kipple

Southern Christmas - senryu and haiku - Peter Macrow

2011-03-11T02:38:00.000-08:00

Southern Christmas
senryu and haiku

her Christmas red top
work makes her wear
'I'm here' she says it says

a man holds the seat
for his boy
wobbling his Christmas bike

neighbour's barbecue
guess who got a trumpet
for Christmas?

New Year's Eve a cabbage moth
crosses the lawn
ahead of its shadow

New Year's Day the first
dandelion daisy
in freshly cut grass

January 7th
a Christmas balloon
still in the tree

Peter Macrow
http://www.pardalote.com.au/titles/oilslicksun/

tincture - stuart barnes

2011-01-09T03:17:00.000-08:00

tincture

our prickly pear’s
eleven copper
suns have expired.
bellies of Rainbow
parrots flare against
a Henson sky like
matches. fireworks
ridicule horizons. a
stray cat blackens.

stuart barnes
http://bluepepper.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-poetry-by-stuart-barnes.html

We Raw Muggers Haiku - Shane Jesse Christmass

2010-12-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

We Raw Muggers Haiku

lying bathe bridge of his
nose one of the other
patience

rapidly into an insole
fall to his
knees

to lie swivels around
in trouble
this comet is useless

the taps off and then
murder these
what do you want?

the water turned trusses are
casing and us coming from
the bathing cautioned

textual some unceasing
plucks off the night
it’s him to hog into what is right

l walked the corridor well
doesn’t mountain bike in the amulet
crackled himself

I’m a bit nervous
she ; the milky cup
of tea

Shane Jesse Christmas
http://luparapublishing.blogspot.com/

Modem - Stuart Barnes

2010-08-31T04:06:00.000-07:00

MODEM

London by night all alone,
London by night on my own
The KLF

3 a.m., 3 a.m., 3 a.m. Eternal like
those Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
I snap awake, buzzy from my
purple shrinking pills, to stagger
to the loo to take a piss. Passing
the computer it startles
me still, this little black sarcophagus
with the boisterous proboscis and
kaleidoscopic lights, electric blue.
May it mourn for a tampered field
of corn? Is there something more?

Stuart Barnes
http://www.pool.org.au/users/stuart_barnes

Jeremy Balius - Three Haiku

2010-07-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

falling leaves spin
teaching dervishes
to whirl

-

mother smiles
then passes on to glory –
the sea ebbs

-

a crow returns to murder
not enough
frequent flyer points

Jeremy Balius
http://jeremybalius.wordpress.com/

Phillip A Ellis - 15 August 2009

2010-06-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

15 August 2009

Over lands, seas, and oceans, the stars rise
steadily, into night and the dark sky
unmarked by any moon. When the stars fade
from the heights, scratched as it is by streets' lamps,
houses, other buildings, then no eye knows
what was once seen, in the open night sky:
seasons, directions, legends, and fair lamps
hung from the heavens, and from a dark vault.

But the night is still young, younger than time,
younger than the lands over which it's hung
like a veil of unseeing, emptiness
kept at bay as by gossamer star-veils,
clusters of flaming gas, fields of burning,
fragile wards facing entropy, heat death.

Phillip A Ellis
http://phillipellis.f-snet.com/

Jeff Klooger - A Brief History Of Getting Smashed

2010-06-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

A Brief History Of Getting Smashed

Emotion is chemistry, and alcohol
is love ― here especially, or anywhere tropical.
Tonight we will get drunk like scientists, our heads bursting
with untested theories, facts
whizzing past our eyes
and into the sunset.

We don’t care. Without fear or forethought,
we gaze into the magic heart of things. Reality
is what we see when we close our eyes,
sure as physics, sucking us in
like gravity. If you lie flat out
and stare straight up at the stars, you will get dizzy,
but all that whirling still makes sense somehow.

God is a dry martini, shaken not stirred.
Proof is a toothpick
piercing the olive of the world.
Einstein understood: the faster you go
the heavier you get.
Intoxication is a formula
that escapes to infinity.

Jeff Klooger
http://walleahpress.com.au/FR37Klooger.html

Michael Lee Johnson - Charley Plays a Tune

2010-06-01T03:34:00.000-07:00

Charley Plays a Tune

Crippled, in Chicago,
with arthritis
and Alzheimer's,
in a dark rented room,
Charley plays
melancholic melodies
on a dust-filled
harmonica he
found abandoned
on a playground of sand
years ago by a handful of children
playing on monkey bars.
He now goes to the bathroom on occasion,
relieving himself takes forever; he feeds the cat when
he doesn't forget where the food is stashed.
He hears bedlam when he buys fish at the local market
and the skeleton bones of the fish show through.
He lies on his back, riddled with pain,
pine cones fill his pillows and mattress;
praying to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads
Charley blows tunes out his
celestial instrument
notes float through the open window
touch the nose of summer clouds.
Charley overtakes himself with grief
and is ecstatically alone.
Charley plays a solo tune.

Michael Lee Johnson
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000058168

Porgy Comes Home - Image & Text by Wayne Wolfson

2010-05-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

She thirsted to hear my voice again, even the small things; asking her to shut the light, the click of the last domino being put back in the box, my cigar as she walked by the ashtray left on the counter.

When she was beautiful there was something almost commonplace about it. I much preferred her looking tired or melancholy. It has a more honest feel to it as it also encompasses a sort of collaborative origin involving us both.

Even when we had first met, her in her best dress, she interested me with the lies that she told and not her beauty.

