A Breath On Reaching Halfway

The day is at hand at last –
that hand which is just short
by a day of when I can
rest the pen and bask in
my own moment of glory.

I said in jest – it is all downhill
from the halfway mark. Now I
ken what that charade implied;
the climb was too quick and
easy – I’ve fallen thus far before.

I have no real fear of falling –
it is deceleration at the end
I don’t care for, a sudden
arresting. And the change in state,
ice from quantum dreams.

I will reflect then – slow the pace,
find 500 more poetic offerings
sedately. The manic speed of
late has spawned a carelessness
I don’t wish to die for.
© 2007-02-12 I.D. Carswell

There Is No Arguing His Dependency

In this case the patient is a severely brain
damaged motor vehicle accident victim.
No memory remains, he is unable to state
a defence – had he the capacity, and whether
to blame or deserving a form of compensation
is unknown or at least uninvestigated.

His stay in hospital demonstrates he needs
24 hour specialised care, and to be trained
in self sufficiency. Bureaucracy claims no
training facility exists so he is released; he is 22 –
your son or mine, but due to this iniquity and
budgetary exigencies in play onus shifts

to whomever compassionately claims the
animate corpse of a man barely into his life.
It is his mother who fills the space vacated.
He is not a Ward of the State, falls away from
its benevolence, and she is unsupported yet
there is no arguing his dependency.

It is sure to engender spirited debate in rarefied
atmosphere of Parliament’s Ivory Towers, or wear
sharp invective in the Halls of Power from bastard
reptilian bureaucrats who’ll think with relief –
Thank God he’s not my son!
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-09

Illusions Of Delusions

It wasn’t that he wasn’t warned –
the little man whose ears have failed
in trying times before revealed his
character again today. He railed against
a candidate who’ll make a stand for
President. Not here, but in the USA!

In Johnnie’s jaundiced view he’s
right, we’re wrong – and bugger you
if you dare to differ. He wields a steel-
capped slipper with the delusionary
invective of a man possessed by
obsessive-regressive behaviour.

I guess we’re tired of political paranoia
spawned in a milieu of prefabricated
innuendo and mistrust, and just because
the war goes badly wont excuse his joust.
Johnnie’s behaviour is execrable, and
without doubt, entirely out of order.

Barack Obama observed that 1,400 into
140,000 seemed rather empty rhetoric,
precociously precise, but it looks to me
like a ratio of one hundred reasons to one
why the Senator for Illinois is right and
Johnnie so obviously wrong.
© 2007-02-14 I.D. Carswell

When You Learn To Love The Dawn

One day his bubble will burst
leaving him stranded in an alien
sea. He has cursed and misused
the gift granted; terse and cruel
words became the poetry of his
burgeoning discontent.

He never accepted the good
fortune easily, it hung on him rank
and foul for years – the smell tolled
the bell he quipped, held my nose
and plugged my ears, dived into
the deep end of a cess pit.

His days of infamy dissipate into
an afternoon of cold comfort where
he dreads the setting sun. Why can’t
you stay still a moment longer you
blind and mindless melon? You
already sleep more than I do.

‘Stay awake little one’,
replied the slowing sun,
‘burn what remains
of your frail light – when
you learn to love the dawn
I shall return’.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-11

No Other Reality Known

He strayed in Elysian fields
fed eyes and ears on rare
and amazing sights and
sounds, wound down
the windows, felt soft air
flow redolent and neat in
a new Spring’s awakening.

He ate the fruits hung plump
and sweet on trees rich in
nectars until replete and
drowned in a virtual
verisimilitude of imaginings.

There is no other reality known,
he complained, where I can be
as relaxed and as free of grave
contaminants, no place as easy.
Why do I have to be here alone?
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-08

Fly With Lepidopterae

To catch a poet’s eye is to woo
a butterfly, the nectar that you
use is awesome sweet; but with
bird held in the hand you need
to understand it has to fly.

The sense of being free to loft
in harmony with spirits of
the evanescent world
compels a poet’s dreams
to coalesce in themes and
fly with dreamy lepidopterae.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-09

Dreaming Second-Hand Dreams

We need to take time out from
dreaming second-hand dreams
wallpapered in our tiered
living spaces. The doorways
to original scenes out where
television screens are as wide
as whole buildings still lie - 
concealing the palpable and real.

The truth is that nothing is free;
give-aways are precursors to hard sales
paid for in prostitutes’ currencies.
We are all whores to the trade –
and though we’d like to think
we do better we still sell ourselves
too cheaply.

