Lycée Dreaming

Oh fie,
‘tis a headless ask gone
wanting, making rhyme
of an answering – hunting
for signs in an eyeless dream.
Why put this curse on me?
Why is it I who seeks?

Wherefore you who
are silenced in words;
in double sens one
must agonise and still yet
choose the right meaning.
While silence is complete
making sense is a dying.

I am old, I am
not trying to reach.
My comfort is in teaching
lies the truth, taking the
quick edge in my
hands, turning the
blade inwards.

Yes, there is room
in verse for untruths,
tho’ tell these at your peril
– it will undo of whom you
are; it is seductive evil,
beguiling. And, yes,
it may still rhyme.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Cheered The Monkey Man

They drank and cheered the monkey
man, they whistled their delight and
jeered when lights were focussed on
the band, cheered when lights had
scanned the throng, leered at sights
of couples clasped in close embrace,
laughed at wasted sights who wallowed
in the night and fell or staggered from
the stand. The dancers barely moved
aside, their eyes were dulled their
movement tied to rhythm’s flowing in
the tide of masochistic ecocide. The
singer screamed a puerile rage, he
bounced around the stage possessed,
absurdly gestured, spat invective foul
and rank – he really stank or were they
merely smelling rat. The longer that
they stayed in place the more the
pace aroused their feet, the rhythms
sweet possessed their limbs, their bodies
moved incited by the urging throng,
growing strong and glowing on
they pressed on in,
and pressed on in,
and
then
were
gone…
© I.D. Carswell 2007

We’ll Make A Bloody Poet Of You Yet

My mentor looked up from his desk,
weary eyed, shoulders attested a
huge weight balanced, unforgiving,
in the place he looked out from.

Yes, he asked, I showed him the script
he’d requested. This is crap, he said,
without reading it, you know it, I know it,
let’s not inflict it upon the unsuspecting.

I quipped, too quickly and I knew, how
about the suspecting ones, we could
get an honest opinion there. I mean
this is hours of work I’ve done.

Pig’s arse, he said. It’s crap and that’s
that. Bin it boy, don’t waste your time.
I sighed, knew how right he was, I’d toed
the line with tripe and paid the price.

He smiled, forgave me with a nod and said,
remember day one when you penned the
first verse I read out to class. About a raw
and open heart which throbbed in fear?

I remembered, almost lost in tears for weeks,
a loneliness that seared. I mumbled yes, I was
ashamed of it. That’s great he cried, just great,
---we’ll make a bloody poet of you yet!
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Lead His Soldiers Out To Die

Men, we’re faced with
certain death, I will not
lie about the ask of it; but
hear this said, I will kiss death
as warmly as I kissed life.

You came here with me and
know the facts – I see it in your
eyes; my fear is that I have
failed you, and I have,
it must be said –

the future has now ended,
there is no tomorrow.
I ask you all to join in prayer
a prayer to comfort – a
single plea to share.

“Let the sword
that strikes
strike me
to spare
the innocent.”

With it said he closed
his anguished eyes and
lead his soldiers out to die.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

The Rites Of Spring (and virgin poetry)

This older poet sits astride a mound of
ringing compliments – a monument in
passive style, a massive pile of eager words
derived from easy, simple scenes

that rarely varied, verse to verse, pastoral
hearse of poetry in hackney themes
with flowers that burst in gaudy showers
of gleaming gossamer, fleshed the eyes,

take sinuses by wild surprise, to cloy
in senses openness with stunning wealth
of trance-like feline stalker’s stealth,
---and leave the reader short of breath.

Yes she was good; her way with words
is legendary still today, and though she
rarely writes per se her thoughts are free,
scattered in the rites of spring and virgin poetry.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

The Other Me

The vision of the other me kept
sleep at bay, the other one who
never heeds the prudence
wound around my soul.

He laughs as if to say that deed
was born without a cause, indeed
an inference I’d never run amok
or go astray. And never did.

As if to say I lead a sheltered
life, never stayed away all night,
ran the gauntlet, got in strife,
a boring son who never knew
the joys of fun.

I can concede the the man is
right and irritates for silly, trite
and clearly fickle reasons, The
Season To Be Jolly had me
tickled pink he’d lead the way

– we’d have some fun on
Christmas Day, drink a lot
and poke the snoot, not give
a hoot when tempers flared.

In the event he wasn’t there.
He chose instead the fickle
sod, to take a book
and read in bed.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Awaken To Dreams

The exhortations would not
go away, the never-ending
unreeling of sub-conscious
interrogation hysterical and
delineated, flying on pseudo
ephedrine, swallowing the
phlegm exacerbated in
dreams still half-awake.

