent his demographic
Digital youth drone on ,dropping bombs in Afghanistan
He speaks American (no other languages-apart from fast food /movies/games/toys
distractions to take his mind away into shopping Malls
to buy is to live/to follow fashion fickle as fate
He will always be 16/Peter Pan pizza/pre-adolescent
Adonis /David/baby Jesus/a god before age crucifies
He will never have lines.He dies young,having been prerserved
like early Elvis,or every 60s idol who left us with retro -riffs
Fresh and clean as we wish we could be-he is boy,not yet a man
He combines innocence with incapacity.

MASK&MEMORIES
Who you are ,who you were,who you will become
All three meet in a conjunction random
Put your mask on.Pick a part.
Your script is written in your mask.

BEST BUY EXPRESS PURCHASE MACHINE
I stare @iphones,ipads,digital every device
Others push a button/swipe a credit card
Many stare @the glass sparkle allure
Some buy a dream.Most just move along.

i repeat myself.i repeat myself.i repeat myself.Let me say once again....

petals(public recluse)

float me on the waters(like a petal
everything is changes/everyone the same
we march towards april like wildflowers
rain drops liquid on green lawn
all my friends are turning recluse
private gardens for the blind
to scent their air with prayer and ritual
welcoming space and time with energies
little will aligns with Great Events
our tiny time ticks accidents
Zip! another one blessed with disappearance
between dimensions/where memories gossip
Streets as public theater/where all wreckage
sits upon their water like a weed
Heated as the conversation weather
changes according to our needs
Now all our private souls grow deeper
Meditating upon both change and loss
We exchange desire for acceptance
The price of living is our only cost
join me @the venues/where we all can be
as contradictory as a public recluse
Recuse ourselves from power/yet demand
each golden line as evidence and influence
Ask if this affects/denial or disaster
Living is the artform we are after
We are petals upon invisible flowers
And it is time for Spring showers

illusion control

your eyes watching Japan and Libya,Egypt ,Yemen,Bahrain, Tunisia
i remember kissing my Godmother Mrs Long/watching her spit out meat
she could no longer digest(we as knee high could not understand decaying elders-
now digital children text while we talk,watch us with wariness
while we all watch huge screens -war,waves,devestation
decay is us in time limited frames/apportioned space
within a family world and personal/both blood.
Wanting no wars between,we are diplomatic
speak gently,carry no grievance,are as generous as we can be
while wind and waves of radiation import our human family.
You know this,yet watch as if we have control
As if a bomb can change behaviour/as if fear can be assuaged
Witnesses see us as participants /a birthday moved up in caution
Gathering tribes while it is possible(one day,no planes-a "no-fly"world)
Environment is us.We break off like glaciers,burn up like Mexican forests.
Wild within extinct.No laughing airports.Every time we meet might be our..

This is why we preciously await you/in trust your bright being
illumines us with positive examples /to break all borders between us
usher in peace,prosperity,poetry for every consenting sentient
Happy Birthday,mother (and our Mothership Planet).We are one.

FLAMES OF CHILDHOOD

are embers now-warm and glowing.They can be stirred to fiery heat via family
for whom blood is no compunction.Wounds long sutured are re-opened and examined
(we all scarred and sliced by fist and slap and insult)-rise
and heal each other via listening.We all carry tales burned into consciousness
Perhaps between fog and flame a new morning.Perhaps deja vu groundhog day
Dawning is no guarantee of light.It visits ,random as delight.
The chuckle of children,secure in digital playgrounds
denies our drinking daze and alcoholism an Al-Anon for others
All that we knew has gone-we are going.As we leave,we turn lights ON
for each other-that we might better see the results of survivalist exercises
It is not all bandages and tears-death dilutes domestic tyrants
Age may not bring wisdom-just incapacity to harm
We wish most not to repeat.repeat what had been done to us
Perhaps this assimilated experience allows us a certain grace
More this limited time-to heal an imperative
Accelerate the processes Zen-let all the dragons out!
Release every dark secluded pain so it might walk about  freely
in the light of a new(or maybe secondhand)day

SHE REMEMBERS BRIGHTLY
what sparks of light defied the heat -
to shine where least expected.Reminds us both of braver days
when fear had no home ,and love was thin as breakfast
Now she recounts on photocopied sheets
to youth who disconnect and text
what happened once can happen again
but it will always be different!
(for ANN RICHARDS and SEMPER FLOREAT)

