And I write to think

I write:
to exorcise
the demons
of the night.

I write:
for family and friends,
(though many times
to make amends).

I write:
for times I couldn’t pen
a line, and for when
I didn’t even try.

I write:
so my hands are occupied,
they’d choke
me if denied.

I write:
to thank my family
for completely
loving me.

I write:
because I have
the choice of words
I didn’t voice today.

I write:
for emotional release,
no greater peace
than artistic catharsis.

…and I write
to think
(therefore I am)!
© I.D. Carswell

Caught in fewer words

Have you ever noticed that
shorter poems get to bat
on many more occasions than
their over-lengthy brethren?

Is that a fact in part explaining
Laws of Conservation claiming
spent creative energy
cannot be reclaimed for free?

Or is it just a fallacy
effected by urbanity to keep them short,
a myth that brevity enhances wit,
that lengthy poems are full of shit.

Where we writers let a poem grow
as poems will, the careful poet knows
the fragile life they breathe demands
you leave them unconstrained. And love
of words and slave to sounds
and rhythms that abound
in treasured, tangled lines will
not abbreviate in common kind.

Poets caught in fewer words and taut
expressions must rebel; curse you,
tell the truth you scurvy swine,
decline the shorter verse!

The truth, of course, is not a mystery
its driven by the beast of Reader Popularity,
not governed by a magic wand or intellect
or lack of time, but length of their attention span.
© I.D. Carswell

The silent treatment

I’ll have to have it out with God,
he causes me trouble needlessly.

I am not kidding when I say we have the
same job; but honestly I’m not looking for his,

I’d rather be gainfully unemployed,
free of Worldly cares, and I don’t
believe I could do it better anyway.

My major bitch is he still leaves the big
decisions to me. Like defining where
I stand on moral grounds.

No shit, it happens every day.
It’s happening right now.

Instead of saying, “Do this, or that,”
I get the silent treatment,

I suppose the message is - think for yourself,
so now I do it without thinking.

I’ve done it all my life, or at least
since my mother let me.

Come to think of it, maybe
she’s the one I should be talking to…
© I.D. Carswell

Too much to die for

The ordinary words you said will have
to do their very best to keep your claim
for peace, your gestures did not make
the madness cease – you spoke with calm
and reverence, a quietness of great dignity,
defused the barbs, disarmed the cannons
ranged against the scowling Imams’ heads.

Alas, those words of commonsense
and deep respect would seem to be
at odds with ugly vagrant deeds that
challenge our belief you are indeed
men born of equal faith – but yet
you sadly shake your covered heads
and turn to walk away forlorn.

We know you made a plea to faithful
then at prayer, that they agreed it was
a sorry state; but wait, they aren’t the
miscreants who boldly break the faith
and flout the law, they aren’t the
dispossessed who press the detonator
causing deaths in crowded shopping malls.

Whomever polled those evildoers filled with
revolutionary zeal, claimed they’d gain respect
from suicide had lied when teaching them, said
it’s written in the holy book that God agreed
there is no crime to murder non-believers
and their families who have no rights. And what’s
the Prophet’s final word on that?

Your chequered history of shameful deeds
and acts of gross brutality which surfaced at the
Prophet’s death were all foreseen, and though
the potent word is spread from common man to
common man, the ugly deaths amongst your
clan suggests your leaders are not still the people
God would fill with never-ceasing love of everyman.

To say you can’t condemn what other leaders
may incite within their faithful flock is but a crock
of trash. Surely greater status comes from
them embracing life at your behest, not soulless
death by suicide, not soulless death amongst
the mangled innocents who die because some
zealot lies about the true and rightful peace.

And willing soldiers of the faith who spread
the written words in ceaseless quest to teach
the seething masses, save them from their sinless,
classless ignorance, enlighten them to reach
the state of one true faith with one true God
would surely find with greater ease
the paradise you’re said to gladly seek.

