Old Tawny

Too many glasses of port lays claim to
the greater part of this day’s dawning,
a nasal affliction with thickness in the
voice suggest a cold – mythology no
less; brewer’s croup is diagnosed and
tightness in the head with avid thirst
attests the truth, laryngitis laid to rest.

Drayton’s took the blame, the bottle of
Old Tawny shamed into submission by
its sheer extravagance, an opulence of
taste far too alluring to resist. This
morning’s Godlike mist has witnessed
miracles of resurrection staged through
restoration of the level there within.

By selfless sacrifice McWilliams Tawny
Select Reserve attains a saintly elevation –
renamed Drayton Family’s Finest, a ruse
I hope will rescue this bruised lad’s now
tarnished reputation. The subterfuge, of
course, will fail unless the miracle extends
to and maintains munificence in taste.
© 4 July 2009, I. D. Carswell

Will Grow Again

Aches and minor pains have paid the fees
for yesterday’s excess – 60 trees I guess
were pruned; a waste in venture terms, a
gesture to placate aesthetics I have yet to
rate or comprehend. Hands vibrate today,
both ears still ring reflexively from revving
engines shrieking malcontent, of trashing
limbs with tactless ease. Scratches are all
dressed with melaleuca oil, tea tree if you
please, which stings a bit but guarantees
a clean foray for minor wounds redressed.

You smile at me indulgently; the job we’ve
done you say looks great, the block is neat,
signifies our management is on the beat. I
keep a silence harboured in the lee of your
content. No need to say a word or disagree,
or further my distress remarking trees we
pruned were destined for removal anyway.
An eyesore fixed may well have paid your
vanity a compliment, but it delays a phase
in timely future plans we’ve missed. Trees
will grow again because you say they can.
© 3 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Being Old In The Game (rev)

It was a half-life that seemed like
a genuine world wielding hard
symbolism over those who ruled it;
we casually learned, lived vaguely
in teen-easy ambivalence while our
pedagogic peers took their chances
in ordered existence, wearing
their office with pride and esteem.

The guises we wore were a mask,
a dream in denial of their system,
its cachets, its legends,
its grotesquely worn smiles.

My pupils once told me I couldn’t be old,
a cheering perception that held my
success – if I could read the lessons
suggested. Unless they were joking.
I asked, they giggled and said you can laugh,
a sign that they knew was not fraught
in old teachers. I aught to be pleased,
I wanted to teach and to teach meant to reach,
to fathom the heart, the essence of each
ingenious child.

That teaching is sharing, puissantly bareing
the soul, airing weaknesses, caring as bold
in its basics as love is revealing; all this is done
in an aegus of trust, a vaporous scroll much
older than reason. It does take its toll;
the treasonous must can sour in the vat
and being old in the game
is a sign of just that!
© 1966, I.D. Carswell

Your Handsome Smile (rev)

Formerly: None Is Spared Your Handsome Smile

The mystery of a smile that glows within
your eyes – framed in a countenance of
innocence passes not unheeded. Those
transient's hallway smiles and greetings
offered through your door are slyly seeking
kisses you unwittingly bestow each time
you purse your lips and say hello.

There is a pleasured bounty in your pretty
face suffused with guileless feelings unconcealed
to every passer-by, and none is spared your
handsome smile revealing each a courted
glance, a promised tryst, an aired caress,
a moment of significance.

And when you venture forth your lines
are pleasing to the watcher's eye, of
softened curves and billows in a tidy form
that draws a wish of muted sighs.
Voluptuous and languid grace placates
your urgent stride and pillows breast and
buttock in a sultry swell, all undulating
gently with the tide.

Were you ungirded of conventions stays
and flowed to fill the place you own in natural
flesh, unrestrained allure would so ignite this
reverie that lust would burst its seams; your
naked charm, that promise in your smile,
beckons madness in its sweetest form
and titillates illicit, luscious dreams.
© 1981, I.D. Carswell

Lake Otamangakau (rev)

The roaring of Te Whaiau intake weir
intrudes as sleep eludes again to soar
across the lake on white-tipped, swan-
wide wings. Defiant wild cat's call, a
tuneless howl that crashes through the
nylon walls which stem the thrust of
night, comes taunting in, curdles dreams,
itching in the seams of somnolence.

