cold case rondel

The signs are better set in stone
Than memories that fizz in glass.
First as tragedy, then as farce -
A light laugh cut into a groan.

A single moult of hair, not mown,
Found in among the buds and grass.
The signs are better set in stone
Than memories that fizz in glass.

I broke each tooth but lost a bone.
Send me to the back of the class.
Because of you, sharpeye smartarse,
I'll end my days in dark alone.
The signs are better set in stone
Than memories that fizz in glass.

What is a rondel?

poets + coffee

Sadly McDonald's have yet to contact me about my "aspiring writer" program. However this email from the Australian Poetry Centre has just arrived.

CAFÉ POET PROGRAM

Submissions are now being sought for our CAFÉ POET PROGRAM. The Australian Poetry Centre is seeking poets, in each Australian State or Territory, interested to sit as 'poet-in-residence' in a café in their capital city for a period of six months getting free tea or coffee while you write. Please apply by emailing admin@australianpoetrycentre.org.au with an expression of interest stating a) all your contact details, b) what you would get out of being the poet in residence, c) a clear personal objective focussing on what you would like to achieve with your poetry in the six months and d) a measurable public objective to benefit others, such as being prepared to give a reading at the end of it, or providing the cafe with a poem to display.

Deadlines for applications are Feb 20th, 2009.

For more details see the website or call the office on (03) 9527 4063.

wishlist / four lions

Today I heard about Four Lions by Chris Morris. Which means I'd better bring out Wishlist - which was written sometime in 2007 (and performed rather poorly one Saturday morning on FBi).

Wishlist

Maybe I did join Al Qaeda for the chicks.
It's so hard to meet a nice girl these days
and it's not because I spend
my spare time in brothels, mother.
The man I met at the retreat
told me about 72 virgins:
pure, chaste, blessed by Allah
(May His Name Be Praised),
like 72 Pamela Andersons
running in slow motion across
the Baywatch beach of Paradise.
Not like the sluts & whores
who don't return my calls & texts
& special poems written in pigeons' blood.

The mountains are remote and sacred
and I have grown a holy beard
like the prophet
(Peace Be Upon Him)
Only it has flecks of orange
and a patch under my left ear
that won't grow.
I sometimes think the other
Holy Warriors of Allah
(May His Name Be Praised)
laugh at me behind my back.
But they mostly pick on Ibrahim
who wears glasses &
comes from Tajikistan.

It is cold here in the mountains
and we pray five times a day.
When my head is against the mat,
I shut my eyes tight and
try not to think of home.
In the afternoon, I carry a gun
so I must be important.
The gun oil sticks to my clothes
smudges my skin into pimples.
Sometimes my hands are too numb
to load my rifle.
Last week I found out
the smell of napalm in the morning
makes me what to vomit.
I wonder if this is truly the Will of Allah
(May His Name Be Praised).
I must remember that the mountains
are filled with tempters & demons.

They said I could not go for flight training,
that my claustrophobia was a liability.
They would not send me to Indonesia or back to Europe.
My hands are decorated with no infidel's blood.
One day they will pick me.

further

This is all about raising awareness and funds for a microfinance project in the Philippines. Check out the links please.

The hippies had left the bus dumped in a ditch
when the trust fund money evaporated
like sunstroked bong water.
The engine was long gone, a generator in waiting.
The seats scavenged for a room for living in.
You had cut the tyres into shoes
while we attacked the frame with tinsnips.
You should use every part of the carcass.
We will reincarnate this bus's body
everywhere around us.

My eyes will not leave the destination sign:
"Further"
So I close them and the sign hangs in space.
I see the bus decomposing
a symphony of human activity.

Follow the rivulets of metal
and the binary pulses of money
and the actions falling like dominoes
in a world record attempt.

Follow the chromosomes
that interlock like acrobats
to create the trick of a life
Balance, harmony - a high wire act.

Follow the tectonic fault-lines
that skid round the globe
without our permission.
Plates spinning in that same circus.

Follow the word network,
the net worth of word nets
that catch us each in ourselves
when the high wire snaps.

Laugh at the words "independent" and "self-made"
carved in the biographies of great men
like a child's profanity on a park bench.

I open my eyes and the sign is gone.
I hope you took it.

luck

My grandfather said
that you make your own luck.
He made his with shotguns
and post offices.
The cops made theirs
with informers and patience.

