POEM: "If A Horizontal Waterfall..."

I am safe. I trust more; I fear less. I am centered and grounded.

            — On a New Age prayer flag in a Melbourne suburb

What does it mean to read

From sorrow to more sorrow

Or from swirling dust to God?

Whether love is really like a bellows

That whispers was it actually that?

Was the issue ever decided

(The unequivocal tragedy

We'll call it dirty realism)

Carefully tending people's lies?

Irredeemable as the waterfall

Suddenly charging horizontal

Under quiet crater lake pressure

Unimagined till the spray hits you

Without shoes high in the Owen-Stanleys —

Meanwhile in a suburban backyard

Six old trees, ten different birdsongs

Held by one summer's fierce blue light

Soft black flies landing on your arm.

                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                            

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

19:57 - Monday 8 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

"SNAKE WINE"

 

  

Snake Wine is a 100-page selection of Rob Schackne's

China poems written between 2002-2006. Readers,

reviewers and publishers are all most cordially invited

to reach out to: robschackne@hotmail.com.

About him, even allowing for fabrication in matters

biographical, this much we know is probably true:

Born in New York in the middle of the last century

during a relatively peaceful era, growing up

there and in several South American countries,

this continued in Barbados, in Spain, Switzerland,

the U.S. again, and then Australia — which

last place finally took him in. He attended a few

universities, serving a complicated apprenticeship

in the humanities. He says he enjoys the unusual

insights of intelligent discourse. He now works as a

Foreign Expert EFL teacher in a big city in China.

There were many sports once, viz. track and

field, ice-hockey, rock-climbing, Goju-ryu karate,

Alpine skiing, squash, scuba diving, soccer,

middle-distance running and long-distance

bushwalking. He now plays (mostly) respectable

chess and pool. He listens to The Grateful Dead.

He claims he can read Shakespeare in the original.

E basta così.

 

11:15 - Friday 5 March 2010 - comments {3} - post comment

POEM: "The Recession; Or, Copying As Art"

                                                                                        

Give yourself a moment   

prop yourself up on the sink 

watch that face in the mirror

practise that three or four times

and go out into the world 

drive to where there's a cliff 

park and practise parking again 

wait for the sunset to finish 

practise this several times 

remember how you did that

go home now go home again 

say hello to them say it again

you practised it so much 

copying the countless ways

you have copied everything 

give yourself a moment.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

16:16 - Wednesday 17 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "In The First Year Of The Tiger"

 

That day when warring finally

was harnessed to fireworks

while the generals sipped their teas

and tutted about fire discipline

the new children's model was found

to explode without warning too

and the fingers and the faces

wore a little of the invention

that whistled death to so many

meanwhile angry parents screamed

against the irreverent technology

and said it was only superstition

to believe that ghosts needed blood

said it was time for quiet now —

but the damage had been done

every year the demons must have their noise

and tired generals sit down pleased

and continue to lick their plates.

                                                                                                                           

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

05:04 - Sunday 14 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "On Borges' Book Of Sand"

 

In Jorge Luis Borges

We hear the falling cadence

Of an obstinate man, largely blind

With maybe only ten years left

Fluent enough to remember horrors

And how well the will preserves

The images of that, and Love —

Whereas we the patient learners

Turn his old stories like a field

Sharp into our own stubbornness

Till we too are reading by candlelight

The parables of not life, not death

With just one last pitiful learning

About uncountable gruesome worlds

With as many dreams as grains of sand

For which we thank you, muy estimado.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

19:30 - Saturday 13 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "A Short Ballad, 5 Foot 9½"

                                                                                              

Young, gifted and usually unused

That day he scored the goals that won

The final game that won the season

The other champions lifted him up

In the street the cars were honking

He was famous throughout Melbourne

People cheered all his moves after that

When he sobered up he'd had enough 

His knees were shot or his body just said no

He went bush and sat among the trees

The abstraction was finally put to rest

Came down the mountain and took another look

At last got back all his breath and grew his hair long

Started to write his stories and poems

And he started a printing business

Mostly young poetry risking it all.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

03:35 - Monday 8 February 2010 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "Midnight On Julian's Balcony In Shanghai, Smashed"

                   "I really should go back to Barber School..."

