There Is A Chance Someone Listens

Now I am incensed – before I might
have been a mite amused, but living
through a mewling disenchantment
with this attitude of noblesse oblique
and ‘grosse redress’ distresses me.

If you wish to keep your pages clean
you’d best address anomalies you let
instance themselves as caricatures of
idiocy – those semi-literate rules you
pose are derisory and sadly laughable.

And yet you take liberties with a form
of censorship that’s unexplained – an
application of restricted access to two
of my poems; I am impressed but what
earned this special consideration?

By your own baldly expressed rules the
words you ban are not included in the
texts concerned – text which reflects a
sadness due to drug dependence in our
youth with consequent loss of identity.

I make no apologies for rawness of that
verse – the sentiment is real, in fact the
truth is more exacting than that which I
expressed, terse delivery suggests a
horror barely concealed or contained.

Let me guess, you wont condone my brash
expression of unease – or even let me air
the dirty linen in a manner where it might
excite concupisense or rash behaviour – or
worse than that – do you even understand?

I know that I am talking to a deaf and dumb
machine – a search program which targets
words considered bad without actually ever
reading or understanding anything. But there
is a chance someone actually listens out there.
© 29 August 2007, I.D. Carswell


I post new poetry on the Poem Hunter site which,
of recent times, has introduced a mysterious form
of censorship. Nothing drastic, just the simple
expedient of blocking a poem from public view.
The mindless idiots who support the site have
decided these two poems:

"Who We Were Before We Came Here",

and

"The Worst Poison Is Censorship"

are not fit for public view. As I have to guess
what their criteria is - I have no formal knowlege
of what gets their goat, it leaves me in a quandary...

Welcome Home

Will 147 years of history
surprise me – I think not,
yesterday was farther off.

In the blink of an eye I will
be in the same place my
Great Grandfather of three

generations removed
hailed from. I have never
been there before but I

know it well. I wonder if
it will remember me,
saying hello prodigal son,

welcome home...
© 29 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Controversy Sells More

Collected in the
darkness of each
days obsession,
paraded in a benign
secrecy of shaded
places; anonymity
threatened in
sharpened shadows
too precisely focussed
to diffuse smut’s history
as a mere procession
of pedant peccadilloes.

Todays views debate
industry-confused
impressions – an ocean
vast and unending as
the dark dreams riding
human emotions,
hungrily seeking feasts,
banquets of their
wildest imaginings.

The imagery hangs in
tapestries on walls
festooned in communal
space, living attributes
paint each animate face;
and pornographers rub
shoulders with Moguls
sagely providing its right
to exist by denying
controversy sells
more than any formal
legitimacy to exit
gives licence for.
© 20 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Heat Of The Hunt

blood-rich heat of the
hunt hunches down deep
beneath rank bowells
of bare bones belief

instinct unaware steers in
instance-sensed challenges –
seeks reflex scent of fear
of quarries’ piss-release

sniffs the air – avid eyes peer
in greedy need for flesh
rent and blood spilled by
rending teeth – for howl

and cheer of the kill
where the corpse lies bent
beneath – where evolution
begins and ends – again
© 21 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Open Your Eyes

Starts this day at 3:53am
full of focussed good
intentions – a need to
progress conjecture
into solid productivity,
build a ramp to the
outside above the lip
of the dark well
surrounding a night
without stars to
reference by.

Blind in a sense
but guided by
serene sight –
an equilibrium owed
no further payments,
climbs the wide
and well worn path,
steps into the light.

Where am I, I
cannot see –
echoes his cry.
WHY AM I HERE?

This is the outside
comes the reply, the
other side of reason –
where your self-contained
rules explain nothing.

Open your eyes...
© 21 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Other Side Of Broken Sleep

Winds returned last night, a
low pressure system breached
boundaries of a consciousness
despairing dedicated overtures;
the deep quiet of soulful air rent
in riot of muffled sound wound
tight by closed windows, shrouded
in a hollow gloom booming the
other side of broken sleep.

Aware without hearing from
veteran years in wilder gales’
shrieking, sensing pitch of wind’s
wail held in thrall of a power
too severe to ignore, witnessing
electrical outages first hand as
they surge across swayed wires
flickering balefully into homes, LED
lights blinking a manic-obsessive call.

