Urban Psalms

Narcissus

2010-08-22T09:46:00.008+10:00

Narcissus sat down
and started typing...
clicking through square
pools of
bottomless death
while outside,
shadows slid silently
across the
face of cumulus,
that is sagging
over shuttered windows
and neat brickwork

You thought you were lost

2009-11-07T15:48:00.007+11:00

you were
attempting to land on
the thin, top most branches
of uncertainty

They...

Even they...

wouldnt hold
your thin, hollow bones

You took the long way round

Terrorized by unseen futures
glimpsed faces of disconnection
and the distant twinkling
of orange lights singing
your unknown longing
back to you

The Couple

2009-08-30T10:26:00.006+10:00

The homeless man rummages through a bin,
Looks up, and walks away as the light turns green
The couple watch him from the car window
on their way to purchase a new lounge suite.

Later, while the couple are talking over lunch,
there is a

Pause

A man with a gold watch
at a nearby table is blowing smoke rings
The couple finish eating

It was a lovely day we spent together, wasnt it?

Yes. Yes it was.

In his therapists office, later that week
The man explores his feelings of jealousy
and being excluded as a child

Away At Sea

2009-03-16T08:16:00.008+11:00

Ive been away at sea, love
Sweeping the discarded tissues
of the grieving from the decks
watching them drown
and dissolve in the briny murk
Drifting for what seemed like
Endless, windless days
Ive been away at sea too long

Ive been away at sea, love
Watching the sorrowful rain
Sting and beat on the decks
and fall like unheeded tears
on an endless horizon rocking
Ive been mopping out the swill
While the timbres groaned in the hull

Ive been away at sea, love
Watching the Albatross,
the Silver gull,

Ive been thirsty,

havent eaten

Ive been away at sea too long, love
Looking for the eagle

The Crickets Eyes

2009-03-11T14:44:00.003+11:00

The sky above
was some unsure shade of blue
And the black shapes of pines
poked over the rooftops

A cricket Chirruped
as was fitting for such an evening
of hushed unease
Its unseen, black pearl eyes
staring from somewhere,
nowhere
With mute invertebrate
wisdom

I stood
And felt the crickets eyes
Running through my veins
I almost felt the valves opening
to his frightening wisdom
And the soft, ever deepening
blue night crushing everything
As if the earth were the very crucible
of love itself

Breathe

2009-02-03T15:03:00.001+11:00

I breathe
The stench of
Panic

Breaking open and
Spilling innards
In the middle of the road
Like some drunk
That cant remember
what she did last night
In her effort to forget

I breathe
Her halitosis curling
Its rancid desire
in my nostrils
Expelling from
Tar choked lungs
I wretch with compassion

I breathe
And cradle her head in my hands
Look at her ravaged mouth
Her chewed nipples
Slender fingers tapering
To drawn knives dipped in red enamel

I breathe
Dim lanterns
Far back in dark caverns
A salt edged hope
Spilling
A river
Down a sunken,
Dying desert skin
The final window

A Love for Evil Things

2009-01-30T12:52:00.008+11:00

You still haunt me
like that ape that swings
through the trees
behind me,
just out of sight
in the periphery
Like that bird of death
to consider
on the rusted cyclone wire
fence thats falling apart
by the station,
with the rotting clothes piling up.

When a dead body becomes
nothing more than a sack of
potatoes...
dispatched with the required
paperwork.

when evil is
Cursed in the other,
But not transformed in the self

Your terrible love...
The love for,
not of, evil things

Stands
Like a large, worn smooth
Rock in earths desert of hate
On this rock I perish,
Am smashed to bits
and broken beyond repair
That evil maybe transformed
in me,

to a love for,
not of, evil things.

Wing beats

2008-12-02T16:20:00.001+11:00

I saw you beat your wings over my head

a silhouette of my sadness hovering.

Following.

I cut the cord for protection

And fell

Snakes and Ladders

2008-11-08T09:56:00.005+11:00

I wont make anything for
you that wont enhance my
brand recognition

I have a profile

here.

Or you can contact me

here.

You can read
a sample of my self
published manifesto

here.

Its all just a game of
Snakes and ladders
we are playing
After all.

See more

here.

Infection Control

2008-11-01T11:52:00.008+11:00

Severed arteries
pump nightmare
into the grocery
aisles stocked with
sanitizing agents
that
ripen souls for
pandemic

As legislation
is enacted
to avoid the truest
cleansing

The theatres are
all disinfected

Fathers Day

2008-09-07T10:29:00.003+10:00

His dead mother
haunted him in the suffering eyes
of his wife
as she sat,
day after day,
year after year,
drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

Until finally,
he wondered why he was so
angry at her for sitting there all day

His sins
haunted him in the proud eyes
of his son
that roamed
through his sadness
like a mad bull
through the most delicate china

Until finally,
He wondered why he was so
impatient with the pig headed boy all the time

His living father
haunted him in the expectant eyes
of the children
that kicked a football
to themselves
in the street
every afternoon.

Until finally,
He met his own eyes in the bathroom
mirror one morning and wept.

