i long for you in your absence and in your presence just the same, endlessly.

WILLIAM C HANNAN

Sarah Rice

Absence

Funny how our anthropomorphis,
makes us read even empty benches in the park
as gathering, huddled, grouped together.

The metal stairs we used to sit on
are honeycombed in structure,
rigid and unyielding, they hold their empty

hexagons apart.

Once we wove the in-between,
spinning the cobwebbed lines across the gaps
in a crazy railway network map.

Funny how you leave a trace on space.
The silver, flattened grass whispers
that here (not long ago) someone lay.

“God is good, but never dance in a small boat”

A nobler yearning never broke her rest 
Than but to dance and sing, be gaily drest.

 

 

 

 

Camelus saltat. — The camel is dancing. 

Spoken of a person employed in some 
incongruous and surprising manner.

I’m hairy on the inside. Angela Carter, Company of Wolves.

 

I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.”

― William S. Burroughs

 

The Vocal Vamp by C.J. Dennis

By Perry Middlemiss on November 1, 2013 7:11 AM | No TrackBacks

Say, kid, I used you like you some

When you were beautiful, but dumb.

   Them pearly teeth, them rollin’ eyes —

   Dreamy and of amazin’ size —

That leak large tears of glycerine,

When you got mushy on the screen,

   They set my feelin’s all awhirl,

   An’ made me go all goofy, girl.

Cutie, I fell for you, I did.

I thought you were a reel nice kid,

   Them close-ups! Say! Them cunning’ curls!

   You seemed the niftiest of girls.

Them swishy looks you slung about

When villainy was winning’ out

   An’ you was suffering’ the jars

   Of bad men chewing’ big seegars!

Aw, kid, my heart was wrung with woe

To see my baby treated so.

   In agony I watched the screen,

   An’ when I seen ’em treat you mean

I longed to leap from out my chair

An’ be your champeen then an’ there.

   Yes, all het up I was each night.

   You sure vamped me, all right, all right.

Why couldn’t I be well content

With gifts that Hollywood had sent

   Of old — the sight of you so cute

   Without no vocal attribute?

But, sweetie, man ain’t built that way.

I craved to hear them sweet lips say

   One little sentence, soft an’ sweet,

   To make my happiness complete.

Honey, you said … Oh, that night!

When my great love, conceived at sight,

   Was buried in the cold, cold ground

   Because the films took to sound.

A buzz-saw, Babe, believe me true,

Ain’t got one single thing on you;

   For you sure spoke a noseful, kid,

   I’ll tell the cock-eyed world you did.

First published in Stead’s Review, 1 November 1929

http://www.middlemiss.org/rhymes_rudely_strung/2013/11/the-vocal-vamp-by-cj-dennis.html

Hope is the last thing to leave a human being.

 tango, the relationship between lead and follower, man and woman, is so intense and all consuming, that there is simply no time for small talk. The last man I danced with, I know more intricately in many ways than his lover: I know that he perspires in a tiny spot above his brow; that when the dance slows and our connection is tight, his breathing almost stops; that when my leg sweeps his, he arches his neck imperceptibly upwards; that when another couple got too close he subconsciously enclosed me in a protective embrace; and that his hand rested so delicately on the flesh of my back. Yet all I know about him are his name and his country of origin. Small talk is a luxury not afforded to us tango addicts.

Anastasia Demaggio

http://www.verytangostore.com/quotes.html

LOST IN THE BUSH

I’d left the camp, and lost my way,

‘Mid tangled vines and ferns;

And puzzled was which way to take

From out the many turns;

 

When presently I saw some smoke

Through swamp oaks wreathing up,

And close beside me soon I heard

The yelping of a pup.

 

A forked stick, two sheets of bark,

A low, small fire in front,

And on the ground there sat a black, –

He’d just returned from hunt.

 

And on the coals a sumptuous meal –

A ‘possum roasting whole –

Among the ashes two corn cobs,

Which he that morning stole.

 

I told him I had lost my way,

Was weary, and footsore.

He pointed to a log, and then

Was silent as before.

 

I questioned him – Why all alone?

Where piccaninny, gin?

He sullen looked, and then replied:

“White fellow bin take him.

