Instructions

Be brief,
pare the kernel
from this seed’s
immaculate idea,
make it easily
reached.

Bequeath
what is yours
with benevolence,
joy is in giving with
least ceremony,
be succinct.

Say
here is all there is,
yours forever, take
it with your hands,
hold it near
your heart.

See the shy
smile of gratitude,
eyes wide in
wonderment;
this is your
true reward.
© 30 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Spam

Damn hysterical campaigns
designed to render e-mail
spam a mortal blow; you’ll
take off both my knees –
don’t you know!

I’m on them begging for
your words in any way you
dare – don’t even care how
they arrive per se, you may
bulk e-mail me any day you
please, the more
the merrier I say.

I love to read which scams
are in the wild – I smile to
think how thick you’d have
to be to fall for one, which
often is the case – I know.

But I guess it shows that
brains are rare expressions
of acerbic wit that makes
the Internet in fact
a fascinating place.
© 10 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Sleeping Demons

Mosquito dreams on
infant wings, unsteady
hovering, erratic flight,
each night bears
ephemeral scars
of passion fleeting.

Brightness aired
in tunes of love
wears shadows thin,
minute shrieks
sing passage close
before the strike.

Aroused
to after-dream’s
dissembler dulled,
silent itching urging
scratch to wake the
sleeping demons.
© 31 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Words Worth Less

Do you regret you wrote the words
that echo on in empty heads?
The words you thought were quite absurd
that others claim can wake the dead?
How do you deal with tupp’ny fame
and whispers in the reading room?
And parodies of your good name –
graffiti from the empty tomb?

Those words you uttered once in jest
return to beat your head and ears
with humourless, regressive pap.
The words were dead at very least
but far outreach your maudlin fears
of drowning in a sea of crap.
© 10 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Fat Like A Rolling Stone

I am going to branch out, spread my wings,
apply for an internet job involved in money
laundering. Only needs 3 – 4 hrs per week,
a whole lot less than I spend on a damn PC
routinely wreaking poetic havoc anyway.

EUR 1,000 (p/m) minimum seems okay, a
fair reward; but no way the scam’s legit –
couldn’t be, but who gives a shit. I imagine
my job will be recruiting mugs to be the
donkeys while I get fat like a Rolling Stone.
© 31 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Praise

I need to feed off compliments;
there is no meat in writing well
despite a well-dressed plate; a
meal arranged for eyes to eat
resists my taste – unless titbits
eventuate. And these you can
provide; please think of them as
‘throw-aways’ disguised as ‘post
it’ notes – and on your part a
moment’s idle waste. Yet they’ll
connive to pander and placate an
egoist whose status is deflated limp
and flat – and levitate his spirit back.
If you’d rather be an indigent then
vent your ire in barbed and brutal
phrase. I’ll play them back as praise
indeed and find a meal in that.
© 8 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Apology To A Stolen Generation

A generation stolen by an act of power in
past administration didn’t fade away, a
sign too real to hide or just deny for sake
of budgetary deliberation. Morality still
stays with power no matter how one ducks
or dances – survivors make a sordid past
an even chance for airing ugly grievances.

Regretful words when truly said placate;
they may not change the state of here and
now or put the past to rest. Yet better deeds
are always said to follow an apology. Yes,
we regret the way our forbears treated you,
recognise your loss – a family you never
knew, the missing sense of who you are.

An apology for acts of gross insensitivity is
not by any means a free rein scramble
for the cash; there will be those irksome
claims for flaky compensation – be assured
of greed, but they will be the least of rash
proposals seeking back traumatic loss of
dignity – not a lolly scramble free in fact.

Your dignity and sense of worth is chief
concern. We need your heritage to be a
badge of pride that’s worn in harmony,
to lead the way where tribal lore provides
a synthesis for ancient ways to meet today.
We need you to return and take a centre
seat and help to guide our stumbling feet.
© 31 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Diagnoses

Hobbling dramatically, hope the signs
say clearly – see, it’s his right foot, how
he favours it. Pain a chaste bump away
from fragile bones complaining silently.

No-one sees tape placed with surgical
skill supporting broken toes. No, they
see a gaunt-faced male’s soulful limping,
read diagnoses from their own fiction.

So how’s th’ gout mate? is asked in
voices thick with mock concern;
‘n hey mate, whassa matter?
Yer lost yer walkin’ stick?
© 8 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Connected Again

05:41 Friday, power’s been out since 4 am.
Woke uneasily, effect of two failed tries to
reset supply – but I knew why immediately;
mordant reminders we are at the end of an
attenuated food chain – quite unnecessary.

If the misanthropes supplying energy hoped to
disrupt morning routine – they didn’t succeed.
It is merely a nuisance, could’ve stayed in bed
but I take to pioneer life with an enthusiasm
born and bred in ancient limestone caves.

Read inward mail via cell phone link, found
Peachester in Nokia Maps – hey, we exist,
made coffee on a gas stove and sliced the
last bake of bread with an impressive
serrated knife – by hand, without injury.

Heard the news, Brittney S been committed,
danger to herself – hardly figures, ‘Summer
of ‘69’ on FM, an all-time fav, everything’s
great! Now Santana’s ‘I’ll Be Waiting’ while
tentatively cruising into a burgeoning day.

I intended to tell energy suppliers go waste
themselves in a Hell they choose, but why
give a choice! I write lethargically not really
amused – kind of lame – but wait, is ADSL
blinking? – Oh yay, connected again!
© 1 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Reflections

I’m tempted, believe me,
I’d jump this solitary ship
in an instant to
taste that ease.