Counsel on Small Things

2008-08-30T13:21:00.005+10:00

Rest your sorry bones
From their labours often
Watch and listen
To the birds that do
not toil or spin.
Work diligently at the few
small tasks you have been given
The known,
but mostly the hidden.
Give special attention to that
Which the world does not want to see
Or touch
And take one step only
On the lake
Before you take another.
Do this, and you will live.
Do this, and you will certainly suffer.
Do this, and you will become,
in some small way Christ's brother.

The Pouring

2008-07-17T10:47:00.003+10:00

Some part of you inside opens up
and pours words out like a waterfall.
Like a tap. And they splatter on the page
not like that. Not like tears. Though sometimes
you still cry. Not like the bitter patter of pain,
but like wine from a decanter. Or spring water
from some ancient rock. From a jug with a lip.
So that the words pour in a liquid cord of beauty.
and begin to take some shape or form that makes
a little bit of sense.

But they collapse at the slightest touch.
Being so fluid and poured from the jug of your heart
they are displaced by any form or weight that is brought to bear
or interrupts their pouring. And you wonder, where do they go?
What dry lake bed holds the liquid cord of beauty? Into
whose cup does the water descend? This you will never know.
Only let the words pour, when and where they may. Do not
worry about wasting them. Only fear that they remain unwritten.
That they go unspoken. That they dont get poured.

How white the tomb

2008-07-09T14:59:00.005+10:00

When your room was emptied
of the former days,
Those days of lost photographs
and other shrouded rooms,
when your heart was emptied
of its joy and sliced from you like a limb,
How many nights did you bleed on your bed?
Feeling the phantom nerves?
How dark were the streets when you awoke
that winter morning?
How vacant the white crib?
How empty the tomb that day?

Ascension of a neighbor

2008-07-05T09:18:00.003+10:00

I never realized that you
cared about me until after you'd gone
I always thought of you as this
berating, critical father standing
in my skull like a little despot
That part of me that never
should have been there

But is

And that's what kept me away
from you and your suffering
You and your sad, playful eyes

The fear...

But you brought me a plate of
leftovers from your Christmas lunch
And I said thank you
You had a picture of Jesus
Hanging in your hallway
which startled me
You offered me a hand with things
But I never knew you cared
until after you'd gone
And thats what changed things

Two or three good lines

2008-06-30T14:03:00.003+10:00

I dont know jack about poems
I only know that once,
when I was very young I was

Alone.

So I wrote it down and kept
it in an old Elvis record sleeve
And I kept on writing it down
and I never showed anyone
Except God.

He saw...

Even though I hid them from his gentle
burning eye and screamed, NO!
What do you know about it?!
And I sat on the top of my parents roof,
in the rain and thunder and dared
him to strike me dead.

But he knew,
Knew I loved them
And wanted him to love them too

Then I applied for that writing course,
and the woman said,
"you wrote two or three good lines here."
we both looked at the words
like they were an unusual oddity,
and I knew they were the good ones too.
But when I got the acceptance letter,
I realized that they only let me in
to get the course fee
And anyway, while I sat in the hall waiting
to be interviewed with the others, I heard
two people talking about poetry
And they sounded like they knew something
I didnt want to know anything
All I wanted was to squeeze two or three
good lines from my loneliness
And thats what I did.
Thats what Im trying to do.

Territorial Pissings

2008-06-30T10:49:00.007+10:00

Partakers of the Sunday meal,
what we call the Sabbath,
herd their children from SUV's
into the carefully planned dining area
To shield them
from mild forms of maddness

For what does innocence
have in common with the damned?
What does hard work have to do with being drunk all the time?
What does prosperity have in common with being lost?

Nothing darling, nothing at all...
Now put on your coat and gloves,
We are going outside.

A poem is a suffocating fish

2008-06-22T16:11:00.003+10:00

Ive learnt
from all the crushing
and squeezing and straining
by that invisible hand
that seems to push your life
through a sieve like lumpy batter
that a poem is not a statement
but some plumbing
of the souls pond
hauling suffocating
fish up onto dry land

You cook them
they get smaller
And then you eat them again
or serve them to your friends

Guatemala

2008-06-18T11:47:00.011+10:00

Charcoal
carrion raptors
peck out the eyes
and the tounge
Leaving bloody caves
of injustice
In a murdered face
In a weeping son

Chipped nail polish
calls out the forgotten
name of innocence
a hundred times
from dead, curled fingers
once gentle,

Something calls from
the silence
Some shocked, absent violence
rolls like mist
while at home,
tannin faces weep
for the blood of their daughters
bleached of its cries by the sun

One long lonely day

2008-06-13T15:15:00.004+10:00

One long
lonely day
is not equal
to a thousand

A crushing
painful life
is not equal
to death

Go off by yourself
Enter THE silence
Bow in prayer
The weight
Will release
the aroma of love

One long
lonely day
is not equal
to a thousand

Little Bird of Peace

2008-06-09T14:20:00.003+10:00

The little bird of peace
sits on the shoulder
of suffering
and sings softly
in a minor key
While suffering wails
and rages and squalls
at the sky that
wont
come down
though he calls,
from sun to moon,
season to season.

the little bird of peace
sings not into the ear
but with sufferings
unheld heart
like a gentle bow
across vibrating strings

