Ruby Street

I now know a new word. Scombroid : of or relating to a class of fish that includes the mackerel and tuna. OK, fine you might say. Why a tuna? Next bit of info. According to the US Food and Drug Administration crowd: "Scombroid poisoning is a type of food intoxication caused by the consumption of scombroid and scombroid-like marine fish species that have begun to spoil with the growth of particular types of food bacteria. Fish most commonly involved are members of the Scombridae family (tunas and mackerels), and a few non-scombroid relatives (bluefish, dolphin or mahi-mahi, and amberjacks). ... The suspect toxin is an elevated level of histamine generated by bacterial degradation of substances in the muscle protein. This natural spoilage process is thought to release additional by-products which potentiate the toxic effect. The potential toxins are not destroyed by freezing, cooking, smoking, curing or canning." So, last night, after my tenderly prepared meal of sea...

from Kirsten Kaschock's Negative Wingspan - "Primary substance, original thing, an essential, core, chora, cadmium. Yellow yes. Colors are ladders of light reception. Sound is pattern, is wave—has visual rep: frequency has height. ..."

Swept across news sun helpless against I fly easy wings rattle shame You got me against the fence Way you do shame on you Elbows shadow scaffolds halfway up, into God among clouds several versions believe Songs creation machines dot aspirations/ blow! Advertise right buttock keeping the score Front page morning a sliding puzzle People look up sex+civil+war My dragon statue tacks the corner Ready to lie in the corner

there's nearly always colour in it

I finally got around to watching Grave of the Fireflies last night. We have a box set of Studio Ghibli anime films, mainly Miyazaki films like My Neighbour Totoro , Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke etc, but there are other directors involved with the studio. Fireflies was directed by Isao Takahata and is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Nosaka Akiyuki. It was originally released in 1988 at the same time as Totoro . It's definitely an anti-war film, sad and quiet with flashes of horror. It tells the story of a young boy who tries to look after his little sister during the period when Japan was being firebombed in 1945. Unlike the Miyazaki films, which I love, this one is realistic anime but it, too, has a focus on the natural world and the story of young people caught up in great upheavals. The animation isn't spectacular but the overall feel - the complexity of emotions and the detail and quiet movement of many of the scenes - is what makes this film. I'm told...

walking with a headache into air potent with rain, grey with water the sky and too much attention needed for bottle brush, wisteria siamese at a window each step past all other need and game, the rain down my right side - temple to ear brow to cheek somehow is undoing me between gutters and crossings the four island girls taking all the path threads unwinding before me visions waves as it sees me going between crowded conversations past election posters, oil, legumes taffeta, sacks of rice looking for the temple of coffee sitting in a cool corridor under sky-dropped noise beside road fuel and daily racket seized with news and comment the same, all the same in the test of minutes before the way again foot for foot in walking language back into the valley and sky.

Here's an item from today's Sydney Morning Herald Spike column. An antidote to some less salubrious cat-related news . Note that, although I don't have a cat at the moment, I have had them round as company on-and-off during my life. " Curl up and watch TV And we thought reality TV couldn't get more bizarre. Yesterday saw the launch of Australia's first reality TV-inspired DVD for cats. Yes, cats. A Walk on the Wild Side boldly claims to "bring the excitement of the outside world into your home for the enjoyment of your cat", for $24.95. The DVD shows birds, mice, crickets and fish cavorting in their natural habitats - perfect for when Fluffy can't be bothered going outside. Unconvinced that any self-respecting cat would be interested in reality TV, we tested the DVD on the Spike cat, Christopher. He pawed the screen, miaowed a bit and looked generally very confused, which sounds like a perfectly normal reaction to the genre." ...

An apparent splinter in my left thumb was bothering me most of yesterday. Today I hacked at it using a needle seared by a lighter. Don't know if I got the splinter out, don't know if there was one (the blackened tip of the needle spread black all round). I heaved some Betadine all over it anyway. It's still a bit sore, still a bit black, but I feel something has been released. I went up the street to get a prescription filled for Annette, buy the paper and some more choy sum and a packet of egg noodles. One of our neighbours indicted a route through the laneways which was an easier walk. Someone walked up behind me and I moved. There was no danger but I always remember being mugged. Here was the backside, garages, driveways, no footpaths, garages where Immigration found families of ten living, lanes where building and street rubbish collects. Then onto the main road, narrow as it is. In the chemist the radio was playing 'Where streets have no name'. Another Vietn...

clivia chinese lantern the orange flowers but not the orange heat yet Supposed to be hot today. Maybe it was, but the evening is green cool. Now for the time of sport in the blue light of television. Now for the dark heat of cooking and night's yellow light. Still no time for reading in between the necessities. Catching at music and newsprint.

I've recently added to the blog roll a new blog, high spirits , begun by my good friend, Andrew Burke, poet of Perth. Apparently. I'm to blame for this. You can read the story over at his page. This will be a good blog to keep in touch with. Also added to the list a couple of blogs by Australian poets writing about other genres. Alison Croggon's Theatre Notes , about her adventures in theatre criticism, and Will Fox's filmism , about films. Enjoy.