That first night we drank all the free booze which the party had to offer, then walked all the way to Les Halles for onion soup. We talked the entire time, not out of any awkward pressure but just for the enjoyment of it.

Our two voices, her French more of a sing song quality than my thick tongued grunts, would sometimes come back to us via an empty alley echo. This late night duet was not without its appeal.

It had kept me more alert than I had expected. The soup would now be more than mere ritual, I was becoming hungry.

She talked of appetite in an honest way with all its accompanying unpleasantness, which appealed to me.

Desire, those who always know how to get what they want, the abstract idea of the goal, radiate a sort of light like the gleam of a star, brilliant and cold. Marissa though, her glow was more that of a funeral pyre.

It has been two years and I am still waiting to see how it will end. We both have our little power plays and bite backs but neither of us seem inclined to rush towards an end game.

I have become superstitious about her tears. After conjuring them a certain amount of times they will haunt me long after she is gone. The tiger crouched in the pile of dirty laundry under the bed, I must be careful.

I had not asked her to pick me up and she had not offered. It would acknowledge our shared history another link in a chain which grew a little longer every day.

The airport at this hour was mostly empty, the few bodies one saw where all at a distance, frozen, more random components of a tableau than actual people.

There were no taxis to be found so I caught the train.

It was raining, I buttoned my jacket even though I knew the train would be too warm and I would have to undo it again.

The last train of the night. Using the blurred lights which slide by, the drizzle paints an impressionistic image of the city upon the window which I now lean my forehead against for its coolness.

I climb the stairs to the street. I stop at Pepe’s to call and let her know I made it all right and a quick Calvados to ease the pain in my side.

Technically, they were not open but two old men sat by the window smoking cigars and playing cards. One tourist who had initially been attracted by the lone light on a dark street in a tee shirt sat alone and dazed in front of a row of empty glasses. He was too drunk to get back to his hotel but did not know where else to go.

Not bothering anybody, Marc had stopped serving him but let him stay.

We shook hands, he let me use the phone as he poured. I held up two fingers. She wanted me to come over. No. She wanted to come over. No. I would see her tomorrow which was now today after I cleaned up and rested a bit.

She tried not to come across as disappointed. I noticed her effort but pretended not to.

The drinks made me temporarily feel good enough to make it home. I paid and left.

Without turning on the light, I put my bag down next to the door and started getting undressed.
I go to wash my face. I enjoy the quiet, the familiar scent of my place. I leave the lights out, I feel a headache coming on, I probably had not had enough water before flying.

The rough hewn bar of soap left in the basin of the sink takes on the identity of a pearl in a shell as now viewed in the pale light spilling in through the windows. I should get some sleep. I look in the mirror, in this light though my features are indistinct, I could be anybody.

I now reach for the soap, the underside is still slick like a secret, someone had been here. I hold it in my hand, my fingers playing over the cracks in its top.

I thought of how I had gotten the drop on the one they had called Zeppo.

He could have stood still and I would have just taken him in. But instead he had made a reach, chancing that he would be faster.

I knelt down and clearing his lips of blood with my own handkerchief held his head up in case he wanted to say something.

The killer had been warm like the hum of an old tube radio. He had gambled it all and lost. Men like us never seem to go in for half measures.

Wayne Wolfson
http://www.waynewolfson.com/

Landscapes - Stuart Barnes

2010-04-18T00:38:00.000-07:00

LANDSCAPES

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
Marcel Proust

(I) Collingwood

the Magi are imaginable

a poultice for sizzling footpaths

jasmine’s in clusters like jellyfish

or brains over ramshackle wooden

fences – missing pales, missing teeth

sepia light smogs broken warehouse

rooftops, cracks the jade-green eyes

of stray white cats you stalk,

face ringing like a church bell

(II) Clifton Hill

alarming palaver! blue Mary,

grey child OshKosh B’Gosh

buggies, brown and black – they pass,

slow as hearses birds-of-paradise

fly fabulous crests’ molten colours

at the air; I stare and stare the light

of the day is starry, and comes

from the eye of the cardinal mountains

you come out of nowhere

(III) Abbotsford

a shock-haired man rubs lamps

of Technicolor glass graceful

as giraffes, nuns unfurl dark habits

hands rub like papery leaves

in November there’s mayhem

at the manger last winter I witnessed

a froth of hops, like sheep or a crime,

across the water you in white

across the water fire in the sky

Stuart Barnes
http://pool.org.au/users/stuart_barnes

In The Middle Of The Night - Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

2010-04-02T16:57:00.000-07:00

In The Middle Of The Night

She played video games

on a dirty brown couch

that reeked of Doritos

and sweaty ass.

She pulled the heads

off her Barbie dolls

in a dark apartment

above Charley’s Bar

where her mother

turned tricks for crack.

She joined the Army

to pay for college–

put on boots

and slammed

to Combat Rock.

Now she sits on a

leather sectional,

sells adult toys

in Manhattan,

has 798 friends

on Facebook,

updates her page

with sexy videos

and hangs up

when her mother

calls bawling

in the middle

of the night.

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder
http://juliebuff.wordpress.com/

Unraveled - Benjamin Dodds

2010-03-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

Unraveled

Never referred to explicitly

they feature alongside

anonymous lab technicians

safety-goggled henchmen

wielding delicate glass pipettes

and endless arrays of plastic phials

in footage furnishing 30-second

news pieces about genetics

and ‘ethically-troubling’ breakthroughs.

Throw in the phrase playing God

and you’re there.