Light has returned a day of
leaf litter spread a visual span
reaching blind horizons, driven
mist bleeds from hills etched
against grey cloud overriding
clear air of yesterday; between
gusts crows soar in wild flight,
ride currents in a joie de vivre
of carefree spirits rejoicing.
© 22 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Song Of The Pensive Patriot

being one and the same
with my fellow man
painfully ends my
individuality –
here I stand in the
beginning of an era where
I am less important than the
sum of our unity

a view confused and
abused in football crowds
is not the stance or essence
enhancing our claim to
common identity

we are less passionate
songs and more emotions
belonging to visibly
disparate but keen
students of similarities

you read my words listen
to echoes of your own
voices express the same
sentiment hearing nothing
less than the same
patriotic enchantment

there is no choice but
to join our arms respectfully
greet you in common voice
take claim for the love
felt in a breast torn with
prior claims of duty –

so as of this day with
great respect I say that
while I do not necessarily
like you all that much –
I love our way
© 21 Auguat 2007, I.D. Carswell

The Essential You

How many views of you do I need
to know which special you I love;
and you, how many do you need
to know which one of me? Am I

the gaudy one, the cheery imp who
gleefully pulls faces in the wind?
Perhaps I am the stolid son, glum
but vigilant and full of passive

strength. I’d go to almost any length
to know. Yet when it comes to you
my love emboldens me to say my
views embrace your every face

with equal and intense concern,
I cannot choose between the one
for all combine in sum to make a
special sense of consequence,

an essence – which to me alone
is the essential you.
© 23 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Trees Breathe Easy

We pray for it to bring relief –
when it comes in thief-like
in the middle of the night,
stealing odds and ends of
peace of mind the anguished
bleats of discontent are heard

to echo loud and long. I listen
to the trees, silence is a proud
consent, bright in promises
and strong assent this rain
relieves their pressing needs.

The herd that gathers in the
Gympie trees and mud around
arenas where the Muster wallows
sees a different scene; their music
falters in the rain, their feet are
mired in different earth but trees
breathe easy just the same...
© 24 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

We Merely Pay The Rent

We are new to this
ancient Land, it cannot
speak to us with ease,
the economies of
our forefathers too
new to understand;

deeds describe our
arrival as recent, we
are undoubtedly the
alienated strangers.

We will not belong in
a way that frees us
of consequence; in
the dawn of each new
day we must aggrieve
with our complicity.

Nothing frees us of
the debt owed the
lessor – indeed, we
merely pay the rent...
© 18 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Who We Were Before We Came Here

gaps in the memory like sheer sided rifts
disrupting rutted tracks leaving chasms of
utter vacancy where no signage survives
the free fall screaming plummet to a darkness
where we cease to cangue as whole things
connected and sure of whom we were before
we came here to a space of nowhere

familiar

where no space is yo mother **** yo bad ass
yo dick-shit yo little bro lying sad in fear –
dying sick-aware in damp piss-pants scared
deathless of an ever consuming emptiness
puking yellow and wretched – grovelling in
stench-reeking gut-wrenching spasms of doubt
whom we were before we came here...
© 22 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

It Is A Sweet Reward

I imagine making
love before I sleep –
it is a sweet reward,
a gift alone complete
and free of promises.

No artifice or cheap
derivatives deceive
libido, the package is
a neatly wrapped
placebo for the deed

and sleep ensues
without the need
debated or potentia
coeundi ever
comsummated.
© 16 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

This Day’s Oligarchy

If you agree democracy
implies in essense an
equality – but deny in
divers ways the rights
of some minorities to
represent their views
then who’s the ogre
in the news? You say

the move to ease the
fate of children left to
languish undebated
by the ethnic based
authorities is a need
of common sense; go
build another fence
and keep them on the

other side – police it
with the rigour of your
arrogance but don’t
excuse the dissonance
eventing of the move
as ‘nothing new’. It is
a view abominated
by good governance.

Your measures used to
gauge a better quality
of life are purely bound
in fiscal terms – values
ground and mixed with
ashes of humanity, a
cost-efficient recipe
of today’s oligarchy.
© 17 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Beer Goes On Forever

Get three others to agree
with you my friend and I’ll
join too; we’ll get a good thing
going with a creed that breeds
its weight in new believers.