"Whole night in form the whorl on earth" - from Pamphylian , Louis Zukofsky I've been reading with great interest all the reports of the recent Zukofsky confab in New York, especially Josh Corey's extended report, including that 'loneliness at a conference' thing. Ron Silliman's concern about the lack of women was also fascinating (and drew a lot of comments, some a bit weird). I know I would have tried to get there if I could've. Pity New York is the other side of this world. I can see what Stephen Vincent was concerned about as well. All that talk to honour the guy, but what about the poems. Of course, I wasn't there, but it did make me wonder. In between my duties I will try to go back to my Complete Short Poetry , Louis Zukofsky. Love those syntaxes.

Today, I'm a bit like Lucy in the sky with ... rhinestones. Into the second day of the ice pack. I'm nursing Annette after a foot operation. Sort of getting in touch with my inner Florence Nightingale - buried deep but I'll find it. But I woke up with a screamin' headache. Popped some reasonably medium duty codeine. Went for a coffee and a bit of shop for necessaries - especially the Samos olives for marinating, chorizo for the heck of it, choy sum for the chicken soup (for real). Headache still sits there doing its grumpy thing. I'm throwing ice round the kitchen when it should be going into the cryo-cuff dooverlackie. Hmm, Annette says 'take some of my drugs'. Extra-duty codeine. So now we're both in doozy-blah land. By the way, the ice thing is 20 minutes ice then an hour off then another 20 minutes, and so it goes till bedtime. Three or four more days. I've got the craft now, and the art will follow, probably at the stage when the swelling ...

you're right, the boundaries are blurred so how do we play the fictions this isn't how reality murmurs it quite somewhere near the instant pharmacies the long leisure of this window involves too many factors as night drops its micro-economic lights whatever is significant has nothing to do with poems their measures aren't fiscal whatever is significant has nothing to do with bodies Annie will only have one working foot tomorrow she has to wait a while for two once more I have not seen - anything - so I write I want to be a client on a sea-sky-change make my methods drip a little into the skin even though the sun is a killer these days opening out my pores to small drops of infinity turning black in the flesh the matrix is harder than its movies even on the outskirts of agony you're in it tomorrow I sit and wait with two legs to stand on and mind-worry beads for friends I don't know how to do nurse save it's more than soup an...

Unexpected rain last night. Just the merest of drops on my face before and after visiting Annette in hospital. All kinds of tasks ahead of me over the next few days. All I can do is muddle through like a human. Woke up this morning, which makes it sound like a song, woke up early, unlike me and out to the kitchen. Yes, there has been real rain, and the bricks were gleaming, that fresh smell on the ground and garden. Morning drops blossom wet black boughs

"It is subjectivity that forcibly brings the extremes together in the moment, fills the dense polyphony with its tensions, breaks it apart with the unisono , and disengages itself, leaving the naked tone behind; that sets the mere phrase as a monument to what has been, marking a subjectivity turned to stone. The caesuras, the sudden discontinuities that more than anything else characterise the very late Beethoven, are those moments of breaking away; the work is silent at the instant when it is left behind, and turn its emptiness outward." - Adorno, quoted in 'Thoughts on the Late Style', Edward Said, London Review of Books , 5 August 2004, p3. Makes my body relive the Late Quartets. I'm thinking particularly of Op. 132 in A minor - Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart' ("Holy Song of Thanksgiving from a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode") - its great central slow movement. I have a great re...

No Tell Motel is a pretty cool poetry site. It's currently featuring three poems by Shanna Compton. One great line that tickled me was "if cans had tits and tits were pink." And loved this poem's ending: The morning we stood there, looking up, The sky so blue--more blue than water, more blue than sky, & bluer than television.

Within a symmetry strange here come all the high achievers from their committes in glowing pants. It's so hot hot inside the drama the ecstatic ordinary jungle chiming with their dares all their lovely paper tigers. ... Not quite an overheard 'found' poem but some words from a telephone conversation behind me got this going.

1. sometimes it's fog with the gone lamentations 2. gunfire cracking glass - five shots what worries these 3. sometimes bruises from the mugging through zones once paths and hills 4. constant sun if the things I know pass me 5. more trolleys how was it ever 6. phone call always some trouble 7. teams of cockatoos death and harvest, dust and iron 8. zombie dreams small glimmering gaps between messages 9. green et in arcadia ego 10. singing up my sheep a shimmer at the top of the room Two poems become one, sometimes. I don't think I've ever had sheep in a poem before this. They seem OK.

mean war was sworn on ever Using the worm idea of Ivy Alvarez's (scroll down to July 29 blog entry) blended with Eileen Tabio's hay(na)ku .

"free your mind and your ass will follow, the kingdom of heaven is within" Funkadelic Or is it the other way around - free your ass and your mind will follow? I still haven't decided. Where is within? Where should I be looking? "I'm so confused about the whole thing."

grab-bag of night everything but rain thirsty my dear the bar raised so old to be entirely forgiving entertainment the big the great crash within memory each ray of it libido heads ego eyeballing the sky windy all way how it complains or trips gaily upon the tongue everything slithers across verandah except rain

I've added a comments thingie to the blog. Finally got around to it. Hadn't really explored the new blogger up till now so have made a few adjustments. It's always tinker time with new technology. Having fun.

Here's an idea that was passed on to me by Chris Murray who got it, in turn, from Shanna Compton . It's a tag poem! Fingered by the morning clouds and faint shiver that poets wake and sleep or worry where day starts with Clayton Couch , how we're swept up in moods or be dreaming the singsong speech and squeaky wings of pigeons landing and remember that Sunday watching the dam's ripple of ducks and a pelican, still, dreaming maybe like Mark Young wondering about Jean Luc-Ponty as something of air.