If this is a tenet of the faith you say predates
today’s religiosity, uniting all the ancient strands
in peace, a single faith of one true God to serve us all,
the ball resides within your seething court,
give it thought; religion teaches us consuming love
of life, enduring life which is withal
too much for anyone to die for.
© I.D. Carswell

Adult games

The noises that he made were quite amazing,
rather like a train accelerating from a station
under heavy load; he huffed and groaned
and chuffed and snuffed with fierce intensity
while building steam and heat, the piston that he
drove went in and out alright in metronomic beat
as he settled in his task, an artful task of making love
although without the charming sounds she could relate
or intimate debate. And as his hairy bum rebounded
in the mirror of their night of mutual lust, described
in action as a trite and comic act, delightful as it was,
it roused innate hilarity; she laughed so loud he opened
up his eyes surprised she found his efforts were
distracting. He later said he’d had to cease because
his concentration was impaired, declared she’d joggled
when he jiggled, sniggered when he quivered, shivered
when he would explode before she’d got that far along
the road beyond the point of no return.
When asked he said he wouldn’t yearn to
play these adult games her way again.
© I.D. Carswell

Gravestones

But I am not yet dead and yet I rest my head
sweetly on the bare gravestones of great poets,
I am not yet dead though I sleep soundly
in the graveyards with their bones;
it is an immaculate relief to me
that my thoughts freely accompany theirs,
that we share heirs and familiar themes,
that they smile indulgently and ask
where I have been.
© I.D. Carswell

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/ivan_donn_carswell

So much alike

If I decline this chance to visit the sister
I served an officer in the Army with, the one
closest to me and at whose desk I sat on my
first scared day at school, then I am a fool.
Mavis is a rare pearl, a gem of like mind whose
purview of the Army differed from mine
– but only in that she was a girl.

Mavis’ virtue grew from turning times in khaki
and green, her being there a warm reassuring
and firm sisterly hand, guiding with a calm voice,
restoring the choice of commonsense, reinforcing
the ordinary and familiar references, conceding deeds
mattered more than self-praise, which only raised
derision when brought to the court of good manners.

They are huge thoughts to ponder indeed;
should I let my mind wander at will, as a free
and vaporous entity to charter its course
through unguent seas of sibling memories,
barter and sift the pebbles and grains remaining,
placidly ride the emotional tides and drift in
blameless currents in search of my sister’s side.

There is a chance I can’t entertain the coincidence,
a risk that an eclectic glance in those eccentric mirrors
will mist the visions I seek, distorting familiars, revealing
just me. That is a weakness I won’t have bear if I care only
to think with warmth and comfort of Mavis, knowing
quite separately she has similar thoughts which
are true of both of us who are so much alike.
© I.D. Carswell

An awe-filled age

An awe-filled age,
not to be misinterpreted
by arthritic clichés or sagging epithets,
this was the era of endeavour, and there,
in centre stage, mid scene, the most
stunning sister you have ever seen.

She was radiant, not just beautiful
– that is flatulence compared
with expressions of Vesuvius,
an exception and a rare proclivity.
To think she was just one of us,
an ordinary soul who cared,
and still delights,
dared to break a mould,
yet shared her triumph, aired
and spread her faerie wings in flight.

Had she aspired to dizzy heights
she could have flown the coup of sedentary vision,
but it was decision time, she knew
collisions of the course she flew
would reeve her heart but she was smart
and good enough to guarantee her soul
was always true.

And where she flew was there into
the learning children’s hearts.
We love you still, we always will,
and bless you Faye, Happy Birthday!
© I.D. Carswell

Big sister is 67 today. My, how time flies!