Caught in-between,
tortured by meanings
all too clear with real
emotions attached, all of
these things palpably near,
unseen in light of day,
gasping and groaning,
comprehending nothing.

Somewhere sleep ends it,
somehow it ceases; in an
unchallenged hour blissful
release wins respite, comfort
and peace descends. In a
moment’s sleep before dawn
the slate is cleaned, memory
erased. Awaken to dreams.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

In The Ascent Of Summer

In the ascent of summer
we climbed the
unclimbable mountain,
drank from the view.

It spread unbroken,
unbent, a panoramic
firmament majestic
‘neath endless blue sky,
before the eye,
before the where we were
and the who we were
became too much to bear.

You shed tears, declaring
it was too magnificent
to ever forget,
---and yet you did.

I swore we would
climb it again, meant
every word said, gave
commitment we’d return.

We’ve talked of the view
as horizons loom bleak and
portentous, hemming us in,
we’ve agreed to return.
It is time that we did.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

January 3rd, 2007

All things considered it’s been
a great day, the guests got away
without mishap (apart from a
few phone calls to check
destination addresses),

the missus is in good shape,
sort of happy-sad the kids
(grown up now) left to get
on with their lives, as she knew
they would – bringing an end
to golden days.

The washings out drying and
most chores are done; for me,
well I’m too tired to think about
it – I hope the son stationed
in Iraq’s safe, he says he’s okay
but I reckon he’s like me, can’t
wait to get home again.

The cricket’s been crap, that
short spell of rain alone made
today worth a few beers,
which I’ve had, and the missus
is on the way back from the
movies.

Yeah, all things
considered – it’s been easy.
A pizza for tea kind of day.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Moved Within Spheres

iconoclastic
refusing to use
the symbols infused
in an inventory
of masochistic
misanthropy.
Too crudely
representative
to see a strange
sameness
too bombastically
blind to care less
too hide bound
to feel the beat
he is out of step to.

And yet he claims
his is the true way.
This scratch he says
was a stick flung
at my feet, the
itch that moved me
to repudiate
that
which is, and
that
which is to be.
I am free of all
that.
And he moved
within spheres
within
spheres.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Because I Care For What They Do

Just spent some hours delving into things
belonging to people whom I know, the
kind of claggage attached to baggage
they have lugged gratuitously for years

brought to light by fears of failure, fears
of inadequacy, depression, diminished
confidence. Call it an investment in creativity,
prurient maybe, and not my forte by natural

inheritance. These are talented people - the
worst I can imagine is I become focusless,
diffused, mired by their misery. But I’ve been
there and there is no magic panacea

I’ve been there, jeered as I drifted dismasted,
abandoned in express shipping lanes, run
down by 100,000 tonne freighters crewed by
comatose compliments of three cruising at

warp speed on blind-weed. Been there and
bear the scars. These friends, who bought my
time with their fine, unasked for compliments,
who stopped for a moment to share the view

write like I do, cheer much for the same things.
And I will not abandon them, will dare to prop
up the bulwarks against their insidious loss of
confidence because I care for what they do.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Presidential Dilemmas: Jerking Sympathy

If you expected to jerk some sympathy
from me I am afraid you’ve wasted your
whole, melodramatic presentation.

Actually, I am not afraid, I am jolly well
pleased you’ve wasted your time, you’ve
just wasted a substantial amount of mine

with a drama which barely rated as
entertaining. It was scarcely earth-shattering
news and you misplaced the punch line

anyway. I suggest you try something different,
why not adopt an original, if somewhat pathetic,
approach – why not grovel and beg?
© I.D. Carswell 2007

We Balance The Earth

This land called ‘down-under’ is not one
country. Nor is it a state of being Australian
explained by hemispheres and ideas north
of here. This land is a vibrant thought waiting
to be recognised by itself, biding an eternity
of time as it moves apart. We are the weight
of this sphere, we are Gondwana and we
balance the Earth.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Once Were Poets

Once were warriors, these poets, once
were champions; fit, young and tanned
in their battle dress, truth’s exemplars.

Once were worthy, these bravos, once
were steel to stand staunch to ideals,
unassailable in their righteous belief.

Once were harbingers, heralds of new
eras, angels of illusory imaginings where
truth holds a moral constituency.

Once wrote with meaning, once wrote
in fear-trembling hands words wielded
as swords in hand-to-hand combat.

Once died on the field. Once bled sweet
blood in wasted words and blighted breath
with no hope of temporal recompense.

Once were poets who clamoured keen
when hordes invaded, conceded their
scared land, wielded white handkerchiefs.

