When Viewed From Above

I just has an amazing thought! And it actually has to do with connecting two things, which as I once told a girl on a first date is all knowledge is about organizing and collecting different ideas. But I digress today I flew out over the Grand Canyon and had an amazing above view of Los Vegas.

I realized and this was one of my first thoughts how organized every thing looked from above, which I might add is in stark contrast to alot of the hill side.

Anyway the physics comes in because there is this odd discrepancy as far as I know about unifying the laws of physics for massive objects and for microscopic objects. You see to put it really stupidly big is somewhat near and elegant and small is random and apparently nothing exists there is just potential...

In any case my poem is all about a city or Vegas. Somehow the whole city looks so perfectly organized from above neat and ordered and yet the same objects on a smaller scale or from the ground are chaotic and the shape and nature of the streets is changing every second of the day. Anyway enjoy this poem...not sure it's great but I needed to share this interesting idea with someone. So I choose you my wonderful readers enjoy!

When Viewed From Above

Let the sights arrest you
Spiral wheels revolving
velvet magenta magnum yellow

Viewed from above and
Chaos starts to reorganize
The jagged broken nails of cliffs
Stacked upon each other gangrene

The greater arms of something or
Someone are clearer the higher
The view
the greater
the perspective
When observing the fault of land

There is after all no use blaming
The universe that so far up
all is well
And always was
But so far below Ruptures chaos
ferris wheels Spiraling endless phantom colours
Trailing through perfect corridors
But of course only when viewed
From above...

I Am

I am thick as a plank
Rigid like a wall
I am tall like a squall
And fiercely defiant
In its white face

I am as far
As the gap between two ridges
I am hollow like grass
Tickled by the wind
I am mysterious
The darkness enfolds me

I am explored
My altitudes have know many
I am the light closest to dawn
the sweetest rays are mine

I am closed within
Desire so deep there is no end
I am raw
As the flesh of a grape fruit
In the cold winter

I am torn and rebound
I am abandoned seeking
Shelter in these alpine woods
I am a loner that
Company forsook

Mostly though I am sand
Easy on the toes
Rough when stamped on
Carried out on the tides.

After He Wanders

It seems to me that the best part of skiing is coming home to relax. So this next poem is basically that I don't claim it to be anything more than a clump of sensual experiences I have recently enjoyed.

Merry christmas to all and to all a good night!

After He Wanders

As I wandered in the maple sun
Icicle storms born to drip
Filled the sky line
With the essence of a Christmas
White and simpler

Woods elm and hickory
dripped on smokey tails
Salty tender sticky sweet

As I wandered the lightning powder piled high on sullen slopes
Where I dreamt of being back
by the fire curling naked toes by a
Naked flame.

Descending the metal rail

You know I was in so much pain this afternoon I actually laughed. I laughed for the pain shooting out of my feet just after I climbed down the metal railings and towards the bus back up to my ski resort.

Sometimes it's remarkable how far something can be...thank you skiing haha you have inspired me with your powder and pain.

Descending the Metal Rail

This purple mark is
Nothing compared with the blister
Biting at my heel
Trying to make me giggle in pain
And shriek for joy
On this cascade of metal grate
It is late and cold
But this final torment i still
Have to face

After...

And there is nothing after
Days are scattered as random
Leaves between high flung
Star-moments like gazing
Up and having your breath drawn
Out of your chest
And you lose your
Breath somehow
This is happening
right now to you.

Otherwhere

After going to a poetry club the other night I got to witness what I honestly heard to be really amazing rap artists.

I realized that alot of these poets and the way they flowed sounded so much like rap to me and in all honesty it probably had a lot to do with the culture of the people there.

It gots thinking though particularly about sounds and how poetry can be read. I'd like to think this poem embodies some of that rapping and aggressive sort of voice to it. As you are reading it imagine you are hearing someone maybe Afro American or whatever but up on stage slamming it out.

