a b l o g o f p o e t r y

[baronbendigo-blog]

ᖃᐅᓱᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Behind myself, I stand high and look on My body: extended starlight on sand, Antlered and lurching with sunbather's lust Over the thin and scattered bones of men. I am the pioneer, the hardy moss In hostile lands, incorrigible.

[baronbendigo-blog]

My 1995 Toyota

The car sets off, after a couple of tries

Sputtering anxiously down Old Snake Road--

While a cataract of cool winter breath

Covers our belov'd, rusted Toyota.

As my heart takes its perch on two-lung'd sticks

We sail in cirrus swirls and traffic's rush,

You ask if I'd turn the dash's dial

I respond, dear, "is it not hot enough?".

See, I'm nervous, but I'm unlicensed too,

And though my fears and your fears are aligned,

You've an idea on how these things work: 

Old hands on deck and wheel, heeding old signs,

I pay them no mind. For in my new life,

I've spared them the heed. I've needn't the need--

Unborn collisions make good company--

Straddlers of thin yellow lines, nearby speed

Impregnates me with insidious verve,

Ignorance and uselessness (and beknown...)

So what if I'm made brief by captains sewn?

Lest I die clad with tumours on my bones.

Well. I'd little need to turn the dial,

But you'd hoped careening would last a while,

Now I sit, high suffused (your orders, dear)

Buoyed in stifler's sea by furnaced air.

[baronbendigo-blog]

Copper

I'm on her bed once again; behind a keyhole's pane The dance of dandelion flakes display in stilted depth before a worn and weathered brick wall your hands would graze. I wonder whether my antipathy for her rust-hued hair fuels my verse,

If smears of your young fingers stole away its beauty. You abridge the breaths below my love's sundry organs, You clench a cool fistful's worth of shapes along the wall And decant them, while your hands become further-frozened.

I wish your touch enlivened; that your hands were warmer, Coarser, still. That you'd have cut me, and made me sharper. While I'd drink a case of you, or skate along your rink, I fear there's little point to unpint a stillborn pool.

I feel that while it's true that we share the whiskey's cup, Or whatever it was we drink while waltzing between The cross-stitched streets of the Mile End on drunken nights That you've laid claim to the liquor; I to icy dregs.

[baronbendigo-blog]

La Fille du Roi (A Song for Emily)

I.

An Iroquois paces sawgrass meadow, his black-lipped fulcrum balancing a stalk and bowl of unlit tobacco embers. He marks his drift with a spinning trail of charred, slowburned matches Poured on trampled clay and finger with their black birched eyes.

Tiny littered sticks--horizontal--below jagged sedges: A light summertime snowfall of fatherly apprehension. His son, sent on a raid to recapture property from foes Was to return, among these meadows, several hours ago.

II.

A swarthy stonemason looks out eagerly at the day's low dusk, Violet rays of hope skitter like flint from river to sea-- Hope which catches momentum on the back of a fleeing tide's black crests, lapping lustily at the hull of his maiden's ship.

The mason is the master of an empty house, but his King has sent a hoard of women aboard a French East Indian vessel, come to settle down the lonely men of Montreal. He wonders if she'll make a good wife. What colour are her eyes?

III.

The din of anticipation scurries along cobblestone, The night is ripe: billowing pennants bustle under moonlight. In the square, hushed voices discuss the matter with gambler tones-- To-be revellers, to-be mourners await the ballot box smoke.

I witnessed the preceding years, months, days, hours. I saw how each Commended those with strength to force the moment to its crisis. Yeas and Nays have had their says; I cast my vote in a glass, Warmed for autonomy's double damned judgement of brotherhood.

IV.

I am often a fool, but am no beachstone astrologist (Until I saw your face in the sand and sought to make a pass). I had vague premonitions, yet was comforted by knowledge: Today, uncertainty is no cancer--but a guillotine.

We needn't endure being racked by pangs of yearning for the post, Or dread the white-gloved knocking of a widowmaker's knuckles. Still I writhe, kept awake with a sunburned sleeper's agony-- Friend, how long must I await you before presuming the worst?

[baronbendigo-blog]

Hypertext Poem

With lowered ear, put to the rod I hearken for the angel's string— Resounding cries of ancient kings Amid the deaf bay of the gods.

With cherub's finger on his harp Melodiously plucked apart, Aroused to neither man nor louse Rung Botticini's opera house.

Not Beethoven's oscilloscope Nor bastard-blinded Bendigoes Beheld thou to the surging choir Taken as you were with lyres.

[baronbendigo-blog]

An Ode (to Nicki Minaj's ass)

The sailing mast                            Of stalwart thighs, The daily dose For strainèd eyes The regal rump of firmness packed, The apple, plump— Arkansas Black. Our hearts ablaze, and soon to fry: Nicki whose thighs are apple pie.

[baronbendigo-blog]

Masthead

There raised aloft, the sail of thought, Clutched to the spar and spindle rot, It billows t’ward what is sublime And swells, until collected time Will bring about that crushing fate To spines which must capitulate. O splintered staff! now good for tind— But whose caprice, the wood or wind? Thenceforth, assailing vessel, broached, Veers loftily from its approach, The captain, captiv’d by his boat, And scuttled resolution, floats. Denied arrival to high lands, Bent body beached upon the sands, Once more, to fix a brittle mast, For where the gales of fate will cast.

[baronbendigo-blog]

Song for a Dead Civilian

I died in disgrace, lonely and a fool. I died, failing to've drunk the universe. There were many things I did not know of, Many that I knew of but did not learn.

My expertise was in thumb-twiddlery, I was the grandmaster of wasted days. I sat, observed, when I could have acted. I saw men go to war: some won, some lost.

I was a conscientious objector, Not only battle, but also work, play, Politics, and science--all grand pursuits. To hedonism. And stoicism.

"What do you do," they'd ask. "Not much, not much." I would limp out of those conversations Wanting to abnegate my existence Though with the handle of these words my crutch.

I am no journalist, nor chronicler, I am no tall teller of lofty tales. I am only mere... and but mere at that. I am the wish-bone, broken, trimmed of fat.

My eulogy will read "he did great things." Maybe there'll be no eulogy at all. Maybe they'll go and sanctify my bones, Or watch them come to ash along the stake.

But whatever cause they might think they'll have They will be wrong. I can be blamed for naught, For whoever did such things was not me. I was an idle man. Remember that.

I had my schooldays, and then I retired. I filled my days with trifles for money to lure women. But today, I lie As cold and dispassionate as the dawn.

[baronbendigo-blog]

Peel

Peel my lips. Peel my dryweathered lips. Peel them like orange rinds--orange rinds Burdened as bedsprings of low wintered dusk. Curl your nails under their skins, and peel

Then, dried flesh tender-fallen, rain on stone, Tear yourself another layer. Salt skins clenched in young-cut teeth with fresh saliva-- you were chosen for your savagery.

Peel the worries that fetter my lips, Peel the prints which case my bygone words. Flay me with your lips, your brush. You, make my face: as candid and barren as the rocks'.