© Copyright Pip Wilson, 2010
Chocolate sticks!
Chocolate sticks!
I love my chocolate biscuit sticks.
Nice and tasty
all for me
I eat them all
GO! ONE! TWO! THREE!
Crisp and yummy
Chocolate sticks
I gobble them quickly
FOUR! FIVE! SIX!
They go so fast
They taste so fine
I bite them, chew them
SEVEN! EIGHT! NINE!
I eat them now, I ate them then
I eat far more than nine or ten.
I’m just a little kid of six
But I can eat those chocolate sticks
As if my age were ninety-one
I’ll eat those bickies by the ton!
Chocolate sticks!
Chocolate sticks!
I love my chocolate biscuit sticks!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
World Poetry Performance Cup
A troupe of Bello Bards are off to Nimbin this weekend for the World Poetry Performance Cup.
Looks like Brian, Craig, Fiona and Liz will be performing with welcome support from Ian, Leo, Marti, Ruth, Sally and Rosie.
Contestants have eight minutes to strut their stuff through heats, semis and, hopefully in all cases, the final.
So, barrack for the Bello Bards this weekend.
Looks like Brian, Craig, Fiona and Liz will be performing with welcome support from Ian, Leo, Marti, Ruth, Sally and Rosie.
Contestants have eight minutes to strut their stuff through heats, semis and, hopefully in all cases, the final.
So, barrack for the Bello Bards this weekend.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Letter to Death
Dear Death,
Please don't take any more of my friends. Cunt.
Death, please, please don't take Gobbo.
Illustrated man Gobbo, with scars across his chest, uninterrupted tattoos adorning his mystical face, and neck and legs and arms -- and, I'm told, also his man-chop. Gobbo, who has an astonishingly beautiful new wife (named after a daughter of Poseidon, but possibly her parents got the name from 'Wonder Woman', a TV show I’ve yet to see), who I'm pretty sure one day will have had enough of Gobbo and do a midnight flit. He also has: a darling baby daughter, loved by him, and who his goddess will take on her midnight flit; in Grafton Prison, a teenage son, who he misses and wept about to me; and a problem with anger. Gobbo, who understands old Fords and break-and-enter, but not as much as he thinks he does about the Illuminati, and paganism, and Egyptian "herio-glyphics" that supposedly foretold antigravity machines. He's one of those kinds of blokes you don't see much, and hardly know, but you sort of … love. Our vibes are always deliciously sweet -- me, his wife, their baby, and him. I fed them a grand meal at my place and I tried very hard not to look at his missus, not just because of my love for Gobbo, but also because, some time before the time I loved and lusted for them both, I'd properly started to learn to respect Honour. And Gobbo's wife and Gobbo each have some (incoherent) human kind of Honour, I can tell. So …
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, please don't take my friend Gobbo.
Death, please, please don't take Asya.
Asya, who cried on my breast in the dark, around the Kings Cross corner where others couldn't observe, so people wouldn't gossip that this little girl was giving her body to me. I wasn’t after it anyway – although I suppose that’s not entirely true. Asya: middle class, Russian Jewish and smart, 19 years old, silly, as lonely as a wet Woolloomooloo rat. Asya, who people tend not to like; who I find annoying but can't ignore or turn my back on, and not because of sex. I think that so far I'm the only human being she could ever really talk to, but that will improve for her in time. She phones me too much. I hate phones; she doesn't get it. I can only take her in small doses. I care for her right to the marrow of my ridiculous bones.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Asya.
Death, please, please don't take Ronald Lawyer.
Ronald Lawyer, who nearly got disbarred by the Law Society because of using cocaine and crystal meth, and whose placidity soothes me; who sometimes snaps at me and seems not to notice his transgressions -- not enough ever to apologise. Coke and ice ten times a day would do that even to Gandhi, so give Ronald a break, you unfeeling cur. Ronald's eyes, when he shares his truth, are beyond my present capabilities, and make me ashamed. His courage is unadvertised and unnoticed behind his meekness and slight stature. Even his peers don't realise he has suffered like Prometheus. Unlike me, I think he might be constitutionally incapable of the slightest resentment. If you absolutely must take him, please don't call him Ron. He prefers Ronald.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Ronald Lawyer.
Death, please, please don't take Deanne.
I know she likes a fight over "issues", and I think she applies street bullshit to beliefs, and she really gave me the shits one night over coffee (she paid for hers -- I was impressed). But she says "I love you" to me, not that either of us wants to root the other at all, and "I love you" is a phrase few men have told her, and fewer have told her with sincerity. She lived in Hell for 19 years. She was probably pretty when she started on the street, when she was just 14. She's buried three husbands who had this disease. She deserves a chance at a man who doesn't grunt and smell like you, Death, and chuck cash on the bed. She's using again, and hawking the fork on Macleay Street again. Struck by Compassion and Panic, I went looking for her and found her. Bought her coffee and cake. It was really nice.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Deanne.