The concept behind the poem is basically an inability to connect a theme I suppose of many of my poems but in a way particularly relevant as I post from a foreign land. Anyway I hope you all enjoy Otherwhere.

OTHERWHERE

Dizzy white wash
Play-ground for my senses
Playing me around
Turning inside what notions
Of reality I assumed id found

People make liars
It's in the blood
Its always been there wetting the dirt under their thick shoes
Somehow the dirt is red
It's desert earth and it's hot and
It's alive

I'm not sure when things
Changed or stopped happening
In my sphere of the universe
Realities living beside each other
Glasshouses stretching along horizons
And lights can't break their opaque cages
So now as I stare out i see light
But like a cloud dispersing and unsubstantial, incomplete
Haze is how I perceive
the only way I could

There's something wrong here
Something that haunts picks
And nags at me in a deep place
The sort of depth that conjures absence and drowns in its dark light a glow black and chilling

I long ago forsook the idea of nothing
Now more than ever I am convinced
That within the deep
There is in the end simply an other where

A place that cannot exist a place
Where thoughts commingle mix
And gather into a viscous soup
writhing liquid like arms broken and shattered in the darkening layers.

Harlem Guy

This is just a short poem I wrote based on an incident I saw while I was walking through Harlem the other day. I wanted to write something about what I'm noticing as a very clear racial spatial inequality in New York. It sounded clieche back in Australia but now I'm here I see it with my own eyes the history of racial inequality is alive and well the white walk the wealthy streets and the poorer neighborhoods I've gone through are predominantly black. Overlook that at your peril I say in any case here is Harlem Guy.


Harlem Guy

Gary walked
Down the street
Wearing only his puff jacket
And the wrinkles of a smile from his
Marriage and the whore
Who threw him up dry on the street

In This Warehouse

Well this is my earliest post eeriest it's 527am in new York...I oft back about an hour ago from Brooklyn. A really cool party one of the best I've ever been to in my life. Largely this was due to the fact I was relaxed talked to a few new people and danced like a maniac. This poem is a commemoration of last night or tonight...

In This Warehouse

Eclipsed by dawn
Written over nights
Glowing and shimmering

Fawning fading felling
Young limber limbs
Pirouetting over the floor

Menagerie people crowding
Guzzling sipping soaking
It all in

Drinking dancing dawdling
In this warehouse
Gazing at the cleft

Revealing that girls raw nipples.

Learning How to Ice Skate

Greetings all,

How great is wi-fi even in NYC I have had some time to quickly spit out a nifty little thought I had. I just partook in what I believe to be a bit of a new yorkian thing to do ice skating in parks

It isn't the big leagues yet (ie not central park) blast it all I don't remember the name of the park but the moral of this tale is pretty cool. Embarrassingly enough despite probably ice skating more than both my friends I was worse than both.

I was so out of control needing to use my mental energy to bend my knees, keep leaning forward, hands not too far out at the sides not to mention dodging people and cripes it was really cool but 100+ people on the ice is not so easy to avoid.

Anyway after losing my friends again around the rink a thought occurred to me something someone pretty wise recently told me if you initiate you are in control. So rather than waiting timidly for people to pass or gaps to open I started to go for the gaps and weave in and out of people. It was still Dan scary but it was also taking the power back and I think perhaps that is a brilliant metaphor for other struggles so I wrote it down. Whatever it is you are challenging yourself to do remember initiating does give you the power and running is easier but you lose power. Anyway this is Learning How to Skate.

Learning How to...Ice Skate

Learning how to skate
Is the lesson for my life
Teetering and swaying
Not comprehending of other
Bodies scattered close and near

Scratching over the ice taking
Care to graft new tracks not
Slip into old cracks in the ice
Avoiding and swaying

Out of control
Not flying falling
Not dancing sprawling
And gawking only ever gawking
Across the bodies close and near
Always danger always fear

Bodies that dart out behind me
Loop me and leave and
Others skimming gently
Others still stumbling but
In different speeds worlds dimensions

There are gaps and if just
Slowly I rock my body up
So that I see gaps
So I stumble to gaps and
Let myself do the stumbling

Why then yes
Somehow at last it actually
feels as though I'm skating

Teetering swaying sprawling
Now falling but
In the end also am I skating
And remarkably also strafing.

