We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Come with me tonight, I’ll embrace you with my leaves
and with my clouds.
I’ll wrap you round in countless metamorphoses and voices,
until merely your white bones remain
in the moon’s foam.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 115th birthday.
From every street and roof rose joyous shouts;
The king that day was passing through the town
An orphan boy amidst this speaks his doubts,
What is that sparkle that’s atop his crown?
Someone replied : that’s not for us to know,
But it’s a priceless thing, that’s clear!
A crone approached, her twisted back bent low,
She said: that’s your heart’s blood and my eye’s tear!
We were deceived by shepherd’s staff and robe
He is a wolf; for many years he’s known the flock.
The saint who craves control is but a rogue
A beggar is the king who robs his flock.
Upon the orphan’s tears keep fixed your gaze.
‘Til you see from where comes the jewel’s glow.
How can straight talk help those of crooked ways?
And frank words will to most folk deal a blow.
Christy Brown came to town riding on a wheelchair
Christy Brown came to town riding on a wheelchair
Back strapped to wheel and chair
Freewheeling down all his days
Into the byways in our heads
Visions bursting from his pen
Ink in blood, left foot in rapture
Riding through Fleet Street pulp
Past paper stand and paste
Ploughing stairs to heaven
Riding on and on and on
His chariot wheels
Conquering heroes in space
In the time allotted for his spin.
Reared in masses his childhood
Playpen on concrete slabs
Turned into flowing fountains
In his fountain pen toes
Ceasing to suffer in the kennel of his bark
Spent dark years with his ears
Tied to his mother’s tongue.
Where are you mother?
I am here, I am here Christy
Growing flowers in your yard
Sending fruit to the marketplace in your soul
Patiently bending my breasts
To feed the hunger in your mind.
Dear bended lady
Drawing she drew in midnight whispers
The elements of verse
Vocalising grammar, building his armory for battle
Filling his long, sleepless, limping nights
With the music of her challenge
And she took a dead season from her womb
And built a birth as bright as Christmas.
In his schoolroom slum
That buried some and crippled most
The toast from her womb grew legs in her words
And walked long distance to the corners of the eart
Striding beyond Getsemane past the Avenue of the Sorrows
Out of Golgatha into resurrection.
Christy Brown came to town riding on a donkey
Christy Brown came to town riding on a donkey
Streets in palms carpeting his Sunday visit
He rode barebacked the donkey of the Apocalypse
Over bridges where crippled water stood still
In the lame shores of our crime.
He rode heaven high over tears and pity
Through the attending city
Where skeletons hid high in the cupboards of our complacency
He rode on and on and on and on her rode
On the laughter in his size
Everlasting in song
Storming our ears in wonder
Making his face shine upon us
And throwing from the seaweeds of his wisdom
Iodine
To heal the wounds of a waiting world.
In honor of Canberra Day, we present this work by one of contemporary Australia’s most notable poets.
On someone else’s place
it seems to him the land
slings distance way out
the dirt is dead and
the sky seems twisted
the beat of the stones is wrong
he doesn’t know how to say it
there are no words no opportunity
and anyway
what would you say
that you’re a stranger
and this doesn’t say it at all
he walks with his weapon through the town
and from time to time he sees the luscious curl
of intimacy the uncommon common life
it’s dressed differently he can’t understand
the language rasping and gargling
another time he’d be an interested tourist
now he’s a hunter and the hunted
soon they say
he’ll be freed to retreat home
where the earth is vein deep
and when he puts his hand on the ground
he’ll feel it beating but now
he can’t remember home
though he knows the words well enough
back paddock Steve’s paddock the yard
it’s just words but now the imam calls
and winds a veil around his senses
and sometimes he thinks he’ll never
get back to where he belonged
The mountains are far away from the extremity, and the sky is limited to the southwest since the past.
The beacon quietly guards the building and the fox goes up to the house, the wind is noisy and the ancient cranes startled the group.
The sideways stone is dangerous and the horse is in danger, and the deep lock Xiongguan cold protects the cloud.
Chi Yu Shengping still feels dangerous, and who reminisces about the old general.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.
Wonder if my poem title will be acceptable.
(The Absence of Courage)
I.
Courage is an interesting virtue.
The only difference between courage
and unrealistic hopefulness is success.
Courage to me means standing up against injustice,
or atleast finding the strength to do something
your character or the outside world would rather you didn’t do.
It’s that noble buck with big horns we admire and have the deepest
of respect for,
it’s that noble buck with big horns we like to shoot down and hang on our
walls.
Like the tobacco in a cigarette, the only way to draw it out
from the depths of your character is to embrace it and set it on fire.
But don’t take more than you can handle,
or you might find yourself coughing up the illogical notion,
the practicality of your subconscious triumphing.
Bite off just enough,
enough to sustain hope, but not enough to defeat the
cowardice in your soul to the point where you altogether snuff restraint
and self doubt.
II.
I have seen courage in a number of places,
in the sun for it’s miraculous overpowering of darkness every morning,
in a woman who decides to have a child despite life threatening consequences.
I’ve seen it mainly in action movies,
where it exists without the natural predators of insecurity and sensibility
found in the real world.
I’ve seen it in the insurrection of children who decide to just say yes,
I’ve seen it in the cynical gaze of withered old addicts who are trying to
say no.
Courage, it’s a wonderful thing.
It’s both a blessing and a curse.
Embrace it and harness it,
but do it in moderation,
or it might get the better of your self-doubt and sensibility.
We present this work in honor of Maha Shivratri.
Love is inaccessible, incomparable, immeasurable
It is like the ocean –
He who comes to its shore will not go back
When he drank the wine of Love,
Varuna became the Lord of the waters
Because he drank poison out of Love,
the Lord of the Mountain, Shiva, is worshipped.
The clamor of dusty children
changes in the throats of flutes.
For the children in narrow alleys, a gun
is two fingers put together,
and death
is closing of eyelids and rolling around in dirt.
Tomorrow
imaginary guns shall be left and forgotten
on the decks of paper boats,
and the camouflage costumes, once too large for the world’s children
shall fit.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
And so it ends,
We who were lovers may be friends.
I have some weeks in which to steel
My heart and teach myself to feel
Only a sober tenderness
Where once was passion’s loveliness.
I had not thought that there would come
Your touch to make our music dumb,
Your meeting touch upon the string
That still was vibrant, still could sing
When I impatiently might wait
Or parted from you at the gate.
You took me weak and unprepared.
I had not thought that you who shared
My days, my nights, my heart, my life,
Would slash me with a naked knife
And gently tell me not to bleed
But to accept your crazy creed.
You speak of God, but you have cut
The one last thread, as you have shut
The one last door that open stood
To show me still the way to God.
If this be God, this pain, this evil,
I’d sooner change and try the Devil.
Darling, I thought of nothing mean;
I thought of killing straight and clean.
You’re safe; that’s gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?
We present this work in honor of the 105th anniversary of the poet’s death.
My good friends, liven up!
He who shrivels up shatters his spirit;
Let whoever wishes to drink drink,
Let whoever wishes to live live
And drink… and long live Have-a-Drink!
Poets Corner 