Ernie Dingo For President

Ernie Dingo for Pres!
Yeah! Cut thru all the
crap, elect a bloke we
admire. We’ve seen a

few too many fat-cats
prance their lick-arse
dance for titbits from
PM’s plates – selected

by rye-grass peerage;
yet here’s a sterling
fellow with roots in
The Real Australia!

Oondamooroo, that’s
his proper name, ‘Shield’
in the Wadjarri language
of the Yamatji people.

A good bloke too,
no prejudices; he’d
be the last bastard
to knock the great

Australian dream –
a damn good shield
for future uncertainty.
We need changes tho’,

this Monarchy thing
is too dated to be more
than aspirin relief from
mean colonial History.

Ernie reminds us gentiley
of that. But in any event
he’d aptly champion a
new Republic, be the

best First President of a
new and, God forbid,
wash your mouth out –
United Australia!
© 8 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Death Of Civilization

Seeking art in minds of simple men’s
fey shadows wrong-sides me. I am a
simple man, yet I see an argument
for brighter lights as worse than the
gloom we try to escape; there are greater
fates than the death of our civilization –
annihilation of my mind amongst them.
The mindlessly numb already berate us
where we should be religiously quiet.
I can wait in the graveyards and the
backwaters of time, a penance for me
as I have lived forever – I can survive
in the sceptic waters while seeking the
keys there; simple as I am I would know
them when I see them. Raised by a woman
it is easy – so let me lead...
© 8 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Lead Me To The Narrow Way

I am content at last – freed of
vanities restraint by your consent;
I wasn’t meant, you say to take an
extra yard there was no need
to play a loser’s game.

You’ve refereed where judges
failed to heed the code of love,
a book they found above their
tomes of lust and precedent;
the dust of sentience.

And in the mellow sweep
of your awareness, deep inside
the tombs where life is
resurrected in effete
and loving tenderness

I am enshrined. You glide
about me as glyph that’s
come to life; a way that
shines – a single light to
lead me to the narrow way.
© 9 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Givers

It is gratitude of goodwill, a sense
of rare respect seldom present in
an ordinary sense. When you saw
a beauty in the words you came on
my side of the fence, joining me in
pastures rich in grazing. In a soft
and salutary way you have saluted
me with gest. I now return in favour
free of any hint of artifice that I am
pleased in heart and soul, you’ve
seen a dream of splendour where
I wrote in words – glimpsed the air
resplendent, heard the very chords
I heard. Your thanks confirms me
right; I’ll sleep the angels’ sleep and
soar tonight in dreams content.
© 10 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Awake, ‘The Dream’

It was a parody – a tasteless spoof
on lover’s leaking fluids, a delight in
making light of night’s sweet congress,
of soulful sex’ insightful whim in bodily
awareness. It might have seemed
much more than that, sounded right
and proper melody for praise; in fact
it was a base and blasé send-up of the
way we seek a glory in our acts of selfish
need. The words were plain, indeed
the climax came and went like echoes
in an empty head completely drained,
the hollow feeling framed in bliss that
bled its warm munificence in arms
wound tight around a dream that
wrinkled wet and meekly waned...
© 10 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

They Care Enough

Unless you shared a beer you’d say ridiculous –
yet these are people whom you’d trust because
they really cared enough to want know your name.
In love with fun and love as such – delighting in
the sun as much as children can, these sons and
daughters all have seen a privileged light.

The flame that brightly burns within each one
cares less of age than pastures free of monuments
– space to see and move within, places where the
pace keeps time at bay, and there they go in droves
to play their games of structured innocence, revel in
a welcome sense of family, a unity of diligence.

Just young, you’ll say. One was meant to frolic in
the early years; desist, I say – for sure they play
at life, laugh and smile a lot, greet each other in
a welcome way of glowing warmth, friendship
rated greater than career, they work to play not
make their work the centre of their daily cheer.
© 11 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Forget The Weave Of The Bassinet

When you can move within spheres of
ideas free of dimensionality, when the
boundaries binding a flat plane stand on
end, embracing scale and bend into an
infinity of instant and forever; when you
can see all possibilities then you can begin.
Where you stand keeps your eyes closed,
blind to words untried and unused, deaf
to phrases not raised in – bound to finite
origins. We heed only the calls of past
generations – like muezzin wails from the
minarets. One must forget the weave
of the bassinet to know what is lost.
© 11 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

How Would He Write The Poem Today

How would he write the poem today?
He couldn’t wander aimlessly
trespass Laws and vagrancy
are rather clear – with right of way
he could well be a lonely cloud,
see daffodils in crowded dance
but dare to pick one – not a chance
(you’d better know it’s not allowed)!
And where they danced along the bay
the waters gone – the margin lost
the trees are lopped the Lake reclaimed
the waters left have all been drained
to water grids at torrid cost
a-twinkle like the Milky Way...
© 11 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Breathing In The Here-And-Now

Is it disease that sours the intellect?
Fame or notoriety viewed in any other
way exacts its toll in heresies; a mass
belief of factual fallacy is still no less a
fact. We’re in a poets’ cloister here –
and all too well aware of that.

A younger man would take his pen and
run; flee the savages who fawn around
the feet of idols incomplete, token men
and women who compete with flashy
jibes and trashy innuendo, deriding minor
scribes, write with fleas for eagle’s eyes.

Where I’ve scratched the rashes red and
raw, bound the bloodied stumps of limbs
torn less from anger than distress a lick
of passion won’t redress this sorry state.
The ashes of a cold and dead cremation
make a better place to start afresh.

So fade to black, start anew and cut the crap.
Save your adulation for those figurines on
crowded shelves in gaudy porcelain; read
the verse and think again – will it mean a
goddamned thing in twenty years? Breathing
in a heady here-and-now won’t alter that.
© 14 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Clichés In Bad Taste

Pretentious old poets finagle words once used in place
of their failed physical presence, attempt to usurp
where their powers once used to command –
dwindled since to damp and hollow innuendo;

they dress grandiose and pretend or stretch
imagination with strut-bouffant inventions;
combing a lack of hair that once stood aloof,
afire and untamed in smooth, denatured tho’

artificial locks drawn across wrinkled pate. I
stand at the museum’s gate and gaze reverent
at busts of the late great bestowed on
ivory pedestals by a generation in awe,

aware there is no room for them; their words
are toxic insect waste, ritual gyrations of an
antique form, a crude parody of the mating
– artifice and sad clichés in bad taste...
© 3 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Election Erections And Fiscal Peace

It was a debate we always had to have;
we’re close mates of that kind, mirrors of
similar ideas but beneath each essentially
his own man – in the event quite different.

So we trade clichés, walk quietly around what
is meant, recognise Political peerage. I am
sort of socialist but not bent irrevocably to the
Left, able to glory in ideas; he is more or less

astride the centre – fears for the lack of its
cerebral weight and the baggage of years, of
casualties. We were soldiers together and knew we
were used, there is strong consensus and true

unity in our sense of family. We agreed in the
end there is more to this election than the
hollow rhetoric of an out-of-touch PM, or a
rash of fine ideas from a would-be successor.