4am

2008-06-04T09:52:00.007+10:00

I hear
Ocean birds
at four am
haunting
the inland freeways
with strange,
calls of the sea
from foreign sands
and the odd
solitary semi
coming down from
the north
Like a ghost
in my skull
bruised by
the violence
of unspoken
dialogues

Two Note song of the small hours

2008-05-31T13:12:00.010+10:00

There used to be a time
I would sit out on the picnic table in the front yard
drinking beer and playing guitar late into the night
there was a big tree in the corner of the yard then
that was home to a small black bird that sang
some times till three or four in the morning
I could hear him all through the summer
While I lay awake in my bed waiting to be killed

And sometimes I would notice him on the telephone wires
under the street lights while I drank
and played and thought of death
While the fireworks went off over the skyscrapers
and he would chirp this little two note song
over and over like a heart beat
keeping me alive
and we became sort of uneasy neighbors, uneasy friends,
lamenting companeros during those hot nights
under the street lamps burning.

Each with our home, each with our
song to the passing world
And we shared that unknown truce with everything,
while the rage in me rushed
like a killing flood tide devastating a city
its murderous fingers gently ebbing away
from the redrawn coastline

I dont sit out there much anymore,
now the big tree has been cut down
Im inside tending the few little things
that are beginning to grow again
I dont hear the two note song
of the small hours any more
Or maybe Im just not listening

These Others

2008-05-13T11:30:00.008+10:00

The roots show through the dying earth
that you were once born
Yet still remain dead
and these empty tombs
These children turned
into industries for profit
become lies
Told to the queues and queues
of people waiting for bread

these bulldozed streets
These light poles
These traffic lights
and wives
These sanitized kitchens
These forests of metal
these cairns of brick
growing ancient
These new ones,
these shiny ones
These shuttered windows dont lie

These frontiers
that are kept in chains live on
in distant tongues yet unspoken
by suburban kings
and women,
Loved and beaten
children dying at the nipple
suckle currency from
suicidal traders and bombs
that till the soil

You cant write poems
about suffering
when you're numb
Anaesthetc becomes
as compulsory
as violence and revenge
in these nicely paved
and manicured streets
These roads
littered with bottles
these gutters washing
away boredom and disdain
from the eyes of houses
and the mouths of teenage drunks
These concrete tongues
waiting patiently for their meds

These nations
these armies
These foot soldiers
of the economy
These generals
Building skyscrapers out of bones
These kindly nurses
monitoring the fragile veins
of the stupeified
For slaughter
These naked prophets
with their heavy sighs
Are not like these others

Enough

2008-05-12T09:43:00.004+10:00

I bought some cornflakes
and some milk
Came home and lay
on the couch with a blanket
Art is sometimes not enough
to make you feel alive

Nor the wind
nor the trees
nor the damp ground after
a heavy rain
is enough sometimes

the Jesus Bird

2008-04-25T13:13:00.002+10:00

I saw the Jesus bird
alone on a fence
overlooking the freeway
on a dry afternoon in autumn
I saw the Jesus bird
at dusk
on a light pole
watching the commuters
wander down from the station
in the dark with the others
I saw the Jesus bird
silhouetted against
a dirty orange moon that hung
crucified and flayed
on a vast black cross
looking down on begging
empty spaces in the market
where cold sleeping ducks
bills buried in
feathered shadow
saw nothing

But I heard the Jesus bird
singing in black
trees of solitude
while men and boys cut
through cold white mist like
fighting soldiers under
artificial suns

And the modern neanderthal
calling our fragile existence
a miracle
sat hunched over flickering
screens and packaged nourishment
in his artificial cave
While the Jesus bird
sits lower than him on the food chain

I didn't see the Jesus bird
he took refuge from the knight
but reappeared the next day
under fluorescent swords
in the eyes of a little girl
who said thank you at the supermarket

Jobs Friends

2008-04-22T09:41:00.003+10:00

Yeah, the poem thing is getting a bit obsessive at the moment...

billboards
tell you what
to do
who to be
and what to eat
Television
tells you how to live
sitting with you
in the lounge each night
like one
of Jobs friends
She tells you your nothing
and yet
your loins boil for her
the whole thing is fucked
and you think that no one understands?
you think your a unique
lonely poet in a city of automatons?
No.
the poet lives next door
in the eyes of an old man
dying of cancer
the artist is pruning her roses
shes shuffling to the gate
to see if theres any mail
the painter is on the porch
smoking a cigarette
thinking of her

Fred

2008-04-21T14:15:00.001+10:00

I went out
This morning
And Fred was
sitting in the
Garden
Under a tree
He looked tired
and old
His hair
is almost gone
his back is hunched
And his face
is pocked with liver spots
His eyelids sag
over once blue windows
that watch the grass
and consider...
nothing more
than what he will
have for lunch
I commented on
the spaciousness
of the front yard
with the big lilly pilly
gone.
Yes he said
it doesnt look the same
anymore

Dictionary of Saints

2008-04-21T11:28:00.004+10:00

These are the saints

A girl with a lesbian mother
and a butterfly stamp on her forehead
looking at a boy
The man who gave me that twangy guitar
before he died alone in his bed
and said,

Music is about

Silence

The woman who kept the carcasses
and bones of animals in her kitchen cupboards
and passed me at night under yellow streetlights
in a turtle neck jumper
and rummaged in bins on train platforms
while I ignored her and
defaced public property with a stolen texta
in a fit of unrequited love

The man who taught me my first three chords
while telling me his prison stories
and then duped me out of forty bucks
To go drinking

These are the saints
The ones I loved
and the ones I hated

A certain ugliness

2008-04-21T10:08:00.005+10:00

Ive been scribbling a few poems over the weekend, inspired by the raw poems of Charles Bukowski. Inspired, not because of any genius with words, or even the grotesque nature of them at times ( thats there of course) but the very mundane nature of his subject matter, drawn straight from his life. so... here goes...