I’m at sea with the lore as it is.

But there, quay-side,
you all seem alike, preoccupied
with expressions of individuality –
or are you reflections in waves?
© 7 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Complete Inanity

It is depressingly simple –
a better declaration on
PH* poetic quality than
zero, zip or zilch
is calling it inanity.

A few synonyms include:
idiocy, silliness, stupidity,
ridiculousness, pettiness,
senselessness, absurdity,
illogicality, irrationality.

Add: farce, folly, futility,
vainness, childishness,
ludicrousness; yes, keep
adding ‘...ys & ‘esses to
inevitably culminate in
insanity & uselessness!

What do I mean? Seen
the poet status – by IP
hits? Go rattle your wits.
Don’t worry, you’re not
about to be enlightened!

To understand these
rules of engagement
and remain poetically
un-estranged would be
complete inanity!
© 1 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

* Poem Hunter website: http://www.poemhunter.com/

Cretaceousness

Never thought I’d need to say
in words what took my breath
away. I am a son of firm belief,
my mind the least affected by
all token tiers of biased teaching
meant to channel me. But in my
hearing, though impaired by
Army years, there is a space
where incredulity still resonates.

Creationists pugnaciously declared
again our Earth with life arrived 6000
years ago. Sounds a fairy tale – they
say it isn’t so! Unshakeable purviews
are bibled to extremes – misused
and quoted as authority to mess
with heads, stuff them endlessly
like garbage bags. What they claim
is so just isn’t in the World I know.

Like Fundamentalists their play with
truth is but one way – a creed where
biblical inerrancy has made a zealot
of their godlike view; all meanings
are confined to what they say is right
and you must stay within the fold or
die a lonely death outside. My sin
is shared across the world I say –
your vision is the one impaired.

I thus conclude I’ve been misled
for years believing that I shared a
place on Earth with rational souls.
I must be in another place, perhaps
a hole stupidity exhumed and filled
with dogmas so extreme as leaves
one gasping breathlessly. Scenarios
like these tell me of what I used to
be and why I try to stand apart...
© 23 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Mediocrity

Wondered how to pave the way
to walk on paths of gold inlay? ‘Tis
easy see – woo paparazzi of poetry.

There’s no such thing, you blithely
say, although intrigued, knowing
poets are not news commodities.

Think again. To be celebrity you play
the game. Take a stance and run for
every chance exposure you can get.

Remember – though a dose of scandal
always sells, it rarely pays the fees; a
tainted rep that says you pee in taxis

won’t dismiss a truth, especially if it’s
true and you’re incontinent indeed in
words as well as deeds unsavoury.

Proof’s in what you say and who reads
who. Believe in free society if you must,
but heed a coterie of dimwit fans who

sound your bell. You pull the rope, they
tinkle free and, well, other dopes come
flock along to see the hell what’s goin’ on.

Don’t matter you can’t write or spell. The
wealth is in stupidity, a commonwealth
that binds you cheek to cheek.

And the meek shall inherit – mediocrity!
© 5 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Willow Bark

No-one sailed those seas
except in dreams, and dreams
agreed, these seven seas were
precious secrets which we
schemed to keep forever locked
inside our heads – no words
were ever said to friends who

didn’t know the key. We only
shared it sparingly; the sign,
as sacred as a holy shrine we
placed beside the riverbank.
The fragile piece of willow bark
should float or sink to fate or
bless a journey out to sea;

symbolically a covenant which
simply said “a safe return”. We
played the game a hundred times
and cruised to play in wilder lands.
But when the willow sank in rippled
pool we knew as only children do –
the game was truly ended.
© 1 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Selfishness

Entirely less a consequence and more
an absent sense, the arrogance they
frame as normative behaviour fazes
and disgraces. Don’t want to see their
faces – avid eyes as shrewd as thieves
delighting in their thievery. Their cries
a strident me! me! me! they prey upon
the weak self-centeredly – say in self
defence that they deserved it anyway.

No charity abrades their dear conceit,
they’d steal the room without a glance
at occupants whose rightful place
would grace a chance for peace and
piety. A queue, they say, to where?
You’re lined up aimlessly! Propriety
would never mar their need of self-
aggrandisement, embrace a selfless
epithet unless it bore a patent name.

Where do these beasts of selfishness
all breed? Their genre rose from seed,
a dour, phlegmatic cognisance that we
are wreckage instanced more in failure
than success, where more is less and
nothing satisfies until there’s nothing
left. And nothing left is what we’ve
now achieved – so go and reap...
© 22 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Santana Live Your Light

I will sleep with Carlos ringing in my ears –
an effortless, appealing end to being in his
company. He and band Santana filled our
souls with sound, a splendorous feast that

echoes forty years. A blend of salsa, rock
and blues with jazz infusing in the beat of
congas and timbales, beat resounding in
the heated blood surrounding senses over-
powered. I will sleep with ease and thank
the man again for staying true to origins.

He’s a gentle man who played with joy and
waved goodbye with great humility; he left
the stage to soulful cheers of friends he’d
made as boy and man – as friends for life.
© 4 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Sure With Some Regret

Told to think that there
was something really
wrong with me because
I didn’t call his death a
tragedy; tried recalling
where I was the day he
died – no idea, at work
I guess, defending what
was left of peace and sanity.

