Impossible Gift

This is not the smoke of colonial rod

of scarred encampments, the prodding stick,

of the fires where infants were tossed.

This is not the smoke of the gift of grog

of paternal authority, of children stolen

of lubras raped, of smug denigration.

This is not the gift of denied genocide

of suicide in the white washed cell

of herding and terror and shrieking mothers.

No! This is the gift of purification

This is the gift of cleansing the spirit

This is a blessing, an impossible gift.

Clean Hands

Clean Hands

They hover, tentative at first, these hooded

birds pecking for sustenance on the shore

of the South China Sea.

Massahh papa? Foot massahh? Pedicure papa?

You buy? They show me their beads and bangles

their packets of crinkles, chips, their cold drinks,

their pineapples on sticks. They carry their hopes

across their shoulders, these slight pecking

Vietnamese ladies.

Massahh mama? Foot massahh? Pedicure mama?

Just over there a plump golden dame from WA

is showing pictures of her grand house,

with gilded bathroom taps, her awesome garden

and swimming pool to these slight creatures.

A lot of work from hubby and more than a little

luck honey, if you get my drift? She winks.

How much is your massahh for an hour sweetie?

You have to be kidding me. I'll pay you half.

I hope your hands are clean.

Cats of the Forum Romanum

There were strange lights in the sky in the early

hours of fifteenth of March, 44BC,

flashes of crimson, hues of blues and yellows,

they had been seen before, when Rome was the prey.

The temple cats stirred and became restless

looking upwards then quickly darting down

to vanish beneath the sacred buildings,

hierarchies and animosities forgotten.

In the chill of morning they watched the sixty

senators stride past led by Brutus and

Cassius. The black tom, known as Magnus

Lux, the Great Light, was heard to remark

'Yon Cassius, hear his slack bones clack,

methinks he needs a good feed and fuck.' The cats

of Rome, like the plebeians, were known for their

vulgarity. They watched as Julius Caesar passed

and heard his taunt to Spurinna the Haruspex

that 'The Ides of March are come.' The Haruspex,

a seer in entrails, had divined danger for Caesar

and so replied 'Aye Caesar, but not gone...'

The cats, a clowder of mewling and yowling

orphans, a ragbag of feline protestation

sensing assassination in the ribbed

and clacking air, followed the gathering

'By the bollocks of Jupiter' said Magnus Lux

'This day will be marked in metal and bone.'

And when Brutus thrust his weapon up high

into his father to forge one of the

twenty seven wounds, to ensure he would

not rise again, the general and god had spat

with blood 'And you child?' And so the deed

was surely done and gods, and cats, all slinked away.

In the ensuing centuries the cats witnessed

the wars and fires, the murderous retributions,

the excesses, and secret assignations;

the screech and the scream of metal on bone,

all of the triumphs and trials, processions

and condemnations, the memorials, the shrines

the arches and the grandeur. More strange lights,

the raw vermilion of war, and the cats

cowered among smokey ruins. Roman gods

were thus deposed and history rewritten.

Yeshua, a Jewish mystic who was

executed by the state became the god

Jesu Christus, and the masonry of

forum temples was used to build churches

in his honour. The twelve guilded deities

of the forum and the myriad minor gods

were replaced by statues of apostles,

angels and saints. Some said Yeshua

would awake in horror at his deification

and return to cast the new temples asunder.

But they were put to death for heresy.

Magnus Lux remarked that 'the new boss

smells like the old boss.' And the temple cats

slinked around and slept among the ruins.

They lived those millennia being fed

each day by the Gattara, a Crazy Cat

Lady, dressed in black and murmuring

in Latin, of news and scandals of papacy

and politics and the curse of inhumanity,

how the paupers had become princes

how the princes had become corrupt

and how nothing changes through the ages.

And how the rule of power and corruption

has persisted from age to age. And the black tom

Magnus Lux would reply 'Carpe noctem'

that 'We cats will always seize the night'.

The Distorted Mirror?

The Distorted Mirror?

A pair of Pardalotes flew outside my window,

their black crowns sparkling with snow white dots

the female beaked hay from the hanging pot

while the cock flew at his reflection

thrusting his bright yellow breast against the glass

saying 'Look at me, look and see. What a buck I am!'