Awake, aware in tented night, a flax bush
shuffled glissé tread of frond on frond and
seed-pod prattle marching on the fractious
wind surrounds the tent, and lake, and night.

Otamangakau, swamphen sanctuary in raupo
days when mangatoetoe stalks were lances
massed to hold the mountain's fire and flax
grew greedy in this hollow. Otamangakau,
the anglers bowl where fledgling streams
enticed here mingle: moaning through the
pumice tunnels roiling in the concrete tumbrel,
spend their youth in sluggish flow; alpine children
named like music – naive, enchanting Whakapapa
comes resounding from its ski-slope, snow-fed
quarters, Mangatepopo, soda waters, adding
basso tones in concert from the cratered face of
Tongariro, sprightly Wanganui frolics over lava
tangles heedless of its sluggish, adult reaches
far below.

A statue in obscenity, the dredge which gouged
the channel and disgorged the levee mutely curses
all who pass; a monument abandoned, Trojan horse
reviled in Te Whaiau’s graceful sweep: promise of
these waters draws me past this chancre, its gaunt
squat shell invites no second glance when silver
phantoms deep in the greenstone lake dance
in my eyes.
© 1975, I.D. Carswell

Let The Moment Pass (rev)

Formerly: I Cannot Let The Moment Pass

I cannot let the moment pass
without a weary greeting – or
retard the recent past where
shadows still are fleeting; I’d
sabotage the future just by
staring at a mirror – never let
a glimmer pass and try to hold
my image fast in healing my
dilemma.

Time is gliding in array, I sense
it move in subtle ways; tells me
I am locked in stride and shocked
and numb and riven dumb inside
the house I used to try with no
success to eulogise – and frankly
I am not surprised.
I’ve cast the very best of words
into a thankless void – listened
long and patiently to hear what
might be heard, garnered dust
and loneliness in chilling, cogent
quiet, a crystal quiet of purest form,
a chaste and potent curling worm
that nestles in my ageing heart.

I must have died and blown away,
my hopes are dust in disarray, of
dreamlike clouds, of coloured sands
that waft and spin in foetid strands
to spread across this lonely lea.

Where are the people we once knew
who talked with us as one, where are
the children growing up and playing
in the sun, where are the words we
shared before of sane and peaceful
unity? Have they all died and blown
away – disappeared like me?

© 2005, I.D. Carswell

Zero Score Effects

Asking my advice on suicide is fuelling flames
to charnel reason. I never ask proposers why
they think that death defies a dourness of its
consequence. My only ask is How? Serious in
life as death is meant to be I weigh up all the
auguries success explains, but latterly, analyse
the ways it seems express intent at best with
little mess, flair, originality and nothing less.

The method is dispassionate, a clinical review
that leaves no room to speculate or guess. We
trace the sequences, grade effect percentages
on user scales, rate significance statistically. I
like to see my aid as utter commonsense and
claim so far that zero score effects pertain.
© 2 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

An Easy Lay

We need to understand that this
is not a tacit form of censorship;
technically it’s just a gag on drek
that Willie Nilly put in place –
a shopping list of words we
use too easily to bad effect.

Real censorship is speech
suppressed – of words removed
to clear offense; words intending
harm excised or words so bad
the censor stops them being
read without a grace of editing.

Censorship removes wholesale the
scenes of sensitivities distressed,
vulgar or obscene, cutting out and
cleaning what we’d see most every
day, laundered quite discretely
by deleting them completely!

Whether music, books, TV or Web
it’s part of life, a deal that tries to
lessen strife within our traumatised
society; the price we pay for tripe
has spice excised to leave the pap
we call the ‘sanitised’ expression.