LEAVING,ENTERING,DEPARTING,ARRIVING

Trains,planes,automobiles,bodies,spirits,minds-
all in motion,process,changes.Angels wing in on the head of a pin
while a tree falls in slow motion forest.She has cancer (not long with us
Another's husband has terminal-wife worries about their two daughters
Process inexorable as breath.Are we end -defined or beginnings?
Ghosts surround us.As we grey they proliferate.Memories mulch
Weed and forget,lest clouds surround and fogmist our life flight
Kissed my grandfather in his coffin.My uncle grieving for loss.
My aunt of 90 brave as working class origins.Persists.Beams.
Whatever your daily journal-always more than headlines,deadlines
Lifelines define us.Your palmed dove(magical illusion)
What is not seen controls our free will.Survivors speak of randomness
yet it is this day's as yet unwritten script they will forget
Is everything repetition?(is every thing repetition?)
Your new now is waiting for your YES! to commence
FRESH! as flowers in another's garden.Perfumed or no,
you are the show until you forget why you are here.
Even Zen,you must leave.All is permanently temporary
The only way out is to leave.

EQUINOX MEDITATIONS

Remembrance selective-editing out pain /reactions
heatseeking episodes of kindness and compassion
within a world of wars-temporary wonders!Wildelife amongst us
transformations immanent.One giant moon,one tiny earth
one of each of us unique as starlight.Within,a ballroom of dancing Wu Li masters
Outside,evidence of giants -examples of humankind(both human and kind)
Each day,open doors to let our footsteps out
They know what we do not-where we are going
may seem a choice within fatalism/sing your way through this labyrinth
There is only ever always possibilities translated into action
Wonder persists-continuing and continuous
Reason is what we say after the rainbow lands
Theory what we compose before the real music starts
Science a method of weighing evidence
unless and until we can connect both with and without these
making leaps into the dark of fact with only openness and trust
projecting pliable fantasies as myth to make the journies lighter
We will tell stories to each other as we glow
and learn from our footsteps exactly where to go...

NEXT!

AUNTIE GOLDIE'S 90th

We have flown in for family
calls ,blood bound and born
in to an Irish spark of Catholic poverty
where education meant mobility,and we
now live round the world.Migrate individually/collectively
from dancers in New York to lawyers in Canberra
In a circle we see each other-Goldie sits and smiles
Black and white photographs revisit memories of relatives
few of us remember past our childhoods
Here the living recount the dead-animate with tales
that spark reminescences and a curious nostalgia
for a world long turned digital where once was backyard gossip
and cup of tea conversations.Here we refresh from the family spring-
pass on smiles and stories-speech as highly valued as literacy
is still learned behaviour.When asked to speak,she shares her gratitudes
When volunteers reply,it attunes in mood and content.(she is content)
We file from her retirement home to our borrowed ones
counting time together as gold,her as platinum
her continuance priceless..her eyes diamonds...

Saturday, March 19, 2011

swimming @koorim

annual pilgrimage to Maayken-
artist/poet/friend/ally-Dutch born(Amsterdam
but now among the birds of Bribie Island
she entertains us with conversation
As an art form,it replaces email/texting/tweets and blogs
Dutch cake ,black coffee and we travel back to the Land of USEDTO
She cares for her beloved Roland as her poetry now-
where once she made paper /books from bird feathers
art from strung kinetic installations
We chew upon these memories
adjourn to the ocean/where i commit
my only body to the deep.Slip slop slap skin cancers
mean even under clouds,a hat is needed
Others wear them in the waves/dark glasses /shirts
to cover up the hole in ozone layer.
We are in an age of massive changes
I commit to waves and float amongst them
remembering the light that comes from exemplary ones
such as our only artist Maayken


(sometimes she says her hands call for art to be created
so she crochets or makes miniatures/may those hands and huge heart make more!

why "Tsunami"is a Japanese word

space is defined via time-Woodstock 1969
Hiroshima,Nagasaki 1945..Konitchiwa!
Godzilla black and white monsters to Manga
Graphic movies dolphin slaughter,minamata
This radiation scares even the Emperor
Sendai wiped off the map.10,000 lost-
harken back to siege of Nanking/Japan surrendering
Japanese printed Occupation Currency(Australia=
mini-subs in Sydney Harbour,Zeros bombing Darwin
Grandfathers remember Bataan death march,Bridge on the River Kwai
Prisoner of war camps.Beheadings and tortures.
Tortured by stories in time/flown in after Hiroshima
Fantasy world soaks up their psychic ether
Science fiction becomes fact.Age of samurai fades like Kurosawa.
Memories of a Geisha/The Mikado.Japanese for foreigners is..
Nikon.Samsung.Gold leaf eating Corporations
Sanyo.Sushi.Pearl Harbour-did we know?Haiku
Another language,another culture.Surrender
100% of industrial materials imported.Fear
Defining sea borders with China/Russia
Earthquake emotional architecture.Mahakari.
Household altars to ancestors.Lotus/lights floating poems
Stone Buddhist monasteries/gardens.Raw as fish and radiation poisoning
The Japanese  for "tsunami"is devastation.