I am skating.

All You Lost Souls

Well I was reading over my poetry workshop class poems and there was always one poem for me that stood out. With this poem I was really trying to do something different, in fact I submitted it as a resume to a law firm ahem who wanted something creative submitted. I think they meant an essay...apparently, oh well as there question was vague I blame them not me. They wanted someone out of the box, how more out of the box is writing a poem right?

 Anyway the earlier version of what I'm going to share is what I gave them. Now this poem runs for several pages, my original idea was a rant on Self-Help books. In the end I reshaped it and made it look like several smaller poems in a "book". I thought this might make it a bit better, I'll admit it's a bit different and I understand what's going on here, but it's quite an odd little poem, which is why I thought I'd share it. It was created in the same spirit of creativity as Jolly One-Click Shoe Hero and it is an example of the extent of what you can do in poetry, although Next year I intend to start showing you all some truly strange and wonderful poets and poems and perhaps have a gamble of my own. Anyway here it is from the Vaults, All You Lost Souls (each title represents a new page).

ALL YOU LOST SOULS

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

I looked up...but no voice responded

Anonymous

Perhaps I should consult my horoscope...

The Inquirer$

(I)Ac(know)ledge(me)nts

For all of you Anthony Robbinses,

sexperts,

relationship handymen

and radio doctors

and all of you Jubilant Alternative Zany Zealous Youths in your various fields

that have helped us all gain such a great insight into the human psyche.

Why without you all studying that big lump of grey matter we might all be walking blind. Now we have the power, testify! Unlike those religious gods of old you have saved us. No please! I need to finish you have saved me and so many of my friends.

 The Power of N(H)ow(?)

I can right now, I can!

It’s all in the knowing, the feeling.

                Now how did you apply that formula again?

               

This Time

MayBe Bullet

Proof

the ballad

of the overly optimistic

radio doc

Hi I want to sue

I think you got the wrong place

buddy this is a radio station

Isn’t this where you report rape?

<laughs>  you’re a comedian huh.

No just a specialist in sarcasm

Well after all who needs a Phd these days...

<laughs>

            ...caller line 2

Your show sucks

<laughs> (sure thing kid)

Emotional rape your honour

It’s Called a Law-Suit cos it’s

Broken (and all that jazz)

Emotional rape your honour

As he explained the facts I began to get suspicious.

“All we care about is love.”

That and the wad of bills in your wallets.

           

            “...And they promised, promised, they promised I would be the best...I could be? It’s just not fair, I’m still only waiting bars, scraping plates and don’t get me started on those drunk bastards on Thursdays.”

            Listen buddy, we never said you would, only that you could.

            “Maybe that should be the title of your next book, ass hole!”

i looked up.

it was my turn after this amazing display of etiquette

 grace and need I say common-sensical-babble:

“I suppose it’s my turn to ramble then?

now let me see emotional rape

can you quantify those damages...

Now for you, come here.

Thatta boy.

A good slap on the wrist for you.

           

Well off you go then!”

Chicken soup for (you) the soul(s)

Hey I just got an idea

Yeah?

The ‘Smile-Diet’ reckon I could get 200 pages on it

There’s never too many smiles

“Ever find yourself searching for that smiling stranger. Wouldn’t it be nice to stare across a crowded street and feel that connection not just those cold eyes. Well why wait at all. After learning the seven symptoms of the Rainy Day we will start to integrate the ‘Smile-Diet’ in order to avoid these shades of grayness so common in everyday life.

            But first a question? Why are you waiting for the world to smile for you?

Get up right now flick to page two and start smiling, your Smile-Diet has begun.”