                    -- Doug Sahm (1969)

                                                                                  

Didn't feel your gaze

as fractious security door

or like an iron balcony

till nightime penthouse

was an open moment

rain steadily changing

clothes trying to fly

just fifty meters away

a felicitous cigarette

because of watching you

putting telescope down

at an open window

smoking a cigarette too

and looking at the rain

was falling between us —

later leave the party

almost leave umbrella

say to a passing friend

clearly is hard the getting in

but why so hard the getting out.

 

                                                     ©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

23:35 - Sunday 7 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Did You Strangle All Delicacy"

                                                                          pace Thomas Lynch

                                                                                          

I can't help writing this.

I'm sorry. Forgive me.

Did you strangle all delicacy

In a single careless moment?

Did you chase her away with music

You gave her to sit down and listen to

Which alas contained a secret song?

Was your every night a fretful one

When you slept like the grateful dead

Did you punch and kick your legs

As if beauty was still your enemy?

Now of course all demons rest −−

Freedom from her was hard-won.

Though the scratching you begin to hear

Is like a heavy gate upon the skin.

Did you think you could get away with it?

I’m sorry. Forgive me.

I can’t help writing this.

                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                   

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

03:39 - Friday 29 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Bravado"

                   for Philip Robert Nash

                                                                                               

Listening to Of Montreal

Their record The Gay Parade

And reading Bolaño's Amulet

Very possibly conflating

The astounding terms of both

There's no story without courage

And so no song without a mask

That cannot be removed —

And all of them wait for fear

Churning permutations of desire

The lists of bravado before we sleep

That are universally troublesome

Shall we write about writing?

Terror befalling the unbefallen

Please don't make me laugh

Unless you are laughing too.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

 

01:53 - Tuesday 26 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Everything"

I wouldn't joke about this. Though maybe it's best to keep the process to yourself — at least till the collectors come. The streets clean again for a day, maybe we dream it doesn't happen -- or if it did, then we'll only have been dreaming of some other place. You know how it goes.

            Natura Morta. Garbage lying in the streets, loose, no bins.

            Sun is rising. Rats are still. This picture is without smell.

            But at midnight the work began, accumulation reviewed

            for what waste would be turned into hunger. Cats agree.

            Furtive looks from out of nowhere people will admit,

            who only wish for disappearance, left at the side of the road.

            We mostly don't know any better now. We throw away

            in equal amounts what we love and hate and fear too late

            and so it rots. So much late heat it makes: perfect comment.

            And other rats that scavenge after? We don’t believe in that.

            Sun rises faster. Dogs are moving too, looking and judging,

            experience that wasn’t theirs but they try hard to want it.

            Before collection. Before anticipation, the sweepers' carts

            and big trucks, the recycling starts. An Easter-time of insects

            to make the refuse-body One, spirits a-buzzing, lives afresh.

            There’s argument. Purposes conflict. Sun is higher than ever.

            The goal has been dispersed. The garbage has walked away.

            How else to measure the soul that’s lost, than when all is still?

            When Morning comes, the streets eventually swept of us,

            the nocturnal organization of vehicles disconnected, down

            we climb from the bed where we had written of paradise.

            Maybe. Walking down an alley last night. Ripped of memory,

            the key ingredients gone, one word came a-hastening of love

            so ordinary now it's missed. Creatures gather everything.

 

   ©ROB SCHACKNE (2007)

 

01:00 - Monday 25 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Short Poem: The Distance"

I cannot talk of love
but only of two hearts
flat against the other one
as if the beating surf
surges upon the shore
and the tide recedes
distant clouds are white
he stands on the beach
distant clouds are dark
the wind grows heavy
his teeth are chattering
as he writes this poem.

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

08:01 - Tuesday 19 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Bones Of Fish"

This one could be read in the latest historical context of recent and

on-going searches for lost relatives — but then again, it might not.