The real masters of the universe
screw whomever they want for free,
drink copiously of the very best
vintages and when they see who
crawls below piss on them from a
great height. And we call it
happiness sent!
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-09

I Am A Contemporaneous Man

He said take a word and build from that,
I took ‘contemporaneity’ –
that is to say modernity, concurrent,
of the era, fitting in to the period…

You’ll go out in a blaze of glory
he complained, there’s seven
syllables there – what made you chose it?

The seven syllables I guess...
I want to quibble with the times a bit.
I am a contemporaneous man.
© 2007-02-12 I.D. Carswell

Please – Just Don’t Overeat

Can we take this apart dispassionately, he asked
sincerely, and recognise where we depart from the
striations of the narrow track? You have taken me
to task, made attack after attack, never mentioned
my name but the lack was no less a derogation.

My, my, I say, why this and why this now? You’ve sailed
within your safe haven forever and a day, never ventured
beyond the navigable constructs of your fantasies, played
to the perfect crowd on the riverbanks of your imaginings;
are you sure you’re not somehow imagining it, even now?

- Could I tell him it was not he whom I deride? His esteem
is not weighed in a settling of flies, a swarming of fleas, a
welter of heady well-wishers fawning to the hand of a great
giver of gustatory encouragement. Not in the least! He is
a feast, dine on him well, but please – just don’t overeat!
© 2007-02-16 I.D. Carswell

See The Company I’m Keeping!

If akin to anything it must be graffiti;
I mean, why bother leaving the
signature of your idiocy on a copy
of a dead poet’s poetry?

What would you say to Edmund
Spenser? ‘…Alacke I saye unto you
there be a veritee of fyne wordes hereto…’,
I’m sure he’d be pleased having
been dead for 408 years.

Though I may be harsh in this
judgement I cannot see leaving
commentary on a verse by John
Donne, or even the late Langston
Hughes, would amuse or entertain
these now dead greats.

All the same I am tempted
to place a comment on William
Shakespeare’s sonnets, explaining
how much I hated him
because I had to learn
them word for word.

But I suspect the true motivation
is bound in the desire to see one’s
name in print, albeit nonsensically,
at the foot of a great poet’s verse.
It says, ‘Look at me, see the company
I’m keeping!’
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-11

Quand Même

It was called ‘Farrago’ that young
literary magazine – somewhere I
got stuff published at nineteen.
Sent in a swathe of poems – didn’t
give a shit. Hadn’t thought about
it until a voice out of the
past asked me it’s name.

‘Quand Même’, I thought. Until
today I hadn’t recognised the
Edith Piaf connection. I plead
untutored ignorance. Yes, I
chose that name, liked the
etymology, sort of blew my mind

the way it was saying ‘just as well’
or perhaps more pertinently –
“Well, what you say may be true,
but that's not how I see it and
anyway you're missing
the point!"

We self-published Quand Même
at Teachers College, sold it at 10
bob a copy, told our friends they
were getting a collector’s piece.
I guess I still have one as evidence.
Got solidly pissed on the proceeds
anyway.

But Farrago was a real magazine
and I paid a whole year’s sub.
My friend referred to that gem
not our torrid College piece.
What pisses me is I never got a
copy sent in the mail. So I never
did get to see me in print.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-09

Bless You For The Gift Of Your Eyes

It ate from within, no clear sign on the skin,
no hollowing. We used to laugh then;
he claimed health was a state of mind.

As old as I am I know why I feel fine, there never
was a day where I did not want to awake, to
rejoin life. Each day is a gem stored in my mind.

I am a rich man, would gift you this if it would
guarantee you a happy life. But it could be a
sleepless dream to believe it so, you must go

through life to realize your own beliefs. You cannot
buy or be gifted time. We agreed, young and brave,
unafraid of life’s mysteries. Until the diagnosis came.

Within days he ceased to glow, radiant energy stilled,
the rich sense of fulfilment his presence supposed
stifled in a bewildered silence.

He would not use
the term, but he knew
and began to die.

When he saw my tears he gently said, those are
tears of joy, my son, tears that give thanks. I have
none to cry but bless you for the gift of your eyes.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-08

Dreams Changed To Dry Clothes

We once ‘camped’ as you phrased it
in a swamp for seven days. The heat
haze and humidity were inconsequent
compared with where we waded in water
to our waists. While warm sweat and complete
wetness debilitate the crazed bugs that fed
on us were the biggest threat. It still amazes
that dreams changed to dry clothes – the feel
of socks drawn sensuously onto powdered feet,
the neat lacing of dry boots and the face
braced after a clean shave. Seven days
of constantly cleaning weapons that rusted
away, listening intent to leaves rustling,
peering through trees hell bent on seeing
them before they came from the gloom.
We could hear the distant boom and shriek
of an out-of-view engagement, we learned
of the way our formation took casualties,
prayed we’d be safe. When the choppers came
the sense of relief was omnipresent, invading
even recalcitrant’s who were usually too mired to
challenge belief or show fright. But the thought
was the same – there would be dry clothes tonight.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-07