Willy Nilly warns us to avoid the
words he lists (f.ck, a.shole, p.nis,
v.gina, b.stard, s.ck, s.n o. a b.tch),
but is that censorship? Get a life...
One pays the price to post this site
– which seems an easy lay...
© 1 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Rehabilitation

I cannot know the agonies you feel
firsthand – while pain is all too real
I comprehend the message in your
eyes. Send this curse away is clear;
as cogent I surmise as is the wish
to end it now would likely be. But
that’s not how the set is played my
friend, you’re trapped within a place
where losing faith’s ability ensures a
temporary loss of upper hand. The
state of infancy is there be obeyed,
limitations but an opportunity with
rare and precious gifts to grasp and
wear at childhood’s end. We’re here
to hearken to the wisdom in your
rueful smile, reminisce and listen
to your memories, share in this,
your youthful rehabilitation
© 30 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Jerry Hughes.

On The Death Of A Father (rev)

I was schooled well before he died, able at least
to feel what others felt when their fathers were
deceased. Able but not willing and not without
despair to glimpse the man who’d hide the truth
of just how much he cared.

My argent truth was fulsome gloom, moribund
and drear, my face a patent emptiness occluding
every tear; I’d gone to view him in his bier and
hoped he wasn’t there. Driven to be reassured
with no idea of what I’d see, uncertain in my
gnawing fear, lead to where they said he rested
comfortably – a wasted corpse too small to fill
the space the giant of my admiring youth had
easily displaced; it surely wore my father’s face
disgraced in modest death – a disappointment,
a crushing jest, I knew at once it was another
in his place. The man I loved for patience and
simplicity was clearly somewhere else instead,
yet dead, yet dead, oh most implacably.

Our sombre deed that day was one and last for
our departed Dad, we wore his coffin on our
rounded shoulders to its grave, a coruscating
scar before our heavy paths, its blinding light a-
thunder in our dismal thoughts, our sight assailed
with shattered shards that blurred the metaphors
we brought to hear, the metaphors we wrought
with care, the loving icons of our youth we fraught
to share, bury with familiar treasures vested there.
I fear I did not cry that night,
I did not dare.

This dismal place I hide my grief is crowded shame,
my father would have taught me tame my trembling lips
without contempt, face far constraints tight-lipped,
remain serene; I dream how well I played his silent game.

The years that separate me from the choke-voiced son
who spoke his Father’s eulogy with clumsy tongue
cleared the final clod of filial unease. I know my sons
as one who loves, and know and feel their love for me.
In memories of a father whom we laid to rest in
strident peace and nascent piety I see the vibrant
image of the golden ones; I so regret I never said
how much I loved you Dad, and so lament that
you, Norman Frank Luke, never spoke candidly
of how much you loved too.
© I.D. Carswell

Weekend Market

Another weekend market passed and
stored away in memory; tables stacked,
the bins and trays all neatly packed
in spaces traded over places
where they used to be.

Taken years to be at ease with any
sense of permanence, we try to see
an order larger than the mess, more
subtle than the claim this spot is mine,
functionality more than design,
and it appears to satisfy.

Although I couldn’t say specifically
just where the ripest fruit would likely be
my guess is sure. Next week we’ve planned
an early pick to balance quirks and irksome
glitches that our orchard likes to yield –
but hitches never make our sense of fun
less than appealing.

There is time to rest, digress and
reminisce; laughter is a good release,
we’re not remiss in letting down our hair
to dance an orchard jig.

For lunch today a ripe and tasty avocado
lightly laced with lime and spices on the
Lauke bread we freshly baked,
glass of wine to celebrate.

We wouldn’t trade this place or play a game
of chance with simple cheer, a currency of
faith our orchard life enables us.
© 30 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Multisyllabic Charm

Not much point in fooling yourself is there?
A version of popularity you buy by playing
“the game” is the sole measure of worth
here. Rules haven’t changed, if rules they
ever were; a statement of fact over anger,
no standards worth a damn exist beyond
sad, pointless edicts changed by the day.

So you wrote commentary on 150 poems
yesterday – the truth’s there for all to see,
while Shakespeare did nothing; he probably
didn’t need to, to gain readers anyway. A
few hardy souls braved your meek offerings
leaving either stale or commonplace words
but you’re reprieved with warm serendipity.

