Hair today, where tomorrow?

Aha, Darrel Hair has done it once again, vomited
up his almighty sense of right and wrong,
made judgements which will echo long after
his precocious sense of umpire proportion
has been dismembered forensically
and patently identified as fantasy.
It will engender a lot of unnecessary palaver
and more hot air, something synonymous
with his name as cricketing controversy
seems to reign wherever Hair pontificates at wicket.
His complaint this time, some blasé Pakistani cricketer
allegedly cheating, a crude case of ball tampering,
Jesus wept, supposedly done when you’re out in front
and all but assured of winning. So how inept can he be?
Take a dozen balls fifty five overs old and see for yourself,
compare them all together, decide which is tampered with
by inspection alone. Remember, there is no evidence
other than the ball, no TV replay or insistent commentary
or even a solitary one of 20,000 suspicious pairs of eyes
to support your decision. Then make your call.
Hardly fair isn’t it! But then your name isn’t Darrel Hair…
© I.D. Carswell

Darrel called ball tampering on the Pakistani cricketers during the fourth Test (supposedly in conjunction with his fellow umpire – whom he could easily intimidate) and awarded five runs to England. Rain stopped play soon after so Tea was taken early. The Pakistani’s failed to return to the wicket after Tea, they were discussing the implications of the insult. At the end of Tea Darrel and fellow umpire waited for a few minutes or so at the wicket. When the Pakistani’s failed to show they took the bails, awarding the game to England. The Pakistani’s subsequently returned to find the game abandoned. Since this unprecedented event Darrel has offered his resignation for US$0.5m, and withdrawn it. The text of his email to his governing body was made public thus effectively and permanently incapacitating his credentials for continued employment as an umpire. Or so one would think! The question is, were the Pakistani’s guilty of ball tampering in the first instance? Well, we’ll never know…

Time to play

It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen
where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way
as words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent
sounds in my head translate into sentence structures,
as lips articulate the rhythms and the sounds of the
jumbled lexis as swiftly as I can unleash them. I couldn’t know
what might emerge tonight, I only knew the gripping tightness
in my mind and the pressure, the indecent urge to express
and let the dammed words flow.

It isn’t always this way, there are times when I know
within a line or two what I must write, like when some event
has incited raw passion or wrenched me from my feet
or I have staggered unbalanced from fright or fear, despairing
its sheer effrontery, beaten and contrite. But not tonight.
Tonight I am free to roam in the growing fields and taste
whatever delights are imagined, to follow the whim of the wind
and the random flights of thistledown inviting my errant
delinquency – to go with the flow.

If I had known poetry could do this for me I’d have
surrendered a long time ago, grown fat on the back
of my promised muse with hair sleek and long to the waist,
wearing kaftans with no shoes, speaking in tones.
As it goes I have time to play without haste the games
that engage me most, write when the urge makes havoc
with good intent, dispense with guilt-management and
stress, lend commonsense enough rope to tether itself
beyond hope of poetic redress.
© I.D. Carswell

Terra nullis ignorata

We came to find the place contained
in legendary tracts, the hidden land
of fulsome wealth that we had sorely lacked,
an empty land of winsome dreams.
We found the continent intact with
evidence of everything the schemers
claimed except it wasn’t empty, we marked
our landing with a pile of sticks and scratched our names,
we even framed the land around without a sign
for Crown and Queen, pretending that
their heirs would reign. We made a pact
before we left to not reveal the site, acted
for the good believing that it might restrain
the avaricious deeds our leaders would ignite.
The owners of the land were shy but graciously
extended hands and trusted us to come again
and learn the natural wonders of their land,
to walk among the spirits of their dead. Our leaders
brutalised the cautious words we said with acid
accusation, absurdly claimed we lied to curry fame,
denied we ever found the site and trashed our
reputations. We died before the tempest came.
Our spirits wandered in the night and wilted
in the dawn, we hid within the pile of sticks
beside the tree adorned with words we
wrote: ‘Hope & Justice found this Land
and ceded it was owned’
© I.D. Carswell

Echoes in an empty room

The strident sounds of silence echo
in a darkened room, a beggar’s tomb
of emptied space and barrenness, a
shameful waste, a bitter sadness.
It violates all sense of being strips aside
all causal meaning bound inside the shrinking
wrap that clings to surfaces debased,
insulates the tiny tap of time, a skulking
soulless mirthless mime.

