Steves tears

My beloved called to me to come and see Steve’s
tears, he was crying on TV; Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Man,
and they weren’t crocodile tears. Harriet had died,
Steve could not contain his tears and freely cried,
which shouldn’t surprise, he wears his heart openly,
but Harriet’s demise was as cruel a testimony to man’s
inclement idiocy as you’d ever get. Harriet was 176
years of age; impossible you say, patently ridiculous,
no one lives that long, well you’re wrong. Harriet was
a dome-shaped Galapagos tortoise, among the keys
to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, and she’d been a guest
at Australia Zoo. It is possibly true that Charles Darwin
took her as an egg or infant tortoise from Alcedo, Isabela
or Santa Cruz to England, and after that sojourn,
around 1860, she found her way back to become
a fixture at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens. Then
most recently the Zoo. Harriet was a living link to
our profligate past as well as a credential we are
going to find essential for admission to a future
we may have already sold our rights to.
I squirm when I read how her brothers and sisters fed
sealers and whalers who raped the seas, stored alive
for months on their backs in stinking holds of leaky ships
because of an evolutionary slow rate of metabolism.
Nothing quite like keeping your steak alive…
You’ve survived the cliché ‘brink of extinction’ before
and lived to slaughter new generations of ancient myths,
but Harriet’s kind has survived, only just, in small numbers
in the Galapagos because of the Charles Darwin Foundation.
Would that we could extend their tenure from the islands
to the seas and stop the rapacious Japanese
from killing our whales.
© I.D. Carswell

Australia Zoo on Queensland's Sunshine Coast is mourning the loss of the country's oldest captive creature. Harriet, a 176-year-old giant Galapagos tortoise, was the star attraction. She even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. Senior vet Dr John Hangar says it appears she had a heart attack."Harriet sadly died last night after, thankfully, a very short illness," he said."She'd been sick yesterday with, in effect, heart failure. She had a very fairly acute heart attack and thankfully passed away quietly overnight."

Dr Hangar says Harriet has been credited with helping develop Charles Darwin's scientific studies."It's thought she may have been taken off there by Charles Darwin," he said. "She's spent a period of time in Britain and found herself at the Botanic Gardens in Brisbane from about 1850 or 1860 onwards and eventually she found her way up to Australia Zoo." source: ABC


Wild Things - Giant Galapagos Tortoise
The Galapagos Islands are named for the 250,000 giant tortoises that lived on the islands - "galapago" in Spanish means saddle and refers to the tortoise shell. Today, only 15,000 of these giants are left.
There were 15 subspecies, although only 11 still exist today. They have become extinct because of overhunting, and the introduction of goats, pigs, dogs and other animals which trample or eat the tortoise eggs and compete for food. Most like the upland areas of the large islands because of the humidity, grassy fields and ponds. The largest populations are in Alcedo, Isabela and Santa Cruz.
The 3 TypesThe Galapagos tortoise comes in three versions, which are distinguished by the shape of their shells, sizes, colors and behavior:
1. Saddle-Backed: Mostly found on the lower drier islands. They have raised shells, long necks and limbs.
2. Dome-Shaped: Found on the upper parts of the islands, where plant growth is dense and thick. They have round shaped shells, very short necks and limbs.
3. Intermediate: This third race is a mix between the two described above.
Some of the most impressive facts about the Galapagos Giant Tortoise is that they keep growing for 30 to 40 years, reaching almost five feet. They also weigh about 500 pounds. These are the largest tortoises in the world. In general, they are the longest living of all vertebrates (animals with backbones). Because of their life span, it's possible that some of the old-timers in Galapagos today hatched about the time of Darwin's visit (1835).
The oldest giant tortoise on record lived 152 years. Reliable records of tortoise life spans aren't available yet because people haven't been observing them long enough.
The FactsThroughout the 19th century, giant tortoises were valued by sailors as food supply. They discovered that these docile animals could live for months without food or water, flipped on their backs, and stacked in the cargo hold of a ship. This gave the sailors a ready source of fresh meat when there was no land in sight. Historical records show that tens of thousands of tortoises were collected from the Galapagos, Seychelles, Mascarenes, and other islands.
Only one male, Lonesome George, of the four extinct races exists. Previously he lived on Pinta Island, but is presently kept at the Charles Darwin Research Station.

It is a secular world

Our Indonesian friends again exhibit strains of gross hypocrisy,
it’s a virus that abounds in the islands of a thousand tongues,
is skipping hosts, mutating at a scary pace, infectious to the
very worst peninsular urbanities. Where do their antisocial
trends originate; I’d hesitate to point, do they need to cogitate
to find a cause, or do we just initiate by asking
wait a minute mate, what’s the story with these dumb demands?
You’re supposed to be sophisticates – you tell us so
in no uncertain terms, what we’ve learned suggests you’ve
joined the World community without a paid-up membership,
you’re late into this Century, if you’ve even made it yet.
It’s here already mate, just look around; and so you know,
diplomacy does not demand, it asks, as in a world democracy,
for causes of divergent views and shows respect for them.
Your veiled abuse and clumsy threats is evidence of such
a lack – and now you have the gall attacking Sovereignty.
You say you’ve writ the rules for us to join the Indonesian team
in terms you set for world-wide games you barely understand
and do not play, competing in a tournament you ridicule
with self-appointed referees that operate without a clue
but certified to do without recrimination what they will
in rough defence of Sharia; and of course you’re not the slightest
insincere. I’d hate to queer your pitch, you are my neighbour still,
but no will in the World will excuse your insular view. Step up a bit
and take a look my friend – it is a secular world, it is round,
and what goes around comes around again!
© I.D. Carswell