The girls
with their perfect lips
and high cheeks
were some kind of art I
didnt presume to be able to aquire
But merely look at in the museums
of cafe strips and the megaplex
But to my shock one of them, or maybe two
seemed interested in me.
And so I found myself at the high school formal
with my secret ugliness and a stuck up bitch
She didnt like me for very long
but she had already asked me to the formal (funeral?)
So I had to go
coming down the stairs with a girl from
one of the most prestigious private girls schools in the North West
and not six months before I had been hitchhiking somewhere
in the middle of the Eyre Peninsula crying my eyes out
And hearing God by the side of the road

And now Im a man
in my shoes that trudged through the mud
of Thailand and kept my feet dry
while I took photos of AIDS victims and walked
the alleyways of bangkok slums
But theres no raw sewage outside the video shop
Middle class girls dont beg
their tracksuit ensembles
with their beautiful men
their dogs and coffee
and noodle box laksas are all grown up
and High school formals just a photo in a long line
of predictable milestones

a step away from malnutrition
a step away from sex
a step away from love
Death
with a certain ugliness
that is not really present in my face
but will stain us both black and red

Cars and birds

2008-04-19T10:52:00.002+10:00

Cars and birds
outside on the lawn
While you work
at your table next door
Dying slowly

We exchanged pleasantries
at the letterbox
you brought from America
An all three of us
ignored the closeness
of your death
Your sagging eyelids
and drooping posture

I hear you coughing
in the early morning
Hacking up your past
Choking on your whole life
And we say hello
Talking of the heat and the cold
and the dying grass
and the thrashed Geraniums
As if they were the
only things that mattered

Life is so small
That cars and birds on the lawn
Are all we seem to have

You know that laugh?

2008-04-19T10:45:00.002+10:00

And you re entered my life
Like the sweetest nightmare
Or rather, I re entered yours
And we spoke
And we laughed, drank coffee at the same place
I saw the pain in your eyes
carefully noted the details of your body
while the tears still swam around
somewhere deep inside you

And you re entered my mind
I've been letting you in to that ugly cage
undoing the latch
On the door to that stupid hope
in me

that we

would laugh the laugh
of joyful grass reaching for the sun
you know that laugh?

On Being Exhibited

2008-03-15T17:07:00.002+11:00

I switch off the respirator
and lie in the dark of death
while light tries to break through

Birds sing on the telephone wires
Cars roar up and down the
snaking black freeway cutting
through the middle class teepees
with their black yawning
eyeless windows

My creations are lying in state
on the other side of the city
Where i never lived
Im waiting here,
where I was brought from
My boyhood tomb
Waiting for some sort of death
Some sort of life
Some creation
In the shadows cast
by the carefully planted trees
of my youth

For The Women in My Life: The Sunshine at my Door

2007-06-21T11:22:00.001+10:00

Been some time since I posted anything here. For me, poetry comes from pain and wounds. Drawing and painting come from a similar place, but the best analogy I can think of is that drawing is the sun rising. Poetry is the moon. Ive gained some insight into some core issues in my relationships with women in the last couple of days. This poem actually preceded those insights by a week or more, but fits snugly like a jagged piece of glass in a wound. There is hope for healing.

How I wish I could have met you
In the sunshine at my door
With a warm hug to clothe you
As a crescent slice of sun met your cheek
And framed your coffee coloured hair like a halo

How I wish I could have met you
In the sunshine at my door,
Entwined in the long embrace of many years
Oiled wounds and caressing fingers
Gently tracing scars
Hearts beating blood against flesh

How I wish I could have met you
In the sunshine at my door,
With an open heart to crown you Queen
Instead of the phantom dogs of longing
That rim the night with fire
And chase me in my thoughts and
In my dreams

How I wish I could have met you
In the sunshine at my door,
Lips meeting in time, time greeting pain
A salty absence banished from the heart,
the mind,
A kiss of renewal, life,
And not betrayal.

Poets Prayer

2007-02-21T00:38:00.000+11:00

Can I pray to you in poetry?
Do you hear the prayers of Art?
Can you hear the anguished cry
Of my pen scratching in the dark?
Can I sense you gently nodding?
Is that your healing touch?
O Lord, are these anguished scratchings
That I offer you enough?