The rhyme of sleep declaims the dark
illusion, deep confusion drains into
the random spaces interspersed beneath
the crumbling sheets, the slowing breath
of gentle death and sweeting dreams
sliding into nothingness that firms to trap
the feeble feet, arrests the weakened limbs
and wraps in comfort all that falls abandoned
in this wretched tomb.

Echoes in an empty room embalm you in
a plaster cast, you laugh aghast until the dawn,
roar and cry and clap your hands for more,
call encore and in your adulation shout
yet lie alert alone at night listening for
the closing door that shuts you out, conspire
to rectify the slight, defying sound in deafness
bound before your pleasure’s sense was
bought in tender arms you’d dearly to die for.
© I.D. Carswell

Frogmouth biker

The biker was a menace on the farm, a madman bent
on speed, intent on leaving all for dead (it was fortunate
he never left the shed). This biker was a frogmouth owl,
a petrol head who sought to ride the biggest, baddest bike
around and did indeed if only in his mind; I’d dread to
meet him on the track. It is said by city folk that nothing
much eventuates outback except a thirst, and the worst
you’d ever get was burnt by sun that never ends, so I guess
a set of tyre tracks across your back was hardly trendy
stuff you’d boast about or earn a shout down at the pub.

And that’s the nub of it. Living on a farm is ample compensation
for a life that urban dwellers would deny has any verve – if they
had the nerve to make that observation. I wonder how they’d
cope with bikers of his ilk terrorising them in urban streets
or places where they meet to chew the fat. I laugh about that
now and hope the little bugger brings my dirt bike back.
© I.D. Carswell

To keep the ambience alive

When you thanked me for the day I felt ashamed,
I couldn’t say it wasn’t much because it was for you,
I had enjoyed it too although it was another day
like any other day we’ve had before in our association.

Most days are good, a few we do regret, perhaps we
would forget in time those we let to shrivel with neglect;
in that respect I cherish all the days we have together,
the clearly lesser days enhance the really better days.

It seems I nearly made the wrong connection once again,
it wasn’t just the day concerned, and in the manner of
your special way you meant your thanks for my behaving
well, your words discerned my keeping calm and staying cool.

I hadn’t spoiled the atmosphere you cherish in your quest
for light and harmony, you enjoyed my company
and felt the gentle vibes; the pointed lance and acid barbs
were curbed and tied to keep the ambience alive.
© I.D. Carswell

Ekka

The Ekka institution bares us all, though call it Exhibition, Royal
Queensland Show, it’s that time of year when you will go in
liberal spirit where the spectacle of fantasies escrow.

Gaudy frills and simple bunting still excites the passive soul,
ignites the fires patrolled by commonsense and daily grind,
enlivens dour inclines with smeared hypnotic flossy smiles.

You wander for a while, mouth agape in milling throng diffused with sounds
and smells both strong and rank and rare, ponder if you dare but move
along or stand aside, or be beleaguered in the tide.

Agile sellers spruik their wares in choral dissonance from booths
that crowd the narrow ways, writhing from displays of goods
you’ll never need or ever use, their cries confuse your commonsense.

The eyes in distant faces move in hazy motion, dazed, endangered
for the moment short of focus, searching for a locus to engage,
staring still amazed and buried in a trance-like syrup dance.

You pay and pay for things you never buy, consume exotic fruits
that sellers ply like smarmy snakes entwined in hanging vines within
your reach, devour the pith and core and seeds and then seek more.

You watch events you cannot comprehend, comments from the cryer
broadcast from the centre ring amuse, confuse or drive you from your seat,
you applaud in concert with the station hands who seem to understand.

When you have drunk the plastic cup of Ekka essense sad-dispensed,
supped and limned within the flow of raw emotion, emptied out your
pockets neat then you may go and flee the grounds, your soul replete.
© I.D. Carswell

A monument in words

And so I had a glaring revelation,
I couldn’t find the poet in the man although
I read his life composed by writers true disposed
to tell it with veracity. They built a monument in words
and deeds, a shrine of writers’ reeds inlaid with proper
quotes refined. Those motes were hardly real; I couldn’t find
the poet in the man they wrote, but when I found alone the
man within the Poet reading from his poetry I was replete.