partisanship and politics

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, I 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. Were 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.
Were 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 as parochial verisimilitude
and bust it open wide. I’d swim 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
within the reach without the tools, crisis redefined as such
that those we’re said to fear are Heaven sent 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
have always been an explosive mix, harbinger of a failing health.
© I.D. Carswell

Key economy

Words today are
how’d you say,
in sad retreat,
or obsolete?
They slide around
conducting sound,
deferent
to moving ground
where once they were
as referent
to common sense
as having common meaning;
misuses of
the proper case
in user space
are typically
so commonplace
they now create
a new taxonomy,
I even heard
a weak excuse
when sorely vexed
by cryptic text
which claimed
the cause
on mobile phones
was key economy!
That I’d like to see!
I’ll try a few;
now “?RU” means
“How are you?”
and “RUOK”
is obvious but what it says
precisely is I have to ask
you if you’re well,
so you can tell
me you’re OK, ok?
As 2 Y U’d?
I couldn’t make a guess,
unless you’d text’d
your state of health.
W?RU means
“where are you?”,
& HuRU? is
“who are you?”
& W?DoU? means
“whaddaya want?”
or “why do you ask?”.
I find it but
a thankless task
to try to read
a literal text,
I never was
a code adept;
in SMS
the message rests
between abbreviations,
it may be found
in common sounds
expressed in close conjunction,
or even worse,
the poets curse,
cryptic alliteration.
The tongue is called
textase, don’t ask me
what it’s meant to be,
the act itself is texting,
and not, you guessed,
as mundane as
just ‘sending text’,
the effect of texting is
being text’d.
Confused?
You are excused.
© I.D. Carswell

Courage is a motherless lamb

For a small child crossing the pen alone was a courageous feat,
occasionally, with a maniacal bleat, the wether would burst from cover
and butt whomever graced his yard. He meant it in fun, something
he had done since his bottle-fed youth, he knew no other form of greeting.
It was useless excusing his deeds as affection, the misguided beast
was a terrorist to small persons, wary or not, and no neat reason
would ease the fear we felt at his sudden charge. By and large
he was fine if pampered and fed, letting us pass with a desultory
glance, but it took just one bump to dispel that romance. Bunty,
an obvious name for the monster we dreaded, would behave
impeccably when adults inspected his manners, meanwhile we
shunned his yard and traversed the fences the long way round
to the hens. At times we forgot our chores, distractions abounded
outside the fences, the chooks were not fed or eggs not collected.
Be bold, stand up to him I was told, tell him who’s boss. I was lost
how to express the stupidity in that, he weighed three of me
and moved with the speed of a runaway bus. The way to stop a bus
best, prudence would suggest, was not by standing in its path.
I didn’t expect sympathy or ask for alms, I just avoided Bunty
and potentially broken limbs by staying clear. The morning I found him
asleep beyond the gate suggested he was still playing games, bound
in dreams of butting boys who crossed his domain, he might even
have sniggered at the terror he caused, at how my heartbeat
soared when he looked my way. I tried to be brave, I found the largest stick
I could carry and gingerly crossed the yard backwards, not letting him
out of my sight, fed the hens, collected the eggs, returning the same way.
He was still on the ground, no sign of his breathing, or of my believing.
When I was told he had died my first unkindly thoughts were of great relief,
of chances missed and vengeance denied, then in shock I cried.
I fed him as a motherless lamb and would not
let my doting dad return him to the flock.
© I.D. Carswell

To win a game

How do you win a football game? Not by skill alone or clever plays,
in modern days the game has changed and subterfuge and actors
ways will pave the path to glory. Fitness pays a fair reward to keep
a fleetness in the feet, a clearness in the head, and special food
and clever drinks recharge the cells when batteries are low or dead.
But referees are certain keys to all the famous victories.
Linguistic tricks of lunatics in soccer strip are even matched by
hieroglyphs from coaches dressed in two piece suits, with
hearts on sleeves, grieving for the chances missed, pleading
with the referee for plays he did or didn’t see, for ploys that failed
to turn his head, for verdicts made and judgements dread.
And referees are equal keys to infamy or certain fame.
Then there’s the crowd, a seething throng of attitude and energy,
baying for their chosen team, living in a plastic dream of cinematic
death or glory; dressed in kind and cheering on, drinking, singing,
chanting long and loud the songs expressing hopes and fears of masses
pressed in servitude, praying for a famous win, praying to the soccer rood.
But referees are willing keys to all the prayers and eulogies.
How do you win? Why do you care? Theatrics grimace everywhere,
a game so crafted for the stage with pathos, bathos, great despair,
actors playing parts and reading scripts with human traits, protagonists,
antagonists, depicting gallant characters with artful flair,
it’s all encompassed there, entwined in referee maturity, so grin
and bear it friend, you see, it looks so good on home TV.
© I.D. Carswell

