Selected poems
Dealer of dreams
In times of incandescence,
a mind as full as a crowded
Times Square, Venetian St
Marks Square, bobbing gondolas
making those on land reach for
the brown paper bag, for a handrail,
a bright stucco building to touch,
grip, give you a sense of steadiness,
but it is an illusion as you seek out
peace, a piece of something might
settle you, then the earth moves
in a wide sweep, like a dodgem car
and you are off once more,
reaching, retching, asking why
these images suck you up,
spit you out, and the wise old owl
with yellow eyes, on the dead
branch, sees it all and simply waits
for a hint of carrion about to be
surprised by randomness, which is
what we all are when it turns out that
today we will not wake and the fiery
flames of Joycean Hell and Fury will
be our home. For some this will be
a relief, even though unblessed, and
the priest will adjust his soutane and
his steamed glasses and offer unction
and the body of
and then you awake.
Discourse
El poeta
alle estabe con su lire
y su baston cortado en la Montana
de un arbol oloroso
the poet
was there with his lyre
and his stick cut in the mountains
from a fragrant tree
Revolutions: Neruda
These men in suits,
well dressed colour coordinated,
sometimes women,
by formula,
strut their stuff in
houses of debate
and formality, in
adversarial poses, speeches
held aloft on scraps of
rolled up paper, and words
dashed on the dispatch box
like regurgitated poison,
having forgotten those who
hid in caves, disseminated
thoughts to turn things on
their head, let loose
the slow moving molasses
of ideas,
crashed glass shop fronts,
and ceilings
and wore bruises on their heads,
as rewards of the process,
rosettes spreading red
across their chests, faces
lit up with belief.
Sometimes prophets and poets
come down from their caves
in the mountains where they
have seen burning bushes,
a light on the hill, having
learnt a new discourse,
language, poetry of new ideas
and images of freedom and hope.
Sometimes the prophets
have seen too much brightness,
it is manifested in their own
burning, flesh crackling
in the flames, too much,
too soon, for those
who need the insight,
the sustenance, deny denial.
As a young poet I read
Marxist tomes, subsidized
by a communist press, workers
of the world unite, the little red
book, other texts and pamphlets,
could smell something in the air,
duffle coats and desert boots
a uniform of dissent and question.
Sometimes the poems were writ
large across the sky, but like
clouds they drifted, dissipated
like the words of the Tiger Moth
skywriter, and now the skies are
blue, and like the height of summer,
spread into infinity,
are an echo in the mind,
of nothingness.
The words of those in suits
simply vaporize like high
invisible,
barren summer clouds
becoming nothing.
We can hold our breath,
those with hearts still
beating,
sniff the air for rain,
harbinger of new growth,
know that patience is all
that we can hold on to,
as long as we do not
clench our fingers
too tightly.
You beaut country
[John Olsen Exhibition, Potter Gallery,
Melbourne, 01.01.2017]
Bursts of bright yellow
sunlight, whorls of intense
colour, a plague of green
tree frogs, Olsen's surprise
packet of energy,
strangers to him until
adulthood, fascinated,
each leg extended
from the folded potentiality,
curious child, one by one,
stretched green across his
pink palm
until
in one bound it was
off,
off he was too,
his vivid imagination
bouncing here and there,
with washes, paint,
brush strokes extended,
frogs seemingly eviscerated
as if mounted in a lab,
his charcoal lines
and paint dobs
like a plague of painted
images
jumping this way
and that,
their spirit caught
on the surging brush
paint tides
free dots and lines,
organic canvas.
He muses on poets,
poets
of nature's movement,
transient beauty
encapsulated,
Lake Eyre
here one day
gone the next,
thousands of pelicans
birdlife millions
salt encrusted pans
where life stays away,
danger to the unwary,
sucking death under
the crust,
no locals here.
His baseline is country,
ridges, lakes,
breakaways,
songlines,
and we are taken
along the skylines
of his imagination
which shoulders its way
through the streamers
of the players race,
colours askew,
bursting out into
the field of play
where we are invited
into his game, his rules,
goal posts he moves
forever, we engage with
the master gamer.
Sometimes we await
the final whistle,
siren,
but not this time,
this is a game
that must go on,
in ever increasing circles,
lines, colours extrapolating
imbued with the muscle
and elasticity of
energized tree frogs.
Gazers
Lying back on the hill
the earth pushing hard
against their backs,
the sky dark as blackness
itself, clear of clouds,
the air still, they looked
at the stars and the planets
and she called the
constellations by name,
pulsating stars and
still-light planets,
as they walked their eyes
across the domed infinity
and he tasted his
insignificance, a grain
of sand on the beach.
A satellite arced across
their view, and a second,
and a third; he could feel
his smart phone in his pocket
getting its orders from up high,
remembered climbing the back
fence to watch Sputnik, making
its initial arc, when he was
hairless, gormless, eyes wide.
This time he reached out
across the moist grass, for
a link with his own reality,
but she was busy in her roll
call, pointing her hand skywards,
her long finger still making
its own journey across
the never-ending
wide expanse.
Tony London has had poetry published in various literary journals around Australia, in national and state newspapers and broadcast on the ABC. He has worked for the last twelve years as a self-funded volunteer for Tibetans in India. His commissioned book on the Tibetan diaspora, High Hopes, was published by the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, in Dharmsala, India, in August of last year.