Perhaps they can’t compete these dry and dusty counters
of the grains of sand, there’s more evoked within a ball of
dimpled clay on any day a sculptor lends his hands to shape
a face; I am pleased to read the poet rather than the man
and will not place my future faith in such abstruse scatology.
© I.D. Carswell

The Last Unicorn

The last unicorn was never
free to chose another ending,
a plaintive melody entrained
with sweet orchestral harmony
was soured and sundered in
our heaven’s cruel 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
the scheme of sessile stimulation.

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 died,
we really lied about forever-after,
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.

The same embrace

We talked with family last night, not mine or yours
specifically but ours, the ones we love familiarly. When
little Jake (though not so little now) was heard to say ,
“Goodbye, I gotta go,” it was like our hearts were breaking;
he’ll always be our baby too – as each of you are perfect
children of our spirit-making, each of you are keenly sought
and brought to mind and claimed within the same embrace.

We could hear the families depart, the handsome faces animate,
alive with energy and radiating charm, the banter racing at a frantic
pace. We could surmise the subtle smiles on parents’ faces, smiles
disguised in patient parents’ graces checked and balanced,
saintly satisfaction chaste with forbearance ushered to the fore,
the conversations at the door, the knowing though
you’re going you’ll soon be seeing all again.

For now we’re happy just to share our son with you and know
he too enjoys the same embrace within the arms of family,
we will endeavour to return the freedom of our hearts to you
whenever chance permits – perhaps a trip, a journey to rejoin
our roots, or maybe you can ferret out your skirts and suits, discard
your rubber boots and join us here. We have a thing we want
to share, a Peachester wedding at Easter in the coming year.
© I.D. Carswell

Pumpkins in our time

For months on end the pumpkins lay at peace,
their parent vines had all but browned and died
although a stubborn tendril here and there had
tried to grow again – glyphosate soon ended
that attempt at insurrection. There were ten
back then, though only nine survived, the unlucky
one caught rot and slowly died, a silent, gravid fate
while yet achieving fame for it will lend it’s genes
without hurrah to grow the batch replacing them.

The nine survivors now sit on the bench inside
the packing shed, they earned their rest out of
the heat and each will have a cleansing bath, be
polished with a brush and buffed until they shine.
In time they will be chosen for the table, used as
soup so thick the ladle stands upright or crusty scones
whose bright and cheery shade delights, or roasted
in the oven pan with juices from the meat, a taste so
sweet and complex in its decadent indecency.

We didn’t breed the pumpkins on our farm,
we let them grow wherever they’ve a mind,
we’re kind and thoughtful (so we think), providing
them with nutrients which were designed for trees,
a drink when thirst inclines and leaves are in a wilt,
placing runners back beneath the shade indeed as
carefully as the like of pumpkin growers might had they
the time, fostering a rare, sublime relationship to reap
rewards which will see more each coming year.
© I.D. Carswell

Thank you Ambrose

Thank you Ambrose for the kitchen door ajar,
a sign your friendship never closed on me, an amity extended
from afar although it was a distant glow I didn’t really know.

Thank you Ambrose for staying staunch and true,
a fellowship renewed in time of need, reviewed each time indeed
concentric paths of earthy spheres we orbit in combine.

Thank you Ambrose for appealing to the poet I became,
the muse I never knew whose gentle protestations were disposed
in subtle plays on words conveyed in hues of ever changing light.

Thank you Ambrose for being right when I was wrong,
being fair when I was strong in condemnation, patiently awaiting
for the end of fancied flights of my self-righteous indignation.

Thank you Ambrose for staying in my mind a sober voice,
I always heard the choices you proposed. It took me time to talk
with you although I made excuses disabusing what you know.

Thank you Ambrose, I am giving you the home you have inside my head;
if you were I instead of me you would have given me the key and lead me
where I could recline in restful ease a long, long time ago. And rest I will
with you my friend.
© I.D. Carswell

Admire their style

I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today,
a sustaining source of entertainment;
I admire their style without exciting comment
or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though
it is to sigh about uneasy affirmation.

I hope when they read me (if they ever do)
they rest as easy on my lack of finished form,
the hazy, blasé spending of poetic wealth,
my failure to bend rhythm in truculent beat,
metre that barely measures a couple of feet,
rhyme that slips awkwardly between sheets
stillborn short of a healthy couplet.