For followers of ‘The World Game’

It seldom snowed – Part IV

It seldom snowed they said,
perhaps they’re right
although seldom was never
in that endless summer
which tightened a fiery grip by day,
baking the plateau,
relentlessly melting its snow.
It began as a cliché
on a slow day
in a new January
of stupid heat
that penetrated the heart,
enslaving energies replete
with blinding lassitude,
defeating even the more able.
Over a beer shared in the Mess
we agreed to climb Mount Ruapehu.
The snowline had retreated enough
for a leisurely stroll
from the skiers upper car park
to Crater Lake,
we’d take a picnic lunch,
snap some great pictures,
be home for tea.
I had never climbed the volcano before
but it sounded okay to me,
representing no more
than a brisk morning’s walk.
I had heard the talk
of its moods,
how out of the placid blue
a shift in weather
could strand climbers,
I had seen the same phenomenon
from a safe distance
and I believed it true
but things had been stable for weeks.
When I reached the peak
clad only in running shorts,
a T shirt and combat boots
I was in awe of the view,
it was worth every risk –
not that there were any,
and to stand in brisk air
on top of this part of New Zealand,
on the pinnacle,
with two properly dressed
climbers roped together,
ice-axed and slack-jawed
gazing at me bewildered,
was an inspiration.
We exchanged greetings
and I left on my bum,
there was no other way down.
When my friends joined me
at the rim of Crater Lake
and we had shared
snow-chilled Liebfraumilch,
chicken and fresh, crusty rolls,
they asked if
my skinned buttocks hurt.
Not when sitting in snow
on top of Ruapehu
with my friends
I said, but tonight,
it might be a different matter.
© I.D. Carswell

It seldom snowed – Part III

It seldom snowed they said, and they were nearly right. In all of nine eventful
seasons crystal white on average graced the place just twice a year. A smaller
fall, an over-night preceded heavy snow. And heavy snow remained a week,
blocked drains and closed the Desert Road; but no complaints, our children
played in desert snow and made the most of winter games, building forts and
snow redoubts with flags and spires, their happy shouts and snowball fights
delighted even those who hated noise. Toboggan slides and plastic glides
and open sleighs made a way into their winter repertoire. Changes
wrought by snow could be excused in festive air unless they over-lingered,
hanging smoke from native wood and burning coal disfigured freshness
we enjoyed most of the year, but we would bear it for the while.
The smile of winter snow remained the season’s winsome pleasure,
and skiing on the mountain buried treasure if you’d make the dash each day
to ski the twilight fields. We do recall the soldiers who, whatever state
the weather yields, wait concealed in layered clothes and strode the roads
to aid the flow of traffic north and south. And lives were saved by soldiers
who were sent to search and rescue where unwary drivers crashed their cars
on frozen roads; it was not supposed to burden them although we were aware
winter was not welcomed with a keenness everywhere.
© I.D. Carswell

It seldom snowed - Part II

It seldom snowed in Camp they said, on the mountains, yes,
and in the Styx, aka zone six. That’s where we were afoot
in alpine grass, garbed to test our winter skills,
tramp the craggy hills and camp a night or two,
spy a special site, an outing planned
to ready us for troop command. It snowed as we approached
our mission site, we set up camp above the dam
diverting Whangaehu River water to desert Tongariro.
The radio, an antique A10, worked okay in barracks
but in the snow it only raised a crackle now and then.
That night the snow reformed the land and we awoke
on an uninhabited earth, wrote our names freehand
in the continuous blanket surrounding our tents,
laughing as we urinated, the moment indelibly etched
in the timeless serenity of the snow-bound plateau.
The still, clear air, the pervasive silence which raided
our senses, calmed and freed us of the prying eyes
and demands our trainers made. We didn’t know
the exercise ended because of the snow,
the night before our fellow cadets slept in warm beds.
Our leader said we should take a shorter route
through the woods out of view of the site, observe
overnight and complete the task tomorrow; he might
have missed the blended contour lines, where they
converged we descended into a river gorge shown neatly
on the map, slithered down precipices, plunged through
saturating snow drifts until baulked by white water;
in a mid-summer jaunt it would be a trekker’s dream,
but now rigid with cold and no-longer brave we demurred.
It only occurred then that our leader should relinquish
command. He acquiesced when he knew our feelings.
We retraced our steps, tried our radio set and surprise,
were informed of the already cancelled exercise. We plodded
the weary miles to the RV, meeting our SSM who grinned
when he knew we were safe, “Good show,” he said,
“I thought you’d gone rafting! So, what do you think
of the snow?” I still don’t know; I’ll keep an open mind.
© I. D. Carswell

It seldom snowed - Part I

I have been a friend of snow ever since I recall seeing it for the first time in primary school in the 1950's. It was a rare enough event to be always welcomed although at times it may have been inconvenient. I first lived within sight of permanent snow when posted to Waiouru in 1967. From then on seeing the snowline on the horison when driving back to Waiouru Military Camp had a special, welcoming significance. I never realised until writing the first of the series about living in the snow just what that significance was.

