The Chalice

 

The Chalice

Tonight the white waters will wash silently upon the sand in Galway Bay.

Tonight the ghouls, ghosts and goblins will rise as wispy mist above the peat.

Tonight the mysteries of Celtic lore shall echo throughout these ancient hills.

Tonight the standing stones of Carnach will rearrange their timeless pattern.

Tonight the extinct wild wolves will howl in the crystal forest of Tyrone.

Tonight the hooded Druid's words of priestly wisdom shall be heard by all.

Tonight the ears of cats and dogs will prick at soundless motion in the fields.

Tonight the wailing winds of Keltia will brush through your raven locks.

Tonight the spells of primitive dreams will unfold before your eyes.

Tonight the shadowy Eirenic moon will be your guiding light.

Tonight the constraints of time will be unshackled.

Tonight the measures of distance will dissolve.

Tonight the endless cup of love will overflow.

Tonight the covert icons of desire will show.

Tonight the written word will ignite.

Tonight the copious chalice

of creativity in

your mind

will charm,

challenge,

inspire and

foment your delivery.

Tonight you will distil the essence of reason.

Tonight you will drain this potent potion from its bounteous cup.

 

The Emerald Runestone Of Truth

 The Emerald Rune Stone of Truth

 

So gently close your eyes my sweet,

relax and quietly seek solemn solace

in the irradiant green message stone

of your own mind's eye.

From the depths of your mystical memory,

guarding the gates of subconscious,

this arcane emerald rune stone triggers

your inmost repressed desires.

  

You alone can now decode our destination,

so seek intrepid new private passions,

unveil your self secret dream spirits,

reach into the candid cone of truth.

This ancient and esoteric crystal power pack

pulses potently its long dormant message

as we touch, intimately,

for the very first time,

Now if this deed is right for you,

this green stone light glows brighter,

throbs and impregnates your chaste senses

with its wise and latent warmth.

 

And you must trust its teachings, my sweet,

for instinctive wills well deep, with emotions

aeons old, charming, compelling,

yearning, craving, erupting.

The emerald rune stone of truth, now dominant,

burns your brain with its dazzling beam,

violates your virgin body,

saturates your soul's sanity.

And so, as plural blends to single,

two bodies forge together, weld as one;

two mortal minds meld, take off,

soar high on the wings of the bird of love.

The emerald rune stone of truth, soon passive,

has unleashed your innate sensuality, my sweet,

dark menace or personal pleasure dome,

like Pandora's box, your choice.

 

Port Arthur

This is an old poem written after visiting the colonial penal settlement of Port Arthur in Tasmania. Not only was it the centre of convict punishment and associated atrocities, but in 1996 a local lad with an automatic weapon massacred some 36 people with many others wounded. The incident brought about much stricter gun control  in Australia.

Port Arthur

I stood high on your cold, crumbling sandstone battlements

looked down on your blood stained, wooden whipping post

listened quietly to the cat cracking,

callously cutting what little flesh there was

from the wayward young waif's guiltless

ruby rib cage, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I read the element eroded epitaphs on your Isle Of The Dead,

both monument and mausoleum in a picturesque bay,

your lush bush growth born of decay

symbolic fallen headstones recounting

dour struggles for life or even death, if that’s

the lesser evil, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I sat on the smooth stone floor of your solitary confinement cell

slammed shut the solid cedar door, no solace, no shafts of light,

sensed the rabid madness still entrapped

inside this small, dank, airless tomb,

the torture of total silence echoing through this

perverse asylum, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I stalked your hillside roads by night on a shadowy torchlight tour,

sensed your ghostly presence crunching on the gravel track behind,

shivered at your rugged colonial history

its engrossing tales both tall and true

of those who once did and perhaps even now

still do roam here, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I knelt in your roofless church, heavenly refuge but hell on earth,

watched shackled inmates cough their bronchial death throes

heard redcoat rifle butts thudding

brutally against masked, miscreant jaws

whispering heresy at the pulpit preacher

saving their lost souls, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I cowed at the body waste disposal chute in your sordid clinic

repelled the convict's abject screams at blunt saw amputation,

grinding gangrenous bones without

real anaesthetic, just a tot of Gordon's gin,

sniffed the fizzing, pungent smoke from sealing

tar on burning flesh, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I rested in your Broad Arrow Cafe, resplendent in new season decor,

respite for milling mothers, their carefree kids seeking souvenirs;

with mannequins in coarse woollen uniforms and guns

to parade your living story in sight and sound

supposedly to shock, but they just mock

this new generation and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

I absorbed your angel face and blonde hair into my empty heart,

and in some form of personal atonement for your barbaric deed

pried open your psychotic mind

smelt the cankered curse of retribution,

felt the depraved bullets of hate brush past

my tearful cheeks, and I asked the question why

but I did not feel your pain.