Electrophoresis gels lay out

ladders of striated DNA

that fade into chemical whispers

running down the page.

To unfurl the coils

you’ll need a solution of Acrylamide

our dreaded antagonist

and known neurotoxin.

Acrylamide even looks dangerous

with its cross-braced capital A

dangerous enough to knock me

off my feet after a long and hot bath

on a departmental flex day

to find myself naked and dry

on the bedroom floor

involuntarily trawling

the bridge of my nose

up and down beige carpet

in a wide red arc.

I’ve since read

that Acrylamide accrues

in the system.

That ground-in stain

with its rusting brightness

smiles up at me still.

Benjamin Dodds
http://benjamindodds.blogspot.com/

in the things we hold and the things we cannot - Mark William Jackson

2010-03-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

in the things we hold and the things we cannot

the bottle paints it perfumed image?

_________________days of empty despair

while the light that guided

smiles as I talk to her

___________________about poetry

Mark William Jackson
http://markwilliamjackson.com/

Three Poems - Majena Mafe

2010-03-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Always…

_____you’d become still
_____before the jump to ____here

_____O laugh out loud...

-

so sue me

‘Doesn’t she look goo-ood
her full-blown-self…’
Ridge Forester bloats.

-

cut

the placing of flowers inside
presupposes a confidence in water
and the dubious assumption that kept
water will beauty provide

Majena Mafe
http://www.majenamafe.com/

Three Haiku - Pearl Nelson

2010-02-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

the pond at the end
of the street, its edges frozen
and without toad song

-

after a hard rain
the old man’s turnips
bare sensuous purple shoulders

-

that old drunken moon–
smoking cigarettes and singing
songs in a toad’s voice

Pearl Nelson
http://pearlnelson.wordpress.com/

Looking Back - Ron Wilkins

2010-02-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

Looking Back

A thump with the heel
of the hand forcing entry,
then the metal ripper jacking up
the lid in levered steps until
with a twist,
the jagged disk snapped loose.
It was hard preparing a meal
of sausages and vegetables
in those student days,
filling up on a chunk of bread and jam,
a mug of tea.

Now, the opener is half the size.
It grips the rim and by successive turns
of a wheel at the side,
the can rotates et voila –
a perfect reflecting circle drops,
neat as a freshly minted coin.
How much easier life has become,
though as I gaze at the pale beans
glowing in their pink sauce,
I wonder could I be viewing the present
through rosy-tinted spectacles?

Ron Wilkins
http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/changsha-beauty/

Beloved - Shonni Hodge

2010-02-13T17:08:00.000-08:00

Beloved

The lies have wrought their own piece:
Intricate curls, gilt and glamour
to showcase the shame.

Glass beads set in the mask
reflect years.
Contorted husk
of animation,
carved dream of humanity:

Her perfection is without equal.

How I despised her, and her magpie eyes.
Unyielding presence, a thing possessed – she watches
And knows.

Empty shell! Your partner quit your side forever.
How he must have loathed your
porcelain, so cold beneath
mere flesh.

But now my heart is merely sickened
to watch you sit and stare.
Skin once flush and heated is now
Chilling, startling to touch.
Eyes whose life once boiled, flooding my heart,
reflect the world without wonder.

Shonni Hodge
http://disorganisationanddiatribes.blogspot.com/

The Words That Fell To Earth - Amelia Walker

2009-12-28T15:55:00.000-08:00

The Words That Fell To Earth

Thirty seven pages.
Thirty seven miles.
The diary of Ilan Ramon,
Israel's first astronaut,
found, wet and crumpled,
in a field just outside Palestine,
Texas. Words:
scrawled survivors,
the only survivors of Columbia,
the space shuttle that disintegrated
upon re-entry, February 1st, 2003
- the newspaper says.

Disintegrated.
Such a newspaper word.
Distintegrated.
All that metal.
All that flesh
and blood and bones and organs
and thoughts -what thoughts?
Any?
Where did they go?

How is it ink and paper escaped
the explosion, the heat,
the ice cold plummet,
the dirt and damp of the field
to be found, two months later
and returned to Ilan's wife?

All that ink.
All that paper.
All that metal.
All that flesh.
Thirty seven pages
and how many words?

Amelia Walker
http://www.freewebs.com/ameliawalker/

New Tone Poem at 'The Poetry Slave'

2009-12-18T18:22:00.000-08:00

Jane Williams and I have just finished the first collaborative tone poem at 'The Poetry Slave' (see link below & to the right)

Much in the same way that Sergei Rachmaninoff used Arnold Böcklin’s painting ‘The Isle of the Dead‘ as a starting point for his piece of the same name, we’ve used the expressionist painter Marc Chagall’s work Les Fiances de la Tour Eiffel as ours.

Have a look!

http://thepoetryslave.wordpress.com/

Mark William Jackson - These Days that Play like Toothaches

2009-12-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

These days that play like toothaches.
dragging each breath in
then pushing it out
like a cheating lover.
Breath upon breath until
the day is drawn up
and spat into a waste basin
by the straight syringe of time.
Day upon day until
we are left
to sleep with worms.

Mark William Jackson
http://markwilliamjackson.com/

Ron Wilkins - A Matter of Life and Death

2009-11-29T02:42:00.000-08:00

A matter of life and death

While walking down the street
I surprised a girl and a boy
in passionate embrace against a wall.
Nothing strange about that, you may say,
but she was dressed in school uniform
and it was during school hours.
Ah, that’s life I said to myself.
Hey, guess what I saw in The Boulevard
I said to my wife.

