This Prison Is Sensory Deprivation

It is time to ask forgiveness
although a pardon would
equally do, I am in no position
to petition either of you – this
prison is sensory deprivation
at its meanest, a medium
absorbing the emotional
transactions I need to stay
this side of reality, tangling
the chemical signals of my
brain, cleaving a clinical
whiteness of nothing and
no-one and no-knowing.

If it it madness you want visited
upon me you have won, I am
mad for the scent of you, I am
insane for your touch, and if I
could hear you call me in that
sweet voice my ears would
burst with gladness. Caress me
once with your eyes so I can
see, caress me and leave me
free to drink the sight of your
leaving, let me taste the best
and the worst of you, give me
back my senses so I
can die in peace.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Sort Of Half Remembered

He had returned from the funeral
of a friend, not a great acquaintance,
more a vague old familiar sort of half
remembered from a crowd of similar
faces – never too much in evidence,
neither to the fore nor either not quite
there at all. He struggled to recall when
they last talked, or even why they might
have had a cause for words together.

Nothing came. It was a bleak and bitter
picture of neglect, a feeling of despair,
an aching emptiness, like the drear and
deadened atmosphere that laid his
friend to rest.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Happy & New & A Year Down

For followers who give a shit, I reached the magic 365 poems mark today.

Sure I cheated, there are 31 poems back-dated to January 2006, as there were to February and March. If you want to read something different, and new, that's where they are. But from now on I will conform to filling from the top - unless I get a surplus of poems to post.

Happy New Year!

Sombre Mood

Where are the living lines, the rising
dreams, rambunctious breaths of
exhaled air condensing into solid themes;
I’m waiting, waiting, near despair, tried
for patience, tied to fears as fickle
as the frigid air surrounding me.

This magus day of gravel grey and
chilling damp attenuates in gentle
shrouds of wispy mist, belies the heat
of yestere’en, the brutal thrash of gravid
sun, the dying threat and drying screams
of leaves burned brown from living green.

Dawn comes slowly, washed through
screens of granite skies, the glint of dew
pricked sweet in points of diamond light
reflects a sombre mood, the flight of
night rebirths this mirthless, naked day,
tho’ silenced in a chastened earth.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Kokoda

Kokoda, seared
cruelly in my mind;
I am ashamed – God knows
I cried, blinded by tears,
by rampant hypocrisy, by egos
buoyed on the massed souls
of men sacrificed needlessly.

I am ashamed
that we waited until the last man
died before the truth was told, before
the feats of grand endeavour
were ever partially explained.

I am ashamed
I knew not of the pain endured,
or of the suffering, of the deceit,
of rank incompetence and
puerile nonsense practiced by
command not in the field.

I am ashamed
of the petty bureaucracy
which failed at the crucial
time of need, which later
denied these courageous
men their peace and glory.

I am ashamed
I knew not that story.
I would be a different man had I too
suffered under Blamey, had I endured
MacArthur’s baleful untruths, their
blatant aggrandising.

I am ashamed
we did not know; but I esteem
the men who survived to keep
a silent wake of argent truth alive
to this day, a monument of timeless
beauty, pure and respectful of their
comrade dead.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

For the Chocolate Soldiers

These Thoughts Are Blighted By Fears

My chemistry is unchanged by the wrack
of oestrogen and progesterone it lacks, still
essentially the same as when it wolf-whistled
you in the crowd at Portsea’s Nepean Hotel,
mid-1968 – and still warmed by the flame.

The old hotel’s gone for all the wrong
reasons but The Portsea remains;
it was in a crowded bar there I first knew
I truly loved you, more than a soldier’s
pannier – where I watched, dreamlike,

the delicate girl of my wildest imaginings
talking, animated and infinitely beautiful
with classmates, some of whom died,
breaking hearts in her hands and offering
them back bound in great gentleness.

Mine was there too. The first twinge was regret,
replaced by a strangeness I never let command,
a jealousy which I could not reconcile nor, in all
these years, understand. Today I am affected
by an alienation deep in emotional lament.

