Room

 

[Room]

 

“1968 kusama lyric”

 

in a white room

with black curtains

in the station

 

you made teardrops

endless circles

goodbye homeland

 

phallic rowboats

naked dresses

tired starlings

 

endless english

softly spoken

now forgotten

 

you stepped into

such a black lake

from your high-rise

 

in the last room

hang one thousand

candelabra

 

all the mirrors

neon ladders

explanations

 

you’ll say no strings

can secure you

just beginning

 

stars out of reach

as steps ascend

the work never ends

 

all left behind

where the shadows

run from themselves

Idiot

 

from 'We are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy', by Maurice Sendak (1993)

[Idiot]

 

the useful idiot

of the global village

pushes people’s buttons

 

the life of the party

wants to clear the room

of anyone but his

 

the prince of lies

doesn’t read books

as a rule

 

the artist of the deal

takes all the money

and runs

 

the moving target

is no. 1 with a bullet

but runs out of time

 

the feet of clay

feels poorly

and well drops dead

 

many are the dead

who leave unread

his gaslight biography

 

Traffic

 

[Traffic]

 

“february traffic haiku “

 

numerous examples of

motorcar

queue enormously at peak

 

mini glances from windows then

minibus

school kids return to scrolling

 

light angular insectoid

bicycles

swarm and split fly out of sight

 

useless extras bedeck brute

utilities

aerials bullbars pipeflaps

 

life offers visions like an

ambulance

ferrying forth against death

 

do not cut in front of a

three-piece tram

hundred rhinos are not wrong

 

mobile heartbeat at the lights

crossover

disco on wheels squeals and goes

 

mountainous turns corners the

tourist bus

leaving vistas in its wake

 

armed with map locations the

campervan

knows there is no place like home

 

burning through midday extremes

fire truck

lights up the street its alarm

 

three-sixty-degree access

e-scooters

park across well-trod footpaths

 

blinkering gasolineing

limousines

careering desiring

 

modest undemonstrative

couriers

send the message emails can’t

 

shaggy the secret life of

panel vans

behind smooth exteriors

 

driving home the full import

vehicles

sporting their exotic names

 

wheels within wheels fast forward

police car

time catching up with the crime

 

lawless clueless lightless a

pizza-bike

runs the red with late orders

 

 

 

Dotless

 

Infinity Dots (1953) Yayloi Kusama

[Dotless]

 

“kusama englyn penfyr”

 

we cannot see cannot guess deep darkness

blackness offers no suggest

more dark we mark, never less

 

should a dot the eyes enter through doubtless

dauntless as though the centre,

dotless no more, frequenter

 

with eyes to see, say why and spy, day walk

cakewalk where there’s only eye

and no full stop only i

 

imagining being initialling

initiating seeing

joyful creating freeing

 

ink stained galaxies innate progressive

impressively scintillate

infinitely impregnate

 

 

Child

 

[Child]

 

“kusama englyn penfyr”

 

war is over her atoms all dotted

besotted as she is some

over every single item

six-sided rooms of mirror are this child’s

exiled universe of wonder

and small margin of terror

 

her infinity ladders disappear

reappear taking matters

in hand now clustered shattered

 

endless paintbox timeless splotch of her brush

is the crush she has with touch

whether masterpiece or botch

 

millions of red flowers glow glossy

bossy as she is powered

by their delicate hours

Pumpkin

 

'Pumpkin' (1981) by Yayoi Kusama

[Pumpkin]

 

what do we see in the pumpkin

there amidst morning tendrils

that wasn’t there yesterday

 

skin hard in the round light

where it rests on the ground found

amidst sounds of grass, wind and leaf

 

cut open the pumpkin to find

more sun firm fibre condensed

and seed chambers in numbers

 

admittedly often happily

there’s nothing to say

just us and the pumpkin out in the open

 

where mood improves

in the presence of this little planet

hard outside not that hard inside

 

but what does she see in the pumpkin

holding it tight like a child

lonely in the clinic and out

 

all you need is love

and the creation and the pumpkin

the ultimate anti-depressant

 

what in wartime she knew

was main sustenance, aid to

all thought that will get her through

 

the pumpkin’s humanness

tenderness humourousness

unpretentiousness

 

buried in clumps of compost

pumpkinseeds

return curved in great green clouds

 

only then what do you see in

the pumpkin that would be something

really would be something

 

a simple question simply answered

not simply a suggestion but

an appealing manifestation

 

plain as day warts and all

big as they come all sizes

protuberant or else squat

 

or just pumpkin pumpkin

pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin

cut from its cord for the kitchen table

 

soup prolifically squashed

roast pronouncedly sweet

pie productively sliced

 