Next day I was carrying
a ring-tailed possum by the tail
as I walked along the road.
Schoolgirl heads
swivelled in unison as I passed.
Burying the possum
in an unmarked grave next to the last
and beside the graves of my two cats,
creating quite a cemetery,
I thought to myself, that’s death.
Hey, guess what I saw down the street
I suppose a schoolgirl said to her mum,
completing yet another
life and death tale.

Ron Wilkins
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2008/4/worm

Sorting - Benjamin Dodds

2009-11-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

Sorting

Stainless-steel pincers prick and tear
at a spread of gelatinous film
as I tack across the magnified world
of circular Pyrex dish.
Resting my eyes back in 1:1 scale,
I find that this membrane
is the anaemic skin
of a tiny speckled frog
made transparent
through weeks
of refrigerated storage
in hermetic cube-stacked jars,
its silken bounds
the only thing
that kept free-floating workings in.
Previously anchored to their task,
strange forms now range adrift
in the sterile expanse of ethyl alcohol,
a wash of organelles
breathed out by the slackening shape.

Benjamin Dodds
http://benjamindodds.blogspot.com/

Running - Vanessa Page

2009-10-30T18:58:00.000-07:00

Running

When roadside has turned to red
and desert oaks are stenciled
neat on car window canvases
you’ve run far enough - to where
dust folds over to new thicknesses
taking with it every trace.

It’s too late for the maps, left
unfolded on the passenger seat
you’re lost in odometer’s slow roll
passing bloated marsupials
with legs stiff as tent poles
grasping the sense in endings.

Vanessa Page
http://vanessapage.wordpress.com/

A Free Verse Sonnet for Freya Buchanan - Phillip A. Ellis

2009-10-13T02:50:00.000-07:00

A Free Verse Sonnet for Freya Buchanan

With the sun slowly
growing through winter,
till the spring comes at last
with its crop of birds,
and the earth itself wakes
from the somnolence that is frozen soil,
it is not strange that some may
look to the long suns of summer.

But, before you do, think on this:
each element of snow is unique,
and will never be seen again,
just as is each mote of dust
strangely attracted along the shafts
of summer sunlight on sleep-dealing days.

Phillip A. Ellis
http://phillipellis.f-snet.com/

Haiku from Graham Nunn

2009-09-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Currently leading our Kasen Renku at Issa's Snail (see link to the right) is the talented Graham Nunn. Here are some of his own haiku:

dawn service
red scarf slashed
across the digger's throat

~

nudist beach
all eyes stare
out to sea

~

rooster's yellow beak opens the morning

~

makeshift bed
blood on the face
of the new born

~

at dusk
pink and blue clouds
of fairy floss

Graham Nunn
Unfortunately, Graham's haiku collection, a zen firecracker, is sold out, but his beautiful haibun collection is not, have a look below
http://www.pardalote.com.au/titles/measuring/

More Haiku from Issa's Snail

2009-09-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today kipple once again samples some of the great poets contributing to interactive renku site Issa's Snail (see link to the right)

wind and wattle -
a season without
a name

~

four dolphins ride
the lip of the surf -
laughter

~

a squabble of rosellas
unzips
the clouds

~

a welcome mat -
the tabby unfolds
on a handkerchief of sun

Anne Elvey

swamp gums
in blossom
honeyeaters luncheon

~

Uluru -
in the distance there sits
a hippopotamus

~

old wooden bridge
waves of sand
...drifting mist

~

Southern Cross Station
two silver trains glide in
a blackbird flies out

Rhonda Poholke

Haiku from Issa's Snail

2009-08-22T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today kipple samples some of the great poets contributing to interactive renku site Issa's Snail (see link to the right)

two worn Oxfords
all that's left of father
in the wardrobe

~

a heron's meal
interrupted by
a teenage jet-ski

~

one strand
carries a spider
weightless

Joseph Mueller

trying her name
ending with his -
the pen runs dry

~

Christmas Eve -
stepping into
a stranger's footprint

~

heat haze
she runs up waving
a fan shell

Sandra Simpson

rainforest –
should I listen to bellbirds
or the currawong?

~

the stray tomcat
tries a kitten’s voice –
winter dusk

~

winter fly –
my death poem
unwritten

Lorin Ford

Two Haiku - Gina

2009-08-11T01:41:00.000-07:00

a little cloud
drifts from its mob –
sheep on the hill

~

the cat’s reflection
nods back –
empty fishpond

Gina
http://blumoon13.wordpress.com/
First Published in Gean Tree Press

Separation - Stuart Barnes

2009-07-23T22:37:00.000-07:00

Separation

As if echoing feverish
prayer, she held the black comb
to her temple, fought to drag it
through the knots
and ampersands. She
stopped, stared into the glass,
and cracked my eyes,
and cried, "Tomorrow!" -
touched the baroque pearls
wetting her neck, and stepped into
crisp new blacks.

Stuart Barnes
http://www.pool.org.au/text/stuart_barnes/the_fourth_floor

Bite - Graham Nunn

2009-07-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

Bite

how close a minute ago had been
young girl in the sand
pulling off wet clothes
red on white
beautiful but for the horror of the moment
the frenzied tide
pulling out and around
as the people piled up
a simple example
of twenty-first century fascination
the screaming hell of flesh
humanity's reaching arms
sand sticks to everything.

Graham Nunn
http://grahamnunn.wordpress.com/

The Measure of All Things - Ros McFarlane

2009-07-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

The Measure of All Things

Man has made himself
the measure of all things.