My grandfather said
that one day your luck
will run out.
His luck ran out and took
the last seat in the getaway car,
leaving him to face the music
counted out in 4-4 by police batons.

N.B. My actual grandfather wasn't a bank robber but he did play a mean game of Scrabble.

kiva poetry auction winners (3)

• Shahnoza Juraeva - "She has applied for a Kiva loan to buy seasonal materials and additional national dresses" in Tajikistan.
• Saneam Soeur Village Bank Group - "Fourteen people in Preak Thom Village in Kandal Province [Cambodia] form one group in one Village Bank".
• Khuraman Sheydayeva - "Now this family requests a loan to buy 2 calves" in Azerbaijan.
• Myriam Lugo - Selling jewelry in Paraguay.

kiva poetry auction winners (2)

Our next four winners are:

• The Ram Group in Sierra Leone are going for some firewood.
• Sergei Avromenko is selling clothes and shoes in the Ukraine.
• Adela Flores Fierro sells cosmetics in Nicaragua.
• Mounitarou Yakoubou will be buying spare parts and a motorcycle to repair and sell.

And still more to come...

kiva poetry auction winners(1)

You may remember this. Well, lesser kudu ponied up $300 (to which I will add $100). Most generous of LK - so three cheers from everyone please.

I am in the middle of writing LK's poem on hope - of which there will be many variants I suspect. In the meantime, here are the first four entrepreneurs I have given the money to:

• Youssef - who needs a new floor-polishing machine.
• Fabiola Dilone - who needs to buy some inventory for her clothing business.
• Seang Sok - who is gunning for a motorcycle and a pumping machine.
• Rose Mensah - who is up for more stock for her food trading.

Go them! More to follow shortly...

the long tale - for anecdote

It was a tricky assignment. Damn tricky. Anecdote came back to me regarding the offer. And asked for a poem. About all of them.

The research behind this was kinda cool. I asked all the Anecdoters to keep experience diaries for a week - what they felt, what they saw & heard & smelt & tasted & touched, adding photos where appropriate. All that info is in here somewhere. Although in hindsight I'd probably have run the diaries for a month rather than just a week if possible. People need some time to loosen up.

The Long Tale

Once upon a time,
a long way away,
there were five stories.
It has been said that
there are only seven plots
in our word world
but all I know is that
there were these five stories.

Each story started off as a whisper,
a rumour then a rumour of a rumor.
As each story was told and retold,
it grew and grew and grew.

There are boy stories and girl stories,
grown up stories and baby stories
(and just to be clear on this:
a boy story is not the same
as a story about boys).

Boy stories are loud and blue.
Their ends are loose and untied.
Events happen with little thought.
a blur of testosterone and muddy knees.

Girl stories are more considered,
in the pink not necessarily rose-tinted.
Their details finer, their voices are softer.
They need light and air as much as boys.

Old stories are wrinkled
with layers of circumstance.
They have been passed from mouth to ear to mouth.
Some say that the old stories are the best.

Baby stories are never fully formed.
They sit in bits and grow in fits.
Their meaning hardens with the calcium of time
and you can never tell how they will turn out.

Once upon a time,
there were five stories
and although they have started,
they aren't finished yet.
Listen.

Download the mp3

urban fragments - for kim (1)

Kim offered me 3 photographs of urban fragments. I gave her 3 fragments back. Here is her post about the first.

listen carefully through your lens
the city’s concrete parapraxes
its slips of a rusty tongue
its sly evasions when put to the question

you can’t get a straight answer out of the city
you read its map statement again
combing over the misremembered debris
until you find a path through the rubble

a lead in the case
some lead from the windows
are you hungry?
in need of entertainment?

then follow the corroded path
up through the air vents
past the fire escape and insulation
into the tainted daylight

the city won’t budge

The other 2 fragments can be found here and here.
Their audio kin are here, here & here.

kiva poetry auction update

Remember this? So far we have 2 bids:

• Andrew Mitchell weighed in with AU$100.
• Lesser Kudu upped the ante to $150 for "hope". Not bad for someone with hooves (do they cause problems with the keyboard LK?) and funky stripes.

Come on - you can band together to get the cash remember? For the cost of a good meal for 4 people, those same 4 people can:

• Contribute to the well-being of many human beings.
• Influence the behaviour of one specific human being (for better or humorous).