The mess his later years
became gave small relief,
I strongly felt he wasted
youth and squandered it
for pastry fame. I can’t
remember if I cried, sad
inside for sure with some
regret, but I forget the place
I heard ‘The King’ had died.
© 2 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Grief

Grief wears many faces, sorrow
sings a solitary tune to nameless
stars, clings to sanity in grains of sand
on seaward reaches – strands too
bleak for man who walks despair.

Silence is a sombre chorus screamed,
a tomb-like sense where disembodied
voices ring, anomalies of emptiness
that brings unease
surreal in its profound cacophony.

Drowned in misery that seeps
through seamless cells surrounding
lost belief, bound in catacombs that reach
beyond the corporeal, despair that
sinks beneath the bottomless.

No ever easing heartache where
no manic madness brushing cares
away, drear and desolate the
atmosphere, which face
of grief you wear today?
© 22 March 2008

What Hope Is There

I am appalled this so-called ‘Poet of Note’
writes like a nine year old, delighting in the
use of abusive language; it isn’t as though
the smutty innuendo has redeeming grace,
the rhyme is haphazard in rhythms that
break pace like wind erupting indecently
from distended half-baked beans tins.
Was there a smell I’m sure it was foul.

Yes I agree, I don’t have to read and be
offended, I can choose from 16,000 or
more members. So the fault is mine. But
there lies the rub – in one fell swoop I’ve
denigrated this mug of a ‘Poet of Note’,
so what hope is there for the rest of us?
© 2 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Pity is this bloke's an Australian - (and not me!)

Thoughts Which Wear A Mask

The day had dawned in greying clouds
which dimmed the light that tries to lift
a sombre mood from gloomy shrouds
so shamelessly surrounding it.
The calls of birds were tolling doom
in echoed cries that agonised
to break the spell and end the gloom
of wishes mired in darkling skies.

Subdued by thoughts which wear a mask
enclosed within a pensive face,
exposed to wants that seldom ask
an easy path to mend the pace –
suborned by guile to stay awake
and wait awhile for dawn to break.
© 2 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Sentence

Too late, I suppose,
to define what is deemed
the joy of connecting
with another mind
in a poetic phrase
pregnant with meaning.

I know that for most
the exercise is seen best
as a trial by expression,
an exorcism of passions
pressed from the maelstrom
of a seething core.

If it is pure, and the
mind is at rest, cured
by a lessening of pressure –
that which is birthed
regardless will be deemed
the essence of verse.

And in a sense it is – less
artistic hand guiding sentence
and syntax to forms blessed
by the eye, investing rhythms
which glide, connecting minds
in allegorical rhyme.

But it is in no-man’s land,
neither here nor there,
orphaned just short of a christening,
nameless and bereaved
before an inevitable
sentence to death.
© 21 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Changelings Are Afoot Again

Changelings are afoot again –
maimed, ephemeral figments of
manic imagination, the untamed
and fragmented crazy personalities
named facetiously, homunculi who
appear and disappear within obscure
poetic discontinuities.

We must bear their opprobrium,
wear their eccentricity as a right
to be different while they range
free to plagiarise and condemn,
perpetrate mayhem for uncertain
ends – unafraid of convention’s stays
or caring for their fellow man.

Sneers which were original would
pave way for some leniency but
there is no room for crass imitators
and blatant word thieves. Beware,
cheap copies of reused toilet tissue,
the next sound you hear could be
the terminal flush of poetic History.
© 1 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

We live in an age where cyber narcissim is
rampant - for some I am sure it is as near
as they get to 'having a life'!

Ode To Beauty

This beast sees through eyes tuned
to lesser light; delights in love’s deft
touch – senses sharpened in scent
and echoes. And in the bite bright
teeth savour romantic flavours rich
in saliva of familiarity. This is the
beauty in the beast I see. She gives
with no aim but pleasure of being,
sings harmony with ease. In purest
gaze says she loves me with her
amber eyes, a liquid tongue to
taste the soothing truth of me.
© 2 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Murray-Darling

Want to know a dead-end game?
Murray-Darling water trading has
a stench redolent of advanced
decay; could you get more dead-
end than that? Some would say,
wait up a bit, you deny people
livelihoods out of hand. There’s
more to the scheme than a good
idea gone bad or its public image
being less flattering in drought.

It is about large rural economies
where land produces too little to
support industries except water
trading. Those who can do while
those who can’t sell water rights.
So list on the Stock Exchange and
be done with it, why fight a battle
of semantics? View it whichever
way you will but remember, the
Murray-Darling has the last say.

© 6 April 2008, I. D. Carswell

..

..

Signs Benign And Free

In pensive mood I ply the road to
anarchy. Lost in thought of origins
I measure needs that time began,
that lead us to our promised land.

Today the law allows its claim is but
a crown of commonwealth – the tower
within a power of rule which breeds its
right to own and knight authority.

But power confused with patent right’s
oligarchy durst not concede that power
and might, indeed, are far too easily
abused. Simplistically autocracy ensues.

Bring us then democracy the people cry.
Express your voice with carefulness lest
figures in authority suppress your claims
with billy-clubs and weighted chains.