dropping by(a fountain of pens

art on every wall-wooden flags-Rupert Bunny greens
antique frames-guitar on stand(classically stringed
air and light and green.Wine and drinks dispensed
Inks on table-art bottled-flavored by hand like nibs
SAILOR to MONT BLANC-a model million dollar diamond
another gold,platinum,titanium-forget function!
Here art is design and ink is blood blue
What copies best is darkness-so he strains the hues
to better crystallize a black with grey,a blue with brown
Soon calligraphy ,Japanese ,copperplate(English)
allured by catalogues,he buys Paradise
one pen @a time.Soon he is inked in,tattooing pages
There will be form,shape and outline
Walls have frames ,as pages white shocked faces
allow his visitations.He holds his nib pen like a lover,
caressing the strokes and curls and waves around
upon each page he finds a mark like stone Ehyptian
He is marking his Bible Sumerian.Soon his pen
will be mightier than his word.Instrument older than owner
Tools survive ages more than fire/civiliaztion of artifacts
Create what ye will as temporary visitor.More will call
and who will answer?All have moved on past copperplate
and cursive,beyond pen and ink and page
Text based emails type finger length contracts
Hand made cultures Museums.We are all in them
WRITE ON!(us)

the new now is YES!

overnight,stocks rise and fall like heartbeats
overnight,governments fall like dominoes
overnight,post offices haemorrhage monies
overnight,you can get pizza delivered
all of this simultaneous/everything happening @once
parallel lions are meeting outside the bars
to drink in consequences/flawed solutions
re-present themselves as our only saviors
predictive prescience fails almanacs
seasons flipflop like drought floods
emergence may mean mutants ,dragons,vampires
entertainment as blood sports,celebrity children
suunglassy and staring,fake reality shows
news as infomercials,staged events as democracy
still you know the fool from the golden
as tinpot dictators strut their armbands
requiring our collusion and silence
we bed to differ/discuss/debate
demur,defer,decide for ourselves
how each daily day or coffee morning
shall siesta our Pieta reverent rituals
Butterfly breakfasts cereal sweetly
serenade our silences into songs
Doors and minds and windows open
Streets fill with flowers,legal as weeds
and we can say "we"again-sans iphone,ipad,itouch,i
Community gathers each to each
and eye shall meet you in these kissing streets

book wars

you no longer need to burn
you can simply change the format
and no one will ever know what leather bound volume means
they will be fake books for TV sets and lawyers shelves
and your grandchildren may go to a book museum
to see "paperbacks"and "hardcovers"
much as we peruse antique stores for tomes long gone
and poetry unread.Chain stores grew when marketing
replaced reading-pot boilers,airport novellas,cooking and celebrities..
Now that content is free,ibooks and e-
can GOOGLE the world's repositories and raid all written for their text
Relax.Someone will read this.Someone will act.
Despite all the NOOKS and KINDLES in the marketplace
these lines of text base will find a format to fit your eyes
and you will hear this recited live!While WESTGATE BORDERS closes
and fave independent stores collapse in a failed economy-
we can still READ ALL ABOUT IT!-available at an open mike
asking only for your attention,please....

AVOIDING OBJECTIFICATION(Bless EVERYthing!

Powerful days blow boats out of the water
Images of change drastic and dramatic
All safe and secure no longer/dragons steam and hiss radioactive
Genie is out of the bottle/will not glow back within
(These are the times we are blessed to be borne in to -
and if perfect is not here,we will have to do(again!))
Some read one Book,and pray for miracles
More implore their gods to rule,and smote their enemies
Collective wants to crush all signs of individual
Few care their rigid limits make others nervous
Fatwa against writers/film makers assassinated
Poets imprisoned,social media censored
Governments shut down the entire Internet
Shakespeare would have been pilloried,tarred and feathered
Myth @the core,manifest as "destiny"
Translate as occupation,"gunboat diplomacy"
Illusion salvation via Roman military
forgets all roads lead to Rome was not built in a day
Compound earthquakes,insurrections,tidal waves
Consciousness arises -are we in the way?
Bless and release peace within as well as out
Prosperity comes when harmonies heal
and dreams only mean better actions are allowed
We are in the midst of primitive and spectacular science
Reptilian brain gives way to antidotes to violence
Art,song and sound restore our links to silence
what happens next unknown-as we evolve- in singing spirals!

