you hear them
clear, the ringing in
of echoes neat
of yesteryears that
sing with joy
my ears embrace
those reveries:
though ill at ease
this heart beats still
with gratitude
I quake in
vacant loneliness
of platitudes
while echoes fill
an aching heart
© 6 December 2008, I. D. Carswell
How simply are you satisfied? A glance, a
fleeting smile? Must it have such substance
to compile a pleasured feeling – can you
freely take your pleasure as it comes?
For some the satisfaction is the smile, but if a
co-respondent went the extra mile, moved
to consummate the greeting in embrace,
could you stand the change of pace?
Remember grandmamma who would insist
on kissing as a greeting, and kissing on the lips
you had to face the withered skin, the musty
smell, the dry and crinkled hairy chin!
That is not to say you did not like her anyway,
gram’s embrace was penance that you paid
to satisfy a need you had from mum and dad,
a need to reach and touch your family.
– Well, that’s the way it is with me.
© 6 October 2006, I.D. Carswell
Little things that should amuse
conspire these days, combine in subtle ways;
after thirty seven years you would
expect them to relent a bit.
Imagine, a radio playing in each room you visit
during the course of vacuuming,
not to listen to but to make the room alive –
somehow it rouses pleasant memories,
fills an empty room and stills the dust.
How do I know? I change the station
on one or two to let a different message
flee into the ambience instead of the same,
synchronous babble.
But you can’t tell the difference
above the asthmatic whine of an
antiquated vacuum cleaner.
© 30 September 2006, I.D. Carswell
There was a sibling who might have
preceded me into the World; I say ‘he’
as I had three sisters waiting in the wings
with growing impatience for a male
applicant to bind with fledgling love;
‘he’ as it is unthinkable our mother
may have conceived another girl.
I was told of the sad miscarriage when
I observed disparity in dates we celebrated
birthdays. The gap between my next sister
and I was our brother stillborn. It was a slow-
growing shock – I still mourn for my brother,
I still mourn for an ally and friend whom I
never knew, assured he would agree.
There was a sibling who’d have preceded
me and made the World a less perilous
place, a brother who’d have loved and
protected me but never was. And when I
dreamed of him, staunch and beautiful with
features hewn from the same living flesh,
he was me and my sisters never knew.
© 30 September 2006, I.D. Carswell
There is little to distinguish the
living from the dead when
both are symmetrically bound.
It is said one cannot meaningfully
be one without the other,
tho’ they mutually exclude.
Life and death are optimistic concepts
of the same somethingness, polar
extremities of the same point of view.
Today I am neither; I am
convinced by an unshakeable
sense of contentment.
© 2005, I.D. Carswell
seeing simplicity
stacked where scholars
count cords of wood in
4 by 4 by 8 feet lots
is not risk-taking
– so they say
the measure
means less than
the horrendous reality
that these were once
a biodiversity
of living trees
discorded innocence
it is which bears the name
but odium clings
perversely
to the deciders
of need & fate
the symmetry
I see equates to
human beings piled
neatly by the Sheldon cord
contemplating
their uncertain destiny
© 16 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
I claim a liquid
origin as such – and plan
a fluid ending
Topsy grew from air
aloft up where she floats in
stately buoyancy
Tinkerbelle will tell
another story ringing
credibility
deceit or not your
fond belief– the awful truth
has many faces
your genesis is
commonplace defined although
rare learnings needy
our pastor claims we
are BUT DUST from whence we came
and to thus return
intrigued my daughter
sanely asks – as children must,
“Daddy, what’s ‘Butt Dust?’”
© 16 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
a bottle of wine’s worth of inspiration –
luckily you’re not impressed easily; de
Bortoli feeds the masses without (and
I sorely wanted to use this expression)
oblique pretensions. Either you like it
or you may protest. Vociferously. Six
glasses or less is insufficient grounds
to be unconvinced. So I say raise the
goblets again, let’s see whether you’re
a weather vane to a real celebration’s
success...
© 16 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
wretched beans he sighed – and farted
viciously – eyes surprised reflecting infant tears
– would you believe
that really hurt...
it’s hard to suppose he reflects
such a trivial self-indulgence
could ever have
an unhappy ending
I refuse to snigger covertly –
observe the incident
too culturally sincere
for approbation
I mean
who wouldn’t release
their admiration volubly
for the new vegetarian regime
– at the next urge
I suggest sagely
try standing
first
© 20 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
begorrah it was an insincere
attempt to ill use the news
sure and by God
if the medals had been
just a worthless gesture we’d
never hear or see the like again –
but for a pestilent aberration
of a thief who stole them – amongst
other things – from the container
so bereaved we are to be
before the public wake
has even been arranged
and suddenly they’re appealing
self-righteously on the TV news
for their return
seems a demand for ribbons
resplendent like these motivated
the estranged memories
now it’s strange isn’t it that in
all the years our Patrick was alive
the intrinsic value was zero
‘twas nought for all the glory
that he fought – but then
he never tried to sell them
© 20 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
whose embrace condones
your brand of lunacy; the
manic and impure idea
that heralds anarchy to
passion’s ghost
despairing rule of lore
what is lost when innocents
are wrenched from life
is not a fear of God, it is
the wrath your cause ignites
for vengeance just congealed
in battle lust
no dialectic underscored
with brutal force and bombs
and guns will win the brawl
for hearts and minds, you’ve
captured chaos and defined
deniers all as infidel
so whose embrace condones
your thoughts of ancient
prophecy; a mother’s arms
which sting with caustic tears
unshed in binding cloth around
your shattered head
© 4 December 2008, I. D. Carswell
washed up and worn out is the feeling –
languishing in doldrums of a new week
where debris of yesterday’s success is
already history
no one remembers it anyway
you share sanctuary in a tides edge –
survivor of the ebb with that singular
success of being buoyed up when the
rest sank
and it stinks out there
tangled in with every manner and
means of flotsam jammed together
in a neat line left where the water
peaked at top of a tidy beach
and all is not what it seems
a beachcomber may pick you up as an
artefact thinking he knows your value –
but you’ve no real chance of resurrection
no satisfaction guaranteed
better you’d died at sea
© 28 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
that wisdom connects me to
the bullet’s flight – an arc of
covenant inscribed by gravity
where all thought falls short
of escape velocity
we were sired in the same
trajectory that brought us
here – our wills bent to the
Earth’s curvature and the
breast of its sustenance
there is no leaving without
shame but those sacrificed in
the name of its prophecy cry
in awe of the bullet’s flight
and it’s dying return
© 22 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
It had taken all day to
get to the front door,
and considerable effort
you are assured.
There was no incentive
to make a greater play at
being part of the day; when
I reached it I had nowhere
to go.
I had ideas, I’m never lost
for them, but there at the
doorway the choices didn’t
pretend to have relevance
or meaning.
You were away, a declaration
of fact – is that a state of being
or an expression? Anyway, you
weren’t here so it didn’t matter
where I went or what I might
have done. So I didn’t. Nothing
matters when you aren’t here.
© 2006, I.D. Carswell
an afternoon of slaughter
made worse by carnage
to a neighbourly association
rural living is indecently more
than menopausic concerns
disguised as urban curiosity
either you learn to mind
your own business when
the cockerels are killed
or there is no prospect
of shared benevolence –
no invite for coc au vin
© 23 August 2008, I. D. Carswell