In soothing, sweetened words

No, she said, I never knew it was your first. It doesn’t
matter anyway. I always had an inkling that we’d find
a way. And then we did. I’m glad about it just for that.
Whether it was good or bad, or would have happened
had we made a pact or that it should have happened
years ago won’t alter facts; it was meant to happen,
and it did, and that is that.
His ego shattered in those straightforward words,
it was absurd, for years he’d suffered his attraction,
never guessed she shared a common thread,
and when it happened she had said it hadn’t mattered.
She recognised his sadness, smiled and hugged
him close, I always liked you best because you held
to every word I said, your soft grey eyes would
stroke my face and never stray, your hands caressed
my hands and drifted just a bit towards my breasts,
and if your thoughts were centred in my pants I knew
of your respect before I felt the hotness of your breath.
What occurred just now is but a lusty cup of sugared tea,
it does refresh, but once the cup is drained for me there’s
nothing left to keep except regrets, and leave. If it was
your first it was the very best but be assured, I know I need
you here to hold my hands, to listen and reflect,
to softly talk to me in soothing, sweetened words.
© I.D. Carswell

After the rain

Resurgent greens and stronger hues
combined within the colours in-between
will spring again, the reddish brown
has nearly gone and all the silver
greys erased in darker shades
that shine with slickly natured stains
after the gentle, gentle rain.

Clouded skies unite and demonize
the dry and dusty plight of days of brutal
beating sun and scathing wind,
the thin veneer is quickly peeled
and puddle-swamped in bloodied muddled
swirls of coloured slushy earth
that tinge the tracks of heavy wheels.

The welcome cold at first conceals its
damp and chilling steel, and in the icy
shades of night the frigid bite ignites
less welcome sentiments until the wrap
of insulation seals the warming heat,
sanctifies the stolid feet and frigid toes
with subtle sweep of warming blood.

And in the morning when the sun returns
to claim the earth the mist surprises, rising
unabashed and clean again to grace the
nascent waiting skies after the rain.
© I.D. Carswell

Pedestrian Ambitions

My thoughts are like the boots randomly arrayed
in the rack outside the window, some in pairs neatly
stacked, comfortably worn with a relaxed air of
confidence, some scattered in patterns of bizarre
relationships, one in Benson’s den under guard from
thought predators he fears plagiarized and stole
its partner’s soul. While I find it endearing
it involves a change in enterprise, his goal
in the past has mainly been slippers.

Of some thoughts I cannot recall
when I last wore them – thoughts which were
surely not my own, bearing marks of relentless use,
depicting an air of docile utility.
I find no shoes of flippant promise
or vacuous bent, no footwear meant
for climbers and schemers of high places,
no lofty thoughts for perilous ascent.

I survey the paucity of choices displayed,
aware of my thoughts keeping pace easily
with my pedestrian ambitions.
© I.D. Carswell

Carbonara eyes

Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming
sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch
(the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write
a word) but then she has the most expressive eyes.
So what she said was no surprise, she’d heard
my lamentations, licked my hands, rested forepaws
on my knee and fixed me with that knowing stare.
It said, "Bear with me, you know I’m right, you can’t write
to save yourself, it might be better if you used the time
instead to feed me diced raw meat – it’s in the
fridge beside the sweet potato." With that notion
running through my head I’m thus excused
from writer’s plight although I’d have to have
the last hurrah. "Snick (my warm diminutive
for Nicky)." I said, "Get off my lap,
you’re way too fat for meat.
Perhaps you’d like share
my pasta carbonara."
© I.D. Carswell

Olmecs rule

For the Chicano Renaissance poet, Reyes Cardenas, and all other Chicanos...

The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence,
Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians.
A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest.
Examine what it means to Mesoamericans!
Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue,
reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum
of everything that history shows, and heaven knows,
perhaps you taught the World to write.
You taught the World to sing and dance, and in
another guise you formed the mortar in the blocks
that holds no surprise to a Chicano. You’ve been propping up
the sorry state, it’s not too late to let them know.
Viva los Chicanos!
© I.D. Carswell




'Oldest' New World writing found
By Helen Briggs Science reporter, BBC News
Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing system as early as 2,000 years ago, new evidence suggests.
The discovery in the state of Veracruz of a block inscribed with symbolic shapes has astounded anthropologists.
Researchers tell Science magazine that they consider it to be the oldest example of writing in the New World.
The inscriptions are thought to have been made by the Olmecs, an ancient pre-Columbian people known for creating large statues of heads.
The finding suggests that New World people developed writing some 400 years before their contemporaries in the Western hemisphere.
Co-author Stephen Houston of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, US, said it was a "tantalising discovery".
"I think it could be the beginning of a new era of focus on Olmec civilisation," he said.
"It's telling us that these records probably exist and that many remain to be found. If we can decode their content, these earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilisation will speak to us today."
Chance find
The slab has been dated to the early first millennium BC. It appears to have been made by the Olmec civilisation of Mesoamerica, a geographical region located between the Sinaloa River valley in northern Mexico and the Gulf of Fonseca south of El Salvador.