The battle-lines once again raise banners of a
Union spectre; right or wrong the issues of our
needs eventuated by votes cast in the light
of a supposed bogeyman. Right or wrong

he sees the issue’s simplicity as one where
Kevin Rudd might win the people’s hearts
but Julia Gillard holds the keys to industrial
peace, and thus, our future prosperity.
© 4 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Pay In Bastard Kind

Piece of cake we say, too
simple, or a breeze, but no, I
never understood the meaning.

To easy to mistake it for
that pleasant something
though I’d weigh the chance

it came to pass as payment
for a nasty deed. A piece of
cake for me? Do I get to say

which sort? The answer will
of course dismay romantics;
you cannot chose your cake

and eat it – a trophy for display,
symbol of the heady sum of
good you’ve done within your

dastard’s deed; that’s why I say
I’ve never kept the need in mind
to pay with cake in bastard kind.
© 4 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Where The Old Men Stare

Young men dream
with eyes wide wakened,
staring deep in passion’s faces,
drinking in the sweet awareness,
blinded to fate’s celebrations.

Chase in pairs
rare energies, dancing
errant of a caution,
feasting eyes will fail to see
the dangers present in a warning.

Young men waken,
wary eyes are worn-out arrows
dreams dissolved in flickered shadows
dusted schemes are pillared billows
dreams that died or bent like willows.

Mud of lust
repairs the vision, eyes now blind see
sights unrisen, comfort cares of mother’s
ensign, sheeted where the old men stare
sleep alone in sainted peace.
© 4 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Plainly By The Same Blinkered Eyes

Which persona do I correspond with,
may I ask? More so I get a gender
than a name? You know I do not care
how many times you clone yourself,
you’re all essentially the same. Now
let me see; there was a vibrant minx

with chocolate label, claimed to be
16, an older guy – middle-aged with a
ladies handle, at least two pseudo
dominatrix by trade if Lady Lash & Puss
in Boots has any meaning, and a fly-away,
Moon Chime Swoon, vaguely oriental?

And you, of course, LMA Male. Eccentric,
definitely, respectable, maybe. Mad as a
hatter, true – surely by your dysfunctional
definition of separate entities doing
business successfully. But you do need to
talk to each other, get roles squared away.

What I wanted to say was, please refrain
from leaving comments on each other’s
verse too easily attributed to your main
persona; I’d rather pithy observations
placed there weren’t plainly by
the same blinkered eyes...
© 5 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

One learns that human nature is too easily exploited.
The 'personas' mentioned are commonplace in the
Poem Hunter site - what a waste of effort!

Sweetest Liquors Of The Night

The sound of steady rain relieves
a constant, nagging state – a feeling
of suspension; it started late bringing
sleep as sweet as sugared dreams
and dream we did in pleasant peace.

I am awake, at my feet an old and
trusty friend, a wary dog advanced
in years who’s pleased to sleep inside,
wonders why it isn’t always so, but
frees anxiety to rain’s hypnotic beat.

My mind’s eye sees patient clouds in
blues and greens sweep majestically
over vastness brown and weeping, love
of the singing bringer ekes out smiles
were frowns have creased for weeks;

and in the coming dawn will be a
solemn revelry when sun’s rays seek
early leaves delight, grateful trees
exhaling, breathing deep and easy,
drinking sweetest liquors of the night.
© 6 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Taking Tea In Avon

Is that a hand of welcome? I guess not,
palm uppermost suggests you want a tip;
I’ll offer you my hand to shake instead,
take a grip on friendship’s hand for free.

Life’s full of expectancy, I’ll grant you one
glimpse without fee, ponder on this cast-iron
certainty – Hell will freeze many times
before you get a tip from me!

You’ll get no tip from me for merely being
who you are, polite for sure, agreeable and
neatly dressed; impressed as I should be a
tip for fancy clothes is truly gross largesse.

A tip for serving me a cup of tea is beggaring
either you work for the emporium or you’re
an agency condemning work opportunities
indicting government employment policy.

Oh, I see, it is because you speak English!
Thank you for that, I wondered what it was.
Quaint, almost Early Modern, around 16th C.
Yes, I recognise Shakespeare; William isn’t it?
© 6 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Santana Playing In My Ears

Santana playing in my ears – infinity of
thoughtful silences expressed in music
dressed with liquid care to ooze through
barriers; rhythm’s cachet beat impressed
with voices misting through a central
theme, a raw and wailing chord shrieks
warning.

Times I found a solace in the sounds
respite, from noises in the street, the
pound of harried feet, whispered
voices echoed loud, daunting voices
shrouded in a past I never shared, of
vagrant memories, disembodied faces
shouting.

Carlos eases agonies, plays his poetry
of soulful joy, soothing voices croon the
rhythmic tunes I wear to set me free; I
read the lines that sear the blinding air
with light – lines that ring with clarity, it’s
there within this warming sphere I sing
the words and dare to write.
© 6 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Tail-End Of Their Conversations

I caught the tail-end of their
conversations, forty or more
as they left roosts in our trees.
They were heading West

for the day’s grazing in pairs,
riding the air with slow, sure
strokes of articulate Black
Cockatoo wings.

Calling their fellows – ‘kee-ow’,
come this way, ‘kee-ow’, come,
follow me; the sombre grey of
a damp-dawn-breaking sky

alive with sinuous silhouettes
animated in a rare display of
beauty. I was pleased to be
there. Just to share, to see.

A magpie chortled goodbye,
reclaimed the empty air, a crow
jeered his sentiment from
a lone perch nearby.
© 7 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Occasionally I Need To Say

Occasionally
I need to say
I love you in another way –
a love that hides
disguised inside,
hidden from all watchers
eyes.

It is the private
me,
the one you seldom see
but might have glimpsed
in moment’s rare,

Moments of emotion
where we share a luminescence
clear in skies that bind
us by a breathless spell.

You know it well,
you knew it on the very day
we joined our minds
eternally.

I am a slave to Nature’s plan,
joined are we, woman,
man
and out there in the spirit
world my energies
are free to say,
I really,
truly
love you girl...
© 12 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

For Anita - 13 June 2007

Much Less Derived An Artefact

So you think the Nike symbol on
your shirt is less derived an
artefact than that expressed
by swastikas. Fancy that! There
was a time a swastika blessed
kindness back before the birth

of Christ. In some societies it
never lost the claim of good,
but then the Nazi Party came
and turned the symbol to a
use despised with ugly deeds of
inhumanity beyond belief.