What could be better? Post your bid now.

kiva poetry auction

Inspired by Johnnie's gift, I am instituting a Kiva poetry auction. Here is the skinny:

• You can bid for a special poem. What makes it different to an ordinary one? I will video a performance and put it on YouTube. You decide the topic of the poem. And you get to decide any "special" requirements for the video performance*.
• You then get to choose the Kiva entrepreneur (or entrepreneurs) we give the money to. I will feature regular updates from them on my blog - and if you are a blogger you will do the same.
• I will add AU$100 of my own.
• The closing date is midnight March 31st.
• The bidding starts at AU$100.
• Bids are made in the comments box of this blog post.
• Given the cooperative nature of Kiva, consortiums of bidders are allowed.

*I will not go nude. I will do not anything illegal or health-threatening. But apart from that, it's all fair game.

johnnie's response - kiva chain

Meet Johnnie. He wanted a poem about action points. Johnnie's has decided on what his response will be - a Kiva gift certificate. Excellent choice, Mr Moore.

Meet Kiva. "Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. By choosing a loan on Kiva, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the entrepreneur you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back."



Meet Lay Sok. A budding construction magnet from Cambodia, he is the first recipient of EwF's largesse. Why did I choose Lay Sok? My due diligence team scrutinised his business plan and accounts for weeks. I like Cambodia and like the idea of him building stuff - in part because it links to Annette's poem (though I am sure things will end better for him).



In loaning someone else's money to Lay Sok, I join Paul from Illinois, Ville from Helsinki and Frode from the other side of Sydney harbour.

Kiva Rocks!!!

there there - for lou

You may remember the offer. Lou is someone who took up the offer and the first person without a web presence to do so. She had jotted down some thoughts and we talked about them over a fantastic lunch she cooked yesterday. She is also a talented photographer. The thoughts aren't getting reprinted here but we are getting some of the quotes she provided.

"my life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue, an everlasting vision of the ever-changing view” – Carole King
“I’m sensitive and I’d like to stay that way” - Jewel
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” - Kahlil Gibrahn
“most people live lives of quiet desperation” Thoreau
“we are only as sick as the secrets we keep” Sue Atchley Ebaugh
“pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional” Kathleen Casey Theisen
“we are all so much together but we are all dying of loneliness” Dr Albert Schweitzer
“the greatest gift we can give one another is rapt attention to one another’s existence” Sue Atchley Ebaugh

And now without further ado...

There There

For 35 years,
I have worn you.
I have grown you,
stretched and
moisturised and
bronzed you.
I have tended you,
my beautiful boundary.

I have fed you
with the caresses of others.
They have traced the veins
that lie just under you.
They have run their fingers
through the hairs
that break your surface.

I can't remember when
I realised that you were
holding me back.
Maybe when the butterfly
landed on us in that meadow.
Or perhaps the sun's nagging,
gossamer impact over decades.

I have been cushioned, comforted, cordoned.
I want to feel the world unguarded by you.
Every touch overwhelming,
a glorious agony of contact.

I start pulling you
behind my left ear.
You let go of me with some reluctance.
I unwind you like a veil,
like bandages over a healed wound.

A breeze dabs my muscles
and feels like a tornado.
I know now that the sun
is a vast nuclear furnace.
The others hold me,
even though it stings.
The others hold me,
and let me whisper
my frayed, flayed hopes
into their ears.

Download the mp3.

art life stuff

Thoughts on the offer & the various conversations I have had with others (not necessarily commissioners). Three things have struck me.

1. Art in everyday life. In some senses, our lives are saturated with cultural products - TV, music, pictures, architecture. We often only allow ourselves to occupy the role of consumer. A lot of this mass-produced stuff is actually very good but we fall into the trap of thinking that the creation of these cultural objects is done by "someone else". I'd like us to emphasize a world where "art" crops up everywhere. The explosion of new media content creation technologies (digital cameras, video, sound recording) and sharing environments (Flickr, YouTube) give us an opportunity to make this a reality. I love the idea of commissioners requesting something connected with their everyday life and being able to reincorporate the output back in normality.