I think it's a hugely important and symbolic find Mary Pohl, Florida State University
The area, once home to the Aztecs, Mayas and their predecessors, covers much of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and western Honduras.
The Olmecs appeared on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico around 1,200 BC. They are known to have carved glyphs - a symbolic figure or character that stands for a letter, sound, or word - since around 900 BC, but scholars are divided over whether this can be classified as true writing.
The stone slab, named the "Cascajal block", was first uncovered by road builders digging up an ancient mound at Cascajal, outside San Lorenzo, in the late 1990s.
It weighs about 12kg (26lbs) and measures 36cm (14in) in length, 21cm (8in) in width and 13cm (5in) in thickness. Its text consists of 62 signs, some of which are repeated up to four times.
Mexican archaeologists Carmen Rodríguez and Ponciano Ortíz were the first to recognise the importance of the find, and it was examined by international archaeologists earlier this year.
Precious object
The team says the text "conforms to all expectations of writing" because of its distinct elements, patterns of sequencing, and consistent reading order.
Commenting on the discovery, Mary Pohl, of Florida State University in Tallahassee, said she believed the authors had made a good case.
"I think it's a hugely important and symbolic find," she told the BBC News website. "It's new and further evidence that [the Olmecs] had writing and had text."
The block was carved from precious serpentine rock, suggesting it was probably a holy object used by high orders of society for some kind of ritual activity, she said.
The inscription is indecipherable but scientists hope that further excavations at the site could give clues to its content.
"I think more things will be found," said Dr Pohl. "We can make some progress although I don't think we'll ever be able to decipher it completely."
The Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, what is now southern Iraq, are generally regarded to be the first people to develop a form of writing around 5,000 years ago; although there have been even older claims made for Chinese inscriptions.
Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/5347080.stm

Published: 2006/09/14 19:48:41 GMT© BBC MMVI

No way of going back

It was my life in fast review, initially at double speed
until I learned which functions scrolled the images
on screen. I could pause, freeze frame advance,
endlessly replay and alter sound although the thing
would not allow fast forward beyond the here and now;
but I could live with that. For hours I was enthused,
then bored I pressed the little square thinking that
I’d watch another life that was attractive; at best I
had expected what ensues on changing channels.
I regret that even with the manual, when you press
the stop in life there is no way of going back.
© I.D. Carswell

Tools for life

Has life ever dumped you in a heap?
Perhaps you’ve found self belief so strongly
reinforcing that doubt never enters it,
nor divorces you from your own reality.

While I admire conviction I see it an
affliction of the blessed, sign of the righteously
possessed and indeed, a decent place to serve
a sentence for dereliction of self doubt.

I argue without it I am a cautious man and
easy to live with, I resound like a drum,
resonate to sympathetic percussion,
inflating nothing, merely imitating sound.

I feed on my doubt, I feast into the long night
of feverish dreams, fitfully sleep from crisis
to crisis, I am fêted, riven, inspected,
and reformed in every second of oblivion.

I waken rehabilitated, consummate with
confidence I can face the day’s rigors and
pursue challenges in the same vigorous
way I did yesterday.

And I die in the dawn of each new consequence,
ashamed I have no plan but the rising sequences
of random words, at times inadequate, at others
inspiring, as my tools for life.
© I.D. Carswell

Let them die in peace

There wasn’t room for sympathy,
the epicentre moved too rapidly for that
and even when we knew the anger
of the dispossessed the storm had passed.

