The Sleepers Almanac is launched today

So if anyone's interested in my poem, which is in the latest Sleepers Almanac No. 9, it's the one about cricket, but not really about cricket. You know how poetry is.

The Sleepers online store is here:  No HERE.

Launch is tonight, I'm taking my sis and old work friend. Then we'll have dinner somewhere in Carlton. Except it's Monday and restaurants are often shut on Mondays.

The other thing is tonight the Episode 1 of new season of Game of Thrones and I have to be back not too late to watch that. I've spent the day in bed reading the first book and last night we refreshed with the last 4 episodes of the last season, including the Red Wedding again.

It's all a bit exciting.

Via Mr E. Just to get the bad taste of Australian politics out of our collective mouths, and make us cry

The Crickets Have Arthritis

Shane Koyczan | poet

The Crickets have Arthritis by Shane Koyczan

It doesn't matter why I was there, where the air is sterile and the sheets sting. It doesnt matter that I was hooked up to this thing that buzzed and beeped every time my heart leaped like a man who's faith tells him God's hands are big enough to catch an airplane, or a world. It doesn't matter that I was curled up like a fist protesting death, or that every breath was either hard labour or hard time, or that I'm either always too hot or too cold. Doesn't matter because my hospital roommate wears star wars pajamas, and he's 9 years old. His name is Louis, and I don't have to ask what he's got.The bald head with the skin and bones frame speaks volumes. The gameboy and the feather pillow booms like they're trying to make him feel at home because he's going to be here awhile.

I manage a smile the first time I see him and it feels like the biggest lie I have ever told, so I hold my breath cos I'm thinking any minute now he's going to call me on it. I hold my breath because I'm scared of a 57 pound boy hooked up to a machine because he's been watching me and maybe I've got him pegged all wrong, like maybe he's bionic or some shit. So I look away like just I made eye contact with a gang member who's got a rap sheet the length of a lecture on dumb mistakes politicians have made. I look away like he's going to give me my life back the moment I've got something to trade. I damn near pull out my pack and say, "Cigarette?"

But my fear subsides in the moment I realize Louis is all show and tell. He's got everything from a shotgun shell to a crows foot and he can put them all in context. Like, "See, this is from a shooting range", and "See, this is from a weird girl". I watch his hands curl around a cuff-link and a tie-tack and realize that every nick-nack is a treasure and every treasure has a story, and every time I think I can't handle more he hits me with another story. He says, "See, this is from my father" "See, this is from my brother" "See, this is from that weird girl" "See, this is from my mother". Took me about two days to figure out that weird girl is his sister, it took him about two hours today after she left for him to figure out he missed her. And they visit every day, and stay well past visiting hours because for them that term doesn't apply. But when they do leave, Louis and I are left alone. And he says, "The worst part about being sick is that you get all the free ice cream you ask for." And he says, "The worst part about that is realizing there is nothing more they can do for you." He says, "Ice cream can't make everything okay."

And there is no easy way of asking, and I know what he's going to say but maybe he just needs to say it, so I ask him anyway. "Are you scared?" Louis doesn't even lower his voice when he says, "Fuck yeah." I listen to a 9 year old boy say the word fuck like he was a 30 year old man with a nose-bleed being lowered into a shark tank, he's got a right to it. And if it takes this kid a curse word to help him get through it, then I want to teach him to swear like the devil's sitting there taking notes with a pen and a pad. But before I can forget that Louis is 9 years old he says, "Please don't tell my dad."

He asks me if I believe in angels. And before I realize I don't have the heart to tell him, I tell him, "Not lately." and I just lay there waiting for him to hate me. But he doesn't know how to, so he never does. Louis loves like a man who lived in a time before God gave religion to men and left it to them to figure out what hate was. He never greets me with silence, only smiles and a patience I've never seen in someone who knows they're dying. And I'm trying so hard not to remind him I'll be out of here in a couple days, smoking cigarettes and taking my life for granted. And he'll still be planted in this bed like a flower that refuses to grow. I've been with him for 5 days and all I really know is that Louis loves to pull feathers out of his pillow, and watch them float to the ground. Almost as if he's the philosopher inside of the scientist ready to say, "It's gravity that's been getting us down."