But I’ll still try to write, nonetheless,
a poem that outlasts us all. If I didn’t believe
in the poetry in me I’d have neither nothing
to write about nor the will to try
& nor would they either.
© I.D. Carswell

To risk your Liberty

Called The Hon ‘Lizard Gizzard’ with aptness bearing fruit
from his septic yellow face to his pinstripe business suit,
famous for avowals starting, “Government Approved,
‘and in relation to’…” delivered deadpan monotone, eyes
a distant, washed-out hue – quartered in a trance.

Never any chance of sparkling talk or winsome repartee
from he, to ask a simple question is to risk your liberty
or worse, boredom for a lifetime via cursed verbosity
that seldom ever answers what you asked. But beware
his eyes will take your measure for a funeral cask.

The attorney gives his counsel to averse augmentation in
acerbic caution shots across the bow or through the head.
He has said we should agree to Spooks calling the shots on who
gains and looses liberty, be comfortable with Foxes in command
of the hen house and agree to see it ‘Lizard’s’ way.

Just let me say that when the screw is turned
it will most likely be on The Attorney General,
and not by you and me.
© I.D. Carswell

After reading Andrew Wilkie's 'Axis of Deceit' I nolonger

have a positive opinion of Philip Ruddock

or the rest of the Howard Government...

Fountain of your rise

For my niece Shelly, hoping you are well on the way to that renaissance…

Michelle, the thought of you confused or under siege
bereaves us; you, the cheerful heart who waged a
silent war for lost, egregious souls whose thanks
deserted you should never be constrained, should never
need to grieve in anxious pain or ever cede to grieve alone.

Michelle, you gave without restraint, the light was
grown brighter by your sacrifice and even though
you managed to avoid the centre glow the light was
quite enough to keep the shadows of another night
at bay, until today. We knew so little of the troubled way.

Michelle, the zesty core you’ve kept proscribed will essence
out, your psyche has rebelled and shouts the epithets of
trenchant self, a new and lively eminence is just about
to soar in anxious skies; it is a resurrection of your inner
power and no demise, the natal fountain of your rise.
© I.D. Carswell

Love stopped before it began

It would have been love, I am sure of it,
and I held her hand torn between concern and pride
whilst she cried and cried on her first day at school.

We walked to where her brother mowed the lawns
with many others, racing with their mowers
at manic speed in tight formation. Fascination
dared me join their frenzied rush, a madness
so inviting that I ran amongst the madmen dicing
at each other’s heels and tempting death or injury.

The crying stopped. Before I could explain I had
the Head’s disapprobation pained upon my hands.

I’ve tried to write this poem but a dozen times,
I had the lines impressed, and even rhymes,
but pain of the strap delivered with dispassionate
venom cooled my ardour and instilled a lingering distress
for love stopped before it began.
© I.D. Carswell

Lethargy of leaden wings

I hadn’t had the ‘flu in ages, avoided all those awful places
fraught of gritty eyes and splitting heads, patrons ringed
in lethargy of leaden wings, deafened by the roaring chills
and still-life flushes, weakened in their clumsy trusses,
trodden on through breached defences, sore diseased
and barely breathing; now I can’t decline a cough or sneeze,
I’m on my knees and in the throes of drowning.

Sure, I sip my lemon tea with spoon of amber honey,
trying to decide which things to do, things I didn’t need
to think about before this day, praying for the strength
to ride these doldrums out, to see them to their squalid end.

Then lost again, the sequence fades and drifts in thinning strands
of random thought, my nose is dripping like a faucet to be stopped,
should I sit or stand or aught I turn a page or listen to my wife who says
to rest. Keep warm, its best you take a blanket dressed
across your knees, keep your fluid levels up and don’t despair.

And just where should I begin? I hate myself for being weak,
for taking medication, the loss of concentration, the bleakness
in my soul with tears that rends the joy I used to feel
when caring hands were placed with caring words
defending me. It’s not a place I long to be.
© I.D. Carswell

The beans were exciting

I 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 form of warped appreciation, and when I think
of it the gag was truly fitting; it wasn’t new,
a barely used waterproof surfers’ jacket bought
at the Market for five dollars, zippered, hooded
and lined for the worst possible weather, not
really a substitute for the chef’s tunic, however
I found it warm and reassuring with its huge
embroidered logo on the back, like a newly doffed
personality, approved, well-used, somehow inviting,
and thus appropriate for an innovative recipe of zesty
beans and cheese with ginger and yogurt.
Like my wearing the jacket the beans were exciting.
© I.D. Carswell

For Siggy & Bill

I awoke with two poets in my bed,
books I chose from the library, possibly
intent on a swift read while schmoosing
for poetic leads. My motives are appallingly
plain, a head bereft of fine ideas although
biographies are not an easy reading.