 

Indented are the tiny bones

In the hapless fossil record

Vibrating an irritation

Down strange countless years — 

A teenage boy holds

An exceptional surprise

The skeleton remains

Of a nervous spinal system;

Maybe unpredictably

Balanced with a tear

Everyone eschews their memory

Leaves old things undigested —

He feels maybe he can’t love fish

Frantic in understatement

Until he can hear their bones

Perfecting the continuous wave

Man, that system was really working

Crazy and open like a swirling sea

But when waters receded

Landing ancestors high and dry

They gave their augury to the earth

Left their lives behind on stone

Like the teeth of a billion frustrations —

Or nothing if not in the shape of bones.

 

                                                  ©ROB SCHACKNE (2008)

02:41 - Saturday 16 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Housekeeping"

We all know people with an unlucky compulsion for public order. Some are clearly mad. But many are slobs who, if you ever circled back around, typically leave their tools, their machinery and their cars in bad shape, skidmarks in the toilet bowl—and a brief but unconsolable sorrow all over the world...  

 

Victims of housekeeping

Know where everything should be

It's the dirt, never the politics

That is the enemy of order

A thousand years of genetic code

Exciting right angles and dust 

Swirling straight up into heaven —

But I, in my truce with cockroaches

Will go straight to hell someday

Just like your perfect mother said

Where I'll sleep in an unmade bed

And wear yesterday's socks again.

 

My old trousers are neat pleated

Accumulations of the world —

Lord, I didn't wash the hands

That trouble my neighbour's sleep

How do unregenerates run free?

One day at a time, piece by piece

Putting coffee spoons in the honey

Errant coins spent under cushions

Strange notes to remind you forgot

The dirty clothes waiting on the floor

The dust that beckons outside the door

For just one more chance at you.

 

                                        ©ROB SCHACKNE (2008)

10:56 - Wednesday 13 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "I Gave It To Her After Lunch"

I know that in the Pataphysics Dept. they study the science of exceptions. Now they're even thinking that exile might remove some key elements of fate. But this one, hell, I don't even get the title.

                                                                                                            

She looks towards the window

and she says it's very windy

I say please look at me —

I'm not a shipping magnate

we've studied Mme Butterfly together

I'm really not a secret agent

(I neither encourage nor prevent)

true enough there's too much rain now

any dreamer can skid on their ass

slip up looking at a window glass

for wisdom and final disaffection

God and the smudges last a lifetime

the best minds of our generation

busy washing themselves off

pay for the lunch we didn't finish

and the many hands stretched outside

to the best minds of their generation

beg for one long birthday noodle

a logistical pot and electrics —

we get up from the busy table

on a day won't be disconnected

from the best ends of us stretched out

flying a kite straight up in the rain

still don't know yet where it went.

 

 ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

10:12 - Monday 11 January 2010 - comments {2} - post comment

POEM: "Three Minutes With Reality"

 

                                                           after Astor Piazzolla

                                                                                                             

It takes so little to get the three minutes
Or so much depending on where you are
Those three minutes might be sombre
They could be ecstatic or just be quiet
The only trick is to be there at the time

After that they who look back will say
Your life is never going to be the same
Three minutes of a battle or a burn or love
You were outside it and now you're in
Well what do they know it's not a club

You survive that and you survive the next
And the three minutes fall on like the rain
That keeps on getting louder and then it stops
Three minutes with reality float by like clouds
But I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea.

                                                                                                                                             

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

10:29 - Friday 1 January 2010 - comments {2} - post comment

POEM: "Her Comment On A Sad Excess"

                                                                                            

I had already known her

the most beautiful woman

in the world as shocking

as a very dangerous wire

exposed and waiting for a child —

she hates that she was so unready

sometimes weeping in the night

there is always so much wanting

she can't believe she's so different

drinking whiskey and choler

pleading to the sadly devout

someday they will really see

their baffled glasses failed them

and finally woken they'll lean

towards another beautiful light

where they forget she isn't there.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

09:28 - Sunday 27 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "These Wings Of Desire"

                                          for Wim Wenders

I really don't care anymore.

My thoughts are debasing me

And I can no longer quiz

A smiling world with my songs —

Rocks below in the water and the wind

I have been falling all my life

There will be an end to this descent.

                                                                                                    

An old man is watching me carefully

Just twenty cold meters away —

He sits like me on the cliff edge

I must be still to get rid of him

And watch no more of this lonely world

There is no point in seagulls wheeling.