Idle Tears

2007-02-16T16:55:00.000+11:00

Is there any healing in these tears?
Or just emptiness and despair?
Is there a way out of the quagmire?
Or just leading deeper into fear

Behold the greif of your son

2007-02-01T20:06:00.000+11:00

All senses inhale
that which speaks of loss
Exhale grief, son
Soul notes float up
Drifting from the deep
Melancholy tears from fingers
Flooding the keys
Perfume hangs low, near the unvaccumed
carpet
You speak to me of death, soul
You speak of love
You speak the language of bitter tears
Exiting unbidden
So bittersweet,
The taste of soul blood
Minor notes falling from trees
Gently sighing
Sad with love and longing
Bone dry
Father, behold,
Behold the grief of your son
Be not deaf to the souls
unseen weeping, Father
Behold the grief of your son

Broken Worship (March 98)

2007-01-26T12:38:00.000+11:00

I walk the streets
Confused as to what I should be doing
I look around at all the people
Pushing and smiling
Towards their sense of purpose
While on the inside
I stand on the edge of brokeness and tears
wanting to cry in the gutter
And break my vase of nard over your feet
But in the peoples eyes
I sense the need to put my fingers in the cracks
And force a broad grin
Convincing my reflection
That I know what kind of man I am

Fragments (13/11/1997)

2007-01-09T10:46:00.000+11:00

I communicate in fragments
Between drowning gulps of pain
Calling frantically between the waves
Desperate to hear my name
I stay focused on the tightrope
Being careful not to fall
And occasionally, I throw a hurting glance
In the window of someones soul
Im searching for approval
For an a ssurance that, "your ok"
And in that brief and searching moment
I see they are hurting just the same
i communicate in fragments
Stabbing pain through wounded walls
With a rusty nail, I chip away
To connect with other souls
I communicate in fragments
Though not sometimes as it seems
When i catch the gleam in eyes of joy
That are free to share their dreams
I communicate in fragments
With the eternal lovers gaze
Following in the dark, the sparkling trail
Of fragments of His Grace

Thirst

2006-10-26T23:51:00.000+10:00

Love is the hardest patience

Too often tugged by deserts yearning

I stumble over myself

with the desire to care

Crude, school boy fumblings

That bruise, instead of healing

Real love is not perturbed by

A lack of connection with its beloved

Love is prepared to wait

Alone, in the dark if necessary

For the right course to take

Real love is wize

But not I.

I cast about furtively

like an addict, not really loving

Anyone, but only hurting

in the attempt to quench my thirst
My desert yearning

Truer words were never spoken;

Real love is not self seeking

It sounds trite, cliched, anachronistic,

To say, "God is Love"

But imagine if you will

Ponder in your heart the true nature of love

and you will find peace

All the furtive desert fumblings will cease

Ghost in the Machine

2006-10-25T22:44:00.000+10:00

We reject truth without evidence
As hot iron blasphemies applied to
The neural highways of our enlightened minds
While the pathetic and uninformed continue to pray
We worship our cortex idols
And the sea remains unknown and intimate
To idiot souls who know
That we create our own destinies
Not as masters, but as subjects

Faith of a Dog

2006-10-21T21:16:00.000+10:00

I seek your face, your loving gaze
The touch that can make me free
With grubby hands and mout h I call,
"Have mercy, have mercy on me!"

You can see what I've been eating
Its no use, I cant clean up my act
My hands are grubby, and the
corners of my mouth are stained
With the evidence of who I am

But even dogs eat the crumbs from
Their masters table, dont they?
Dogs are not ashamed of need
With grubby hands and mouth, I call
"Have mercy, have mercy on me!"

The Kings Troubles

2006-10-19T09:20:00.000+10:00

The king became sick
The prophet said,
"you are surely about to die, O King!"
The king turned his face to the wall
And wept like a child
Later the King said,
"it seems it was good for me to go
through all these troubles.
You never let me tumble over the edge into nothing."

Each heart gropes in the shadows
Along the path to loves union
Made soft by the beatings it recieves
In the search for love
The battered heart is prepared for home

Everything on the hearts journey must be stripped away
What was a gift
Became addiction
What was devotion
Became idolatry
What was once a humble ear
Became a lie
And all the Kings troubles led him home

Surface Touching

2006-10-16T23:32:00.000+10:00

Our eyes only met for a moment
As the kingdom of this world rushed by
she was lying in a doorway
Vacant
Staring
Unseen by passing eyes
Beneath her barricades
Her Faded plastic bags
full of relics
salvaged
from lifes war
Beneath her Icons
venerated
against the cold assault
Of city neon
On her soul

I ventured a weak smile
Powerless
Shy
Ancient wisdom welled
In my imagination like vapour
It is we that pass by who are lacking
Lost in our cold aversions
We that are driven
To find peace in consuming
The temporal ghosts
Of our empty yearning

The Apricot Tree

2006-10-15T23:12:00.000+10:00

My heart is the roots of an Apricot tree
People like me when the fruit
is right and the leaves are green
But when the days grow short,
the nights long and cold
And the moons white silence
rides high above earths mourning souls
My limbs can appear sickly and grotesque
To people wandering past my fence
Chilled by the rooftops barren glow
White eyes
Now awake to darkness close
to keep at bay some nameless thing
That the fingers of the moon arouse within
My heart is the roots of an apricot tree
People think I'm dead when
they see no fruit and the leaves arent green
But alone in silence, buried deep
In loves mysterious darkness my heart still beats

The Restless Heart

2006-10-05T21:45:00.000+10:00

Home is where the heart is
Thats what people say
Does this imply
That anywhere a heart may find itself
Is a good place to remain?