I picked Siegfried Sassoon instinctively (not
for any cogent reasons, I liked him in his
uniform though his name may cause
a resonance), and William Butler Yeats
who sat nearby within an easy reach,

so I took him too. I flicked them through,
scanned a few pages, gazed at the ancient
pictures, yawned, left them on the bed
and rediscovered them this morning.
Now I have two books to read

on the hidden lives of immense poets,
written no doubt by excellent biographers
intent on doing their subjects proud.
It unnerves me that what I am about to do
is discover who lurks behind their pretty poems.
© I.D. Carswell

Her gentle hands

She came at night, her gentle hands
defused the ticking bomb that was his brain,
she soothed the pain and drew his livid
length inside, she sat astride to weld
his broken head with anxious gaze
and clever hands, gave praise,
encouraged him to try and see,
to open up his eyes.

He cried.

She sighed and sighed and signified
repleteness of her solo ride, she kissed
his salty tear-filled eyes and said her name.

When doctors came at dawn and found
him smiling in the bed, relaxed, alert,
and certainly not dead as half expected,
they wondered out aloud how it could be.

Soldier 102 replied Nurse Jenny Callendaur
in reverent voice. They shook their heads,
there’s no such nurse the matron said until
a staffer checked the roll. He said with wonder
in his eyes and awe-filled voice, she died in ’41
when they bombed the psychiatric ward.
© I.D. Carswell

If democratically elected

What is it with Hezbollah
representing barely 15%
of the Lebanese Parliament
living outside the government
immersed in an undeclared war,
sympathetic to Hamas and Al Fatah for
the return of Palestinian refugees,
whose obscure and murky origins
are odious amalgamations of violent
Shi’a extremist views, combined to express
the crude and singular elimination of Israel,
the death of the last Jew on earth?
What is it with them that they will gladly
pay a dearth in lives as a common price
for ‘heroic resistance’? It is a nonsense
to declare they are protecting their
people or claim they pursue
legitimate aims of government
when randomly firing missiles
into Israel, supporting open acts
of terrorism, training and equipping militants
to destroy lives and property beyond their borders
– though they do keep a worthy covenant of care
with schools and clinics and good management
in the South where they rule.
The Israelis withdrew in tatters
six years before, it hardly matters
whom history saw as the victors or vanquished,
the sympathy was for shattered lives.
Which are shattered again.
The bombs and the missiles rain death
and destruction in wanton profligacy
while people flee in fear.
Can Hezbollah still claim to care
for their people and yet risk their
innocent lives to Israeli planes
firing guided missiles at Hezbollah
war machines nestled in tranquil villages?
It seems wasted lives and acrimony
is their declared aim – to engender
and enflame hatred by premeditated
acts of murderous, insane hypocrisy.
That is one Hell of a Duty of Care.
And beware, Hezbollah would be
legitimate Government of Lebanon
– if democratically elected.
© I.D. Carswell

My views on the war in Lebanon have been polarised by researching Hezbollah's origins. I cannot sympathise
with a group whose primary reason for existence is the total and unequivocal annihilation of another society
on a warped form of historico-religious pretext. The group does not invite support on two counts:
First - it's continued insane reason for existence; and,
Second - it's unconsciencable use of innocent civilians to further it's murderous aims.

Hidden dangers

Which things excited you the most when you were young,
can you recall the pleasures they would bring? Indulge
yourself, dispose your mind of daily care and take
the plunge – but beware, there’s hidden dangers here.

Have you ever sucked your thumb? And if you did would
you admit you did? Did you ever lick your plate, masturbate,
cogitate an evil fate for siblings who offended you. You know
you do, or that you did, although you’re no recidivist.

Were you ever lost in song, sang along in perfect
harmony in what you thought was sweet accord,
to find indulgent faces soon disgraced, distorted
as in pain, derisive claims you sing off-key?

Ever take a book to heart and read it end to end,
delighting in the hero’s part, falling for the heroine?
Were you lost for days and days in roles they played,
amazed real life declines romantic endings?

Did you chose to be approved so you could chase your
wanton dreams? Are you awake alone at night wondering
where the story ends and life begins? Are you real
or just a dream or is this what your fiction seems?
© I.D. Carswell

Still hear the waves

It was a brave day under an endlessly clear sky
that extended forever from our valley
to the unfathomably distant sea.

