Pissy-Eyed

It is the last refuge of hedonism – as
convenient as writing laudatory memos
praising yourself and answering them
with unctuous thank-yous. So who do
you think we think you’re fooling?

It may not be fantasy in your opinion,
who knows best? Writing praise reflects
both ways – like a feral hog writes a fair
poem and we say... amazing! Saying less
is utterly prejudiced, more, uncharitable.

Yet you reach greater heights! Epithets
flow like counterfeit champagne – pearls
cast that malign are equally germane:
well done... compressed in few... lovely...
It says... that’s barely contained bleech.

Yet logic threads manic needles lost in
hayrick sanity; there is bread and fishes
in your largesse, much wine in amphorae
blessed with soporific gifts – we are pleased
you came pissy-eyed to poetry gladly.
© 19 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Smaller Alligators

hey
if it is
beneath
your dignity
to wallow
in the swamp
with smaller alligators
stay away

an appearance
every other month
is patronising
at the very best
– as if to say
conceitedly

I’m here
to grace you with
my presence
though you’re hardly
worth contempt

the silent stare
and jaundiced
face expresses
dead end conversation
like you’ve really
really lost your way

now if you
stayed away
at least we’d likely
be assured that
that was accurate
© 21 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Colours In Lamplight (rev)

Colours in lamplight
are previews scarcely eschewed
as wave-length turbulence tuned
to closeness and friendship.

Colours in firelight
are skin-warmed glowing
harbouring contentment
revealing intuitive insight.

Colours in moonlight
are barely shown shy smiles
recalled with eidetic intensity
from reservoirs of sight.

Colours in candlelight
are lace filigree –
decorative shimmers of
sympathetic enchantment.

Yet in the hard light
of day they all become
flagrant solidities,
bulwarks to true feelings.
© I.D. Carswell

Neandertals

Neandertals – in the extreme sense of
brutish looks and inimical cave-mannish
behaviour typifies a class of player which
we’re incensed about. That is not to say
we don’t recognise such an arbitrary use
of the term down-plays what in essence
is the converse of the true ancient man.

Be that as it may, these are rugby union
men at arms, professionals in the game
supposedly played in Heaven. Whether
French, English, Irish, Welsh or a Scot or
two (though only occasionally), they do
not win on angelic looks alone or beatific
deportment – nor are they meant to.

But let me say the term pales into utter
insignificance with the World Champion
Springboks! No disrespect is meant to
worthy endeavour – after all they earned
the accolade, but have they ever learned
to play with flair and finesse? The abuse,
head butts and mongrel effects say nay!
© 15 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

The poem is about 'labels' and 'popular' views,  plus
misconceptions about behaviour! I'm sure Neandertals
would be appalled by a likeness to any rugby player -
let alone a Springbok!  

Comms Outrage

Took hours for concerns to graduate
although ‘outrage’ has been alleged
by mouths never actually put out in
the first event. No doubt a few cruelly
inconvenienced complained – waited
impatiently for rectification. Needless
to say after-the-event naysayers are
out in their vociferous droves today,
baying for a pound of flesh.

This fibre optics cable raised louder
complaint than concerns on energy
outages ever did, outages we’re
supposed to grin and bear; the price
of fuel didn’t get a look in! Maybe no-
one wants to despair that much. Yet
a broken cable led to catastrophic
and widespread but short lived
communications system failure.

A contractor cut the cable, which we
can understand – but when backup
systems failed, chaos ensued and we
were left dangling in familiar territory.
Okay, it was fixed by midday and all
systems are go again. Do we blame
Optus, the contractor, the cable or the
fools who seize every weak opportunity
to grandstand their inimical idiocy...?
© 16 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Moocooboola Dam (rev)

For more than a million years we’ve been
nearly out of water; sincerely, a need
repeatedly exposed in reports of the calamitous,
tragic-comic sort glibly cognising collective ‘we’
as principle cause and proposing proscribed
population growth, avoiding taxing resources,
limiting courses for future development.