Hearts are restless creatures though
Chasing this and that
Leaving rooms empty, cupboards bare
and boxes unpacked

the belongings of the moving heart
Are labelled no fixed address
Although a permanent home is what they seek
they take up any room for rent

A true home for the heart
Exists, its true, we know
For without origins of rest
For the soul and the heart
Why would so many roam?

Road to Recovery

2006-10-01T10:01:00.000+10:00

Sometimes home
Seems a long way off
Like a glinting on the far horizon
fooling me into travelling on
i put one foot in front of the other
On the road to recovery
Past houses with many rooms
That resemble the mansions
Ive been searching for
Their emptiness seems pregnant
With the promise of life
Maybe I am welcome there?
But peering in their unwashed windows
I can see that their pallid walls
And musty rooms
Are just unoccupied shells
Of other places I have been
Empty scenes
Waiting to be filled with the wounds
and noise of broken lives
Visible
But to most unseen
Their 'for rent' signs
Crudely stapled to the front fence
Are not inviting me into my Fathers house
Only advertising a place to rent
Somewhere to put my baggage down at a price
So, I continue walking, enquiring
Looking for my rightful home
A patch of blue sky
Is revealed by parting clouds
Filling me with hope

unknown author

2006-09-20T22:21:00.000+10:00

copied this down from a Lewis Smedes book a few years ago. Dont know who the author is..

Within my earthly temple theres a crowd;
Theres one thats humble, one thats proud
Theres one thats broken hearted fro his sins
And one that unrepentant, sits and grins
Theres one that loves his neighbor as himself
And one that cares for naught but fame and self
From such perplexity and care I would be free
if I could once determine which is me

A Tolerated Pet

2006-09-09T01:21:00.000+10:00

It followed you through life
Like a mangy dog
Down an empty street
Head lowered
Ribs exposed
Hip bone protruding
Through mottled coat
Like a blunt instrument
Following at a safe distance
Sniffing the air
For a whiff of hope

GIDOUDAVITT!

It drops behind a corner
Scampers away behind some bin
Tail between sinewy legs
And cowers a while longer
Circling itself in fear
While you turn and stride away
When you turn
You see hungry eyes
Head begin to lift
It wont stop following
So, you think
He might as well become to you
Like a kind of friend
Like a tolerated pet.

Tears, Idle Tears.

2006-09-06T22:47:00.000+10:00

I knew there was a reason I collected stuff and left it sitting in a folder on the bookshelf for months and months..

So i could be refreshed by it later.

I found this last night among my collected papers, by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from ther underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
the earliest pipe of half awakened birds
to dying ears, when unto dying eyes
the casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O death in Life, the days that are no more!

The broken hearted

2006-08-30T11:10:00.000+10:00

The bitter edge of life
is succulent with beauty
and the saltiness of tears
That rim the cracked earth
of our inner deserts
Broken hearts can be fertile ground
Teeth on edge
Eyes slitted
We regard things witha cool eye
The broken hearted

You cried some more..

2006-07-28T10:04:00.000+10:00

You spent your life in tears
Looking out windows
Watching the clouds roll
The rain fall
Your room was dimly lit
Half in shadow
Chains
Chairs, they were silent
Socks and pajamas
Were your only comfort

You wondered if there was any future
if there was any hope at all
As you looked over the fence
Into the neighbors yard
And the clouds loomed and rolled above

Through a blur of tears
You thought you heard a voice
Comforting you in your mind
And for a moment, stillness and peace reigned
In your heart
And you cried some more
You cried some more

Easter

2006-04-14T00:03:00.000+10:00

Mustard coloured heart shapes
Sing brightly against skys looming face
that puffs and rolls down as if from holy mountain
Sagging under thunderous skys belly
Hearts bend under the weight of clouds and
the weight of deaths cold descent

Heaven's darkness makes everything look so bright
As it bears down upon the earth turned black
Pressing dead hearts and bones into earth and rock
To rest among each other in damp and silent graves
Pregnant with diamonds
Becoming nothing, becoming faith

The way to Gods Heart

2006-04-06T20:06:00.000+10:00

Ive been looking for the way to Gods heart for so many years
In so many nooks,
Rocks and holes and far flung landscapes
Listened to instructions, admonitions, sermon illustrations
Read thousands of sentences, searched thousands of eyes and faces
that promised so much, but were merely fellow pilgrims on the way.
We are all looking for the way to Gods heart.
Bhuddists, Muslims, Hindus.
Christians think they are so damn smart!
Meditators, procrastinators, activists, professors, garbage collectors, agitators.
All looking for the way to Gods heart
Artists, musicians, story tellers, movie makers
Even those of us that descend the stairs of the human cellar
Blind in our dank and furtive groping
From arts highest beauty to sins slop and mud
We search for the way to Gods heart
Why hide such perfect art?
Ah.. Gods heart! Gods heart!
Where for thou art?
We look at the Christ and paint him high on walls and ceilings
Volumes of articulated thought create spiritual vapour trails across history
While Gods heart calls, whispers in the birds and trees.
And when Jesus prayed to his Father, thanking him for "Ordinary people"
And spoke tenderly, inviting the ordinary and the young
To recover from the damage done in all our desperate searching for the way to Gods heart,
We heard and sighed, and staightened up, just a little.
We saw no hard edge in his eyes.
"Take a real rest.."He said,
"Get away with me and find Gods heart."