What it

said on Page 2

“I read a book recently and you know it was funny, it said right at the end. Everything up to this point is theory. I nearly laughed you know, like actually laughed out loud. It then went on mind you”

forget everything,

every line,

every syllable,

every word,

every symbol.

I will be frustrated if I’m not seeing the sides of the trash can.

Jolly One-Click Shoe Hero

Hey all,

I thought as this may very well be one of if not my last post for 2011, I thought I might post the poem I named the title of my blog after. I began this poem by putting my name into an acronym generator. Basically you type in your name or any word and it'll spit out random words as if each letter in your name stood for something. Hence I got:


J olly O ne-click S hoe H ero or J.O.S.H

Anyway i though that this ridiculous phrase epitomised who I was so well that I decided to use a poem not with my imagination, but with this random generator. What I produced was a bit of an interesting poem, it's actually about a past relationship I had and as such is somewhat personal. In any case I'll post it, because it was an interesting experiment. If you know me it won't be too hard to work out who and what it's about as for everyone else, I hope this poem encourages you to really flex your creative muscle and try something completely different.

Jolly One-click Shoe Hero    

:)

Spoiled Omnivore Peasant Hiatus

Blonde Uranium Boyfriend

:(

Jolly one-click shoe hero

Loving Unit vendor

Skintight Optimal Penetration Horizon

                                                                                    Fissure Agony Tribune

Juicy Outline Sword Hypocrite

Deconstructed Insect Existence

                                                                                   

Sinking Overnight Parabolic Happiness

Enigmatic Neglect Database

Jungle Obscene Sundae Healer

Translucent Investment Target

                                                Spoiled one-click Penetration Hypocrite

                                                Juicy overnight sundae hiatus

                                                Jungle omnivore shoe horizon

                                                Skintight outline parabolic healer

Jolly one-click hero

Spoiled omnivore peasant hiatus :)

Real Hero by College feat. Electric Youth

When I saw the movie Drive I think I almost loved this song as much as the movie. It's such a beautiful song really, I just love the chorus. It goes "be a  human being and a real hero" and to me that's what the movie was all about, it was about this everyman only known as the driver and in his own world he was a hero. He was extraordinairy true, but the song is good because it says to me that the ordinairy can be extraordinairy.

 It's a really nice synthy song that makes me nostalgic for the 80's a time I spent in dipers and struggling to say my first words. You don't need to see the movie (although I highly recommend it), you must however listen to this song. I'll post the lyrics below, but check out this link as well if you have time you will not regret it.

 Real Hero

Be a human being ( being bein being... )
And a real hero ( hero hero hero... )

Back against the wall and odds
With the strength of a militant cause
A pursuit some called outstanding
Or emotionally complex
Against the grain of dystopic claims
Not the thoughts your actions entertained
 
And you, have proved, to be
A real human being, and a real hero
be a human being, and a real hero
be a human being, and a real hero
be a human being, and a real hero
be a human being ( being being being... )

A pilot on a cold, cold morn'
One hundred fifty-five people on board
All safe and all rescued
From the slowly sinking ship
Water warmer than
His head so cool
In that tight bind knew what to do
 
And you, have proved, to be
A real human being, and a real hero
be a human being, and a real hero
Be a human being, and a real hero
Be a human being
Be a human being ( being being being... )
Be a human being.

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/a-real-hero-lyrics-college.html ]

Big by Sneaky Sound System

It might seem odd for me to post this up, but when I first heard this song I really liked how sweet it was. So many pop songs these days aren't about the really sweet stuff. This song though to me is really beautiful at capturing that moment where a relationship goes to the next level and it's really hard to put yourself completely on the line. In fact in the song they sort of talk around what they're trying to say, which really just works to make it seem like a bigger deal, hence the title Big.

