Ruby Street

Hermitude - Rare Sightings Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36 Bonnie Prince Billy - Master and Everyone ... and some Led Zeppelin, primarily to do with a project I'm writing, but enjoyable anyway.

Barry Hill does the rounds with two recent Australian poetry anthologies . A mention of JJ amongst the other new and notable.

Thread the light that goes out leaning on the door ... What doubt is there about the sky? Is it the blue?

Quartet for the End of Time , Messiaen Gaspard de la Nuit , Ravel Triple Concerto , Piano Trio Op.121a , Beethoven ... and the rain

flux of sound, syntactical manoeuvres, dictions

look at the sun along the off-white afternoon over my shoulder memory speaks through heroic ideal shivered beauty lashed by cold light your questions lip air go out fall to ruin walk ordinary matter

it wasn't quite as ... ....................................... there's precision in the bird's cry the valley sucks it up ....................................... it's welcome, you don't know its meaning

poet wanders the page imprint chasing a trail through poems fugitive ghost phantom presences aura what is noise in the poem the subjective relation to others what is important in a poem at the edges

phew!

I’ve left my attitude with a slew of energy the dope in me ducks, sure tastes bitter A familiar song - we shall never part Remember the verb that got away Forget your sex, taste then lips along the off-white, apparel falls away Petals bruise my hand after a wave of wild correspondences No page entirely contains my wandering breath Even the air is a strange grain You must slip stealthily into the ventilator the dollar will be normal after that But, wait, don’t press my buttons, cast them aside Let's shut up and dance

"A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity — he is continually in for — and filling some other Body — The Sun, the Moon, the Sea, and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute — the poet has none; no identity — he is certainly the most unpoetical of all of God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I would write no more?" John Keats , Letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 27 1818

that things refuse to side and ground walks away

Rising with air, breath's desperate ages loud music carries all its times with smoked out clarity as well Nerves flower out my bare need knowledge, I found skin, and underneath day slowly wears, moved by turn And clouds don’t ‘need to know’ and being moves a new overlay out here the valley, goes how

thrall

a poem is as it passes

I = wandering new trails

a trace at the point where a poem differentiates itself from flux of experience the fragmentary or incomplete

Tomorrow Annette leaves for regional Victoria (via Canberra), taking the long hot journey by car, so she can be around for the opening of her exhibition, The Romance of Death, at Horsham Regional Art Gallery . As well as 30 photographs which she took in Paris cemeteries between 2004 and 2007, the show will include some poems I wrote on the theme during that period. We have also made a chapbook to accompany the exhibition including a hand-printed photo on each cover, plus the text of the poems on the wall, and a number of others. Here's one poem. Works & Days These unexpected masterpieces statues and companions balconies of angels linked by cement and passions the falling autumn The lost genius of air still penetrates broken stones and other works As on any street the guarantee of beauty lies around the crystallised dust empty bottles dead chrysanthemums Mutability is no harder than stained marble a pile of petals Cimetière Montparnasse If anyone is around that area of the coun...