architecture of thoughtclouds

Statists rejoice!all movement ceases!gravity demands
we postpone levitation until UFOs appear!
Meanwhile,smiling meditators sell thought balloons
as if they were cartoons,bouncing prices Enlightenment of wallets
Depositing dreams in a vault means investment in clouds!
Why is the Australian dollar worth more than America's?
A:they sell the very earth you walk upon,and possess more of it
Why have children been shunted into virtual universes?
A:Control of information processing is control of information
Why are modern novels/poems/artpieces non-linear ?
A:They seek to represent the zeitgeist/end up Weimar Republics
Why is poetry archaeology?
A:Buried deep ,have to dig it
When constructing parabolas of plotlines
what replaces grid pattern thought traffic ,squares of characters?
A:Spiral themes ,Heisenberg scripts,Mandlebrot story arcs
How do you compare disasters?
A:Only via personal experience.All external is data.
Will bloggers replace journalists?
A:Economy of scale.They shoot journalists,ignore bloggers
How do military steal budgets? A:Fear.
When will civilian culture rule?A:Freedom cannot
Where find example?A:Look in your mirror
Who are our elders?A:Whosoever finishes these lines

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Mother

Words have meaning/especially when
your very life depends upon the worth of them.
You(our mother)bore six healthy children
by the work of your hands in to this working world
You cleaned and cooked and catered
we grew and left and returned later
to thank you for your worthy wisdom
Thanks to you we are still here and hearing
how your works still keep other's lives alive
You knit and bake and make friends easily
and keep them with a ferocity of loyalty
that protects them from the wild winds of change
Now you approach your 80th cycle-
we return to honor and respect you(our origin)
and as your time turns towards you
you turn this time into one of our celebration
for all you are and give ,worthy of the sharing
your children thank you,your friends and families
affiliates and acquaintances,recognise and acknowledge
your wondrous uniqueness!

before and after

before Google satellites,marks on maps-
"HERE BE DRAGONS!"/where explorers fell
off the very edge of their world-maelstorms,
Sargasso Seas,doldrums,typhoons,krakens
and storms that stripped all ships to deep
(there is no beginning to tragedy,and no end)
We cast comparisons disasters/personal/political
Runes,Revelations,W B Yeats-still it will not admit
each moment as unique.Litany of suffering Titanic
The one difference is witness.In olde worlds,
we fictioned white whales and spumed hurricanes
now we see it replayed like September 11 on INSTANT TV
Over and over the waves come in,planes tossed like toys
ships on land,cars on rooftops.We have seen pix of this-
yet moving images quick as 2012 or ARMAGEDDON
make fact of our fictional lives.Script repeats-
Chenobyl,Three Mile Island,now this..
will nuclear power be restricted when no power exists ?
Will we rebuild and repeat in death zones?
Are we capable of alignment with a Nature
that flicks us off like fleas at will
allows our occupancy as provisional?
Before now,probably.After this,questions..
When there is no power greater than earth
what will we do with all our household altars?
what will we do with our gods?

before and after

before Google satellites,marks on maps-
"HERE BE DRAGONS!"/where explorers fell
off the very edge of their world-maelstorms,
Sargasso Seas,doldrums,typhoons,krakens
and storms that stripped all ships to deep
(there is no beginning to tragedy,and no end)
We cast comparisons disasters/personal/political
Runes,Revelations,W B Yeats-still it will not admit
each moment as unique.Litany of suffering Titanic
The one difference is witness.In olde worlds,
we fictioned white whales and spumed hurricanes
now we see it replayed like September 11 on INSTANT TV
Over and over the waves come in,planes tossed like toys
ships on land,cars on rooftops.We have seen pix of this-
yet moving images quick as 2012 or ARMAGEDDON
make fact of our fictional lives.Script repeats-
Chenobyl,Three Mile Island,now this..
will nuclear power be restricted when no power exists ?
Will we rebuild and repeat in death zones?
Are we capable of alignment with a Nature
that flicks us off like fleas at will
allows our occupancy as provisional?
Before now,probably.After this,questions..
When there is no power greater than earth
what will we do with all our household altars?
what will we do with our gods?

before and after

before Google satellites,marks on maps-
"HERE BE DRAGONS!"/where explorers fell
off the very edge of their world-maelstorms,
Sargasso Seas,doldrums,typhoons,krakens
and storms that stripped all ships to deep
(there is no beginning to tragedy,and no end)
We cast comparisons disasters/personal/political
Runes,Revelations,W B Yeats-still it will not admit
each moment as unique.Litany of suffering Titanic
The one difference is witness.In olde worlds,
we fictioned white whales and spumed hurricanes
now we see it replayed like September 11 on INSTANT TV
Over and over the waves come in,planes tossed like toys
ships on land,cars on rooftops.We have seen pix of this-
yet moving images quick as 2012 or ARMAGEDDON
make fact of our fictional lives.Script repeats-
Chenobyl,Three Mile Island,now this..
will nuclear power be restricted when no power exists ?
Will we rebuild and repeat in death zones?
Are we capable of alignment with a Nature
that flicks us off like fleas at will
allows our occupancy as provisional?
Before now,probably.After this,questions..
When there is no power greater than earth
what will we do with all our household altars?
what will we do with our gods?

