POEM: "Burr-blind"

Burr-blind


With only
an old mattock
to cut burrs
in my youth
missed a million
horses watched me
daydreaming
in the top
paddock
now must find
them all again
socks of burrs
clothes of seed


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Back To Back"

Back To Back
                          
                        for David Oliver

The terms of being together

narratives of circumference
brings greatest heartache
how (before very long)
the centre is a lost cause
two lovers at opposite ends
of an ever growing circle
stopped like a coin put on edge
a plate washed and shelved
or an egg unset spinning
a yarn without an ending
then stilled, finally the heart.


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Australian Election"

Australian Election

I know how eternal hope springs
now 25 years without recession
a promise of a job or a decent wage
of no redundancies or cutbacks
then that premise of power
in the heart with no electricity
how a cat comes to you for warmth
a small suspension of reason
and how we shout and cheer
that hope will spring eternal
and a few asses in Parliament
and 12 submarines make a difference
in the election of fools no comment


© 2016 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Neil Young, "Ambulance Blues" (1998)

A great song, but I won't say the meaning of it either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GqihwUj-8g

POEM: "Simply Trouble"

Simply Trouble

                             With your stomach pump
                             And your hook-and-ladder dreams

                             Neil Young, “Ambulance Blues”


I rocked up to the frame
I thought it was the fence

Give me a break next time
a little butter with the bread

Are there a million troops
shit, maybe, I don't think so

The barrier reef is a bed
the sandwich is my sleep

My arm is the baseball
that was caught in China

The mountain is sheep hides
on the cheap and elegant side

My horse is tomorrow
and the fences are imaginary

And the river is new mountains
and the old hill has run away

You can rock up anywhere you like
but you might want to avoid the street

The rooftop pigeons
DON’T SPEAK VERY LOUD


© 2016 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Kurt Cobain, "Here She Comes Now" (1991)

Wait a minute...here she comes now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmo9e7DzKlk

POEM: "Event Horizon"

Event Horizon

Ebb and flow, nothing before
the event horizon fell on me
featherlight of a hot life with ice
the collected years, misunderstood

I chose her for the hair she wore
she laughed at the things I said
an alarming way of wearing pain
and sure an odd way with words

This isn't the story of the world
told by the fire, told in the wind
but of traffic, relapse, and delusion
old habits and misremembered love

At the table sits the air I breathe
the light is provided mostly free
once gifted in a silent transit
a most urgent universe of events.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

Painting: Mark Rothko, "Blue Mark"

POEM: "The Dream of the Snake"

The Dream of the Snake 


A horse shied from the track
I don’t remember any of that 
though a ghost once tried
to climb on top of me
I sent her back to mother
and my dreams thereafter
were merciful except for
when I was chased by the gods
it seems I had figured out
they had so fooled with time
that we could not be gods
I gathered all my poisons up
and going deep underground
I remember biting the earth
to remove all time forever
from the hinges of the world


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Gloop.Soup.Sand"

Gloop.Soup.Sand


Sometimes a ditch
makes a body stop
gloop or soup or sand
one itch from staying there
one reason for altering a mind
anyway, this is my declaration
my didactic, my fierce invitation
it's the Sunday I'm in this bar
trying to write you this poem
it's a perfect autumn evening
I'm making notes to perfection
on the subject of making love
I wonder why more women don't
just make their menfolk laugh.


© 2015 Rob Schackne


Painting: Edward Hopper, "People In The Sun"

POEM: "I would enter"

“I would enter” 

                                for Yuhan

I would enter the gate
under the electric wires
and like Han Shan leave
the dust in the road
walk into the mountains
leaving no trace behind
except that I would take
my turtle and my cat
and at night by the fire
we would tell our stories
of reincarnation 
these desperate bids 
to live again
and how maybe
the Buddha got it wrong


© 2016 Rob Schackne

MUSIC: Stuart Rawlinson, "Eight Elegies" (2016)

www.stuartrawlinson.com

...because you'll be happy you did.

POEM: "The Bicycle In A Tree"

The Bicycle In A Tree


The interpretive work
Of being human the dirt
Under those table legs the
Dirt under the speakers yes
The pretty dirt in our minds
The skirting boards the dust
That follows for ten months
The years that we just let go
There’s no point to it no 
All those bicycles in a tree
Being dumb seeking truth
A vacuum cleaning nothing
A loud monkey shedding hair.


© 2015 Rob Schackne

A Li Tianjing Poem

The Pain You See


See there’s a dark bone
our hero at the tip of a knife
in an old black and white movie

It shows an awful persistence–
the results are definitely positive.
The disease is in the bone.

The doctor’s report is written in cuneiform.
Birds come and turn over the leaves
before they leave a couple more.

Guess at the thing growing in the bone
some places more and some places less.
We wait for the numbers to be less.

In fear also dwells the pain.
My wife’s doctor holds it–
a bloody stone in his hand.

What was taken out?
One pain that cannot be treated.
Such is the problem with ideology.


(2004)


Version by Rob Schackne (2016)

A Chi Lingyun Poem

A Kind of Poetry


To discover a tree's memories is impossible.

To seek a pebble's experience
 is also impossible.
We spy on water's motion

but in the end we still can't touch its core.

The cloud has always been there, we exhaust our energy
to understand its will, yet there's no hope
it will reveal the sky's mysteries.

Poetry also has the will of clouds

with words like rain, to avoid madness

it creates more madness. Just as when love

is written down, it loses half of its sincerity.
When explained, there is only a layer of sticky
mist left. No one is quick or deft enough

to capture poetry for long. Everything perfect
contains a dark cave.

