Kit Kelen #4 - a skinny latte for Melinda (after her first, 'accumulate')

a skinny latte for Melinda

(after her first)

gathered up a skin to be

and here I am hello

was an odd shape to begin

went on from there

and all alone

through the mill

scratch back

and pour and prime again,

stipple, drip to tint

a win!

all these years misshape me

aren't we in the thick of it

deeps even?

the knives of time

make lines less subtle

a skin indulged

will bulge

more where that came from

why worry?

and all over broken out

with kin

as flesh is heir to

pigmented?

that has been a thing

form waggons in a circle

though mostly we miscegenate

(who wouldn't, half a chance?)

left, the scummed cup

makes a culture

cheer

all these signatures of it, prints left

flakes, we're microscopic too

no other planet known to them

rub skins for a fire

and this keeps you young

have you ever jumped out of yours?

hair on end

stand at the window -- hold hands

and on the other

a finger up to test the breeze

hold breath

one two three

the story of this life is

'saved from myself again'

we have carnivore and cannibal

nothing for those who eat themselves out

feed on own hearts

go self-harm vampire

I had a wife who painted skins she'd hung to dry

I still have that wife -- paints forests now

the ones who are cured won't come back

this is why doctors are pessimists

a visit to the physio

shows how crooked I am

Melinda Smith #1 accumulate

accumulate

how would it be to think

of your tiny life’s skin

as wood with a grain

close up

it is simply millions

of dark pores

constellations of them

black-brailling the surface

of the smooth brown heart

a murmuration of pocks, of pits, of stipples -

stubble on a shaved place -

the grubby fingerprints of chance damage;

cellular pushback of scars

tilt your head

each blemish vibrates with its neighbours

they resolve

into wings ovals petals clouds belches smears whorls

targets  tidelines of jetsam  feathers

gouges  treasures

survival is the slowest of arts

don’t sand yourself back too early

you’ll never know

how you turned out

Kevin Brophy #2nd Post 'To Love' in response to Peter Boyle's first post 'The Afterlife of a Genius' http://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2017/12/peter-boyle-1st-post-afterlife-of-genius.html

The gods are playing tennis again
and will be forever
in their favourite colours;
Red Peter hanging from the stands
hoots in memory of all that was
almost eternal. Dappled play.
The foreheads of the gods are swiped.
Reports are scribbled down on laps.
All that writing happens in another room
on the third floor in the far Rose Wing
set apart forever but with a listing door,
high window and rattling balcony beads
sounding like a cat lapping from a bowl.
On this far side of pain the gods always win
to love. Kafka pauses, revises some notes
in his head again. There's time, he knows.

Andrew Burke #2 Dear Beneficiary

 Kindly note that you are required
as a matter of urgency to
reconfirm your information
including your name,phone number
and your address
for verification and immediate
payment within 24 hours to
enable your payment of
US$10.7Million.This is as
a result of the mandate
given to me by the President
Federal Republic in conjunction with
the Federal Executive Council (FEC),
the Senate Committee on Foreign Debts
Reconciliation and Implementation Panel
on Contract/inheritance/compensation funds
to complete all the unpaid
Contract/inheritance/lottery fund.

Get back to me urgently.

Kit Kelen #3 - thread of breath (notes towards a shorter poem)

thread of breath

responding to 'the breathing thread' - 

poems starting with Judy Beveridge and followed by Tricia Dearborn and Susan Fealy)

we of a breeze begin

stain dwellers

tide turned

we catch

ourselves

awash away

begin into intensity

here because

there's breath left

*

because I'm here a word with you

and sometimes hard

to spit it out

begin because

there's still to climb

and we make mountain of it

all overgrown

this orchard I, squeeze --

tether me any sea so

*

then tendril touch

and all enfold

caught to be kissed, go on

guess again

come bright

of the vision sought

certain notes

spin up from the fire

or come through smoke

a pollen cough

then we're the dark of it thus far

- we're carbon creatures too

*

must have slept to here

the snoring!

stertorous

catch ourselves a wink

it's work

this cramming air in

of a whim

then witness

call the forest lungs

call forth

a word because I'm with you

take mine -- please tell on --

*

all of a breeze begin

invisible, as we are

it's the pores as well

breathe in breathe out

kup hei fu hei

(Cantonese)

you'll take it in the treetops

a wingsit

huffed and puffed to here

let time be open-ended with

first perfect with before -- a self

I sit for they come as manna

*

then a stillness of it

as in death

but here we are again

chemicals is what the air is

even when we're soil, respire

evenly, especially

lives depend as much on song

aren't we reminded

confound the skin of style

*

as through ether I was dreamt

for a special radio rhythm

when wind blows the reception

this is my proposal for a volume of breath

(we all contribute) against the fear of never doing

what we haven't come to yet

*

sometimes a fist will freeze

by gust

and then not a breath of it

so steady on against

as with cliff

to clamber up

or out of puff

mere hill

with all that think-I-can

*

rose in nose much

fools of a garden reach to this

when bee to bud impatient flits

isn't it for this?

spell cast will resemble

a smoke ring, though anathema

has form to cloud the mind

the nextness of our having been

is all to go on here

*

best thoughtless

how hard can it be?

it's in the blood - our pedigree

like leaves blow in

the door we've left

the sacred thing

a death away

always just

thin thread of breath

who's happy with the ending?

Greg McLaren #1 Standing to Penrith

Standing to Penrith

            “These shoes are legit, true.

            I think so.”  