you can go home again

spend many mother moments while both are here
time is a gift.remembrance too late
while we are here,we celebrate
of course we are not the same
we grow,we leave,we change
when you return ,you will find
only what remains.Living hearts
who carry your DNA(or is that role reversal?
Source as origin ,pilgrimage,destination
Gather these threads of thin silk life together then
parachute back into family skin
land where welcome affirms zen
none of us ever the same again...

BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW
we sit,listen,as stories go past
like a river of sorrows/tales of time
entwined fates,Wakeup in another skin
wrapped in histories,begin again...

CONTEMPLATING ENDINGS
ours,yours,what Light shared in common
time it takes to define and then release
all that is lost,remembered least

FROM ANOTHER TIME
we emerge in to this moment
inhabit sitting circles,glow sunlight
night moon comes,dreams enter
some of them familiar

IN A BORROWED STORY
like a car that starts intermittently
this borrowed home skin
needs returning

SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

Japan is on your TV eye-but where i am
you cannot drink the Brisbane River waters(brown
and rains still pound from Tully to Cairns
Floods were just a month before/it takes forgetting longer
to remember Mother Nature is in control,
and how little is in our hands.They who championed
nuclear power for Austin cower Three Mile Island/Chenobyl
Fault lines and Texas as a spent fuel nuclear waste dump
Our groundwater wells polluted by benzene,gas,oil-now this..
Water as precious as blood or oil.Libya price rise
Airlines fees increase surcharges.Surrealism enters
when the cost of moving more than refugees across borders
Where i am the waters need be filtered/heat and humidity
Christchurch cheap flights to escape that earthquake
Where does CONTROL enter in to this?-except
when choosing renewable energy resources
letting wind and wave and sunlight supply all we need
letting dinosaurs be released,and the Third World be free
of economic colonialism,invasive occupations in the name of "democracy"
while we watch whole cities sink beneath the same waves
that took Atlantis and Lemuria ,long ago and far away
when they ,too,would not listen
to what you have to say..

MADE IN JAPAN!

LIVE!(all over the world!-first an earthquake/next Tsunami
speeding waves crashing through coastal towns/wrecking all in waves-
cars,boats,towns-TV updates NUCLEAR FALLOUT!Google earth
defies censorship.(we do not wish to alarm/graphic images may meltdown
as cancercausing emissions are releaseed into both sea and air
We watch(quite helpless)as we who are of cyclone ,waves and storms
pledge instant help to a Japan as censored as it is nuclear.
Oil prices quiver,then drop.(Japan imports-LOTS!)
Libya distracted by waves off coasts of California /Australia
reminding us fragility and connections.All arguments fall
and fail to convince.Whether we are the cause of these outbursts
We are learning the results(vulnerability-thousands assumed lost
Billions the cost of these disasters.Wherever we are,is connected
By trade,war,Tv,Internet-and these natural outburst/outbreaks
shattering artificial walls ,drowning cars,bridges,towns-and we
who deny we are prime movers-must now move out of the way
Seventh Day Adventists knock @our doors with apocalyptic pamphlets
The real thing live on widescreen news.These lines are boats to rescue you
They bob about on the surface when real depth is required of you
You are not victims of Tsunami-it is you...

ONE NIGHT IN CUBA

sister#1 shares two ($85 each)tix with me and sister#2/we
bus to queensland performing arts centre/queue
enter auditorium in seats K21 and 22
Cheer leader in grey suit revs up crowd
One by one,in white suits,musicians enter stages
(Americans are not allowed to go to Cuba-
Buena Vista Social Club introduced us to these Spanish stylings
now we get to ingest harmonies both historic and happy
First half may as well be muzak.Percussion solos/solo singing-
After interval the pace starts to levitate dancers
out of seats along the sides and to the front Some sway on stage
until seven women are undulating with the band/and
even the colorful professional dancers must merge with this wave
Every one stands in their seats.Cameras flash ,videos capture
energies that stroke and stoke the night in to fever
Till the 15 band members file offstage to an outdoor stage
where more of the same will entice more to move
We catch the last bus ($4.50 each)feel like tourists in our town
Smile at the late night waves slapping around us
Cube is very close to us.I wish the urge to dance
could translate in to freedom for journalists and poets