It seldom snowed, they said, it might get cold but it won’t be snow;
well, one should guess the locals know the weather best and I was new,
so when I left the warmth of the limited express and descended onto
a dimly lit, deserted siding I was not impressed to find the ground at
least an inch deep. I looked around as far as the sad light would allow
and while the train hissed and huffed tiredly into the cavernous dark my worst
fears were confirmed. On this night of nights it had snowed in Waiouru,
I was alone on the siding, no-one cheered me with a greeting, there
was no duty NCO meeting me in my bright new uniform, no revellers
reeling with drink and ribald cries to farewell a fortunate colleague
deserting them to the cold and lonely night, flying off to the bright city
lights, the noisy pubs, the crush of streets alive in social whirl, and the girls.
I had barely time to feel the cold before a troop truck slithered
into the lamplight and subsided steaming against the kerb, a stern
NCO bellowing to greatcoat and balaclava clad soldiers issuing listlessly
from the deck, boots clattering, kitbags thudding to ground, and oddly, not a word
amongst them. He lined them in two ranks under the pathetic light, told them
of their dubious parentage, wished they would never blight his unit again.
Their heads hung in dejection, I could not see their eyes for the shadows
that concealed them but I swear there was no living soul in those ranks,
they were spent husks of once strong young men who had failed
some herculean task and were being sent away. I should have joined them.
A polite driver asked if I was the new training officer for the Depot, I supposed
I was I said, and he assisted me into the cab of the Bedford. We squelched off
into the narrow alleyway of dim street lights, turned once and the siding was lost
behind me. In that instant the world I knew intimately faded as desperately
from view as the destiny of the soldiers standing in the watery lamplight
silently awaiting the southbound train.
© I.D. Carswell

Tales in the beginning

Tales in the beginning didn’t begin in the telling,
they would have started no doubt, but not without
a concrete bearing, a causal opening and a beckoning
ending (at least tacitly implied), otherwise devout
listeners would have opted out.
For a tale to begin with no known point of origin,
with no sequencing and no denouement in sight
is a journey nowhere, and nowhere is death
in storytelling. Selling the fiction is inimical to voyaging,
and we have surely travelled far in a continuing tale,
it’s essence is ‘we’ as a company of choice
and its charter free travel where, though our journeys
may be separate, may roam quantum distances
in intuitive places, invade the reaches of stellar space,
they are never journeys we’ve taken alone.

So what is a beginning the beginning of? The clichéd expression
‘let there be light’ and there was; no sudden burst of it,
at least not at first, just a pleasant shimmer on an intellectually
indistinct horison that grew into a glimmer of realisation,
an awareness of continuity agreed, a contiguity between
this moment and the next because we needed it sustained,
and in the barest consummation a shouted recognition,
We Are Here! Whether it was on the shores of an inland sea
in Africa many millennia in the past, or in a burst of melodramatic light
that was good and has lasted, We Are Still Here.

In the beginning that was all there was,
a new forged social unity of the self aware
in a community of need, a bare structure
to belie the complexities to come,
but it was where the tales all must have begun.

When Faye read to us pencilled lines from her exercise book
and the sound was no different to that of real tales being told
in the firelight, and when we were absorbed in the parables
and fictions which emerged and found they were just like us,
and as we overcame our prejudices we were bound in the same
ancient fabric as our ancestors of the sea and lake wove,
to wear the same clothes in our shared histories, there in the fable
and the firelight where we finally discovered ourselves.

I return to those ways when I invoke the power of words,
of listening open-mouthed and able-eyed to hypnotic reading,
of being bound up in breathtaking storytelling, of breathing
hushed and constrained for fear of missing a nuance, a whisper;
it is there where it would have begun,
with tales in the beginning.
© I.D. Carswell

June 2006

For sister Faye who may have unwittingly started it all.

Does the name toll a bell?

Let them declare Jihad then, let them despair that I
will speak the truth as I see it, and where that truth bears
brutally on their lies I will have applied my brand of terrorism as
desperately as they do theirs. Abu Bakar Bashir,
does the name toll a bell? It tolls in Hell for Bashir,
a sonorous ringing, a triumphant chime of evil over reason.
The lunatic cleric is released from prison after serving his
token sentence for monstrous crimes; Bashir entrained the hatred
which motivated bombers in Bali, he didn’t set the explosives
which destroyed innocent lives, he merely told the inhuman lies
disguised as an Imam’s teachings, declaring all justified
in the context of Koranic readings. Allah decreed it, he cried;
Muhammad recalled the words God gave him in a vision and the scribe,
who wrote them into the sacred book a near century after the great event,
justified his own interpretations – I merely described the incidents
a little more prosaically, he sighed, when questioned by ancient sceptics.
They aren’t lies as much as extensions of probable facts.
Plus a bit of this and that.
And Bashir uses the same technique, an excuse
to embellish his misuse of the redoubtable text. And Bashir is back
at Ngruki, the religious boarding school where he teaches,
a convicted accessory to murder, a criminal demurring his crime
returning to preach to the minds of impressionable youth.
For God’s sake, the man is insane! What kind of lunacy is that?
Does this school reek of radical theologies,
prepare children for glorious but certain death as religious soldiers?
Are their subjects terrorism and the suicide bomb? I am struck dumb!
Perhaps the boarders’ loving parents are not aware of that.
Perhaps.
© I.D. Carswell
June 2006