So why do I like it? I'll admit I've felt like this a lot, both in my head hoping for something Big and also in real life scared when I'm ready to admit to some girl that I think what we have could be big. So here it is everyone, Big and Sneaky Sound System's third album is pretty awesome so any fans of their music check it out you won't be dissapointed, I'll post a link to the video on youtube here if you want to check it out. I highly recommend it.


Big

I won't forget the time,
When you told me, we could be something,
The memory, it is mine.

We talked so many times,
You were always, my medicine.
You mean everything to me.

And every time I thought you'd take my hand,
And you would volunteer to understand... me.

This is the moment we've been waiting for.
This could be big for me and you.
This could be more than we both care to know.
This could be big for me and you,
We could do anything.

Of all the things you said,
But there's one thing, we can't escape.
Like a bird who's wings, are no more.

You said every time I thought you'd take my hand,
And you would volunteer to understand... me.

This is the moment we've been waiting for.
This could be big for me and you.
This could be more than we both care to know.
This could be big for me and you,
We could do anything.
We could do anything.
We could do anything.

Always by your side, up until it ends.
Always by your side, up until it ends.
Always by your side, up until it ends.
Always by your side, up until it ends.

This is the moment we've been waiting for.
This could be big for me and you.
We could do anything.
This could be more than we both care to know.
This could be big for me and you,
We could do anything

No One

Good morning everyone,

I'll try and post as much as I can today and perhaps Wednesday. I'm leaving for America for the next month so my very loyal and important readers, most of December will be a postless vacuum. The next poem I wanted to post, is really a nice thought or perhaps a critical one. I wanted it to be a bit more poetical. It's rather simple really, I've been reading a book of Les Murray Poetry and I think...by god, boy you confuse the heck out of me. Naturally people think that poetry should at least be decipherable to poets...maybe it is but not to me, but I have another theory whcih helps my confidence. I know for me Poetry is a particularly unique thing like an abstract painting sometimes and really the only one who can completely know what the poem was or where it came from was the poet, so hence why I'll share a little here so you can get what I'm sayin.

Basically, I was thinking what a shame it would be if people kept everything inside and then I thought so much of who we are is about connecting to other things so really inside we are "no one". Anyway readers please enjoy this next poem and in your own lives try and connect with as much as you can!

No one

No one on this earth can admit the plainest

Bounds of our minds are our real homes

Trapped behind a glass wall of nerves

And pulsing electrons

Inside we are no one

Outside we become something

We build our neurons around other bodies

Things shapes landscapes lives

We breathe and we feel

We breathe to feel and

Feel to breathe

Apart and together and interconnected

Laced clumsily and tightly

The knots are where we thrive

The places between things and connections

Before this and before our entry and exits

Within the glob of bile and swelling brain though

We are truly no one

A Girl by Ezra Pound

I wanted to find a poem by Ezra Pound who I was convinced is credited with writing the shortest poem. I don't know where I pulled that ahem fact from, but my search led me to this poem.

Quite frankly I love it. This is such a beautiful and flowing metaphor of love a relationship and a girl.

A Girl

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

The Brood

Greetings all,

So we have arrived to December and now that we are so close to 2012 I'd like to post some older stuff I've written and also some songs that have been on my radar and whose lyrics I adore! Anyway we will begin November with a bit of dark and brooding. Read on for the chilling intro and dark words.

I was haunted this afternoon by something from the past. Looking back I saw it with greater clarity. This is intentionally vague needless to say this poem is that sense of collective belonging and sharing. All of us are part of the brood and we all go to drink by the pools of the black :-)

The Brood

Lurking darkness strays as
Lines divide it turn it
Make it yours make it mine

Ours is the brooding dark
My dark one my only one
Fair spell fair night

Your truth thicker than black
As obscure as night
As deep as mine
as broken as the spaces

Kneel and so will I
Under the yellow into the black
Stray to me intoxicate me

Beside me be and exist
Pleasant and singing silent
Hymns down and darker

Melding smelting forming
Collecting gathering Spawning
My Sweetest sadness so far below

The Mundane Manifestations of the Bedroom

I haven't written a truly unpleasant poem in a while. I had the first line floating in my head and wasnt really sure what to do with it.