So who is out of water – whether nearly, almost,
a teeny bit? If you believe it from infected sources,
nothing less than all of us! It can’t include me and
others who live comfortably within our water
limitations, who demur a paternalistic cure which
neither gives comfort nor eases what we do.
Either we agree with their points of view, levied
by this dilemma’s causes, its antecedents, its
precedents, or we deride unliveable tenets
its solution invariably eschews.

I side with residents of Traveston Crossing,
nothing a Moocooboola dam proposes can
please them – so the sad, always greedy, city-
based, water-needy can go hang themselves
with their garden hoses. And that pleases me
in the sense you know which ‘we’ I represent.

I am not reticent for sure – I love a natural
environment, water-needy or not, and a dam
won’t complement any aspect of the free flow
of Mary River out to sea; the consequences
detract from responsible Government but
think back to the vandals who sacked our land
and murdered its earliest inhabitants.

They’re at it again, this time they’re killing a
river and the reasons extant are prescient,
ecological treason. It must be the season
for such dangerous thought. If you bought
your dream home on a canal at Pelican by Sea
and the Council dammed the creek and drained
the waterway you’d self-righteously shriek blue
murder. Don’t wonder, start shrieking,
you’re next...
© 2005, I.D. Carswell

Smiles Familiar

Call it what you will - an affliction or an awful
affectation deeply sore ingrained – no reason
why, no explanation for behaviour satisfies.
Rules are changed. Dare you ask my feelings!
To imply decides your tenure and your fate
– with menarche now forty years of late.

Is it right to say the change was like disease
that eats within? No symptoms recognised as
surface signs; a trifle pained when questions
pry for reasons not explained. “I changed my
mind” is offered up appeasing real concerns,
revealing – not concealing seething tides.

Is this the bride I wed and bedded famously
for years you say? She looked the same, had
answered me with passion equally inflamed.
Today she’s rarely there where now a stranger
peers with jaundiced eyes that criticise. Dare
I say the word ‘absurd’ illogically applies?

Whichever way I try to make amends for what
I did, or thus did not – I’m on a losing team.
The woman of my youthful dreams is lost and
in her place a new identity. Though strange I
see that strangeness is effaced when smiles
familiar range across my ageing lover’s face.
© 14 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

National Prestige At Stake

It is a game after all – a game, spelled
G.A.M.E. Do referees have any inkling
of what’s at stake? Like their credibility?
OK, so one team plays odds and wins
against chance; skill or ability has not a
modicum of relevance. In this sad case
a sorely misguided and visibly irrelevant
referee determined which opportunities
were randomly applied by creative idiocy.

Explanations were as equally accidental
and players questioning decisions were
left to ponder a fate for obduracy. In any
event players paid a price far in excess
of fees due; the game failed to exceed
a farce or achieve heights of the test
match it was supposed to be. Common
ingredient, unfortunately for National
prestige, were all Australian referees...
© 12 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Possums (rev)

Formerly: Possums Came At Night

You could see the signs which said that possums
came by night and fed upon this tree, they left
their mark in fruit discards and broken twigs and
shredded leaves spread randomly in careless piles
beneath its ravaged canopy.

Father ground his teeth, his frown a sentence to
the pests; such waste he said, you’d think they’d
eat the best and leave the rest for us, but no, they
have to have a taste of every piece. He cleaned his
gun with dour intent, tonight they’ll pay, he said.

We could see their furry pelts stretched tight upon
the drying boards at 2/6d each, hardening in the
springtime sun, bleaching to a silvered grey, a fair
reward to pay for widespread wanton waste
these hairy beasts called feral possums wreak.

Brush-tailed possums, trichosurus vulpecula, Sons
of Satan to a name whose personal claim to fame
was an invasion of our orchard every year; we
were fortunate they didn’t seem to care for plums
as near as much as peaches, even nectarines.