Are we estranged? I think I am the same young
man imbued with self-righteous vigour, ready to
stride into battle again, fearless as you and our love
is within me. But strangeness abides as I
cannot feel your presence beside me.

There is a newness in you I do not countenance
with ease, a distancing that was never more than
a fleeting touch or reassuring heartbeat away.
These thoughts are blighted by fears, is it I
who am to blame?
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Wears The Farcical Wig

There is a third tier to the Legal debate,
an unassailable tower of will-sapping
power, a magister-less pontificate who
is judge and jury and justicate.

No mundaneness of referee, this is a
vetting of unequivocal majesty, fictionally
free of baited adversarial bedlam and
the principled bloodletting of advocates.

Approved by peers and elected by seers
of long and legally sanctioned behest,
a figure who wears the farcical wig, argued,
gesticulated for years from the barristers’ pit,

gathered there scars – criterion defaulted
hors de combat, a bolter to sit on The Bench.
Then raised by an impregnable institution
dignified in didactic silence.

This elevation defeats categorisation in an
intimacy of comfit truth and censored tales
untold, lips sealed by Practice, hindrance-
free to dispense Law as he sees it, and sees fit.

So bully your lawyers, proctors, solicitors,
barristers, bailiffs, advisors, practitioners,
the Judge is the man on whom all surmises –
the master of ceremony and legal disguises.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Clear To The Coast

From King Ludwig’s you can
see clear to the Coast – a
regal panorama agreed,
a visual feast laid easily off
the southeast side veranda.

We dined there, ate with
our eyes, seeking out a
place familiar, found it
nestled articulate in an
edited treescape randomly
rumpled, insignificant next to
Mt Beerwah – yes, to the right
of it, just a bit over this way;
there, you can see the
colours separating.

Debating whether we
saw the orchard or the
firebreak first – but despite
distance the tree lines
caressed my eyes knowingly,
solidity in fluid state.

And where the uncontained
green graduates in a solid
line of darkness, disappears,
melting an indistinct horizon,
there seduced by barely
discernable curvature the
genial host appeared,
brought us German party
hats to wear, poured
another beer unasked.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

What Kind Of Flavour

I need a feed of cock
she said, and not just any,
that comely beast of yours
leads well I’m told, would be
quite savour-some to many –
so be my saviour please!

An honest plea can’t
be demurred the
gentleman agreed,
and kindly asked of her
indeed what kind of
flavour she preferred.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

No Footsteps In The Sand

The inspiration didn’t come – instead
a shallow sense of washed-up, wrung
out disbelief pervaded where the
golden sands began. Somewhere out
beyond the ken, beyond the pale, the
tide had failed to turn. There were no
wavelets on the beach, no comber’s
gems a-lying free for taking,
…alas, no footsteps in the sand.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

With Victorious Mien

Take this game ‘cricket’ and make
a solid guess where it came from.
Take any sport for that matter. There
is a growing clutter of dross attached
to origins obscured by ritual and time,
beware – some disingenuous, but let’s
clear the air and tell the truth, all,
in some form, derive from warfare.

That’s right, mortal combat, forsooth
blood, guts and gore, the kill or be
killed grunt and sweaty clash of bodies
smashing at each other – bent with
vagrantly honest intent on beating
crap out of a foe. Where is the show
of nobility in that? Who knows
who dares wins and who cares?

We play inside rules of the ancient
games, crowds sway in the terraces,
baying for blood in points scored over
late bodies of vanquished enemies
prostrate at the feet of our conquering
troops. There is succour in being a winning
team with victorious mien basking in
self-adulation. Or seeing ritual death

for failed leaders of the losing side,
losers can’t be choosers so we’ll have
your resignation by noon today or by suicide
tomorrow; a new coach will grace your place
at the foot of the flag, next to the bugle
and the Regal Standard. Onward we shall
go to glory in the name of the great game.
Oh, and England lost The Ashes.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

An Enid Blytonesque Commentary Hobbles Commonsense

An Enid Blytonesque commentary
hobbles commonsense with
fantasies and imagined realities;
feelings transcending evidential
intelligence are cobbled
with sinister renderings, yet

there is no escaping changes
in our connectedness. You
know them better than I.
While I struggle day by day to find
anything friable in the new,
all-titanium, autonomous you –

you say you need no supplements
nor interventions to aid changes
wrought by ageing, the emotional
swings are gauged by what you feel
in a Worldly here and now not by
how our relationship is managed.