 

And he bin promise gib it me,

Clothes, blanket, and white bread,

Bacca, and rum, and budgery things;

Baal gib it though,” he said.

 

“And many moons I’ve trabbled bin

With white man long a dray;

But now me going back to tribe;

Baal me now with him stay.

 

“Almost all gone, blackfellow, now;

Baal plenty kangaroo;

Whitefellow sit down everywhere,

Him take it all land, too.”

He led me on, I’d wandered far,

For now ‘twas almost night,

Then pointing to my camp, he turned,

And soon was lost to sight.

 

I thought ‘tis late now to begin,

At this the eleventh hour,

Yet still a something might be done

By those who have the power,

 

For those once owners of the soil,

Neglected thus so long;

I would I had the poet’s gift,

I’d plead their cause in song.

(Kiama Independent, March 28, 1884)

MELINDA KENDALL.

 

She laughs and whispers ‘Arrangkwe just 2 pelicans in the sky!

I drive out to Amoonguna to tell the family he

is right

I sit down with his Aunty, round the campfire, in

the night

I ask her to explain the pelicans and the meaning

of the sign

She laughs and whispers ‘Arrangkwe just 2 pelicans

in the sky!

Ali Cobby Eckermann

foto – urunga sea lido january 2014

Carefree by Samuel Wagan Watson

you’d never forget the pelicans
because it was their home too
and that occasional one who’d try and swallow your baited hook
while we cast out into an endless mould of brown and blue skin
sometimes catching our line in its enormous and clumsy wingspan
floating around the jetty constantly boasting that huge gullet
so close to the pylons covered in poinson oyster shells
that waited for the bare flesh within our gait,
inviting our bare flesh to dance
Mum worried that we’d get sick from eating them
Day saying the sewage from the caravan park
would sometimes flow near where we fished
and that they oysters bathed in it too

little buckets of a few bream
silver catch of a meal
and the persistent cats at our ankles
lapping up the smell
running up past the shop
a front window necropolis of stonefish in vegemite jars
suspended in a vault of clear alcoholic brine
still deadly in death
and us in bare feet all the time
three kids in stonefish-infested mud
playing Russian roulette –
one good pair of running shoes between us

Source:  Smoke Encrypted Whispers  by Samuel Wagan Watson Univ. of Queensland Press, 2004

Cats are like music. It’s foolish to try to explain their worth to those who don’t appreciate them.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes you purest thoughts, for out of them will grow delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

James Allen

My heart: its birds away, its branches bare, Swooned in eclipse. William Baylebridge

http://www.middlemiss.org/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-search.cgi?search=bird&IncludeBlogs=1&limit=20

 

foto of birds in raleigh 2013

“A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.” 

― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.” ― Kahlil Gibran

 

Half Moon Creek

LEON VAN DER LINDE

De Spatio Reali

Halfway to Miena
the Milky Way
hangs differently

so much brighter
and closer, that,
if you wish,
you can reach out
and touch
the powder-white
brush dots
painted by the moon
and stars at night

http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/10/09/half-moon-creek/

Two should stay together when crossing a ford.

Is treasa dithis a’ dol thar àn àtha na fad’ o chèile.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” 

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

One love, one heart, one destiny.”

― Bob Marley

Lying Down In My Hotel Room,
Thinking About The Day

I have spent too long
telling the world the world is the world
and poetry is made of language.
Today on the Bedford platform, I began
the great poem: weeping openly on the public
telephone—the way some were staring
as they swirled past, the way some
weren’t—yes: it was truth
at last.

—Jan Zwicky

http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/10/09/the-draw-of-the-heart-to-the-flame/

 

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.”

― Margaret Atwood

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy — the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

ERIC HOFFER, The Passionate State of Mind

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/d/disappointment_quotes.html#HdAsP1pE3kX4pRuH.99

Best to slip with foot, than with tongue.

(Charlie Chan at the Circus)

“Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.”

― Erin Morgenstern

dive into your inner wisdom, and uncover what’s already under your nose.

