A Simon Armitage Poem

At Sea


It is not through weeping,
but all evening the pale blue eye
on your most photogenic side has kept
its own unfathomable tide. Like the boy
at the dyke I have been there:

held out a huge finger,
lifted atoms of dust with the point
of a tissue and imagined slivers of hair
in the oil on the cornea. We are both
in the dark, but I go on

drawing the eyelid up by its lashes
folding it almost inside-out, then finding
and hiding every mirror in the house
as the iris, besieged with the ink
of blood rolls back

into its own orbit. Nothing
will help it. Through until dawn
you dream the true story of the boy
who hooked out his eye and ate it,
so by six in the morning

I am steadying the ointment
that will bite like an onion, piping
a line of cream while avoiding the pupil
and in no time it is glued shut
like a bad mussel.

Friends call round
and mean well. They wait
and whisper in the air-lock of the lobby
with patches, eyewash, the truth
about mascara.

Even the cats are on to it;
they bring in starlings, and because their feathers
are the colours of oil on water in sunlight
they are a sign of something.
In the long hours

beyond us, irritations heal
into arguments. For the eighteenth time
it comes to this: the length of your leg sliding out
from the covers, the ball of your foot
like a fist on the carpet

while downstairs
I cannot bring myself to hear it.
Words have been spoken; things that were bottled
have burst open and to walk in now
would be to walk in

on the ocean.

(2005)

POEM: "Untied"

Untied


Buy makeup teach her how
lend weight to lose weight
educate educate god he hates it
might as well eradicate now
she's so beautiful like she is
canst thou remember a time
before we came unto this cell?
sure girls ride mountain mules
sure they ride trails steep as caterpillars
slowly slowly up around they go
mushroom clouds are pretty chilly
she's taking the lift up to his place
later she cooks him a strange dinner.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

A Gjertrud Schnackenberg Poem

Signs


Threading the palm, a web of tiny lines
Spells out the lost money, the heart, the head,
The wagging tongues, the sudden deaths, in signs
We would smooth out like imprints on a bed,

In signs that can't be helped, geese heading south,
In signs read anxiously, like breath that clouds
A mirror held to a barely breathing mouth, 
Like telegrams, the gathering of crowds--

The plane, an X in the sky spelling disaster:
Before the whistle and hit, a tracer flare;
Before rubble, a hairline crack in plaster
And a housefly's panicked scribbling on the air.


(1974)

POEM: "Germany 3 - Argentina 1"

Germany 3 - Argentina 1

                                              (2006 World Cup)

This week the Germans lifted steins
As they drank to a kind of imagination
That owes a little more to cupidity
Than to the demands of extra time

I guess that tonight by a campfire
On the high plains of Argentina
Gauchos will argue the off-side rule
And if there’s such a thing as free

The wireless crackles, the boys debate
Whether a penalty may not result in death
And several sharp knives are unsheathed
In demonstration of traditional scorn

At last Andreas curves an old ball high into the dark
(Their long beef ribs were burnt mostly black)
Now the herd is slowly moving it around
And occasionally a perfect goal is scored.

                                                        
© 2006 Rob Schackne

POEM: "After Reading Gerry's Poem"

After Reading Gerry’s Poem


Opens out of sleep
surfaces in remnant memory
dread whatever you conceived
maybe departure maybe death
maybe deadly fear of an insane world
you call out you search for it
only to find the darkness is empty
surprised as you say that nothing stares back
for how else does revolution occur
looking for new fears to conquer
the challenge of changes we asked for
if poets inspire dreams of freedom
they’re the first motherfuckers against the wall.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Kodachrome (1974-2009)"

Kodachrome (1974-2009)

                                Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,


                                Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

                                Goethe (1782)

Now that Kodachrome is dead

Will such fine exceptionalism

Be called into the station because

No one can find the film they need

Is it stored someplace did you sell it?

The police are interrogating you

(The sweat dripping from them)

Getting hit a few times in the head

Confess there was once a project

Conceived late at night in a shack

A green man lots of empty poems

Who didn’t know atoms from Adam

Whose one simple moment wanted you

To take that picture then you waited

Waited forty years for it to fade.