I don’t normally enter the debate over matters concerning religion versus ethnicity versus law. I am finding it increasingly difficult, however, to remain neutral in matters of Law because of the reverse religious intolerance, hypocrisy and extreme arrogant nonsense practised by our Indonesian neighbours. In part I realise that Muslims need to have their own ‘mosque’ reformation (in which radicals and extreme factions will resist violently in their time honoured way, but will eventually be overcome by moderate influences), it is necessary to bring them into the 21st Century. A young, vigorous religion is a wonderful institution but it needs to be relevant to the times – and it is still only a single ‘faith’ amongst many others. In matters of Indonesian Law however, I am bewildered how a cleric convicted of criminal offences like Abu Bakar Bashir can re-enter society exactly where he left it. He should, at least, be barred from polluting the minds of children.

Out of ideas…

If I don’t write something good tonight I will sleep
without the comforting Canopus of deep believers,
if I sleep at all, and this light which ignites
my enormous poetic conceit and guides my muse
will suffer and die, my hands be stilled.
Tomorrow I might read these words and endure
the bite of astral derision, contrite in failing to attain
an irrelevant end of my own, arrogant making,
descrying the blight that screens my dream invention.
I have sagely delighted in little words casually placed
in weak conjunction growing suddenly out of the page,
thriving in the space of a line, yielding the sweetest,
unintended rhyme and reaching for life; it is what I die for.
But tonight the rhymes are bleak, the rhythms lie
broken and lifeless, steeped in self-pity, and usually bright
Canopus is shaded; poor choices surround me
with listless conjecture, jaded, banal and sourly dejected.
I, too, am drained, ill-used and rejected.
© I. D. Carswell

A few kind words

A few kind words, what can be bought with that?
In essence just a clique of tidy prose,
a verb, a noun, perhaps an adjectival phrase
offered in the form of venal praise
– and be surprised at what it buys.
Like a fleeting smile it’s currency outweighs
the simple form, a hint of urbane compliment,
a subtle implement to sway discursive
dissertation, stun a lengthy recitation,
steal the centre ground; oh, so was that smile
for me? Profound congratulations are implied,
and truth denied, we always need a dose of that!
I’ll put it in my hat, my ego is well fed enough
and poets with a fat, indulgent ego are a nuisance
to the trade. Thank you for your words;
these words are yours in kind to muse,
I hope you’ll find some joy in that.
© I.D. Carswell
June 2006

A few days ago I received the following email message from Diana Collins:

“Hello, Ivan!I'm Diana Collins, I'm a poetry fan.I've visited your blog and I liked it very much.I would like to thank you for your blog and for the time you spent creating it.It's wonderful that there are such blogs, where people can learn something new and useful about poetry. It would be great to have such blogs as many as possible!Wish you good luck and success in your occupation!Hats off,Diana Collins”

It is the first time I have received direct and unsolicited words of encouragement since I embarked upon my solo poetical mission. I thanked Diana in the only way possible for a poet, with the poem above, ‘A few kind words’; after all she did provide the motivation and occasion.

I have since discovered Diana is one of three enthusiasts who front “Famous Poets & Poems” which I have since linked to this blog (see sidebar links). It is a fabulous site and definitely worth revisiting whenever time permits. I know I will be doing so…

Worthy Places

There were some worthy places where we could escape,
avoid the heavy weight of living in a densely
peopled space; the first was to the outside loo
(the only loo but where at least the toilet paper
could be read), a very basic spot at best and
not a famous thought unless you needed
to relieve insistent body stresses. The loo
was close at hand but only as the final choice,
and in a house of eight the dunny queue was used
to grossly exculpate such crude ineptitude.
Then there was a tree or two, take your choice,
actually there were twenty three, we mostly
named them all and climbed each one
with simian rapport, but not at night, and night
was when the social pressures soared. Trees
where sacred ships and flying things, offering respite,
magically transporting all the sorely used
to places off beyond the tepid grind of daily life.
I write of trees with great respect; they were to me
in need a place of sanctuary, a place I wont forget.
There were cabinets in the house which offered room
when smaller size was useful to the very young; one
was called the ‘safe’, a ventilated space that served
when meals were done to hide until the call for bed,
or story time – and story time when books were read
would dredge a solitary resolve, seduce the most
recalcitrant. When we could retreat outside,
and hide beneath the wooden bridge we thought
of trolls and elves and warty dwarves, and how
we’d stand upon the deck, staunchly claim a toll
and never let the traffic pass without a show
of due respect; we never did, we only hid.
The stream would patiently feed our solitary needs,
placate the maladroit and send us sneaking home
when judged that all the chores were safely done.
And last upon an endless list of special places
was the company of a handsome witch who deigned
all social graces, rain or shine would rise to greet my fond
embraces with a fervour she reserved for me; Belle,
a novel name, a short-haired border collie bitch
of faultless breeding living in the grossest luxury,
a corrugated iron water tank that lay horizontally,
and unlike the loo which really stank, afforded ample room
for two. She decorated her abode with half-chewed bones
and bits of woollen blanket, dressing her environment with
blasé flair just as she pleased. If it weren’t for fleas
I could have lived there comfortably, she had freedoms
I would never dare or dream to claim for my shared room.
© I.D. Carswell