It blew into their lives already stressed
by large events with precedents that rose
from dark and baleful incidents beyond
the wildest stretch of their naïve imagination.

Ululation for the recent dead resounded
through the canvas tents that formed
in ragged lines amongst the devastation,
the remnants of their island nation.

Piled upon a shattered beach the living dead had listened
listlessly to those who preach, their eyeless faces
turned to seek the truth, a worthy explanation,
but none would come and lift them in their desolation.

We left them to their solitude, we left them to
pursue another foe whose spoor we’d seen descending,
we left them promising that we’d return but
knew the truth without them comprehending.

The storm that passed had killed the earth they sat
upon and soon would kill them too, it mattered not
what we could do except to let them die
in peace – and never tell them why.
© I.D. Carswell

Nothing ever is the same

Gnashing teeth,
a grinding meet
of molars crashing
cuspid on cuspid
and the fracture of a piece,
of pressure not intense but awkward
in an anxious, unintended sense,
then giving way, the rapid play
of tongue immediate with censure
seeking each deformity,
the gross enormity – a shard of tooth
hard and loose embedded with a chew
of food, the rude and vulgar realisation
that your perfect teeth are rendered
meek by random chance in thankless bite.

And the anguish is replayed,
the roughened edge is sought,
caressed obsessively, the ease with which
the tongue is grooved and scraped
and still returns though raw with pain
reminds you of the time again,
and time again and time again,
and nothing ever is the same.
© I.D. Carswell

Bitter sweet

The events
of September 11th
2001 remain bitter sweet;
as well as 2973 innocents
confirmed dead (with their 19
terrorist murderers) there
are still 24 persons
to be accounted for.

It was an insane act
of calculated violence,
deplorable in that it defeated
lucid belief, horrific in every
rational sense except
its immediate impact.
You ask how that
is bitter sweet?

The facts are too
enormous to contain
a sweetness while the pain
endures, but we can surely
find a common purpose
in our hour of grief,
and just revenge is, oh,
so incredibly sweet!

Don’t let the terrorists
beat you with their threats,
this is not religion working here,
it is perdition. Slay them with your
thoughts of vengeance, tear out
their scraggy beards
and strangle them with jeers
in public streets.

Stone and blind their
bloodied eyes with
grinding truth and bode
their loathsome epithets
with vaporous claims
to martyrdom, expose
their naked lies, compromise
their useless lives.

And when they whine
what hypocrites
we are, smile and say
respectfully, you’re next
Muhammed, while you’re
still a terrorist.
© I.D. Carswell

There is no safer place to be than dwelling
within the folds of conviction and resolve...

Seven suits

Seven tailored suits, matching shoes and socks,
a brace of muted ties with subtle breast pocket
handkerchiefs inscribed, you wouldn’t credit
how badly they governed you in days gone by.

And the shirts, the cuffed and collared shirts
with collars wide and elegant, the colours understated
with a deference to foppish sense that’s better suited
to excuse a crass excess than daily use. Or commonsense.

And you kept them all,
vacuum-packed in plastic sleeves
stored in back of cupboards or on dismal
shelves far out of view to gather timeless dust.

That you never wear them even now and then
must strike a chord – if there’s a chord to resonate
when struck, or bleed a mote of seasoned doubt
or starts a keen debate about the waste of space.

But you are a snake, an old and elegant example
of the code of haute couture who kept the skins he
shuffled off across the years and never grew beyond
the loss, kept them all to long endure.

It matters not they’d never fit today, you might lose
some weight, a chance of fate, the fashion’s never dead
and what a hit you’d surely make in matching shoes
and shirt and tie immaculate with tailored suit.

It won’t occur, the time is passed as has the place
to wear these clothes, it would be better to dispose
of them in decent taste than keep them all, hope
they’ll find a better home at Saint Vincent de Paul.
© I.D. Carswell

Forsaken promises

Nothing came to claim my muse, instead I dreamed
of freedoms neatly folded in a treasure chest lying in the debris
of a crater; the best were simple choices, the rest forsaken
promises bombed to shreds beside their makers.