Kitchen Table

2006-04-02T01:06:00.000+11:00

My mother wept over its
Faded laminex the day dad left
Twisting sculptures of knotted tissue
Around its surface like offerings
While sisters and priestly neighbors
Gathered with us at its humble edge

Your father is not coming back
The words reached me across familiar expanse
Setting the kitchen table was just never the same after that

Pride

2006-03-23T20:59:00.000+11:00

Here's another one of Terry Andersons, accompanied by an excerpt from his memoir, "Den of Lions."

"I rarely ask God for freedom anymore. He knows how much I want to go home - I've already told Him so many times. Instead, I pray for patience, acceptance and strength for myself. I give thanks for what I've had. I havent become a saint, or anywhere near it. I still rage, and sometimes I want to scream in frustration. But less frequently. I'm still deeply unhappy and lonely. But I know I'll live through this. I will be free someday, and I will use what I I've learned about myself properly.

PRIDE

Pride goeth before a fall, they say.
I fall often, but my pride remains.
My dignity is tattered,
my reputation a bit bespattered.
My hair goeth, and my teeth.
My belly saggeth; my arches, too.
But pride stands regally,
a stubborn Ozymandias
astride his crumbling kingdom,
my, and man's, despair

In Your Sight

2006-03-20T22:44:00.000+11:00

Psalm 27:10

"My father and mother walked out and left me,
but God took me in."

These are the lyrics to a song that I wrote last year, after seeing a documentary about a remote Australian community called Balgo, in the Northern Territory.

One night in Balgo, the local Anglican Priest, a gentle looking man with pale skin and watery blue eyes, the way a priest should look, was called by a community elder to cut down three teenagers that had tried to hang themselves in the same park.

Saw it on the news today
Another teenager died
A lost girl in a fatherless world
Had to take her own life

I dont understand
I just dont know why
All these forgotten and fatherless kids
Cant see how precious they are
In your sight
In your sight

If I could hold it out in my hand
A cup of treasure untold
Then just maybe they'd feel the dawn
Of loves kiss on their soul

But I dont understand
I just dont know why
All these sons and daughters of yours
Cant see the love in their lives
They are in your sight
They are in your sight

A survivors Tale

2006-03-19T17:41:00.000+11:00

Zarifa Klepo, lived under the siege of Sarejevo for two and a half years. In the Age, Sat, 18th march, Rachel Gibson writes:

"Mrs Klepo recalls one story from that time in a halting voice. One sunny winters day, in early 1993, a friend allowed her two daughters, aged 5 and 7, outside their apartment to play witha group of chidren.

Easily visible on the white snow, the girls were murdered in a targeted burst of shelling."

This poem was written by Mrs Klepo after she arived in Australia in 1995.

Stay alive
Stay alive
You'll find a better place
stay alive
You will get a chance
Stay alive
Sounds like a fantasy
When a war is reality
Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive.

( the Age, Sat, 18th March 2006)

Exile

2006-03-12T13:05:00.000+11:00

This used to be exile
Coffee, book and notepad
Sitting alone and anonymous
An outcast in my own land
Now I feel like its home again
Which of course it always was
That shimmering pool that rises
And spills joy from my eyes never strayed
But Ah! Exile is still a hard place
When you're there
No hope of home or hearth is visible
In those barren times
And you weep for your Jerusalem
Spirit of Grace springs eternal
Even in arid places - it doesnt leave
Though you might be left
Never realising it was there
Until it brings you home again

The Little Moth

2006-03-01T23:07:00.000+11:00

The little moth, struggling to be free
From the cocoon that it built
In a bit old tree
Wriggles and squirms with all he can muster
so that his untried wings may begin to flutter
But along happens a caring but unthinking man
who says, "I must free this poor creature if I possibly can!"
And without a thought that it might be too soon
The man begins ripping apart the moths cocoon
"You are free," cries the man.
" the battle is won! you need struggle no longer
and fly home to mum."
But what the poor man failed to note
as he watched it plummet to the earth
was that without the struggle from its dark cocoon
the poor moths wings would never work
Now you may be praying to God in heaven
to free you from lifes muddle
And take you from your dark cocoon
without the pain and trouble
But be sure to note from our little tale
Of the moth that avoided struggle
that the wings of life will gain no strength
Unless you are prepared to suffer

(Head of Christ - George Roualt)

A Child's Smile

2006-02-24T22:29:00.000+11:00

For Justin and Rebecca

My feelings are alive and beautiful in my mind
They are my desires - I think
I imagine all of life, its beauty so real
Imagination - You lover! You beast!
Butterflies flitting among swaying wheat

A child's laughter
A smile from a special friend
Hand in hand down a long desert road
Intimacy is oxygen to the straining leaves of my soul
I crave its secret air
Fantasy - shatters like a mourning window
Is that you reality?
Which of you two is knocking at my door?
Which of you is vapour?
Which of you is real?
Which of you two is hell?
"How long must I wrestle with my thoughts, Elohim?
And every day have sorrow in my heart?"

