We, The Living (rev)

We, the living, buried deep in selfish grief
strive to comprehend the passing of your
hour, minds are numbed, aghast and
grasping for some sense of revelation,
seeking analgesic succour in the weeping,
searching for respite from clamoured
conscience shattered in the shriek of
desolation; each bereaved is silenced,
trance-like, choking cries that chorus,
welling out of depths where feelings
rise malignant, immolated in a
rhetoric of grief.

There were moments when we rose
above despair – borne by strength of
spirit in your name, but tragedy
remained in darkened shadow's gloom
beneath your widow's eyes.

The mourners came, solid men of the
land who worked at your side, dry-eyed
and laconic, never ones for public grief,
withdrawn in private homologies and
self-spectres, destroyed for words to
dam emotions that jumbled on their
stoicism; but their compassion ranged
beyond their gestures, their awkward
presence was an epitaph, a eulogy
more fitting than a song.

A chasm that was present as a penance
from your past fast dressed itself in
pettiness, forbearance all but faltered in
its face, but propriety prevailed in place
of flagging etiquette though nothing
changed to mark this day in passing,
nothing changed to ease its painful fete.

The hours and tears and sleeplessness
merged in trancelike coffee mugs and
cigarettes and gins & lemonade; the
air of quiet was ominous and agonising
shrill beyond the threshold of our hearing,
penetrating equanimity and baiting
a disgrace of hysteric indulgence.

We were waiting for a sign, a power
to free emotions from constraints that
grief connives, we knew your strength
survived this fasting of sedated senses,
that you live again in the world of your
baby son’s egocentric passions, to grow
magnificently in our shaded futures.
© 19 March 1976, I.D. Carswell

Anniversary

Almost forty years; cannot
recollect to say the date exactly
when we met, but here and now
the place and time remains as
clear in mind as yesterday

the change it wrought sustains a
knowledge new to solitary thought
to be precise I never knew a time
without the meeting of your mind
and mine that meant a damn

– like how it doesn’t pay to count
the days secured as lessons learned
clearly you have changed the matrix
of our lives in ways which earned
a permanence and rite of place

and when I ponder how and why
I am amazed and quite surprised
the little that I really know of you –
you are the same yet not the
one I met those years ago

it is a mystery benign – enclosed
in enigmatic folds and wraps of
secrecy which holds the hand
of fate and fuels familiar furnaces
which welcome love’s dictate
© 14 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Anita – on Anniversary 39

Fires Incendiary

Show me your God of light and I
will mourn the lack of ambience –
ignore the plight of biospheres destroyed
exhuming power from corpses warm;
the deed will need no sanctity.

And where you dance a harmony
in rhythms revelling at freedoms
flight all lesser gods will cant and carp;
why should you care? You wallow in
the lust of your magnificence.

The farce is sharp; clerics reading
inference in ancient words interpret
what they like, scholars raised on rich
and heady fare delight in passing wind
through empty minds as godlike fear.

Burning of the atmosphere explains
a charred and broken promise, a rule
of godly life abjured – no solace there
just penury for holy men whose words
inflame and fuel the fires incendiary.
© 14 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Presque Vu

Even if I’ve walked this way
in ages past, or will in time
to come – I can’t explain a
pungency of thought that
thrills my consciousness.

Familiar as the scene
remains words to capture
it escape – flee fitfully before
catharsis of its potency has
time to come to pass.

All purity in images that
lasted years in future memory
are cast aside, where words
exist a game is played to trip
my tongue;

I know it not for what it is
but pain absurd invades along
the bermes of memory that
failed to grip and hold
these powerful terms.