Once were poets
– who now entertain.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Thoughts Of What She Might Have Missed

The skin was bare and envious, raked with
bumps of gooseflesh where a cooling
breeze assailed its fleshy ampleness.

The young man stared, he’d never
thought to witness such a bounty and
declared his willingness to be interred

right there, enfolded in the pliant mounds.
She took him by the ears and kissed him
senseless, buried him between her breasts

and held him tight. If he never saw the light
of day or breathed again she’d made his
happiness complete, saved the sheets from

messy smears his cheekiness would surely
seek, a cheekiness that made her weak
and easy to surmount, but thankfully her

flout of tits had dulled his wits. She listened to his
peaceful snores which lulled her dreams and
thought of what she might have missed.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

When The Tree Frogs Sing

In evening when the tree frogs sing
in choral chant as the dusk sets in, as
the night falls free from ringing song of
their voices raised in the reckoning,
as the chorus strong is echoing in a dark
which flows on beckoning, we’re freed
from fertile care.

The soft song clings to the mantling which
shrouds the trees where the frogs all sing
and we rest at ease with imaginings of an
evening’s perfect rendering – a song-fed
glory blending in with the frogs in the trees
where they’re sheltering and the trees at
ease with the songs they sing.

When the tree frogs sing in the evening air
and daylight flies to their precious care,
when choral voices fade and die the night
invades with a silent sway to signify the close
of light – another day and another tune where
the frogs exult in singing in the peace
and harmony they bring.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Sasha And The Mount

Reciting Sasha in words
would be like capturing
a shard of sunlight,
refracting it to express
a spectrum of light
and finding it far
too flat. She is more four
dimensional than that.
Her existence is
infinitesimally fractionated,
she is a thousand
simultaneous conversations,
a million strands of information,
a mass of contemporary
relationships.

And when the mountain
fell on her head and she
froze in stasis it is said
the mountain bled for
her silently. It is not a
submissive mountain,
but Sasha will climb it
again to be part of the
pantheon at its peak.
She will flicker and glow
in the circle of light which
defines the ancient deities,
grow with dedication and
ceremony. Sasha is ready
to climb Mt Beerwah again.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Reached Across The Centuries

The name on the letterbox has a
poignant familiarity, you knew him
when he rang the classic bells of
verse, when he sang those sweet
etudes in words that reached across
the centuries, a man who pleased
his readers, quenched their thirst,
seduced them with the melodies
that claimed their ears and tamed
a fractious Earth.

For shame that poet doesn’t live here
anymore. The man who’ll answer doesn’t
care for faithfulness, the dishevelled
hair implies a fall from grace, unshaven
face, eyes that stare at distant dreams,
a voice that trembles. He is a lonely man,
wanders aimlessly in shambling gait, he
stares, and waits. The words you want to
say have flown from your mind, the praise,
the flowery phrases teased to ease your

gratitude have gone. “I came…,” you start
to say and cannot carry on, the words
are wrong, the pleasure meant to be is
soured and rancid in your mind. For
heaven’s sake you didn’t know the man
was deaf and blind to geniality. And yet
the beauty of his words still echo clear
and ring in chorus true within your inner ear,
the lines you want to say are settled for
“…to thank you.”
© I.D. Carswell 2007

On The Other Side Of Your Tears

A view through tears
is clear – imbued of water
and peculiar-to-human
things oozed by glands:
I am amazed when you
claim to be blinded by them.

A near likeness is rain,
in shape and emotional
wear the drops are the same,
but raindrops refract light
in a miraculous show, was there
ever a teardrop rainbow?

I am standing here on the
other side of your tears,
you can see me if you dare,
I know you are looking
for I feel the emotional
power that heaves in you.

I am standing on the
other side of your tears
and you know
I cannot leave.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

I Like To Look

If I could wear your breasts today
I’d treat them extra gently, and
in that way I’d get to fondle
rather than abuse a right you
claim I never had, a fondling space
that’s reached its use-by date. I’ve
thought about it much of late,
your breasts I mean, the right can
wait, because I rarely get to cop
a decent feel.

The deal, you say,
is keep away - indefinitely. You know
I need to exercise my hands and
mind – that’s why I pat your sweet
behind each time I pass; it is a classy
ass which asks with cheekiness
and sass to be admired.
And as the child within me says
I like to look, but understand,
I can only see if I use my hands.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

One For The Crows

I will confess to liking crows – I know
that doesn’t sound like a man given
to farmer’s trenchant views, a
man with a penchant to tilt and

overthrow the balance of wild
and free species he sees as potentially
antagonistic to his agrarian game;
but crows don’t really conflict with

the aims of growing avocados. I know
they eat an odd one or two when
food is scant, and I don’t begrudge
them that; I used to get testy though

when they bashed a few more from the
trees, knowing they would ripen as food
for tomorrow. But I’ve learned to live with
that; in fact I get a payback from my friends,

better than a Government cheque. You
see the crows keep the real pests on
the wing, and as a consequence, the
orchard is pretty much vermin free.