Then he glanced in the mirror on the courtyard wall

and spotted a rival - what a handsome chap

with his fine night head festooned with stars

and he said to the female, his new found mate

'Check out this boy, such an impudent fellow

to flutter so close with his looks and his charm

so utterly gauche when our deed is done,

sure his breast is brown where mine is yellow,

a golden sun to warm your nest, and the down

of our young.' Then the female she dropped the hay

from her beak and flew in the face of the mirror.

'Here's a fine looking gal, far better than I,

she will turn his head but I'll live with that.

I so want the cutie who appeared before

instead of Old Mate with his bangs at my door.'

And the pair of Pardalotes were up and away.

Was this a game that each year they play?

I really don't know. They are just birds.

I simply relate all I saw and I heard.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Lovely Creatures Box Set - 3 cds and 1 DVD. Superb!

I wrote this review for Amazon. But I can't post it because I haven't bought the required USD50 or GBP50 over the last 12 months. Postage is a killer. I bought it locally at JB Hi Fi for AUD37 (from memory) and it is well worth it. So, the review had to go somewhere and here it is. 

Well this really is an embarrassment of riches, 3CDs plus a DVD of prime Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. There are a couple of reviewer complaints that some fave tracks are excluded - Henry Lee I think was one mentioned - but it's an indication of the band's quality of output that this is so. I don't know any other band that has such a high quality in terms of rock, lyrics, and performance, given their longevity. Check out the alternative box set of 3CD B sides and Rarities, it's a treat! Ok, its all subjective but that's my view.

Nick Cave, a superb lyrist, vocalist and performer is really without peer IMHO. Dylan and the late lamented Leonard Cohen are on a par lyrically, maybe some of Paul Simon, Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson, but do they reach such heights as vocalists and performers in a rock sense?

Your decision. And The Bad Seeds who Nick regards as one equal unit, are beyond any other rock unit in terms of delivery and imaginative interpretation. Yes? No? Its all subjective, whatever pushes your buttons.

How do you choose a 'best of' for this band from an output that spans thirty years? Well, this excellent compilation was chosen by Cave and Mick Harvey with some input by the current Bad Seeds. To quote Nick from his website, “This release is designed to be a way into three decades of music making. That’s a lot of songs. The songs we have chosen are the ones that have stuck around, for whatever reason. Some songs are those that demand to be played live. Others are lesser songs that are personal favourites of ours. Others are just too big and have too much history to leave out. And there are those that didn’t make it, poor things. They are the ones you must discover by yourselves.”

The tracks are in chronological order, a total of 45, from 15 albums with 3 session tracks included, the double Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus being counted as one album. I wasn't familiar with some of the earlier more manic rock tracks, 'The Carny', 'I'm Gonna Kill that Woman', and 'Up Jumped the Devil' but they provide a reflection of where the band was at, which was some liberating place of intense release, a cacophonous maelstrom of deliverance. Such purity, ha, is balanced by a sly dose of black humour and songs of beautiful melodious melancholic majesty.

But the cream on top for me is the DVD with 25 performances and 14 interviews approximate running time 2h 5m. Most of the interviews are short, providing song writing and performance background. Cave is a wordy songwriter, 'swallowed a dictionary' as they say here in Oz, and like similar songwriters, Cohen, Dylan, Shane McGowan, Elvis Costello, you wonder how they remember their lines. But he does, like a cinematic narration I guess, but it's his performances that are stunning. I've seen those artists mentioned above and they were all great, Cohen and Costello particularly, but I haven't seen Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds yet. On my bucket list. I have a number of their DVDs, top entertainment.

And this one will do it for you too. As Kirk Lake describes Cave in his insightful essay, 'ever the stick-thin, jack-knifing, marauding malcontent.' The DVD does not run chronologically which is a good thing. Most are excellent in terms of sound, photography and production but a couple look like Utube phone caught, and you're looking at the performances of course.

The book is cardboard bound, nicely designed, which includes the aforementioned literate insightful essay on the origin and development of Cave and the band, lots of rare photos, plus track and video information. It is superb!

Note that there are no tracks from the two Grinderman albums, although at least four could have fitted well here, but Grinderman is a stand alone stripped down unit, and one which may be savoured in the safety of your own parlour. Sorta like durian really. Hey, there's a whisper that another is on its way. Lawd be praised. 