 

 

Macquarie Marshes

Macquarie Marshes

Parched flat once grassy terrain

To the horizon distant

Water starved marsh wonderland

In prolonged drought persistent

Jigsaw creeks now dehydrated

Silent and deserted

Migrant vacationers to other routes

Eternally diverted

A quietness so like the end of time

Enveloping the marsh

Having stolen all animal wild life

In retribution harsh

For man’s betrayal of the bush

In slowing up the flow

Of distant lifeblood river systems

Created long ago

With damns, bores, canals and salt

Into the years beyond

A birthplace now only of hope

For nature to respond.

 

 

 

 

 

Looking Out Looking In

 

Looking Out Looking In

Like static distant vistas through the window of a speeding train

life simply passes by.

A rushing tunnel of darkness coerces self reflection most arcane

but easy to deny.

The brazen image focused at a metre merely mirrors the disdain

I see in my minds eye.

Satisfying to complete another day but this mediocre life profane

is still a living lie.

Unable to see value in remaining here with nothing much to gain

yet I’m afraid to die.

Am I then fated to continue to exist in introverted moods inane

nil effort to comply.

See visions of radiated ones in a hospice in Chernobyl the Ukraine 

tears welling in my eye.

A world beckons beyond the raucous chatter of cockatoos insane

mocking me in the sky.

Dare I taste the piquant flavour of the devil’s daily curry once again

of course I have to try

To seek fulfillment and in my personal esteem, higher levels to attain                                myself to dignify. 

 

 

Night Flight

Night Flight

Tonight the air feels strange, not cold, in fact, not even cool

Unusually warm for Sydney in July, Australian Yule,

A perfect night for viewing stars, cloudless, clear and pure

Unspoilt by man’s pollution, no smoke haze to endure

And airport curfews now in place ensure a sky sublime

Pregnant silence coats the land like a Marcel Marceau mime.

Above the regal moon, so full, sits low in elevation,

Infuses mood, instils a sense of eerie expectation.

Peering from behind tall trees promoting shape and shadow

Furtive profiles on the land, lurking late night tableaux.

Such aura from the moonlight evokes weird scenes theatric

A world of two dimensions, a shadow-graph dramatic,

Immobile trees and buildings, flat silhouettes outlined

Robbed of girth and colour just in monochrome defined.

A breeding ground for creative minds, night under attack,

Lost souls and ghouls, a shaman, all shades of black on black,

Intensify the ambient mood as the nimbus rises higher

Flooding the earth with ghostly beams, nocturnal silver fire.

To all intents and purposes there is no night time breeze

Just a hint, a puff, a zephyr stirs high branches in the trees,

Quaintly moulds mixed mind shapes from hallucinogenic fronds

Fomenting fear and panic when a fertile brain responds

As one bold rustling mind shape, hanging high, takes flight

With powerful strokes of webbed skin into the dark of night

Its form quite imperceptible until its moon traverse

Revives foyer poster memories, a Transylvanian curse,

A horror movie cliché now transposed to local skies

Stark and black and potent uttering ultrasonic cries,

That pulse like radar signals across this heavenly stage

Directional technology born of a primitive age.

With strident shrieks this leader bat now signals its cohorts

In manner urgent drawing a shrill chorus of retorts

From shadowy shapes on branches, in querulous debates

Of fever pitch crescendo, which then suddenly abates,

Arrested on command as flapping leather flays the air

Their leader has directed an alternate night time lair

That generates a chilling, but unusual, local sight

A flurry of flying foxes taking off in mass night flight. 

 

 

 

As The Dust Settles

This one was based on an unsavory accident in 1997 when the ACT government demolished the old hospital on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. Thousands lined the lakeside to watch but the explosives were incorrectly set and flying debris littered the lake, reached the far shore and killed one poor little girl. Sad, very sad.