It was a day to remember amongst days of
classical splendour and wonderment,
from an unoccupied beach and the virgin
sand crisp and crumbling under flying feet,
to the tumbling vastness of twinkling ocean
lying invitingly within reach.

We shrilled in the whip of the wind
that blew into the bay, growled with the clap
and crash of waves always in motion,
waded and splashed in an unnamed ocean,
fell in pools filled with wallowing froth,
coughed and laughed in wavelets and troughs
boldly shouting defiance ‘til stopped by cold.

And when the sand chafed beneath our trunks
and the salt sea dried to crystals of coarse rime
on our reddened skin we still ran. Do you remember
it then, do you remember how that day would
never end? Though there are years between now
and then I can still see the sand and the twinkling
sea in the nameless bay, still hear the waves.
© I.D. Carswell

Joys of the chase

Colours fade into nameless shades of grey 
and where the tonsure of bas-relief crudely 
stands effete, semantic symbolism degrades 
into meaninglessness. 

The artefacts of an old existence deny you 
humanity but you don’t recognise them anyway, 
they are not bound to objects of power that 
belay access to reason. 

In this flat world of monochrome un-ambiguity 
and ceaseless movement you hear in a 
spectrum of sound that defies tympanic 
sympathy, sounds you feel in your teeth and 
in the hair that covers your lean shanks 
and in the scents that surround you. 

You move in a world of here and now, 
where yesterday was a stomach full 
and tomorrow is an extension of 
your hunger for tastes and sounds 
and joys of the chase.
© I.D. Carswell

Blame Katrina, or Larry…

You may have heard a dumb-ass claim that
Katrina, a hurricane, is to blame for current
stress upon our fiscal state, that petrol prices
ate their share but be aware of what the lack
of Cavendish bananas did when far too few
were found to satisfy the mad demand.

It began by setting off alarms throughout the land,
scaring out of bed irrational thought that bought
Cavendish at 14 bucks per kilogram, buyers pleased
to show their purchase as support for growers
caught on horns of a dilemma (who are now
remembered not as victims but beneficiaries).

A local breeze, Cyclone Larry, did the deed,
his claim to fame was wrecking Innisfail and all
the crops around, bananas lay aground and
vegetables were drowned (while we still suffer
from a clinging drought). Without a doubt it was
a time of malcontent and dismal instability.

The banana industry which ran the NE Coast
ceased that very night, and despite relief designed
to keep the Coast alive survival tales abound to
make one shiver as of fright. It would be surreal
to think it might have been in order our PM
could have bananas with his breakfast cereal.

For months we’ve heard the plaintive cry and still
the prices do not fall – with all the hue and cry you’d
think a shred of conscience would be pricked
but pick another line and think again, the price will stick
for years to come until the gain exceeds the loss,
that is the blooded fee no matter what the final cost.
© I.D. Carswell

Something to shout about

Captain AJ Shout, VC, MC, MID (& bar), who died at Gallipoli
of wounds and was posthumously awarded the VC,
a rare and prestigious award for most conspicuous bravery,
could say, even in dying, it was something to shout about.

He was a Kiwi serving in the Boer Campaign, mentioned
in despatches, remained living in South Africa a Queen’s
Sergeant with the Cape Field Artillery, married, a child,
then in 1907 came to Darlington, Sydney.

Entered the CMF, practiced his trade as a carpenter & joiner,
without peer as a rifle shot, considered the coming onslaught,
joined the AIF in late 1914, commissioned, made 2nd Lieutenant,
volunteered for even more ANZAC service at the outbreak of war.

1915, April, and during bloody confusion at ANZAC Cove
Lieutenant Shout bravely won an MC, he also received
wounds which cost him time out of battle ‘til June,
promoted Captain with mention in despatches on his return.

In August, severely wounded by his own grenade in close range
fighting in trenches at Lone Pine, incapacitated by the loss of an eye
and a hand, undismayed by blood and pain, fought ‘til collapse.
Passed away aboard HMHS Neuralia, August 11th, 1915.

A short but stellar career, if you had wont to call it that;
the aftermath, however, was just as as ominous. Clerical stupidity,
the curse of General Staff was blamed for heedless misinformation
provided his wife; her life, apologies aside, was also destroyed.