Suddenly he is sitting next to me.

                                                                                              

Offer him a job in my little shop

Maybe introduce him to a lovely girl

If his constitution can stand it

There looks to be enough room

How do you live in this world without desire

When the stuff of stars is in your veins

Distant, cold and fine, but there?

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                    

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

 

10:56 - Wednesday 23 December 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "It's Almost Christmas"

                                                                                                                                          

I'm listening to La Bartoli

Sing magnificently of the castrato

And damned if I know that I can

Get my ears past any barber's knife

That promised to settle the future —

Why does a woman singing of dreams

Touch my battered soul like this?

It's almost Christmas this is true

When we hardly look a beggar in the eye

But adjust the sack on our shoulders

March on there's a music we didn't hear —

Beneath my gods the sweet angels

Have never stopped their singing.

I probably wouldn't mention this joy

If today I hadn't seen so much kindness

Or if out of the corner of my eye

I didn't see you coming toward me

A voice as painful as all others

Speaking like some other angel

Moving somewhat awkwardly.

                                                                                                                                               

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

13:52 - Thursday 17 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "A Minor Whisky"

I've always thought the Rastafari have it about right. Even though I'm privileged and white, I still write quite alot about Babylon — if you don't know approximately where that is, then you might have a little trouble getting out of there and into here. As Max Romeo sings in "One Step Forward":  "This is the time of decision/What is your plan?"

         

Temperance is the measure

You take before you go out

Weighing how little was decided

How often you bit your tongue

And didn’t argue about the seasons

A minor whisky is what you call it

Kaliyuga is what the others say is left

Four hundred twenty-six thousand

Nine hundred and eighty years

Of worsening misplaced zeal

Like the man said, I don’t think I can

Put up with this shit for much longer

How can the end of days last so long

How much else will intoxicate a man

As he walks straight in chattering crowds

Pausing before the massive walls of ire

Everyone is charging everybody else

For distractions no one can live without

If the truth, they say, lacks any substance

How blessèd then is the minute without heart?

 

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2008)

11:14 - Thursday 17 December 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "Lists At The End Of The Year Gathered By The Sun"

 

                                                                                                  

It's a fine pastime, putting
together lists of things
you really like. This book
that chapter, another verse
you don't quite remember

Always just beneath
the bough of breaking tastes
that go this way and that
it's all a man can do to keep up
with her latest last best book

Listening to a dream
recounted past good sense
we have to listen well 
but you know a picnic 
isn't exactly a fine meal

It's not actually a list
you can sit on for long either
there are ants on the way
one of them has already arrived
damn it's got a piece of paper too.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

18:14 - Wednesday 16 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Moonlit Night On Floor"

                                                                                              

Look at the center of things

Where you haven't been before 

Half dreams of seeing sorrow

Half adept at believing delight —

When she slaps you in the face

Every time she climaxes

It's just a reflex action she says

And she always says she's so sorry

The mirror is delivered a little late 

Of course you never see it coming

On the tatami mat and futon 

Where your travelling dreams 

Have rolled you far into the kitchen

Ten feet away on a hard foreign floor

And when you wake up with the moon

She has you covered with a quilt

She is snuggled close to you — 

An alley cat is looking in the window.

                                                                                                                                

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

01:57 - Thursday 10 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Some Old Words On New Music"

                                                                                            

Venus on a clear night. She doesn't blink.

Music lies gently upon the mind

Like light upon a fractious planet.

                                                                                              

John Cage said he explored non-intention.

He composed music but it composed him.

But only two sounds, the high and the low: 

                                                                                              

There's a sound of the crack of rock

Somewhere ahead in the sandy gully

And cicadas rush in to cover the noise —

 

Which sounds shall be prosecuted

Till there is silence at the end of music

Till the just spell of love is a winter breath.

                                                                                               

But what listens to you listening to it?

They all say conserve your energy.

How long do you think that will last?

                                                                                                    

Tonight you stay inside the light

Your heads are turned I think 

As far as memory takes you back.

                                                                                  

Cage asked: Which is more musical:

a truck passing by a factory

or a truck passing by a music school?

