Sunday, 31 August 2025

Overview

 


Image: Winter leaflets no. 23, detail (2021)

 “ai overview prose poem”

 good morning

can be something you wish for others, or it can be an inquiry into the status of the other person. Some good morning synonyms are appropriate to use only in certain settings. Top of the morning to you. Top of the morning is an incredibly old-fashioned and formal way to say good morning. Rise and shine. Wakey, wakey. Happy morning to you. What a glorious morning. Buenos días. It is a 1959 film by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Two young siblings take a pledge of silence in an effort to persuade their parents into buying them a television.

 

good afternoon

is a polite and somewhat formal greeting used to acknowledge someone after midday, typically between 12:00 p.m. and sunset. It can be used to say hello in various situations. You can respond by saying ‘Good afternoon to you as well’ to maintain a positive and friendly tone, according to Quora. American people seldom say good afternoon. Instead, they simply say hi or hello.

 

good evening

is a conventional English greeting used to acknowledge someone in the late afternoon or evening, functioning like good morning but for a later time of day. It can be used as a polite farewell or parting phrase, especially in combination with have a good evening. The phrase was first recorded in the mid-1500s. You can use it when meeting someone for a late business meeting, starting an evening class, or greeting a host at a dinner party. It is generally considered quite formal, such as by a television news anchor or at the beginning of an address to an audience. It is also a 1989 album by Marshall Crenshaw. Although critically well-received, it failed to chart. The album was his last for Warner Bros Records and, due to his soured relationship with the label, he chose to fill the album with covers.

 

good night

said when people leave each other in the evening or before going to bed or to sleep. Instead of good night, you can say sweet dreams, sleep well, rest easy, nighty night, sleep tight, have a good sleep, until tomorrow, see you in the morning. Other options include more affectionate phrases like dream of me, or colloquial ones such as time to hit the hay. Both good night and goodnight appear to be acceptable spellings, though some people might disagree. In American literature good night has pretty much always been at least twice as common as goodnight; in British literature it's similar, but goodnight has been catching up in recent decades. It is a 2023 Indian Tamil-language romantic comedy film produced by Million Dollar Studios and MRP Entertainment. It is the directorial debut of Vinayak Chandrasekaran and debut of K. Manikandan as a lead actor. The story follows an IT youngster who has a snoring problem, which affects his life.

Saturday, 30 August 2025

Spoken



Image: the 2022 version of the façade of the art room

 at Fitzroy Community School, Brunswick Street, North Fitzroy

 

good morning

more like a courtesy call

than hello, form of recognition

borne of habit, enough of a sound

to register our existences are real

woken to the instant

 

good afternoon

with its air of a manifesto

unfinished business that must finish

hours of unspoken implications

with us the half-witting witnesses

of this particular afternoon

looking as though we’re in charge

when we’re just along for the ride

 

good evening

is intoned like the tone of its day

whoops for our apparent victory

conjectural, with its ups and downs

commiserations on our disaster

the moment is a giveaway

sip a nightcap, or wear one

and move on to other things

 

good night

the semblance of an ode

in the making, formalising

in brief a temporary finality

a salutation to time gone now,

with the unknown ahead

not so much beckoning

as assuming we will be assumed

each one of us

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, 29 August 2025

Grey

 


Image: ‘Storm 4’ (Winter 2021)

 

good morning

when the elements resound

keeping day grey an hour more

a resounding success

gleaming bark

soaking earth

the most important job of all

 

good afternoon

above the rooflines and hills

fringes grey fall from black for miles

obscurely present

most important

till highways are haze

and hillsides indistinct

 

good evening

that brings grey tidings

of great import

oceans contribute

lakes rise to the occasion

the only stopping

is ground zero

the million million leaves above

 

good night

to streetlights and grey windows

curtains drawn on falling temperatures

sometime in late august

or early september

and kind talk in warm rooms

around the soup and crusts

 

Thursday, 28 August 2025

Japan

 


Image of Senso-ji Temple in Tokyo by B. Harvey

 

“august haiku japan”

 

postcards no more just chat app

narita

send/receive yes have landed

 

earthquake early warning all

tsunami

network early morning call

 

tokyo together beats to

shinjuku

greets meets seats eats bleats repeats

 

wabi-sabi means lonely

wasabi

means sharing something spicy

 

slow boats in bucket seats view

shinkansen

streams hills slo-mo hokusai

 