There it lies, victim of its own
success, evilness in black and white.
But I digress, there is no way you’d
know what either meant beyond
a visit to a library – much less
fuss on Internet. Thus inoculated

by antiviral antibodies we never see –
‘flu-like symptoms without the full
disease, a virus in the form of truth,
keys that trigger queries in a classic
sense of disbelief, formed outside
our sphere by actions of an algorithm

meant to pare all data to a common
core. And there it dies a nasty death
to unitary consensus. Rather like the
swastika you cannot see a wood for
trees disguised by patent rights allied to
Nike’s pernicious brand of market might.
© 31 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Referring To Yourself

Anna Russell wonders why people try
and write biographies as if they’re not
that somebody. Crikey, I’ll admit I’ve
done it too; at the time it seemed the
right & proper thing, sort of distanced

‘me’ from ‘him’. You slip easily into the
third person bit when sharing lives and
living lies, & then there’s that raucous
crowd you’ve joined – most of whom
are dead & very past tense about it.

But I take her point. She is right to see
pretension in a fallacy that you're much
more interesting when not referring
to yourself as ‘I’ but rather ‘he’ or ‘she’.
© 31 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Anna Russell is a younger poet whose talent is both
prodigious and legendary. 

8000 Years Standing Still

There is an ethnicity in it, a creed
as visible as the graphic trauma it
breeds upon – this is the culture
of violence. In 8000 years we’ve

diverged scarcely an inch from it,
rather we’ve refined the ways we
insanely kill each other with diverse
and creative skill. In the nurseries

of our schools and playgrounds we
rehearse battle drills which pave the
pathways to our Nations’ illustrious
graveyards. And you stand in the

crush of your fellow man, hemmed
in by structures tall enough to be
modern towers of Babel talking
the same brutal kill-or-be-killed

braille. You will claim to be free of
prejudice; bear no ill-will to any
man of any nation, race or religion.
This is the specious veneer, the

stamp of civilization – a barefaced
denial of 8000 years standing still.
© 1 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Balance Of Nature, the

There’s been precious little time since
the last ice-age ended but the melt is
already underway. It may be some time
yet before the impact comes screaming
into our daily lives, before the advent of

mass hysteria, but that won’t change the
public way we live what is left of our certain
desolation. We are masters of our fate –
these events were man-made and no debate
will ease or escape that fact. While it is too

late to balance the ledger and we cannot stop
the process, we can learn a seminal lesson. It
only took us eight millennia to challenge the
balance of nature. Next time let’s see if we can
achieve it more economically – say in just one...
© 1 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Dream

The dream, sheathed sweet in tender flesh
held deferent, drawn deep in breathless
peace and shrouded calm now rests; energies
absorbed in echoes of a quietude are stilled,
enmeshed in body languor by the needs
suppressed to steep in this largesse.

The dream engenders reveries of calm
beyond a caul of veiled subscription, a
balm of soothing fluid easing wicked weals,
healing wounds, appeasing hungers where
the hard-edged hammers crash their
symphony on yielding, pliant flesh.

The dream is only ever transient, a rite
of passage brief but cogent in its depth,
ceding bonds between the wants and
needs, binding those whose comforts feed
on mutuality. And in its dying breath it shrinks
to nothingness and deftly slips away.
© 4 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Oil My Rusty Sanity

Thwarted again, hoping to be
entertained – challenged by a
brave and dauntless poet free
of earthly gravity. Greeted

instead by restrained lines
formed in the manner of a
drawing-room-subsumed-and-
damn-boring Victorian’s idol

with lamp-lit, hand-writ, limp-
wristed scribbling birthed scripts
agonising anal retentiveness –
hosting chronic constipation.

You need a good shit I think in
utter frustration, try again; lift
your thoughts beyond the hem
line, the nape of the knee – find a

rhyme for parody. Go, take the
piss for the sake of humanity;
ease levity’s springs – and while
you’re at it oil my rusty sanity.
© 30 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Just Shy Of The Horizon

Stranded just shy of the horizon at twenty three,
haven’t thought mechanically of sex without a wry
grin for a week – a Cheshire grin at that, and at its
most manifest, believing it still a damn fine
motivator beating anything that came next.

Wondering where this whole tragedy is leading –
aware the fine line between conceding and not
succeeding wilts in the sheets of the tumbled bed
that comes after sex went.

Rising fresh and adamant it won’t be that way
again; and yet, buy me three more drinks and
maybe I’ll think you’re worth the effort.

Is it there – just short of the curve that defines
this low-level orbit I’m gliding, eccentric and
free of spatial influences, the gravity well I am
seeking – will it be where I am liberated?
© 30 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Pop-Up Ads And Hover Commercials

OMG, I’m seeing double standards;
Celine Charcoal gets to f**k for free
while I amend the naughty words
and take a gentle smacking. I know

I should have kept my damn fool
fingers off the keys; by telling them
(PH Management) a crude attempt
at censorship was worse than what

they deign suppress – I guess I drew
the cystic force of their outrage. It
cost me fourteen poems blocked
from public view, poetry that’s free

for all to read within domains whose
policy is less repressed than here.
Well, one of those is mine where I
express those sentiments in ways

akin to my own formal censorship,
so it doesn’t count for much except it
isn’t driven by pop-up ads and hover
commercials for shit you never read.
© 1 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Postings Of Peter S Quinn

If you’re wondering why forget it, the
effort is too onerous with no tangible
reward. Peter S Quinn is posting everything
simply because he can. ‘Too much’ is not a
worthy criterion to deride his work or put
him to the sword, read it and be surprised –
elated occasionally. There are gems which
deftly defy description guised as throw-away
lines. He is the last of the brave. And why,
you say, leap to his defence? Look at the foot
of his page – you’ll see that his readership
also reads me!
© 1 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Peter S Quinn's poetry collection of over 2000
poems is veiwable at:

http://poemhunter.com/peter-s-quinn/

Dear John, Get Thee Gone

The boring little asinine analogy for our
current state of mind freely dripped with
wounded indignation on the said occasion.

Shaking in his shoes as if the anger got
away, face a beetroot shade of puce –
reduced to howling threats. He’d been

accused of being out of date, not much
mind you, just a century shy of eleven
years, a decade, the whole of his term

in power. So he lost his cool; the grey,
composed and supposedly dignified
official was revealed for what he really

was – a drooling fool. His rhetoric was
screams of rage. He bounced about on
centre stage, cursing with vehemence.

The polls all say he’s had his day, he’s
dead and gone but won’t lie down and
the stench is appalling; but our Dear

John is clinging on like AIDS. He knows
he’s had the finger but stays in place
making a persuasive case for euthanasia.
© 1 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Poetic Etiquette – (i.e. don’t read the words)

If that is the etiquette I must have missed
the lesson which preceded it, I must have
been adrift again – away at sea with words
and dreams and poetry.

Machinations of a madhouse filled with
troubled minds that shout their demons
down in public places wearing many faces
using words as clubs to batter victims of

supposed maligned and puerile forms of
unhinged rage (disguised as poetry) has
greeted me on my return. To say the least
I am amazed; to say the worst I am ablaze

with righteous indignation, sickened and
beyond a lay redemption – then I spent
some time in reading poetry from friends
whose calming words were soothing balm.