Death, please, please don't take Chee.
He nearly always smiles when he sees me and we sit awkwardly in the Tropicana. His skin is like porcelain; his silence is excruciating. With people pressed fearsomely around him in a language not his own, he sloughed off the Dragon, but some of Chee's meat and skin and spirit were left behind. Like most of us. He is always alone. People don't notice him. He has a mother and sisters in Shanghai, but you took his brother because of this sickness we share. Chee lives near Gobbo. That's about all I know. Except that he's tired of wearing other people's pyjamas in detox wards, and that he's very gentle.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Chee.
Death, please, please don't take Maori Woman.
She could smash the bridge of a nose with that look, and there's probably no denying she's cracked a few noses with her fist. I told her I don't approve, and she forgave me. Spare her, you bastard. She's tall and straight, not that I care, and has long blonde plaits because her grandfather or some ancestor was a Norwegian merchant sailor or something. She lets me tell her I love her, and maybe no one else may do that but me, or her lover, The Yellow Rose of Texas -- who is always depressed, calls herself "as ugly as a mud fence", and is obviously a bit jealous of me (but I still like her a lot). I like to think that Maori Woman and I keep each other in a little special secret hiding place. She told me she's only a dyke when she sleeps with women, and I learned a real lot from that. Men more handsome and charismatic than I might get to be with her. We hold hands a lot. Sometimes, without a word, she suddenly love-hugs me really slow and long, and when she does, we are returned to the poison decades we shared before we met. When we hug those hugs, we are still Hansel and Gretel quivering in the Wicked Witch's oven. She has some kind of heart condition. When she was very ill, it was me she phoned for help, and I felt so honoured. So I rushed her to hospital, and that night I wept; I wept all alone for hours. The tears fell in big drops on my keyboard. She stayed at my house for a few days to recuperate and I cooked for her -- I gave her my bed and I slept on the couch in the living room. And I didn't try anything on her, because of Dignity, Respect and True Love. Only those. Sometimes I'd give anything to fuck with her; sometimes the very thought of it makes me feel creepy, despite her beauty inside and out. Too incestuous, maybe. She restored my Faith in Woman, which took some doing, you mongrel. She doesn't understand why, nor particularly want to know. She's funny that way. She is brave and remarkable. I will love her, sort of, all my life. And vice versa, I get the impression.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Maori Woman.
Death, please, please don't take Morgana.
I know she's skinny and has a whine where a voice should be, but she rode in my car whenever I needed to do someone a good turn -- someone who, like me, has vomited in gutters and alleys far too much for one lifetime. She shot up in the same McDonald's toilets as me in Port Macquarie, but different years, and she thinks I have interesting hands. Do you remember her? When she beat you last time, all she had was a green garbage bag of clothes stolen from washing lines. She can't read much, but she knows almost every lyric penned by Jim Morrison, who I can't stand. She once nodded off on a gas heater and burnt off her entire front and tits. Once, the ambulance blokes said that, according to official records, they had brought her back from overdose 82 times. She reckons I could be David Bowie's brother, "No fuckin' shit". Regardless of all that, I like the woman.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Morgana.
Death, please, please don't take Murray the Moocher.
Remember him? You had him by the throat in the red-and-blue flashing Newtown night, but you left him because you were interrupted by a shouting crowd. Remember, please remember! He was too sad and fat and alone, and you thought he was not worth the effort. He's happier and even fatter now, since he put down the spoon and picked up the fork, and never forgets the name of any brother or sister plucked from your fangs. Murray phones me way too much as well. He grows pretty good roses and spends too long on Foxtel, and no one comes to his house unless they're punted out of rehab. He always has a spare bed, even though he gets ripped off time and time and time again. He spoke kindly to me when I was too buggered to go with you. He's a good man at heart, not that I can make you care, I guess. And he helps other people, you bastard.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Murray the Moocher.
Death, please, please don't take Sexy Sara.
She can't go back to her parents' commune in the hills of northern New South Wales, and her pretty face and enormous jugs won't survive Sydney's streets, so please let her be. She said if she has just one shot for relief, within two days she'll be in Kings Cross with some ugly, smelly guy's cock up her arse (she quite enjoys selling pussy, but she hates doing anal except with a lover, and loathes men who stink). Don't be that guy. Find some old woman instead. She's scarcely lived more than two decades, and if you spared an old boiler like me, you can spare Sara. She's been kind to me, and I've been kind to her, even when I wasn’t foolishly hoping to bang her.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Sexy Sara.
Death, please, please don't take Mister Blister.