                              His head craned over,

looking at the pics,

            hand covering the phone like

            protecting a pin.

            She fingers across photos

            a couple in steel framed chairs

            in a cafe courtyard

                                     like but not

            Bar Italia.

                             Then the same

            people again, but aged.

            “Like Star Wars but every lightsaber strike

            is a Michael Jackson noise.”

            An apple from a bag,

                                              it looks

almost square. The bag

            labelled Blackheath, B, then obscured.

            Cover your cough

            or sneeze please.

            Late light is a lot like early light,

            falling onto the flattened land

creekside in the wood.

                                               And makes his hair

            look translucently white,

            not grey, not silvered, and the leather

            jacket’s vinyl.

            A yellow pacer, marking up

            something in a paperback book

            that doesn’t seem to be puzzles.

Her hair and eyes look like

            Rowland S Howard’s.

                                              “I’ve been

            contemplating suicide.”

            The getting-of and offering of seats

is competitive and refusal scores a frown

you can hear in a change of tone.

            FULL STRENGTH SCAFFOLDING

            FULL STRENGTH SCAFFOLDING

            FULL STRENGTH SCAFFOLDING

           

            Have you been injured at work?

            We turn lives around

Susan Fealy #2 Remedies to Ease the Breath responding to Judith Beveridge #1 Breath

Remedies to Ease the Breath

(i) L’Heure Bleue

Fresh orange-flower, 

cast with cloves, carnation,

moss and violets;

the distant sound of church bells.

(ii) Missoni

It spangles a fresh-to-sweet range,

progresses from chord to chord,

as if alive,

as if creating itself as it goes along.

(iii) Incense Rosé

Rose, cardamom and mandarin,

so warm, so welcoming,

as if you were gifted

a piece of good news

you cannot quite remember.

(iv) Marine Mint

the sky blue of mint

and the flint grey of the sea;

spacious, airy—

as if panoramic thoughts

arrive with the view.

Note: L’Heure Bleue (Tauer Perfumes), Missoni (Missoni), Incense Rosé (Tauer Perfumes),

Marine Mint ( Dirty by B Never Too Busy to Be Beautiful).Adapted from descriptions of

perfumes in : Perfumes: the A-Z Guide. Turin,L and Sanchez, T. Profile Books. (2008, 2009)

Cui Yuwei #4 A Translation: "The Colour of Summer" by a Chinese Girl Poet (in response to Kerri Shying's first post "three sun bakers")

Cui Yuwei #4 　A Poem in the English Translation: 

The Colour of Summer by a Chinese Girl Poet Hai Jing （海菁）

 (in response to Kerri Shying's first post "three sun bakers")

The Colour of Summer

Written in Chinese by Hai Jing

Translated into English by Cui Yuwei

Summer sets in. Sunshine is big.

The sun shining slowly on the ground,

summer wears a colour as it should be.

《夏天的顏色》

海菁

夏天來了，陽光大大的

太陽緩緩照在地面上

該是什麼顏色就是什麼顏色。

A Bio of Haijing:

Hai Jing (literally her name means "the ocean is green"), born in 2011, is a first-grade student in Jiuzhou Primary School in the city of Zhuhai, China. She'd  like to be a painter in the future, and wishes to have a unicorn.

Béatrice Machet # 3-- Feel Like I’m Somehow Appropriating Someone’s Words

Feel Like I’m Somehow Appropriating Someone’s Words

in response to Toby Fitch's 

#1 Feel Like I'm Somehow Related to Everyone on the Internet

Ziggy Stardust : I’m outraged

So where were the spiders
While the fly tried to break our balls?
Just the beer light to guide us
So we bitched about his fans
And should we crush his sweet hands? 

Major Tom to ground control: I’m outraged

you want to recycle but trash the planet Earth dead

it is still blue and there is nothing I can do

c’est dans l’air du temps a kind of moody

deadliest  Zeitgeist

 

Emile Zola: j’accuse—I’m outraged

what you call treason

                                       is just a name

for what you’ll never confess as being

your insulting behavior against

human intelligence that never aims

either at fame or power

Crazy Horse: I’m outraged

One doesn’t sell the Earth the people walk upon

A snitch from the NASA: I’m outraged

The government uses the lottery to catch time-travelers

Anyone in a pretty how town: Am I outraged?

I feel like I’m ashamed but

is it true shame or fake shame

how does it feel in the guts...?

Automate replies:

Feel like I’m somehow related to everyone on the internet

Anne Kellas #2 Thinking of a strategy (remembering Taking Tiger Mountain) in response to Kit Kelen #1 - the first post, December 2017

This journey’s a nail-biting, upward, cliff-wringing climb.
The path, clouded, in a drifting of time,
sways ahead, veers. A breath-holding effort
to get to the cliff-face. Up over the edge before sunset.
 – and me no climber at all, "forcing lines through the snow".
A foothold, a pause to look back
over lines of distance below.

All that green clouded out.
See down, far down.
All those words for things lost.
No upward flying, no downward spiral,
no thermals,
no thrust of a plane’s invisible updraft to
take hold of. I want, and I need, invisible bird-flight.

But we're flying now.
You’re pilot, belaying.
I won’t look down at the rocks below.
I know that birds fly free there, far down.
I have seen them write code in the air, their flightpath
deciphering spears of wilting light.
Sun sparks.

Peg steel onto rock.
Hold on.
Watch the cliff-face as clock –
for poems, someone said, are all about clocks.
Don’t think it through.
Grip those words by the fingernails.
Tackle it edge-on.