In pensive mood I see the signs benign
and free, a state of anarchy exists within
the tightest rule – the yin and yang in
balance seethes, pleases me so mightily.
© 1 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Hot Cross Bun With Cheese

A hot cross bun with cheese,
initially ‘Ol Bitey, an aged
cheddar if you please, with
flavour wasted on the spice,
but very nice. The second was
a further bun with soft and
creamy fetta; I know you’ll
feel much better if it was a
lissom last. It was – a glass of
brandy to redress the need
a palate used to cleansing
tastes of diverse food would
condescend. I don’t believe –
but once I did; if buns imbued
with crosses meant the same
to you you’d never let me say
the taste is great, placate your
quailing senses, try instead a
simple bite of history requited.
© 26 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

At Ease And Comforted

Waited weeks to do the chores
that keep an Orchard sweetly tuned.
Wasn’t lack of zeal indeed – a wall of
water intervened. Couldn’t spray for
bugs or weeds, had to gaze pathetically
on rainy days, grew a beard in sympathy.
Today I mowed the unkempt rows with
grass as tall as me; a cosmic task that
leaves a mask of smiling green.

Knocked fruit off some abundant trees,
limbs encroached on crowded rows – it
felt obscene. Weeds in wilt from herbal
sprays we dealt with only yesterday amid
the showers – their end is watched with
steely eyes that glint to see them slowly
die. We are too pleased to feel no twinge
of empathy. We’ll sleep a dreamless sleep
tonight at ease at last and comforted.
© 1 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

The Very Finest Accolade

Searching for a way to say congratulations,
trying not to bleat like sheep who merely
echo phrases sounding quaint and trifling
neat. This effort praising you is really due
to earned and open admiration.

One more son, the third of three, a brother
for our little mate – young Saxon, who assures
us he is very pleased. As we are too for both
of you. Well done dear Paula, Simon too,
and welcome to your newborn son.

The famous five you’ve now become
declares a precious crew of people we are
proud to know and fondly greet. And be
assured, with honesty we gladly say – parents
such as you deserve the very finest accolade.
© 28 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Paula & Simon Hay & baby Byron

Punishment

There is no remission,
nothing comes between
a sentence and a punishment –
deserved or not, and you will rot
here at this desk until it ends.

You made your prison,
you chose the scheme
unchecked from rendered memories,
observed or not; this is your lot
by choice – enjoy your aching dreams.

It was your decision.
You said you’d serve
your time with no regrets, let’s not
forget the final words you said:
you know not what you do to me.

Thus the manumission
that you seek evades
our jurisdiction in a clause,
polyglot by contradiction –
you are both master and a slave.
© 21 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Gently Fade Away

Had you worn the uniform
you’d know just why old
soldiers never die;
they only fade away.

A day with death is but another
dawn and rising sun, the stirring
call to first parade. The World
won’t end if death arrives.

Old soldiers are the memories
that have survived. And every
day they spend alive contends
their last parade.

They stand revered – will never
lie on battlefields with those, so
young, who gave their lives. The
glory fades, the glory fades.

Old soldiers never die; in dark of
night death passed them by to save
their memories. Consider them, but
let them, please, gently fade away.
© 29 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Through The Looking Glass

There is nothing weird about these creatures
Alice said. I made them from the best supplies
that I could get. Want to meet the crocodile?
He’s eaten I enquire – cautiously; the smile is
fixed, a sign of absent enmity I think, but raise
his ire and find that smile ingesting disrespect.

Wouldn’t know she said, it’s just a shape within
my head. Are you’re really interested? I know it
sees beyond the panoply of humanness - a purity
I’d not believe that I would get, means I don’t need
to guess your state of mind, read non-verbal cues
which may mislead – causing me so much distress.

A construct of your mind I muse, a stratagem to
deal with stress. And yet you know he isn’t real!
Oh yes, the smiling Alice grinned, original, quite
patently was made by me but free agency as well;
talks when I’ve a need for different views, exists
as it sees fit – now please be careful where you sit!
© 29 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Alice, my Lil Sis

Futures

Taking refuge in the pages of SF today
is the best ‘contemporary malaise’
antidote I know – sure, ‘we all gonna
die’*, nobody proposes there’s a future.
Even half-brained SF writers know the
past is better left connected to its own
diseased umbilical, to wither away. Late
drastic surgery won’t save the foetus
from itself. So the way to go onward
is break free of mortal chains.

It isn’t easy; politics of power and creed
has yet to displace vestigial legacies
of our last ice age and our breeding to
extinction plan is cogent and real – naive
belief it brings its own relief in a Messiah
whom we unconditionally agree with
is a by-product of your fondest dreams.
No-one is going to appear magically,
take charge and lead us out of this mess
without some fundamental change.

So grubbers grub and leeches leech,
preachers warn catastrophes for
unbelievers, sinners stoned by stone-age
reasoning, because it’s written – in much
plagiarised pieces of didactic scripture
dictated by illiterate misanthropes to
illiterate misanthropes hiding in the hills
seeking salvation, pasting drug hazed
visions to cave wall mythologies. Hey,
what a great idea, start a movement!

They were futures that we could not
see the day we coined the phrase but
human greed is still no lesser predator,
seeking prey – aching to aggrandise and
legitimate its selfish ways. Called politicians,
minutemen, priests or thieves, they’re
always first to feed. We need to dump these
artefacts so corporeal in rubbish cans with
bodies of our human waste, vacate the
past to contemplate a promised land.
©20 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

* From: ‘Fish Cheer’ by Country Joe and The Fish

How To Introduce A Carbon Tax Into Queensland

Between we must decide – a carbon tax or
daylight saving to survive the next decade;
I sense your smile. Daylight saving? Surely
not that load of crap – I thought we’d had
two votes to scrap the dumb idea! To coin
a pansy phrase, it was ‘fully sick’. The other
States may take the Mickey out of us, but
things’ll never change that much round here!