If this is Presque vu, I almost
see the fate you have in
store for me; I won’t
complain – it is the same
I have in mind for you.
© 16 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Days To Remember

Days
to remember
don’t advertise themselves in tabloid
newspapers; copy sold in yesterdays
taverns express news as fresh as morning
after breath mixed with out of date hints
of Old Spice grumbling in the rear pages.
They don’t always have happy endings

But
they don’t
carry the sentiment
of Ages like precious
memories of a knowing
touch and earnest wanting
in waiting

Later –
when savoured meaning
of the simple being forever
together asking and a
response you never dreamed
would evade even rudimentary pride
are tasted in the cooler
light of a longer day, you
will say with sentimental
mist clouding knowing
eyes – I said “Yes”
without
hesitating

Indeed,
a day to
remember
© 17 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Tara & Ezra – Happy Togetherness

Ought To Be

Was it the thought of penance
deserved which brought it to a
head – or, as an almost empty
roll-on deodorant bottle stored
upside down in aged patchouli
scented pot-pourri of mauve &
cherry shaded wood-shavings –
where it sits self-righteously,
that it played the lead role?

Although I don’t know faithfully
what makes the World go round –
heady scent of today’s pure body
odour untainted in a sour sweat
unbathed of yesterday’s labour
still takes a power of beating. My
simple mind says it is a clearly
aphrodisiacal way of how things
ought to be.
© 18 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

The Ease and Charm of You (rev)

There is infinity of wisdom in your smile
that would deny the winsome wit that lies
at back of it; and then the droll and cheeky
Svénska troll of you which peeps out from
the flimsy drape in which you sheet your
public soul, an urchin bold, a squirming
sprite who claims a manic tithe to steal
with ease our ears and eyes and hearts.

It is not easy to dismiss your smile or snub
a stronger draught of it, or pass the impish
guile infused with honeyed tones of liquor
dews that drip from curve of Nordic lip. It’s
just as hard to think of you as sad as stone
or cold as ice embalmed in time that never
passed; never passed and never thawed,
and never danced and never soared.

The furnace there that is your smile exhibits
warmth that mitigates the frozen fates, over-
whelms their frozen hearth, warmth debased
in languorous grace, subtle charm uncommon-
placed with cheerful heart.

A light appears to shine from you, the kind of
light which glows in happy times, light which
shows no darkened tones, throws no sharp-
edged shadows. At last we know the true
length and breadth and depth of you, and
breathe with ease the same enchanted air,
we also feel the nascent breeze that trifles in
your vasty hair; at last we know the ease and
charm of you, and feel as free to tell you too.
© I.D. Carswell

To Our Beautiful Svénska Troll

Almost Taste The Flavour (rev)

It was a fat-tyred 4WD utility hard back,
sort of ute you’d expect a contractor to
drive – except for tacky stickers all over,
no genuine subby does that!

Snailed down-range at 30KpH, girl-like,
braking every bend, frail-brained driver
sending donkey-dead karma, wandering
double white lines again and again.

Less distressing than a burning irritation;
my imagination or have I mellowed some?
A pedant doing penance paid in trailing time –
wisdom wasted as I beamed him potent

pictures of my delicate appreciation and
chagrin, mental boot imbedded tersely
in his ample arse; that thought at least
replaced another evil thought I fasted on.

I bought myself some charity, gave the dork
his space & he excelled himself, increased
his snail-like pace, broke the Law by speeding
through restricted zones beside the school.

Man’s a fool who’ll suffer for stupidity but not
today, had his way with indolence – I’m proud
I kept my peace, waited in the queue bemused,
let good fortune favour me. Hell, I almost taste
the flavour…
© 11 March 2006, I.D. Carswell

Familiar Rhythms (rev)

Formerly: Absorbed In Familiar Rhythms

Absorbed in familiar rhythms, carillon
of senses steeped in good vibrations,
surrounded by musical beat pulsing
avidly in articulated veins.

Blood heated faultlessly, delivering
purity of sound into reservoirs of
deep power, preserving cadence
of drumbeat accurately – timeless
oceans of sound wound eagerly,
counterpoint to breathing relaxed
codas of rhythmic inspiration
tolling the true song.

Feet tap to old tunes, fingers rap
themes as words free in schematic
admiration. Scenes driven by racing
guitars pour surf back into my soul,
waves break rapturously in the heart,
renewed energies.
© 9 June 2006, I.D. Carswell

Gross Return

The bleating hasn’t stopped –
increases every day as more
decide to join the throng and
add their angry voices. Hey,
I cry, told you all along, why
the sudden discontent? Price of
oil is hurting families they say –
same was said ten years ago
is my reply, but did you make
allowances or listen then?