2. Demystifying creativity. If "art" is done by "someone else" then that person must be "creative". And of course, we are not creative. Those beautifully composed photos? Oh, just something I did to relax over the weekend. But that's not proper art because art is only done by creative people and I am not creative. One major rule of improv is that you should never try to come up with the perfect response. You just need to do something. Now. Because now is the right time to do it and whatever you do is the right thing to be done. In some ways, the profusion of high-quality cultural products is an inhibitor to local creative acts. Few of us will ever paint something as beautiful as Van Gogh's Sunflowers. And yet that image is everywhere. I love the idea of commissioners sharing their own creativity at every stage of this process (but I am not going to insist that they do so).

Several people have decloaked as past or present poets when I've brought this topic up. A couple of people have even sent me their stuff (ta).

We need to acknowledge that creativity is fundamentally collaborative & social.

3. The role of technology. As mentioned earlier, I think the new media have a major role play. This role is subtle however. I've been using tech because the commissioners so far have not been based in Sydney - not because I especially want to use technology, just because it's helpful. Visual artists are way ahead of writers in terms of using new media tools but I think it's time we imagine a world where the novel, the short story and the poem are only three of many textual things to be worked on. There was a big, self-conscious rush into hypertext in the mid-90s which then died a death. People got bored with it. There needs to be more exploration of digital media as vehicle for language-lovers (of whom I count myself one).

djehuti deal - for lauren brown

Djehuti deal

Thoth shuffles the deck.
His feathered thumbs
interlace each card with its twin,
base pairs of my story.

The corners of the cards are bent.
This deck has been used before
so my story is not new.
I find that comforting.

Thoth does some flashy tricks.
The cards catapult from one hand
to the other across the gap of a lifetime.
I think he’s trying to distract me, bless him.

“Pick a card”, he says
fanning the deck before me
like a peacock buzz saw.
“Any card”

My fingers touch one card then another,
flirting with a fate
they must unwillingly consummate.
They stick to a card.

I have seventy six choices,
arcana major and minor.
Three score and ten and six,
more than a lifetime.

The horse is as white as the rose
on the black standard,
as white as the skull of the rider
with the gotcha grin.

Seventy six choices and I get this one.
“Thoth, is the deck loaded?”
“Yes but don’t take it personally.”
There is a pause (for dramatic effect).

Thoth pulls a coin from behind my left ear
and another from behind my right
and places them on my eyes.
I ask him how it‘s all done

and with an ibis smile he tells me.

Get the mp3.

I have a confession to make. I didn't come up with the mix of Thoth and the tarot. This piece owes a big debt to Hot Head by Simon Ings - which is a awesome book that you should all read (if you can find it).

creating death and magic with lauren brown

I met Lauren at Interesting South back in November where she not only designed the stage and presented on How To Not Feel Like A Twat When Looking at Modern Art but also made the tea. Lauren is doing a show on Death & Magic later in the year and requested a poem for inclusion in the catalogue.

I asked Lauren to do 2 out of 3 possible activities for the research process. Despite being an artist, she avoided the one art-focused request and went for the musical and writing ones instead.

"Send me mp3s of 10 songs that rock with D&M goodness for you."

Lauren's Death & Magic playlist:
The Blue Lady (Outro) - The Nerve Agents
The Gallows Is God - The Distillers
Helicopter - Bloc Party
The Milkman Of Human Kindness - Billy Bragg
Suppose You Gave A Funeral And Nobody Came - Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine
Bullet In The Mattress - The Gadjits
Don't Lose Touch - against me!
Girl Anachronism - The Dresden Dolls
Mint Car - The Cure
Don't Look Back Into The Sun - The Libertines

"I'm interested in negative space. I'd like you to sit in front of your keyboard and hammer out what a world without magic and death would be like in a free-association, stream-of-consciousness prose flow. No editing or deleting. No pausing. Just a a continuous stream of words. For 13 mins 13 seconds."

no death, on and on and on. my ex boyfriends would never die, my parents would continue to live in nursing homes until the money ran out and I would have to send them out onto the streets to beg like strangers, pretending that I had never met them before and lying about the change I had in my pocket. my poor cat would be meowing at the door for all eternity. the mice would run around in a plague and the cockroaches. oh the cockroaches. if there was no death, I couldn’t stamp on them and have a smug little grin that, despite my belief in a reincarnation pay-it-forward system, I managed to exterminate the little bastards.

and about that reincarnation pay-it-forward system. without magic, I don’t think I could believe that I might, eventually, atone for sins, or whatever you want to call them. I also wouldn’t believe that breaking a mirror gives you 7 years bad luck and that not looking someone in the eyes when you say ‘prost!’ in germany results in 7 years bad sex. ok, so it’s not strictly magic, but it’s on the same level.