And they won’t while we allow democracy
mean rights the people truly own – so don’t
push on us too hard. You know that every year
you change your bloody clocks and jeer at us as
out of sync. Daylight saving? Utter crap, nothing
but another form of blinkin’ daylight robbery.
And y’know, if it really comes to that I’d say
we’d even rather pay y’ bloody carbon tax.
© 29 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Pretence

So I’m a monk – the kind who doesn’t
intervene unless a life is poised.

No, it isn’t true; your life is fine, you’re
only playing games – you’d like to see
me mantled in a gray prospectus.

I’m not that old although I’ve seen
a season here and there. And where
you live is barely real enough
to seem a trite pretence.

Okay, the sham for sure is me,
while where you are is anybody’s
guess. I’d say you never left the
page to turn a chary word –
although the fantasy is fairly real.

Today is but the end of what was
said while yesterday held sway.

The role you lead will play an eerie
consequence. Where is the end? Will
tomorrow bring us any relevance?
© 28 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Inglorious Battles Lost

You did not believe in an answer, did not
ask – you made a statement in its place;
no supplication will ever suffice or make
less sense phrased that way. Now we face

echoes in emptiness, dear life ended too
easily – we are suspended between last
memories of a full belly laughing and this
familiar hollowness. Yes, we are aware.

The last day dawned silent, no fanfare of
trumpets, tympanic rattle of drums –
those sounds are our shadows crying.
A parade of sere corpses mangled, a

stark relief, dark-grey angles elongated;
bleak reflections eyes cannot see. No
victors to wear bright colours – no hearts
uplifted. Just slow march of the dead.
© 29 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Reminisce

We reminisced and traded names,
relived a moment’s time as soldiers
once again; too old and bold to tell it
all for true just as it was – although
we knew exactly who was wrong and
why, and swore to you we’d never lie.

She’d heard it all before, a dozen
times at least or more; mighty deeds
of derring-do that sounded true. She
asked one day – can you recall the boy
who died? The young cadet who played
in barracks with a hand grenade?

We shook our heads and sighed, a sadly
troubled soldiers’ sigh – did not deny we
knew but looked away. The wound has
stayed, we all recall a dreadful day. No
fable there to eulogise except a truth,
that life is easy bled and Hell let lose.

Estranged, the conversation changed to
mundane things, the farm and weather
reckonings, a holiday. Wordlessly the
uniforms were packed away – creases
eased, ribbons dressed and laid to rest.
We’ll reminisce, perhaps, another day.
© 19 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Better Man Than I Gunga Din

I have that photograph somewhere –
smoking cigarettes at school beside the
art room stump; it was our lunchtime
deal, being cool, rolling spare, eccentric
‘durries’ which we smoked with great
aplomb. We four declared a neutral
zone where rules were let abide, even
prefects did not chide us for our sins.
I remember Gunga Din once said we
only used his rooms for deeds nefarious,
Art was scarcely part of our domain. He
shared a fine rapport with us and gave
us room to try the roles we played. To
this day I’d say we learned them well
enough to make the grade. He praised
a picture I once painted as a worthy
piece – said a poem that accompanied
it was worded well. I believed him then
but knew that words were truly my forte.
Today these words are praise for him...
© 28 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Gunga Din was our art teacher’s nickname.
But we usually called him Graham.

Motives Already Lost At Sea

It is a graceless state to begin with,
one where metric beat seizes pride of place,
before mind contends with the frantic pace
of rhythmical words tumbling off a cliff.
Natural thought ablates in the anarchy
of gushing water and order concedes
to new disorder, while flooding stream breeds
contempt until it is absorbed by sea.

And in the mind of ocean we will find
tranquillity of space to amble in
beyond the banks confining courses free,
no cause to loiter or to look behind,
no currents drive, no need to gamble in
despair for motives already lost at sea.
© 28 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Easy To Be Cynical

Mama said it was too easy to be cynical.
I disagreed. It took a long and lonely
time of it to ravage childhood dreams.
I wasn’t born a pessimist – my views
indeed were Mama’s, pure and roseate.

So what obliterates your innocence? To be
assured enough to make the query shows
you’d know for sure – the rhetoric adjures
the weak and halt and maimed, so certain
it is framed to show my Mother right.

Which means I’m wrong? So is it far too
easy to be cynical – I think it takes a major
breach of faith to lose the way, a faith you
base on old belief. I’ll never join that fold
again – in truth it used and blinded me.

I learned to see without the symbols that
were handed out and bandied as the real
and tried and true. You call it education if
you have a mind, detached I played alone
because my sight was real, I wasn’t blind.

I learned an egocentric role; didn’t mimic
common thought or copy cat the milling
herd. In words I knew the stable truth
that fitted what I saw – and words alone
remain my friends, of that I am assured.
© 18 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Choosing A Persona

So,
exactly who are you today? A
porno queen who runs a racy
magazine? The funny guy who’s
kinda shy or maid who’s feeling
all forlorn and wishes she was
never born? So many guises to
be worn – it has to be a trial to
choose. You’d lose a sense of
who you were if every day you
had to play a naming game.

