Happy At Last To Be Home Alone

He struggled for years to write
the perfect poem, by chance
he read that exact verse written
by a practising moron, no less
and no presence – a real moron
who made no bones about it,
one Henry Herbert Goddard,
psychologist.

It said all the things he wanted
to say, all the things he had said
badly, and all the wise things that
he thought needed to be said
about people.

It resonated with such intense clarity
in his head that he went mad.
Now he rests easily with the said
moron, happy at last to be
home alone.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-31

Falling For The Trap (of his own rhetorical thirst)

Felled by the ward of his intransigence,
levelled and laid flat, sword brandished
in denial – sword wafting words uttered
emphatically in a trial of words by words,
falling for the trap of his own rhetorical
thirst, falling into the gap between those
who run first and those who carp and
cry in the pack – an empty husk cracked
and ablated, an old fool trashed.

He rises from the refuse pile and smiles
awkwardly; the weight of years is erased
in a cloak of discarded peel and wilted
celery, he feels the freedom beckoning,
he steals a glance at the husk in the
recycled livery of an unnatural trance,
shakes his tangled hair, shambles from
a grave of arrogance – is there still room
out there for an old stager – somewhere?
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-31

The View Few Would Contemplate

We spent the day delivering things;
water to the trees – their air of good
grace eases the ache that makes
replacing sprinklers a curse in the heat,
their benevolent shade is sweet comfort
- new leaf confirms their relief.

We took the three day old chickens
hatched in the peak of the heatwave
to their new home – six to go, eight laid
low with me despairing; caring for their
comfort and welfare rests heavily –
why did they die, where does it end?

Then we visited an extraordinary man –
shared a beer and dined on the view
of the Glasshouse Mountains few would
contemplate. He and his life-mate are
true-life compatriots who wear their
affection dearly as ordinary clothes.

We know we should have stayed longer,
the pleasure of their company is a treat
but this meeting has assured us we will
greet them on our side of the mountains
before too many summer nights have
expired. And we will be grateful for that.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-01

What Kind Of Delinquent Thinking Is That

Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,
you’re a Brisbane ABC Radio talk show
host and the debate on recycled water
is a farce because, quote: You think we
all should have to drink recycled
water to make it socially equitable.

Wait a bit, who’s run out of water? Think
on it – we’ve never even mentioned it.
By God, then it’s you! And you pontificate
on a waterless State as if we all have to
share the blame for the shameful solo
debt of profligacy Brisbane alone incurred!

So the scheme to pipe 70 mega litres of
recycled water a day from here into the
city grid has you in fits – you think we
should have to drink it instead of you.
But we don’t need to! Don’t nearly use
the storage water we already have.

If you don’t want it we’ll let it run out to
sea – easy come easy go gal. Now let’s
see, I just flushed away two cups of tea,
the means to wash your BMW & refresh
the lawn. And when I empty the sink you’ve
lost your only chance of a shower today.

I understand you want access to our
water before we’ve used it? Really!
What kind of delinquent thinking is that?
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-01

It Is Just A Game (at heart)

It is just a game,
that is the literal truth,
one where you put
your aspirations in the
aperture provided and
pull the handle.

So it is a bit more complex –
perhaps you need
a uniform, a set of boots
and a hat; a coach
and a masseuse.

A playing field, a parking
lot, changing rooms and
other what-nots in the way of
facilities, referees, umpires,
judiciaries.

Then there is the raft
of memorabilia; trophies
and cups and shields with
pennants and ribbons, flags
and trenchant supporter
zeal – the whole deal a
new-wave surreality.

With legal contracts and
financial backers and
sponsorship on live TV.

Woe is me, it couldn’t get
worse than the rigueur
of being owned by an
asshole entrepreneur.