@the airport

Sports Bar
Jennifer sings to the video screens
and the laptop generarion
She sings like honey for these worker bees
before they fly away from her
in other  days she plays as massage therapist
here her hair is unleashed/as her voice reaches
everyone in drinking view.She notices me listening
hands me her CD.i note the titles to learn
when she sings her  own truth.Two hours of song therapy
she leaves the stage/having blessed the air
where those who will fly/have just been given new wings

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

how could i forget?(the healing power of music...

she asked me what music my mother liked-
"Whatever it is,play it with and for her-
i asked permission to sing for my mother
so between strokes,each night-a lullabye
At first she was resistant to this "New Age"idea
but when assured of good intent,we spent rich times together
Massage,reiki,reading to and having stories shared-
elders are rich in life experience/happy to relate
once they know how precious time is..."
She shared that it was hardest with her mother
She had been with many in their passing
Yet the specific nature of parent love is such
that music is a healer-just to hear and be heard in harmonies
So i packed some Irish music,knowing St Patricks Day
would evoke and invoke Potato Famine memories
long before my mother's own life-yet,like the music,
bringing forth memories of Irishness and life and growth
(like the music)-long past popular taste."It is the music(she said)
which will best convey your love.Silence helps.Words may not be necessary
Just to listen together-to connect.Then to release
and let the music take over...

"since smell is the last sense to go..

"find those aromas pleasant to your mother
(Mine loved vanilla and lavender-
not chemical vanilla with alcohol base
more the root bean seed that when snapped makes amazing aromas
"Touch her-her generation was reluctant to be touched
(perhaps alcohol abuse and fist and slap ended that
just say"as your son,it is important for me to hold you,mother
Hold her hands/massage her shoulders
Engage every sense to sweeten her time with us
Ask all the family to do like wise-seek what is pleasant to her
Supply more of it.I knew a couple-she was a senyasin
when in her mother's womb learned all these chants
Now they travel the world singing people through their final passages
Rather than sedated and fearful-to be harmonically birthed into her next world
Ask to massage her feet.The privilege of assisting in release
allows every one a learning experience.
Whatever you believe,before senses shut down
some always maintain vestigial needs-
to be touched,soothed,cared for lovingly
allows each to be at ease in this world
and to move in to the next.Love your mother
in ways her birthing body can understand
She /we are all on time release.Love is the plan.."

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

beyond my scale

whether social media makes for information revolutions
whether cyber optimists will win over digidivides
whether peace can lower gas prices
beyond me
whether gathering together is better than seclusion
whether expression better than recession
whether positives are intrinsically wise
i am up for
dsytopias,dsyfunctions,dissent-hard to reach agreement
still we will walk down streets and sing for peace
makes perfect sense to me
illusion of aloneness a lie
we are a community-try
to recognize each other in the mirror
before it cracks and dies
meet you @an open mike
where we can say whatever we like
no one knows what will happen next
we have seen the silent altered natives
whether or no we are part of the show
it rolls on /with or without us
volunteers,artists,poets
you can afford us

Saturday, March 5, 2011

YOUR ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE(GORGON STARE)

You have troops occupying countries post WW2
They are still there (despite changed politics-
you are now strategic friends with corrupt Russia
and trade with Communist China.You war in Muslim countries
yet say it is not religious(just revenge).Vendettas recoil.
Terrorism becomes local as well as imported
You have troops stationed in your own cities
SECURITY forces ready to kick in doors
Your jails bulge with non-violent offenders
You pay for wars on drugs,poverty ,illegals
Surveillance industries profit by this-privitizing fear's responses
You pay for drones to bomb civilians.Police use these
You are under surveillance as we speak.This may be monitored.
No matter who is President,wars continue.In the name of war,
civil liberties are limited,lost.Bill of Rights abandoned
When Middle Eastern Muslim countries rise up against dictatorships
you are confused.Just as their Constitutions were allegedly for freedom
the reality is a gorgon stare.Now you must ask-what of our Empire?
Are we to occupy in the name of democracy/yet deny human rights?
Will we continue to torture?detain?use rendition?abuse?assassinate?
Must Palestine be declared unilaterally?Peace convoys unimpeded?
Are we to treat others as we treat our own citizens?
Can we dismantle NSA,CIA,FBI,TSA?
Who is in charge here?We,The People?