 

 

Online

 

[Online]

 

do you ever feel spoken to

by online does online ever

reach you where you’re at

 

is online your main learning tool

what’s the first think you think

when you see the word online

 

do you wake or sleep online

does online enhance your sleep

or keep you awake all night

 

this survey takes only a minute

does online lift your spirit offer

all the spirituality you need

 

do you use the wasted time app

to measure how much online

could be spent on something else

 

when the scroll fights

when the troll bites

when you’re feeling sad

 

do you simply remember

your favourites online and

everything feels alright

 

sorry actually this survey

takes several hours

but you can pause at any time

 

would you describe your current

online presence as vacant

glancing nonchalant pedestrian

 

academic insomniac

omnivorous omniscient

psychopathic trumpian

 

all of the above

if online fell over today

never to recover would you

 

go in search of another spirituality

sort it out over a cup of tea

or 2, 3, 4, 5 cups please specify

 

return to writing letters by hand

go to the kusama show

for the afternoon spit the dummy

 

what will online do in retirement

take up shuttlecock ring triple-0

retell its carer old clickbait stories?

America

 

Sunrise in Melbourne, 6.15 am. New York, 2.15 pm.

[America]

 

america why talk to you

you have all my data

what more is there to say

 

america you populate my screen

your gossip is a convulsion

your news a million reactions

 

america the enemy is within

the enemy is without

the enemy’s all in your head

 

america your lies are legion

you suffer from president slump

and wildfire denial

 

america the beat goes on

each year is warmer than the last

summer’s here and the time is right

 

america it’s them bad russians

them russians and them chinamen

before I switch you off

 

america how long have you got

I mute your endless movie stream

I go somewhere not america

 

the live conversation is sane here

sleep is good and jazz cool

the past speaks with now

 

a beautiful book expresses

my soul here and unexpected

words make ginsberg-like poetry

 

here familiar voices comfort

being human is personal

time takes time to observe

 

when I want I text friends

or drop them a whimsical selfie

sent from my iphone 

 

Leonardo

 

[Leonardo]

 

‘saviour of the world’

has it come to this

owned by an arabian prince?

 

woodworm screwed your base

paint disfigured your face

you hardly hold together, just

 

sight unseen for centuries

hid in castle keeps, job lots

freeports who may gaze on you

 

the object of money veneration

the highest bidders

selling their souls for your tax break

 

your maker believed painters

were grandsons unto God

recreating nature by hand

 

now restorers wish to save you

as though you are more glorious

than all the lilies of the field

 

oligarchs are on the phone

raising million above million savings

something nice for their old age

 

it has come to this, you

‘saviour of the world’

draw the crowds with your maker’s name

 

even if evening no one can say

if it be he or another or others,

leaving you, only your half smile

 

your resolute gesture of blessing

for eyes to read as they can

at the end of a desert gallery space

 

and an orb of the world

fragile as starry glass held in the palm

an arabian prince could drop

 

and eyes of penetration

and mystery riding time

and the general melee of existence

 

In recent weeks I have been reading the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. This prompted me to watch the documentary ‘The Lost Leonardo’ on Netflix (recommended), in turn inspiring the poem about ‘Salvator Mundi’. The poem exhibits the behaviour of poets who go up to a painting and start talking to it in the second person singular. Pictured is one of the central figures in the story, Dianne Modestini, at work in New York circa 2006 restoring the object in question.

Clothes

 

[Clothes]

 

slipping into them

drawing their cords and belts

the business with buttons

 

standing up in them

caress lasting hours

stresses tuck and trim vim

 

stepping out in them

hues unforgettable forgotten

the body in question beneath

 

stopping to check them

the sag that should be straight

the drab that should be gay

 

forgetting about them

any uniform in a storm

fashion is a fig-leaf

 

paying for more of them

shopping therapy spare-pairing

or bare necessity

 

judging by appearances

that alarming tee-shirt

that oh-so overgrown overcoat

 

attending to mishaps

the fleck of ketchup

rain-soaked to the bone

 

change as good as a holiday

this goes with that

a statement sewn with questions

 

or then haven’t a thing to wear

brain like a loose thread

all out of sorts with clothes

 

they stop and stare

take wear and tear

threadbare then oh not there

 

they ghost real selves

motion pictures of

the living breathing being

 

they attract message bluff blend

anonymity in label and design

they warm and warn

 

clothes they are a vain excuse

learnt behaviour

they cool and school

 

slipping them off

statements and questions left

in a heap crumpled suggestions

 

dropping them in the wash

there’s one in every crowd

a holy shroud

 

sleeping surrounded by them

dreams where they cannot hide

and lovers cast them aside

 