But it is just a game
Mac. At heart,
it is just a game.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-01

Make Me Live Again, (think of me when I’m dead)

If I ever despair, rock my chair.
Draw the shades and let
music swell from the ceiling. I

have dwelt in this realm for sixty
years and I still cannot
comprehend why my feelings

are unchanged. If my last resting
place is behind a plaque on a
wall in a shady place I will not

disgrace it – I’ll be deceased,
the noise comes instead from
the living imbued with their

ideas of my discontent. That is
my legacy. Make me live again,
think of me when I’m dead.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-01

I’ll Meet You There

It’s been
a thankless ask
one of my own making
I set the task
breaking the same
sticks to beat my back
as to bear my weight
taking the hard road
when choices framed
no practical limitations
when freedom to choose
was a right to abuse.

I’ve reviewed
the path I chose
confused I’ve come
this far from a vague
sense of direction
unclear where I’m going
only knowing
with utter assurance that
I’ll meet you there.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-02

An Autumn Wedding

An Autumn wedding
in verity – but this is
indeed Spring’s ambiance
reflected in today’s
warmth and charity;

April showers cleanse
the air of yesterday’s
heat, but today we meet
here – where your real
beginnings began

we are gathered
for your matrimony
as friends forever
bound in the bonds
of your joining

this is a fusing
of your free spirits
engendered in
a transience of magic
and shared with joy

may this carnival
day and the colours
you wear remain
untarnished,
evermore.
© 9 March, 2007 I.D. Carswell

Greetings Lady Master

This lady was never one to push
her own barrow – yet she did
in discrete silence with veiled
aplomb! In the event she mastered,
be amazed, not in an ordinary sense,
honoured in a unique way to make
her selflessness elite.

Shirley rose above a seamless
serendipity to show the love that
flowed without respite was worth
every heartbeat bequeathed;
every instant felt for her grew
into the consequence needed to
make her troth and to succeed.

Greetings Lady Master, halloo
and tally ho, the coursing has
begun. You may not ease the
follow, you have just begun
to run.
© 11 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

Bullshit We Invariably Use

Spent a couple hours at the Sunday Market
this A.M.; a chance to say ‘gidday’ to old
friends (articulated in Australian the
same way the word sounds), went to catch
up on gossip and see what was ‘going down’.

The truth was nothing much – though there
were a pony club, gymkhana and equestrian
trials on simultaneously in the centre ring;
but no bloody customers was the common
theme and, well, it’s too hot anyway.

We shopped judiciously for fresh vegetables
and new season fruit on offering; Anita knows
all the Stall Holders worth going to – our good
friends Daph and Clem were still selling orchids,
Jack and Di flogging limes and lady fingers.

We didn’t linger, said our giddays and shot
through. Markets where you’re not selling you
don’t dither in – Jesus, you’d lose your credibility
quicker than you’d lose a quid. But mostly you
don’t hear the bullshit we invariably use.
© 11 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

Does It Get Any Better Than That?

Transcript of a
roadside interview:
notes appended.

A goddamn bucolic view;
a lusty rusticate playing the
simpleton shepherding
sleepy sheep, dreaming
harvest moon dreams of
shagging the reaper’s lass
in an August hayrick. If
that’s what he’s up to
most days we’ll stick no
posters on his bumper bars,
demand no contributions
to the Nation’s great debate,
leave him out of our polls
and surveys measuring
the national pulse, stay
entirely out of his rustic
& quaint, countrified way.

Wow, does it get any better
than that?
© 13 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

Every Thunderous Falsehood

The light in her life dimmed
and failed,
dissociating
places she knew
without needing to see:
the half-empty cup of tea placed
unconsciously
on the corner of the table,
next to
the phonebook
she never used,
in view of the mirror
given only to reflecting
bad feelings,
by the curiously silent phone;
all these receded
into featureless shadows.
But her ears heard
every thunderous falsehood
uttered
in thirty five years.
© 14 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

In Full View Of The Moon

On a star-lit night
and in full view of the moon
you made a premise

we would be wed soon.
I had so strongly believed
in the lunar fates

that the make and mend
conversation did not end
in my baffled ears

but resonated
for forty two moon-lit years –
whose idea was it?
© 14 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

CO2 Emissions Are Hot Air

I am sure they have existed
before and like others of their ilk,
distinguished themselves similarly.