Supply is very much the same
though competition for each
drop has changed. Demand is
way beyond the mean excused
as rational in this day and age.
We’ve got to thank ourselves
for breeding more consuming
mouths to feed economies the
pundits say we need to grow to
keep ourselves afloat and free.

The key to better life is greater
change than growth sustained.
Fear of mass redundancy is real
enough where good is merely
termed a gross return, measured
not for quality or future years
but as exchange on current debt,
which, regrettably my friends,
whether good or bad or even
real – still has to be repaid.
© 19 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Another Way Of Flying

An easier call would have been to ignore
the whole scene but you wanted to soar
without leaving the ground – explore
another way of flying. You never explained
this to me, afraid I would not understand.

At least that part was true – I am not afraid
of flying although landings do raise the
body heat. I am not bloody minded, the
deliberate meeting of two dissimilar
states of motion is gracelessness to me.

You laughed when I closed my eyes, said
are you afraid? I denied it but knew I lied,
knew a small dying in the euphemism
for release – the cry that precedes is a
dying breath expressed before you arrive.
© 1 Feb 2007, I.D. Carswell

Her Kids

Her children were born caesarean –
by choice as rumour goes and not
inadequate design; now it may well
explain their leaving. Absences are
clarified in terms derived from why
the silence spells a shaky calm – a
reign of terror quelled, it may say
nothing more about her than a still
to be resolved innuendo hinting at
a neighbour’s unsavoury character.

She walks a thin line between self-
actualisation and numb isolation, a
place where six packs of bourbon &
coke make much more sense. If self
esteem came tailor-made in cans and
there were no come-backs for past
mistakes she’s bound to be okay.
Weekends I sit in the bleachers glad
for peace; her kids drove us crazy
wrecking cars from dawn ‘til dusk.
© 19 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

An Old Busker (rev)

He was an old busker he said,
but not before regaling me with
shocking tales of wanderings. I
listened half amused but truly
entertained. This small white-
bearded man my wife exclaimed
could be mistaken for an Aussie
Santa Claus; that explained perhaps
why I didn’t really fathom him.
We shared a belly laugh or two
and found enough of common
ground to stamp around.

He did nasho back when I was RF
(an officer cadet), we both knew
Les Hiddens, wondered how the
Vietnam Vets’ plans to establish a
retreat for victims of PTS* and
dioxin distress at Kalpowar were
progressing. He’d lived on a pineapple
farm a bit north of where we’re growing
avocados ‘tho was wise enough to
make his own way out of it without
a stooped back or eternal complaints.

When we were solid and simpatico he
wandered over where we had our market
stall, leaned against the ute and played his
ancient squeeze-box, sang a few leery
out-West ballads and variegated bush
anthems, recited a bit of Banjo Patterson
without the drop of a hat. That was what
he used to do to rustle a quid back when,
and believe me, he was bloody good.

He could have been my best mate easily
and stayed but the houseboat he and his
wife lived on in Broadwater awaited.
And I learned all that because I gave
him a ripe avocado.
© 1 November 2006, I.D. Carswell

(*post traumatic stress)

Better Citizen

Be a better citizen the label says, and help
us show the World a better way to healthy
life and happiness. While Nature’s power is
in decline, no doubt a falling out with needs
of far too many mouths to feed, we happily
assist her blessings with a science we’ve
applied to make the genes in normal seeds
a little bit improved. Okay, we’ve modified
a thing or two inside the grain – but now it’s
better than it ever was before. Be assured.

So share with us your worldly cares, be our
partners in a scheme to feed a World in dire
need. Buy some shares, they’re sure to pay.
Eat the food we’ve guaranteed. Genetically.
Take as read just what the label says and be
assured, you won’t be modified in any way...
© 10 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Water Babes (rev)

We were water babes born in the arms of
a brook that patiently took us to heart.
From the start we blithely played amid
pastel-shade ranks of serried wildflowers
arrayed on somnambulant banks.

When one of us drowned in a mad escapade
the brook buoyed her up, a swirling embrace
enchanted her smile, placed coronet of gold
on her tousled head, rephrased her name
as beatified daughter.