We have no maligned history you say,
my antecedents coped I can too,
these happenings are neither untoward
nor strange. Please refrain from aspersions,
it is nothing to do with you;
– if only that were true…
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Dear Heart, Too Late

There is a clarity of thought at 3am,
clarity of thought that won’t exist
when day begins – an ease of finding
rhythms in the words that tease a tender
flow of more, words that grow from pensive
thoughts which opened this prosaic door,
this charismatic magic music score of rhythmic
song persisting, concentric echoes all insisting
you depart along this path before the dawn
begins again the process of awakening.

I’ve travelled down this path before in
times when rhyme was subtle glue that
kept you true to hints of visionary grace,
lead you to a place beyond the reach
of mind, rested you and left a peace as
subtle as a gentle hint of death. And there
I died. Today I’ll run the race with vigour
born of desperate need to beat the glow
of light that springs – has sprung! Dear heart,
too late.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Making Babies

Let’s fuck here she said
this kitchen bench is just
the right height for your
stumpy legs and she sat
naked spread ready and
accommodating next
to the breadmaker –
and it was as perfect
for making babies
as it was for making
bread.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Beer Promises

There isn’t room for any more
beer promises, we are not close
relatives, we are not close in any
form of intimacy – you laugh easily
when your sense of social etiquette
triggers that out-welling of mirth;
it is not only believable, I envy it.

I look to you to sanction me – but
you see a different set of colours,
a rich tapestry of nuances beyond
the weave which hangs about me
as a shroud.

I pour the beer, we drink, you sing
the joyous songs of your heritage;
I hum the tunes, ponder long
and dolefully over their meaning
– not understanding a fucking thing,
and promise you the World.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Tray Of Ripe Thoughts

This is my gift to you, a tray of ripe
thoughts for Christmas; although
the box is composed of avocados
they are munificent thoughts each.
Try and look beyond the fruit therein,
these thoughts are ready to eat now.

May Christmas bring you joy and
happiness, may you rest warm in the
bosom of your nearest and dearest,
and may you spare thoughts for
those whose Winter of Discontent is
chilled and fraught with loneliness.

As you savour this fruit of love think of
the unstinting devotion that went
into producing it. It is gifted to you,
the labour consumed in making it is
tradeable commodity but the heart
in its brilliance deems it to be free.

Think of tomorrow, the flavour will not last
forever and whether you eat this avocado
now or save thoughts for the future holds
a lien on your soul, is germane to what life
brings from the refrigerated shades of rude
awakenings hidden behind its door.

There is one piece of fruit left in the tray,
my suggestion is make guacamole.
Each of us brings an ingredient and with
loving intent adds it to the bowl. The mix
is not consequent as much as the
gathering of friends is meant to be.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Growing Old With You

I am growing old with you,
perhaps I’m growing older
faster than you wish to, but
you are growing older too.

It wasn’t what we’d planned
I know, it sort of quietly up
and happened, a consequence
of hectic, flowing years

gathered faster than you’d
expect when you’re having
fun, maintaining the pace,
showing the race hasn’t

extinguished the flame.
These last few days suggest
it isn’t all that easy, a late
wintery change has left

a lingering sense of regret,
there are so many things you
still want to do and the jury
is out whether I’m to blame,

but I’ll be blamed nonetheless.
I confess I have an advantage
I’d like to share, I have watched
the most significant women

a man has in his life, besides his
wife, grow old, and I have learned.
This is a change you have to make
or it will unmake you as surely

as your love rings true to its earliest
origins. Time has not denied you nor is
it a thief, the truth is not deceased
and your beauty is just beginning.