They claim in antagonistic
submissions of pseudo-science
there is nothing more to the global
warming debate on anthropogenic

carbon dioxide emissions than a lot
of hot air. They do not deny the
advent of climate change, merely

that we breeders to extinction
are its cause and solely to blame.
It is hard to believe these recondite
visionaries live in the same refuse

heaps of our dysfunctional cities,
factually deaf to anecdotes
of over-population, derisive of

resource depletion,
ignoring pollution,
blind to everything
they would rather not see.
© 15 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

Too Full Of It To Know

Why am I writing this? I concluded
an hour ago we lived in sh*t, weren’t
aware of it but didn’t give a sh*t per
se – and thus the status quo are made.

I refer to the sh*t we listen to, the sh*t
we watch on TV, the advertising sh*t
selling dreams full of sh*t – and so much
so it’s bursting our seams.

I look up a Thesaurus full of sh*t and
learn the term ‘taboo’ attaches to it,
a weak euphemism for ‘bad’ sh*t, cited
in a laconic and sit-comic way.

Like, it’s bad sh*t and we live in it, eat it,
listen to it, smell, see & feel it day after day.
And nobody gives a sh*t, while mostly we’re
too full of it to know that anyway.
© 15 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

Fascination Ended

Too naive back then for envy –
found instead a stirring
fascination in the gaudy dress,
the stance,
the polished diction;

he knew I was impressed,
a simple rustic lad
with much less polish yet
in all improbability
a grandiose vocabulary.

He used to test
the range of words,
a party joke that played
into his hands
until I learned.

In time when I became blasé
and teased his made-up air
of the inchoate
neo-sophisticate
we parted ways.

We remain
good friends –
no envy cruelled a giddy scene,
no dour or lasting enmity,
just fascination’s end.

I am assured
of more in you than he
the girl who had preferred me said,
pleased to stake her portion
free of keepers claims.
© 16 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

‘Arizona’ Joe

Maricopa County – the ascent of man
arrested, the descent into an unhinged
republicanism encouraged inceptively
by downtown, hoedown homilies

expressed in the irrepressible parlance
of a much re-elected Sheriff, ‘Arizona’ Joe
Arpaio. The Badge ain’t mean – he just
invented a new way to contravene civil

liberties with a rich and powerful appeal
to the mind-numbed, comatosed vote-blind
who still find Dubya a new-age saint, which,
in no small-minded, word-mangling way he

exactly ain’t. I say Joe’s antics are okay by and
large, the way he shits on all prisoners equally,
feeding them at 15 cents per meal per day says
‘don’t fuck with the Law in Maricopa County –

it don’t pay!’ But when deputies dispense their fervent
zeal in beating men to death while ‘questioning’ them,
and are set free, one has to express some concern:
‘Hey, Joe, wait up a bit. Y’all ain’t outside the Law.’

I thought a sheriff’s job was to uphold that
august statute – not abuse it, no matter what
he finds fit. But that’s not the way they see it
in ‘Arizona’ Joe’s Maricopa County.
© 16 March 2007, I.D. Carswell

Duty’s Shadowed Gloom

You’ve cleaned the gun
with slavish care, the same
concentric careful way you’ve
always done. The training
stays imprinted where
your thinking ceased and
runs a litany of ceaseless
inner talk – your fingers
walk familiar sets without
the need to see the pieces
fit in perfect match, the
closing of the latch, the
silky snick. You rise to
booted feet and hooded
eyes, the faces stained in
broken lines besmeared
by graphic paint. Silence
taut, the air intense, a
hunger burns, a caustic
fear erodes the guts but
there the signal starts the
move and matching parts
are met and merge in
silent dance to disappear
in duty’s shadowed gloom.
© 17 March 2007, I.D. Carswell