Stars are measured by the distance
from him.
Mountains are conquered
in feet.
Oceans are only as deep
as his ships can travel down.
Sunlight is dissected
into manageable portions
of sleeping, waking and working hours.

Animal intelligence
is compared to his.
Infrared and ultraviolet light
to colours visible through his eye.

Women measure their intelligence,
assets, education, prospects,
by his ideal;
and find themselves lacking or overachievers.

Man has even made himself
the measure of love
with “normal” (heterosexual)
“aberrant” (homosexual)
and “erotica” (hot lesbians).

But when man has even
measured God in relation to himself
(an outdated, primitive concept)
what is there left to measure up to?

Ros McFarlane

Your Mother's Hands - Vanessa Page

2009-06-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

Your Mother’s Hands

In the kitchen

you are slicing fruit

with hands

that remind you

of your mother

Deliberate,

and lined

they betray you

So too,

these beginnings

of crow’s feet

and pursed lips

as you hover over

autumnal hued

laminex

Careful, for

the influence

is catching

First the hands,

second, the

confused diplomacy

a tapping foot

closed gestures

the economic effort

We are all reinventions;

skin, papered

over skin

Vanessa Page
http://www.ipswichpoetryfeast.com.au/2008/winnersother_4.htm#hc4

Gone, with the Wind - Ian C Smith

2009-06-10T23:55:00.000-07:00

Gone, with the Wind

Like the wind we find a way
past prised planks. It pierces gaps
in the copper roof left by thieves.
The patin a of verdigris was our landmark
the colour of a lime milkshake.
Broken glass stains the aisle, soaked and still
all these years after that day’s excess.
Puffed-up pigeons gossip in the groins.
Before the altar the massive organ
has been overturned in a puddle.

They war, enemies without and within.
They conceive, are bereaved, never cede
victory despite the constant counting.
Sex is one bare luxury, extra rations
on a Saturday night after standing
in the double-decker to The Gaumont
to see Margaret Mitchell’s lurid fable.
‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn’
seems a throwaway line to savour
passing the air-raid siren, Dad as Clark Gable.

Ian C Smith
http://www.cordite.org.au/poetry/ian-c-smith-your-hair-was-so-yellow

She Is, I Am - David Stavanger

2009-05-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

SHE IS, I AM

She is the kiss
and I am midnight

she is the silence
and I am Leonard Cohen’s last waltz

she is the nail
and I the empty chamber

she is the fish
and I am scaled to bone

she is the door
and I the unlocked

she is the floor
and I am still learning how to fall

she is the salt
and I am ordering take-away

she is the start
and I am stumbling to the finish

she is she is she is
I am I am I am

she is the heat
and I the smoke detector

she is the leaf
and I am winter

she is the switch
and I am sitting with mushrooms

she is the art
and I the finger paint of children

she is the appetite
and I the empty bowl

she is the paper
and I am out of ink

she is the sound
and I ring the door bell five times

she is the ready mother
and I the sudden father

she is she is she is
I am I am I am

she is
I am

David Stavanger
http://www.myspace.com/davidstavanger

Far - Emma K Osborne

2009-05-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Far

You traced flowers with
Ballpoints
Shone a six-ton smile
Right at me
Then flicked back - far-eyed.

Emma K Osborne
http://verbatehim.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/verb-ate-him-issue-one1.pdf

Start: One Evening in 1923 - Janine Baker

2009-05-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

Start: One Evening in 1923

His start -
unremarkable -
barefoot street cricket
after floggings by The Brothers;
pudding on Sundays
and sly grog at the Palais

His journey -
unending -
from dodging Gyppo street girls
during shore leave in the Med
to jumping trains near Wagga
to escape the Army Provo’s

His contest -
unaccompanied -
through two continents
three wives, four kids spread wide
(could be a score more)
a dozen ships and
still no sign of contentment

His race -
unwon -
past maritime disasters
and that husband with a gun;
unfinished pictures; pulped novels (still unsold);
searching for a truth that’s not worth knowing…

His gravestone could read:

Tried it All (Once)
Failed
Kept Going

http://www.jackmagazine.com/credits.html

Alice perdu - Jamie Brown

2009-05-11T02:34:00.000-07:00

Alice perdu

I can’t help thinking about
Alice, and her pretty white
dress, as she slips through
the television screen. The
strangers she meets there
measure out their lives in
coke spoons and cigarettes,
Beemers, bigger houses, and
who has the newest rattle.
The glowing phosphorescence
of her face as she says she
would rather stay on that
side of the glass, content
to have the rabbit for
dinner in burgundy sauce.

Jamie Brown
from 'Conventional Heresies'
http://smallpressreviews.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/conventional-heresies-a-quick-chat-with-poet-jamie-brown/