Sixty Five Ways To Gain Weight

Sixty five readers; fortunately only
fourteen bothered t’ reply t’ th’
proposed antithesis of drivel penned
by a self-addressed doyen of business
acumen. So why not bond to benign
sleeplessness as an erstwhile occupation
then? There is no Corporate measuring stick
to jam in the craw – apart from hammed
and buttered readership bonuses;
erudite bunions will still burst in an
insomniac brain. Yes, think again!

The Forum, where all things Liberal and
unique to democratic ideals of liberty are
enshrined piqued with the said insomniac.
Fell into the trap quite reasonably exposed.
But suppose, what one tacitly gets from
sleeplessness degenerates into hackneyed
meanderings of misspelt, unpunctuated,
grammatically audacious doggerel – which is
then said or written. And one should needfully
respect those opinions...?

Common sense says… get
a laugh, play in the Forum
and you’ll meet your ass!
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-06

Strain A Page To Wreak A Rhyme

Would you believe it – I’ve found
that poetic flatus profound who
leaves Wm Topaz McGonagall flat.

Now fancy that in this modern age, a
poet who can gracefully strain a page
to wreak a rhyme with compleat and
sublime indifference as to how it looks
or sounds.

Blasé, ‘penny a pound’ arrangement of
this unique and contrived verse is creaky
(to say the least) and it squeaks in the
corners where Topaz would square the
rhythm neatly, but what the heck,

it works. And there, in the corner of my
eye, I see daring structural anomalies –
a line of dashes, crosses and holy cow,
contiguous spaces with abbreviated
cases of multiple redundancies – what
now! What next!

         A  penchant  for  text  alignment
         as sheer as Mt St Helens is steep
         as  drear as  the tears that weep 
         from  the precipice  to the abyss
         but this verse just flipped me off
                                       egregiously!
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-07

Adores Him With Those Liquid Eyes

It clings in his memory like
the fine dog hair he finds
on clothes unused for years
small white strands that are
always there – never too
obvious, never absent,
and he wonders why.

We share a muse, one
who cares for artists he
concludes, the fount of
our daily inspiration – but
consider, perhaps it is a
dog with fine white hair
and not a literary spirit.

Nothing changed with the
observation, the hair still
evident when he wears his
favourite fine wool pullover,
the muse still waits at his side
and the dog who lies at his feet
adores him with those liquid eyes.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-06

Tendentious Power Of One

Where the augmented minds
contemplate lesser processing
powers of free agents vying
for the same piece of cake,

where they generate snake-like
atmospheres of mistrust in their
lidless, glitter-eyed unwavering stares
where they talk tongue flickering

radar-tasting acrid air taking in
pheromones of their adversaries
where the tensed coils radiate
fake refrigerated boardroom

bonhomie from a pulse-less,
non-breathing, predatory carapace;
smiles worm from ear to ear, breaking
soulless faces into canine coutures

of mock-invasive, incisor-pared
ice-thin lips. This was where I sickened
and died from the bites. These killers
had no joy of life in them,

these were the icemen come to
carve off their take, these were the
undertakers feeding off the corpses
of their corporate dear departed,

these were the makers and shakers,
the erudite leeches who bit
hard and clung to a smugly
tendentious power of one.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-05

Middling Mediocrity Ensured

So we are to be educated the same,
minted in common coin with a name
attached to the substance of what it is
to be Australian - a giddy idea for our
tight-arsed politicians. Canberra elects
a common core curriculum selected
by consensus (of conformist and
federally elected) elitist thinkers.

Far be it from me to demur - it sounds
sensible, albeit dispensable, and there isn’t
a needed budget increase. So, if we are
to continue to produce quintessential
Australians why not leave it alone –
the bloody way it was is working okay!

‘New curriculum confuses old values
and resources new stereotypes’.

Some headline - unfortunately true,
with middling mediocrity ensured.
It is the sort of idea one expects from
Canberra in an election year; though the
debate from the States suggests we’re
not through with the robust give-and-take
we’re used to, nor that we’ll sink to the
same levels of inane, nonsensical
conformity demanded - just yet.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-02-05

Too Many Hearts This Time, Johnny…

A thousand years ago (it seems)
I wrote a poem for the poor, sorry
bastards whose water choices
were reamed by arrogant bureaucracy.