Are you ready to grow old with me?
© I.D. Carswell 2006

The First Lady (of poetry)

This is no Plath nor Dickinson, no Angelou, this is a wholly
new persona crashing the hallowed halls, painting the
sacred wall, pissing up the rope of poetic treason;
that she is seething with indignation barely contained
within tight penned lines is not surprising.

This thin enough to peel in golden sunlight disguise
and the multi-faceted diamond beneath is hidden in
a maze of double sens. There is a thousand layers to
peel of a million personalities unexpurgated – but
somewhere near the core you’ll find The First Lady.

Be awed, Royalty has that power but first you must
read and recite the poetry aloud – this is not an ingénue’s
work, there is depth denying tender years, wisdom belying
plebiscites for truth and an unrepentant penchant for
surprises. She is first because there is no other choice.

We did not discover Susan jane, she was ready-made
for the role at birth, an infant prodigy with an uncanny feel
for words and a shrewd brain biding its time. There is no
shame in The First Lady, she is free of poetic crime
for all of nostalgia’s time, absolved of the claim forever.

Long May She Reign!

© I.D. Carswell 2006

For Susan jane Goldner

Read her poetry at:

http://www.poemsabout.com/poet/susan-jane-goldner/

Poetic Post-Coital Gloom

The anxious night of wicked awareness is
hard-edged guarded in manic succession
unconstrained lust ascended of primeval
furnaces and guts hungering adrenalin
to light up darkness’s instantly
erect spit and invective
blood roaring aloft
a mayhem of bursting mood-madness
disintegrating star-burst fantasies
descending soft and trite
trading spaces making place
for fawning words flattering
placating words – words battering
within words loving words
words sung aloud words talking
as hands talk with clearer meaning
and less confused thought.

In dawn unspinning in feeble light’s
indecent withdrawal a coldness of
seeping chills creeping in
the gathering ills of a drear
and cheerless day beginning.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Eros Visited

Eros visited
while I slumbered,
he left the somatic gift
of his antique touch:
an overwhelming sense
of munificence, a towering
of providential trust, riches
beyond belief - and all of this
pro bono…
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Weighty Measures

You deny yourself pleasure
of things you really desire
to lose weight so you can
admire at leisure the things
that really pleasure. These
things indeed are
weighty measures…
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Shower Screen Walls Are Not Opaque (the essence of you)

Gratefully the shower screen walls are not
opaque or it would make no sense to visit
while you showered. Any excuse, a scratch
that needs dressing, the perfunctory use
of a toothbrush, wetting and brushing back
tousled hair – first with the plastic brush that
has been there forever – then, eyes fixed
beyond the misted image in the mirror
to the cubicle where you stand glistening,
unconsciously grooming a courted sense
of endorsement, counterpoint to an ancient
comb and sightless hands.

But this is just an excusable pretence, the
inference of an unrefined need to be in
your presence, to see the nude you, your
ineffable beauty bared with its dimples and
curves and clever crevices. The svelte young
girl hidden there in the cascading shower is
still a hesitant fawn of yore, gracefully
ignorant of her attraction. There are features
for sure which have matured to feed avid
eyes, more elements to greet and entertain
caressing hands, more substance and weight
combined in a bravura statement.

Here, with the bathroom door ajar, is where
it all makes sense. Here the explanation stands
evident and clear; there is nothing to blur
the entire experience – the anatomy,
the ecology, the essence of you.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Simply Dreaming

Asleep aware awake amok
these dreamers wear a thin
veneer that tempts to
buck eclectic sanity; beware 
you dreamers what belies 
somnambulant

and wake surprises,
contemplate seraphic schemes,
escape the fear on magic
wings, soar and wheel
and gather where the
dusty pastry angels care.

Between a plasmid state
of being there in detailed
dreams and here aware,
knitted in connected themes,
united in half-glimpsed effects
of visions far too real 

for eyes a-scry - much too 
beauteous to be disguised 
or undressed by reasoned 
whys, and yet distressed to leave
unchecked, much too true - the
bona fide you revealed.

