jazz – a frictionless universe

December 21, 2009 at 4:00 pm | Posted in australian poetry, contemporary poetry, poetry, senti-mentality, writing | 28 Comments
Tags: draft, energy has momentum

I couldn’t disentangle the fight. I kept losing track of whether I was fighting for me or for people like me. But it turns out those two things are always the same. There were times when it was pure survival of my individual ego, but the context, the reason I was there and doing it, was very simple.

It was for creatures like me. We longed for a world in which this was not necessary but could not create one. The pressure from outside, the rapidly reducing resources as the forest fell and was churned into hamburger insistently required response.

Waking at dawn to the sound of leaf-blowers destroying the micro-ecosystem for no reason at all. Suburban tanks driven six blocks with one person in them. Every year less rain.

the eye will add images each further from the thought
there is only one soul and we are manifestations of it
passes through us radiant

over and again in the poems, the old man with his arm around his son looking up at the stars, different every time though, so each is unique. The weight of opinion is irrelevant and every one is equal. It’s like a series of Ned Kelly paintings, the eyes looking out from the desert a thought projected through the characters, through the observatory, fractures like light through language, save draft in which floats life

sense of place and uniqueness of time then someone says soul

raft the truth is indri
hear that existence it
self is a miracle we
rejoice in it

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