Love is given
And it makes you feel good
But it's a life thats forbidden

I have rights

Part of me wants to hold on
To these imaginings
Hug tightly the winds of fantasy
But this other part - You lover! You Beast!
Knows that they are just that
Only wind
I'll never see a little child running
Towards me like that
But there are times when it is nice to dream
Of love
Sweet dreams son
A child's smile
Connects me with what is deepest in me and the world
Eden innocence running openly towards me
A warm man becomes possible
A warm man becomes real
I am a warm man
Gentle child of Grace
The child smiles
And I smile, wind in my face

The Return

2006-02-22T21:39:00.000+11:00

You came back to me
In a million sparrows
Plaguing lawns
With fragile beauty

You threaded my eyes
In the dark
With a million year old stars
Blinking

A million fallen leaves
Carpeting ovals
a million paddocks, a million rocks,
A million insects
A million pimples on the globe

You returned
You came back in
a whispered word
Spoken in silence among scraps
Of paper, discarded pens,
And useless bits of information

You returned
in the midst of
fragmented meaning
Slotting it together

You returned
in silent words

And my house again grew quiet
My house once more at rest

Patience

2006-02-21T20:33:00.000+11:00

This is a poem that I stumbled across in a religion and society class a few years ago. It is by the American journalist Terry Anderson who was taken hostage by terrorists in Beirut, 1985. He lived hand cuffed to a wall or radiator for seven years.

What impresses me most about his story is his rediscovery of God and himself in such a dark place. The depths of his pride, his selfishness in relationships; all this he had to face, alone in a room without knowing if he would ever see the light of day again. I can only imagine the utter despair that must have assailed this man.

And through it all, caged in inhuman conditions like an animal, he seemed to become more human, not less. Faith was reawakened in him, not snuffed out. In some ways, it holds a strange parallell to the imprisonment of the sixteenth century saint, St John of the Cross, who endured much harsher conditions than Anderson, no doubt, but in between beatings, in his rotting rags and tiny cell, composed some of the most beautiful and heart felt poetry ever known.
To learn more about St john of the Cross go to, camelite.com

Terry Anderson's memoir is published by Ballantine and is called 'Den of Lions' - if your interested...

Patience is not a virtue -
its a necessity, a survival trait,
an ever- filling well from which
I sip, or gulp, exhausted
by the desert of this nonlife.
My faith surges and recedes;
hope sometimes abandons me,
leaving only patience.
I kick and scream and flail
inside my head; patience
offers only soft resistance,
washing gently at my rage.
I know if I dive deeply,
I will find patience, hope, and faith
emerging from a single source,
eternal and unchanging.

- Terry Anderson ( Den of Lions)

The Silent Yearning of All Creation

2006-02-20T22:08:00.000+11:00

We traverse barren lands, you and I
No comfort here, no palace dwelling
We wander aimlessly through suffering
Treading barefoot on salty earth, cracked and laden red
With stiff, silver blue scrub stretching away
From our sore and sorry eyes to nothing

A hot, bare breeze of sorrow comes down
From where, who knows?
Leaves murmur it's arrival to each other
As the tonic of our memory stirs

Elephantine gums with creamy, wrinkled,
ancient trunks stand at attention
Their slow moving, serpent limbs
Twist up
With the silent yearning of all creation

This is a land that is known
A land sown with seeds
We are loved, you and I
Not forsaken
Born in secret on the Spirits cool and gracious breeze
We traverse barren lands
No comfort here, no palace dwelling
We wander aimlessly, yet trasformed
through suffering

Cookie Cutter Ducks

2006-02-19T12:57:00.000+11:00

Memories pop up
Like black ducks in a shooting gallery
Sillhouettes of the past
Darkening the horizon
Cookie cutter patterns of suffering
Going by in circles
Each with dents, bullet holes
And scratched surfaces
Each containing their own unique pain

I try to shoot them down
But they pop back up again
Boyant in the still waters of my life
These cookie cutter ducks remain

G'day from the Cookie Cutter

2006-02-19T11:42:00.000+11:00

G'day! For those of you not familiar with Aussie slang, Thats, "Hello"
This blog will hopefully not stray to far from its intended topic, which as you will hopefully discover, is basically a chronicle of poetry by the author. I make no claim of it to be particularly good poetry. I really have no idea what good poetry is! And this may become more evident as you read my posts!

But I do claim it as an authentic voice. A voice, that I believe resides deep within me. ( and all of us) One that cries out in anguish, questions bitterly, sings with hope and gratitude, and is always searching for meaning.

I dont intend it to be too serious, but ultimately, for me, poetry is a serious business. Not in terms of form and content, or technical artistic ability. (Boring! ) But in terms of the expression of my deepest self and the articulation of my deepest feelings. And what the pastor, writer and wordsmith Eugene Peterson calls, " the connection of the visible with the invisible. Heaven and earth." For me it is an intensely personal thing.

So, that being what it is, I hope you will forgive me for any self indulgence! For my sloppy Doggerel and furtive verse! But I also hope that you find something you resonate with. That it might provide something encouraging, thought provoking, stimulating. Well, perhaps thats asking a bit much!

The New Bible Commentary introduction tho the Psalms says that, "Poetry is able to get to the heart of our relationship with God." Ultimately, this what I am looking for, though I still havent found it.