As The Dust Settles

As the dust settles

media moths migrate 

en masse, 

attracted from the capitol, 

wild accusations 

like shrapnel fly, 

imploding the myth 

of Sunday by the shore, 

lake’s shores 

safe shores 

Lake Burley Grieving, 

ask whose is the shame, 

ask whose is the blame?

As the dust settles

back peddling 

politicians nit pick 

the community picnic, 

conceived of 

mass marketers 

now counting 

their electoral cost; 

old union heads, 

after the event, 

wax wise in lament 

of such cost effective, 

but non traditional 

solutions; oh yes, 

and dangerous too.

As the dust settles 

over the shattered 

sanatorium, 

once life’s savior 

now turned harbinger of death 

in its own deck of cards 

demolition demise, 

keen sighted 

legal eagles 

hover above the carrion 

that was Canberra’s child, 

but the dead 

will not arise 

from class actions, 

even on the third day.

 

 

History

 

History

when a word can recount the full story

when a tear can flood the whole world

and a sigh, a breath fierce storms provoke

yet our flag of life remains furled;

when a dream disappears in an inkling

when a sliver seems mountain size

and the flame of your candle flickers

free in the instant before it dies;

when a glance can engender a pageant

when silence can sweetly serenade

and moonlight at dawn in dappled skies

is the catalyst for our love’s crusade;

where an echo fades before its return

where two parallel lines intersect

we dwell in the rhyme of my poetry

through that mirror, darkly, we reflect.

 

 

The Doorway

 

The Doorway

Faint breezes puff impotently at the heavy metal security gate,

but only rattle the loosely latched wooden door behind;

two currawongs, couched high in council's potted jacarandas,

warble their musical morning alarums in perfect counterpoint,

their echoes eerily climb the graffiti clad concrete stairwell

cross sensory paths with aromatic coffee and crunchy bacon

sliding stealthily under the door, wafting out to the unlit mall;

lazily, dawn drags the dank cloak of darkness from the doorway.

Despair, in various guises, played, worked and slept here last night;

uniformed hope and charity did their very best to coddle fallen kin,

but even now, as dawn's first light floods the cold concrete floor,

one shivering legacy of the dark side's frantic trade, curls up

foetus tight in unconscious mental bondage amongst the bed mates

of her addiction, discarded syringes, heroin caps, tablets and the

crumpled condoms, her credit card in the alternate economic society;

poignantly, her life now poised on the point of a state issued needle.

 

 

Bush Anthem For Australia

 

Bush Anthem For Australia

(As read nightly for the last eighty years at the Mount’n Lagoon pub!)

 

With just a snatch of light remaining from a perfect autumn day

observe the cloudless sky continuum of red through ginger, then dark grey

which last lights the lofty eucalypt with its cockatoo congregation

reflective sun turns white to red faking a tree born conflagration.

Its a special time and to welcome night catch nature’s form of praise

as a poignant Aussie chorus forms to farewell the best of days;

there’s poor cohesion, lack of harmony, voices laced with some discord

but prize your days in this unique land and accept this aural reward.

To some its just dusk, crickets chirping and cockies ceaseless squawking

but drink it in, its the spirit of our great land that’s really talking

and it only takes a second for the cloak of darkness to descend

and bring the resonance of Australia abruptly to an end.

Keep these idyllic scenes eternal, help our land to long survive

love our people, love our fauna and learn to keep the bush alive,

believe in the spirit of nature, keep faith with natural ways

entrust your god with the power to deliver such perfect days. 

 

Bill The Artist

Bill The Artist

Bill is a tall, wiry, older guy

very softly spoken, almost shy

has arthritic fingers but suffers the pains,

prefers to sleep right through his dreadful migraines,

tills his backyard garden for sustainable food,

through his art seeks inspiration to sate his mood

and deliver a subject that justifies

his artistic skills and his mind satisfies.

Yearly April when Aussie minds turn

to historic lessons all should learn

of futile past war games the sorrows of death,

the loss of loved ones having breathed their last breath

ably serving our country no matter the end,

belief in our freedom always theirs to defend,

built an ANZAC legend based on their demise,

on display now the Gallipoli art prize.