Yet suspicion lurks like cancer. Having paid
your dues you’re entitled to improved status;
you know it – crusade with increased vigour,
cruise cyber waves with ego inflated, riding
rough-shod over speed bumps until sated by
excess blandness – ‘til Captain Courageous
lays intriguingly eponymous complaints...

It may take years but eventually you’ll see
popularity has nought to do with so-called
poetic acuity. It is all a numbers game with
dollars for clicks fated to ablate any creative
use of words. And beware which dictionary
you consume – the flatus called censorship
is unimpressed by chic, multisyllabic charm.
© 28 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Night’s Sentinel (rev)

Even tonight will pass into memory’s
oblivion, doomed despite an ardent
reunion of once estranged yet precisely
matched parts – to a guiltless verdict –
a foregone conclusion.

As you dissolve twice-blessed in a
kaleidoscope of dreams, claimed by
the deep, curdling sands and sink,
absorbed in self-suffusion, I sense
hard-edged awareness balefully
prick, dredging insomnia, haggardly
thick with past phantoms relating the
fates of all vast and antique storms
that ever menaced our skies, a raging
suspension of consensual lives which
all but passed into nothing; wise and
implausible storms that calmed hearts
in thrall, teased wrinkles from sad eyes
before falling easily upon our sore
and thirsting land.

Even tonight will last only as long as
eponymous night can last, decreed
by blindness and a beggar’s mask to
beg in the darkness ahead of the light –
and when it is all said and done,
perpetually follow a transient path
under an old and intransitive sun.

And in the evening’s ritual dying and
before tomorrow’s dawn flies this
night’s unguent shore I am more awake
than trying to sleep, at last alive in glory
steeped, encased in a mould of your liquid
embrace where I fuse with the dew from
your sleep-used face, rejoice in the scent
of your fragrant hair; united in sum and
not caring to part, suborned, a transfusion
of wearing your heart.

Yet I desert you again in a dilettante swoon,
atoning for deeds, bleeding with sins, an
amateur whom while knowing his trial,
self-mutilates in thin pledges and bogus
denial, unable to render or stomach his
fate… I won’t be reborn, it’s too late
and too long to the innocence of dawn

As the light from a new day splits the
anxious night along its softened seams
and spreads a filigree of lucent threads
to gleam in my mired eyes, I am alight;
the clouded cold ebbs to journey’s end
and tangles in the bends of broken sleep,
and though I’ve only strung a line or two
of odds and ends where meaning’s clear
I know I can return from here; night’s
sentinel will wait good-naturedly to place
my fate. I can rejoin your warm embrace,
thrill in the joy of your wakening face;
comforts abide and time has stood still
in a blaze of enlightenment; I know what
is true – as I always will, my comfort is You,
Forever is true; You are as you are,
and You are as I see you.
© 2003, I.D. Carswell

The Law Is A Ass

Actually, the Law is a Ass is what he
said, as in Equus asinus, the donkey,
or perhaps Equus africanus, African
Wild Ass; although he could’ve meant
Equus hemionus onager, the Onager
or Asian Ass, but it would have been
a bit too confusing.

Thought of the Law being likened to a
nice piece of Nubian Wild Ass however,
rather intrigues – pseudo-erotic hints,
jocular reference to ancient history. And
not too bad an idea it would seem. The
black and white of it had to have a start
somewhere back there.

But alas, he referred to Charles Dickens
character in Oliver Twist, the Mr Bumble
who replied, “If the law supposes that…
the law is a ass—a idiot.” And it was all
to do with coverture – the condition of
being a married woman. It has changed
of course – you see, Bumble was right.
© 28 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Real Underwear

A clothesline kind of day,
one where underwear displays
insouciance that you were
never duly gifted to
begin to emulate.

Sure, you used to wear them
with a hint of flair – but here
their sinuous display midst
dour and stolid towels a-sway
is breathless flippancy.

All you can say is, “Thanks for
making me aware,” – ‘tho knowing
you were volunteered to clear
the line before a chance of dew
arraigned all those accused.