without magic, I might not believe in those happy little coincidences that happen without even thinking about it. in fact, I might have to believe, for every single second, of every single day for the rest of my eternal life (you know, remember, no death) that I was responsible for everything that happened to me. I like a bit of existentialism in my diet, but I think existentialism works because there’s death at the end of it. game over. you can move onto the next level if you’re wrong.

no magic and you’re in charge, buddy. or I’m in charge. and I can’t quite work out which would be worse. it’s like magic (and death) give you some kind of traffic light system. green lights, born; red lights, death; amber lights are those near misses where we thank god, or the universe, or the magic of santa claus for a chance to give it another run.

Now some random comments from me. It's been a long time since anyone has mentioned Carter USM to me. I love The Nerve Agents track - it has an icy, eerie feeling to it. And who doesn't like The Cure? As for Lauren's writing, I loved it. Like disappointment, we tend to think of death as a negative thing but Lauren seemed really uncomfortable in a world without death. But magic is the flipside, the requirement that makes life bearable. This heavily influenced the piece that follows (believe it or not).

7h - for annette clancy

7H

I draw the plans in hope and 7H pencil
on the back of a flattened cigarette packet
(smoking may harm your unborn baby).
They are sumptuous,
stunning,
mine.

They are, however, but a pale shadow
of my house of dreams.
My imagination mansion.
Diamonds and mahogany,
marble in majesty,
but still tastefully done.

I have the plans transferred
onto vellum with gold leaf letters
from the finest oriental calligrapher
stolen money can buy.
The authorities approve my wishes
with only minimal bribing required.

The builders are engaged at
sufficiently exorbitant rates
to appease my ego,
and I plant the opal foundation stone
on the first day of work
to rapturous applause from hired lackeys.

Slowly the house of my dreams
rises from the ground
like the geological event it is;
then burrows under the earth,
a regal mole blind
to its own beauty.

Three months in, there is a stock market correction.
I stand, corrected, humiliated, broke.
The house is half-done and alone.
A perfect ruin already.
I burn the plans
and float away on the smoke.

Get the mp3.

action points - for johnnie moore

And this is the commission for Johnnie Moore. The process for this was just us nattering on Skype for half an hour. Or it is the hours of conversations and personal blog posts that we have had since we met in 2006. Which makes it either the simplest or most complicated in terms of development. Whatever.

Action Points

The Children of Israel
were in the desert.
They cried out unto me,
beseeching me for a display of
my level five leadership.

Have I not given them manna from heaven?
And quails and bread and sweet water
and drinks with nibbles
after each quarterly update?

Have I not delivered them
from bondage in Egypt
and offered them a
land of milk and honey and share options
set at a reasonable strike price?

Truly they are a stiff-necked people
but I am the Lord their CEO
and employee engagement
is a key focus area this fiscal.

I summoned my COO to the Mount Sinai off-site
for forty days and forty nights.
Amid the fire and the smoke
and the golfing, I gave him my laws
and bade him formulate
a training plan.

I bade him write ten action points
on 2 slides of powerpoint
with handouts carved in stone.
Everything will now be right.

My COO returned to the Mount of flame
and team-building trust exercises
and told me of a golden calf
that stood without
the strategic plan.

The Children of Israel are many
and in need of rightsizing.

Get the mp3 of Action Points right now. Feel free to redistribute if ya wanna.

ahead of the curve - for adam ford

This is the commission for Adam - which as you may recall was on the topic of anticlinal folds. Adam created this mind map as part of the research process (I love the references to the statistics and pastry - click on the image for the full-size original).

I met Adam firstly on Barbelith and then in New York in 2000 (where I decided not to visit the World Trade Centre on the basis that "it would still be there the next time I visited"). Adam is a novelist and a fine poet. In exchange for the commission, Adam is writing a poem on the same topic. I'm not encouraging this option with anyone else but Adam gets more leeway than other people. So without further ado:

Ahead Of The Curve

I bet you thought
there were no traces left
by your crime of passion,
that act of creation.

I found a plastic print,
a twisted arch of earth
left at the crime scene.
Guilt-raised ground

gave away your botched intent.
They are coming for you on my evidence.
Your getaway was not equal
to your intelligent design.

Get the mp3.