It’s not an end but a beginning they say,
and showed me how with gentle urgings to
ward the bile, train the eye; seeking style,
soaring featherlike and free on metaphor,

drinking cogent imagery, finding more
than just the vicious cuts of brutal words
demeaned in texts riddled with crude
and unredeemed invective.

Find poetry first they said, in form, drink
with eyes embracing curves. Hear the
rhythms, feel the passion’s beat. Then
read the words.
© 5 June 2007, I.D. Carswell

Hardly Sunshine On My Shoulder

Hardly sunshine on my shoulder, more
a craven field of cobbled pain, the cause
a ruptured axillary artery complaining.

You can hear it hurt; it capers in my face –
each sharp, indrawn breath reflects the
needles stabbed rudely into a candid

tenderness, each momentary lapse of
memory – where arm moves reflexively,
crudely brings me back.

Explosive hurts that flash a warning light,
bright and pointless; I know its causes
painfully identified by ultra sound

applied with blithe technical efficiency, the
entire range of flexion adroitly examined –
antipathetic to evidence it really hurt.

There is respite in dream-disturbed sleep but
what is that to do with poetry? Let me explain –
my right shoulder, I am right handed. Got it?

No? Well if my verse seems inflamed it is because
NSAID medication contains a dosage far too weak
to even colour tea, and so be it!
© 30 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

I Am Whomever You See

I neither grew old
nor young – if it is to
say the same thing:

I neither matured into
a certain perspective
nor out of any one.

In a mischievous way
I stayed free of labels,
no-one labelled me.

So, when asked to explain
who I am the play for me
is on these words,

I don’t really know,
but my guess is –
I am whomever you see.
© 28 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

They’ve Learned I Cock A Snoot

Where were the Philistines today? I must
have missed their bold parade along the
cobbled street of commerce; I didn’t get
a fleeting greeting, cheery smile or wave.

That I never did would seem a blessing in
the dress of studied ignorance, they stare
with steely eyes disguised like watchers for
calamity – poised to warn their chary peers.

And yet I send them messages of hope and
derring-do, riddles with a cheery ring, inspiring
them with classic tales of profits earned from
stirring trade and news of heady fiscal flings.

Seems they’ve learned I cock a snoot, take a
boot to cerebral pursuits they revel in, parody
their artistry in general trade and joke about their
cultured links to a stock exchange of ignorance.

I’d need to make my poetry appear a ledger
entry rhymed with care at each line’s end in
columns trimmed and figured sweet to show
a sterling profit – and all of this toute suite!
© 29 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Schemes Of Mice And Men

Humiliation is the greater pain,
you think you can prevent it –
or at least decline its sentiment
by cautious deeds; you creep up

to the moment shifty eyed and
tensed. It doesn’t need a better
plan, you think. And wham,
you’re snookered once again.

In the larger schemes of mice
and men (and grown women)
you’re a mess – and the less
that’s said about it would be
best!
© 29 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Vanilla Pod Of Sweetness

She is my vanilla pod of sweetness
an old fashioned love giver dressed
in comfortable clothes still rebellious
wearing pants when skirts were ‘de
rigueur’ standing spread legged and
balanced against a fractious sea.

She is no demure figure of speech
robust and easy in mannerism free
of pretence and haute couture but
not without a sense of chic fanciness.
Where she grants licence happiness
adeptly blooms flowers dance their

panoply in a womb of munificence
nurtured safe in beds she tends with
confidence borne of warming years.
The smile she shares has weathered
with the times, softened lines wrinkle
sweet like the vanilla pod she wears.
© 30 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Should Try To Be Like You

His brevity of line cracks clear in
cogent echoes dreamt as parodied
portly poems and over-indulgent
wordiness – he survives in hungry
metaphor that’s bared of useless
dress, strives to write much more
with even less, invites the eye’s
imagination fleshing out the canvas
of his skeletal respect; the sketch,
a panorama binding vast and simple
in attested pure, circumspect and
truly balanced views. Yoonoos, the
rest of us should try to be like you.
© 28 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

In appreciation of the poetry of Yoonoos Peerbocus
which can be read at:
http://www.poemhunter.com/yoonoos-peerbocus/

One-Footed On A Chair

I’ve been accused of everything
you’ll find in Webster’s best and
worst; some I’m not ashamed to
claim are my originals invented
durst I say from pique when idle

moments trifled with sanguinity.
And thus I say don’t pamper me!
I’ll rise again and coin a phrase
you will misquote with able glee
because you can; and I – I will

refrain from laughing out aloud,
instead I’ll wisely nod my head
and say ‘he’s right, you’re right,
the lesson endeth here. Abstain
from loud applause now please,

laud the poet in the manner of his
moderate, near infinite sagacity
declared by standing one foot on
a chair that’s facing south, placing
other foot in gaping mouth.’
© 26 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

A Dream We Can’t Sustain

There is even less room
here since you left,
walls encroach, creaking
in their eagerness

to fill a space once
radiated with your charm.
I hear their whispers;
they say the real poet

is no more, this ersatz
kibbutz has no real
defences left. We’ve
failed you where you

left us with a dream
we can’t sustain – the
crush is killing us with
aching emptiness.
Life will never be the same...
© 26 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Monkey On My Back

Likened to a monkey on my aching
back a sweet affliction present from
a distant past disturbed thru many
folds and bends and twirls in surging
forward, reversing track.

Addicted to a state of never being
free of voices, crying for the stasis
of a simple seeing one but wholly
one complete and stable point of
view; chary of too many choices.

Fed few but nourished fine by paltry
grains of truth awash in dross and
flotsam of this day’s invention, hold
the cravings dulled by intervention
of a lesser god than he who rules.

Aware before the moment enters
seeing consequence engendered in
a finger fate intended; caring not to
play a role – wearing guise of psychic
souls complete in their theosophy.
© 28 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Your Dreams Will All Return

You will read this note and I concede
before you reach its morbid end that
tepid tears will sear within your eyes.

Tears of joy or sadness which may bring
a stark relief to ease frustration’s fears –
I know not where your sentiments ensue

save bearing errant truth in tears. I’d lend
to you the tissue of my very being which 
to dry your eyes with was it free to give,

a rag of old worn linen soaked in wayward
times & now devoid of dreams, crudely
wrung and freed of its frayed conscience.

There will be no brighter day than this upon
its certain ending, especially when your
tears have washed it clean of all pretence.

You knew that I would go away. No use in
being reverent. You’ll learn that when you’re
freed of me, in time, your dreams will all return...
© 28 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Happy Harry Hallowes

Harry Hallowes is a happy man and I
am full of praise for English Law. Harry
lives alone on Hampstead Heath, the
phrase they used was ‘sleeping rough’ –

he built a shack and squatted there for
many years, a public place but no-one
came and moved him on – essentially
he’d had the same ‘address’ since 1986!

