In my bedroom early morning hours January 7th 2018

Gerringong, NSW

The heat almost unbearable tonight; like the years lost to phantasms; memories which mock till sucked dry; the roundness of my back a parachute; this body once carved from Greek marble; the teasing of a spirit which stays young; the soft flesh and decay of teeth; tonight this is not who I am; tonight I am a god smearing moonlight on my face; I am a poet until the sunrise; and my hair is thick and hiding a multitude of stories; Augustine of Hippo “ever-present eternity”; “[y]et the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness” (Khalil Gibran); “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise” (Dan. 12:1); I hear the waves crashing onto the shore; years ago the Pacific Ocean almost claimed me; the water has been after me since the womb; vodka; voda; little water; you can drift off nicely with a huge ear; tympanic membrane; Bugs Bunny “Rabbit of Seville”; Syd Barrett busking in Paris before his conflagration; Estas Tonne’s burning fingers whirling dervishes in Madrid; the blind guitar player on Piccadilly Circus looks my way; word association associative patterns; “[w]ild, wild horses we’ll ride them some day” (The Rolling Stones); Eleni wakes up to a nightmare; J.P. Morgan; the ‘1907 Panic’; the Federal Reserve System; do understand it is a private trust; this generation has been reeling in the darkness; algorithms are without soul; ‘number crushing’ will be reversed; to the right on top my side drawer four books; The Handmaid’s Tale; Titus Andronicus; The Robots of Dawn; David Brooks' The Fern Tattoo; to the left on top my side drawer; the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece; a pair of blue crystal angels; a prayer rope; a Rubics cube; a bronze owl from Istanbul; the stories from Paphos almost done; I enjoyed drafting these on the mountain; I might send them to Westerly; I am nodding off; I will sleep for a few hours; here on this bed you were conceived; 5.47 AM; “From bed and sleep hast Thou raised me up”; dreamt of my Father sitting on a ledge in his suit; episodic memory; aromatic incense; Lily of Aegina; 2 charcoal pieces; Surrealism and the unconscious; Salvadore Dali (1904-1989);  camouflage; concealing colouration; “[y]ou can close your eyes to reality but not to memories” (Stanislaw Jerzy Lec); it is a little cooler; remnants will be left behind; my pillow wet like London rain; I am getting a new laptop; I wish I did not need one; nobody needs Facebook; great alphabets are hidden in our backyard; “[o]nly the body remembers stillness”; Elvia Garcia Ardalani; back soon must quench my thirst; chilled tomato juice; savoury crackers and cheddar cheese; a short black; Boat Harbour Rock Pool; Seven Mile Beach; Cathedral Rocks; midnight Christmas services the Julian Calendar; typewriter patented on this day (1714); total fire bans are in place; motifs return in different keys; they come back on their head; Ludwig van Beethoven; Claude Debussy; Jon Lord; we are all connected; all things touch; except the “internet of things” which has no soul; but Charles Bukowski has soul (1920-1994); Iranian oil tanker fire leaves 32 missing;  “Aussie Flu” outbreak; Donald Trump ‘absolutely’ would talk with Kim Jong-Un; Titus Andronicus; pulp fiction; “Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?” (Titus Andronicus); redemption; “the action of being saved”; recovery; Katina and the little ones at the beach; George gone fishing; my left leg folded under the right has gone to sleep; Tito Colliander (1904-1989); The Way of the Ascetics; searching for faith in a disbelieving world; Pythagoras’ golden thigh; speak to me great river; bite the head off the old serpent; 10:07 AM; I will take a shower; a shower like a baptism promises re-birth; healed in the waters of the Pool of Siloam and the Gihon Spring; blue sundew; purple garlic; dark orange; the dyers guild protected their secrets closely; the porcelain guild even more; my guardian angel above and beyond; Uberveillance is nearer than I thought; who will be able to resist; save your children; blood pressure 157/95; pressure in large arteries; sphygmomanometer; the explosion of colour; diffuse nebulae; interstellar matter; second breakfast: Melba toast, feta cheese, black olives, and a drop of Sangiovese; drafted a poem; revised two translations; listened to Loreena McKennitt; leafed through some old photographs; joyful-sorrow; translate to ‘double-edged sword’; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIS3Y-lZStU;  “I made my song a coat” (W. B. Yeats); Red Mashad Persian Rug; the Blueface Angelfish will dazzle in the Indo-Pacific; diamonds rain down on the surface of Jupiter; Katina and the little ones have returned; George is still with Pops; our neighbours mowing the lawns; the shrieking of Galahs; much cooler and “partly cloudy”; stratus; cumulus; stratocumulous; a postcard from Singapore arrived two days ago; a letter from the bank; an invitation to a wedding; remember Mary Wollstonecraft; she died giving birth to her daughter; the other Mary who wrote Frankenstein; “[i]f I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”; back later don’t go away; 9:47 PM; “The day has passed, and I give You thanks, Lord”; another ritual washing; at least the flesh will be clean; earlier a bowl of lentil soup, onion, olives, with crusty bread; a tall cold beer; a mild cigar; a secure roof; unqualified love; blessings beyond words and so my heart be silent and do not complain; “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever” (Ps.136); belief is action and movement; belief is not dogmatic it is ongoing counsel through the darkness; “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24); Jeremy bouncing a ball downstairs; Eleni drawing pictures in the big room; Frida Kahlo (1907-1954); look on the underside of the image; a magical realist acquainted with grief; I am upstairs in the bedroom; “Beam me up, Scotty” (Star Trek); Google maps; ‘view or edit your timeline’; what will be the truth; to the right of me the bathroom; to the left of me the walk-in wardrobe; and to the front of me “[t]wo roads diverged in a yellow wood” (Robert Frost); Siccar Point; time split into many points; creation and evolution; blue whale; white whale; grey whale; it invariably comes down to triggers; “Stories that educate and inspire those with OCD” (Stuart Ralph); tap… tap… Tao; the Titanic burned; the iceberg came after; like the new world we are building; “dance me to the end of love” (Leonard Cohen); Salome; Isadora Duncan; Martha Graham; chasse triple step; lock step; feather step; Rabindranath Tagore; Nandalal Bose; Niranjan Bhagat; contextual modernism; orchid; lotus; bleeding heart; last week I dreamt I was wrestling with myself; I had the ‘other’ in a tight headlock; subdue that which wars within you; courage; enlightenment; collapsing stars and gamma-ray bursts; all good for now; the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; from the shadow of death; light will dawn; it all goes too quick, the little bird lamented; let us cry together tonight.