EPHEMERA/MARGINALIA/CULT OF THE BOOK

i began via improvising
prior to that was listening/reading
text less important than performance
(Shakespeare via eisteddfods)
Listening to poems /ballads
allows the voice of song to come through
dead text lie like bodies unread on dusty shelves
aliveness came when voice to ear and speech to mind
hearing nuance,irony,drama inflected and re-
turning to core origin of speech as primary
Never believed that books has a voice(only humans
so when Supreme Court ascribes legal personality to corporations
i dissent.When it comes to book burning,i would rather see
books burned than people.No witch hunts nor censorship of libraries.
I write in the books i gift for free,and ask that the conversation continue
in print as on each coffee shop mike,so we might hear each other tonight
I have no time for tape books/CD books/ebooks/Kindle nor Nook
I make time to read authors new and strange-
those whose emergence slaps a reader's face
by saying the unspeakable,now and often
I have given away many thousands of poetry leaflets
over 200 poetry books (self published).They are gone-
memory remains.Write over this poem with your own
It matters less than your experience of it/and when
you are asked"what did the poet mean by this?"
LAUGH AT THIS LAST LINE!

DREAM THROUGH THIS!

when the outside seems cloudy  with occasional patches of rain
and the sunshine is largely on the inside
steal time to snuggle beneath blankets-remember
you can always dream through this

when all the news is war and guns and violence
and even entertainment is the same
you can dream of how your life will be
when you create your own life game

script spontaneity,improvise momentarily
remember the rhythm beneath rhyme
time is a meter,measured in measures
you are fine ,to be refined

this is the bliss you are silkworm creating-
making your own world as you glow
soon wings will stretch wide,soon you will fly
dreams are the way to go

you are not seeking to impress
simply ,with love and dreams,to ex-

why goodness wins

a dentist office epiphany
to be clean as my teeth need to be-otherwise holey
eye repair to ACC where students can practice on live patients like me
they get experience-i get clean teeth-a bargain!
she is vietnamese -speaks three languages
fragile as a flower in a  new vase-she interviews me
but her bravery in paying to stay in this new country
betrays a glass thinness that might otherwise shatter
apart from her steel will to be her best /
so she devotes herself to dentistry/and we
smile over lands,cultures,languages and teeth
Thin next is being examined/she comprehensively checks
for nodes,cancers,moles-any signs of red alert health
Her supervisor smiles and trains by example-reducing stress
by pointing out every tiny evidence of compromised health
When exam finished,she asks her student"did you give of your best?Yes?
All we can give is 100%.In this moment,if you gave of your very best
then tomorrow I can ask of you no less."

Thursday, March 3, 2011

child hood formats

Those of you  who have never seen or heard a 78rpm turntable
with a handle to crank and a HMV speaker
cannot know the sound of scratches on black shellac
nor the changing of steel needles with each record
Digitally enhanced noise can be added by DJs
skilled in mixing old and new retro riffs-yet that tin scratch thin sound
of Caruso defies contemporary vinyl equivalents
Same with the sound of rain on a tin roof
that drowned out conversation and imposed Nature
upon her human equivalent.This is not nostalgia
This is format.Like Kodak Brownie box cameras
that made miniature black and white prints pre-color/pre-digital
Cars drove slower.People were conversations.We made time for stories.
We had grand mother time.Uncle Time.Now time is grandfathered
I do not idealize what has gone.Hard rock work times and poverties.
Yet basic life can never be the same again
and even if we wished,those times do not remain-
slow steam train time ,Sunday time,horse riding time
sitting and watching time,thinking time-pre-noise quiet time
time to just grow like a garden -to wait olde time out
Time itself has run out.We are shaken awake -elders in a child's mind
All our formats are historic,as our elders become ancestors
their formats stories shared with eyes remarkably like yours..

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

2011 homeless

you need to carry all you own
so you learn the art of stash-
perhaps a car that no longer works
can be your library /crash pad
perhaps couch surfing
trusting to the kindness of strangers
you are  food for police
and anyone in authority
who forget we are all just one degree of separation
job cuts make homeless/dispossession is eternal
when you move,it will be walking-
a bicycle gets flat tires /a car breaks down
your two legs ,a bag,perhaps a shopping trolley
You learn by watching/earn by panhandling
perhaps you can drum or play guitar
(it needs new strings/you improvise)
Even if you seek work,you need an address
You hang out with the dispossessed-
in Green Belt or bush cover-away from eyes
where you can light a fire and stay calm
You know one hundred and sixty two of you
died on these streets this very year
You look for opportunities to work-
even the bad jobs are gone
There will be more of you when you are gone
you write this down.Settle down.Stay calm.
Whatever happens next is still unknown

open mind,open eyes,open ears,open art

open to new possibilities of betterment
no need for expanding frontiers/colonialism of ideas
when we can sit in circles and discuss
with equality for all and each
she proposes we walk together for peace
he agrees,suggests we gather in assemblies
sing harmonically,listen each to each
for ideas of change require that we change as well
so we deeply listen to your wisdom ,as you tell
of examples where every person speaks
as in those Quaker gatherings,and a "talking stick"
so equality is given each to each
and peace is simply the respect with which we treat
each other ,air,earth,wood and water
Art simply the steps we take to explain ourselves to each other
Music merely the harmonies implicit in our individual lifestyles
Architecture abandons square cages and follows rivers
in bending ellipses,circles,spirals
We watch,wait,observe ,absorb,integrate-
what happens next depends upon your  bravery
For change can only happen by consent
and dreams are simply scripts
until action is taken/to birth them...