Cast aside your fervent care, 
revel in the fantasy, if you were 
to wake again you can 
declare with unreserved, 
immaculate assuredness - 

you were only dreaming…

© I.D. Carswell 2006

Coming To Siberia

Are you ready for a move
to Siberia? Well, plan on it
bravely because the good
word is out, it will be too viciously
hot and dehydrated to stay where
you’re at. That is if you didn’t drown in
the rising tides anyway. This isn’t
a play on the words ‘sent to Siberia’,
it may be the last refuge, the last defence
for humanity’s pitiful continuance.

Look at it another way, Siberia is
warming to the idea of an influx of
humankind by default, the deep freeze
is thawing at a mercenary pace, water
evaporates carelessly everywhere, and
the current state of the steppes represents
a fertile bog in the making. By the end of
the century, this one or the next, you could
be growing tomatoes and grapes where the
ancient permafrost left rich soils two miles
deep. I know this because my good mate Bob
Ivanoff went and visited his family in Siberia.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Launch And Be Free

I don’t want the same choices again, just the passion,
just the manic rush of blood, the chilling certainty,
the thrust and power abrupt and overwhelming.

I don’t want to teeter on the brink, I don’t want to
think my way through a myriad of frangible choices,

I just want to leap into space, trust gravity, cheat
the race to extinction, launch and be free.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

His Lifelong Fan

Wasn’t influenced by Hemingway,
wasn’t influenced by Steinbeck,
didn’t give a shit about Kerouac,
hell no, thought they were pitiful –
needed to learn the language. Read
the entire grade school library at least
twice, became a bored adult extension
reader in the City at twelve. The English
masters at High School despaired when
told Shakespeare was dead. Didn’t they
know? Regretted what was said but you know
he actually IS dead. No-one writes gaudy
notes to Shakespeare, some heathens
try and replicate his sonnets, a great exercise
in word choice, rhythm and metre but to me it
is best left to Elizabethans.

So where did I come in? I met
a poet called Dylan. A dissolute
Welshman at Officer Cadet School,
listened to him reading. That’s when
I learned. Note what I said, ‘listened
to him reading’- for God’s sake he spoke
with an incredible power and delivery,
made the mundane classics stand
on their heads with fearsome intensity.
Fuck me, I’ve never recovered!

Never read his poems before, didn’t know him from
Adam; and I learned and became his lifelong fan.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Knew I Was Outnumbered

I can’t remember when
I wasn’t a duality. From
first becoming self-aware
there was no time I dared
think of me as a singular entity.

Yes, thinking of ‘me’ as ‘us’ was
weird but a more comfortable
way of integrating all parts of
a vigorous multi-personality,
and it worked out okay.

When ‘we’ married and soldiering
permitted ‘us’ live with our wife
there were three entities tripartite;
it took years to manoeuvre the
attendant idiosyncrasies.

I know ’we’ never succeeded. What
I can say is ‘us’ became ‘me’ – even
polar opposites will bond in
relations when facing a spectre
of certain extinction.

The ‘we’ that remains is still ‘I and she’
as this battle of wills plays out passage
to time-honoured conclusions, whatever
they may be; all I can say at least is
– I knew I was outnumbered.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Once Wrote A Good Poem

Let me make a fair deduction in your case,
you’re young, you’re invulnerable and
you know you cannot fail. Fair enough,
we were all that way once. For some that
was eons ago, including me, but I’m not
writing like there is no tomorrow, I’m not
riding the crest of a wave, grooving to
the echoed chorus of hollow sycophancy.

But I have done something I think you should
do, I have taken time to read what you wrote.
Have you? Objectively? If you did the
complacency of your half-formed lines would
jangle on your sensitivity, the rhythms that are
at best broken and estranged would beset
your tolerance of disorder such your teeth
would itch. And you’d correct the spelling.

I found it strange that where you write one
good poem (and you do) you follow it with
twenty two or more compositions reflecting
the most pedestrian penmanship imaginable.
It is like you’ve drained the pond of drinkable
water and are dredging the rotting leaves that
line the depths of your overreached imagination.
But you are invulnerable and you cannot fail!