In recent years he learned how to stop stuttering, and how never to hit a man or woman again. He looks strange; pretty weird, actually. We all know it. He knows it. He's hopelessly trying to learn Spanish because day and night he dreams of getting a Filipina mail-order bride. He once got fitted up by a crooked copper and was sentenced to four years in Long Bay – 30 months' non-parole. It was a set-up and everyone knew it, probably even the judge. Later he got stabbed by two real crims in the yard just for reading poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But he says he got away with more than he paid for, so he considers, all being told, that the tally is square. As far as I can tell, he harbours grudges against no one in the entire world, except maybe his mother, and from what he's told me, she deserves it. Sure, sure, he's a dreadful bore, but Jerry the Nose reckons he once saved a kid from drowning, and we both love Robert Crumb comix. We hug each other slow and long, a bit embarrassed.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend Mister Blister.
Death, please, please don't take the Flower Girl.
Sometimes we also do the Hansel and Gretel quiver thing. Not her -- please don't take her. She lost 29 teeth, and, for a while, her mind. She's been in 42 detoxes and seven rathouses. She hawked it on filthy Macleay Street for 16 years, but never, ever pinched a drunk john's wallet. She never cut the gear with sugar, and she never, ever taxed a deal, whether selling to friend or stranger. She lives for her niece. Do you even understand that? She lives for her niece! Half the time she wants to go with you … but fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!!!
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, don't take my friend the Flower Girl.
Death, please, please don't take Crazy Bo.
He's not even crazy any more -- it was just him coming off the methadone, cheap rotgut vodka and tablets. He used to rave about trains and big-arsed women and some pawnbroker who stole his watch, and he interrupted me all the time till I thought I'd walk away from him, but I'm usually not that sort of man. I think he might get a woman one day, which is all that he wants. Sometimes he still blanks out. He doesn't smell as bad as he used to, and now he can breathe between sentences. Even when he was mental, he wouldn't hurt a fly. Once, when he was tripping in Sydney, he woke up six days later hugging a telegraph pole in Brisbane. When he was only eight his uncle fucked him up the arse. One day, maybe, he won't be so down on himself. He has the saddest, saddest eyes, and I have cried for him heaps of times too. Well, only about three times, maybe four.
Oh Death, please, please, I beg of you, please don't take my friend Crazy Bo.
You always spat them back before, many times each, as you did me. You don't want them now. You certainly don't need them now. Take really old people, or really bad people. I can give you 25 names and addresses off the top of my head.
Who will be here in ten years? Why did you let me loose from all those close calls?
I won't say, "Take me instead”, because I hate your guts so badly, after all that I’ve seen you do, and I'm not that good a person. Never pretended to be. Just, please, please, please ... pass my friends by.
Fuck ... fuck ... FUCK!!!!!! DON'T YOU HAVE ENOUGH OF THEM ALREADY??!!!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Death of Nordvag
© Copyright Cherie Pugh, 2010
Well its bad news for you
and its terrible for me:
the Norvag's been abandoned
to the mercy of the sea.
We once crewed a gallant ship
that sails my memory,
the strong and beamy Nordvag,
from the salty Baltic Sea.
Brian sailed her to Toronto
on his dream journey,
and we voyaged over oceans
from Bermuda to Fiji,
around the Caribbean,
across to Hawaii,
from New Zealand to Australia,
through unknown territory,
and many times we risked her life
quite accidentally.
In truth, she was a noble ship
well built of Baltic wood
with Dragon carved in bulkheads,
copper Mermaids on her hood,
dolphins carved in bookshelves,
and dancing round her bow.
She was a sight with bellied sails,
when we stood at her prow,
but how I think we'd weep and wail
if we could see her now.
When she turned to face the storm
in the Caribbean Sea
off the Golfo de Pirates
she showed her quality.
When the ocean was a foaming hell
that made other vessels flee,
she surfed waves full masthead high
and lived triumphantly.
Now the Nordvag lies forgotten
At the bottom of the sea.
Every time I hear the sea
crashing on the shore,
I think of the Nordvag
and the time I knew before:
the mad adventures we survived
in our floating caravan,
the Nordvag riding on the waves
of unknown, foreign lands.
When I was a gypsy girl
and the wicked world did roam,
the Nordvag was my soul's abode,
My only, ever home.
And when my life comes to an end,
We will together sail,
and roam the oceans always,
me at the wheelhouse rail.
For the Nordvag has a soul like mine:
unfettered, ever free,
and we cannot forget her,
and her gift of liberty.
But now its time to weep and wail
and write sad poetry,
for the Nordvag lies forsaken
in the cold and cruel sea.
Well its bad news for you
and its terrible for me:
the Norvag's been abandoned
to the mercy of the sea.