I heard someone cough obscenely loudly...as members of my family are often known to do. I admit the thought in my head was brutal and cruel...do I pondered not experiencing it myself all the foul noises and sounds encountered in the thrawls of intimacy.

I hope you enjoy this exploration of forbidden thoughts.

The Mundane Manifestations of the Bedroom

You cough like a strangled dog
Grotesque wrangled worm
Foul loathsome creature
Why must you haunt my sheets

Twenty Long nights and mornings
Where you assaulted me with your musk
Twenty long days shuffled behind a too hot body

The sheets are dirty so I
Go to the laundry
The sheets once more are fouled
As always I go

Rabid animal
Demon spawn
Lazy succubus

Who while drunk on semen
Lazily succumbs to deepest slumber
You roll and roll about
Tumbling your sweat and faecal remnants

Twenty days
Twenty years
Twenty sleeps
Too few dreams

Movements of the Night

All the dark faces
All the loneliness
All the promise of this night

Lost on me
Lost because of what I am
Of the shadow that I've become

Flags families and memories
Other people call their own
I can wait though till I drown
Tonight in this sorrow

Walking along this street
And I wonder always is the world
Really this bigger than me
Or Is life simply my own dream

A dream a fading thing
A wisp or step on the road

To trail or to gleam
Something for myself
Something for my own
To lift my chest and my heart
Make it lift and make it roar

But the darkness and the emptiness
Drowns it all and now
I am still alone.

He Walks the Dunes

I wrote a poem when I was back in year 7 in school. It was called the journey and I really loved writing it. It did everything I loved in star wars or adventure. It took a hero to exotic places and through intense personal trials and more importantly it isolated then and forced them to confront the dark.

I recently watched all six star wars movies and craving to capture that sense of adventure and wandering and facing heroic trials I wrote this next poem. It's also very much a tribute to my earlier poem the Journey.

So without further waffle I present:

HE WALKS THE DUNES

Broken cartilage reveals a dark sneer on his brow
Caught across the dunes and the light
Seeking out his destiny between the days and nights
Till it all comes blowing out of him
Tumbling out over the sand and up the hills that roam and roll

The endless stretches out in his eyes
The corners or the horizon are the same as the dust at his feet
On he plods treds trudges
Not to anywhere he knows
Nowhere to go no signs
Just a simple pursuit of life

To live to drink to eat
These things he both wants and needs
His bones weak now snapping
His eyes once clear now hazy
Coated in a film like webbing of
A great spider that might live here
In the endless featurelessness

What comfort does night bring or can it?
Can it cool and calm torn ligaments
Does it mend broken tissue
Infested and rotted as the sand which darkens and howls at night

Empty
The word that fits perfectly in a world
filled to the brim in sand and wind and evaporation

Through death in despair
Through mortality and the after
Into the featurelessness here and the absence there
He walks across the dunes

Two Wretched Men sit defeated by the Poolside

This is a poem recounting a particular memory I encountered on the weekend. I actually was requested to write a poem about a friend and was lacking inspiration when I remembered a very whimsical line my friend S told me "my body does represent the demise of humanity". I think it gives you an idea of the kind of melodrama we incorporate into our conversations.

We had a typical men fisticuffs off in y pool. S and I being too weak alone took on the almighty T. He ultimately defeated us we were too dismal to defeat such a Titan. But it was a fun battle and I hope you enjoy the poem.