Silence ANZAC Day 2018

My dad was silent about his place in the war


except to say that shells whizzed through the night


over El-Alamain seeking the army


of the Desert Fox. And that, sleeping on


those cold night sands, if you could, you would


wake to find a brace of scorpions


under your bedroll each morning. The tales of


my Uncle Don by contrast would enthral


us kids, how he'd dived behind a tank


with bullets ricocheting around his head...




No, my dad was mostly silent about


his place in the war. He had seen a Bedouin


carrying in a basket much prized eggs for sale


walk too close to the makeshift runway


and a Spitfire while landing had lopped his head


and everyone had jostled for those eggs.


I think that vision stayed; summed up war for him.




He did say that when the allies liberated


Rome he stood for hours in Saint Peter's Square


at a papal mass in celebration


of peace. Now, whether it was the fierce heat


or perhaps he was just overwhelmed,


he fainted and found himself inside the Vatican


where a kind and grateful priest gave him


a heavenly wine; scooped from the spring at Cana.




I recall that he and a fellow Airforce


mate were returning to base along a


valley track, maybe from a night out


in Perugia with those friendly effusive


Italian girls or maybe from a visit to Assisi,


'just us,' he said, 'not a soul to be seen'


and out of the sky swung a German fighter


with jackhammer canons raking the ground.


They dived in a ditch. 'What sort of human..?'




I recall as a young lad being on a hot


pebble beach at Deal where the Romans


had landed in 55BC. Granddad


had a handkerchief over his bald pate,


and a single engined plane zoomed over.


'Eee, exclaimed our Nan, 'I thought Gerry were back.'


We all laughed.




No, my dad never


celebrated ANZAC Day despite being


urged to do so by his boss.


In Dad's opinion


such marching and celebration


ratified the inhumanity of humanity.

Balloons, Sunday 18 March 2018

In the pre dawn half light the headlights

wash the road, and maybe the kangaroo

was mesmerised but knew where she had to go.

I swerved and almost collided with a cab

and the young one followed her mother as

she knew she must and slammed into my wing.

I braked hard, and she bounced off then bounded

and collapsed by the roadside, her tail

rising and falling, once, twice, three times

signalling the end before she'd barely begun.

I wondered whether the mother waited

dismayed like me, waited for her young one

to rise. There are those who would say

oh well, they're a pest, it's only one less...

And so, I drove slowly down to the lakeside

to await the gentle rise and drift

of the colourful balloon spectacle.

Down there the day was peaceful and still

with sunrising walkers and joggers,

and images mirrored upon the water,

which betrayed the image in my mind.

And I waited for the balloons to come

and play upon the placid lake.

And I waited for balloons to come.

Snared

Snared

That little nymph statue laced with web

holds indented prints of the sculptor’s thumbs

when he formed her flesh and curved her thighs

and smoothed her breasts with strength and love

and tenderness to place her proud at the

Governor's wharf. And now in shoulder curve

and tilt of head a spider drapes a lucky web.

A board decision cast a cement plinth

to fix this lithe ephemeral nymph

who watches unblinking those cruises arrive

they come and they leave in the bay of her eye

now filled with us and our fiddly lives

being shunted along through gardens and lawns

vacuumed, filleted, stamped and endorsed

by imprimatur of reign and rule

our route defined by steam cleaned walls

and paths and if you wander beyond

you'd be flung like a sinner into

the water or flogged like a felon,

a sculptor perhaps, on that old triangle

of truth and justice and clemency

this our U3A convener warns

mischievously on this smiling morn

where the warmth of the sun albeit strong

on those lissom limbs can raise but motes

and memory of sculpted nymph
 and sculptor

his firm and loving thumbs forming her into

perpetual life both model and sculptor

conjoined each day in viewers' eyes

like ours where art will jostle with fiddly lives

and we, replete with our sunhats, cameras

concerns and knee-jerk 'NO', just cannot affirm

this moment thumping with Life and YES

before it passes and the nymph oh the nymph

she understands well and would comfort

with welcome limbs and whispers

but snared she is by silk of spider and

muted tongue, and snared by atrophy

of circumstance and cautionary twirl

of his final thumbprint with its solemn

imprint forbidding her flesh and will

to move as it would but to cast instead

caution as currency into her form.

Yes, oh yes she would whisper softly

into his ear... as she did.

Adapted from a prose poem by Neva Kastelic.
The beautiful statue is at the head of the Governor General's landing in Yarralumla, Canberra. 