We once crewed a gallant ship
that sails my memory,
the strong and beamy Nordvag,
from the salty Baltic Sea.
Brian sailed her to Toronto
on his dream journey,
and we voyaged over oceans
from Bermuda to Fiji,
around the Caribbean,
across to Hawaii,
from New Zealand to Australia,
through unknown territory,
and many times we risked her life
quite accidentally.
In truth, she was a noble ship
well built of Baltic wood
with Dragon carved in bulkheads,
copper Mermaids on her hood,
dolphins carved in bookshelves,
and dancing round her bow.
She was a sight with bellied sails,
when we stood at her prow,
but how I think we'd weep and wail
if we could see her now.
When she turned to face the storm
in the Caribbean Sea
off the Golfo de Pirates
she showed her quality.
When the ocean was a foaming hell
that made other vessels flee,
she surfed waves full masthead high
and lived triumphantly.
Now the Nordvag lies forgotten
At the bottom of the sea.
Every time I hear the sea
crashing on the shore,
I think of the Nordvag
and the time I knew before:
the mad adventures we survived
in our floating caravan,
the Nordvag riding on the waves
of unknown, foreign lands.
When I was a gypsy girl
and the wicked world did roam,
the Nordvag was my soul's abode,
My only, ever home.
And when my life comes to an end,
We will together sail,
and roam the oceans always,
me at the wheelhouse rail.
For the Nordvag has a soul like mine:
unfettered, ever free,
and we cannot forget her,
and her gift of liberty.
But now its time to weep and wail
and write sad poetry,
for the Nordvag lies forsaken
in the cold and cruel sea.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Bello Bards' last rehearsal for the World Cup
We had a poets' gathering around my firepit at 'The Ponderosa' today, last rehearsal for the Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup http://tinyurl.com/2dlxszw. It's a good team from Bellingen. Unfortunately, I won't be going, but Bello Bards will do us proud! Contact me if you want details: wilsonsalmanac [AT] gmail.com. Put BELLO BARDS in your email subject header for any communication at any time, so I don't miss it. Go Bello!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Next bardie fireside meet
2pm, Saturday, July 24, 23 Dowle as usual. Hope to see you there ... it's the last one before the Nimbin Cup.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I AM BUT A POOR MAN...WALKING A COUNTRY ROAD...
© Copyright Brian Carter, 2010
I am but a poor man in a world full of riches
The earth provides me with many bright gems of light every day
As I am seeking them all the time....
I look beyond the fake film of impatience, concrete and insecurity
To the blend of hope, calm and tranquility of natures creatures
and the busy and peaceful human being.
I am in Bororen (Boroaren) on the Bruce highway
With fifty road trains an hour
And fifty rail trains a day, not a hundred metres from my sleeping abode.
The trucks abound only ten metres to the bitumen from my bed...my cubby
At June and Ray's cuddly little roadside caravan park.
But I do not hear the trucks and trains when I wish to sleep.
The transport is a mechanical symphony that rocks me to sleep
As I seek different sounds and tunes in their engines and drivers.
The trains are like my train set as a child
That I built out of match boxes and blocks
A world full of toys now come to life
Their blinkered image as they snake thru the trees,
Viewed from a distant forest and wilderness.
The express ''Tilt'' train worms its way at great speed
Past blinking trees, like a silver catterpillar,
Seeking refuge from a hovering bird.
Bororen is a small highway town in Queensland near Seventeen Seventy
And the Southern most point of the Grand Barrier Reef.
Like many small Australian towns, almost lost in its own infinity.
A town charged with gossip, drive, spirit, instinct, survival
And a smothering layer of natures best overlay
On busy lives and commercial, smoking, noisy, orchestral transport system
Of trains, trucks, caravans and campers going North, South and West
Leaving East for me and a few locals.....
All honoring work, retirement, lazyness and holiday ethics of daily lives.
The main shopping strip...the length of a good Rugby try
Or a long Aussie torpedo punt
Dressed up with the Bororen Hotel...Motel
Housing still the aura of the Aussie outback
With all its hats and smoking suspicion and apprehension.
The allready delectable rude timber ''Daves little creations''....
With creatures, culture, sculpture bewitched by imagination.
A general store held in time with 1870 still hanging out its curtains and product
For all to view and be enticed by the joys of jumbled words and product...
And 1960s westerns and sitcoms on an in house ten inch TV mmmm.
A memorial in the rail side travellers park honoring all by faith in the young
To continue to defend all that is revered
And bless those fallen in that task...hopefully of the past
But still fringed by conflict in other parts of the world
where we offer our duty to ourselves
The earth beneath us
The creatures around us
The time we have given
And the mistakes we have made.