All around the sound of raging thunder rumbled
in a night lit bright by streaks of blinding light
that tore the vision from my eyes beside the chest
which huddled quiet in abject fright an orphaned child.

I held it in my arms and cried for lives forgone, the price
of lovers rudely shorn from life, their children never born;
my muse had sought to soar alone and not be hobbled
in her freedom’s flight – she rued the thankless night.

At dawn I rose to skies worn grey with sullen clouds
and dismal chill, my will suborned. I tried to rationalise
events and failed to find a common thread that lead me
to resist the test, reveal the contents of the chest.
© I.D. Carswell

As much a part

In a slow drawn focus the concrete
blocks that prop up my view of the sky
morph soft and easy like double
brie melting into a shirred close-up shot
of the pores and the craters and the
tiny colourless hairs that populate
this particular space, this winsome spot
near your chin on your handsome face.

I am not confused that rigid edged
substances surrounding us bend
and sweetly blend into the lines
of your mouth or the crinkles around
your eyes, I am not surprised for this house
is as much a part of as all of you.
© I.D. Carswell

Beta Blogger Blues

Have you switched to Beta yet?
It’s an even bet that if you have
you quite regret your impulse
to accept the canny invitation.

It’s okay, I hear you say, the crew’s
a clever team and give you confidence
they’ll solve the sorry logon glitch
and while a bitch to reach your Blog in Beta
functionality’s much neater
and the features seem to meet a need
that you’d imagine was a boon.

But to whom? It reeks of bells
and whistles programmers thrill
to implement and sells itself to raise the rent,
perhaps that’s not their main intent
but heaven sent as it would seem
what does it really do?

Have you tried to post some pictures,
worked through all the hidden strictures
governing acceptance of the size and features,
imagined how the placement looks upon
the page but nothing came, tried again,
and tried again, then cursed and given up
and dumped the goddamn thing?

Today I managed something neat, a
feat imagined to defeat an agile mind,
I posted on a date I’d missed, the 6th
of August, and be blessed it worked!

What a jerk, I criticised the Beta form
for being reticent while it was me who
missed the point. But that’s as far I recant,
I’ve yet to post the goddamn pictures!
© I.D. Carswell

Political nonsense

I was saddened just to hear the bitter rancour
in his voice, a sour hostility aloof of commonsense,
and ranks who sat in audience held captive to his
ranting must have felt it too. Was this the one
who said he’d lead us to a promised land? How
could a man of honour make the dead surmise
he’d cosset us with obvious and barefaced lies?

I asked my fellow listeners what they thought
about his claims that malfeasance was soured
within this state by parliamentary representatives
but not, of course, those members seated where
he sat in opposition. His disposition was to blame
the government as if he wasn’t part of it.

All the ailing wrongs he thought could spring
his party into power were teased and spun and wrung
and spread as seeds of dour dissent, I knew
he meant to state a case that wasn’t based
on truth or justice as we’d wont from Courts of Law,
and yet he had the irksome gall to ask us for our trust!

And thus the blame he sought to wield
was placed beyond the span of ordinary men
and governance and doubt, and slipped his hands
to neatly slice his foot and place it
sweetly in his carping mouth.
© I.D. Carswell

There will be a State election this Saturday, 9 September. It will provide a welcome relief
from the hysteria we have been subjected to the past three weeks. The poem was written
to remind us that all prospective members of Parliament are both part of the problem
and solution. I think they need to be reminded of that from time to time.
For the record the incumbent Labor Government was re-elected

Dead thoughts of corpses

The symbols that we use are T shirts of the dead
thoughts of corpses without heads, a rictus
without sound – open-mouthed, empty, unbound.
And if you ever write those clichés which incite
my approbation, fuck you, I am not amused.
And if I ever do, then fuck me too.

I battle with the icons of our time, not so much the images as
those inclined to overuse the gushing phrases, rabid writers
praising vapid lies, journalistic worms still at the maggot stage
of feeding on the headless corpses, reading symbols from their
graphic shirts, descending into dismal depths of gutter
meaninglessness and desperate doggerel.