It should have been fine to remember the feats of his valour
revived from a fruitless campaign, and learned it was sane
to consider his warrior domain denied from our distant shores.
But he wore a Victoria Cross, or would have had he not died.

He’s in the news again with medals and ribbons and decorations
posted on bulletin boards across our Nation; Kerry Stokes, Ch 7,
aka ‘anonymous’ buyer, paid one million dollars for his VC,
a record made graciously at an auction to keep it in Australian hands.

Was it worth dying for in Gallipoli, a sufficient reward for suffering
and pain, and who may have gained from this magnanimous act? One
inescapable fact is the bronze of his VC came from cannons captured
at Sebastopol in the Crimea War. Yes, Collectors, there aren’t any more.
© I.D. Carswell

The perfect cup

We were born of tea, our mum could drink fourteen
cups a day, an awesome feat to try to rationalise,
beyond belief unless you knew where we had one
she would have two. The perfect cup, she said,
was never one; I understood in sum that meant
a pot of tea for two, a cuppa shared with time to talk,
perhaps a scone with cream and jam. It seemed
the nicest way to greet a friend of old, a friend to be,
a greeting with a pot of tea. We learned to make the
perfect cup when we earned our mother’s trust,
could bank the stove, raise the heat ’til kettle boiled,
warm the teapot, measure tea (with extra for the Queen
or pot – it mattered not), fill the pot with ease
and free of incident or scald, dress it in a stained
and holey, tattered old bequeathed tea cosy, wait
for it to draw, cups and saucers placed with tiny,
anxious hands afraid to break a member of the
set, milked and sugared ready for the pour.
If there was more to life than this we had to meet
it yet. And Mother in her driven quest, when all
had sipped would ask for more – even in a land of
plenty, ensuring the blessed pot was empty.
© I.D. Carswell

Strawberries again today

The red berries wreak an awesome spell that some would dread;
others, weak and soulless, must succumb, they treasure with the eyes
the plump and soulful fruit, the shape inspires a heady heart that beats
aright as if in love, and love it is that drives the buds describing taste.
You treasure with the tongue, you suck the juice august and pure
and thus are done. The journey back to reason stings with acid barbs
that cling in blushing shame of juices in the blood and on the skin
and tightness in the chest, the crème you swear has done you harm,
you’d best pass up dessert today. But reason begs you to delay, to wait
until the season ends. And so, dear friend, strawberries again today.
© I.D. Carswell

If it ever bloody rains

I never said I would, I only said I could
do what you wished, the subtle difference
should have raised a caution flag;
maybe I bragged out loud, made it sound
as if it was intent, I never meant to make
it seem that way. So today I wear your
brittle animosity – just out of curiosity, how do
you manage that? It smacks me to the core, though
I’ve felt it thus before I’ve never managed yet
to live at ease with towering dread that’s leaden
in your steely, silent gaze. I suppose my only road
is plea of raw insanity, I’m bruised and battered
from a false belief that rain would fall and give relief,
that you would see the consequence of acting
out too soon. I should tilt the moon, I knew
you’d never fall for that. Alright, I’ll clean the goddamn
drains; God forbid, if it ever bloody rains I’ll take
the chance and also dance a naked jig.
© I.D. Carswell

Piscine kind of kinship

To glibly say that Joe was sort of odd
quite missed the point. Peculiar in many
ways and kind of weird, I would have
been afraid of him were I a child (if I ever
was a meek and mild retiring kid), avoided
him as if the plague. But he was good to Mutti,
and that Mutti was so good to me was cause
enough to bear the most extreme
eccentricity. He taught me how to fish;
oh, a blissful art it is, and just as Art exists
beyond relationships we were not friends,
instead we shared a piscine kind of kinship,
a sensitivity in which we learned to tie
the special flies that fished with great success
in streams around his home; we blended with
the river banks, cast our lines in rhythmic,
trance-like ballet dance that looped and swirled
in gently rippled peace, rarely spoke, we had no need,
we always knew which piece of water each
of us disposed. We drove the many miles
to fabled Lakes and fished in legendary tarns
and breaks, watched each other’s backs in places
anglers have a wont to go. On the river I’d
know within an inch where Joe would be,
studied his impressive ease of cast,
his reach, retrieve, the placing of the fly,
the gentle rise of rod to set the hook;
it took me many years to even part achieve
his awesome symmetry. I should,
with true humility, mention I
was never near as good.
© I.D. Carswell