Best of all is the gentle sights, sounds and smells
The passing cattle trucks offering the nose something to remember
The often operatic jumble of mechanical noise
Occasionally suffocating the gentle sounds of the birds
With the endearing silence of the forest and country road...
When all creatures hear a new pin drop and go silent for seconds
To compute any danger in the intruders presence, shape and sound.
The daily acceptance of stopping a good yarn in the middle
To allow a loud, symphonic truck to go past
In the middle of a mechanical rock opera!!!
Then to repeat the story without a blink.
The benefits of a trucks sounds preventing occasionally
Another boring story told many times before!!
A fine country road heading east over the busy highway
And main railway line, with its magnetic, straight lines
Narrowing North and South to beyond or to nowhere it seems.
The Eastern country road that belongs to me alone at times
With some locals dashing everywhere.
I set off from the operatic prattle of the main street
Past the comfort station that absorbs tourists and truck drivers alike.
A meeting place for drivers bringing huge metal monsters
For mining purposes, North with police and transport entourage
That take up all the road and much of the landscape
As they trundle past, offering great drama to the symphony of metal,
motor, scale, magnitude and imagination.
Past the railway signals that offer ''proceed'' to me
Into this calm and peaceful sound of busy, noisy ''Avarian'', silent natural wonderland!!
The country bitumen glides thru these charming and calming everglades
Of wetland, road verge, distant eroding hills, fringed with white trunked trees.
Pastures of many grazed grasses, harvested all day and night by
Kangaroos, cattle horses, bustard, snakes, lizards, ibis, quail,, thrush
Wagtail, predatory feathered kings of the air
And a throng of infinite small birds, insects, spiders.....
Joined at many roadside ponds by by singing frogs, yabbies, paddling small fish and dragonflies
With the ever present mosquoito and midgee!!!
The air and grasses filled with red winged parrots, honey eaters, rainbow lorrikeets,
ring necked lorikeets, galahs, many families of red backed wrens, kookaburras, kingfishers and more.
All stop in awe as a pair of brolgas fly low overhead
Like peaceful B52 or Lancaster bombers watching all below
As masters and gods of the air.
The Brolgas often standing like graceful sentinals or roman soldiers
Then lowering their heads to graze.
Brolgas are in tune with all around them
With awesome raising of their wings and bodies
To show off their size and power.
Rising into the air at a low level
to tip the earths fringes as they fly low over the earths busy pastures....
Then offering their croaking call as the time for all to close down
Curl up under wing or in the trees, hollow or burrow
And go to sleep to avoid the adventures, dangers
And predators of the night.
As I walk at my gentle observing pace, seeking all movement
Or new sights ahead and at all peripheral levels
I observe to my right and left the gentle speed I travel
As an aware human being, as the trees and landscape
Gently glide past and beside me.
I am but a poor man, offered riches and riddles every day.
Observed by my eyes, ears and invisible senses
Searching for details obscure to most
Who search mostly for plunder.
I am but a poor man in a bed of riches
offered by the spirits of infinity and powers of observation....
and understanding.
In Bororen you can observe everything that matters
And everything that doesn't matter!!!!
Depending on the slant of your observation, calm and patience
At the time.
I am but a poor man in a world full of riches
The earth provides me with many bright gems of light every day
As I am seeking them all the time....
I look beyond the fake film of impatience, concrete and insecurity
To the blend of hope, calm and tranquility of natures creatures
and the busy and peaceful human being.
I am in Bororen (Boroaren) on the Bruce highway
With fifty road trains an hour
And fifty rail trains a day, not a hundred metres from my sleeping abode.
The trucks abound only ten metres to the bitumen from my bed...my cubby
At June and Ray's cuddly little roadside caravan park.
But I do not hear the trucks and trains when I wish to sleep.
The transport is a mechanical symphony that rocks me to sleep
As I seek different sounds and tunes in their engines and drivers.
The trains are like my train set as a child
That I built out of match boxes and blocks
A world full of toys now come to life
Their blinkered image as they snake thru the trees,
Viewed from a distant forest and wilderness.
The express ''Tilt'' train worms its way at great speed
Past blinking trees, like a silver catterpillar,
Seeking refuge from a hovering bird.
Bororen is a small highway town in Queensland near Seventeen Seventy
And the Southern most point of the Grand Barrier Reef.
Like many small Australian towns, almost lost in its own infinity.
A town charged with gossip, drive, spirit, instinct, survival
And a smothering layer of natures best overlay
On busy lives and commercial, smoking, noisy, orchestral transport system
Of trains, trucks, caravans and campers going North, South and West
Leaving East for me and a few locals.....
All honoring work, retirement, lazyness and holiday ethics of daily lives.
The main shopping strip...the length of a good Rugby try
Or a long Aussie torpedo punt
Dressed up with the Bororen Hotel...Motel
Housing still the aura of the Aussie outback
With all its hats and smoking suspicion and apprehension.