O un-beleaf-a-bubble

suzuki

x-planes ink-ready-bubble

 

it’s pretty rainy upon

tsuruga

pretty and isn’t stopping

 

it is mist wild streams castles

nagoya

gold rooms walks and mist again

 

green mountain stream flute music

odori

up firm feet down drumming ground

 

flowing air and tangled cloud

nagashi

somen flow down bamboo chutes

 

waterfalls of butterflies

kyoto

computers do not compare

 

monkey tourists frolic at

kosan-ji

locals rabbit to frog guides

 

amazing amazingness

todai-ji

big buddha is still as stone

 

teatime in selected realms

osaka

expo pavilions

 

vast unseen but knowable

fujisan

under days weeks months of cloud

 

every fashion crosses

shibuya

stop look admire no time

 

cloud-surpassing towers where

nippori

radiates all directions

 

 

 

 

Sunday, 24 August 2025

World


 

Image: Iso-mandala No. 311 (2021) 

good morning

to the world you couldn’t make up

residents with minds of their own

trucks groan

magpies curlicue

you have words enough to explain

what

 

good afternoon

to the world completely familiar

object of your latest reports

patterns of coastline

getting off at the right stop

the talk is polyglot halfway

between snippets and incessant

friends text thankyou

 

good evening

to the world of certain change

alone together

you decide tonight to stay in

 

good night

to the world of all you know

airwaves choppy

documents saved a handmade movie

shutdown with a touch of icon

classroom dreams then

recall forgotten friends

even their period clothing

wanting everything at once

Saturday, 23 August 2025

Room

 


Image: “autumn 2021 real estate 2”


good morning

bedroom sonorously alarmed

well-dressed railway carriage

cafe of clinking spoons

office of ten thousand things

awaiting the next thing

most likely a text thing

 

good afternoon

routine surroundings

we cannot live without

chains of command commend

the corners of our mortality

relief cell or stairwell too

to catch our omnibus phone

our mainly materialist tour

 

good evening

boisterous pizzeria

highly strung auditorium

later once in a while

land of a thousand dances

keyswipe corridor

to rooms with a view

or at the top

 

good night

kitchen of catch-up

dog in his doghouse

bathroom the world over

turning a page turning the light off

a roof over our head

before moments magical mystery

fill the eye-shut spaces

that seem to lack walls

Thursday, 21 August 2025

Kept

 


good morning

crosses the line

shapes up the givens gradually

the usuals made new

unhidden a gain

and feet on the floor

 

good afternoon

converses the fact of the matter

hours the air we breathe

head making our city

at every turn the size it takes

and incidentals curious

 

good evening

effortlessly emphatic

makes for a change

memories at will

us includes unapologetic

a cast of colours going down

 

goodnight

keeps what is kept

keeps watching darkness

keeps imagining

all manner of thing

never noticing how we fell asleep



Monday, 18 August 2025

Warmth

 


hail 3 winter 2021

 

good morning

time to leave the warm bed

find warmth where it may be had

wrapped around your body

walking the hard icy street

day glow a slow roll of updates

 

good afternoon

winter windows

at a glance turning grey

clouds draughts more of the same

but different with emails

signed warm regards

from almost perfect strangers

 

good evening

climate activists make signs

warming world and softening brain

no one wants to know

news is rich and sundown dense

ramen brings us to our senses

 

goodnight

is blood finding wool

is body warmth again

reading the 17th century in bed

places where lakes froze

outside possums scratch an eave

and drops of rain droppeth

Monday, 11 August 2025

Gaudí

 


I spend weekends leafing the sea inside Gaudí

i.m. Rom Brady
Philip Harvey

Balcony iron twisted black kelp.
Forests of porphyry their palm canopies bursting.
The sure foundation a stone quarry from stone ages.
Streets thereabouts away and towards the source.
Surf city of the west end pitched to glory.
New scaffolding stacks to ceilings of marble stars.
Tremulous leaves of tiles take to the light,
Thunder handled as it approaches.
Computed entrances have witnesses guessing.
Ribs of the crucified downward unbroken.
All in his head, he never left a sketch.

I spend weekends leafing the sea inside Gaudí,
The sun inside, which colour to choose, size and shape.
He believed, and then someone believed in him.
If he was a savant guard how I judge
His singular exertions combining geometries,
A life best understood after completion.
His hours of hope with the transforms of life
Could be the hour of his death, alone.
For it’s never completed, his one client God,
Where every day is the practice of load-bearing
Be it beatific temple or beaten-up cross.

A poem about Antoni Gaudí written after attending Spiritual Reading Group in the Carmelite Library on Tuesday the 27th of February 2015. Republished here, with Iso-mandala No. 71 (August 2020)