SuperHero - Jeff Fleming

2009-04-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

SuperHero

it’s not the boots
that draw me

thigh high
though they may be

studded, spangled
with stars

nor is it
the mystic bracers

encircling
your righteous wrists

their glimmer
and shine not enough

your fluttering cape
snapping to attention

the golden
garland wreathed

through your hair
with such heroic flair

mirrored
in tiny hoops

through each ear
these captivate, enthrall

but alone are not
dynamic enough

to entice me,
nor the strength

of your countenance,
the mighty

purpose of your
gaze, though hypnotize

it may, something
other is your power

the naked weakness
you try in vain

to cloak
draws the villain

in me from
his veiled lair

Jeff Fleming
http://nibblepoems.wordpress.com/

Kenotic Remembrance - Matthew Hall

2009-04-14T19:48:00.000-07:00

Kenotic Remembrance

white thought

coalescing

close / artless / feint parameters

vis-à-vis aphasia

the ruined code of captive architecture

sequence reliance

missing elements [∞]

the resonant line

ontological patterns of red dirt

or granite, or distant regard

grotesque mechanics

in fields of ~~home~~

lechery in the distance of negative freedom

on edgeless overlays / palimpsest / dimension

stagnant ~~between~~ the adjoining image

a compound enclosure of horizon / instance /

a scream which bears it teeth

and then recedes

Matthew Hall
http://www.cordite.org.au/poetry/matthew-hall-polyvalent

Karl Marx Drowns His Sorrows, 1871 - Justin Lowe

2009-02-27T18:31:00.000-08:00

Karl Marx Drowns His Sorrows, 1871

You will no doubt appreciate
the irony, Freddy
it was never to my taste,
as you well know, but
I live in a perpetual state of it
for you, I think, to either
qualify or quantify, God knows...

either way it is ironic, no?
that it should be here
in this dank Brixton flat
I finally eliminate grey from the world

Jenny hovers in the hallway
afraid to come in
we speak like this
her face veiled in twilight
hours days years...

this oppressive London twilight
it seems she lives there
as though sensing I am
the butcher of her world
this grey London world
storms in a million teacups

I could cover a hundred pages like this

please mail me ten pounds, Freddy
and I will send you my notes
my life here is this mountain of paper
like the soot that blackens my windows
ashes of how many cities?

Justin Lowe
(from 'Glass Poems' 2006)
http://www.bluepepper.blogspot.com/

Outside Centrelink - Jane Williams

2009-02-22T00:55:00.000-08:00

Outside Centrelink

among the lunch hour execs catching a few rays
a young man with cyclonic eyes aware only of this
fast becoming another day without and what to do
about it breathing through clenched fists the trigger
for anything more taking the usual form
an absentminded brush from a suit filing back
into the system that has failed him yet again or this
(you had to be there) sunlight bouncing off silver
buckled shoes tempting as a free lunch unleashing
weeks of P's and Q's honed into the heels of his
own redundant work boots as he sprints jumps
lands hard on target then simply walks lighter now
uninterrupted steps through parting briefcases it isn't
the stuff of revolutions but on a good day it might
wipe the patent leather smiles from our faces

Jane Williams
http://walleahpress.com.au/FR36Williams.html

Untitled - Brooke Linford

2009-01-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

Untitled

After a long time
of being still
he begins to crackle

I can hear
his mind tick
see him kneel
in his robe

maybe
finally
he can call off the search.

Brooke Linford
http://www.holland1945.net.au/

In Translation - Amelia Walker

2009-01-18T18:44:00.000-08:00

In Translation

This language is a borrowed dress
I put on,
but never truly wear.

It is functional enough:
hides what must be hidden,
enables me to blend into streets and supermarket aisles.
Still I know -perhaps others can tell-
it is not mine.

It hangs baggily in some places,
affords no movement in others;
is patched mismatching colours -legacy
of countless past wearers.
It has been taken in,
taken out, torn and soiled,
sewn up and let down.
No matter how much I wash it
the fabric is flavoured with moments that are not mine:
spilled drinks and cigarettes,
perfume and sweat,
a million mixed meanings,
minefields for misinterpretation.

Still I walk around, wrapped in this language:
foreign as it is, I know no other.

Secretly, though, I pick at its frays,
trying to imagine what could be
if this language and I were to unravel
into nakedness,
into silence.
Without words there are no rule books,
without words there are no lies.

Amelia Walker

(first appeared in The Mollusca Chain)

http://www.freewebs.com/ameliawalker/index.htm

Tourist Strip Poems - Graham Nunn

2009-01-02T03:35:00.000-08:00

Tourist Strip Poems

1. The same old people
walking along the
same old skyline

2. A shell in the window
listening to the waves

3. Ghosts of the Yugambeh
people selling artefacts
in the avenue

4. Tomorrow's sand
waiting in the bilges

5. A seagull deafened
by concrete
on all sides

6. Clouds of sandflies
rise to neon calligraphy

7. The night sky's excesses
pour into
wakefulness

8. Streets of homeless;
suburbs of living dead

Graham Nunn
http://grahamnunn.wordpress.com/

MASCARA POETRY - ISSUE FOUR

2008-11-16T15:50:00.000-08:00

Mascara Poetry have recently published Issue 4 and it's full of brilliant, stirring work by a wide range of poets from all over the world. I am very proud to have my work alongside them.

Michelle, Kim & Adam have presented one of the best publications this year.

Issue 4 features:

http://www.mascarapoetry.com/

Ashley

Minutes - Tiggy Johnson

2008-11-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

Minutes

I glance at the clock
sure half an hour’s passed.
A minute has. One minute.
I look at the ceiling. Suppress tears.
Wonder if fifty years will pass
before hand-over time.
I circle the room, moving
in slow, steady steps.
Need to clear my mind.
Need to stop the noise.
It hurts to stand. To walk.
But the screaming’s subsiding.
I persist. Focus on the pain,
hope it’ll block the noise.
Son cradled in my arms
still crying, but not so desperate.
I want to look at the clock again, but
I expect only another minute
has passed and I don’t want to count,
one by one, the twenty-eight minutes
until I expect my husband back.
I hum. Sing. ‘Hush little baby...’
I rock as the words screech
He seems to be calming. I hope.
The verse is finished and I don’t know
what the next one is, what happens
to the diamond ring?
I have to think. Need to know
But the words don’t come in time
He cries louder, I’m rocking, humming.
The diamond ring? I have to know.
‘Hush little baby...’ The diamond ring?
‘If that mockingbird...’ Shit. The ring?
The clock. Twenty-four minutes to go.
I walk quickly as if it’ll help me remember.
Then, it comes. I smile. Relieved.
‘If that diamond ring don’t shine...’
Hum the rest. What if it doesn’t shine?
But I’m over it. Couldn’t care less.
I repeat the first line. Over. And over.
The crying stops. He’s looking at me.
Smiling? He’s tiny. Cute. Mine.
Still has that new baby smell.
Can’t help but to smile back.
‘Hush little baby...’ I’m still walking circles.
‘Daddy’s gonna buy...’ I hear a car in the driveway.
Move to the front window. Sing ‘Daddy’s home.’
But I’ve forgotten it’s hand-over time and
Daddy walks in and kisses both of us.
‘Hush little baby...’

Tiggy Johnson

(first appeared in Tamba 38: Winter 2006)

http://www.pageseventeen.com.au/Tiggy.htm

Not Going Anywhere - Robert Morris

2008-10-30T17:09:00.000-07:00

Not Going Anywhere

darling she said
not that you'd leave
but should I find you
if you do
I think you know
what I'd do.
Things, born of love
threats
drops of poison from a bottle
I'm not forgiving
I'd throttle you
and if there were another woman
I'd kill her too
now let's forget all this
come sit here
in your favourite chair
I know
you'd not
go
anywhere.

Robert Morris

http://www.smallchangepress.com.au/titles.htm

Levels of Incapacity - Jane Williams

2008-10-22T02:07:00.000-07:00

Levels of Incapacity

it seems only yesterday

he was free loving his way

around a world open to

suggestion his suggestion

now unexpectedly sixty

the wrong side of a pension

fresh from a triple bypass

he shouldn’t have survived

trying to explain why he prefers

meditation to medication

for the pain he can’t otherwise prove

to the young customer service officer

wearing jeans for genes day

(there’s a brochure on his desk)

smiling rhetoric like the myth

of his own immortality depends on it

gauge your level of incapacity

professional evaluation

here to assist you in any way we can

back into the workforce

Jane Williams

http://janewilliams.wordpress.com/

Storm - Jonathan Hadwen

2008-10-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

Storm

like a storm that does not mean to sink a ship

your sadness settles on this tiny house,

we founder, the dog and I

until gasping we flee outside,

a brief saunter in the eye

while over dripping trees

clouds can be seen

all around.

Jonathan Hadwen

http://www25.brinkster.com/jkhey/poetry/index.asp

Even the Wind Has a Poem - Julie Beveridge

2008-09-22T06:41:00.000-07:00

Even the Wind has a Poem

words spill
from sleeping mouths

walls hold secrets
exposed in cracks

even the wind
has a poem

i wait for inspiration
to teach itself to read and write

in the drunk and dimly lit
corridors of my mind

feeding myself deliberate lines
i edge off the excess of language

into a blank and patient page

Julie Beveridge

http://www.cordite.org.au/?p=918

Lily - Michelle Cahill

2008-09-07T19:31:00.000-07:00

Lily
(photograph by Ian Cameron)

Not the lilies, their November tongues or clitoral folds
or her almond shaped eyes that follow the camera lens,
but something about the stems strapped to thigh, how
hands buckle down the gnarled, uneven stalk each length
locked in the hiatus of hips; lips profiled with irony say
with vagina and sass you can go a long way and some…
Satin ruched over her best points like a minimalist gorge.
Art in the corners of her mouth breathes a private sigh.

Michelle Cahill
(First appeared in 4W, Issue 18)
www.ipoz.biz/titles/ac.htm
http://www.mascarapoetry.com/

Grounded - Graham Nunn

2008-08-28T03:46:00.000-07:00

Grounded

Coming back, the land didn't know him.
Not the soft air, peaks and skittering leaves
or blurred faces rising out of the fog
along Kingsford-Smith Drive, not the river
haze of the city
opening into his eyes
through trickle of morning sun
or the aging pier at Breakfast Creek
he half-imagined had been built for him —

the land under his feet and brooding
in shadows cast by the sheer rise of the city
had forgotten him. The odour of the river
drummed into shifting rock
was familiar, but wafted the frail taint
of foreign ghosts. He thought he knew
the sounds: low hum of ferry coming into dock
with passengers murmuring
home home

but it was not. The clouds
had grown heavy, the radio
in hard accents, promised more
rain continuing through the night.
In a crowded bar on Merthyr Street
he trembled like a sailor or fisherman
having seen the slope of the world and its infinite
smallness, having returned
with the illusion he had not changed, but friends
had grown old and disappeared
into home and heartbreak.

After short black and numbing
football on the TV, he rose
weightless as a ghost
and followed the riverbank, with drifts
of crows crying ironic above him
coming home coming home
the land didn't know him.