Now our ‘Follow me chaps, yes me,
I’m over here, standing on the chair’
PM has unleashed the eloquence of
his tame water spaniel to sort it out.

Bully for him – there’s an election
this year. In the meantime it hasn’t
rained enough to slake a goanna’s
thirst – but he’s gonna save the rivers first!

If the man could think outside the
square he’d guess climate change
is the cause, not despairing farmers
clamouring for more resources.

But that’s where he’s chosen to send
the spaniel – and to spend the ten billion
he’s promised over the next ten years. By
when he’ll be seventy seven.

I don’t think there is a prospect this plan
will meet the need – too clearly a ploy
to buy votes and not fix what’s been broken.
Just too many hearts this time, Johnny…
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-26

Adrift On An Iceberg In A Boiling Sea

Y’know what pisses me off most,
he said. Y’really wanna know?
Not particularly, I answered.

‘S pricks like you! Yeah, smart-arse
pricks who know everything – see,
you’ve cracked that hard-done-by smile

again, like you’ve been down this road
before. What’s more you probably have,
but that don’t cut no slack with me!

I’m an ordinary sort of bloke who sees
things as they are, natural like, and I know
what I know. You can’t tell me nothing...

Yes, I say, that is so.
I can’t tell you that you’re adrift
on an iceberg in a boiling sea.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-24

Living Several Lies

Truth is a relationship’s enemy, damn it;
doesn’t take sides – will always out.
Where you are living several lies, and
here I theorise that this is true of most
folks in relations, there isn’t room to
make mistakes. And you will
make them.

Life’s a duality – even when you live alone
you are prone to the errors of your own
fiction – or you must indeed love yourself to
obsession. Your fear is then a bi-polarity
of feeling. Recently I learned to admit
I cannot make sense of a world where
I am wrong.

I can make even less sense of a world
where I am right. This is a shattering insight
which would change the lives of people
who care for people. And I discovered
that at the same time. From sublime to
ridiculous – I am not a self-contained isolate,
I need you even just to be me.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-23

Make Them Hear

The sadness of it is you’ve done no
wrong – you are a victim of the
clique which sweeps the streets,
the moral police who act without

a Law to keep a fragile peace
enshrined in token words that
claim their freedoms are for
everyone. Everyone but me, you

cry, reminding them of how the
lie is told repeatedly until it flies
above the truth – and truth is
never told for reasons held in trust

by secret oaths and deep cabals
hidden in the fabric of the former
lives you lived. You wished to speak
and tell the tales you knew were

true, and now the screw is turned
to still your tongue, to blunt your
pen. You never knew how much
had been repressed until you

opened up your mind, the silence
that you thought you’d find has
roared and finally wakened their
outrageous fear, you’ve found

the potent ear you thought was
deaf and dumb. This time you know
the perfect way to clear your mind
and make them hear.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-19

Last Play In An Ambience Easy

It was the last summer together
before we went our different ways –
the last play in an ambience easy,
a sultry laziness of days merged
without punctuation.

We were boys grown but not yet
men; to say of us we knew our
futures, or that we had great and
churning ambition would create
hilarity – it was the wrong expression.

I cared more for music of the
spheres than strictures of virtuous
learning. We shared a last cigarette,
swore on a dying oath that our
friendship would never end;

the girl I thought I loved told me
she would wait in tears. It wasn’t
an actual ending. In the dawn
of a new day we left –
never to meet that way again.
© I. D. Carswell 2007-01-22

Will You Sanction Me?

There is something beautiful in it
he said, the last legitimate and
sanctioned form of hand to hand
combat – where you can test
your skills and strength against
an opponent who likewise wants
to best you in the field of play.

I shook my head, the way he said
it made sense but it came from a
front row forward; there is evidence
they were the reason the Rugby game
got a bad name. Intelligence in a prop
would never rest easily on me, yet what
I heard suggested the difference.

When did you last play, I asked, noting
his girth – expecting he’d say many
years in the past. I still play he said,
I have an ambition to take the field
in every position a player can play,
to this day I need only to be hooker.
Will you sanction me?
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-23

Saw It On TV

It was a silly, trifling and completely
inconsequential disagreement.
The kind you regret instantly, but
we’d already disagreed.

On principle we must now progress
from light-hearted jest to entrenched
positions, where defences erected
stonewall rational and sane desires to
end an obvious nonsense.

And the nonsense it was merely
entailed a nameless comet neither
of us could see in a huge, starlit sky.
But it’s there, you proclaim, I saw it on TV.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-22

Appeared Defenceless

They were small and appeared
defenceless – until their first altercation.
Even their mother kept clear of slashing
teeth and the macerating snarls.