Days of the slow roll

It was the days of the slow roll,
times when we dextrously dressed
our hand-rolled cigarettes
with a dearth of fine-cut tobacco,
teased in frugal strands from
a handsomely battered,
always near empty,
2oz tobacco tin.
The thin rolls were patiently
mastered in a slow statement
of intense deliberation
in a fold of rice paper from
a yellow zig zag double deck,
yellow before blue,
the blue burned too slow;
held in two hands and
sensuously massaged
between thumb and fingers,
licked with delicacy along
the gummed edge
when its shape and feel
were judged just right,
sealed tight in a flourish
of thumbs, minutely inspected,
stray strands recovered to
the ubiquitous tin,
ends twisted gently and then,
generously set alight.
We didn’t expect to offer makings
but to share a roll was a mark
of decency and real respect.
I dedicate the art of the slow roll
to an artiste extraordinaire,
a singular exponent who set
the night alight with his singing,
contemporary guitar renditions
with his thin rolled cigarette
jutting jauntily from the corner
of his manic grin,
trailing tendrils of gentle
smoke past squinted eyes;
Johnny managed to escape
with impunity the congenial
disapprobation and ribald jests
of ‘The Boys’, his teenage peers.
God rest you, Johnny Tuhoe.
© I.D. Carswell

This Window Is

This window is confidence,
documenting proceedings,
capturing moments,
cleansing views
challenging sentiment.
This window is nourishment
filling the eyes
with strong drink,
and acidly piercing
over-elaborate structures.
This window is furniture
re-hung like a picture,
recording new outlooks
when the old pleases
no more.
This window is doorway
to feelings,
good feelings and bad,
all of which enter
free of discourtesy.
This window is sanctuary
for victims afflicted
with borrowed ideas,
delivered of barren words
which will not ignite.
This window is respite
from dreary duties
and ill-judged discourse
about nothing
that pleases.
This window eases
the thankless grind
of writing for unimaginative
scene stealers who are deaf
and regrettably blind.
This window is palette
and mirror to life.
© I.D. Carswell

Of Such Simplicity

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 dwelling in the hall,
seen in awe like pretty pictures hanging on the wall;
was it meant to be, intentionally,
of such simplicity?

The pace of Life
is not predictably ever free and oh so easy,
from the swift and mad to cruelly sore and sad
good times were had amongst the wrenching sorrows,
but most of life is so free of strife
as it was 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 of great complexity,
but was it meant to be, implicitly,
just simplicity.

Here we are
the pantry door ajar
the shelves within are filled with all our living memories,
stored carefully, thoughtfully, for perpetuity;
it’s where we see our very precious legacy,
which is meant to be, uncontentiously,
of such simplicity.
© I.D. Carswell
June 2006

It is Anita's birthday today. These last six years I have written her a birthday poem, sometimes more than one, to commemorate the occasion. You should be able to find them somewhere herein. Of course I've written others for her too, in fact Anita is the primary reason this collection exists at all. And at times, perhaps at ALL times, a Poet needs more than his own inspiration and incentive.

Absorbed in familiar rhythms

Absorbed in familiar rhythms,
carillon of senses steeped
in good vibrations, surrounded
by musical beat
pulsing potently
in avidly articulated veins,
moving heated blood
faultlessly, delivering its purity
into a reservoir of deep power,
preserving a cadence of fractured drumbeat
accurately with timeless
ocean sounds wound effortlessly
in an eager counterpoint,
breathing a relaxed coda,
witnessing a rhythmic inspiration,
all tolling the same true song.
Feet tap to the old tunes,
fingers rap common themes
as the words roll free
in schematic indignation.
These are scenes driven
by racing guitars pouring
the sounds of the surf
back into my soul,
beating anxiously alongside my heart,
renewing my energies.
©I.D. Carswell

You can be excused for hearing 'The Ventures' playing Perfidia or Walk - Don't Run at this point...

Travellers Whom We Met

Another fork away ahead
Exactly like the one behind
And twists and turns to leave you dead
As choices in your mind.

We've travelled here before you know
And had this conversation yet
We learned a way to ask for more
Than empty signposts that we met.

Of travellers whom we met
And journeys we have done
And twists and turns and choices yet
Beneath a never setting sun.

The sun we followed drew us on
And nights were filled with endless fun
And youthful folly not beset
Before our travels could be done.

Our lives segued and flourished when
We strolled through amber dreams
Whose rhythms were recorded in
Our vibrant, pulsing veins.

Of travellers whom we met
And journeys we have done
And twists and turns and choices yet
Beneath a never setting sun.

Now we sing our joyful song
To harmonise with voices set
In stones beside the roadside of
The travellers whom we met.

Of travellers whom we met
And journeys we have done
And twists and turns and choices yet
Beneath a never setting sun.