Now did I train them,
or did they train me?
© I.D. Carswell 2007

‘06 Was A Shit Year, ‘07 Better Be Better!

Sure,
disappointment is easier to deal with drunk,
insensate, comatose, dead-eye pissed,
inebriated and flaked. A fuck-it all state
where nothing matters. But this ain’t
a cool place to start out on a classic binge.
Mate, you’ve heard tales of morning’s after
awakenings when death would have
been a sinecure, were it an option, when
one vows it will never happen again – those
legendary tales of tongues shaved and
vomit caked. Believe me man, it all began
from a sorry-arsed unhappy state to start with,
disappointment from the beginning.

No way mate, the go is to celebrate like
you’ve just won – bugger the score or the
notions of anyone who had reason to piss
up the wind, get in there and piss alongside
them, steal their thunder, lose your loser’s
cloak and become an abuser with the
rest, let wit and invective invent you again.
It ain’t easy, but then your natural instincts
to be life of the party will win. If you keep
the perspective then you will wake to glory.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

In Endless Corridors

Three hundred and sixty five poems
piled on the living room floor and the
poet writes more. It is his way of giving
thanks and celebrating, his way
of sharing what was in the beginning
an anxious ask. Now caring souls are
heeding his words, easing the task.

There is a way to go; simple arithmetic
will suggest 635 poems at least are free
of a tether, still to be gathered from the
air they have weathered in, there in the
windrows of experience, the washrooms
and weigh-stations, the beer-halls and
backdoors, in endless corridors.

The journey thus far is a dream, a vision
visited in an instant and forever familiar,
a pillar propping up this poet’s visionary
world of winsome words drifting in reach,
to be plucked and savoured like the ripe
peaches of a favoured childhood, tasted
forever and crafted in charismatic verse.

Bear with me. Come fly on my journey…
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Let Me Enjoy My Dotage

Should I be amused by thoughts
of Langston Hughes reading this
verse, or please, the hilarious
equitation of William Topaz
McGonagall taking the same
perfidious perambulation.

Alas, I know they’re dead, and
that the game has gone from
bad to worse through their heirs,
who cling to my corpse, singing
dreamily in my ears, drowning out
the sweet sounds of singular
adulation echoed in thunderous
one-handed applause.

While I don’t mind Langston’s
benign and munificent attention
I won’t say the same for anyone
with Topaz for a middle name.
I beseech you, leave me
peacefully in my senile
senescence, let me
enjoy my dotage please.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

Fringe Of Woodstock’s Legend

Blissful Ben got lucky last night, didn’t return
from the festival’s New Year’s Eve rendering,
Sasha awoke free from nocturnal fright or ghastly
trauma she delights in describing, waking bright

and bubbly, keen in her recollections; Orlando
charmed again with his singular and honest
observations, a gentle man with an open and
welcoming smile. Chris and Frida were quieter

this morning, still half way back from Sri Lanka
and the delights of Mysore, straight off the plane,
into the deep end of the maelstrom; Grigor,
with his wry Austrian way of uniting the strands

of idiomatic Australian in miscomprehension,
a whole new way of communicating, had a
memorable evening – standing taller than all
but a pair of the wash of crazies crowding

the lanes between bright, tribal stalls, making
a thunderous recitation of humorous good sense.
Craig drove us there and back again, a third time
veteran of the festival, while Anita and I as the

ingénues were conceptually wide-eyed. Asked
would I go to Woodford again – there is nothing
but fine-tuned feelings of good-will and gladness,
and memories resurgent of being 21 again, immersed
in the living fringe of Woodstock’s Legend.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Legend Of Glasshouse Mountains

Tibrogargan broods uneasily, looks out
to sea from furrowed brows, his flanks
a shroud of bitter angst - sorely bound
by tribal law; behind his naked calloused
back Beerwah cries with saddened eyes
that leak and track the plains in silver
streams. Coonowrin, the errant son, stares
through tears and crooked neck,
wondering what might have been.