So may this glimpse be insight
true that keeps your love alight,
for you’ve been there to see
reality in underwear right
where it’s wont to play...
© 27 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Essence Of Intimacy (rev)

Formerly: We Reflect This Day On The Essence Of Intimacy

We reflect this day on the essence
of intimacy, from its origins in the
spring-tide of youth to an afterward
secured in distant mist – in awe for the
reason and to what end it endures.

We weigh the consequence, keen with
up-welling sentiment, sense new love
spring before the old has run its course
(‘tho its course is never run); each day
adds its weight to the sum we bear this
day, to solidify with days gone by in
an endlessness of summer’s inheritance.

Today we take time for ourselves to
renew our vows and return to the
mood of youthful love with the same
tremulous excitement as beset us
when we danced on its eve ‘til dawn.
© 3 March 2005, I.D. Carswell

Limited News

It came to a head last Sunday,
for years buying The Sunday Mail
was a treat from me to the spouse
who complained living in Peachester
was like being in a news desert.

Never took her to task over it –
the Mail was literally as good as any
I have ever used to start a fire.
But actually read it, no way!

Glanced at an item unconsciously
yesterday, eyes strayed from sports
page to feature article is my excuse.
Expletive, I say, that’s the same sort
of shit as Sydney’s pejorative style.

Any chance it’s the same rotten rag?
Least for a name it is; News Limited,
which means “limited news” literally,
of THE News Corporation, owns it.

Now whatever else you say about
Rupert Murdoch – owning so many
multimedia entities worldwide
indubitably feeds an irreverent ego –
but not as much as it ensures
complete immunity against the truth
for those who he decides need it.
© 30 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Settled Dust

Dust settles ceaselessly around
this place we live – the air alive,
though clear, bears particles we
rarely see until its signature is
sprawled indecently on floors
and furniture-surrounded walls.

The surface is effaced by random
scrapes and smears my passage
has recorded over time; I write
my name irreverently in lavish
script with flourishes that say I
couldn’t give a damn.

Whoever chases dust obsessed
appears to miss the ancient
claim; from dust we came,
and thence always,
are destined to return.
© 27 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

The Beans Were Exciting (rev)

I’ve tried cooking in my new Quicksilver jacket,
just an affectation I assure you – no, not the
coat or the cooking but me in the wearing of
it, a distorted form of appreciation.

When I think of it, the gag was fitting. It was
not new but a barely used, zippered surfers’
jacket bought at the Market for five dollars,
waterproof, hooded, lined for lousy weather.

Not a substitute for a chef’s tunic, however it
was warm and reassuring with its embroidered
logo huge on the back, like a doffed personality
peer approved, familiar, somehow inviting.

And thus appropriate for an innovative recipe
of zesty beans with chilli & cheese – spiced with
grated ginger, smoothed by yogurt. Like my
wearing the jacket – the beans were exciting!
© 5 April 2005, I.D. Carswell

The Last Unicorn (rev)

The last unicorn was never free
to chose another ending, the
plaintive melody entrained
with sweet orchestral strains
enlivening was sundered
in a soured rendition of our
cruelly slewed dominion.

We were never set to let her
free from facile bonds, we
fondly loved mythology too
much to let her go – kept
her chained beyond a dream
of sessile permutation.

It chained us too, we never
knew her beauty but within
the constructs that we drew;
we made her so and when
composer Johnny Webb
expressed it in his song we
cried and said it isn’t so,
she never lived and never
really died, we lied about
forever-after –
but now we know…

“In the distance hear her laughter,
It's the Last Unicorn,
I'm alive... I'm alive”
© I.D. Carswell

Quoted lyrics from ‘The Last Unicorn’ composed by Johnny Webb.
America’s version of the song ‘The Last Unicorn’ is my inspiration;
I have never seen the 1982 film and don’t specifically remember
reading Peter S. Beagle’s book (though I must have, it certainly
strikes a chord)… Perhaps I should if I haven’t.

Forever Alight (rev)

Were meetings destined then this
one would take a leading place; the
oracle decreed it fate in a matrix of
moving matter, the signs all clattered
with chance fêted as a sweet benefactor.