But they wasted so much more than ever was
consumed. The moon is right tonight, full and fair,
our father reasoned, we’ll see them in the branches
clearly set against the moonlit sky, they’ll wonder
why we point out torches, peer intently at us
while we shoot them there.

Ever seen the brightness of a possum’s eyes at night
when handheld light pins them in suspense? Heard the
high-pitched crack of bullet which despatches them? Ever
heard the weary grunt, or softly fluid thump of corpses
bumping to the ground, or worse, the sound of panicked urine
voiding down the trunk of trees which gave no sanctuary?

I’m not proud of bloody nights we took a heavy
toll, nor proud of harsh controls we used in need
to keep their numbers low; I’m only glad we’ve
grown in our belief a possum here is not by choice
or desperate deed an avocado thief.
© 2005, I.D. Carswell

This House Which Is Lived In (rev)

This house which is lived in resounds
with the chorus of voices bound in the
press of its generous and unconcealed
affection; blessings are neither distressed
nor restrained, nor caught in an intricate
mesh of wicker and wire-ordered veins
of its construction, contained within gentle,
carbon-breathing walls.

The halls are hung with wooded reminders
that ask forbearance – the task is benign
and in the heartbeat pulsing rooms you find
mementos in a precious arcade.

The rooms are clothed in guises unique and
disconnected each from each, yet oddly unified,
resting easily before eyes truly seduced,
wearing tenant characters deduced in muted
shades and crafted shadows folded into thriving
colour and softened drapes hung or flung in wide,
comforting curves revealing objects ordinarily
placed in ordered disorder;

this space is so soothing and yet it deceives
in the ease it steals your heart. Where do you
start in generous word and unclichéd phrases
describing a house which astounds and amazes?
© 2004, I.D. Carswell
For Paula and her amazing Houses

Don’t Talk To Me Of War (rev)

Don’t talk to me of War or stalk the ground our fabled soldiers died upon,
I’m sound of limb and strong of will, my mind as clear as when we learnt
those gory lessons founded by our forebears; I’m whole still, my sanity
intact, wife and sanguine life extant despite the wrack of loyal Service –
though I will avow some wrinkled stress in thirty years, more or less, and
pride as signal as the very best of graduates from OCS.

Oh the pomp and circumstance of that, the cringing revelations, the flat
drum beat of sibling cries alive with drear elation, steeped in deep
emotion plied and pried by driving tides of damned humiliation. In those
early hours we sat confused in closet ease to crew a hurly burly year,
taking cheer in kindred arms and comradeship, bonded in the object
cup of common deed, proud and young and strong and needing just the
Company to keep the faith.

In that year we ran a cracking chase, a course of tally ho and view halloo,
of pulses racing in a strain of sweat that smudged our painted faces,
entrained our natural graces, tempered us in diverse ways without ado
although we grew and learned to look out for each other, holding in our
hearts a strong belief that each and every one of us would reach
the fabled end.

And when the thief of Time denied those rites to some who sundered
in the night; a shameful passing without fête or argent cause or silent
class debate, we knew, and turned our eyes, it could have been our fate.
Who where we then? Fine striplings come to take their place in larger
schemes, subordinate, acquiescent, yet free of shocking dreams.

Who are we now? It takes a mighty leap to bridge the gap or shed
entanglements that wrap us to our past – and sleep the deep and
blameless sleep, survive the shrieking terrors of the night; for some
the task is nemesis, for some the quiet of peaceful death is rife, for
most it is a part of life. And yet we know that when we meet again
the years will disappear and time will be our friend.
© 2006, I.D. Carswell

.