The Nek, Afrikaans for mountain pass,

bottleneck in truth a planning farce,

unsynchronised watches officer’s mistake,

barrage stops early still decisions to make,

so lacking protection the light horse hop the bags

go over the top, some succeed raise marker flags

lure more waves of young men to an early tomb

in twenty ten Bill depicts their gunned down doom.

A solemn moment maternal tryst,

embracing the son she always wished

had not enlisted to fight did not have to leave,

his father there too firmly grasping his sleeve,

but they cannot restrain him the train whistle blows

soldier son off to battle this mother’s fear grows,

tears well in her eyes as she prays to heaven

Bill captures this scene in twenty eleven.

Mates, cobbers from small towns in the bush,

farmers, ringers become diggers push

back forces of evil in overseas lands

lives recalled today where this monument stands,

names of men carved in stone unfairly sacrificed

a cost to their families much too highly priced,

cattle graze nearby help our feelings to salve

in Bill’s praised contribution for twenty twelve.

Bill’s quiet, humble, just gets on with life

calmly fades into crowds never seems in strife,

not a complex man and with aura serene,

but deep inside forces powerful and keen

relate to the real world his experience knows

in passionate study of what history shows,

to thoughtfully create such skilled works of art

pose questions, force answers from deep in our heart.

Secret Garden

Secret Garden

There is a secret garden

a place I often go,

sanctuary

in a world of chaos

where the colours of all seasons

are guaranteed

to be on show

So when I’m fractious, angry

or simply cannot cope,

recovery

in a world of turmoil

is walking through an everglade

where I’m inspired

by nature’s hope

My garden is full of people

around each shrub and tree,

our destiny

in a world of learning

locked fast in peace and harmony

with equal shares

the simple key

Forever in my garden

our essence is retained,

'Eternity'

in a world surviving

etched in chalk upon the pathway

this way of life

will be sustained.

'Eternity', a symbol inspired by Arthur Stace (Mr Eternity), an Australian soldier and reformed alcoholic who converted to Christianity and spread his message by writing 'Eternity' in chalk on paths around Sydney between 1932 and 1967. The eternity message came from Isaiah 57:15.

Passing Time

Passing Time

The train was rapidly passing a station

Whilst she was just slowly passing time

I was engrossed in observation

A commuter bred habit no reason or rhyme.

Oblivious to the noisy intrusion

Schoolchildren in scrambling homing haste

Uniform led hysteria infusion

With energy latent not a second to waste.

Bags slipping, legs tripping and slurpee spilling

All talking all listening one to another

Some thumbs cocked in raunchy text thrilling

Others phoning home today’s tales to their mother.

But she remained still, intent and focused

Propped casually in the far corner seat

Unruffled and tranquil, not at all nonplussed

At the physical fuss milling round her feet.

Her interaction with people was mental

Fictitious characters plied her mind

Through inspiring creations from Ruth Rendell

Or rather her alter ego Barbara Vine.

Totally absorbed she did not disengage

From the English author’s newest tale

The Minotaur’s intrigue on every page

Captivated her senses, was her Holy Grail.

Slightly hunched, bent forward with both feet planted

Perching her rucksack to suit her need

She formed on her lap a firm book prop slanted

For easy reading while traveling at high speed

On this trembling train in a giddy carriage

Chasing the warm winter setting sun

She read of four daughters from a weird marriage

And of John the haunting sad and self absorbed son.

Whilst she made no movement, did not flex or blink

The train’s rock n roll sideways traction

Made her pendulous aubergine earrings jink

And jive in a true sympathetic reaction.

Natural grey tints, subtle, rightly expressed

Her age, not young, just nicely mature

Oval glasses clearly not for reading best

Sat balanced atop of her neat, short cropped coiffure

Reflecting filtered sun, a prismatic look

Like the matching aubergine dress ring

On her left hand steadfastly gripping the book

Tight fingers the soft plastic cover impressing.

Her gaze still fixed, not at all animated,

The only gesture was her slim wrists

As from right to left she manipulated

Completed pages with deft repetitive twists.

On her well defined, small and elegant bones

The pallid skin seemed still young and taut

Her thin lips smiling, still erogenous zones,

Instilled in me base feelings I ought not have thought.

My stop was due and with her mind in the tome

I left her to the novel sublime

And an unknown ending to her journey home

We were just passing ships, she was just passing time.