The allready delectable rude timber ''Daves little creations''....
With creatures, culture, sculpture bewitched by imagination.
A general store held in time with 1870 still hanging out its curtains and product
For all to view and be enticed by the joys of jumbled words and product...
And 1960s westerns and sitcoms on an in house ten inch TV mmmm.
A memorial in the rail side travellers park honoring all by faith in the young
To continue to defend all that is revered
And bless those fallen in that task...hopefully of the past
But still fringed by conflict in other parts of the world
where we offer our duty to ourselves
The earth beneath us
The creatures around us
The time we have given
And the mistakes we have made.
Best of all is the gentle sights, sounds and smells
The passing cattle trucks offering the nose something to remember
The often operatic jumble of mechanical noise
Occasionally suffocating the gentle sounds of the birds
With the endearing silence of the forest and country road...
When all creatures hear a new pin drop and go silent for seconds
To compute any danger in the intruders presence, shape and sound.
The daily acceptance of stopping a good yarn in the middle
To allow a loud, symphonic truck to go past
In the middle of a mechanical rock opera!!!
Then to repeat the story without a blink.
The benefits of a trucks sounds preventing occasionally
Another boring story told many times before!!
A fine country road heading east over the busy highway
And main railway line, with its magnetic, straight lines
Narrowing North and South to beyond or to nowhere it seems.
The Eastern country road that belongs to me alone at times
With some locals dashing everywhere.
I set off from the operatic prattle of the main street
Past the comfort station that absorbs tourists and truck drivers alike.
A meeting place for drivers bringing huge metal monsters
For mining purposes, North with police and transport entourage
That take up all the road and much of the landscape
As they trundle past, offering great drama to the symphony of metal,
motor, scale, magnitude and imagination.
Past the railway signals that offer ''proceed'' to me
Into this calm and peaceful sound of busy, noisy ''Avarian'', silent natural wonderland!!
The country bitumen glides thru these charming and calming everglades
Of wetland, road verge, distant eroding hills, fringed with white trunked trees.
Pastures of many grazed grasses, harvested all day and night by
Kangaroos, cattle horses, bustard, snakes, lizards, ibis, quail,, thrush
Wagtail, predatory feathered kings of the air
And a throng of infinite small birds, insects, spiders.....
Joined at many roadside ponds by by singing frogs, yabbies, paddling small fish and dragonflies
With the ever present mosquoito and midgee!!!
The air and grasses filled with red winged parrots, honey eaters, rainbow lorrikeets,
ring necked lorikeets, galahs, many families of red backed wrens, kookaburras, kingfishers and more.
All stop in awe as a pair of brolgas fly low overhead
Like peaceful B52 or Lancaster bombers watching all below
As masters and gods of the air.
The Brolgas often standing like graceful sentinals or roman soldiers
Then lowering their heads to graze.
Brolgas are in tune with all around them
With awesome raising of their wings and bodies
To show off their size and power.
Rising into the air at a low level
to tip the earths fringes as they fly low over the earths busy pastures....
Then offering their croaking call as the time for all to close down
Curl up under wing or in the trees, hollow or burrow
And go to sleep to avoid the adventures, dangers
And predators of the night.
As I walk at my gentle observing pace, seeking all movement
Or new sights ahead and at all peripheral levels
I observe to my right and left the gentle speed I travel
As an aware human being, as the trees and landscape
Gently glide past and beside me.
I am but a poor man, offered riches and riddles every day.
Observed by my eyes, ears and invisible senses
Searching for details obscure to most
Who search mostly for plunder.
I am but a poor man in a bed of riches
offered by the spirits of infinity and powers of observation....
and understanding.
In Bororen you can observe everything that matters
And everything that doesn't matter!!!!
Depending on the slant of your observation, calm and patience
At the time.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
A blessing to my loved ones
© Copyright Pip Wilson, http://www. wilsonsalmanac.com, 2010
When the concrete sets around your eyes
and failure's demon heaves heavy on your chest;
when all is lost and bands of broken dreams obtrude your brow,
may mother Moon wash you in her white beams
till all your cells are young again
and torrents of ecstasy whoosh! up your being.
When dams of tears unyielding ache,
for fairness isn't in the rules;
when mealy maggot men expropriate
the prize your mind's eye still implores,
while women of jagged ice squeal above like banshee bats …
may the sunset song of eucalypt and oak and bloom and grass
lay you down in ancient mystic beds of healing
till you slumber unafraid with the silent warm babies.