The blow that bent his graceful neck was
tribal law dispensed in vain, more painful
to the father than the errant one, and through
the years his fate remains a deep regret,
a silenced conscience screams the lore is
wrong, forgive, forget. Bring back the life
we lived before the floods inflamed this
sadly maddened state, redress the pain.
Tibrogargan stays the same, unable to relent.

Coonowrin calls to twins, Tunbubudla,
Miketeebumulgrai – don’t look at me,
I am ashamed. Forgive me if you can.
I would have helped her had I known.
Elimbah, his sister, shoulders bent from
many cares sheds endless tears; the one
called Round – so fat and small and
the one named Wild Horse who strayed
while others played all look away.

I stand here next to Beerwah, hear her
thoughts. Climb to the sky she thinks,
climb me and free us from misery. Talk to
the spirits and say it is time for change, ask
them to please let him forgive Coonowrin,
forgive him, and give me back my children.
© I.D. Carswell 2006

The Same Brand Of Tranquilliser

I joined the debate too late to make
an impression, it was a depressing
debate anyway, about whether or
whatever the morality of killing a
tyrant had as relevance for our
ersatz sense of societal values. To be
outraged was easy, all the signs said
so, and so we were irritated our better
judgement had been high-jacked by
late evening viewer ratings. I don’t
give a goddamn about dictators in
the Middle East as much as they have
the same feelings about me. In point
of fact they do a better job of being
dictators than I do of being irritated.
But being forced to view the worst case
of prurient interest news imaginable
couched with consensual intrigue and
slam-dunked into living rooms as a
matter of goodwill just about did it
for me. I need the same brand of
tranquilliser they gave Saddam.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Festival Of The Butterflies, Woodford Revisited

Before these real images fade into the
legend and dream-like place where
the gatherings of the long-haired and
flower-decked faithful hear the same
dissertations, before I see them as scarce
adumbrations of forty years passed and
burned in a night and the turning of a year,
before I grow weary let me say with awe,
I was there.

My body’s liquids vibrated in the amplified
blast of bass notes growled through the
amphitheatre, my ears felt the power
and my eyes saw them, lost in themselves,
jerking in rhythms syncopated, flailing their
hair, free-form worshipping in stark and
raw strobe lit rites, offering the rare induction
of group fusion, of dimensional mind
in solid transition.

They were too easily broken and re-birthed
in the neat hand rattle of sweet percussion
that thrummed its demands. They were
seduced by voices that mumbled manic
messages or screamed adulation while the
band played and the land swayed beneath
their pliant feet. Yet there in the crowded arena
we shared three minutes of candle-lit peace
in an eloquent unity, an unbroken silence.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

A Fragile Beauty Writing In The Damn Cold

While translating her ordinary thoughts
to lines on paper she had a revelation,
who would want discourse, or intercourse
for that matter, with a girl who was so
patently obvious? It came hot breathed,
urgent and unveiling, she was not someone
with whom she wanted a relationship.

She had read to death and back again
every passionate and moving poem ever
written by men, and some by awesome
women whom she held in great regard,
and in the final rendering they too were
too damn obvious, condescending even;
no room for improvement being like them.

Then a line sprang from her confusion, a
hairy thing that jumped sideways from
staid and usually urbane classical fields,
landed in an undignified sprawl, square
where she’d thought a genteel opinion
might engender the right sentiment. And
it did, breaking the chain, setting her free.

Now she writes easily, cares less of restraint
or whether her meaning is bent by rogue
ideas married to obscure opinion, senses
an enjoyment outreaching the bare words,
revels in less rhyme and more meaning, dares
tilt at icons shared as sacrament. It is lonely
out there, but the cold is pure damn gold.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

My Grandmas Did It Shamelessly

My grandmas did it shamelessly in
public; on the bus, in trains, on the
sidewalk – even when we were out
driving to the shops. It got to me
eventually, I began to see it as
something necessary for life, not
the outrage it would have
been in any other existence.

My mother did it and all my aunts,
and if they didn’t do it openly
I imagined they did it in the discrete
comfort of their long-lived relationships,
in the small-ways and the hallways
and in the closets and the cloisters
of their dwellings.

My cousins did it frequently, without
guilt or hinted embarrassment, and a
girl I once admired did it in the stand
at Rugby Park while we watched a
stirring rugby match. I remember that
only too well, I was asked when
the happy event was happening.

Yeah, I knew you’d ask - what the Hell
were they doing? You can’t wait, used
up your imagination. They were knitting;
knit one, purl one, knit two together,
pull the wool through, start all over.
Knitting the fabric of life, teasing the
yarn into yards of scarves, socks, and
jerseys to be worn by the unwitting, the
unwilling, the comprehensively loved.
© I.D. Carswell 2006