Neurosis

if truth –
it’s filtered through
an unassailable hide

this route through one man’s
view suits certainty – such that
he maintains it IS that way

no true perception of reality
exists which can create
this tailor-made anxiety

in thus a dedicated life alone
there’s more to being recognised
than shouting out your name
© 12 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

The Best Days Of My Life (rev)

What is it about Bryan Adams and his song
‘Summer of 69’? Why do the lyrics linger?
Was it 90° in the shade and the harbinger
of the end of the golden weather, or the
impending closure of a glorious decade?

He should have called it ‘The Best Days Of
My life’, would have rested easier – better
parable than the truth but resonance of a
summer of ‘69 is timeless, allegorical to an
era, metaphor for youth.

He didn’t write the song until January 1984;
right or wrong it’s more a creation of the 80’s
than design of an endless Summer of ’69.
© 2006, I.D. Carswell

The Power Of The Lake (rev)

The power of the Lake lingers still
though many years have weighed
beyond its fascination ending;
it was there in the beginning,
an unveiling of towering sensitivities,
a flowering of gentle obsessions.

The town that grew in the lee
of the Lake expressed the same
thoughts although hard head
bastards bartered and fought for land,
bought the ideas for profit
without embracing them.

In glory days we frolicked
in the Lake’s warm fringes,
cast or trolled for fish, fell in love
with blazing sunsets and blessed
citizens who shared their bounty.

I could go there now and feel
the same buoyed spirit welling,
infusing veins with an innocence,
placating sad humours residing there.

It was where I learned to be one
with the air and the water,
to breathe the peace which
surrounds all who willingly enter
her gentle embrace.
© 2005, I.D. Carswell

Close Encounters

Any day Cacatua galerita* earns the short
straw is a memorable one – thus today is
sweetly summed to be recalled delightfully.
They set the frigid dawn alight with calls to
arms, a mutiny of sulphur crested cockatoos
were bested there in raucous air and put to
flight by currawongs and crows.

At first abuse seemed but ribald disputes
more or less about territory, loud personal
gestures perhaps but when punctuated by
indisputable skills of aerial combat – of mock
attack and over-flight designed to intimidate,
it was clear the cockatoos were being told
to go elsewhere – and to do it right away.

Entertaining, free, much more fun than
Attenboroughed wildlife videoed in soup
entrees – a thrill of early morning sun had
warmed their wings to soar and swoop and
wheel with daring ease; thankfully the airy
close encounters raised a heat too great for
said cockatoos to stay and contemplate...
© 11 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

*Cacatua galerita – Sulphur Crested Cockatoo.

Clouded Dreams (rev)

At dawn I dreamed of wispy clouds –
I had the time to wield and watched
the regimented lines of cirrus racing
north by west; elusive strands of airy
ice spread high across a gravid sky.

Each was less obsessed than speeding
to a destination far-away, constrained in
ever shifting shapes that fled to sea, off
beyond the obfuscating lines of hills
where they belonged as instanced in
my mind enthroned in solemn dignity.

This afternoon the cumulus appeared,
for so their dumpy lumps suggests, a-
hung with sombre clumps descended
from an aerie vastness. Tired cirrhosis
of their leaner selves, they droop about
the mordant blue and plod their way at
least in ordered flow from west to east.

Tonight I’ll dream of stratus clouds and
gentle rain to lift the shroud that binds
the earth in powdered dust, arising in
asthmatic puffs about our weathered
feet; and sleep I will with cirrus wings
to soar above the earthy things that
strive to snare my clouded dreams.
© 2007 I.D. Carswell

Captains Three (rev)

We sailed a pebbled sea in The Weeping
Willow with our Captains Three and a crew
of me. I was four, practically five, a cabin boy
blue, too young to do much more than cry.

Why they even let me in their crew I only
guess, emotional blackmail – nothing less
could explain how I dared request to join
their ship or shared their Corsairs’ domain.

The Jolly Jacks’ were my sisters three, all older,
naturally, so I was the crew. That gave them
scope to do legitimately, had they the wont,
those despicable things sisters think are fun.