January

 

“january haiku garden”

 

yesterday spent beheading

lavender

shrivel bent from last week’s heatwave

 

and starting trimming swaying

nectarine

branch-threads now firm fruit had dropped

 

watering-can watering

watering

best early in the morning

 

sunlight wakes epiphanies

correa

pink where yesterday was green

 

urine-rich wasp-free spreading

lemon tree

glows overnight sensations

 

dangling laughably by strings

tomatoes

lusciously by stalks hanging

 

eddies of airiness wave

banksia

to-and-fro ancient whiteness

 

rivers of timber rainbow

eucalypt

send endings into flowers

 

eye perceives green pagodas

sweet basil

nose detects fragrant odours

 

buried inside numerous heads

climbing rose

holds off the moment again

 

buried in clump of compost

pumpkinseed

returns curved in great green clouds

 

knowing not the hour wait

hakea

breaking open in the heat

 

secure another year

satsuma

sweetened air softening death

 

ramifications of the

secateurs

collect in a wheelbarrow

 

and native pea climbers spray

green shade-cloth

and burst through paling fence slats

 

rising infestations curbed

bamboo shoots

thinned bundled tied for high stakes

 

next day unseasonal floods

gutters full

seem now seasonal enough

 

 

Gulf

 

[Gulf]

 

orders are orders

south of the border

down sudetenland way

 

the gulf of america, to explain

lies midway between

the left and right hemispheres

 

of the president’s brain

between wanting everything

and his fear, to have nothing

 

with the great wall of texas

the gulf is the only manmade folly

visible from the moon

 

the gulf of america widens each day

in every way bigger and better

no money will close the gap

 

the missile or bullet fired

crosses the empty gulf of america

entering the victim’s space X

 

the president, remember him?

cheats at gulf his scorecard

an abysmal abyss, alas

 

yet gulf stream humidity

cataclysmic stupidity

the first policy cupidity

 

means an executive order rudely

signed by the gulf of america

drowns the land overnight

 

lies get around this untidy sight

but for most the blackout fade

out is simply called the gulf

Image: ‘New Holland and the adjacent Islands, agreeable to the latest discoveries.” Alexander Kinkaid, 1790.

Reading

 Reflections for the Third Sunday of Epiphany, the 26^th of January 2025, in the pew notes at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne.  Written by Philip Harvey.

 

Being read to is one of life’s minor pleasures. While one of the few places nowadays where it is required, and generally the norm, is church. The other public place where we regularly read aloud and are to read to is school. The synagogue was both these things, a place of sabbath worship and teaching, which is where we logically and audibly find Jesus. 

Today we hear him taking his turn reading to the local Nazarenes (Luke 4: 14-21). This event itself is an example to us of why we read Scripture aloud to one another in church, to hear, ponder, and interpret. He is the one giving permission, indeed requiring this be done, which is why in any church we expect the Gospel (at the very least) to be read, or even sung, at worship. The precedent is written into the story, an encouraging model. 

The verses from Isaiah are an epiphany. They enact one expectation of poetry, that it state sufficiently in a brief space the best words to declare a revelation. No syllable is wasted. Listeners may have different reactions, but they understand what’s being said. 

Like all witnesses to this moment, through time, we are told the Holy Spirit is upon him, that he is anointed and brings good news to the poor. God has sent him to proclaim release of those captive, recovery of sight to the blind, freeing of the oppressed, and proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour. It is a jubilee moment with a difference. They are words we hear in church. 

This text within a text, this poem within the narrative, is read to us as if for the first time. The poem is an icon, an icon of the one who is reading the words to us. Having scrolled down, he rolls it up, then sits down again, rather as we might turn off our screen when we’ve had enough, job done. What next then?      

As we know from hearing the Gospel each week, the showing forth of Jesus is not simply beautiful words but the true living out of the actual prophetic words we have just heard in the icon. Very soon he will say and do other things in the synagogue that will cause the temporary wonder of his hearers to turn to anger, such that they will be ready to throw him over a cliff. It gets nasty, as the living truth of his words take hold in their minds. Just as, today, we are confronted with the actual expectations that Jesus’ presence places on us, in our own particular and peculiar places and ways.