And you, they ask, just who are
you? You have a claim to fame
or shame? – Oh, let me think;
I like a drink, a song, a laugh,
farting bubbles in the bath,
I like to read and love to write,
I think I may, I think I might –
and only just, but it’s alright,
– be me...
© 27 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

I Cannot Imagine Purity

The anonymous wash of sundry schemes –
therein a place for unique thought? It may
seem withal a weighty cause of sort – a fey
pause in tall analysis, a “what brought it to
this” bleep in unilinear thinking, a weak, spur-
of-the-moment “let’s get to the nub of it”
phase in self-analysis fraught with all, as yet
unnamed, contemporary poetic malaise.

Honestly I cannot wear a claim that purity
exists in “only one of its kind” thought; it
smacks of heresy which thinking ought to
lay to rest. Apply this test: I think therefore
I am, I’m me, a consciousness aware – and
what’s more I’m NOT unique. So if you think
dare to give it subtle thought and answer this,
how come it ain’t been thought before?
© 26 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Mites

Maldison – on its own at 1%, is not enough
to begin gene splitting immediately – but
when it’s dripping on your ass from a leaky
back-pack tank you should think again.

Maldison, [malathion; diethyl (dimethoxy
thiophosphorylthio) succinate] a broad-
spectrum organophosphorus (OP), an
insecticide/acaricide used to control a
wide range of agricultural and veterinary
insect pests; in this case mites on poultry.

Why bother to identify all that tripe?
You too, can buy the stuff as dust or in
aerosol cans at six times the price for pests
in your gardens or on your pets. But I’ll bet
you don’t try and take the proper care.

Nor did I. The spray gear is now in pieces
on the workshop bench – seems a simple
seal failed right where it could do me the
greatest indecency.

I’d wondered before why my ass was wet,
and sigh, so when fur grows thick on my
left butt cheek I’ll wear the mark as an
idiot’s brand. But by the bye, I won’t have
mites alive in the hair...
© 17 March 2007, I. D. Carswell

Find Yourself Again

In its own way this wall of insecurity explains
most everything; like it describes which place
you occupy and where we might yet interface.
I am here where it’s secure, where meaning’s
clear. You are there, in ambiguity, where war
on meaning is too real to bear. I vaguely know
what has been said but have to ask for clarity.

When I send my message sticks I’ve no idea
if you will ever read and be amazed or how
you will interpret what I say. I only know that
when we meet you have to hint at it before
I feel we may connect. You cannot understand
the half of it, I know – you explain the way that
only people who pretend they do will say.

Should you live with me you’d know of what I
mean. You’d hear the dawn in chorusing, feel
rhythms in the night and see the pictures live
in tiles where shapes unite. You’d commune
with dew-damp grass in bare and happy feet
that stroll quite unselfconsciously in misty rain.
Here with me you’d find yourself again.
© 27 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Whimsy, With A Ballsy Whimper

To call oneself a poet and disgrace
the trade with tripe like that is infamy
allayed within a wearisome conceit.

What do you call it then? Effete? The
words you use do not amuse, in fact
I’d say that surely they emasculate.

A neuter state is not a great example
of pure comedy – and laughter turns on
disbelief; for sure, the laughs are there,

– the farce you writ just bellows it. But
what’s it mean they ask? A search for
shades of relevance reveals the hints

to be just tones of grey. So look out on
a summer’s day with glasses roseate,
where colours play alive with vibrancy

in eyes that see the whole damn scene.
Not you, you’re staid and off the wall,
so far away from what we call reality.

I guess there is a down-beat to resist,
essentially you’re full of it, and if you
care to play with poo it smothers you.

Dare try again? Try for a gender
change my man and count your balls.
The toll’s the same with one or more...
© 25 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Meltdown

To say the melting ice is just a phase
in cyclic entropy amazes me. Too cute
a way to dodge a measure that we see
most every day. Our ice reserves still
shrink – in truth they do not grow; any
fool will know THAT evidence foretells
a stark reality...

Before the freeze you’ll drown or dry
to dust and
blow away.

Play with words, claim there is a greater
scheme afoot on scales too vast to think.
But look at me and tell me what you see.
How can we wait a thousand years to
prove your claim? The entropy is here
today, we’re on the brink – catastrophes
a wink away.

Come the freeze you’ll be extinct
regardless who you
now believe.

To say the melting ice is just a phase
may well be true, and glory be that you
are right for all Humanity. But think of
what we need today to stop the race
to doom and gloom – to rid ourselves
of baggage room we’ve carried for no
earthy need except our arrant vanity.
© 17 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Remind Me Again I’m Here

The bored pseudo-whores,
the intra-cranially
eclectic forae fledglings
court self-delusion
again and again –
selling themselves as
distressed offerings
to y’all, the soap on
a rope a dope invitations
saying tacitly, please
return the favour friends,
poets, and dumbass
journeymen, lend
me your tears.

I’m not doing this for
your entertainment,
or sanity, or
to find a cure
for insomnia, nor
is anything for free.

Try and believe
in greater complexity
than any one god could
possibly be responsible for
and, please, please,
remind me, again,
I’m here...
© 26 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Allergy By Any Other Name

Rhinitis is a curse, whether persistent or topical –
who really cares, the worst affliction imagined &
truly too unbearable. Yep, been there & suffered
that you say – am wearing the medal. If you had
you’d keep your counsel silent since it cruels in a
way which debilitates. I’m writing stuffed up with

dope – ho hum, plus fexofenadine hydrochloride
and innocuous things like croscarmellose sodium,
magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose,
titanium dioxide, providine, pregelatinised maize
starch, colloidal anhydrous silica, hypromellose &
besides all that macrogol 400 – & even iron oxide!