An attempt to move on Harry failed quite
dismally when he fought eviction in the
Court, a property developer had thought a
harried Harry bound to be an easy mark.

Eviction failed when Harry’s counter case
unveiled a claim, having lived unchallenged
there for 21 years he sought a right to title
to the land – and much amazed, he won.

A humble Harry merely smiled a shy
71 year old smile when told his 800
square metres of Hampstead Heath
could fetch one million pounds.

Where would I live he asked? Why not
buy a bit of Queensland or all of
Zimbabwe, have a stash of cash left,
but forget about the legal protection!
© 25 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Your Sleep Is Thus Secured

This gratitude expressed in unsullied
silence is the very best. Yes, I love the
way you creep about so softly when I
sleep; if you could train the dogs to
keep the peace – bark in muted tones
at very least or growl sub voce I’d be
pleased and much amazed:

– their view of charity is bones with
ample meat on which to loudly curse

– then I, I would indecently return the
favour twenty-fold. I’d be a mouse-like
guest until the sun has roared, labour
long ensuring your repose is undeterred.

And in the wash of breaking dawn
forget the peace – revel in the growing
light and birth of day, chorus in the birds’
delight at end of night, join their song.

I’d sing along effete and hopeless
to a cause I’ve never paid a penny for.

But in my mind I have ensured the door
is tightly closed and sound defused,
confidant your sleep is thus secured.
© 24 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Law Dispensed With Senseless Zeal

31 cows are all it takes; it is the Sudanese
way of equating justice to a formula that
makes their Law a donkey. I could write
ass but know it takes a swipe with literal

sense whichever way you might pronounce
it. To say a suicide denies the victim’s rights
for after-life and ‘blood money’ only buys a
second chance for six accused tried for a crime

they had no hand in flies surreal in the face of
evidence. But this is Sudan! So think again – where
a Judge declares the autopsy (both of them) were
wrong and doesn’t clear the air on whom to blame.

Death demands a balance; in the absence of choice
the Law decides who lives and dies – an lo, George
Forbes et al, ignites an ancient sense of tribal rite with
justice but a faint lament and only glimmered on

reversed event horizon – all for a price of 31 cows.
George et al, with no appeal until a relative agrees to
dia within the presence of a Law dispensed with
senseless zeal, is innocent for 31 cows but stands
at worst to hang for them.
© 24 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

The utter inanity is expressed much better at this site:

[http://nebuchadnezzarwoollyd.blogspot.com/2007/05/southern-sudan-dia-and-george-forbes.html]

Won’t Need To Wear Anonymity

The poem I never wrote waits
expectantly while I debate the
new Rugby rules, cogitating the
expediency of drinking voigner
too early in the afternoon.

Moments like these I demur good
form and allow leniency; it’s no
crime to be flippant, to let the
warm wash of feeling slosh in
the glass I sip from frequently.

My love eternal sees more in it
than me, tuned to frequencies I
cannot receive. She is double brie,
whipped cream, strawberries with
kirsch and the sound of the sea.

My admiration for her has saved
more lives than just mine, a scene
of good faith, an epiphany to match
the bloody sacrifices men make – and
it’s only taken 38 years to define.

These rules which will change empower
Referees and Flag Judges (note the new
name) to make the game a true spectacle –
such that they can lead normal lives and
won’t need to wear anonymity.
© 24 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

His Mirror Twin Reflects His Grin

The line that sprang to mind was almost
ancient, something from the Kinks, “...he
thinks he is a flower to be looked at...”
– I guess I must be patient he surmised, it
is a misconception to be dealt with, the
kind of dated thinking one survives in vapid
times, and by being clear, uncompromised
in my rejection, escape the Czars of agony.
I am no slave to fashions trends, of anarchy
perhaps, a lawless blade, a meter maid in
fancy dress, but flower for picking I reject.
His mirror twin reflects his grin.
© 24 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Phoenix Of My Imaginings

Am I insane? – the question
remains enigmatic, but that
I think of it has relevance
for sanity; I never claimed
to be free of the pain that
ameliorates visionary reality.

I create; it is a state of perpetual
being, not something that acts
at the turn of a switch or the
surge of mysterious feeling.
I have been at the birth of
moments where the urge to cry

out in a blaze of ecstasy inflames
all senses equally and there are
dolorous times neither few nor
far between when I have died
the mean and unpleasant
literary death – literally.

That I rise from the charred and
stinking corpse of yesterday’s
defeat spun fresh and ethereal
woven in the air of dreams is
small wonder. I am the phoenix
of my imaginings.
© 24 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Fat Of Your Fine Indignation

Oh to mend
impressions
that went awry –
to take this guilt in
hand and pry it free
of double entendre
suspended – to dredge
in the depths of sugared
and cinnamon subtlety peppered.

Those shallow words deserved
to be fried in the fat of
your fine indignation –
or is it I who is tilted,
still imagining?
© 23 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

I’d Rather Be Asleep

In dark of night
deprived of sleep for noises
breaking meditation

gazing where the darkness
creeps a patent nothingness
of nascent gloom

where blues and greys
combine in subtle shades
advising me of morning

I glory in the dawn
although I know it
won’t be mine completely

The hints of pink that briefly
light the clouds, lifts its dearth
of sleeplessness

Shroud denied I yawn
and greet the day, complain
I’d rather be asleep.
© 23 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

I Hear The Claim Made

I hear the claim made time and time again 
that there is a little good in everyone; the 
trick (they say) is but a play on words - a 
knowing where to look. And in that view a 
seeker finds the proof of all things good, 
an omen of the simple in a universal truth.

I’ve looked - and plainly found a vacant lot of
little use, an empty space that might contain
ideas of what is good, or not, or met with force
that sullied raw and hot - a disabused view that
good was good for only goodness sake but what
of it that has a wicked end of personal gain?

The good is there for all who seek and thus
obtain a lien of coin; but no gain no pain no
aerie good to find or fit a want of it. But good 
is just and good is right and good is there to 
be defined in ways a seeker’s eyes inflame the 
plight of any whom it might slightly benefit!
© 23 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Falling From A Point Of Balance

This unyielding
thief of confidence
beats me;

when poised
at a point of balance
it tells me

I
am

f
a
l
l
i
n
g
© 23 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Now Go, Scribe Your Words

Awake at 4:00am
learning what the ghost in the piano
already knows – everyone rational
is asleep, hugged tight in their dreams,
safely enclosed in the samsonite
of contemporary being.

I, who am seeking the friable sands
needs more than the flow of its free-running,
more than the surge of a tide in an estuary
of immortality.

The ghost plays a chord, a slow
harmony of notes rising – sweet notes
that strike echoes in memory. You will
not sleep the same sleep with the dead,
he says, while the sand is still running.
Now go, scribe your words.
© 22 may 2007, I.D. Carswell

David’s Supposedly Inalienable Rights

David Hicks is home, back in Australia
anyway with seven months to face
behind bars in an Adelaide prison.