                                                                                          

Maybe you know.

 

                                                                                                                           

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

15:38 - Saturday 14 November 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Liberation"

                                                         for David Sylvian & Jack Gilbert & Z

I saw it I heard how you rejected her

Because one breast had been removed

She sent you a perfumed box of dead bees

Each one laid out with precious oils

I heard how you gave your dying wife

Perfect flowers and the falling petals

Kept her awake they reminded her of you

                                                                                                         

The massive Tibetan thangka I gave you

Which I asked that you take away from China

To show your very ailing mother in Kobe, 

Keep safe between small mountains and the sea —

Why did you do that to me? You asked later

Miles west in Shanghai along the boulevard

Connected to some other perfidy of mine.

                                                                                                           

How one hand can give and another disregard

That intricate picture of awful trial and liberation

I did not want to fall into the hands of deaf ears —

You loved the sun and mourned your mother's passing

But there was really no answer I could give you then

Now I say that not every wall is the same, my love

And there are still a few things Buddha hasn't told us.

                                        ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

21:30 - Saturday 24 October 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Johnson's Glass House"

I live not according to the glass walls

in our Glass House, but in accordance with

the cool and visible perfection that boils

inside my bedroom and outside in the big trees

you can see. It's the living room's opposite.

I am not Johnson. But this is my home. 

My glass house become a prayer of presence,

that it stick my feet upon the marble steps

and I shall bump my nose against the wall; 

that I see into all the rooms I wasn’t meant to

and I'll look through glass as a meditation

of an emptiness I never knew before. Focus eyes

and unfocus them till I see the parting inbetween.

Reality in architecture? Who could build the thing?

I did not invent this space. I have played with space.

From still-curtained rooms on moonless nights

the boys and girls from the town dare themselves

to creep far into our lucid property. They watch. 

They believe they can't be seen. Finally, because  

living slowly in a glass house will remind you of fire,

how much presence born of great desire and cooling

longs for this transparency — that all, all will be clear.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2007)

 

 

02:12 - Sunday 4 October 2009 - comments {2} - post comment

POEM: "To The Third Man"

   

                                                                                                  

O it was only in the everyday it was

Pointing the way they said it was himself

Who never crossed against the slow lights,

Who never took the last beaming chocolate

From the big box, unless it was offered —

They said strange such a man became a poet.

But he meandered and he learned quite well

The Third Man factor, how pleasure defers

In the expense of a holy misery, or even love, 

The mysterious source he sometimes sensed

Counting one-two past everything he knew —

Days are knife-sharp and nights are thunder.

He crawled to his window and looked at the stars

In the morning dark, aware that there was a form

Always within his reach, but there was a form

It was touched by, that knew when he was reached

He would skip across the street and take the jewel

Never look back a moment or give time thanks.

                                                                                                                                     

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

12:08 - Monday 28 September 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

L'Angina #14: "Elevator — Miami Beach, 1955"/THE POEM

Robert Frank/Courtesy of SFMOMA

                                                                                                                                                                           

No argument about having lived an unperfected life 

Or that there were stories that almost changed you —

You might have been the elevator girl or one of the men

Using their daily conveyance to sit still in their offices

Blurred sight of all that goes before and what awaits

A business kind of life maybe not so divorced from loneliness

She pauses for a moment fifteen years old already tired

The problem with the elevator today the plan for lunch

The limits of dialogue her sore feet her perfect legs

Her gravity — what is this dreaminess we care about?

Is reflection but a word we use to design ourselves

32 floors up and 32 down and again tomorrow, my love?

                                                                                                                                                                         

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

12:00 - Sunday 13 September 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "So She Like Gets This Letter From Her Dad Like 6 Months After Her Birthday"

                                                                                                                                

 My dearest Julie,

Did you ever get that drawing I sent you? Looks good, doesn't it?

A thousand light-years from here, I climbed to the rim of Yasur volcano

on Tanna in Vanuatu and peered down into its awful fire. I looked down at

my feet and there was a red Coke can. I saw a postcard someone had dropped.

I picked it up. A terrific photo of some severely sharp snow-capped mountains.

