Ivan Donn Carswell

The man whose term we would remember as our longest, Constant serving Head of State, besides the late Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, turned 67 yesterday. Congratulations John, You’ve run a long and torrid race,

Travelling on the thumb, it wasn’t hard to do, you took The rides that you could get with no regrets – let shrinkage In the mileage to your goal provide your measures of success,

These painful, cold athritic fingers have to last Much longer yet, they’re all I have to keep the pages On the screen prescribed with glowing words, my favoured antidote To weak and skulking weariness;

What’s in a song John (or is it ‘Knuckles’), what’s In a song about an unemployed, suicidal bum, caught In the act of sheep theft which defines the Australian Psyche? I’ll bet you don’t

It seldom snowed they said, and they were nearly right. In all of nine eventful Seasons crystal white on average graced the place just twice a year. A smaller Fall, an over-night preceded heavy

It rained throughout the night, a truly welcome sound That eases sleep although we barely slept – we were Distressed by other things. Today the kitchen’s centre ring, The kitchen of Anita’s dreams. It’s

Advertisements, they’ve trashed the web, Somehow they’ve gotten into bed With common sense; ubiquitous And so intense, insistent As to cause offense, Intrusive and quite truculent, I would they should all go away. [Your

At dawn I dreamed of wispy clouds, I had the time to wield and watched The regimented lines of cirrus racing From the north by west; elusive Strands of airy ice that spread Up

You could see the signs which said that possums came at night And fed upon this tree, they left their mark in fruit discards And broken twigs and shredded leaves spread randomly In careless

We’re going to miss you little girl, you leave an aching space Way out of all proportion to your size. Tomorrow we must face the day Without your lavish greeting – without your urgent

Growing up, I propose, Is like wearing a dead man’s clothes. Death has a way of levelling the ground. I have found the closer your relationship The closer the fit; The unsettling bit is

For months on end the pumpkins lay at peace, Their parent vines had all but browned and died Although a stubborn tendril here and there had Tried to grow again – glyphosate soon ended

It seldom snowed, they said, it might get cold but it won’t be snow; Well, one should guess the locals know the weather best and I was new, So when I left the warmth

I had no profound feelings of shock or surprise To those matter-of-fact revelations Which spelled the end of this chapter of your life. It was, as you put it, too late for recriminations, And

I cannot let the moment pass without a weary greeting, Or retard the recent past where shadows still are fleeting, I’d sabotage the future by just staring in a mirror And never let the

Baby waits alone In sandy shallows lying, – wretchedly crying Dam marooned at sea Aware her calf is dying Precious time expiring Biped mammals strive Distressing trials appeasing Cold denial teasing Infant but alive

Words today are How’d you say, In sad retreat, Or obsolete? They slide around Conducting sound, Deferent To moving ground Where once they were As referent To common sense As having common meaning; Misuses

I’m sure it would be easier to survive as a dead poet, I mean it in the surmise that I won’t be tempted To revise or rewrite the poem I wrote last night, or

Gnashing teeth, A grinding meet Of molars crashing Cuspid on cuspid And the fracture of a piece, Of pressure not intense but awkward In an anxious, unintended sense, Then giving way, the rapid play

In the beginning there was light, Abundant light that truly lit the way, Time was never lost in dodging flights Of feckless shadows and darkness seldom Ever blight the brightness of our days. And

The strident sounds of silence echo In a darkened room, a beggar’s tomb Of emptied space and barrenness, a Shameful waste, a bitter sadness. It violates all sense of being strips aside All causal

Seven tailored suits, matching shoes and socks, A brace of muted ties with subtle breast pocket Handkerchiefs descried, you wouldn’t credit how Badly they governed you in days gone by. And the shirts, the

Nothing came to claim my muse, instead I dreamed Of freedoms neatly folded in a treasure chest lying in the debris Of a crater; the best were simple choices, the rest forsaken Promises bombed

Congratulations, you’ve succeeded, You’ve acknowledged 60% of you at least Are the incredibly dense and mindless people Needed to make sense of incomprehensible Avoidance strategies on recycling water. You may have missed the point,

Clean your glory glasses, scrub the lenses clean And see the puissant morons stare; Garbed in common guises far from unfamiliar, Guises fair as anyone you know or care, And what they seem is

They’ll always tell a story those Obscure mementos stacked on Dusty shelves, demure and silent like The other gaudy tributes tacked To walls in floodlit halls and if you Could suppose their lusty origins

It was your first outing, or more rightly, our first outing With you. We were as proud as new parents could be, Wheeling our son in the crowded Sunday shopping throng, Glancing down again

To my shame I’ve been mending fences again… A quaint habit I inherited from my father; He would rather fix a fence than parley Repair, and that it is where our views diverged. He

It grew out of the Annexe and our Corps in a world at peace While our army trained, magnificent in its heroic pretence, For an implausible war. They were halcyon days In the shelter,

There wasn’t room for sympathy, The epicentre moved too rapidly for that And even when we knew the anger Of the dispossessed the storm had passed. It blew into their lives already stressed By