© I.D. Carswell
September 2004

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 by just staring in a mirror
and never let the 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 best of words into the endless thankless void
and listened long and patiently to hear what might be heard,
and 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 sand,
that waft and spin in thinning strands and wallow in a foetid band
to spread across this lonely land.
Where are the people we once knew who talked with us as one,
where are their children growing up and playing in the sun,
where are the words we shared of sane and peaceful unity?
Have they all died and blown away and disappeared like me?
© I.D. Carswell

The Price of Fame

Do I really love you? So let me guess, you’ll think I’m easy prey
if I say, okay I do – but it wont get in the way of my impending fame;
I will be famous, be assured of that, and please to keep it hidden in
your fancy beggar’s hat. Be it fame or notoriety, I’ll need to parley that,
but my dream of space in bigger things will not be done by ruse
or wily subterfuge but earned by sterling deeds I deem to be my own.
I don’t know how I’ll do it yet, I know it will be done and in the wash
I’ll stand the test and shine beside the very best; while now I rank
amongst the rest I can surely rise with you to guide me.
Do I really love you? Yes, for sure, a love as pure as polished snow,
as sweet as birdsong in the morning, as neat as furrowed rows
that stretch across the fields until tomorrow, and when they recognise
my name and cry their adulation I will wear your smile upon my lips
and avidly acclaim whose hand it was that lead me to my eminence.
You look askance, I know that troubled glance, it says
you see the fame I seek as refuse rotting on the beach, a pile
of putrid vows and vapid lies, and you chastise yourself;
it’s my demise my dear, I’ll die a pauper anyway if I don’t play the game.
You know it is the price of fame.
© I.D. Carswell

Morning’s Reflections & Forever Alight

Were meetings predestined then ours was intended,
great oracles decreed it as fate, and the auguries chattered
with sweet benefactors and fêted to chance with a face.
We were then both separate and free in our choosing
sailed in clean air on the breeze, a following sea to sail
where we pleased and our pleasure a duty of care.
The elements schemed and drove us together, coincidence
less than a plan, a confluence of paths, an innocent meeting
but innocence died in the pan; unlike ships in the night that pass
on the right sharing glimpses of distant desires – and sail on free
to a known destiny with conscience as clear as the skies.
Our passage through life was changed on that night,
our courses aligned in the hour by forces and choices beyond our
resources, driven by unlimited power. The morning’s reflections
in clear light of day were freshened by stars in the sky,
forever alight and still burning bright and showing the reason why.
© I.D. Carswell

It is seldom I feel the urge to write two versions of a single poem, perhaps
because writing one it is difficult enough in itself, but this posting actually
gave me no choice. I thought the ‘Forever Alight’ version was finished but a
cursory re-editing produced ‘Morning’s Reflections’. Which is better? I don’t
know, and frankly, don’t care. I like them both for different reasons which I
do not intend to explain. You, however, are free to make a choice.

Were meetings destined then this was one
to take a leading place, the oracle decreed it fate
in a matrix of moving matter, and the signs all clattered with
chance fêted as a sweet benefactor. When we were separate
entities in clear air with a fair breeze and sailing on pleasure,
scheming elements drove us together in a coincidental
confluence of paths, a meeting in all innocence;
but unlike ships that pass in the night, sharing glimpses
of distant but unkown consequence – and sail on free
in an unaltered conscience to reach detached destinations,
our passage through life was changed irrevocably,
our courses aligned by forces beyond our power to deflect.
Do you remember it now? Do you recall how it was?
In the mornings and in the clear light of day the freshness remains
in the glorious evening stars still burning bright,
the heavens forever alight.
© I.D. Carswell

Being Old in the Game

It was a half-life that seemed like a genuine world
wielding hard symbolism over those who ruled it; we
lived vaguely in teen-easy ambivalence whilst our 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, the 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
I could 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
and the essence of each ingenious child.
That teaching is sharing, puissantly bareing
the soul, airing the weakness, and caring
as bold in its basics as love is revealling;
this is all done in an aegus of trust, a vapourous 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!
© I.D. Carswell

Gimme ‘n F

“Gimme ‘n F” the spruiker cried,
“gimme a U” and crowd near died,
they knew before he came
to, Whatzat spell? Whatzat spell?
they knew his game, or thought they knew,
but he threw a sinking curve,
a gentle lob that bobbed just short;
“gimme ‘n E, gimme ‘n L,
Whatzat spell? Whatzat spell?”
He was no fool, he played them well,
and he ran the telling rhyme,
“Now come on over to Iraq ‘n Iran,
come on over ‘n get in the game,
things just ain’t gonna be the same
until you’ve done your deed for Uncle Sam.”
He paid respects correct and due
to Country Joe and the Fish
whose, ‘I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag’
was kitsch before he was even born,
a thorn directly in the side of the crazy gang
who sold a generation into trauma and misery,
ostensibly to free Vietnam from tyranny,
the question was whose, and who had to
loose? So the game’s the same
but the names have changed, and we need
our team back out on the park.
This time we wont bark at the boys
in cams, the felons wear suits.
© I.D. Carswell

Every Time I laugh Aloud (An Ode to Short People)