At Kiama Blowhole

10 April 2016

Kiama, NSW

William Oscar McClleland, aged 28 years, drowned off Blowhole Point, October, 9, 1897; the incontestable beauty of a full-rigged ship; “Does anyone know where the love of God goes | When the waves turn the minutes to hours” (Gordon Lightfoot); pirates wore eye patches to adjust the volume of light; a young Mother walking with her two children which will soon pass her; a man in a red cap and a yellow shirt is counting down the minutes to his second resurrection; two fishermen in a small boat are glad to be alive; The Old Man and the Sea; an old angel in white sneakers is on house cleaning duties; the parkland is strewn with flight feathers from the morning take-offs; “The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss” (Douglas Adams); Kiama Lighthouse white group flashing 28,000 candelas; Mount Pleasant Lookout 3 miles; Fox Ground 6 miles; Garry Moore Parisienne Walkways; Picasso loved the circus; “Poetry is what I do in real life” (Les Murray); “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (Gen 28:12); are there any coffee shops open; the seeds of berries; I must finish H.E. Smith’s Mark Twain; thank you serendipity for Robert Lax’s Circus of the Sun; Al-Sheikh al-Akbar The Meccan Revelations; Musa my dear friend, we are all of the book; Shalom Shabbazi ‘Shakespeare of Yemen’; Jung on myth and dreams; gili, gili; Oodgeroo Noonuccal formerly Kath Walker; Schopenhauer on reality but do not tell the children; the only sure thing with suffering what we make of it during the early hours of the morning; endurance derived from “the ability to last”; Pink Floyd shine on you crazy diamond; one awful trigger after another; do not give in to the cigar; “We hire people who can get inside the head of a customer” (Apple); they have, and they will; Peking toffee apples; inside humble exteriors of churches in the little village of Arbanassi hang titanic lightning bolts of colour; Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky); diptychs and icons; take a look inside Tasos Leivaditis’ large overcoat; the dance of the dervishes; the search for truth begins and ends with tears; philosophy can lead to bad pride; theology often enough to hubris; love as best you can and go about your business; why is everybody getting tattooed; the “mark” had many significations in the old world; Ink; Vladimir Nabokov loved pencils; a waterbird with a foot missing; commercial interests versus environmental concerns; the polar ice caps are melting like big blocks of butter; Immanuel Kant the categorical imperative and the inherent value of moral agency; I have an ongoing compassion for the Prince of Denmark; “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive” (Marcus Aurelius); political correctness does not like to be questioned; totalitarianism; fascism; New Atheism; ‘the invisible hand’ of Adam Smith; the ‘hand of God’ and Diego Maradona; my right arm is racked with arthritis; Ottmar Mergenthaler’s linotype machine was hot metal; “Rivers team with fish, and water’s clear. People spend their time inventing names for things they see” (Michael Sharkey); Dante Alighieri godfather to Petrarch and Boccaccio; 12… 1234… 12… 1234; saints above this might never end; it is getting cold; where are the socks; hide your true self; Superman starring George Keefer Brewer; “What’s My Line”; I have always liked Jack Lemmon; we are for the most engaging in dramaturgy and stagecraft; an essay on market forces and mechanization; we must be sure to distinguish between the two; one is economics and the other power of steam; like the gap between tenor and soprano; David Brooks transfigures the rooms of cities; Elena Shvarts birdsong escaping from a cage; here lies our beloved father, husband and grandfather Athas Xiros “This place you loved so much”; Sydney to Kiama 159 kilometres; no exit; kiosk; bus parking; Jack Gibson and Mick Cronin were born here; luxurious accommodation with a great cocktail bar; Charmian Clift Mermaid Singing completed in Lent; “Call me Ishmael” Moby-Dick or, The Whale; “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down | Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee” (Gordon Lightfoot); where there are no biological clues it cannot be trusted; “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it” (2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000); where are you Jacques Ellul; absolute efficiency; The Chicago School of Economics; a marshmallow can hit the earth with the force of a hydrogen bomb; “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off”; Google and Facebook feed on the desire for reputation; identities are bought and sold through brands; “We are the hollow men | We are the stuffed men | Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw” (The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot); Oskar Kokoschka and his life-size Alma Mahler doll; what if robots become better parents; oh Lord, what if baby robots are better children; beyond the stuff of dreams and more terrible than nightmares; Vladimir Tatlin goes straight for the bones; the great humility of Saint Francesco of Assisi; Wumen Huikai The Gateless Gate; blood pressure on the rise Zan-Extra; Eleni’s violin is missing the D String; jazz the arranged combination of accented downbeats and upbeats; byzantine chant and southern spirituals; the true joy of the mystics; “I will soothe you and heal you. I will bring you roses. I too have been covered in thorns” (Rumi); the high tides of the Bay of Fundy; as mysterious as the Caves of the Taurus Mountains; that is correct, Guildenstern, death is not a boat; honey bottled on the lips; the master of the seas Captain James Cook could not swim; bamal; gura; guwiyang; postcode 2533; are you still here; difficult to live nowadays; people have stopped loving; “Starry starry night” Vincent.