In any event my nose cavities are plugged with
pink tissue to catch the drips whilst my eyes run
free. Hay fever, woe is me, haven’t had it in an
aching age, 1963 to be exact, back in Taradale,
Hawkes Bay. Nearly died then! It’s just an allergy
the doctor says – learn to live with it or move to

somewhere where the air is pure. Like Tignes Val
Calaret. Sure, pop in, see the honeymooners, ski
a bit – awkward isn’t it? Who’d mow the Orchard?
© 19 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Yesterday

It was the last day
yet even then it wasn’t the end –
more of a chapter’s closure,
a diminuendo.

A respectful pause in events
to observe the break in routine,
or was it part of the routine?
We’ll never know.

Today began as it does, never leads
always follows and now we know
the end was a yesterday and
there’s always tomorrow.
© 17 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Ass Poetry

If I return to earth it will be
as a cream coloured silicone
butt plug. And I make no
apology for such a choice.

Some will ask why, not seeing risible
irony in my obtuse reasoning – a
proverbial pain in the ass
epitomised thus in what must
seem an uncompromisable guise.

Rejoice I say, at last we will get to the
seat of it, begin a new and productive
association – one where sitting on your
ass pays great dividends, way out of
whack to energy expended.

I’d get to influence seats of reasoning
through homeopathic ideas infusion,
you’d learn poetry without me
stuffing with your heads.
© 26 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Good Enough For Me

She came crying fears of inadequacy, even
the tears were real enough, arrayed like a
crown of thorns worn in glory’s absence –
all doubts raised in a closet of isolation.
What do you fear most I ask, shrewd in the
matters of causal reality. That I am not good
enough for you she says tearfully, that I am
dragging you away from where you should be.

If I expressed my fears emphatically I say,
you’d wonder why you came – I have no
argued place I’d rather be; as for me being
better than you think you are, there is no
cogent case – where you are now is where
I am – and that allowed is good enough for me.
© 18 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

To Be Sure

I’m not Irish but I’ll drink the beer
and sing the songs; to say that I
cannot belong to Ireland’s fest
upon St Patricks Day just takes
me breath away. I’m true to all
that makes the Irish full of pride
and sees me self annoyed you
dare suggest I’ve tried to climb
aboard the Gaelic fun express.
So here I am a-prancing in the
street, my feet respond to epic
calls to dance and eyes reflect
the peaceful emerald green...
© 17 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Sleeps Soundest After Dawn

It is a sweet malaise; whether ill with grace from temperament
upraised in pleasing sufferance the pace is always easy.
She sleeps soundest after dawn – swaddled in a bounty
free of melancholy dreams, while he awakes in wide-eyed
wonderment. Day begins beyond her tight closed lids; there
is no less respect enacting ire of early-morning Gods, no
fire benign that’s blessed to burn the more intense – yet all
repealed in selfless acts of penance meant to grant surcease.

And she is freed of morning’s brace in gathered shards of sun,
afloat beyond this timeless space, seduced as one with love’s
embrace, at peace within a ceaseless charm. While he fights
demons come to claim her soul for antique night, sprites who
prey on broken sleep – let her rest and leave her be, he says,
just see in me that thus her faith shall ever be repaid.
© 18 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Culicoides-Brevitarsis

I know this is not the morning to glory –
or if it is I read the wrong signs. These
yawns before I arise deflate indulgent
pretence – and a Culicoides-Brevitarsis
Kieffer (Diptera, Ceratopogonidae) itch
ensures my sentiments assent.

I am laced with puncture marks of an
unspectacularly named ‘biting midge’;
at 0.5mm too small to see, yet for such
a size these beasts leave an impressive
legacy. Don’t scratch! Urges my better
sense, nerve-endings shriek raw agony.

Hard to conceive molecular war inside me –
the amount of saliva infused too small to
measure, yet invasion repelled is declared
in lumps revealed – inflammation wanes in
3 – 5 days left to their leisure; acts of itch
restraint not necessarily guaranteed.
© 26 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Glory

How do you keep it bottled up inside?
This is a battle where your passion is
the bride and death is glory; to say it’s
but a game and no-one ever dies just
isn’t true. I die for every combatant
who tried to win and failed. They lie
in battlefields where death derides a
muted mortal end. The strident cries
in wasted fields are calls for heroes to
arise from corpses warm. You shade
your eyes and claim it isn’t so. See, I
say, shadows of the beaten men all
march in line again to form a battle
square. They’ll join in combat fair to
trade their lives for your sham glory.
©15 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

Their Dog – In 2D

They have another dog –
and/or an illusory cat. That
makes maybe five to
ignore. It seems happy;
it plays with a puppy’s
random abandon.

As yet it is free of the
owners’ dysfunctional
idiosyncrasies, a situation
we know will change; it
will soon see the World
only in 2D and matt grey.

Meanwhile we run the
gauntlet of Blue Heeler
stupidity, fuelled by Dandi
Dinmont vacuousness,
overseen by an estranged
dairy farm dog that stayed.

It’s the Wild, Wild West out
here. But we shouldn’t
complain. Our five JRTs rule
the roost with anarchy born
of the breed. And at the least –
they know they’re family!
© 19 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Too Great A Sacrifice

Grant me one wish he says, and take
those damned insane vehicles off of
the race track. What, in Jesus’ name,
is gained perpetuating an obscenity?

