cruising

July 14, 2010 at 3:49 pm | Posted in jazz poetry, poetry, writing | 11 Comments
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gaily traipsing road crossing
daffodils and dandelions fluttering wakeward
as he passes
and a scent between miner and metal
hobnailed
playing ‘dancing with cars’

This bus is very quiet he thinks
And Tuesday!
Spectacularity!
Yet another icecream sky

why is a letter of the alphabet
who the noise of owls
how a pleasant greeting
when a minor chord
what a measure of electrickery

Ducks down the alleyway
Waddle and a quack
Fruit salad breakfast
Back to formularity

rainbow graffiti trailing beauty
curlicues of exuberant joy crisscrossing
as he passes
and a music between oscarrrpeterson and
the brickwork
playing ‘reality, it’s a great place to be,

still life with irony

July 12, 2010 at 6:24 pm | Posted in poetry, writing | 9 Comments
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not flowers who live and bloom in splendid
florid overt context
nor feathers shed which drift
snake skin, cocoons, containers,
fruit’s obvious temptations

irony since even the word
stasis moves but the breeze
is less than momentuhmmm
as the thought drifts verbless
involuntary
hello response complete with
echolalia la laughter

left drawing a bead
on pre-stretched canvas
Louise while waiting

King Lear Tattoo

July 8, 2010 at 6:26 pm | Posted in poetry, writing | 10 Comments
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behind the mirror shades
the zap of flash bulbs
fades
three card slips into the back of the limo
exhales the long held breath

the Edgar engine purrs the street scene blurs
he drifts between the his the hearse
this strange and aweful awesome curse

where are we going to sweet Mamu
“when sudden lit beneath
a spotlight mooon,
he chuckles, wiggles
his Lear tattoo pay day
soon, accelerate,

Just

July 6, 2010 at 4:21 pm | Posted in australian poetry, contemporary poetry, memoirs, poetry, writing | 9 Comments
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walking to West End from Stafford
in a cycle of recrimination and
justification a church sign plastic
letters clipped
neatly
‘to avoid criticism
say nothing
do nothing
be no-one’

hours later a strange misplaced nostalgia
at the sound of a Scottish Marching Band
as it escaped the shadow of the Big Wheel
with a bass drum ponder call to attention
and the rattle of steel carefully orchestrated

On the Art Gallery wall -
‘It’s between representation and the other thing,
whatever that is,
and it’s difficult to keep one’s balance.’
Ian Fairweather, 1963
the year I was born
coincidentally like the young
man’s soft nervous trilling triplets
before the march began, loosening his wrists and
thinking about the architecture of sound.

Lastly the river
a breeze not even birdsong
accompanying me
just the sun dancing
silver sparkling
from the water,
literally
a memory of stars.

the gentle art of soft landings (podcast)

June 29, 2010 at 7:42 pm | Posted in australian poetry, contemporary poetry, jazz poetry, music, podcast | 2 Comments
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I have podcast the piece below “the gentle art of soft landings’ below this linkage.

I did it in one take with no rehearsal because I wanted to practice live work which I feel kind of fits with the idea of improvisation.

Now I will have to ask Joseph Tawadros for his permission to use the music as a background for the performance. But only if I don’t write a better one for it in the meantime.

the gentle art of soft landings

June 28, 2010 at 7:28 pm | Posted in australian poetry, jazz poetry | 9 Comments
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Suddenly his hands forgotten,

Take one moment to see my work he said breathing dirt
and holding out an open hand tis true one develops
a heart of stone when one sleeps rarely
and only in certain uncouth company, yesterday
a gilded cage
then under bridges
fallen

Sketched you in Morocco
standing naked hips tilted,
at the window in the morning
thinking about breakfast.

with a twist on ice, if it’s not too Dean Martin, omerta
principles with an end to occam Picasso was an immaculate
draughtsman before he was a Cubist without
being sweeney practiced my grammar, recap
italising the ‘I’ and using ‘one’ as in one may assume?
between the keeping of secrets and the breaking of promises
insert ocean metaphor here teddy as I explored your consent
to my manipulations of the roots of language and gloried in my power.
remember that car exit bridge alternate endings either way and both shot down
left you standing by that river shivering and her dying
hyannis port, white sails blue horizon,
on the occasion of another passing
found at the centre Matsuo Basho
giggling over a still pond no frogs nor
the sound they make when they land

(composed to the music of  Joseph Tawadros -”Hand in Hand” which you can listen to here, with Alister Spence (piano), John Napier (cello) & James Tawadros. )

(written as a first attempt at the National Jazz Writing Competition)

liberation

June 22, 2010 at 3:46 pm | Posted in ekphrasia, poetry, writing | 9 Comments
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would that it were possible
to write pure instrumental lines
an imperceptible dissolution
into a henry moore shaped whole
like grass pondering dandelions
or two children holding hands
light variations
to untie the sublime from this humanness
of language, the moral, the spirit,
tethers which dull the glisten
of wordless beauty vaulting
the harmonic between open sky
and the softness of skin,

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