When we were separate entities in clear
air on a fair breeze of sailing pleasure,
scheming elements drove us together in a
coincidental confluence of paths, a meeting
in innocence. But unlike ships that pass in
the night sharing glimpses of distant but
unknown consequence – and sail on free in
an unaltered conscience to reach detached
destinations, our passage through life was
irrevocably changed, our courses aligned
by forces beyond our power to deflect.

Do you remember it now? Do you reflect how
it was? In the mornings – in the clear light of
day the freshness of evening stars still brightly
burning remains – heavens forever alight.
© 2005, I.D. Carswell

A Mad Disease

They’re ha*ry, scary days my fr*ends,
plague *nvades w*th v*rulent *nsan*ty –
*f you’ve felt mal*gned per se compla*n
away to Em*ly; she’s the one th*s s*te
constra*ns to try to keep the peace.

Her role’s no sinecure or light relief,
think of whom she has to please –
could you maintain a database,
equivocate, police, restrain, or ban
behaviours by the disparate?

It’s true that she’s no judge of verse,
that’s okay, who the H*ll is anyway –
but with a strong belief she soldiers on
and neatly meets contingencies that
border lunacy each working day.

I hate to say this ain’t the site it used
to be or wonder why it’s atrophied –
something crawled into the works it
seems, jammed a lever of restraint,
died and spread a mad disease...
© 20 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

.

.

Winter Solstice (rev)

Brevity’s the curse
of a poet writing verse
in Winter solstice:

a sad mendicant’s
acrid medicine, begging
bowl of Winter’s cheer,

seasonal owl starved
of mice-thoughts and winged prey
fallen from Summer’s grace,

skeletal remains
of once fat contemplation
chancing Winter’s ire,

scant leavings of the
feasting in plenitude, bare
bones of Winter’s whim.
© 8 January 2007, I.D. Carswell 2007

Doing Lunch With Charles

I’ve tried imagining Bukowski
seeing the same scenes I see;
wondering whether he might’ve
found it real enough to want to
write ‘em down. That scared Hell
outta me. But I doubt it. I mean
you have to be mostly sober to
see anything real around here –
as distinct from constructs and
boundaries like where he lived.
I imagine our conversation – he
chivvying me for hiding in trees,
drinking too much to make a
statement, me agreeing. I mean,
what else could you do with him
three quarters inebriated.
© 21 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

You Will Claim (rev)

Formerly: And You Will Claim

And you will claim we need more births
to keep our population mix in check while
nature’s truths suggest there are too many
of us yet. And you will make the claim with
good intent, wear the jeers precipitated by
our peers; you’ll blame statistics for the
deed no doubt, you’ll see the figures shout
a raw event, a massive rise in aged percent,
a generation which will dent resources you’ve
restrained through stringent fiscal policy.

Is that indeed official view? So make us breed
to right the scale, create a younger set to settle
up our social debt, a captive gang with time in
hand to pay the way. I wouldn’t want to be a
child whose birth was instanced by a budget gift
of 1500 bucks, give or take, accompanied by an
airy pledge that you would make provision for
me down the track.

On looking back I should have guessed your
game, even noted that your ages tell the same
old story; so it’s the ‘Grow Or Die Economy’,
times are hard competing on a Global plane –
a death or glory scheme, again, so nothing’s
changed in that respect. You must have missed
the lead my friend, young ones still won’t breed
in times’ like yours. The cause? Their values are
estranged, their lives are rearranged as such
which 1500 bucks won’t set aflame.
© 27 June 2006, I.D. Carswell

Rather Sad

To seek an explanation wastes
energies too profligate to contemplate,
best to wait and see what time
will bring – it gives a space for
reason’s beckoning, eases confrontation
and abates the raging dissonance

A gang of zealots, unless you see
hoodlums busy creating mayhem,
whose obtuse behaviour borders
gaucheness so naive it’s quaint,
all of whom stuff up things that
were going okay

While crude and stupid it airs
true sadness, those who play
in the ranks believe they are actually
Saints bringing fabulous gifts –
which were never theirs
to give free in the first place;

the cost is a slew of dated homilies,
ruthless invective and contumacious deceit
spewed in a pit of burgeoning iniquity –
synonymous with raw manure.
All who play the game are equally
shamed for sure. Rather sad, isn’t it?
© 23 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Of Such Simplicity (rev)

You and me,
the proof is there to see,
our lives are held within the spell of great simplicity,
we’re free of all the shadows in the hall,
seen in awe as pictures hanging on the wall;
was it meant to be, intentionally,
of such simplicity?