Bali Healer. Bangkok, South Wales. 2016

The first part of my journey was to Ubud, Bali to look after my delightful grand daughters while the parents went to Melbourne for a wedding. I arrived in very poor state barely able to walk due to my accident in the Sayan valley at Christmas when I had fractured my fibula, plus an added affliction of gout in the right knee which had hobbled me mercilessly.

But the ministrations of Cara with her jamus and silver antioxidant, both local concoctions and our visit to The Healer, all saw me on the plane to Bangkok in good shape. 

  This morning Cara and I rode 25 mins south of Ubud to visit 90 year old healer Cokorda Rai at the temple. He is thin and wiry with veins down his arms like string, in a sarong with silvery hair swept back, finely featured with sharp smiling eyes, except when a couple were talking and he sternly reminded them that they should show respect and listen. The consultation is all out in the open temple. 

There are many healers in Ubud and some deal in the effects of black magic by a purification ceremony. Why had we gone there? Well this ole body has taken a few knocks lately with the broken ankle, the almighty gout and to put it bluntly, I've been disregarding my body as a temple, and a chakra realignment could only help, Cara said. Realignment? Well I'm not sure my chakras have been lined up at all. And to be truthful I only found out about them a couple of days ago. Chakras? Percussion with Santana, yeah?? 

So, I sat with my back to him and he used his strong needling, searching fingers in pressure points around the head and shoulders. Some pain here and there. Then he told me to lay down on the mat and proceeded to investigate my feet. A brave man. I think I've mentioned before that these Scottish feet must have been an afterthought when handed out. Och they'll do him, bung 'em on, Jock. 

On the foot, my broken one, he used an acupuncture instrument like a pen around the toes which reached 9 on the painometer. 'This will be painful' he said, jabbing the instrument again into one of my wee toes. Holy Faaarking Hinduus Batman. So then he said hormones and blood. My problems. I need to take Omega 3 tablets and B12. He whispered to me that after 15 days my sperm will flow freely. Just thought I'd let you all know. Watch out. I didn't mention my vasectomy.

He did some chakra alignment with the wand/pointed instrument and some prayers while I was prostrate. I 'donated' 100,000 RP (AUD10) for the 15 mins - I'd been told that this was the standard donation. He told me it was 300,000RP. Fame incurs a higher figure. 

Cara had the same treatment and yes we both felt calmer, as distinct from karma. But I thought well... a large bottle of Bintang is AUD3... and the Tai Chi I do in the morning and my daily walk on Cooleman Ridge are free. I'm not a sceptic, on the contrary, i welcome any sort of spiritual incursion into this thirsty ragged temple, and hey, my ankle feels good!

On the bike this morning easing

through Ubud from Penestanan;

you savour South East Asia

with its colour and music and

flavourful ambience,

its intrinsic aromas

of woodsmoke and incense

of drains and durian

of heat arising from ripe earth

of the dark humus of being

of fish sauce, coriander and chilli

and chicken and pork sizzling on coals

of clove smoke and frangipani

thunderstorms and gin and tonic

of the fragrance of largess

and of the rank

of licence and excess.

 So I travelled from leafy, rice green Penestanan Bali to hot, steamy chaotic Bangkok to meet with Denise, Brendan and our friend Carol. Also we met up with my ex colleague and good friend Kirsten; it was great to see her and enjoy her lively and always amusing chat.
Then over the jagged ice capped mountains of Iran to reach our destination - South Wales.

Post: Here winter still clutches the throat of Wales. Bleak fog bound countryside with skeletal trees, and an old Druid wind curls around yer Brindabellas, boyo. This is no country for the faint hearted. Apart from that errr... wonderful atmosphere, our swap house is warm, spacious and comfortable. I'm slow cooking a lamb shoulder, with a head of garlic, thyme and some sauvignon blanc and the bread making machine is loaded and on a timer. The aromas pervade, wonderful weather for home comforts.

This morning we walked through Thomas Chapel

along the hedgerowed and sheltered laneway, 

past tall rook nested trees, past house dogs barking in duty

past a field of those pretty sheep, white with black faces

so cute ('not like ours'), past the giraffes, 

yes, two giraffes leaning together

for warmth and comfort in this Welsh wintry day. 