For a small child crossing the pen alone was a courageous feat, Occasionally, with a maniacal bleat, the wether would burst from cover And butt whomever graced his yard. He meant it in fun,

It’s a ruling from the field of pain (devoid of antique nave, A judgement process aptly named ‘benefit of doubt’); You’ve encountered it without veneer in waning times Where referees decline to rule on

The hunt begins at a languid pace Belying hysteria building in place, biding its time To menace the peace in an orchard where mayhem’s Scant held on a leash. Abigail Belle’s the first into

We knew their names Or thought we did, we knew their faces From an album of places we’d played In a fabulous lifetime of childhood shared. Events of our beginnings declared us united By

Talk to me of love with wonder in your eyes, Of limber magic flying through the veiling air And soft-edged silks trailing in a vintage plume, The bloom of fragrant lavender intimate in your

In a slow drawn focus the concrete Blocks that prop up my view of the sky Morph soft and easy like double Brie melting into a shirred close-up shot Of the pores and the

This house which is lived in resounds With the chorus of voices bound in the press Of its generous, unconcealed blessings; Affection is neither distressed nor restrained, Nor caught in the intricate mesh of

Let them declare Jihad then, let them despair that I Will speak the truth as I see it, and where that truth bears Brutally on their lies I will have applied my brand of

The power of the Lake lingers still So many years beyond its fascination Ending; it was there in the beginning, An unveiling of towering sensitivities, A flowering of gentle obsession. The town that grew

My thoughts are like the boots randomly arrayed In the rack outside the window, some in pairs neatly Stacked, comfortably worn with a relaxed air of Confidence, some scattered in patterns of bizarre Relationships,

Enduring an inguinal hernia repair can Drive you to despair, it is a monumental Nonsense; in my defence I hadn’t lived Through one before, couldn’t be sure What it meant, should have feared Not

The red berries wreak an awesome spell that some would dread; Others, weak and soulless, must succumb, they treasure with the eyes The plump and soulful fruit, the shape inspires a heady heart that

For more than a billion years we’ve been Nearly out of water; sincerely, a need repeatedly Exposed in calamitous reports of the tragic-comic sort Glibly cognising a collective ‘we’ as the principle cause And

I said goodbye and went to bed to die; I never knew that they had lied – was quite Surprised they didn’t seem to care, I agonised, Refused to cry although in time the

We were born of tea, our mum could drink fourteen Cups a day, an awesome feat to try to rationalise, Beyond belief unless you knew where we had one She would have two. The

Should you be allowed sole privilege Of unconscionable martyrdom? This affliction is self-pity brought by suffering As penitent to unrequited lust. Private sexuality has you bound In bonds no-one devised, In silent bondage languishing,

We came to find the place contained In legendary tracts, the hidden land Of fulsome wealth that we had sorely lacked, An empty land of winsome dreams. We found the continent intact with Evidence

It was the days of the slow roll, Times when we dextrously dressed Our hand-rolled cigarettes With a dearth of fine-cut tobacco, Teased in frugal strands from A handsomely battered, Always near empty, 2oz

In ash-fine silt that spread like sand After the flood and before the wild weeds Claimed the old stream bed; Before thistle phalanxes sprang From the dying mud to invest hollows Between abandoned river

No, she said, I never knew it was your first. It doesn’t Matter anyway. I always had an inkling that we’d find A way. And then we did. I’m glad about it just for

It was a fat-tyred 4WD utility hard back, The sort of ute you’d expect a contractor To drive, except it was plastered with tacky Stickers, and no genuine subby does that. It snailed down

I awoke with two poets in my bed, Books I chose from the library, possibly Intent on a swift read while schmoosing For poetic leads. My motives are appallingly Plain, a head bereft of

If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way It’s little wonder what other people think of you, but The ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close

There’s an infinity of wisdom in your smile that would deny The winsome wit that lies at back of it; and then the droll and Cheeky svénska troll of you which peeps out from

You and me, The proof is there to see, Our lives are held within the spell of great simplicity, We’re free of all the shadows dwelling in the hall, Seen in awe like pretty

And you will claim we need more births to keep Our population mix in check while nature’s truths Suggest there are too many of us yet? And you will make the claim with good

It was a half-life that seemed like a genuine world Wielding hard symbolism over those who ruled it; we Lived vaguely in teen-easy ambivalence whilst our peers Took their chances in ordered existence, wearing

“Zipless sex” one cynic called This festival of fornication, This celebration of new-found sexual strength And urbane honesty, of sex for sex as sex alone And not a public test of latent puberty. These

Called The Hon ‘Lizard Gizzard’ with aptness bearing fruit From his septic yellow face to his pinstripe business suit, Famous for avowals starting, “Government Approved, ‘and in relation to’…” delivered deadpan monotone, eyes A

She wrapped a paper towel around his softened cock In what he thought was quaint affection, that was new, An after-thought perhaps, refined appreciation? She had never talked a lot in bed just let