The nearest I have heard a ‘personality’ decline
hysterical inanity was when he said,
“that’s real life, it doesn’t always have
a happy ending…” he had described his own demise,
he fell from grace, he was displaced by higher ratings
inspired through insipid boardroom compromise.

My sympathy was strained within a breath of balanced reason,
drained of all compassion and decision by the consequences
rising from Steve Irwin’s death. When networks went beyond the pale
of deference and showed the clichéd scenes of Steve and baby Bob
and croc repeatedly as counterpoint I was incensed. He’d died that afternoon.
And there they were, already feeding on a feast of vile controversy.

But further yet, the eunuch bitch with no veneer, of course
I mean her holiness Ms Germaine Greer, thundered into print
to plant her boot as firmly as she could into a legend she
maintains is self-delusion. Not unusual for Germaine.
The Doctor has delusions too, she believes with vagrant honesty
that she eclipses Steve in every form of tragi-comedy.

Forgive Germaine diffusing post-menopausal class delusion,
back in her menses and her prime she was a tart of class.
But if I died would it ignite the journalistic anchovies?
I called them nasty names and damned their plight, I hope
I earn precocious right to cause a feeding frenzy by them,
and pray that irukandji bite them on the disrespectful arse…
© I.D. Carswell

Before the arthritis set in

It’s Wednesday, September 6th and a birthday,
again, these things arrive tediously on time
with wry regularity – and sadly, no sense
of providence or charity.

Instead of counting a year less I am
said to be blessed with sixty one
while actually I’m the age where I want
to regress about six, hover around
say, fifty five, start a new career.

But I doubt the World will cheer
at the thought of that or be as magnanimous
when I invent an age-reducing elixir /regime,
start a seditious scheme depriving younger generations
of their sexagenarians, septuagenarians,
octogenarians and nonagenarians – and any
centagenarians still kicking ass.

It would be considered a crass abuse of
aged-privilege (which I have yet
to discover the whereabouts of)
and a waste of rare resource opportunity,
meaning I couldn’t be exploited as easily.
Alright, I’m just having some fun,
I used to think sixty one was old
way back when I was fifty five,
before the arthritis set in.
© I.D. Carswell

I am pictured with Neil Gardiner, an old friend from Army days

A final journeying

Steve is gone,
I hardly can believe
the man wont cry again,
I cannot credit that
his energy wont bloom
and burst the candid pane
that kept us so aware of just
how much he really, really cared.

I grieve for Bindi Sue
and Robert who’ll despair,
for Terri who has lost the man
with whom she shared a life
of loved eminence; and where
bereaved will gather to declare
their love we’ll find a solitary kind
of saddened solace there.

I think I understand how friends
would wander without light,
I think I comprehend their loss
of sight, I know despite the pain
they feel a powerful sense of
omnipresent guidance in their
waking hours, and though he’s gone
his spirit towers to guide us all.

And through a pall of sadness
feel he still walks tall and talks
to us with commonsense and
passion deep to stir our souls.

A loving larrikin with whom
we share profound beliefs,
and though bereaved we join
to make our voices heard and call
a joyous final journeying of
Steve ‘The Crocodile Hunter’ Irwin.
© I.D. Carswell

A tribute to Steve Irwin who tragically died yesterday. Steve was filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef when he was struck in the chest by a stingray barb. If nothing else could be said about the great and unique man we could assert he died doing what he cared most passionately about. He will be sadly missed throughout the World. He will be sadly missed at the Australia Zoo. Our hearts go out to Terri and the children...

Another barbeque tonight!

It rained throughout the night, a truly welcome sound
that eases sleep although we barely slept – we were
distressed by other things. Today the kitchen’s centre ring,
the kitchen of Anita’s dreams. It’s had a long gestation,
twenty years it’s taken just to reach this actual day (that’s in
this iteration, there’s been some trial versions in the past),
and now at last the preparation is complete.