CREATIVE ACCOUNTING

in these days of budget cuts
when social services are slashed to teh bone
and the bones then crushed beneath fiscal bulldozers
a true story was shared last night-about a streetwise philosophy Professor
whose dedication to public service led him to becoming Assistant Chancellor
of a University under a highly critical government
who kept slashing the University funding every year
He decided to trust his own people-said-
"we have Faculties here for Engineering,Architecture-
why should we offshore building contacts and privitise contracts?
So students learned and earned at the same time
and all otherwise assigned funds were spent inhouse
and he also shared that there be spaces for free speech on campus
where poets might be employed to engage students in conversation
encourage them in free speech and critical thinking
and de facto add to their chosen community..
These measures were such a success the University increased enrollment
seven times on one seventh of the cut budget
and the standard of learning grew too
no mere rote-applied knowledge
building Blake's New Jerusalem on the land where you are standing right now


LEAD IN TO GOLD
She teaches @ACC,and shares "sometimes @Monday lectures
i see students nodding off.I ask them why this is...Mondays are hard on all of us"
They have children,and jobs,are sleep deprived,and share this with her
She asks them why they are here.They reply-"to get a better job"
She then suggests there is intrinsic value in learning(more than earning)-
and that they need value the opportunity to learn while it is possible
":Few people have the time to simply question,absorb knowledge
and grow in wisdom in a distracted world.YOU ARE NEEDED.
This is the time for clear and conscious dedication
Your time and attention needs be applied while possible
Time and energy are gold-leave the dull lead prose of rote
enter that spark of critically applied mind and heart and spirit
Your full attention is required-this world needs you
More than gold.

there is enough

homeless have street corners and jail cells
every bird has a cage of air
earth holds bones and ash of us
we build walls for wars
there is enough.there is no lack
distribution of the Golden finds bailouts
banks build money mountains(will not lend
even when the dollar rolls down again/we compare
exchange rates are energy indices/we
hoard air until we become balloons.RELAX!
water finds ways round mountains.air is every where
earth  will last our atomic divorces.fire warms as well as burns
do not even ask about the Fate of stone and wood!
everyone transmutes.change skins!memories!lives!dreams!
there is a wealth awaiting when we seek
and even silence searches for your voice to speak

LOVE NEEDS A HOME

so we must make one.Even in flood times-
sanctuary.Mitchie's Gallery 4th Saturdays
welcomes poets of all ages with a  buffet
of fresh and diverse food for thought.
Stacie Shea extends the circle
with every ear hearing/every tongue on fire
Joyce asks for all the prayers we can muster
(This is mine-a petition for her to cure blood clots on her lungs
so we might share that laughing joyous Joyce
whose energies created three safe spaces for poetry
a gypsy who will always be moved on
She smiles from the back of her room-surrounded by friends
whose poetry is loving support-and her talk is of cure
and operations for hours that might move these clogging clots
and clear her for more happy adventures.
Poetry is not just words-it is love manifest
making better where wounds need healing.Joyce knows this
her poetry is loving action-and she makes space
for more angels to wing in.May their ministrations
heal,help and cure her .If you pray,now is the time
If you do not,send your best vibrations her way
For those who love tread a Golden Way
All Shining has a home.All this you know
Your best intentions invoked .For Joyce of Mitchie's Gallery
TO BE WELL AGAIN

MATHILDE GARVIA's CENTENNIAL(February 26,2011)

She would have been 100.We who loved her
and were loved by her met at Gilka's home-
a circle of friendship with a pot luck table
Stand we together with toasts in hand,praising
her loving acceptance,wisdom,Light and example
She related sans authority-7 languages later
in her homeland Bolivia she staged a Poetry Festival
in Aymara(indigenous language despised by the Spanish)
became a film star in black and white colors
lived in Italy,learned English by herself,came to Austin
already famed as "declamadore"-to perform @AIPF,
poesia y calle,poesia y sur,Expressions and open mikes.
She would kiss you full on the lips at 96-had memorized
Neruda,Borges,Mistral-all those truly Southern poets
whose speech was flaming tongues/with her-smooth rivers..
We spoke of her because she is still with us-example
of poetry as universal,language as necessity,love as all-
then the piano roared to life-percussion ,guitars,songs
arose as though her spirit had touched us(as it has-
100 cycles round the sun-we have yet to reach the end of...