We gave gracious thanks to the water, we
knew who had saved her. She wears the crown
still, faded to russet in autumn decline – tho’
her spirit is pure as the water divine which
filled her with life, returned her for love.

We flowed into a fractious world and learned
a dour pain of soured associations, torment
and misery; lessons deeped in humble origins.
Peaceful banks were breached and flagrant
paths scoured with awesome power.

But might belies the calm that flowers in gentle
times and gentle times were all we knew.
There, beside our brook a conscience shaped
our thoughts of peace and gave to us romantic
views she tethered with a temperant lease.
© 18 September 2003, I.D. Carswell

The Beer Was Cold Enough (rev)

It was amazing; while I lay a-bed I had the lines
a-roaring through my head like locusts on the wing.

An unabashed extravagance of such a flock of stunning
words had shocked me out of brittle sleep – and sleep
avoids me like someone who’s plagued or way too out
out of vogue – so I rise and try to write, reflecting that
I might confine a rogue idea or two – at least.

It was a desperate hope. My thoughts were caught in
politics and patronymic polymeric jingoistic sh*t concerning
what it means to be Australian. I’ve had the thoughts before
and drowned them with the coldest draught of beer a
man can stand, and followed that with gallons more.

I mean the thought need not occur unless you’re not an
Aussie drinking beer. Or more distressing – given over to
depressing thoughts on things without a beer in hand.
What brought this on? Crikey, I don’t know –
the beer was cold enough.
© 22 August 2006, I.D. Carswell

Scattered Cloud

A dismal
day progresses
to a chastened dawn

mock fidelity
crows 4am optimism
from a lone tin shed

night shrouds its
fixed belief with more
indecent knowledge

amends once bright
futures accounted easily
in scattered cloud
© 9 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Degrade Me Please

Degrade me please; I have an urgent
need to feel unclean. Just say if you
will wee on me. I can’t explain, I am
this way to be demeaned – it makes
me feel that I have paid disgracefully;
I plead for you to sanction me and
give relief – you see my life to be a
sham and I indeed a shameful thief.

Why me, says he whose face betrays
estranged proclivities? Curious as I
may be I can’t obey. My penchants
stray beyond your hand, to reach
this goal please understand – it’s
you who’ll have to pee on me.
© 8 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Twenty Four Hour Embrace (rev)

Awakening in the twenty four hour embrace
of a few moments sleep where half a lifetime
eludes dreams; feeling you were cheated by
wages of too much gin and lack of sleep
in these unconsummated fumblings.

Reunions of this passion seem so jarringly
deranged, do we feed self-interests which
allay its mutuality? To cling together is
amorphous death when coursing blood is
killed by footsteps echoed in the hall.

Guilt's malignancy stalks a gas-lit shadow-dance
upon the walls, perversity arouses oestrus
in the embers of our trance; magic moments
muted in taut breath are crushed in weighted
consequence, discretion flees the night to
heighten senses steeped in self-pity,
drowned in self-indulgence.

This trauma is a scene where players
claim immunity from plight by plea of
actors licence. The effect is candid apathy –
not abandonment to passion's flight.
© 12 September 1972, I.D. Carswell

Travelling On The Thumb (rev)

It wasn’t hard to do, you played the game
the simple way, took all the rides that you
could get with no regret – let shrinkage in
the easy miles provide a measure of success
strode grassy verges slow with thumb erect
but quick to curse the surly bastards speeding
past so close they near to spun you round.

The sight and sound of transport slowing
down from highway speed to eye you up
became profound relief – you were a thief of
driver’s time and yet the kinship of an open
road possessed a code as old as spoken word,
and when you heard, “Where y’ going, mate?”
from stationary car it mattered not if near or
far or anywhere as there you’d made a friend.

Carefree days at least for me and though
I’d been marooned a time or two, I never
felt alone. A traveller on the lonely road is
primed to see his fellow men a kindred soul,
inclined to want to share his time, speak
and hear and laugh in common cheer while
only those who fear the simple dignities
of fellowship will thunder by, faces turned
away; I wonder if it’s thus today?
© 6 April 1992, I.D. Carswell

Shameful Stains

These stains will make no
enemies as vanity vacates a
chef’s belief; space for frippery
is wasted in audacious minds
which feed a greedy Nation.