It may have come as a surprise he made
a guilty plea to some – but as a five year
victim of America’s hard-to-see as legal

off-shore imprisonment policy and only
recently charged with so-called offenses
against America, he’s suffered more than

enough deprivation of liberty – let alone
having to bear the stigma of this countries’
Government’s unwillingness to recognise

and protect his supposedly inalienable
rights as an Australian citizen – come what
may! Welcome home David, I don’t know

whether you deserve to be in Yatala Labour
Prison for being an impressionable fool
but I do know that neither you nor any

other rights-denied civilian held illegally in
Guantanamo Bay should have been denied
justice while wholly ignored by the judicial World.

What would be worse though, is to be deprived
of the forgiveness and sympathy of this Nation
by its Government’s unforgiveable intransigence.
© 21 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

I Never Believed The Fable

Black cockatoos passed
overhead on their way
West yesterday, six in the
flock, flapping a slow
languor in pedantic
sweeps of their articulate
wings, conversing in thin,
eerie ‘skree’, ‘skree’
echoes as they laboured
in the lean, dry air.

If legend had it correct
there would be rain today
where cautious ants vacate
their nests – scurrying in
black swarms to higher
ground, heeding the birds
warning. To be fair I never
believed the fable anyway
until it started to rain this
morning – quite heavily.
© 21 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

We Know He Wouldn’t Agree

Bob Ivanoff and I are friends,
no surprise about it, we see
many things in a similar light,
one might say this is so despite
our cultural differences –

of which there are a few; Bob’s
a self-funded retiree who sells
Asian produce he grows himself
because he can, I sell avocados
at the Market because I have to.

Buying customers were few and far
between that dreary Sunday so we
set about fixing the Government’s
policy machine – done, need I say,
for the benefit of our fellow man.

Bob’s view mirrored mine – we hadn’t
compared notes, just used our years
of experience to decide where the
priorities lay; Health and Education.
No way could they be eclipsed with

grandiose posturing on short-term
arguments, whether environment
or economy based, and all the divisive
tripe about labour market regulation
was diversionary at the very least.

The beast of Global Warming needed
public debate with informed choices,
not an economy-derived formula of
user-pays while anointed investors take
the whole bloody cake.

We congratulated ourselves on a
coherent and sustainable policy
for future generations, but neither
of us felt it necessary to tell Johnny;
we knew he wouldn’t agree.
© 22 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

One And One Makes Three

Julie Bishop and Education
have become the shame of
our fair Nation – it’s too easily
likened to a lavatory left
adrift alone at sea without
a stock of toilet paper. Well,

she concedes, without batting
eyes of blue or nervous flick of
long blonde hair, who can read?
Why waste vast sums on wiping
bums of thick-head kids whose
mums and dads vote Labour

anyway. I’ll spend a tidy sum on
gaudy funds for future education,
endow some Universities and
run a scam to scare the goddamn
teachers into doing what I say.
I need a tacit nationally agreed

curriculum with learning’s much
improved beyond that which the
States all fail to teach our younger
ones these days. Teachers who can’t
reach a decent standard set by me
can bugger off – and so can kids

who’ve failed to show capacity to
learn the values which I say are
right and proper ones for all us
good Australians. And something
really close to me, they’ll learn
that one and one makes three.
© 22 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Friends Are Harder To Find

We’re drought declared again mate, not on our
Pat Malone mind, so’s two thirds of the State.
Don’t see any changes which make it seem like
something special though; it’s just like the way it
was all those years ago when we came here in
the middle of a dry. We kinda knew it would rain

eventually ‘cause that stands to reason, now we
know why – El Niño, southern oscillations, warm
currents in that vast southern ocean but a drought
here in Queensland is merely a prolonged spell of
summer – another season if you like, might bloody
last seven years, any longer and you’re in shite

but you learn, adapt, buckle up and get on with
your life. The whinging comes loudest out of the
cities – or from these newby farmers whose know-
how was tested, found lacking – most probably
missing; they complain bitterly about government
backing being non-existent or too little too late.

Yeah, it’s a sad state when you need to blame
gutless politicians for your mistakes, but dire
misfortune makes many gratuitous enemies and
friends are harder to find in a drought-ridden land
than a fresh, green billabong amongst sand dunes
without a tourist resort about to be built on it.
And that, mate, is the nature of this place...
© 18 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

I Do It All For Love

I do it all for love, there’s
nothing in the air that says
you have to pay, there’s
nothing there to wear but
love for free. The cost to
me is less a fare for peace
and harmony, it is a loss
I couldn’t bear unless I
see the smile upon your
face – your lips a-curl and
eyes alight, amazed. Its
only there I am repaid.
© 18 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

In A Rare Solitude

When you came to the earth-shattering
conclusion that there were irremediable
discrepancies between what you saw in
the World outside your door and the
same place prescribed in the romance of
a child’s lifetime you didn’t rant and rave.

You should have. It was already too late to
save the best of that dream. But you are
awake and no-longer naive; there’s a way
to make amends – not the way modernity
dictates with clean, second-hand images
captured forever in a hand-held machine.

The places of worth mean more than the
pixels that make them glow in the screen
of your imagination – they exist where air
and water meets, where the elements cry
in their rawness and the tears are sweet;
take yourself there, grow outside yourself.

In a rare solitude of unengineered effects
except those built by your own hands and in
the glow of a fire made to warm your face
and delight your eyes, discovery of whom
you are waits. Let your heart beat apace
with whom it is that you may find there.
© 18 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Write A Few Gaudy Words

It’s nice isn’t it – write a few gaudy words
on the hottest topic of the hour, use some
tried and true lines you’ve already trialled;
never leave home without ‘em! Wake up
to find a dozen or more pieces of trite neo-
adulation snuggled cosily at the foot of it
sporting names of ‘friends’ who agree.

Christ, there has to be more to poetic life
than preaching to the converted about a
theme-in-common, a nod and a wave in lieu
of conversation – I say old bean, what have
they done to the rules regarding posts; what
in the benign name of any tame god you’d
like to call your own are we embracing?

Can’t you wretched
Understand that
Nothing breeds this compliant
Timidity more than being
Frightened shitless by hitherto
Undisclosed consequences
Cleverly moralised as
Key issues of public decency.

Damn me to eternal perdition then,
let me smell like Hellfire, not of sulphur
or brimstone but the reek of burned flesh,
of fouled guts and shit as it really smells
fresh from the forge of traumatic death.
I don’t need to use those words banned
every day, but after this I bloody well might!
© 17 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Indecent Use Of Purity

I am no stranger to pain,
learned in 1951 during
utter confusion of a first
school year when our

beliefs of the nursery-
World were challenged
by the day’s implacably
rigid structures in mad

array; the losers – an
innocence vigilantly
nurtured in caring and
warmth, hugs and kisses

sought wrenched away for
disembodied praise or the
sharp conflict orientation
of a leather strap.