TWO WRETCHED MEN sit defeated by the poolside

My body does represent the demise of humanity
Quoted a grim facade of my friend
A grim expression and grim end
To a fight that should it have ended different might have crowned us both victors alas it was not so
No the tiger of the waters was destined to swallow us in his mammoth grips and so completely destroyed were we
All now left to do is to move on and let the titans have their war
For us we are on the sidelines until called upon
On the sidelines till a fight finds us again and maybe again shall we have a shot and opportunity
To overcome the tiger once more

Earth-Sex

Continental gyrations
Shifting plates and spasming
Lava vents spewing
Ripe and red and
Forming new mounds

Death of a Bird by A D Hope

I just had another read of Hay Fever, I love how it deals with such a grim topic as death and time in such a seemingly distant and contemplative way. I suppose I should say another thing about A D Hope, he's very good at creating images and motifs that run through his poems, like the scythe in Hay Fever. I really fluked upon him going through an anthology of Australian poems, but while I glossed over most poems something hit me about A D Hope and I think after reading Hay Fever again it's more than an intellectual appreciation. As I said poetry for me has to deal with something human and if you'll read Hay Fever closely you'll aslo notice the way A D Hope plays with what the scythe means in his poem and he also does some interesting things with the sounds of words and some nice enjambment on lines that run on to the next (ah, I think secretly that's my favourite form of play, someone who likes to be naughty with their words...give me a break people I'm a poet and this is what we get excited or dare I say Itchy about).

Death of a Bird is a very different poem to Hay Fever, it has none of the levity of Hay Fever, but the same darkness. It is again a poem very much about death, but it feels less personal. It isn't so much about A D Hope's personal secrets, but something he's witnessed and feels strongly about. Death of a Bird, is exactly what it sounds like, but it's also a fascinating journey poem as well.

Also check out this very informative blog. If you want to understand the actual influences and hear about an actual conversation with hope go to this website, it's also where I found the text for this poem.

Death of a Bird

For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart. 

Year after year a speck on the map divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home; 

And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest;
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast. 

The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm-tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scraps of stone. 

And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger,
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air. 

A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place.
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space. 

She feels it close now, the appointed season:
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies. 

Try as she will the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign,
The immense and complex map of hills and rivers
Mocks her small wisdom with its vast design. 

And darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.

Hay Fever by A D Hope

I feel like I should have posted this already, but you know what I'm sick of, people praising the same poets. It seems like no one except poets and a few nieche readers understand how far and wide poetry is. For me what I adore about poetry is exploring secret places, but not only that as my tutor Martin Harrison said in Poetry Workshop poems should be about play as well.

Playing with the dark stuff, whipping out hillarious puns (well ocaisionally), playing with the rules of language, playing with the supposed structures of poetry, challenging yourself and challenging the reader. To me these are all ways of playing, but I also like poems that are vivid, but not in an old school sort of bush poet way. That's what I loved about A D Hope's poetry, he's an Aussie like me and honestly, he is an amazing poet. What do I like so much about his poetry, not only does he gravitate between more sprawling structures and tighter stanza fare, which I think is always an important.

He's got a real honesty and there are secrets to be found in his poems. The stupid secrets of his childhood, memory and heart. Honestly if a poem isn't capturing something powerfully and wonderfully human, I'll admit, I want to glaze over a bit, which is probably whyI roll my eyes at the idea of bush poetry, but anyone reading this feel free to post a rebuttle...I'll admit it's harsh, but a poem needs to explore something personal and raw I think for it to effect me.

That's why increasingly, I've moved back out of an odd experimental phase and back into realising that exploring one's humanity is much more than being emo and I think that's what this poem does so well. To me Hay Fever is a mixture of nostalgia and secrets and warmth and maybe just because I finished up itchy, there's something sticky and sexual in there too (hey I'm a guy so help me).

So it's my pleasure to show who I consider to be one of the less mainstream, but awesome Modern Australian Poets. Anyway without further ado here is Hay Fever by A D Hope. As the internet is acting all annoying on me, I'll have to give you a scanned copy of the poem. Anyway, expect some more A D Hope coming soon.

 P.S There's also another intriguing layer to this poem and it's something I actually wrote an extended essay on...but I'll leave that for another post. Enjoy!