We eat and spray the livid
mess about our face’s frenzy
of bad taste; nothing new
abstains a shocking case
which grosses here.

Stains dictate a view that
urbane eaters must consume
the food as well as napkins
plates and spoons with trees
rebated for incessant greed.

Decadency’s seen here in
an agony of market share –
While there the grain is gleaned
from spare and hungry waste,
without these shameful stains.
© 8 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Thief Of Time

A thief of time this poetry – it blithely
steals the hours one tries to set aside
the hour’s one allocates to lie in ease
of poets arms proportionate – dictates
survival of the heart and mind; while
I, victim of its larceny, comply in fear
nowhere is it safe for me – day divides
in shaded nights and waked apostacy.

Write I must or die a poet’s lonesome
death in words bereft; no justice left
to succour me, no claim besides a life
foregone to creed that writers write to
just survive – and I to find a breath in
words that no one yet may get to read.
© 8 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Simple Pleasures (rev)

Formerly: The Simple Pleasures That You Bring

Do you mind I try and write some lines
for you tonight? I’m fuelled for sure, a bit
ebullient perhaps – now there’s a word
too truly hard to find a rhyme to suit!

I’ll try, but time will take a pensive break,
prescribe unruly chance to make its telling
consequence. Am I afraid of you? Why yes.
Why is it so – how else should it be?

You are a figment from a past I never really
knew, so Arctic bright in suns which never
set, connecting parts of histories compressed
with ease – redressed complete into this day.

A past in which my son will bask in eminence,
a past which now has never passed. And if I
ever asked a chance to greet the making of
your graciousness I never made the meeting.

I take instead the simple pleasures that you
bring to place as treasured offerings amongst
the rings and ribbons, with the trinkets lying
there, with the things I’ve yearned to share;

Grandpa’s foreign words in childhood memories
ancient deeds of antique clans which reached us
in our daily lives, derived in poetry and melody,
consummate in harmonies which say I care.

I never dared to lend my heart before, my head
was always offered up a sacrifice instead – a price
severe in time’s etheric scars. But that is past. And
now you join our family, we gladly welcome you

with open arms, our hearts disarmed in greeting,
it is a magic meeting of a past we never knew
first hand, of parts uniting in your golden glow –
a past that’s now enshrined in you.
© 10 February 2006, I.D. Carswell

For my Daughter-in-Law Frida

Don’t Pay To Notice

When your best mate Blue (yeah,
he’s th’ bloodnut) asks you, How
d’ these marital things work really?
Dunno, y’ tell him wisely; ‘n when
he looks sick y’ say, Read th’ label
mate, there’s bound t’ be a hint in
bold-face somewhere – they print
‘em big for blokes these days.

Strewth says Blue, an’ he’s lookin’
proper crook, Didn’t get one – or a
handbook that I recollect. Reckon
I’m buggered mate? Just a guess
Blue, I’d say it’s too bloody late ‘n
you’ve done y’ fancy dough. Y’ see
I know for a fact they don’t come
with money-back guarantees.

Crikey he says, It don’t seem a fair
go – I mean you’ve been married,
what, forty years? How come you
‘aven’t ‘ad a malfunction. Oh, but
I ‘ave, I say. Th’ model I got spits
‘ers regularly – same way yours
does. ‘N mate, I learned long ago,
it don’t pay to notice...
© 7 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

The Light Was Always You (rev)

In the beginning there was light,
abundant light that truly lit the way,
time was never lost in dodging flights
of feckless shadows, darkness seldom
ever blight the brightness of our day.

And when the shadows came at night
and stretched into a weary dawn, tangled
in the sleepers’ eyes, yawning in their
tousled hair, barely then we were aware.

That was when we dwelt in dismal shades
of grey, remembered flawless summers’ days
we left behind in broken time, dismembering
a quintessence of things that bound us
thence – held us tightly on our way.

Now we stumble in the dark, walk a sorely
riven path that’s strewn with rubbled past,
strive to find our perfect light, aghast a gloom
compounds our plight and treats us to affray;
could we find our flawless day within this
darkened room, or find the kindly light we
seek whilst stepping in each other’s way?

