CREATION CALLS

CREATION CALLS

- August 2014

Creation calls with its enigma
Seduces with colour, with its curve
So that a cry of a single creature
Singes the heart of our equanimity
As if it is all of more than this

THE WORLD TEETERS ON A BRINK

The World Teeters On A Brink - photography by Eric Johansson

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The World Teeters On A Brink


The world teeters on a brink
As crops lines crest off the family-farm
Mindless tides pull in a flood roar of change
The world teeters on a brink
the old farmer falls, his strength disarmed
The sustaining pattern loses its heritage
As the world teeters on a brink.

RAT-RACIST

THE RAT-RACIST

- 29 August 2014

'Racist' the accuser calls you a name
As if 'Accusation' will auto-defame,
Leak you of history.


But more common is the 'Rat-Racist'
Who conforms, without basis,
Without any glory.


Then, casual, with extreme prejudice
Pimps to sell-out, like Judas'
In ignominious story.

A HUED CRY AGAINST THE HUE AND CRY (after the riots, the looting, violence, in Ferguson, St Louis)

A HUED CRY AGAINST THE HUE AND CRY

(after the riots, the looting, in Ferguson, St Louis)

"We need to stop talking about race"- Morgan Freeman

Colour is a black kettle
Colour is a red herring
Colour is green with envy
Colour shades into gray.

Colour is purple prose
Colour is a blue joke
Colour is liver yellow
Colour is a white out.

A WARBLING

A WARBLING


A single note reaches
you at last, follows through
the verandahs and painted
weatherboards like your
mother once called you,
sung your name and you are
three years old again yet
far older, further, although
memories of that magpie
you told your kids of warbles
in the rain as if the liquid alerts
you to unsung remembering
of games you chanted for 'her'
using clinking glass as marbles
in the old harmonies she joined
like its was some ritual warbling.


W.D.K.

A TOAST TO THE AS IF LIFE

A TOAST TO THE AS IF LIFE

- by W.D.K

As if Idi Amin never did those gross things
to Uganda, and so much Africa did not copy.

As if the year Zero never began in Kampuchea
with ideas as legacy in library shelves of skulls.

As if Gravrilo Princip was not full of hate & worth a statue in
Sarejevo, as if the politics of rancour, of resentment

was a thing of the past, as if the hate of unforgiveness
was not at work in the world like a feral virus.

As if we could all play life between the kerbs,
with footpaths and bins and letterboxes to

get out of where it is our neighbours go. As if we can
go on tour all about & out of it with just money.

As if you never ate sausages or chicken, as if the veal
rennet in your life's cheese was grown on aspic.

As if Darwin wasn't bombed. As if the 2nd world war
in Asia & in Timor & PNG & the Pacific never was.

As if Argentina was a truthful State, as if Uruguay were
good sports. As if Egypt was a place of justice.

As if the Palestine victim story was not told & did not arm
with many guns & kill & kill long before 1948.

As if the Suez crisis was any legitimate
anti-colonialism against its engineers & builders.

As if Pakistan's Islamist creation in separation
from India is not a perpetually violent tragedy.

As if we really lived in this world on call,
as if these cafes and those booked dinner tables

really were the watchtowers, as if the right rock
music made any difference, as if right attitude did.

As if what we do is no living concern so much as
the progressiveness and acceptance of attitude we take.


* * *
- 1st draft 30 June 2014,

Australian Eastern Yellow Robin

Australian Eastern Yellow Robin

Like an unheard idea of a rare fruit with wings
they droop from bush branch and tree trunk;
yellow robins that ripen of the grey dull winter
with sweet sun close as family members
in the sheer cheer of a bright-eyed harvest;
they flit here as if they complete the cryptic
mystery with darts of feed-found intelligence.

- W.D.K.

DIRT ROAD, BELLADONNAS, FENCE & SKY

DIRT ROAD, BELLADONNAS, FENCE & SKY

A dirt road, belladonnas, wire
fence and sky
A path leads out by grass, cut
or falling down;
as our past has gone by, who
wonders why ?
but a few like bulbs of the
pioneers re-grown.

- W.D.K

THE SAND OF EMOTION - (after a homily by Pope Francis)

THE SAND OF EMOTION

- (after a homily by Pope Francis)

The sand of emotion is good
for adding in aggregate for use in
a cement that makes for concrete.
All you need is a working recipe.