Where threats of a slap
made one less brave the
strap cut all pretence of
stoic defence – rendered

raw agony. No stranger to pain
but no slave of it, no new wave
of hurt-seeking self-mutilators
springing up in defiance. Livid

stains of piss hot-leaked into pants
remain a shameful embarrassment
reminding me for eternity of man’s
indecent use of childhood’s purity.
© 21 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

I’d Trade Eternity To See Another Dawn

My soul seeks
eternity, a simple
end free of sign
and connotation
lent to daily deeds –
temporal schemes
and fleeting dreams
which wallow in a
night that never
really ever ends.

Thankfully
we came to an
agreement where
we share a dream
and vision equally,
the madness waits
abated out beyond
the Great Beyond –

the madness of a
single day, forever
one and none
suspended in a
strand that’s
longer than the
thought that
thought it so;

my soul will go
and I remain –
I said I’d trade
eternity to see
another dawn.
© 17 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Listen – The Bells Still Ring

A saga of liberty bells silent and
lost opportunity – scarcely the stuff
you see emerging from primordial
ooze; still savouring old conventions,
primacy effete and reeking, eclectic
egos rampant and loudly ringing.

We stand at the pinnacle of our
season, full of achievement,
spend our moments of glory
carping and slicing with an evil
intelligence so lethal it repels and
freezes even contemporary Hell.

And you still see nothing untoward
in claiming your ascendency! To a man
you are stick figures in a child’s
first pictures – merely lines drawn
in tidal sand; images pilfered from
pipe-dreams of grandeur.

But to have such dreams! To ride
in the arms of imaginings freed of
earthly taint, free of strictures bent
in the loop of narcissism, free of
the tedium of egocentric thieves;
but wait, listen – the bells still ring!
© 15 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Notion Of A Fledgling Nation, the

It was too small to have been the scene of
such great deeds, yet history said it had been
a defining moment in the land wars. So I
stood on one of the mounds, trying to see
what the defenders would have seen.

They beached their canoes off somewhere
to the left, spread out in warlike array across
the flax bush plain, made their silent way to
the battle ground. They could not be seen
until they breasted a rise 100m away.

The battle raged until the last defender died
and the flag was burned. At least I see it that
way; a romantic view – and the dead were
honoured not desecrated. Why it happened is
as unclear as this anonymous piece of ground

testifies; two sides fought for their rights on a
drear and drizzly day, many died, and in the end
nothing changed. The site remains unsanctified,
even the locals stay away; if you desire to go
you must find it on your own. The images that

came were a revelation; I knew then what
the defenders felt as the battle engaged.
There is no glory in dying defending a sterile
piece of ground against the might of an idea,
the notion of a fledgling nation.
© 15 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Comfort Of Her Husband’s Hands

That journey to the wedding was a trip
through realms of girlhood once again,
a trip into the dreams and recollections
of a timeless age, sybaritic reminiscences
of nymphs whose age was shed to don
their gauzy wings and fly with ease the
leaden weight of stolid feet. And in the
naked dance upon the beach they were
an essence of the spirit free, a whim and
charm of minds released, of bodies pure
and senses lent to scents and sounds
and music of the ocean’s bower. She’s
had her hour of great content and now
returns to land her dancing feet again
in comfort of her husband’s hands.
© 16 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Censorship (add another ‘p’ to drop)!

It is not censorship per se, but
the empty headed way it is
imposed. And empty heads
resound with vacant sound. If we

invite restrictions through a rule
of overuse for words of grosser
choice, but only two – so far, mind
you, it seems a censorship without

a rule of sense – a farce. But that
we have a choice of every other
word extant extends bizarre relief;
perhaps we are supposed to be the

censors of ourselves? Do I hear a
chorus of complaints from poets
now incensed by rules that can’t
defend the innocence of readers

grazing in our fields – the prey of
dirty words, the victims of a foul
intent? But better any day than real
complaint you’ll say. There’s irony

in that defence; it means instead
of censorship reacting to offensive
words the minders of the site will
institute a search machine, a dumb

program to poll our words and
cull those gems, the ‘fu.ks’ and
‘cu.ts’ which salt and spice a line,
the naughty words we use from

time to time – when time is right.
And there is nothing there to say
it can’t or won’t excise all words
of darker parentage it knows, or

was programmed to find by minders
with a mind to ban, and still find time
to stop to crop a colon or parenthesis,
and add another ‘p’ to drop!
© 16 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Sugar Your Soul

This piece of you,
this smidgen
of fleshless
idiosyncrasy – this
unmistakable
endowment
breaks me.
I am breathless
in your embrace.
Take
the essence
of me,
sugar your
soul.
© 14 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Indignation Of A Whole Generation

I haven’t had that experience yet, but it
may be next in the catalogue of events
due to screw up my idyllic existence.

That is, as my much & sweet-loved
offspring say, I don’t give a toss; and
I paraphrase their cryptic view of me –

it means a lot to a man whose World
view (screw the current conventions,
it’s still capital letter worthy) is null and

voided. The last time someone seriously
shat on my purview I opted out. I saw more
of me in him than an overdose of his

second-hand intelligence – and he was
a Judge! Well, lost or found it wasn’t
my pound of flesh sliced. He dies of it,

I am wise to it. Where he goes to an early
senility I write the words which ignite
the indignation of a whole generation.
© 13 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Moment Flies Away

The smile attests a fancy
blessed with keen
extravagance concealed
in whimsy held in check.

Too easy to indulge you
think, to easy to display
a winsomeness surely
meant to break the ice –

what should suffice is
less a smile than an invite
to speak, a cheery grin
would bring them in.

The smile survives into an
evil leer of chalcedonic thin,
translucent grey, and the
moment flies away.
© 14 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Puck Is Enough To Satisfy

Hunch expressed her thanks with
great respect, she shat; “Phuk,” she
said, what do you think of that?

You’re a natural comedian, a gem,
a potent free-liner with one-liners
to burn, I say, can I borrow it?

With due recognition, she replies,
use it, abuse it, but affix my name
to it. Was I surprised? Well – no;

I knew she’d been to Hen Finishing
School, and when her sister Stella
laid that dubious egg she claimed

was her own – knew then of her
aspirations. She was a mover and
shaker, a breaker of hearts,

a queen in the making. You’re not
taking the easy road to fame,
I remark. Listen up my man,

she cries, why would I want to be a
hen all my days – there’s more to
the pen than meets the eye for

sure but the audience here demands
no encores, just an occasional
“puck” is enough to satisfy.
© 14 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Sudden Changes Which Take Forever

My people came to the bus stop
beside the tarsealed road in the
centre of nowhere, walking in
relentless sun from a vast, arid red

and featureless desert, stood
gratefully in the shade. There were
words written on a poster in the
shelter, words which made no sense,

about services terminated from
an effective date – which was years
in the past – because of lack of
patronage, but we waited anyway.

