Uncupped Hand

Softly in your uncupped hand
Sat among gnarls and wire cuts
Lustred heaps of calloused
Schoolyard savageries

Where it all began

And now?
An old brilliantine bruiser
Watching amber effervesce
Among motes and jangling slot machines
The slow afternoon sunshine
Bursts your weathered glare

You're there again but never seen
Parading about the ring in
Shifts, sleights, feints, dud turns
And ragged dead-hand rolls of
Grog and battered head bones;
These waxen scars laced down their side
Stretched loose toward the smallest knuckle
Are glossed with the smokey charm forgone
Of working men and bar room banter

These are the real show
(Soft)
The real you in your gently upturned
Uncupped hand.

Oh, they do go on!

"Con"

"ver"

"sa"

"tion"

Window on the 9.15 Frankston II

Foreign

Domed platform
Falling to every horizon
Scored with the husks
That gather among phantoms
At its edge
This ancestral stage burns
Beneath an unforgotten sun

I'm screwed to a chair
A warped agent of renewal
In the middle of a storm
Trying to lick the dust from my mouth
While dogs fight
For my tongue

Trying to lift myself
Out of myself
And call for an exit
For rain

Window on the 9.15 Frankston I

C'mon, just one.



It doesn't have to be hot.

Experimental P--m

This a response to Ted Hughes' poem View of a Pig (below).

Thumper

Pig on a barrow
Snouts a punch
Lolls back
Bares itself
Is bleeding
Is split
Is wild for it
This rain
These vicious flecks finding ground
Dissolving
Into one another

It's not going nowhere this morning
Dead
Its trotters stuck straight out
Pig on a barrow
Is a thumper

And its viewer knows
His subject
Fat wheat sack poundage
Laid out before him
Is too deadly factual for market
For shame
Before Him too dead
The sunk thumper's viewer is unabashed
He fancies a greased fairground piglet squealing
       between shadows harder to
Catch
Nimbler than a cat

The pig
More than dead
A thumper


View of a Pig

The pig lay on a barrow dead.
It weighed, they said, as much as three men.
Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes.
Its trotters stuck straight out.

Such weight and thick pink bulk
Set in death seemed not just dead.
It was less than lifeless, further off.
It was like a sack of wheat.

I thumped it without feeling remorse.
One feels guilty insulting the dead,
Walking on graves. But this pig
Did not seem able to accuse.

It was too dead. Just so much
A poundage of lard and pork.
Its last dignity had entirely gone.
It was not a figure of fun.

Too dead now to pity.
To remember its life, din, stronghold
Of earthly pleasure as it had been,
Seemed a false effort, and off the point.

Too deadly factual. Its weight
Oppressed me – how could it be moved?
And the trouble of cutting it up!
The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.

Once I ran at a fair in the noise
To catch a greased piglet
That was faster and nimbler than a cat,
Its squeal was the rending of metal.

Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens.
Their bite is worse than a horse's –
They chop a half-moon clean out.
They eat cinders, dead cats.

Distinctions and admirations such
As this one was long finished with.
I stared at it a long time. They were going to scald it,
Scald it and scour it like a doorstep.

Two sideways ways way too sideways

Provision for the intellect

According to poet A. E. Housman, the purpose of liberal study is to awaken the joy of learning.

The pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of pleasures; the least subject to external things, and the play of chance, and the wear of time. And as a prudent man puts money by to serve as a provision for the material wants of his old age, so too he needs to lay up against the end of his days provision for the intellect.

But I'm not sure.

Playful hyphen

This hyphen (play-acting a bracket) is apparently untroubled by its turd-like appearance – or the fact that its closest mark is a dash.

Separated at 'birth'

A poem by Ted Hughes

The Thought-Fox

A Wiki survey

Adam Smith
b. 1723 (Kirkcaldy), d. 1790 (Edinburgh)
Age: 67
Right

Known for his explanation of how rational self-interest and competition, operating in a social framework which ultimately depends on adherence to moral obligations, can lead to economic well-being and prosperity.

Notable publication: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).


John Maynard Keynes
b. 1883 (Cambridge), d. 1946 (Tilton)
Age: 62
Left

Advocated interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms.

Notable publication: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).


Friedrich August von Hayek
b. 1889 (Vienna), d. 1992 (Freiburg)
Age: 92
Right

Known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought.

Notable publication: The Road to Serfdom (1944).


John Kenneth Galbraith
b. 1908 (Iona Station), d. 2006 (Cambridge, Mass.)
Age: 97
Left

Believed that economic activity could not be distilled into inviolable laws, but rather was a complex product of the cultural and political milieu in which it occurs.

Notable publication: American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952).


Milton Friedman
b. 1912 (Brooklyn), d. 2006 (San Francisco)
Age: 94
Right

Argued that if capitalism, or economic freedom, is introduced into countries governed by totalitarian regimes, political freedom would tend to result.

Notable publication: Capitalism and Freedom (1962).


The Swedish Chef
b. 1937 (Jokkmokk, Lapland), d. 1981 (London)
Age: 44
North

Known to have waved kitchen utensils while singing a "signature song", the lyrics of which varied but always ended with "bort, bort, bort" (meaning, literally, "away, away, away").

Notable publication: Ginger-free Pepparkakor Cookies (1962).

A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could
       stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go
       about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and
       the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further
       forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race
       roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close
       aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running
       high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his
       eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore
       home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed
       out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial
       cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the
       year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where
       I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the
       shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to
       sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas
       Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
'All hands to loose topgallant sails,' I heard the captain call.
'By the Lord, she'll never stand it,' our first mate, Jackson,
       cried.
... 'It's the one way or the other, Mr Jackson,' he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and
       good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as thought she
       understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but
       me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were
       growing old.