The truth is: there's not enough miracles to go around, kid. And there's too many people petitioning God for the winning lotto ticket. And for every answered prayer, there's a cricket with arthritis. And the only reason we can't find answers is because the search party didn't invite us, and Louis, right now the crickets have arthritis. So there is no music, no symphony of nature swelling to crescendos, as if ripping halos into melodies that can keep a rhythm with the way our hearts beat. So we must meet silence with the same level of noise that the parents of dying 9 year old boys make when they take liberties in talking with heaven. We must shout until we shatter in our own vibrations, then let our lives echo and grow, echo and grow, grow distant. Grow distant enough to know that as far as our efforts go, we don't always get a reply.

But I swear to whatever God I can find in the time I have left, I'm going to remember you kid. I'm going to tell your story as often as every story you told me. And every time I tell it I'll say, "See, there's bravery in this world. There's 6.5 billion people curled up like fists protesting death, but every breath we breathe has to be given back. A 9 year old boy taught me that." So hold your breath, the same way you'd hold a pen when writing Thank You letters on your skin to every tree that gave you that breath to hold. And then let it go, as if you understand something about getting old and having to give back. Let it go like a laugh attack in the middle of really good sex, the black eye will be worth it. Because what is your night worth without a story to tell? And why wield a word like worth if you've got nothing to sell?

People drop pennies down a wishing well, so the cost of a desire is equal to that of a thought. But if you've got expectations, expect others have bought your exact same dream for the price of a 'hard work, hang in, hold on' mentality. Like, I accept any challenge so challenge me. Like, I brought a knife to this gun fight, but the other night I mugged a mountain so bring that shit, I've had practise. Louis and I cracked this world wide open and found that the prize inside is we never lied to ourselves. Never told ourselves that we'd be easy or undemanding. So we sing in our own vibration, and dare angels to eavesdrop and stop midflight to pluck feathers from their wings and write demands that God's hands take the time to catch you. So, even if God doesn't, it wasn't because we didn't try.

I don't often believe in angels, but on the day I left Louis pulled a feather from his pillow and said, "This is for you." I half expected him to say, "See, this is the first one I grew."

I just can't help myself

Whenever I go into a bookshop, I come out with at least one book. Whenever I go into a second-hand bookshop, I come out with double, because I figure they are cheap.

Went away on the weekend to a small country town and I think I spent as much on books as I did two nights of accommodation (it was cheap accommodation.)

I picked up:

Hemingway, A biography by Jeffrey Meyers. it's hard cover and it cost $20.00. It's a biggun.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. I don't read poetry really and I am going to start trying a bit more. Throw the old poetry a fricken bone, so to speak. This copy is hardcover, in good nick and cost $12.00. It also has a groovy pic on the cover, a photo of her typing on a typewriter. At least I guess it's her.

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton. Two things about this. Does he not have the best name in the world? Also, this book is cleverly divided into sections which offer consolations for (in order): unpopularity; not having enough money; frustration; inadequacy; a broken heart and difficulties. And if that weren't delicious enough, then he has paired each section with a famous philosopher: Socrates for unpopularity, Epicurus for the money one, Seneca for frustration and of course Schopenhauer for a broken heart - "the darkest of thinkers and yet, paradoxically, the most cheering." I have another of his books, not yet read. I think it's Status Anxiety. This new book also is hardcover and cost $5.00

The Monkey's Mask, Dorothy Porter. It's a nice cover, female head tilted back so you can see the line of her throat. Cost $10.00

Ernest Hemingway, A Life Story by Carlos Baker. I can't get enough of Old Hem. Paperback, good condition, $6.00

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I wouldn't want to give the liar full price but this is paperback, good condition and was $10.00

Marcel Proust: A Biography by Richard H. Barker. Hardcover and has a painting of a face with a veree Franch moo-stache on the front. $5.00

Hazel Hawke's daughter's memoir of her mother with Alzheimers. Don't judge me. At least I didn't get the Diana and Charles one. $5.00

Friday, oh yay

I know I'm overdue for some diarama but, dear reader, I have been so busy with renovating the flat I just haven't time to spare. Not a square to spare.
But briefly, this morning, before I go to meet the plasterer, who I'm hoping won't be nasty, who might just be a spunk, to add to my collection of tasty tradeys (cabinet-maker, swoon; plumber, oh-my-gawd; and floor polisher [faints].)
But before I away,
Precious.