I had to run pointless errands, walk the plank,
clear crocodiles from dank pools at the docks
edge and still yet, pile pebbles so they could
cross the creek, not getting their feet wet.

I regret I did not play the game they said, laid
complaints and bellowed wretchedly, enough
to bring rain. Thankfully the ship never put to
sea – remained moored to its creek side bank.

As steady as a rock was our barque, anchored
on the stream that bubbled by our Ngatapa
home. I never sailed it alone, nor put to sea.
It wasn’t right without the Captains Three.
© 2005, I.D. Carswell

.

.

Friendly Fire

The oxymoron of the week is
“friendly fire”! In the book of
life’s lessons learned the hard
way – assuming one survives,
for clarity any “fire” received
is definitionally unfriendly.

It is an extreme euphemism
rarely exceeded but for news
release rhetoric; “unfortunate”
incidents are neatly rephrased
as good news disguised but
languishing in retrospect.

It was a mistake, we sincerely
apologise for casualties. It does
not change our tactics or the
way we relate to the enemy; we
demonstrate our faith in deeds
not bleeding-heart speeches.

I didn’t feel safe in the room
when an Aide delivered that
round of “friendly fire”, nor on
an ill-defined front line were
the geographically illiterate
fly bomb-laden warplanes.
© 4 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Cruelly Cynical

To vigilantes burning flags in dark
of night – what a sight you made
on Channel Nine! Wasn’t news as
such, just public distaste uttered
out aloud – or duly orchestrated
by said TV station..., be that as it
may – ‘spontaneously’ declaring
right & freedom to protest events
no decent neighbourhood should
ever have to cop.

No-one stopped to ask – what’s the
sense? The Judge who started all
the fuss is free to wash his hands
without redress. In his view Justice
had been orphaned by the news pre-
trial. Your actions proved him right
at least in that respect – he’s off the
hook and not the one to blame.
Then who?

The paedophile who stood accused
is free to shake his head and blame
whoever he might choose. You’ve
had him moved, again – big deal;
so then who is the cruelly cynical
antagonist for real? Channel Nine
for making TV News perhaps?
© 5 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

What Does It Take? (rev)

Is the current rate of global warming a serious
and cogent warning? Do we need to think about
the fact that higher tides will drown Pacific island
states within a year or two, or do we listen to the
loosely spewed claptrap backed by pseudo-science
(which says with fervent ease it’s all happened
before, a cyclic phenomenon which is basically
benign and not to worry please)?

Yeah, sure, the weather’s been great though recent
storms were a pest, could rain a little more out West,
or in the storage dams where it hasn’t rained for years.
The best thing to happen would be we get back to
patterns of twenty years ago, or more. For sure.

And some guy who studies the thermocline produces
a thermo-geomorphologic guide, a timetable, saying
we’ve got years before, well certainly not this Century,
any catastrophic event will inundate Mexico City,
Moscow or Sydney. I’m relieved, only metrological
events don’t read, they ride rails we construct.

Next event down that track is on rails set up by a
warm snap one hundred years or more in making;
perhaps that’s why the islanders are shaking sand
off their tapa mats, readying for mass exodus. In the
meantime we use dirty energy, release greenhouse
gas calmly through industrial expansion fuelled by
exponential population growth driven by expansionist
economies without fear of intelligent intervention or
reprieve? Please, what does it take to make the
picture clearer?
© 29 June 2006, I.D. Carswell

Reporterese

612 ABC Brisbane’s Madonna King bares
her eclectic brand of reporterese before
most wake to events she makes today’s
news breaking. But she’s a fiery 20 year
career vet beneath the mild turn of phrase
with journo credentials ranging from police
rounds desk of The Courier-Mail to political
correspondent in Canberra’s press gallery,
to journalism scholarship in the USA. This
morning she completes a 30 hour straight
stint to equate to doctors’ routines at ICU.
Hey, it’s great for her ratings; it doesn’t do
much for the news – that’s to say news á la
King, but atmospheric radio wallpaper is all
that matters these days.
© 8 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

.