A harmless ‘sport’ you say! Harmless
as 450kW of power can be unleashed
in look-alike suburban vehicles we see
every day in our family communities.

Do we need these exemplars of our
crazed and self-destructive ways to
be complete? V8 delinquency is not
eccentric – it’s something we breed.

We’d be better off retooling factories
to produce cluster bombs – have less
egg on the face, full employment, & a
rash of disingenuous nations queuing.

That is obscenity I could see banned
by rational acts whereas V8 racing is
sacrosanct – too great a sacrifice to
make sense to our lunatic urbanity.
© 25 February 2008, I. D. Carswell

Puddles

Careful where you walk today,
that puddle you gingerly skirt
could be the pooled collective
consciousness of all spirituality

that was or will be. On the other
hand it might just be an innocent
puddle waiting for some little kid
to romp in. Whichever way it

transpires you’re probably no worse
off. I know this because I’ve romped
in a lifetime of puddles; there’s no
way to differentiate between real

thing and plaything. But I’ve
felt that rinse of all spirituality
wash over me. In the nicest way
it’s just like playing in puddles.
© 15 March 2008, I. D. Carswell

In Your Love Redeemed

Technically, well – yes, it was the very first
and all of that, the event you don’t forget sort
of thing, but practically you never guess an if
or when this man’s Virginity was ever lost.

You see he never really was a Virgin in that
sense – certainly the term suggests a time
of innocence and purity; for me I’d rather
never claim the virtue or the consequence.

What you never had cannot be lost, mislaid,
or stole away – or thus bestowed, as she who
claimed she had received this man’s Virginity
was heard to crow. It was never mine to give.

And so it was until the day you took my kiss
to bed and burned my dreams. I woke to be
an innocent as clean as freshly fallen snow –
and in your love redeemed a pure virginity.
© 20 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Depression Without Enthusiasm

Feeling hopeless, 

feeling out of synch and 

empty of thinking 

reasons for being 

beat. Just reeling, 

no really deep or 

inner meanings 

betraying 

anything more 

than being 

dogged down 

and bogged out 

by despondency. 

C’mon man, snap out of it! 

Pile that crap over here, 

climb on top of it – 

take a look see... 

Wow, 

look at all this shite!!

© 21 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Light And Pithy Puns

Whatever happened to that lying
jerk we knew from Bennelong? The
one with slightly botched recall, wore
glasses and was bald – flibber lips we
called him then. Beaten by a girl

they say, in a most horrendous way,
and – well, in the end, slid smoothly
round the S bend of history. I guess
you cannot be too flushed with what

we see as your success, so all the
very best Dear John! Tho’ I’m glad
you’re gone; make no mistake, I’m
pleased as punch and take delight in

making light and pithy puns about
deflated dreams. Look mate, I’m out
to lunch on your defeat, won’t be in
for many weeks to beast inflated
claims of what you said you’d done.
© 21 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

He Who Would Be PM

Making moves of a peacock playing toothless
wolf my friend, all haute couture in hirsute
coiffure. Were you aware the role died when
comrades-in-arms shouldered jibes and fled
the field? Sure, you do look good in a suit, but
there’s never been blood on it lest you cut
yourself primping in a media mogul’s mirror.

Your right to front the tattered ranks was lost
when none could see your bouffant ego champion
anything but self interest. These past few days
put paid to claims you’re everyman’s best friend –
in light of your belated Banker mates’ fiduciary
finagling we’ve all learned to see your empty
rhetoric as stamped with their complicity.

And you would be our leader! Best you dress
gay again for Mardi Gras – parade your less
than salutary and unrestrained aristocratic
flamboyance as mere bunyip peccadilloes –
if that’s what you think we deem courageous,
tell yourself you are not ashamed of ambition
bordering on a grave, pathological addiction.

After all Malcolm – it is Your Mission, isn’t it?

© 21 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Insouciance Blended

Insouciance blended with a
deadly scent of malfeasance
entrenched, and their defence
– nobody cares!

Buoyed by omnipotence, a
pathological transcendence
of self-sense, an obstinacy
bordering bizarre –

these are the oligarchs, the
Robert Mugabe’s of our era.
Blind to lessons of History,
deaf to pleas of Humanity,

sage only in greed and power.
Screams of the homeless seem
legitimacy for abuse as a truth
absolute, an unchallengeable.

Whether compared with Hitler
or Hussein, my impression’s the
same. Indeed, these beasts
weigh how far we’ve come...
© 23 January 2008, I. D. Carswell

Forum Grandstanding – (For Um!)

You are the cock-crow of gaudiness, a plastic
figurine obsessed with make-believe. Good
heavens, was there ever matter where you
situate, a left and right of you? I know there
is no depth – no obverse side to uni-linearity,
set sideways it’s my guess you’d disappear.

Your claim to fame is merely that – your claim.
It’s based on second-hand belief uttered in
a press of incredulity; a sceptic grandstanding
to an audience naive and undiscerning, a play
on words which rarely praise – the prey, a few
who don’t behave or doff their hats to you.

Well damn you and your sycophants – may
Halls in Hell expand enough to cater for your
ego man, for sure you’d take it too. Without
it you would be deformed, all arse for mouth
on spindly legs, no spine, instead a carapace
of funk and bunk and squalid barrenness.
© 23 January 2008, I. D. Carswell