Graham Nunn

http://www.smallchangepress.com.au/index.htm

Sooty Sky - Kevin Gillam

2008-08-19T23:10:00.000-07:00

Sooty Sky

these are black days. mine a sooty
sky. grit falls with rain. thinking wet,
won’t catch. black days are these. these
days aren’t those. past tense a
varnish. these minutes splinter. pierce
hands of fate. future pain racked. black
days these are. pills bleach a.m.
p.m. coma grey. these are black days

Kevin Gillam

Sick Again - Wayne H.W Wolfson

2008-08-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Sick Again

The anniversary of a dead ambition. The drops of blue paint on the floor, now smudged from someone’s foot, leads to nowhere.
The record player spits out my new thing, a car backs into a phone pole, an empty bottle rolls under the bed, murmuring marimba, she cries. We are a long way from Mozart.
The moon, what was left of night, fought its way through the cracks in the shade. The record still had three songs to its life-span.
The shadow of a cat on the polished wooden planks of the floor. I want to look, fleeting moments of poetry.
Poetry, mine. I actually am not that nice. Not for real, I feel like a phony, liar, hooves tangled in the jasmine below the bedroom window.
I am nice, but it is like an inconsequential doppelganger whom I have grown used to allowing to occasionally wander around.
She still sleeps and at least one of us does too.
I went down to the café. Standing outside, by my usual table was a cretinous little girl with a big belly, who stared at the newspaper kiosk without ever blinking.

Wayne H.W Wolfson
http://www.waynewolfson.com/

Ladybird, Ladybird - Justin Lowe

2008-08-06T00:42:00.000-07:00

Ladybird, Ladybird

She did not
exactly glow
at the mention of my name

her hands
did strange things
around her throat

she tested
the strength of one leg
then the other

considered the world
to the left
and the right of her

I offered no gesture
of re-assurance
I am not like that

she wanted to know
how far I’d traveled
as though

no amount of poetry
could convince her
I

had been inside her all this time
invisible and all-encompassing
as the space between two words

this is a bad time
she whispered pertly

as though to a newborn.

Justin Lowe

(first published in 'Glass Poems')

http://www.lulu.com/content/265422

Eggshells - Casey Asphel

2008-07-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

Eggshells

your voice becomes
very brittle,
like instruments
in a 45 from the 60s

I could shoot Warhol again
with my words,
or maybe shock Goya’s
Saturn, they’re
marching through eggshells
now

you’re hurt and all I’ve got is a mouthful
of bravado, I can’t make myself
reach out and put arms
round you, instead
I’m leaning against the doorframe
reloading, new horseshit
ready to spit

and your look
tells me enough,
suddenly you’re
married to a stranger.

Casey Asphel

You and Me and Dora Maar - Amelia Walker

2008-07-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

You and Me and Dora Maar

You wear red shoes to the Picasso exhibition.
I keep reminding myself, Look at the art...

Picasso never smiles in photographs
(appropriate for somebody so famous, so dead)
so many photographs -Dora's photographs-
this is her exhibition too.

Placards on the wall explain how they met
in a cafe: how she splayed one hand
on the table, and with the other danced a knife
round the crevices between gloved fingers
-a rabid, messy polka.
Picasso watched her stab and miss
and keep stabbing as her blood spilled and shone
-winking garnets, unflinching flesh -
he asked to keep the glove.

He painted her as a minotaur,
he painted her as a bird.
In a rare snap he catches her -Dora- off-guard:
small body, dark eyes staring into space,
she looks sad, she looks shy,
looks like half the girls who catch my train
-the cafe story just doesn't seem possible.
Then I see you, spinning on the heels
of your winking red shoes,
-suddenly anything is possible.

You are Dora Maar the Minotaur -strong,
sleek, shining creature of mystery and terror.
I am Dora Maar the bird -flightless, losing
myself in your labyrinth, wanting
yet afraid of you -ferocious you,
legendary you, mythological, unknown
you (and me?) and Dora Maar,
two women, three women, a million
funhouse mirror / images,
kaleidoscope wormholes and dancing knives.

~

I am Dora Maar the Minotaur
-savage, sweaty, lost
in my own maze.
I am invented, outdated, a legend, a lie,
slain and sliced up and squealing
at the sky where you,
you are Dora Maar with wings spread.
Dora Maar the bird,
circling above me, singing,
weightless, wondrous, out of reach.

You are painted blue but laughing,
rebuilding Guernica as a shiny silver egg.
You are dipping, diving, darting close
and far away (a brush of fabric, almost lock eyes...)
We are two women, so many women,
dancing careful art conversation
-proper as a white glove, polished as a knife.

Amelia Walker
(first published in Arabesques)

http://poetryandpoeticscentre.com/index.php/Interview_with_Amelia_Walker

Soup - Graham Nunn

2008-06-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

Soup

ten pm. Chinatown
birds wait
in the window

he is drinking Johnnie Walker
and I am drinking beer

a bowl of something clear with
greens and pale meat

outside the steamy window
it is raining
he is smoking

pale blue curlicues
drift from his nostrils

move across the surface
of his scotch
like famous Highland mist

I watch the words
come out of his mouth
but cannot hear them

I am listening
to the birds
pursue their seed in us

Graham Nunn

http://www.smallchangepress.com.au/index.htm

submissions open

2008-06-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

subs of poetry and related forms are now open

kipple will consider ONE poem per sub

e-mail your poetry and a short bio to

mountain0ash[at]gmail[dot]com

with the word 'submission' in the subject line

(place sub in body of e-mail)

kipple will publish as often as the material dictates. sadly, it is impossible to pay contributors. response time should be within two weeks. this blog is meant to serve as a small, simple poetry site. the one poem per sub rule is an effort to keep things managable and to avoid the pitfalls of kipple.

in the future, a downloadable pdf of 'collected kipple' may be made available. at this stage, it will appear seasonally and will depend on the amount of material submitted in any given quarter.