I went and saw it last night with my mo. That's ghetto for mother. Don't you know. She gasped a couple of times and I hid my eyes once. I have images from this movie burned into my retinas, laid down in the visual equivalent of quadrophonic sound. Or is it 8 track? Probably 16 by now, or infinity.
It's very confronting. We loved it, but sad, so sad, but uplifting and redemptive. She was going to break the cycle. What a cycle. We agreed we'd never seen that sort of stuff, so raw and confronting, in a movie before. Lenny Kravitz - the only man in the movie with a face; he was so gorgeois, and kind and sweet. What a movie. Go and see it. Mariah Carey too, like you've never seen her before.
*
So every week I've been doing buddhist meditation with my mo. It's helping me, I am a bit calmer, a bit smoother, and most importantly a bit nicer to the people I love the most.
This week, the theme was suffering, so in lieu of my self-indulgent ramblings from the '80s, I give you Auden.

Musee dex Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or
just walking dully along.
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately
waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen,
skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the
torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns
away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun
shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have
seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

*

I was told once I should write more poetry, but that was a blogger who I didn't know and who seemed like a bit of a nutter. Here is an exhange we had once.
This is the thing I've learned about poetry, for myself. I like poetry that is clear and you can understand the imagery, this is how I like to read prose as well. I've also realised that poetry has been dangerous for me because it makes me feel too much, like music. I have been avoiding certain emotions and poetry and music especially bring them to the surface. Not deep, dark, really bad things but the stuff of suffering that we all have. Once you get to a certain age, you can't tell me you haven't suffered. And if you're like me, and you've had to get on with things, you push the pain down and carry on because if you don't, if you stop and cry, you'll never pick yourself up.
Oh how woe is me.
We all suffer, it's a part of the human condition and it's important to realise that. We haven't failed if we haven't achieved perfect, ongoing happiness. It doesn't exist, it's a delusion.
Happy Friday all, and have a good weekend too.
And be kind to yourselves, first.
And apologies to the other very famous blog which does poetry on a Friday. I'm not moving in on the concept, it just looks like it.

in the manner of my bad '80s poesy (apols to john keats, robert browning and INC)

Ode to the Frescoes of Mike

OR Broken by the Vatican

[this is a manner of writing that i sometimes slip into when i want to write about something which was meaningful, but at the same time it shat me big time.]

The contempt with which they treat you
As you are Herded
Like so many fucking sheep
Bleating in ever increasing, rhythmic chants

Is this it! Is THIS it?

[The Sistine Chapel. Must get to the chapel.]

No, you are told. No, not yet.
As you pass through
More
And MORE
Rooms filled with "art"
Oh, the Vaticanus ART
Of Yore.

Most is Shite
Perchance by hand of minor
Fra Pandolf AKA Papal Wannabe.
We are fed through rooms
With Roman Numerals above
That count the huge numbers
Of spatial repositories for this
Fucking Bad Art.

Is this it! Is THIS it?

I'm dying.
Being killed by the Vatican.
Right her, and right now.
[How ironic, they presume to save souls.]

But finally, FINALLY
We five, weary solds (heh)
Burst into the room
After being tantalised,
Nay taunted,
By lesser hands
The prior paint a travesty
On the walls and ceilings
I'll admit, some fair tapestries,
Yea, I will nod to them.
And having taken
A vast number of digital images
On my photography machine

But none compared
To the Fair hand of
Michaelangelo.

The fingers almost touching
Just so.

A chapel full of paparazzi
ignoring the signs of "no photo"
I am swept with the fervour
With the "must take as many
photographs as possible, oh look
At that one, look at THAT!
It's coming right off the ceiling
Right at you, can you see it,
Like the Spiderman ride at
Universal Studios Japan.
How did he DO that?!"

Silenzio. There is none.
Cameras. There are many.

We leave, exhausted.
Husks of humans.
Drop into taxi.
Go to our flat
With the nice parquet floors
Drink quickly
And scoff potato chips
And cold left-over pesto pasta
From the bowl, like animals at the water hole.

Tomorrow - Calabria.




And for those who like:

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart---how shall I say?---too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace---all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,---good! but thanked
Somehow---I know not how---as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech---(which I have not)---to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"---and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
---E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

the passionate shepherd to his love - christopher marlowe sonnet 1598

come live with me and be my love
and we will all the pleasures prove
that valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
woods or steepy mountain yields.

and we will sit upon the rocks
seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
by shallow rivers to whose falls
melodious birds sing madrigals.

and i will make thee beds of roses
and a thousand fragrant posies
a cap of flowers, and a kirtle
embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

a gown made of the finest wool
which from our pretty lambs we pull
fair lined slippers for the cold
with buckles of the purest gold;

a belt of straw and ivy buds
with coral clasps and amber studs
and if these pleasures may thee move
come live with me, and be my love.

the shepherd's swains shall dance and sing
for thy delight each May morning
if these delights thy mind may move
come live with me and be my love.