Perhaps it is time to take a backward step, use
the process of reflect, review, reject unless there
is a spark of something vital, new. To stay in the
vein of your last success will not make you worth
the effort of wading through one hundred and
twenty seven poems in the hope of finding
the gem that everyone knows must be there,
afterall, you once wrote a good poem.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Cautions For A Young Poet (Trying To Write In An Older Poet’s Style)

You really want to know?
Would you stand shoulder to
shoulder with Mary Angelou,
Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda?

Well then, what you’ve writ is,
in a word, …pretentious:

– too effete to
close the gap between
what’s real and
what’s pretend

– too tendentious,
lends fallacious airs
to icons badly jaded by
their self-indulgent friends

– too detached
for true reflection
of the light that gave
it birth;

in effect too much
the bastard child,
ego engineered
by sadly marred,
misguided work.

And it stands a barely
wilted jest – a parody
of what was meant but
never said, a council elect
of words selected for their
histrionic embeddedness,
beyond conscience or
cleverness teased out of
scarcely vested sources,
divorced from original
freshness, a derisory
deliberation, a schism
revealed in afterthought
as the incipience of your
paradigmatic cynicism.

And there it rests, patently not
amongst your very best; please,
don’t let it sully that!
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Freed Of Unit Pride

You stand a guilty man the major said,
his mind was closed to damning evidence
suggesting less than guilt, the soldier eyed
the major squarely in the eye, denied the
crime, said in his defence he never lied.

The CSM was moved to passive silence,
knew the soldier never lied, but for this
crime one had to keep the balance
well in check, the soldier was the major’s son,
a worthy heir, and one to whom the CSM

would cede all trust. And retain a reference,
was the gun the major held against the young
man’s head. Agonised, cried inside for truth
and justice freed of unit pride, wore for one
a uniform inscribed with rank well earned

by learning how to lead, the other was in
deference to primacy, command,
and power and might, and though the
right was there by precedence
the charge was wrong.

Sir, the CSM demurred, I might suggest I talk
to Private X, my son, outside. The major raised
his eyes, tired and sore from sleepless nights,
acquiesced in bright relief. Why yes, please do,
and thank you Ma’am, he said.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Vaginal Thoughts

The doorway to ascent which in an upbeat, sadly
abused mythology became the super-highway
to heaven – and as such remains, a haven
for rest and recreation, a hideout and respite;
and despite its subterranean mien all those
things delighting the comforter and comforted
alike pertain for now and forever.

Where the sheath for the stem binds its leaf-like
embrace tightly, the fibrous grain of its fleshless
enfoldment contains the truth of an evolutionary
involvement. No erotic thoughts arise at each
leaf node but the comforts of a tight and satisfying
fit abide, a deep liking held desirously erect,
a welcoming containment conspiring inside.

Here we glide in lubricious ease, cleave, clutch
and strain for singing nerve-endings, riding a
chorus of feeling. Sadly it lasts no longer than the
mad moment of its being, fleeting impressions
remain contiguous igniting small fires randomly there
at the end of the rumpled sheets where I cannot
erase vaginal thoughts from my head.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

The Mount Beerwah Avocado

Not to be mistaken for the avant garde
fruit which instances the 2004 Barossa
Shiraz, cautiously marketed and
attractively presented: its creator, Grant
Burge would agree that this particular
avocado has yet to reach its potential.

I am drinking from the bottle, mindless of
impressions created imbibing his wine
that way. Worthy of the abbreviation, there
is no glass which celebrates a better flavour
than that which emanates from having
sipped directly from the maker’s lips.

A je ne sais quoi suggesting I like wine
says in knowing what I like I understand.
This avocado is my poetic metaphor, be it
Hass, Sharwil, or one of a thousand or more
from my trees. I know, I created it. This is my
metier: I used to know more than is fair

or fashionable for bending wills, I may
still but don’t need to. Here is my child.
The fruit which has suborned the private
face of the avocado World is without
doubt the Mount Beerwah Avocado.
Try one tomorrow…
© I.D. Carswell 2006

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