© 2012 Rob Schackne

A Vasko Popa Poem

Little Box


The little box gets her first teeth
And her little length
Little width little emptiness
And all the rest she has

The little box continues growing
The cupboard that she was inside
Is now inside her

And she grows bigger bigger bigger
Now the room is inside her
And the house and the city and the earth
And the world she was in before

The little box remembers her childhood
And by a great longing
She becomes a little box again

Now in the little box
You have the whole world in miniature
You can easily put in a pocket
Easily steal it lose it

Take care of the little box


(1987) Tr. Charles Simic

POEM: "So She Like Gets This Letter From Her Dad Like 6 Months After Her Birthday"

So She Like Gets This Letter From Her Dad Like 6 Months After Her Birthday

                           


My dearest Julie, 

Did you ever get that drawing I sent you? Pretty good, wasn't it? 

A thousand light-years from here I climbed to the rim of Yasur volcano 

on Tanna in Vanuatu and I peered down into its awful fire. I looked down 

at my feet there was a red Coke can. I saw a postcard someone had dropped. 

I picked it up. A terrific photo of some very severe ice-covered mountains. 

On the other side was written But what you don't like where you are

you won't like here even more. Only this. I wish it had been sent to me. 

Today they showed us the film A Scanner Darkly. Check it out. 

It's about addiction and prevarication. Everybody's itch has everybody 

doing it. Tell your mother it's just about photography. There in one scene

our addled heroes car has broken down on this shitty California highway. 

They lift the hood. They are peering at the hot engine busy studying it doing 

their best to clamor and convict a mechanical part of intentional malice. 

Finally exhausting all paranoid leads one shouts Don't blame the drugs! 

Which was the moment all of us had been waiting for. So we cheered. 

Afterwards we discussed the million drugs. For what? The old beaters 

we drove? The hunger for explanations beyond the conventional wisdom? 

Hope the 12th grade is OK & you're making friends with good people. 

Happy birthday. 

Love, 

Dad

© 2011 Rob Schackne

A Ronnie Yates Poem

New Smyrna, Florida


She waits in the jungle beside a dirt road

Dead ends into Turnbull Bay, pelicans,
Skeets, close heat, no-see-ums, armadillos
Scratching in the dead leaves beneath the poison-tip
Blades of the killer fans of the yucca gloriosa. Headlights
Ply the dust. Pulling himself out, blinking hard, no reason,
Presents himself to his fare, he’s a 50 something hillbilly skinny,
Damp hair, chews on the remains of a menthol smoker’s
Cough; a juiceless ghoul in a Members Only Jacket,
Gray socks, a blood sugar tester, driving a ‘90 88
In a 2 car fleet run out of a Locksmith’s shack.
She laughs, a little nervous, pictures centaurs assaulted
By ten million stars, dreams of Voltaire’s secular
Angels, a magical technology and fetal abductions. He starts
To wheeze, a vacuum of awkward pity opens up
And she goes weak in the knees. What happens next,
She tells it better. “I’ll do it if you want.” He couldn’t
Hear, she opened her mouth, he gave up only a little prod.
It was like an apology for how beautiful she was.

(2013)

POEM: "Spleen I"

Spleen I 


Bless my heart and cross the street
through the gates of Puji Monastery
past the souvenir vendors and the seers
rent-a-cops beggars plastic Buddhas
thinking a complex faith is best left alone
it was my only meditation on the day but
that night I dreamt Guanyin was running too
breasted the surf in a fiery flower cap a champion
powering a hundred wondrous strokes and stopped
and bobbing in the waves turned and started
working her way slowly back to shore.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Spleen II"

Spleen II 


O spring streets comes the artist 
a pail of water and a large brush 
to draw his frustrated characters 
they dry the moment you read them 
dusk but hard to tell dark particulates 
closing hard with the invisible ink 
this is not the life you ordered 
these are not the epicurean streets
what has gone before is turned to rice
polaroid photos working in reverse
you reach a pale door without a poem 
in a city that is not long-shouldered 
that pushes points between our bodies 

shoves and turns shoulders to make way. 