Cruel you'd think. And onwards to the shop at Begelly.

A South East Asian face greeted us with a Welsh

'Hello'. I almost said 'G'day mate' to this bloke from home.

The Welsh landscape at this time of the year, early March, entertains a hardy, bleak forebodence, in fact a dragon or druid lurking around a bend is easily imagined, and I heard the dragon more than once. But there is a bullish magnificence also, a permanence which still holds its secrets and strongholds against the intruder despite the civilisations of towns and suburban sprawled cities. There is always a castle and cathedral going back to Norman times when the foreign English tried to assert superiority.  By contrast, the Arts are big in Wales as they always have been with their music, spoken and written word in poetry, stories and song, and their visual art. 

We revisited Laugharne, went to Dylan Thomas's boatshed and Brown's Hotel which accommodated his thirst ahhh for local interaction. Denise and I had visited in 1975, slept in a one midget tent under the brightest star glittered sky after a night at Brown's. The locals had celebrated our presence by singing en masse 'Come Back To Wales' and those Welsh voices were magnificent! Not many traveled there at that time - certainly not from Oz. The boatshed back then was still cobwebbed with his ruminations. It has been spruced up now.  My reflection in the photo is intentional.

Here in South Wales 

the wrong footed sun stepped out two days ago 

and quickly retreated, chased back by the roar of the gale

which stirred and clotted the clouds in its wrath.

Merlin was born in a cave in Carmarthen.

You can see him now as he was back then

outside the Conwy Castle walls

with his falcon strapped to his leathered arm.

He engages old lladies from Llandovery

with expansive displays of trajectory

and speed on the stoop.


His eys pierce like llaser

His hooked nose q-quivers, his nostrils dilate

as he looks to the sky.

He rarely smiles.



'Moira, how is your chill and vigour dahl?

The sun jumped back into winter today.

Did you see it? Did you feel its warmth?

That was my sunbeam Moira.

Have I made you smile?'



The standard of produce in Wales is fabulous. The pork and leek sausage, the pork and black pudding sausage, the cheeses, hams, smallgoods are all excellent. Nearby in Narberth are two excellent butchers, one of whom sells fish. Also a Spanish deli where the best coffee can be enjoyed with breakfast, and you can take home a Spaniard or Spanish ham or cheeses. All this in a small Welsh town. I haven't mentioned the people. We all found the Welsh to be very friendly, if a little bemused by Aussies coming there at the end of Winter. Why had we come at that time? We had a house swap with Roy and Angela. Oh, and the fish and chips. We had a number of scrumptious fish and chips.

Tonight the Full Moon Looks

Tonight the full moon looks;

its cast is upon the oceans

and in the eyes of sailors

it is impartial in judgement

it measures no discourse.

And if you say the right words

in prescribed sequence and

let them drop into place

and tap them home

your desire will be done.

You have a neighbour

who stole your hat

who covets your wife

who has scratched at your spine

for years. Who can stand such tribulation

for so long? There comes a time when

the measure of affliction must be met.

You would have a lover

whose warmth, whose softness

would grace your bed

whose ripeness you would taste

but for the rind of resistance.

You cast sweet sounds in sequence

upon the ocean of fate

and the tide of circumstance

will swell and flow.

Tonight the full moon looks;

its cast is upon the oceans

and in the eyes of sailors.

In A Moment

A holiday today, a long weekend

Mum wouldn't know it, every day is the same now

Spring too, the parade of flowers has begun -

the heavenly sweet citrus sepals of Daphne,

late Winter really, she didn't sense it pass

the temperature is constant in the nursing home,

she knows hot and cold, sometimes she is so cold.

The golden wattle shouts her Spring proclamation.

Mum's senses deteriorate, where once she could hear

the sweet swing band surge and feel the tight

syncopated rhythm quicken her pulse

all so long ago, now she looks significantly

as though you've said something

of import, her surge and swing evanescent

evading her recall, with the salty wild pheromone

of a dancing partner, 'never the same each night!'

she'd toast and laugh, a mischievous twinkle

in her eyes, that right now are shutting down.

The pink mouthed magnolia beseeches the sky.

'I might tell my secrets with a top up of wine'

and she clutched them close for their warmth in the night.

The cherry tree weeps all her tiny white tears.

She strains for words, names, then in a moment

of clarity, 'I know, I know what I must do.'