There is a street-corner logic of
six-pack credibility stacked in its
favour; makes a lot of sense after
some beers and a yarn – not that
we do lot of that stuff per se.

But convincing your skeptical
mates gravity doesn’t exist just
because Velikovsky said so goes
a long way to explaining how
credibility rides on creed.

So how do we stay in place?
Electromagnetism? Dunno – if
gravity doesn’t exist. Does it make
a difference? Not especially –
meaning have another beer.

Why should we care if gravity’s
gone and we’re still here; the
only ‘out there’ is a beerless
world. Sure, explanations come
and go, but beer goes on forever.
© 18 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Things Meant To Be Accepted

I lived with them most of my
life, they were never taken
too seriously as such – or for
granted as much as fey evasion
strategy would allow –

one just got along, somehow
tried to preserve the balance,
the sense of ‘de rigueur’; it was
easier to play nameless patron
than agent provocateur. Like,

how much mileage was there
in dissenting God’s word or
appealing the legitimacy of
corporal punishment instantly
imposed by soulless teachers?

When I became a pedagogue it
was still just as vague – things we
lived with without comment
perhaps never meant to be
challenged – but still so utterly wrong...
© 18 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Trystaline Buprestidae

in the aftermath of the
shaking came the sparkling
jewel-beetle making the june-
bug sky burn bright, boring
the wood of the night and
fervent heat of a lover’s
heart blazed crystaline
and sweet; where will you
take me the beetle sighed, to
the stars above in the june-
bug sky – to the stars and
beyond her lover cried...
© 20 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Written for Trystal Wright, a very young lady learning to love poetry

.

.

.

Reputation Never Claimed

The epistemology of fame
has always bothered me;
the only word I cared to try
was notoriety. Fame was
framed in glowing names –
like celebrity and eminence
or crowned in renown and
dressed with distinction or
leant to prominence. To my
shame a reputation bent or
maimed defamed the image
staid, and disrepute disgraced
my case, plagued with infamy
and ill repute, a name ablaze
by imputation as a
most unsavoury
reputation won
or lost
or never claimed.
© 16 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Seems A Fair Compromise

I’ve no idea what it’s on about, he said,
shaking his long-suffering head – I think
I liked it better as a dumb machine.

Now it seems preoccupied with sets of
rules it makes and modifies of whim;
for instance, this morning it demands

I list in a knowlege sharing circle on a
program I don’t even know exists
before it lets me log on properly.

Of course I feel intimidated. It’s like an
intimacy with a wife who is a complete
stranger to me and my particular needs.

Now it is staring at me, daring me to ignore
it’s demand for input, stating it will enter
the least invasive response in thirty seconds.

I don’t know what that means. All I want is to
play solitaire and read my email – if it will let
me. Ah ha, now there is a possiblity! The

screen suggests I may wish to register as a
Guest User with Limited Privileges. In the
circumstances it seems a fair compromise...
© 15 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Skirting An Awkward Innuendo

Been walking around it too long, skirting
an awkward innuendo on soft soled shoes,
scared lest it awaken the same shrieking
rage that laid it to rest.

They were crazy, undisciplined days – full
of mischief and merriment. We weren’t
meant to fall in love just then you said,
timing was bent every way but free.

You made us agree to wait; had your
priorities in place, nothing would come
between you and the degree you sought –
yet you slapped my face egregiously.

In abject silence my eyes died, the smile
stayed frozen on lips dipped in ice but
the pace of my heart jumped out of
time and on into a vacuous space.

Over the corpse of our late relationship
you made it plain who failed whom. I
was to blame for not falling at first
and irrevocably in love with you.
© 16 August 2007, I.D. Carswell

Remember Them

The soldier cried, his tears were tears that
only soldiers cry of pride; he did not close
or wipe his eyes where tears rolled free to
fall upon the ribbons worn for all to see.

So many of their unit died – all noble deaths
their Colonel said, a sacrifice of vital men who
gave their lives to live again in memories. They’ll
not grow old he said, nor age shall weary them.

These tears we shed are there to wash away
the years and bring them back again, all whole
of limb and comforted; they’ll sing again our
battle songs in voices clear and chorus strong.

We are not here to stand for war, the justice of
the deed is dust and now we must allay the angst
we wrought in battle cries for friends who died –
and remember them with glowing pride.
© 12 August 2007, I.D. Carswell