© 2013 Rob Schackne 

POEM: "Spleen III"

Spleen III

The faces of Chinese women in anguish

           forced detentions

                 the razing of homes

the vanity of old men with dyed hair

the tether of foolishness

           already in opposition

                 at times the only way out 

sits quietly upon the stair

shoo away the temple rats
          (maybe pray away the time)
                 Guanyin please help us
fold these dumplings with extra care

some faces from the years I've lived there:

[CENSORED]

© 2013 Rob Schackne

A Chris Wallace-Crabbe Poem

Rendition


Not, please, this creeping elaborate pain
and not slow parody of how lives end,
nor policemen in mufti playing a dirty god,
not the stinking underside of Elsewhere,
regimes of colonels or generals or psychopaths,
not fascination with seeing just how far a body can be made to go
nor the treatment of survival as precisely equal to dying.

Please, not a battering on the door at three in the morning;
not, I'm afraid, you're going to have to come with me.
Not the large plain dull old car
waiting outside your door with motor grumbling
for the quick take-off,
nor the bareness of a shabby room with overbright lighting.
Not Them, moving in.

Certainly not having to take off your clothes;
water, the truncheon, the cold, the blaring, the slaps
and long standing still in one damned place,
not the prodded humiliation of your nudity,
clothed ones treating you as a slab of meat,
not the drawn-out thickness of questioning
and not the detumescence of hope.

Not the naked genitals like frightened mice,
not something hard inserted in the vagina,
not pints of liquid trickled down your throat,
not a bully's foul breath up against your face
as concentration goes,
not the pummelled phonebook against your guts
leaving no distinct bruises.

Not the electrodes.
Fuck, no, not the electrodes
and not your buttocks beaten, then beaten again,
not something pushed right up under your fingernails
nor a bloody gobbet hacked off your left ear –
which you are then going to be forced to eat.
Not weeks without food.

Bodies have been designed frail, by and large, by and small,
ready to be tormented and taken apart.
The shit may run down your cold legs.
You may die.
You will suffer and die.
You will survive, language holding some trace of you for years,
And the mourners, too.


(2013)

POEM: "Climbing Rock: A Meditation"

Climbing Rock: A Meditation

                                      .for the freaky mountain kids

Look along any line keep the light

any grip of angle know the hope

we are distracted

divine winds hum stand off don’t hug

first rule of salvation never hang from a rope

the subtle atomicities of evil

hold my cold flexed hand

maintain the grip on a winter day

where fear is not 

the summit is finally reached
days & nights they pass away 

the happy ending

evidence prominent 
witnesses numerous

the falcon circling us 

one will never say

I cannot do that 

old friend miraculous.

© 2013 Rob Schackne

POEM: "The Turn"

The Turn


You've been brave that way
no stopping in the tunnel
so Li'l Buck just danced today
won't you dance he was asking

but there's no need to answer that
sometimes bravery's just a sudden thing
now consider if you’re dancing high
in gunfire shelling or screams
when did you turn into wolf
smell of gun oil in your bed
the big swans dying from love?


© 2013 Rob Schackne

A Carolyn Kizer Poem

On a Line from Valéry (The Gulf War)

                            Tout le ciel vert se meurt
                            Le dernier arbre brûle.


The whole green sky is dying. The last tree flares 
With a great burst of supernatural rose 
Under a canopy of poisonous airs. 

Could we imagine our return to prayers 
To end in time before time's final throes, 
The green sky dying as the last tree flares? 

But we were young in judgement, old in years 
Who could make peace; but it was war we chose, 
To spread its canopy of poisoning airs. 

Not all our children's pleas and women's fears 
Could steer us from this hell. And now God knows 
His whole green sky is dying as it flares. 

Our crops of wheat have turned to fields of tares. 
This dreadful century staggers to its close 
And the sky dies for us, its poisoned heirs. 

All rain was dust. Its granules were our tears. 
Throats burst as universal winter rose 
To kill the whole green sky, the last tree bare 
Beneath its canopy of poisoned air.


(1996)