The pace of Life
is not predictably
ever free or very easy, from the swift and mad
to cruelly sore and sad, good times were had
amongst the wrenching sorrows, but mostly life
is quietly free of strife, meant to be,
essentially, simplicity.

We have the time
now to reflect about
the things in life that we have surely gone without,
we could fixate no doubt on what we’d never see
or make our lives to be of great complexity,
but it was meant to be, implicitly,
just simplicity.

Here we are
the pantry door ajar
the shelves within are filled with living memories,
stored carefully, thoughtfully, in perpetuity;
it’s where we see a precious legacy,
which is meant to be, uncontentiously,
of such simplicity.
© 6 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Raspberry Tart (rev)

Formerly: Of The Raspberry Tart (in you)

I love you for your fat.
Your thin intimidates what
attraction contemplates –
and no respite from that.
My avid eyes make peace
with nascent curves that
grew into a joyous, rounded
you from waisted space.

Beauty’s eyes behold,
afire in bounteous sight,
a-captured in the light
of burgeoning desires.
The thin of you recalled
is lost in reverie, buried
in sensual devilry of the
raspberry tart in you.
© 3 July 2007, I.D. Carswell

Softtail Harley

Torque and power,
that’s all I truly live for
now; a solid dream
of freedom flying
eulogised in chrome
and self-esteem.
The Harley Rocker C
I ride is me, softtail, sleek,
a deep and throaty bark
that cries a throttled might
so lightly held in check.

I glide the byways free
to feel the envy radiate,
flee from enmity and hate
by changing lanes – a twist
of wrist, a lean into the
subtle curve of borrowed
fate – slipstream a 4WD
of here and now, slide the gaps
which hesitate but dearly seek
then roar beside and wink
beyond that fatal reach.
© 26 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Partisanship And Politics (rev)

Were I not a patriot which of course I am, I would explain
just how the term remains a sticking point within my craw,
how it contains a core of prudish mockery, dissembles
jingoistic claims. But I am and not ashamed.

I love the land, the people and the open places, can’t condone
the crowded spaces, feel concern for those who cannot leave,
grieve for children trapped within regimes that stunt
their growth and drain their youth in cruel hegemony.

Was I just a visitor and open passed to wander where I might,
free to censure as I please, light the fires, feed the flames and
duly leave, I would explain. But I’m here to stay. It’s not the way
that I was born to bear – condemn and sneer and run away.

I’d rather taste the venomed jeers of ultra right-wing cavaliers
whose skins are thin; I’d rather fight those battles here. Yet woe
betide the hasty son who fights alone on borrowed ground – it
is unsound to make a stand without a constituted plan.

Was I but a paying guest I’d gripe and whine and make a fuss
you’d think would never end, I would distend the bulging gut
of shit expatriate disguised and bust it open wide, expose
provincial heresy and swim in it against the tide.

That I can’t – that I must be quiet amuses me and those like me
who own the pool; we’re just as much a cause as case reviewed,
solution placed in reach without the tools, crisis redefined
as such that those we’re said to fear are foist the blame.

And that remains the near and easy explanation; we’re afraid
to be as patriotic as we might, afraid we’d blight the egos in the
crown, our thin-skinned peers who cant and carp and rage at
trite deflections of their petty schemes and piecemeal policies.

The men we once selected to bring change are now afraid of
change with fears as drear as odds against their re-election.
In the aetiology of national wealth, partisanship and politics
are an explosive mix, seen as a harbinger of a failing health.
© 26 June 2006, I.D. Carswell

Originals

You’ll never be Original they say,
and that’s a fact – going back 200
years might make you one, family
and relationships intact. As if you
are impressed or really care. So
what’s the dumb insinuation here?

Being Inbred? Why yes, essentially.
That’s a cold & hard reality allowed
by Peach Trees early pioneers.
The nights were cold, neighbours
warmed themselves abed, extending
family to friends, over & over again.