 

Though everyone in town was safe, the beaches were gone . . . all covered by the cool green Flood, which almost paralyzed her with its beauty, its clarity . . . for “days” she could watch nothing else, while all around her the town adjusted to its new shoreline and life went on. Late at “night” she went out on her deck and stood just above the surf, looking toward a horizon she couldn’t see, as if into a wind that might really be her own passage, destination unknown, and heard a voice, singing across the Flood, this wonderful song, the kind you heard stoned over at some stranger’s place one night and never found again, telling of the divers, who would come, not now but soon, and descend into the Flood and bring back up for us “whatever has been taken,” the voice promised, “whatever has been lost.”

–Vineland

My eyes are an ocean in which my dreams are reflected.

Anna M. Uhlich.

“My reflection said so many things, and as I searched for what it wanted me to hear, I heard nothing. When you don’t even want to be who you are, how do you listen when you try to tell yourself something?”

― Melissa Perea, Seeds of Hate

The wise create proverbs for fools to learn, not to repeat.

~ African

http://afritorial.com/the-best-72-african-wise-proverbs/

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

 

 

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood, don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Friendships sail like any other ship… left unattended, it will drift away” – Sensei Stokes”
― Sensei DarianStokes

Punters know the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag Self-Interest always runs a good race. “

 GOUGH WHITLAM

 

“Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.”

― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors.

 

Armenian

“The ship of my life may or may not be sailing on calm and amiable seas. The challenging days of my existence may or may not be bright and promising. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.”
― Maya Angelou

No matter how much you train the wolf, he still looks at the mountains and howls.

Қасқырды қанша асырасаң да тауға қарап ұлиды.
(Qasqırdı qansha asırasaŋ da taūġa qarap uliydı.)

http://www.omniglot.com/language/proverbs/kazakh.htm

“He Sat in the window thinking. Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature…the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while.”

― Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts & The day of the locust

“I’ve got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.”

― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“I wonder if rooms in an insane asylum have Do Not Disturb signs for the doors. I should hope not, because knock or no knock, every occupant in those rooms is already disturbed.
”
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They’re Over.

all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for.

― Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty

No tears, Celia, now shall win

         My resolv’d heart to return;

I have search’d thy soul within,

         And find nought, but pride, and scorn;

I have learn’d thy arts, and now

Can disdain as much as thou.

Some power, in my revenge, convey

That love to her I cast away.

Disdain Returned

BY THOMAS CAREW

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173131

There are two things that cannot be taken back- the sped arrow and the spoken word.

― Jane Casey, The Missing

“You are born with the yearning arrow, my Glynna, though you are not yet fully aware of it. It is not a happy thing to possess, for nothing on earth – no goal, no person how ever beloved – will answer it. It points to the sky and to the heavens and the stars and when it cannot reach them, it must fall back to pierce your heart.”

Isobelle Carmody, Darkfall

Life is a free circus. All you have to do is pay attention. Bill Copeland

“I think at the heart of so much restlessness of the day is a spiritual vacuum. There is a yearning for meaningful lives, a yearning for values we can commonly embrace. I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses.”

Bill Moyes

“But I’ve swallowed my pride before, that’s for sure. I’m practically lined with my mistakes on the inside like a bad-wallpapered bathroom.” Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

YEARNING

"I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in the sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occurred to them to do anything less then perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I’d suddenly know that I Belonged among them, that I was one of them, that I’d been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake; and they’d know it too. I’d be like the ugly duckling among the swans."
Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road)

If you want to become a rich man, you are desiring. But if you want to become a sannyasin, it is a longing. Desiring depends on others: in longing there is no need to depend on anybody else. It is your own flowering. It is already there — just it needs the right soil and the right time It is waiting for the spring to come. OSHO.

A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit).

I Came to buy a smile—today—But just a single smile—The smallest one upon your faceWill suit me just as well—The one that no one else would missIt shone so very small—I’m pleading at the “counter”—…

Source: A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit). | THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY

Bunny’s Excuse. There was once a wicked old sinner Who fancied a rabbit for dinner, But the bunny he met Said: “Don’t kill me yet, For I really am still a beginner.”

My living problems also cease to be struggles.

Heaven designs to suit our trials to our strength.

Though the sun shines, leave not your cloak at home.

” The queen’s mocking laughter cut in. “This is your treasure, Lord Sheftu?”

“Aye. The greatest treasure in Egypt—a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever bargain we make, Daughter of the Sun, must include her freedom.”
― Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Mara, Daughter of the Nile

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS