Spike Milligan deals with a gatecrasher on live TV

Herbie Mann - Memphis Underground - 8/19/1989 - Newport Jazz Festival (O...

One of my favourite pieces of plumbing.

Tom Waits - Chocolate Jesus + Make It Rain

One of my favourite people!

Duke Ellington , Jimmy Blanton - PITTER PANTHER PATTER

The Buster Keaton Cure

 

Charles Simic
The Buster Keaton Cure

“Every few years I take a look at Buster Keaton’s films, and recently, being thoroughly depressed by our wars and our politics, I watched a dozen of his shorts to cheer myself up.”

A Poetry Reading by Jerome Rothenberg

A wonderful occasion to hear one of the world's great living poets!

The Last Goon Show Of All

Ahh, memories ...

HART CRANE

 My current thinking is prompted by Hart Crane who said: 

"The writing of a poem is not - as the writing of a chemical equation is - intended to describe anything; instead, the poem is the chemical reaction itself."

Chu Berry - Blowin' Up A Breeze

So far ahead of his time ... and Hot Lips on trumpet: great musicians.

Natalie Goldberg's definition of Poetry

 

Over many decades, when I’ve been teaching writing, I have used a great list of famous poets who have described poetry, never quite nailing its essence. Today, while throwing out books to the op shop, I came across Natalie Goldberg’s WILD MIND. Page 203 held a great surprise – another definition:

  Poetry is a dumb Buddha who thinks a donkey is as important as a diamond. 

Wow, this reader’s mind is in a turmoil of images which collide and clutter in the neural junkshop. It doesn’t tell me ; it delights me.

ART IMPULSE by Andrew Burke

 

One of my favourite artists

was born before language

and I understand what s/he

was communicating:

five clay streaks on

a cave wall. Now the Tv

would feast on the arts channel

exploring which school of art

s/he creates in, what

string of influences s/he had,

the materials s/he chose

and the palette of the diaspora.

I ask, ‘Why did you stop at five?’

S/he puts up her hand in answer.

 

Published in The Australian 2022,

Lisa Gorton wrote in her poem Grafitti:

An arm’s length of wall permits any depth

of meditative calm or your money back.

I read it on the Internet,

I saw the streaks on my screen.

 

*

 

Why I wrote this poem

is the same impulse s/he had.

wise saying

 

TRAINSPOTTING by Coral Carter - a movie-poem

 Trainspotting V3.1 FIXED.mov

HOPE IT OPENS UP OKAY! 

LAKE MOON by Murray Jennings

(from the novel ‘All Our Christmases’)

I have no idea what bird that is which scuds,

a silhouette along the silver-pink surface.

You need to hear a call, but it’s nearly night

and they don’t.

It’s not quite a lake, although there’s been more rain.

The frogs sound resigned to the season change,

the grasses, reeds and marshes

are fed again by the winter creek

from the foothills

where cashed-up people spend the weekends

scraping barnacles from boats

and vacuuming driveways.

Across the water, distant shadows are absorbed

and suburban lights flick on for the News.

I have no boat, no house, no complaints.

For me, nothing taints this swamp

this winter silence

an old bed

a shed roof almost leakproof

a lake moon

rates to pay soon.

PS: The novel is for sale at Crow Books and New Edition

OUT THERE by Colin Young

Out there ground imprisoned by drought

longs to escape in rain. Tussocks of spinifex

inject the sky through needles.

The law of agony has sentenced

the thorny devil to wander its scorching hell.

Look over the nearest rocks and watch the sun

gloat over ants’ nests trying to reach the clouds.

Why bother to expel breath here? Better to conserve

every drop of sweat for the long haul,

for the trudge over dune-oceans, and twisted logs

sunk to the bottom of a lost water-hole.

And that dingo hobbles, hesitant,

toward nowhere, fur ruffled by hints

of wind, teeth drooling for food,

without finding a companion anywhere.

 

PEACH by Jan Napier

Peach

Peach pits are poisonous This is not a mistake.

Brenna Twohy.

we eat of life as if a ripened peach.

I wipe my chin, protest that I have had little

of this though on the cracked blue and white

plate only a single slice remains.

look, you nod. can mirrors have intruders?

hair is hoarfrost, face a windfall, hands aftershocks.

the sun is low. there are clouds. shivering begins.

on kitchen china, discarded skin, that last piece.

it is late, you say, for sweetness. crush the kernel.

tell the secret of the seed as you leave me.

head in hands. the pause between seconds.

I open my throat.

plate only a single slice remains.

THIS COULD BE ENOUGH - Gail Willems

I’m a catabolic woman

Stimulating

Dangerous

I want a slow    hand

across my sagging    breasts

spiralling    nipples

tummy rolls    thighs    love handles

a wet tongue that adores

the many craters of my hot     skin

me vivid with    desire

shouting

nonsense as lust unravels

This landscape 

sticky with you

won’t be enough

Years later

maybe sooner

Reality sneaks in

This could be enough

ABALONE FISHING

 

ABOLONE FISHING

 

John walked out

            on ankle-high surf

babbling on the reef

            finding its way

through the sharp rocky surface

 

I followed behind

            nervous in my old tennis shoes

walking gingerly

            tyre lever in hand

hunting for abalone.

 

John knows how. He’d been

            around the world

working on merchant ships

            telling tales of the high seas

and the low dives in port cities.

 

I’d been in boarding school

            for much of his travels,

anchored to declining verbs

            and translating Caesar.

He told us about the tough whores

            of Marseilles while I was

taking a Burmese girl from

            a Catholic boarding school

for a hamburger and coffee.

 

“Here you go, here’s some,”

            as he bent to the reef

hacking at stones  as

            the sun glittered off

the Indian Ocean.

 

 

 

-        17/08/2022

Herbie Hancock - Jazz Fusion Cantelope Island

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