They shrieked vehemence, tore at
each other, sisters who had slept cosily
cocooned in a hug of benevolence –
yet here they would kill.

Five little girls, angels until jealousy
triggered this scene, too bizarre to
reason from their good looks,
too well concealed in their genes.

The Vet explained; these are real animals
just once removed from their origins –
not lap dogs trembling at the feet of
indulgence. But they will make great

companions; keep them apart, you will
see them become stable personalities,
and he laughed – that is, if they survive
the depths of your anxiety.

Cleo and Jane, Ticket and Lil’
became the best pals ever, but
Mariette rests still and silent in a
lonely grave beneath the trees.

She never forgave.
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-19

When John’s Up And Gone

Before the question arises,
before some anesthetized,
semi-literate and politically
exacerbated lickspittle poses
the inevitable ask, the answer is

no, I’m not. My wife is, and so are
my kids. And their kids will be, and so
on, but not me. And before you blink,
pause, and think to wonder why – no,
I won’t oblige. Bugger off, go away!

When ‘Honest (little) John’ leaves the
stage – whether on foot or razed in a
wheelchair, whether carried, dragged,
or gagged matters blot; when John’s up and
gone then maybe I’ll say whether or not.

I’ll say I’m glad, I’ll say I’m proud,
I’ll sing the national anthem out
aloud – and crikey, maybe I’ll write
a poem to celebrate, to conciliate
those years of shame.

Yeah, when John and his coterie of
blame is gone I’ll wear a wig, I’ll dance
a jig, I’ll beam a manic grin; but listen
mate, I’ll bet I still won’t tell you straight
of what I’m not!
© I.D. Carswell 2007-01-19

Hello Tomorrow

Yesterday; no seminal regrets,
no carping incantation of idiots
who’ve yet to prove they’d ever
be otherwise – a slew of no surprises
unless you count a hornet attack.
And I attacked back.

My back is flushed with lush
embellishments of their well
directed venom, intended to
steer me clear of their territory.
They died a glorious death, nest
laced with deadly remembrances.

And the hens, our prize breeders,
talked to me one-on-one; a young
pullet questioned her destiny,
suggesting, maybe, we could
broker some arrangement.
I said I’d have to get back.

The week’s pick of avocados rests
in the packing shed, boxed, ready
for market; the wife lies abed, relaxed,
reading a novel. “All’s Well in the
World”, the crows say vociferously.
– Hello tomorrow.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Was A Mighty Opponent

The snake in the grass was quietly
leaving, its passage a ripple barely
seen on the seed-green surface
covering its flight. That it was a mighty
opponent in any earth-bound battle
seemed not to deter an unpretentious
parting, an illusory conceding the field.

In the air birds of prey faltered and
wheeled in their ceaseless soar,
seeing a meal, reeling in tight
turns to terrorise a victim whom the
dice were surely loaded for. And I,
– I stood at the edge of the field,
wore the wig, and decided.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Wear The Wreath And Tunic Gladly

In a mood of manic moment
fraught beside a wise proponent
tied to old established habits
banished in these troubled gambits
wombed to weather bad disposals
winnowed in the wanton wind.

Would you could begin again
to usher in your favoured team
chase the dreams you chose especially
win the crown with limber gestures
wear the wreath and tunic gladly
dance to adulation sadly

Had you run your prospect badly
failed in races meant for winning
fell or faltered limbs a-spinning
crashed or sundered in the ambit
gambled, lost and died in transit
but you didn’t, lived the moment

stand beside the wise proponent
gazing on the greater glory
chaste, ashamed, this is your story
revel in the happy ending
yours is glory all transcending –
to winnow in the winsome wind.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

Cracking The 500

These tips are offered so you’ll
agree there is more to poetic
life than popularity – but –
if it’s your want to succeed,
here’s how to crack the 500
with relative ease.

Cultivate fellow poets, read
home pages, biographies, get
to know the scope of their poetry.
Use ‘stats’ to find latest posts,
read shrewdly, leave laudable
comments; you’re seeking reciprocity

so easy on the gushing tripe, be
honest and if you can’t then
resist ass-wipe commentary.
Always access home pages. Hits
there count more than poems
read. Put to bed myths about

the power of a good verse;
the power of the poet’s name
actually comes first.
Establish your readership with
an open mind in order
to receive comment in kind.

Compose your own verse clearly,
use a dictionary, a thesaurus, and
please spell correctly.
Post frequently in short verses;
list new poems first, seek examples
of how this is achieved.

Vary themes prudently, while
depression may be your driving
force it’s not tops in reader’s choice.
Focus on writing readable verse –
in the end, if all else fails,
good poetry prevails.
© I.D. Carswell 2007

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