I can't explain the attraction of this cave.

A kind of tranquility, which carries a greater sacrifice
undissolved by light. A kind of dizziness

from this shore to the farther shore, crossing freely.

It has enslaved every golden finger.

A wild cave, harboring minerals, ice and feathers

a few symbols, and I still don't know what it is.


(2014)

(Trans. Eleanor Goodman and Shengqing Wu)

一种诗艺

发现一棵树的记忆,是不可能的。
寻找一块鹅卵石的经验
也不可能。我们窥探水的运动
却始终无法触及它的核心。
云朵一直存在,我们耗费力气
理解它的意志,却无法祈望它
泄露空中的奥秘。

诗歌也有云朵的意志
言辞如雨水,为逃避疯狂
制造更多的疯狂。就像爱情
被写下,就失去一半纯真。
意义经过阐释,只留一层黏糊的
薄雾。没有人能做到眼明手快
捕获长久的诗意。一切完美
都存在一个黑洞。

我无法说清黑洞的诱惑。
一种寂静,带着更大的牺牲
不被光所溶解。一种晕眩
从此岸到彼岸,自由过渡。
所有的金手指都受过它奴役。
野性的黑洞,包藏矿物、冰块和羽毛
一些符号,我至今不知它是什么。

POEM: "It Looks Like It Hurts"

It Looks Like It Hurts 


I.

I watch a friend 
killing mosquitoes
in a Shanghai restaurant
tonight with an
electric tennis racket
and yes me too
the slowing time
a minute watching
fifty years to remember
an owl came out at night
and I remember
the cat racing out
and still I wonder
what we would give to
go on living if we would
give up love and joy and art
and good food and learning
if most of us 
(say this very quietly)
would even give up
our minds

II.

It looks like it would hurt
but of course Coke is the real thing
and the consumer is always the sucker
Coca-Cola & Disney the perfect marriage

What do they need us for?
Do I really want Minnie’s phone number?
When she finally takes off her costume
she spends the next four hours naked 
Mickey comes home at 3am 
with a dozen stolen Cokes 

he mixes with Bacardi and passes out
she poses like Barbie for a minute
and then cries for an hour 
it looks like it hurts


© 2016 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Before Heaven"

Before Heaven


This time
I really thought
I would go to heaven
praise God
exhausted in victory
the sword slipping
from my grasp
O eternity
God is great
while the beams
of angels sing
my hand reaching
for her smile
and all the horrors
receding into morning
in a garden
full of flowers
there is only one God
I go for a walk
my sargeant calls


© 2016 Rob Schackne

A James McMichael Poem

The Cabin North Of It All

You build it where you will be heard only by chance
And at a great distance. The hammer is moss

And the saw moves like the wolf’s shoulder,
Smoothly, and with no sound. It is a good start.

The seasons themselves come singly, and you are still
North of it all, north of brooding on that later time

When it will be quieter, when the door will not hold,
When the raccoons, on their first night inside,

Will not trouble to be afraid, their heads
Bent in the squares of moonlight, dreaming of the north.

(1971)

A Linda Pastan Poem

After an Absence

After an absence that was no one’s fault
we are shy with each other,
and our words seem younger than we are,
as if we must return to the time we met
and work ourselves back to the present,
the way you never read a story
from the place you stopped
but always start each book all over again.
Perhaps we should have stayed
tied like mountain climbers
by the safe cord of the phone,
its dial our own small prayer wheel,
our voices less ghostly across the miles,
less awkward than they are now.
I had forgotten the grey in your curls,
that splash of winter over your face,
remembering the younger man
you used to be.

And I feel myself turn old and ordinary,
having to think again of food for supper,
the animals to be tended, the whole riptide
of daily life hidden but perilous
pulling both of us under so fast.
I have dreamed of our bed
as if it were a shore where we would be washed up,
not this striped mattress
we must cover with sheets. I had forgotten
all the old business between us,
like mail unanswered so long that silence
becomes eloquent, a message of its own.
I had even forgotten how married love
is a territory more mysterious
the more it is explored, like one of those terrains
you read about, a garden in the desert
where you stoop to drink, never knowing
if your mouth will fill with water or sand.


(1989)

A Yuhan Poem

No Windmill Is Real


The red wine and coffee
the Alfred Hrdlicka stone carvings
the vineyard, the medieval castles
they all display a different light
painted in a pool of country green

When the thunder comes
half the sky is dark, the other half is bright
with the blue and red of space

Then I see a rough red hue along
a window that doesn’t belong to me
liverworts growing in concrete windmills
not Oedipus fleeing his divine predictions

The mysterious mood is stolen
order confronts the mess
a little old, a little depressed
the sun visits Le Corbusier’s chapel
and removes my breath and stomach

The Just reside on Easter Island
where metal towers and gypsum mines
will gladly crush the Spirit

Schopenhauer…Shakespeare
I’ll give you both of them
I’ll give you the madness
of kindergarten children

This morning a boy didn’t eat his breakfast
he smiled at me in the Garden
he said he didn’t know the name 

of the sweet fragrance from Heaven.


(2016)


Version by Rob Schackne (2016)

An Osip Mandelstam Poem

 

Not One Word


Not one word.
Purge the mind of what the eye has seen:
Woman, prison, bird.
Everything.

Otherwise some wrong dawn
Your mouth moves
And a sudden pine
Needles through your nerves,

A trapped wasp crazes
In your brain,
And in the old desk's ink stain
A forest mazes

Inward and inward
To the unpicked
And sun-perfected
Blueberries

Where you now and now always
Must stand,
An infinite inch
Between that sweetness

And your hand.


(1930)