This window is confidence, Documenting proceedings, Capturing moments, Cleansing views Challenging sentiment. This window is nourishment Filling the eyes With strong drink, And acidly piercing Over-elaborate structures. This window is furniture Re-hung like a

Every time I laugh aloud, who springs to mind but Johnnie Howard? Cathartic laughter eases stress which Johnnie causes in excess, So when I hum acerbic lines of Randy Newman’s quirky song ‘don’t want

It is an abhorrent thing, this incarceration of your vulnerability, Profoundly cruel in the way you were beaten To your knees, blithely unaware it was a battle lost For your health and wellbeing. It

Have you switched to Beta yet? It’s an even bet that if you have You quite regret your impulse To accept the canny invitation. It’s okay, I hear you say, the crew’s A clever

Were meetings destined then this was one To take a leading place, the oracle decreed it fate In a matrix of moving matter, and the signs all clattered with Chance fêted as a sweet

If I don’t write something good tonight I will sleep Without the comforting Canopus of deep believers, If I sleep at all, and this light which ignites My enormous poetic conceit and guides my

The mystery of a smile that glows within your eyes And is framed in an innocent countenance Passes not unheeded. Those transient’s hallway smiles and greetings offered through your door Are slyly seeking kisses

And so I had a glaring revelation, I couldn’t find the poet in the man although I read his life composed by writers true disposed To tell it with veracity. They built a monument

Colours fade into nameless shades of grey And where the tonsure of bas-relief crudely Stands effete, semantic symbolism degrades Into meaninglessness. The artefacts of an old Existence deny you humanity but you don’t Recognise

To glibly say that Joe was sort of odd Quite missed the point. Peculiar in many Ways and kind of weird, I would have Been afraid of him were I a child (if I

It would have been love, I am sure of it, And I held her hand torn between concern and pride Whilst she cried and cried on her first day at school. We walked to

It is a pristine page, clean on the blue screen Where I compose, I don’t expect it to stay that way As words glow from blunt, abused fingers, as insistent Sounds in my head

It happened by Bretton Wood (although that Wasn’t it’s real name) and I recall a clear, grey dawn And the tall sky fallow with torpid clouds; We went on before to watch how they

I was schooled well before he died, able at least To feel what others felt when their fathers Were deceased. Able but not willing And not without despair to glimpse the man Who’d hide

Steve is gone, I hardly can believe The man wont cry again, I cannot credit that His energy wont bloom And burst the candid pane That kept us so aware of just How much

A crystalline awakening on the plateau, The crisp air as brittle as new celery Snaps with expectancy. The cold clings like a blanket Mantled across the rigid landscape, Muting stark shapes in antiseptic folds

I am having a haircut today, it is not A complex event requiring excellent Foresight, careful planning or indecent Logistical arrangement; not to my way Of thinking. It does, however, dictate Great diplomacy and

The manic fires flared again today, very much the same irrational urges Blazing from the open grate, urgent fervours that belittle and berate, Ardours that depict a gross mistake and derisively debate Hereditary intelligence.

Do you mind if I write a few lines for you tonight? I’m fuelled for sure, perhaps a bit ebullient, (now there’s a rhyme that will be hard to find A word to suit!)

Is there anything which isn’t made in China? The answer is… of course there is, the question Was rhetorical, a crude attempt to palliate China’s late renaissance; eighty years ago you’d say That nothing

It was my life in fast review, initially at double speed Until I learned which functions scrolled the images On screen. I could pause, freeze frame advance, Endlessly replay and alter sound although the

The biker was a menace on the farm, a madman bent On speed, intent on leaving all for dead (it was fortunate He never left the shed). This biker was a frogmouth owl, A

Is the current rate of global warming A serious and cogent warning? Do we need to think about the fact That higher tides will drown Pacific island states Within a year or two, or

Colours in lamplight are previews, Scarcely eschewed as wave-length turbulence Tuned to closeness and friendship. Colours in firelight are skin-warmed Glowings, harbouring contentment, Revealing intuitive insight. Colours in moonlight are barely shown Shy smiles

The critic gushed and said, “Just like Jack, So raw, I never thought to see another writer just Like Kerouac!” Kerouac, who the fuck is he? A writer? Christ, that’s a laugh, compare me

Nicky said I couldn’t write, she’s got a charming Sense of social etiquette – given she’s a bitch (the canine sort, can’t spell for shit or even write A word) but then she has

Access Road Fifteen they named it This anonymous road to the Waipakihi Where its brawling water becomes Tongariro. A moment’s journey across a horizon Anchored in haze-ridden Taupomoana Distanced, but jewelled in my thoughts.

This morning, coffee in hand, standing at the kitchen Window thinking of things that need to be done I contemplated the post with a lean at the front gate Which I should right one

What is left now that we’ve used the last excuse, What is left to justify excess. The rhetoric at best Was very thin when things began, but to suggest We must remain and play

The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to

Absorbed in familiar rhythms, Carillon of senses steeped In good vibrations, surrounded By musical beat Pulsing potently In avidly articulated veins, Moving heated blood Faultlessly, delivering its purity Into a reservoir of deep power,