When one and yet another poison plastic chalice
scald your hand in this your turn for futile hell;
when fumbled chance and yet another,
and opportunity and possibility sink sad beneath your divinity;
when your hands are bound and cannot punch
the wily smoke that chokes your hopes,
and bed again alone adds aching loss to loss …
may misty light float through balmy groves
and play upon the darkling sea
till all around is jasmine dew
and fountains of amethyst and agate rain your night.
When guilty gales around your face
are filth with city grit and wasted days,
may all your hero wizardry
light up your golden lamp, and may it blaze!
When the concrete sets around your eyes
and failure's demon heaves heavy on your chest;
when all is lost and bands of broken dreams obtrude your brow,
may mother Moon wash you in her white beams
till all your cells are young again
and torrents of ecstasy whoosh! up your being.
When dams of tears unyielding ache,
for fairness isn't in the rules;
when mealy maggot men expropriate
the prize your mind's eye still implores,
while women of jagged ice squeal above like banshee bats …
may the sunset song of eucalypt and oak and bloom and grass
lay you down in ancient mystic beds of healing
till you slumber unafraid with the silent warm babies.
When one and yet another poison plastic chalice
scald your hand in this your turn for futile hell;
when fumbled chance and yet another,
and opportunity and possibility sink sad beneath your divinity;
when your hands are bound and cannot punch
the wily smoke that chokes your hopes,
and bed again alone adds aching loss to loss …
may misty light float through balmy groves
and play upon the darkling sea
till all around is jasmine dew
and fountains of amethyst and agate rain your night.
When guilty gales around your face
are filth with city grit and wasted days,
may all your hero wizardry
light up your golden lamp, and may it blaze!
Bello ramble
Oh this is what it's like sometimes
oh this is how it goes.
A wild colonial boy
in the Bellingen 'Truman Show'.
and this is what it's like sometimes
and this is how it goes.
And it's endless sky and it's mists of grey
and we must do it again.
And it's hi-yi-yi and it's hi-yi-yay
for don't we love Bellingen?
My first wife was the Hyde St clock,
for I said she was always wrong.
I said I was off to the crossroads
she said she couldn’t come along.
And just sometimes I get it right –
think it’s the times I do it alone.
My second wife was the footpath
on the east of Lavender's Bridge
'cause she was on the wrong side.
Thank Christ we didn’t have kids.
Something she said split us apart
and something that I did.
I remember there on Hyde St
I was in the greengrocer's shop
it was about 19-and-76,
the grocer he leapt up,
lowered the roller door with a crash
I wondered what was up.
And it's endless sky and it's mists of grey
and we must do it again.
And it's hi-yi-yi and it's hi-yi-yay
for don't we love Bellingen?
And all was dark within that store
and by the spuds stood I,
and the grocer peeked out through a crack
until the funeral passed by.
When Mrs Reid's cortège had passed
he flung the shutters high.
And I looked out into the street,
for Mrs Reid the town was shut
till shopkeeper after shopkeeper
opened all the shop doors up.
For that was how it was, my friends
and on that I won't shut up.
And it's endless sky and it's mists of grey
and we must do it again.
And it's hi-yi-yi and it's hi-yi-yay
for don't we love Bellingen?
And my third wife was the Bellinger
'cause she was new but old.
My fourth wife was September
for she was hot and cold.
My fifth wife I remember
took my silver for her gold.
And my sixth wife was a black cockatoo
whose cry said rain was coming.
My seventh I called the valley,
she set my heart a humming
she set my heart a humming
a billion cicadas drumming!
And it's endless green and it's endless blue,
at the wharf the cedar's still loading.
And lay down me with corroboree
and remember my heart exploding,
for this deep soil and my youthful toil
and may I leave nothing owing.
And it's endless sky and it's mists of grey
and we must do it again.
And it's hi-yi-yi and it's hi-yi-yay
for don't we all love Bellingen?
Vastlands of innocence (for July 4)
© Pip Wilson www.wilsonsalmanac.com, 2002 - ’10
"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
United States Declaration of Independence
"O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea ..."
Katharine Lee Bates, 1904
In the vastlands of innocence,
Liberty and Justice
sang to a southland and we heard the call.
We are torn, we’re all born on the Fourth of July.
Purple mountain majesty washed over all
Australia’s red rocks and her blue mountain pall.
O vastlands of innocence,
manifest destiny,
great people, just people, people just the same.
They pulled down their king for a trivial thing,
and raised up another who sullied their name.
O beautiful, for spacious skies and Richard Nixon’s shame.
In the vastlands of innocence,
in the wide dreaming,
mansions of marble and motels of mud.
We marvel and wonder when we hear distant thunder,
will it bring rains of plenty, or does it speak flood?
Jefferson, Franklin, or movies of blood?
O the vastlands of innocence,
Swaggart and Leary,
they send us provisions at our own behest.
Marlboro and medicine, Manson and Edison,
they ship us their best but then ship us the rest.