We are patient people with graces
we wear openly on our broad faces.
And we are used to these sudden
changes which take forever.
© 14 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Living In The Refuse Of Your Fellow Man

It is a secret; don’t say a word to anyone.
Cities are toxic dumps of people, every
one is an artefact of suspended disaster –

the mean survival rate is as courted by an
obtuse argument claiming the national
mortality average is not discretely separated

by population density but managed into neat
and tidy figures proving each is a safe place.
Don’t believe me, check the damn figures!

If you have a choice, run for the hills –
or the hills where there are at least
more trees than dwellings.

There is no comfort living
cheek by jowl in the refuse
of your fellow man.
© 13 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Dogged With Redoubtable Stupidity

One wonders how moronic they think we
are. Mr Jeffrey William Seeney, Leader of
The Nationals, Leader of the Opposition,
Leader of the Queensland Coalition
(and Shadow Minister for Trade) had the
gall to say he believed that a minister who
hadn’t lied was worse than a liar because
she hadn’t told the truth in a believable way.

This of course implied she still lied. When
asked to clarify what he really meant he
denied he said she had lied in saying she
hadn’t told believable truth, but in his
august opinion she was an unmitigated
purveyor of untruths anyway – and no-
one could believe with a modicum of
confidence whatever she was saying.

Come now Jeff, as a well-known boofhead
with an unsavoury reputation for bullying –
you expect us to cop that? We see how
easily you fell short as a lawyer, yet stand,
nonetheless, to make a fair fist of being a
fearsome Queensland politician of the first
verse in doggerel, dogged unfortunately,
with redoubtable stupidity.
© 11 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

What Will Be, Will

Waiting for the damned alarm again,
as if it was ever needed – like an earthy
observation of inherent obtuseness,
a Murphy’s Law of inevitability.

And yet there is a closed workshop
of sustained symmetry in the idiocy
of it, a self-contained prophesy that
says ‘what will be, will’.

Ever the optimist I make as much as
I can from this irrational state, I
convince myself I am staying awake to
ensure this alarm is really going to work...
© 12 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Sourdoughed And Rimmeled

Sourdoughed
and rimmeled in
a yawn of wide-eyed
awareness bright,

lashes shined in a wax-
gathered envy
delighting paired
openings

cleverly darkened,
inviting light
that shines out of the
multi-tiered and

mascara’d eye.
Coal black or tenement
white lashes flash
a benign warning –

a fractious dash,
heralding
the beginnings of
articulated passion;

there is no going
back when the
cleidoic stare
fixes you in place,

spears your eyes
with its steely tips,
sires an obdurate
embrace.
© 12 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Tara McHale challenged me to write a poem about mascara... Whew!

Sentenced To Listen To Yourself

Get ready to meet your maker, you claim,
your face flushed in an agony of red, eyes
insane. My parents are dead, I say, stony
faced and unwavering, there were two of
them; unless you can resurrect both we’re
stuck in this useless frame of reckoning.

I hold the whip hand, you rave, and I’m the one
who decides who lives and who dies. Pleased
to make your acquaintance, I reply, do you do
a number in salvation as well as ‘raisings from
the dead’? Otherwise this conversation takes
the farcical path to the eventually nonsensical.

I can kill you now, you shriek, you know I can.
As easy as squeezing this trigger. Do it then,
I say with candour, get it done. At least I won’t
have to listen to your absurdities – but if you kill
me then there is no-one to listen and you can’t
stand alone, sentenced to listen to yourself.
© 12 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Sex Without Sharon Olds

Imagine sex without Sharon Olds doing
a number beyond the shadowed
bedroom window. Imagine you
winning a marathon without bona
fide running shoes. If it were love
that made these things possible
then I could agree with your
quaintly estranged views. I have

ice-skated only in an involuntary
sense, the experience that survived
was an intense ‘falling down’. Waking
wet with an aching head taught me
more of caution than joy; I can’t see
that sex entwined in an ice-dance
analogy was the epitome of such
grandiloquence in our lovers’ antics.

Have run marathons though. The love
is as pure as she says. No-one could run
for the love of the love of the love of it
except within the bounds of a sanctioned
insanity – no-one would say that they did
but for the love of the love of it. And in the
same way I see sex without Sharon Olds
languished in an alienated misogyny.
© 10 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Where Did All The Money Go

The Stone Age of Economic
Rationalism is dead, long live
the New Age! Alas cerebral
embarrassment is why we
have to change, not an agreed
choice I concede, not a course
we’d have needed but for the
intransigence of the last
dinosaurs clinging to power.
And we have no easy
choices left to us now.

They have to go to make
way for new ideas, for plans
and policies that take the
future as a real constituency,
not effects of dolorous thoughts
of financiers – they have to go
too because they’re entrenched
in yesteryear. There is no room
for toadying comfort seekers,
acceptors of bribes and gaudy
promises. Hear ye, gather
ye, and get thee gone.

There will be hard years,
hot years and years of
drought to endure. But we
knew of them before this
economic miracle made us
less aware of a World gone to
wrack and ruin on the back of
rampant fiscal growth and a few
profit sharers’ extraordinary
largesse. And where did all the
money go? Can’t you guess!
© 9 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Glory Came To Nought For Love

I should have left it there;
- to carry on the rant for years
has meant the stable peace
we shared is bent beyond repair.

Or bent beyond redemption at
the very least, you’d think,
beyond the reach of clemency –
a link which wears the thinner

with its discontent. And there’s
the irony, it gathers strength.
It grows and glows a halo that
entwines our souls in winds of

silken thread – I am enmeshed
abed with thoughts of you I’d
rather shed, a slave of comfort
only you provide, a gladiator

left alive when all the others died:
their swords in hand they bled
a sticky death for vacant eyes that
scarcely noted their demise.

You took my head between your
hands and said that glory came
to nought for love, and love was
pain the brave alone endured.
© 9 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Which Ring The Vast And Ancient In

The colours of this sombre day
are subtle hues in pastel shades
imbued with patient pinks and
bonnet blues; the grey horizon
loses constancy and blends into
amorphous clouds which hang in
dull sonorous shrouds about the
hills. I find the verdant music still
in sounds that rise like strands
of mist from breathing ground,
the echoes faint resemble bells
which ring the vast and ancient in;
I resonate in empathy, the day
begins and comforts ever graciously.
© 8 May 2007, I.D. Carswell

Sold To Its Lowest Bidder

I know you
you low b*st*rd,
opportunistic
sifter of rubbish bins
and refuse heaps,
thief of opportunity,
pustule creeping
the thin veneer
of social acceptability.

With no sense
of moral conscience
in your wretched grasping
you ooze
like the presence
of a suppurating sore,
amoral and avaricious,
infected and infectious.

Keep the f**king phone
you stole from me,
I hope it sells you
down deviant sh*t-creek
to its lowest bidder.
© 10 May 2007, I.D. Carswell