Suspending my anxiety about rhyming poetry in ballad metre (where tweeness gathers ripe, like a load of fresh cut tripe), I read this poem several times through. Just now I read it aloud to myself. Twice. And I must say it really is quite beautiful.

Here are four things I like about it:

1. The grand and effortless way it moves between different settings: from the epic immensity of a ship on a storm-tossed sea to the folksy familiarity of a coastguard in his garden to the intimacy of a fire-lit living room ... and back again.

2. Its tantalising 'gaps': Why did the narrator go to sea?; Why was he a 'shadow on the household'?; What business did the (presumably) merchant vessel have so close to his birthplace?; Why Christmas day?; Did any of the other seamen know of his familial connection?

3. Its slightly unexpected metaphors - such as in "the ship smelt up to windward", "the chimneys volleyed out" and "cleared the weary headland".

4. Its melancholic atmosphere. At last light and sailing clear of the heads, the other seamen were relieved to be free, finally, of the day's toil and peril. But the narrator was thinking only of the little village where he was born - that he passed on this Christmas morn so close he could hear it and smell it. Of leaving home and of his parents growing old.

Window on the 370

Urban ablution

Riding home the other night, I passed a man on Redfern street squared up to a shop door. It was very late and there was no one else around. His belt was undone and his pants were loose at the rear. A stream of urine was hosing out from his front side, drenching the lower part of the door and running down frothily past his shoes to the gutter. I couldn't help but admire the sheer animalism of the situation. Bladder to brain: GO. Brain to hands: GO.

(I think he might've had a couple.)

Mondrian Jellyfish

m
.
j
.

Falling gracefully

A reprisal of Window on the 461 II

Window on the 438 II

Window on the 438 I

But
t
h
e
real
p
r
o
b
l
e
m
with
t
h
i
s
man
Is he says he can't when he can.

(From Sitting on a Fence - The Housemartins.)

Endeavouring to find the right words II

"Captain?"

"..."

Preternatural public transport

What are you looking at, she asked.

A window. But not at it. We're on the bus, so I'm clearly looking through it. But I mean the window's in me, and together we're checking out what's going on outside. In the street.

What do you see?

Oh, that question is less philosophical than you might think. Crowds. Cars. Neon lights. Mashed paper. Shop front awnings. Shoes. A kaleidoscope of hoods and hands. The city is lively tonight, don't you think?

(Her stop had come.)

Window on the 399

Whatever happened to the leftover lamb?

"For me, true perfection is a result of passion, understanding and the willingness to transform lives," Dr Chris Brown (veterinarian).

"Nala [a dog] and the Purina One team agree."

This quote appeared in an advertisement for pet food.

Car's Law coffee mishap

(Aketon is ...?)

A fragment of John Kinsella's Armour (on poems without politics ...?)

From the OED: A stuffed jacket or jerkin, at first of quilted cotton, worn under the mail; also, in later times, a jacket of leather or other material plated with mail.

Window on the 461 II

|
o
|

o
o

Trans parent

This window, whose otherwise dull life was brightened by the occasional court jester appearance at kids' parties, ended it all by leaping through a window. IRONIC huh! (He was a single father of three.)

Window on the 461 I

Finding yourself in a Morandi still life

|
| |
|
o
|

Giorgio Morandi's Still life, 1960 was painted four years before his death.

The Mundanity of Reconstruction

Mundanity (from the OED).

1. The quality or fact of belonging to the world; worldliness. obs.

2. The quality of being in vogue; fashionableness. rare.

3. The quality or fact of being commonplace, trivial, or ordinary. Also: that which is commonplace; a humdrum thing, a tedious necessity.

Inundation

Passing

We walked on cold ground
Heavy with rain
Unspoiled yet
By night
Or the nomads
Who pass through here

We came to a fire
Straining to see
Its long
Loosely offered
Curlicue tongues
Flare out
Amongst the swollen brush
Lifting and parting
And reforming fiendishly
Into places beyond the embered lair
Or the gypsy pilgrims
Whose tambourine capering
It shadowed

We unwrapped each other
In a cradle of leaves
Out of view til morning
Til our passing
Could be weightless again
Of the temptation
Of the surrender
Printed like veins on our skin

Fragment

A Definite Article

Spider Window

A Tullamarine Factory

Apprenticed in shades of pink
But not for them
This headful of
Blood moons
And silted river beds

Little grey animals
Infested the factory
Bolder the closer they came
To the colour guns
And for a time
My only means of survival

But not for them either
That eventually I retired
Bought a chair
And fashioned while compos
Spherical objects
From moist sand
For the markets

Going Down

Endeavouring to find the right words I

By coincidence, the sailor quoting John Donne was the great poet's namesake. The conversation continued ...

"Yes."

"And you reckon your fancy words'll help?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"They'll make this perilous predicament seem less real. That is to say ... less real."

"You're an idiot."

"Yes Captain."

"Who hired you?"

"You did."

"So I'm an idiot?"

"Captain?"

"Who hired you?"

(Pointing towards the wave) "Fate, sir."

Beth's Window

After a clean up, no one expected to be able to see more clearly. (Though some new geometry did emerge.)

Freedom Ride.

A woman on the bus this morning was shouting into her mobile that she was "a free agent." That her divorce was now, finally, "legit." This followed a cheerful conversation with her mother, from whom she extracted a full description of her soon-to-be-consumed evening meal, item by side-saladed item.

Except for the volume, I thought, fair enough. She's unshackled. Loved. Evidently, she's happy.

And yet I was pleased when my stop came. The sun had just broken free from the clouds after days of diffusion and greyness.