cruising

July 14, 2010 at 3:49 pm | Posted in jazz poetry, poetry, writing | 13 Comments
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gaily traipsing road crossing
daffodils and dandelions fluttering wakeward
as he passes
and a scent between miner and metal
hobnailed
playing ‘dancing with cars’

This bus is very quiet he thinks
And Tuesday!
Spectacularity!
Yet another icecream sky

why is a letter of the alphabet
who the noise of owls
how a pleasant greeting
when a minor chord
what a measure of electrickery

Ducks down the alleyway
Waddle and a quack
Fruit salad breakfast
Back to formularity

rainbow graffiti trailing beauty
curlicues of exuberant joy crisscrossing
as he passes
and a music between oscarrrpeterson and
the brickwork
playing ‘reality, it’s a great place to be,

My Dear F.,

July 4, 2010 at 8:34 am | Posted in jazz poetry, poetry, writing | 5 Comments
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Just a short note to let you know
the vicar’s visit turned out something
but not quite as expected
there is something quite uncouth
in these villagers.

Still, better,
than a nunnery.

Your handiwork continues to inspire
but I must say not quite
what you promised, the antidote,
does not work. Please send more tao
haha, these strange realms sterile and
the portraits looming, and all these damn
petticoats. Anyway, have fun. I’m not.

eden

July 3, 2010 at 5:06 pm | Posted in jazz poetry, sheer selfindulgence, writing | 5 Comments
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… a reality whose connection to the actual world of the imagining reader is tenuous at best. The truth becomes gloriously irrelevant, postulations on orchids,

How old fashioned thinks the vicar, louche on Ms Helpburn’s divan. Now we are in the post-Victorian in which all is quaint decoration and pop but he remains tightlipped on the outside of whatever’s slightly outre.  Rain, he suggests aloud as she pours his tea, and struggles to find a tiny niche in which to survive like some strange insect. Happy for the shelter of a waxy leaf from which water drips, snoozing through the day with a low buzz which may just be tired lungs and excessive humidity,

She sits, decorously, Vicar, it is such a wonderful word, don’t you think. Sorry, he says, I was just looking at your garden, so gentle and pretty in the afternoon rain, Ms Helpburn. Do you have a gardener?

the gentle art of soft landings (podcast)

June 29, 2010 at 7:42 pm | Posted in australian poetry, contemporary poetry, jazz poetry, music, podcast | 2 Comments
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I have podcast the piece below “the gentle art of soft landings’ below this linkage.

I did it in one take with no rehearsal because I wanted to practice live work which I feel kind of fits with the idea of improvisation.

Now I will have to ask Joseph Tawadros for his permission to use the music as a background for the performance. But only if I don’t write a better one for it in the meantime.

the gentle art of soft landings

June 28, 2010 at 7:28 pm | Posted in australian poetry, jazz poetry | 11 Comments
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Suddenly his hands forgotten,

Take one moment to see my work he said breathing dirt
and holding out an open hand tis true one develops
a heart of stone when one sleeps rarely
and only in certain uncouth company, yesterday
a gilded cage
then under bridges
fallen

Sketched you in Morocco
standing naked hips tilted,
at the window in the morning
thinking about breakfast.

with a twist on ice, if it’s not too Dean Martin, omerta
principles with an end to occam Picasso was an immaculate
draughtsman before he was a Cubist without
being sweeney practiced my grammar, recap
italising the ‘I’ and using ‘one’ as in one may assume?
between the keeping of secrets and the breaking of promises
insert ocean metaphor here teddy as I explored your consent
to my manipulations of the roots of language and gloried in my power.
remember that car exit bridge alternate endings either way and both shot down
left you standing by that river shivering and her dying
hyannis port, white sails blue horizon,
on the occasion of another passing
found at the centre Matsuo Basho
giggling over a still pond no frogs nor
the sound they make when they land

(composed to the music of  Joseph Tawadros -“Hand in Hand” which you can listen to here, with Alister Spence (piano), John Napier (cello) & James Tawadros. )

(written as a first attempt at the National Jazz Writing Competition)

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