Flats the bullocks grazed are gone –
timber laden wagons crack and squeak
the narrow tracks in distant memory,
pioneers who cleared the trees remain
as names revered while Peach Trees
tamed became Peachester acclaimed.

Lest you get the wrong idea, locals say
you’re welcome here and warmly greet
the new – ‘tho with watchful eyes they
view and ask in cautious deference your
name in case a vagrant son returns;
then smile and vaguely walk away.
© 26 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

So Let Us Dare (rev)

How do we discover cures to proof us
of each other? Are there antidotes
attuned to you and me? Can we meet in
spiteful space without effacing hopeful
calm – or cause alarming conflagration?

Our bleeding hearts and noxious farts tie
us in a hopeless chase to free this place
of evil quarks of energy that detonate
without behest; distress the poise we
need to keep our sanity.

Profanity which vents each manic crash
so rends the fabric where we weave our divers
ends and tangles in the warp and weft; we’re
left to ponder with regret the bolt of
cloth unwoven, the promises betrothing,
the futures that are stolen.

And yet there is a silence in the loom,
a space as free of curdled dreams as paradise
appends; it’s crashing quiet assaults the senses,
overwhelms the sad defences, avows
a calm which would eschew an armistice –
a synthesis of each of us, an end of war.

Before we tear the loom apart let us
heed the healing quiet, listen to the tick
of time, hearken to its here and now,
let it invade our where and how and open
up our seething minds before the cloying
blindness sends us mindless.

The quiet and calm and dignity needs no
antidote from me or you nor do we
need a place apart, we start right here in
peace and light and in the dome of silence
where our voices join in common prayer – we
know that we are free to care, so let us dare.
© 2005, I.D. Carswell

Terrestrial Decisions

So, what happened to the World between
when I rode upon it last and then left for
fresher fields? Actually – not a lot I’d say.
Or am I simply far too out of step to join
the fray again? Tunes I hear all seem the
same, or is the beat of change, a portent
in an inconsistency of neatly re-arranged
and rhythmically unseemly aberrations?

I’m estranged, agreed, I know I left for
foreign climes to feed addictions I have
earned by making strangers welcome
here; all the more the merrier I say in
my defence. But why the riot fence with
pennant flags? What’s that meant to say
to refugees? There’s need out there for
folks like me to wave a welcoming –
© 26 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

Cyber Narcissism (rev)

Formerly: And Cyber Narcissism

The question remains; how many aliases
per dysfunctional sentient are needed to
survive in narcissistic, pathological space?

Those irresistible urges to spawn again and
again, birthing figments of fantasy in a nest
of intrigue, where false identities & specious
claims seem de rigueur – are symptoms and
finite details of a real disease.

Cyber narcissists stalk ersatz fame with an
unhinged and insane energy, gathering cults
of transient, disposable fans as insects to light,
burning brighter each melodramatic iteration.

Somatic and cerebral alike prey in rich waters
unmediated, feeding in epicentres tailor-made
for stalkers, erotomaniacs, denigrators and
plain nuts, sustaining grandiose fantasies,
inflating self-images.

Cinctures of normative behaviour do not apply;
cyber narcissists are addicts of their own provincial
delusion and, where unsatisfied, beware, become
disruptive influences – blaming some other as the
guilty one, as a racist son-of-shaitan.

Addicted or reformed you remain in thrall when
you seek gratification in those hallowed halls...
© 6 December 2007, I. D. Carswell

Thanks For Breakfast

Life’s rewards don’t come post-scribed
with an indicative afterword; there isn’t
a simple way to infer whether by being
singled out one earns a claim to either
notoriety or fame. It’s a bizarre leap of
faith to see such irony as justice paid –
indeed, misgivings linger longer than
a measure which the pleasure brings.

Today’s gesture said life’s rewards don’t
mean instant or necessary gratification –
can be misinterpreted; leastways that’s
the accolade from a hen who delayed
departure while all the others noisily fed,
– as if to say: hey, thanks for breakfast!
© 20 June 2008, I. D. Carswell