.

Suffer For My Sin

The uneasiness has stayed all day, it bleeds
away what little willpower would be needed
to erase the slate, balance an extravagance
you once again let fête your leisure time too
easily. Arrogance demeans you – you can’t
see it as indulgences’ surfeit; the aches and
pains were earned in arrant nonchalance –
vanity and alcohol consumed has duly paid.

Remorse that you may feel is chamfered by
the fit of knowing you were wrong; comfort
isn’t worn with ease or long, you’d ever be a
penitent in aspirin relief where every glass
reflects a champagne grin which says – hey,
look at me, see how I suffer for my sin.
© 7 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Post Your Beaver

Give yourself a break – posting
pictures of your genitals with
fake concupiscence writ as
semi-literate pledges of faux
bonhomie hardly rates
as poetic communication.

Okay, you say, you’ll clean up
your act as soon as this new,
vicarious thrill loses its edge –
about the time runaway self-
indulgence has added 30
pounds to your weight.

Meantime, ain’t it great!
Hey, it’s me, I mean that’s
my genitalia you’re seeing
on the screen. Didn’t post my
face of course for all the right
reasons – but nobody cares.

Apologies; say, while I can’t
agree I knew they were yours
implicitly - don’t know why but
all beavers look the same, I
think I can identify that cuddly
roll of fat around your waist...
© 8 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

.

.

Tickets To The Game (rev)

I asked my Dad about the War when I was very
young; he said it happened a long, long time
ago and a long, long way away – seemed a little
vague so I relented thinking he hadn’t attended.

Never knew he was sent tickets to go and only
went because he had to. It seemed to me to be the
only game in town – and, for what I knew, wasn’t
frowned upon because it was so clearly right.

He never said he was against the War,
wouldn’t fight or was opposed to use
of lethal force, or might have sympathised
with causes other than our own.

He said so little other than get tight on ANZAC
Day – an ‘as eloquent’ a way to thus reply
to nonsense accusations, or might have
had he ever even needed a defence.

When I was old enough to understand he
told some wartime stories; they were not
about the War as such, or gory tales, more
about companionship in far off places.

Stranger’s faces in the crowd, swimming in
lagoons with crocodiles, Française plantation
owners drinking wine and telling yarns, sharing
dangers. In time I came to understood.

His mates were circumspect as well but
when I joined the Army wished me all the
best – but said much less. It took me years to
guess and hold onto the telling reason why.
© 9 February 2006, I.D. Carswell

Cherry Bomb (rev)

Said goodbye and went to bed to die;
never knew that they had lied – was
quite surprised they didn’t seem to care.
Agonised, refused to cry although in
time the tears were quietly shed.
When I awoke and found my sight,
listened to the sound of night’s
retreat, got to my feet and went to
greet the day my Mother calmly said,
Oh, you didn’t die!

When sleep had kindly calmed my
quaking heart and evening’s panic fled,
I slept a deep and peaceful sleep, mindless
of my peers deceit, guileless in my tiny bed;
then I remembered what she’d asked. Didn’t
die! Hadn’t had to say goodbye or suffer
from my sister’s lies, didn’t meet with my
demise, indeed alive and well, my lungs
were whole, I breathed with ease throughout
the night, the rubber which would blight my
breath and kill the tissues dead when lodged
within the fatal spot had not.

So what had caused my fear? The night
before we’d had some fun with dead
balloons; you stretched a piece across
your mouth and sucked until a cherry
bomb emerged within your tongue,
twisted off to seal the air compressed
in there so tight, popped them with your
teeth, pinched ‘tween fingers ‘til they
burst, or tritely offered each in sacrifice.