I had already penned a verse called ‘Camping in a kitchen’,
a bit of whimsy yet to be released, I’ll post it in the week
and let it rest, assured it says what was intended. The work indeed
was never easy but it rendered unto Caesar what was hers,
now it is the measure of Anita’s dreams. To see her vision vested in an
emptiness that isn’t will be cream upon her cake, a cake she’ll bake
which time will make her reputation awesome.



Even as I write the rain remains a subtle, soothing sound within
the aura of Anita’s dreams, a complement surrounding where
we live, a sign that what we scheme is timeless in itself,
the wealth of what we have and do includes the kitchen soon
to be restored to life, includes relief in sight from crippling drought,
includes returning green, the birds who flock and scream their joy with
mien delight and, good Heavens, another barbeque tonight!
© I.D. Carswell

We had 24mm of rain overnight, not enough to consider the drought broken but a good start if the expected weather pattern continues for the next two days…

Remember with affection

They’ll always tell a story those
obscure mementos stacked on
dusty shelves, demure and silent like
the other gaudy tributes tacked
to walls in floodlit halls and if you
could suppose their lusty origins
and still allow the glory
they impute you are in thrall.

I recall that tiny pot,
a plastic flower in pink and green,
an orchid made by Ponn
whose proper name I could not
spell or even get my tongue around,
and still perceive her blinding spell
of Asian prettiness impressed
so neat upon an entity which
though I try I cannot see.

So it is with treasured objects
stranded out of space and time
and kept in silent places with
our memories intact, a focus
which brings back the feelings,
warm and sweet, vibrant with
intensity, baubles vested with
largesse to pay a tithe we will
remember with affection
all our lives.
© I.D. Carswell

Thought it was America

Is there anything which isn’t made in China?
The answer is… of course there is, the question
was rhetorical, a crude attempt to palliate
China’s late renaissance; eighty years ago you’d say
that nothing was – or nothing much that
mattered was, and still been wrong.

I’d clipped my nails, don’t like them long and chanced
to read the label on the tool, I thought it read
‘Made in China’, there’s the fool. It wasn’t, had
been made next door, okay it’s nearly China but
before we criticize my knowledge of geography, where
would you say Korea came in terms of foreign policy?

Who would, you think, influence the ginkgo country
most? And while we gabble on that point, why do we pay
much more for petrol now than was the case ten years
ago? It hasn’t showed a causal raise in costs that makes
the price okay, although inflation sways much more these
days than all those years ago. And ponder on some more.

The reason to the fore, at least in ‘Honest (as the day as
short)’ Johnny Howard’s call, is bloody China. He blames
the Chinese for the hike, says their growth was all it
takes to push the market price beyond our reach. It’s not
excise or foreign debt, but Chinese being just like us.
Crikey, all the time I thought it was America!
© I.D. Carswell

Camping in a kitchen

To say we’ve done it all before is not to bend
the truth and though we’ve lost our youth
the vision of the bright contemporary kitchen
draws us on, sustaining us beyond our strength.

It’s all the donkey work that palls upon the weary joints,
the stripping off of stubborn tiles, the cupboards
with reviled veneer that peeled which lies in scraps
outside the kitchen door, the growing piles of rubbish

littered on the floor, the wall with timber joists exposed
and wiring hanging limp and going who knows where,
the plaster dust that settles in our hair, the sudden
realisation we aren’t even half way there while yet

we wait for tradesmen said to show today,
they’ll make us pay and pray and pay,
and shout hoorah, hip hip hooray, but still
the vision draws us on beyond our strength,

we’ll go to fevered lengths to have our kitchen
back with within the week, and as I speak the
phone is ringing, the electrician bringing bright relief,
he’ll drill his holes and string his wires within an hour.

We’ll hang and plaster panels on the walls this afternoon;
the plumber says he’s hot to trot for Monday morning.
It’s not at all that great a trial to bear although beware of
camping in a kitchen where you cannot boil a cup of tea.
© I.D. Carswell