O would that their captains would heed our request!
In the vastlands of innocence,
by the blue harbour,
‘W’ dared and he ventured to touch
on his favourite oration, The World’s Greatest Nation.
Sweet Jesus forgive him, he ain’t travelled much,
and vanity in vain, isn’t vanity as such.
The vastlands of innocence,
Fonzie and Whitman,
adored in dark theatres and the rockets’ red glare,
we never will hate them, condemn or berate them
and part of our hearts is in their love affair.
But we must implore that the rumours of war
will wither like whispers in yesterday’s air,
like the whimpers of babies, like Mary’s last prayer.
The blood-spangled banner of hunger’s unfurled –
let the vastlands still sing the Pursuits, for the World.
"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
United States Declaration of Independence
"O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea ..."
Katharine Lee Bates, 1904
In the vastlands of innocence,
Liberty and Justice
sang to a southland and we heard the call.
We are torn, we’re all born on the Fourth of July.
Purple mountain majesty washed over all
Australia’s red rocks and her blue mountain pall.
O vastlands of innocence,
manifest destiny,
great people, just people, people just the same.
They pulled down their king for a trivial thing,
and raised up another who sullied their name.
O beautiful, for spacious skies and Richard Nixon’s shame.
In the vastlands of innocence,
in the wide dreaming,
mansions of marble and motels of mud.
We marvel and wonder when we hear distant thunder,
will it bring rains of plenty, or does it speak flood?
Jefferson, Franklin, or movies of blood?
O the vastlands of innocence,
Swaggart and Leary,
they send us provisions at our own behest.
Marlboro and medicine, Manson and Edison,
they ship us their best but then ship us the rest.
O would that their captains would heed our request!
In the vastlands of innocence,
by the blue harbour,
‘W’ dared and he ventured to touch
on his favourite oration, The World’s Greatest Nation.
Sweet Jesus forgive him, he ain’t travelled much,
and vanity in vain, isn’t vanity as such.
The vastlands of innocence,
Fonzie and Whitman,
adored in dark theatres and the rockets’ red glare,
we never will hate them, condemn or berate them
and part of our hearts is in their love affair.
But we must implore that the rumours of war
will wither like whispers in yesterday’s air,
like the whimpers of babies, like Mary’s last prayer.
The blood-spangled banner of hunger’s unfurled –
let the vastlands still sing the Pursuits, for the World.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Want to enter competitions?
Check out www.fanstory.com and post your poems and other writing...
ongoing contests, reviews etc
ongoing contests, reviews etc
Bello Bards Meeting July 3, 2010
Apologies for the delay in posting …(school Holidays and preparing for family trip to New Zealand !) …cheers Liz
Attended by:
Marty Guy, Misty Hanley, , Fiona Kendall, Iain MacDonald, Craig Nelson, Ruth Powley, Elizabeth Routledge, Pip Wilson, Sheree and Russell
At 3pm we met around the pit fire in Pip’s garden. Fiona read excerpts from her intended poem for The Nimbin World Poetry Cup – “Confessions of a Single Mother”. Craig read his “P’ poem and was spot on 8 minutes and looks like a serious contender for the cup (should we start betting?), Liz read “Fresh meat and Intercourse” but was under by a minute!
Marty to put an announcement in The Courier in the near future... outlining the impending journey of the Bello Bards to Nimbin!
Meeting again tomorrow, SATURDAY JULY 10 TH at 2.00 PM … same place!
If you have a poem and want to perform it at Nimbin come along and get constructive feedback!!
Apologies for the delay in posting …(school Holidays and preparing for family trip to New Zealand !) …cheers Liz
Attended by:
Marty Guy, Misty Hanley, , Fiona Kendall, Iain MacDonald, Craig Nelson, Ruth Powley, Elizabeth Routledge, Pip Wilson, Sheree and Russell
At 3pm we met around the pit fire in Pip’s garden. Fiona read excerpts from her intended poem for The Nimbin World Poetry Cup – “Confessions of a Single Mother”. Craig read his “P’ poem and was spot on 8 minutes and looks like a serious contender for the cup (should we start betting?), Liz read “Fresh meat and Intercourse” but was under by a minute!
Marty to put an announcement in The Courier in the near future... outlining the impending journey of the Bello Bards to Nimbin!
Meeting again tomorrow, SATURDAY JULY 10 TH at 2.00 PM … same place!
If you have a poem and want to perform it at Nimbin come along and get constructive feedback!!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
A meeting for proposed Bellingen Writers Festival
Those interested in helping to plan a Bellingen Writers Festival are invited to email Brian Purcell bgpurcell [AT] people.net.au regarding a meeting to be held in North Bellingen, Wednesday, July 14 at 5:30pm.
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