Try '5,2,1' for starters, say, that is,
five shovelfuls of gravel, (it must be
real stone, a crush of the rock), then
two shovelfuls of your said sand of

emotion, even if you must break it
from the languid beaches of feeling,
or smash it of the hourglass of time,
plus one shovelful of lime cement.

Mix well with enough water in a barrow
or a revolving drum mixer and
you will be able to lay down a path
that will firm up to a walk a future.

- WDK - July 2014

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

WHAT'S HAPPENING?

Bare twigs touch the cold underside
of the moving sky, fearless of its weather.

A wind gust huffs like panicked moral outrage
in the wintry ash tree, and falls breathless.

For all of three minutes not a visible bird
lands in your own window's quadrant of sight.

Yet a raw noise - crass sound - reaches ears
without earplugs: unseen crows read the news.

They report the atrocities of a gang of blue wrens
wreaking havoc among a swarm of undeclared midges.

The crows claim that when singing blackbirds cease
performance they kill earthworms in carnivorous silence.

Now a honeyeater sits on one of those bare twigs,
having ravaged all the honey from today's flowers

And sings.

- W.D.K. 12 August 2014

AT THE CHURCH OF ST JUDAS AND THE POOR

AT THE CHURCH OF ST JUDAS AND THE POOR


At the Church of St Judas and The Poor
Take off your boots all shoes of common trade
Leave a mask for street parades at the door
At the Church of St Judas and The Poor

At the Church of St Judas and The Poor
No altars, make no grand churches anymore
Nor practices in blood or body, none of war
At the Church of St Judas and The Poor

At the Church of St Judas and The Poor
An endless parade of philanthropy redeems
A finery, a fashion, all made to be as seems
At the Church of St Judas and The Poor.

At the Church of St Judas and The Poor
We criminalise those who judge, compare
We take their wealth so we can give a care
At the Church of St Judas and The Poor.


- W.D.K. - 1st tentative draft 9 July 2014, more to come...

NEW HOLLAND HONEYEATER

- by WDK

As if in a time of shared grief, as that much
tragedy unites, the seer-sprites remind of earlier
Australian links to the merchant seafarer Dutch,
come to the call of a New Holland Honeyeater
(Phylidonyris Novaehollandiae), that mushes
the currs off correa flowers & bottlebrushes
a mere bird in gumleaf shape, in pied camouflage,
appears but a moment before our passing cage.
'Tch Tch Tch,' it calls in alto as a sung sneeze
nothing at all like a 'Tsk Tsk' of hateful scolding,
more like affection's daily call to pets for cheese,
a thing almost grand-parental, old, enfolding;
as if a 'Tuck-in now', only pointier and sharper,
like a chook calling its chickens only higher
up the tree, the striated, beaked visitor of flowers
works honey of all the tweaked daylight hours
with sun-bright gold in quick flashes of its wing
and a 'Tchuk touche' at day’s end and beginning.

Every Minute, Every Minute

Every Minute, Every Minute

Every minute, as if yours is minute,
an Outrage far worse than yours
is done, or just was, or soon will be.

Which would show that such dire
things are all too dangerous to keep
as pets or hobbies; else set match for fire

and make genocide as you emote.

- W.D.K.

BLACK FOX CALLS

BLACK FOX CALLS

Every Midsommer before a murder
the night is riven with black fox calls
tho' no vulpine reynard is ever seen.
Each blind sky echoes darkly further
as a vixen cry rings out again and falls,
the music of incognito where evil's been.

-W.D.K.

GOOROOK (AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE) SONG

GOOROOK (AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE) SONG

- by Wayne David Knoll

Light washes dark sky with its call out
For a first word as the song of the birds.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

The tree necks a break for the hard weather
It’s branch offers a table to cling out a wait.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Here’s heaven come after traversing hell
Phew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the sky we’ll go.

A ladder-climb up the sky beats an air drum
To mount joust and not lose to proud eagles

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

For pied-birds rent the air owed the gum-trees
We pay a life-lease in a death-pledge of song.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

A dive writes on broad-black with a chalk-edge,
In winged claw at knife-point as swoop bloods.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Here’s heaven come after traversing hell
Phew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the sky we’ll go.

The wires of human-kind are bow strung
To be tuned by us pied birds of great airs.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

- July 2014

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AGAINST THE SKY

AGAINST THE SKY

See, a yellow-flashed New-Holland honeyeater
atop a wintry tree
Calls its arch of throat out - as if something
in the world is listening.