The bruises which we bear from crashes
in the night are sorely worn, we’re torn by
crazy flights of fantasy despite the anchors
of our past, deluged by vast illusions with
no caste or frame to give a name to;

I know it’s not a game and I despair at my
lost sight, I see a worldly light that glows
within the warmth of you, a light to guide
you true, a light to surely show you where to go;
and where you go is where I need to be
because I’m blind, did not construe,
the source of light was always you.
© 1 February 2004, I.D. Carswell

Without you I am blind….

Better Words

To try to say in fewest words what fills
a Universe still takes a devastating toll,
simple calls of birds who merely sing for
joy allays my fears although I’m shamed;
away from my reality their play on words
is purely bliss expressed, such brevity in
song impresses more than words can
yield – for which I thank my eager ears.

I know beyond appearances I hear the
voices of a Universe in tune with birds
and rest at peace requited, justly in my
place, a tamed, contrited poet bested
by his feathered friends who once again
suggested better words to make his day.
© 5 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Today’s Enlightenment

It is a parody of how not to behave
spoofed in wit and whimsy no less
of grave consequence, yet uttered
in bleachers sotto voce. Agonised
by tactless and antagonistic faux
vehemence, theatrical attack and
defence, the odious clichés flew fat
& thicker than spoon-fed gnat-shit.

Fledglings flexed their forae wings
in mordant mating dance of rhetoric
read with fleas for eyes; demiurge
dispensed snot half-picked of lies
and sour derisiveness – spread as
wisdom of today’s enlightenment.
© 4 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Thinking Of An Afterlife (rev)

Was Beginning the flower’s
fertilising, or was it deeper,
in earth beneath? No end of
wonderment shall cease this
quest, or know why
it is unknowable.

A universe in a bloom’s cusp;
we glimpse mysterious, grasp
reality, surrender a dearth in
searching finality to find
our earth has nothing hidden
behind, is all that there is –
nothing defined but Being,
believing in power of the bud,
durability of Youth.

When time is upon us we will
descry mortality bequeathed
by our parent dead, viewing
instead a wry but temporal
frailty debasing in fragile strands,
uniting tumultuous past to
petulant futures, and we stand
before the tempest of noon
knowing how with surety
as those who have seen it
our fate is soon –

we shall wilt into the afterlife
our successors allow. And when
they smile in passing – think
of us with affection, why then,
yes then, will be life everlasting.
© 10 February 2005, I.D. Carswell

I Love You In The Morning (rev)

I love you in the morning and in setting of the sun
in aching hours of darkness before the day's begun
and in a waking solitude to greet the breaking dawn
I grant you sleep an extra hour although you sleep alone.

I love you in the evening and on into the night
I love you and I need you despite our torrid plight;
this battle is anomalous, tensioned in despair –
perhaps a tender measuring of just how much we care.

If loving you were bars of gold we’d both be millionaires,
but love is gold enough for me and money my despair;
I wish your life be full of joy, of triumphs and acclaim,
when all the tumult quietens I’ll be here just the same –

a kettle on the boil, a fire in the hearth
and warmth throughout our tumbled
home, so tender in my heart.
© 26 June 2006, I.D. Carswell

Making Sense

So you don’t watch TV much these days!
It typically equates to $ and ¢, always in
the real sense; you either pay up front &
get screwed anyway or are pared out of
your dough by what’s on free-to-air. No
relief is at bay, ad pursuit is relentless,
goods you don’t want, indeed never need

pound the screen, stare from billboards,
scream demented messages of “consume
or be beaten”. And it’s useless declaring
fervently – Hey let up a ways – it won’t
buy relief. Ad men believe it divine duty
to buy their wares – as persuasive proof
of your good citizenry and belief in God,

motherhood and our great Nation! So get
shaking, empty your pockets, wear your
flat-wallet patriotism proudly in the name
of all that was & will be Good! But beware,
a little bird said TV scheduling won’t even
change a little bit but the price
of fuel most certainly will...
© 3 June 2008, I. D. Carswell