Every time I laugh aloud, who springs to mind but Johnnie Howard?
Cathartic laughter eases stress which Johnnie causes in excess,
so when I hum acerbic lines of Randy Newman’s quirky song
‘don’t want no short people ‘round here’,
I am reminded there are valid grounds for jeering men
with little minds. Newman claim’s ‘they’re gonna get you every time’,
a fear enshrined no doubt in dwarves and elves and children’s
dreams – the stuff we feed them on the screen of epic entertainment
like the Rings, or Harry Potter, or the Wardrobe, just to name a few,
but what has that to do with Johnnie Howard? My guess
is he’s the best example of a poppy cut to size you’ll ever see,
a childlike dummy who wholly reflects the ventriloquist
and wears the guise of wicked caricatures with ease,
to demean him is a breeze and he has a face inlaid
with rubber which hides the strain when he’s ‘tellin’ great big lies’,
to quote Randy’s vapid claim of short people and
duplicity going hand in hand. And of course he’s short.
There was his brash excuse which sought to exonerate him from the
blame for ‘children overboard’, the truth was just out of sight
and out of reach, and no-one cared to put him right.
Had I thought that was enough to queer his leadership,
remove him from the helm and get a man of stature as
the captain of the ship, then I was wrong. He’s from a line
of eccentric heads of state, bizarre leaders whose mistakes
are more often seen with affection than derision. So watch
our little man with baited breath to see whether he will loosen
his trousers and leave them somewhere unknown,
take an early morning swim in gigantic surf or cede
the Queen as our Sovereign head despite our need
to fairly and rationally debate the forming of a republican state.
© I.D.Carswell

The beer was cold enough

It is amazing, while I lay in bed, I had the lines
roaring through my head like locusts on the wing,
the unabashed extravagance of such a flock
of stunning words shocked me out of brittle sleep;
and sleep avoids me now like something way too out of vogue,
so I rise and try to write, reflecting that I might at least
confine a rogue idea or two. It was a desperate hope.
My thoughts were caught in politics and patronymic
polymeric jingoistic shit concerning what it means to be
Australian. I’ve had the thoughts before and drowned
the bastards 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. Or given over
to depressing thoughts. What brought this on?
Crikey, I don’t know – the beer was cold enough.
© I.D. Carswell

Today

The manic fires flared again today, very much the same irrational urges
blazing from the open grate, urgent fervours that belittle and berate,
ardours that depict a gross mistake and derisively debate
hereditary intelligence. While surely lacking relevance,
it has a bit of je ne sais quoi, ‘contemporaneous penchance’,
a droll predictability which, connected to mutterings, dark and murky,
and bursts of unvoiced but extreme obstinacy, has compromised a plane
where rational discourse could be revised. Well, we survived
this darker day although I guess my version is the only view recorded,
one would claim ‘distorted’ view because in truth only I reported it.
The tiles are laid, the tiles were never but, the problem is a dearth of wine
and equanimity. The day today was just another one of happenstance,
of tiles and missing tools and bloody providence,
tomorrow has a legacy of avoiding the void of misanthropy.
© I.D. Carswell

Water Babes

We were water babes, born in the arms of a sparkling brook
that patiently took us into its heart. At the very start we
were never far from its shingly banks, playing amid ranks
of serried wildflowers. When one of us all but drowned
in a careless encounter the stream buoyed her up in a swirling embrace,
enchanted by her smile, ingenuously placed a coronet of gold
on her touseled head and delivered a beatified child of the water.
All of us knew who had saved her. She wears the crown still,
the gold faded to russet in autumn decline, but her love
is as pure as the divine water that gave her her life.
In the passage of time we grew out of the streamside
and flowed into a fractious world beyond the sheltered hills,
we learned of wars and catastrophes, torment and misery,
the dour pain of soured relationships; lessons which
challenged our humble origins, questions unanswered.
One cannot deny a brook may breach its peaceful banks
and scour a flagrant path with awesome power,
potential might belies the calm that flowers
in gentle times, and gentle times were all we knew.
But beside our brook the true conscience of peace
had shaped our thoughts and romantic beliefs.
© I.D. Carswell

Growing Apart (rev)

We knew their names
or thought we did,
we knew their faces
from an album of places
we‘d played in –
in a lifetime of fabulous
childhood shared.

Joined by our origins
of common ascent –
whether they liked it
or cared, they knew what
it meant to be watched
and we knew too,
though a reason evaded.

By being unmoved, by
denying the treason they
clearly gathered under,
we could renew
contemporaneous
friendships if we dared.

While it was true we’d
suffered them forever
as yet we’d never met;
today was the first we
could meet in this state –
if we could just take our
feet past the line.

Behind fey hands we
traded coy glances in an
electric air, declining to stare,
too uncool for real style,
but one had to watch closely
to see who watched whom.

We found it bizarre, defying
all wit to seem not to care
or show worries a bit while
emotionally primed and dying
despairing she mightn’t be watching,
or declaring her stake.

The debate about playing
the part still rages, the roles
they are playing, the role of
teenagers – uneasily acting
the fires in their hearts
and caught in the chill
of their growing apart.
© 26 June 2006, I.D. Carswell