Suffice to say a bomb went off just as I
breathed. My sister said with grave concern
(though now I know in jest) It’s not a joke, if
rubber meets your lungs inside you’ll die.
Naïvely I believed, trusting to a fault my
sweetest sibling’s word. And thus was I
prepared to die. In retrospect I thought
about the claimed effect, my knowledge
of anatomy was rather bare although it
seemed there were a few anomalies.
Connected these, sadly noting that
indeed I had been well and truly had.
© 4 July 2006, I.D. Carswell

Crying To Be Written (rev)

Dawn has reached the ridges to the north
and night chased west by a thin line of light;
it is the best time of day for me – a cup of
coffee, dogs pretending to sleep in baskets
at my feet. Seated, ready to write knowing
the lounge fire is glowing cheerfully,
relaxing into profound thoughts.

I had the opening lines when I awoke, a
sharp couplet bought at no cost, bright,
brimming with promise of more rushing on
into an easy progression and beyond.

Sadly it is gone in the inward thrust of the day;
a fleeting adoration lost, a lyrical compilation
of whimsical brilliance – an amazing ephemeral
meeting merely brushed against my mind,
floating on, uncontained, wafting into an
insubstantial nothingness.

It is an image I will borrow nonetheless,
a symptomatic consequence of the duress
I live in, the distress of one million poems
crying to be written.
© 7 July 2006, I.D. Carswell

Forty Years On

“Forty years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today...”

I won’t continue – but you remember it don’t
you? It was Harrow’s School Song sung with a
chorus line change; “thirty true men” made much
more sense back then. And we were the babes in
the livery of men.

Forty years on is hardly forever; OCS made us older –
yes, whether wiser is best left to hearsay or dream
therapy. It was the pause in between. So where were
you July 4, 1968? Flinders Street Station? I vaguely
recall Whiskey A Go Go, sleeping on the stairs.

I’ve already had my say, know well a richness of
memories that still remain – some facts may drift on
errant wings but voices of the past will soon correct all
those things for me it seems went discretely missing in
action. Forty years passes in a wink and a nod.

“Till the field ring again and again,
With the tramp of the thirty true men...”

See you then...
© 9 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

For the OCS Class of ’69
Forty Year Reunion
13 June 2009

Being Voyeuristically Reborn

I’d like to rethink part of my life
again. Is it too late to avow and
declare being born was never my
idea? Don’t mean to be ungrateful
or suggest I’m not happy; I am,
but my life was declared for me,
unilaterally, like it or nay.

OK, it’s what I’ve got – won’t give
away easily. It is the mere notion
that somewhere there’s an idea –
an impression of inalienable right
to have at this procreation thing
as recreation – without really
pre-considering what is created.

If it’s going to happen to me again
I’d want some say in the matter – or
a better opportunity to bring to bear
my thoughts on the latter. If that’s
not possible then I’d like to be there
to see whomever is doing this good
deed for me at least does it properly...
© 10 July 2008, I. D. Carswell

Not An Auspicious Beginning

not an auspicious beginning was it –
this return to reality; too much said
too soon – as recklessly spilling your
guts as on a first day of school

but it was in a sense, an outing long
planned in the dark unwound in an
agony of sweet relief – there is now
no going back to the shadowed room

yet it is where you run to repair the
damage you swear must be evident –
but to whom? Judgements are not
implied in such welcoming smiles
© 10 July 2008, I. D. carswell

It Was Your First Outing (rev)

It was your first outing
or more rightly our first
outing with you. We were
as proud as new parents
could be wheeling our son
in the crowded Sunday
shopping throng
glancing down again and again 

to reassure ourselves
and you that we were
indeed a family gazing in
awe at your small face and
trusting eyes head encased
in lacy cap unselfishly sharing
this consuming intimacy with
everyone

When you could participate
in the sights and sounds
around you and sat erect
commanding all that passed
you ate your first ice-cream
unaided. Your face was painted
in rich chocolate smears
and your beautiful eyes
devoured our hearts
© 1976, I.D. Carswell