A Barry Dickins Poem

The Million Australias


You gaze into a wintry silver pond and what do you see there?
Well, your nose to begin with. Possibly an outline of frosty air
And breath, let’s not forget your breath. And your old friends the trees
The outline of something you were thinking aloud: An interrupting breeze
A word or two that say winter in English
Or tell you how cold and sharp it is today in Portuguese
A library pond and pages of wintry words
Now an incredibly important meeting between birds
Who can remember Captain Cook and Mrs. Cook two hundred years ago
When he first saw student dolphins and librarians from Atlantis
Dreamt long ago of Aboriginals inventing short stories in ashes
Years go by taxi and now there are a million Australias all reading
Translations from wintry silver ponds and talking about dreaming
Walking The Long Narrow Road to The North by Basho the Chinese mystic
He is reading his early morning poem to rain that’s almost crystal
Pioneers in the raindrops turning over favourite marked passages of sun
Flemington is tracing the murmured lettering of The Songs of Solomon
Teachers are listening very carefully to their teachers the children
The topics are endless, like glee, mystery, secret access to incredible buildings
Spanish singing overheard from unknown windowpanes
Cranes and sparrows - are they Australians? Oh let us arrange our dreams
Once more in the old design of openness and the one language of dreams
Is it still a hundred years ago or more? This is the Blessed Door
Time to get up and go to work: And what’s the work but writing for God
Up those ancient seawave steps again to write for the poor and give more
Lines of dreaming to the captive schoolchildren in their desks of hope
My Grandmother is getting up to go to work in 1900 did you know her?
A factory job where she worked her brains out to put bread upon the waves
Of sea tables where dolphins memorized their morning prayer and saved
A Fragment of her laughter to share with a thousand other pioneers
The old lady, Australia, shakes the toy world of learning now
Holds it upside down and smiles as meaning tumbles down into snow
Every single person is sitting up nice and straight in classrooms of brightness
Each old story tumbles down in the printed snowflake of brightness
What you said to me a hundred years ago: What I said back just then
What herons said to pigeons and teachers dreamt of in rooms like beacons
All possible and all beautiful because we bothered to record stories.


(2001)

POEM: "Ordinary Bizarro"

Ordinary Bizarro


At dinner tonight I overheard
Someone say, this crummy planet
I turn around – of course the table's Chinese
They're discussing an unrelated matter
Money or some other delicate relationship
Us do opposite all Earthly things
Now I hope I’m not in for this again
Plain speech drifting into strangeness
Confucian lessons in fluent acrimony
How me protector no one here protect?
When you see how it functions
When it goes around in your head
When it comes out different.


© 2013 Rob Schackne

A Les Murray Poem (2)

The International Terminal

Some comb oil, some blow air,
some shave trenchlines in their hair
but the common joint thump, the heart's spondee
kicks off in its rose-lit inner sea
like an echo, at first, of the one above
it on the dodgy ladder of love —
and my mate who's driving says I never
found one yet worth staying with forever.
In this our poems do not align.
Surely most are if you are, answers mine,
and I am living proof of it,
I gloom, missing you from the cornering outset —
and hearts beat mostly as if they weren't there,
rocking horse to rocking chair,
most audible dubbed on the tracks of movies
or as we approach where our special groove is
or our special fear. The autumn-vast
parking-lot-bitumen overcast
now switches on pumpkin-flower lights
all over dark green garden sites
and a wall of car-bodies, stacked by blokes,
obscures suburban signs and smokes.
Like coughs, cries, all such unlearned effects
the heartbeat has no dialects
but what this or anything may mean
depends on what poem we're living in.
Now a jet engine, huge child of a gun,
shudders with haze and begins to run.
Over Mount Fuji and the North Pole
I'm bound for Europe in a reading role
and a poem long ago that was coming for me
had Fuji-san as its axle-tree.
Cities shower and rattle over the gates
as I enter that limbo between states
but I think of the heart swarmed around by poems
like an egg besieged by chromosomes
and how out of that our world is bred
through the back of a mirror, with clouds in its head
— and airborne, with a bang, this five-hundred-seat
theatre folds up its ponderous feet.

(2002)

An Alexandra Teague Poem

Adjectives of Order

That summer, she had a student who was obsessed
with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South
Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when

Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order
could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook
with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering

streets. On the dusty brown field of the chalkboard,
she wrote: The mother took warm homemade bread
from the oven. City is essential to streets as homemade

is essential to bread. He copied this down, but
he wanted to know if his brothers were lost before
older, if he worked security at a twenty-story modern

downtown bank or downtown twenty-story modern.
When he first arrived, he did not know enough English
to order a sandwich. He asked her to explain each part

of Lovely big rectangular old red English Catholic
leather Bible. Evaluation before size. Age before color.
Nationality before religion. Time before length. Adding

and, one could determine if two adjectives were equal.
After Saigon fell, he had survived nine long years
of torture. Nine and long. He knew no other way to say this.


(2007)