On the other side someone had written: But what you don't like where you are,

you won't like here even more. Only this. Wish I'd been sent that postcard. 

They showed us the film A Scanner Darkly the other day. Check it out.

It's about addiction and prevarication and everybody's itch has everybody

doing it. Tell your mother it's just about photography. There, in one scene,

our drug-addled heroes' car has broken down on this shitty California highway.

They lift the hood. They are peering at the hot engine, busy studying it, doing

their best to clamor and convict a mechanical part of intentional malice.

Finally, exhausting all paranoid leads, one shouts, Don't blame the drugs!

Which was the moment all of us had been waiting for. So we cheered.  

Today we discussed the million drugs. For what? The beaters we drove?

The hunger for explanations so far beyond any conventional wisdom?

Hope the 12th grade is OK, and you're making friends with good people.

Happy birthday.

Love,

Dad

 

             ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

       

01:15 - Sunday 13 September 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "It's A Wonderful Life"

                                                                                                                                

What you do instead of being quiet or holding her tight

You supply more words than a corporate box of soap

Though wishing and wishing to cleanse the situation

Every single breath is bringing you closer to disaster —

You should've just held her one minute against herself

Holding your own dictionary away and your woman tighter

Well, who could blame her for throwing historical principles

When you cannot be quiet or even look yourself up —

Perfection my precious still lives classically between us

Perhaps on a chilly mountain track whether silent or bold

The children are not playing there isn't much laughter

Time is a struggling bush and we take time to avoid it

What glistens there on the leaf is a tear is not a tear —

I don't walk silent I know we should hold tighter.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

12:30 - Sunday 6 September 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "Anywhere There Are People"

                            for Mike Beeds

                                                                                                         

Into the cold blast out from under

The river of the world into yearning

And the serried valences of the self

Gets us to a bar — anywhere with people

Though tonight a Shanghai jazz club will do

And there in company music enters you

Though possibly delight will go no further

Than the girls there — as melodies of song

The drum and bass electric violin the piano

As you lean in hard to hear the musical idea

One note one woman one place indeed

But you my friend are one sorry bastard

Her name is Gorgon and her friend is Lilith

Everybody counting sixteen beats to a measure

So little to come here for than we forget ourselves

Some expensive drinks, an argument in the dark.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

01:29 - Monday 24 August 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "In The Year 2666"

                                           for Roberto Bolaño

                                                                                                       

After three wrong turns, a tractor and a flat
You're at The House of Vanished Writers
After all, that was always your destination
You park your unreviewed car and go right in
Sitting and waiting, smoking and watching —  
Joe, the Indian, who never could get started
Sophia, who once was beautiful, great shorts
No power to stay long enough on the page
Fred, whose fiction fried like a skillet, killed it —
And you, who are merely visiting, get a key
A towel and the schedule of daily readings
Who are these happy people you are thinking
Why do they look at me like that? One part pen
One part the next event, one part is wind
Where did all the vanished writers go?
When did they write their perfect poems
Who said they'd had enough and could leave?
Your room has a limited view of the forest
It is possible the birds might sing there again —
Second seating meal is vegetable soup with bread
Dessert is an autumn ice cream you don't remember
Afterwards the word games and the music upset you.
 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

02:59 - Saturday 22 August 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Look! Up In The Sky!"

There are no red balloons anymore
Only nervous plastic bags hovering
Over city streets, dodging cars
Waving at office windows, gazed at
Sometimes they land, sometimes not
Going up and up. Somebody watches
With a light heart or a heavy one
The discount that now flies to the sea
One less garbage bag, one less tote
To stuff in purse against next purchase
The most obvious excess of how we live
One bag at a time, as they escape us
Drawn by the Siren of the red balloons
All of them arrayed in a secret cove
Someplace else by the industrial shore.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

09:28 - Sunday 2 August 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "A Little Teleology"

His shirt tearing inside two fists

A button spinning to the floor

Throat, solar plexus, groin

I feel his heart beating fast.

I take a deeper breath, a comma

Funny how a sentence is passed

Against this violent mood —

Then again, it could’ve been you.

I won’t hallucinate mayhem

If you wish me no harm

Put on a kinder face

Leave me alone when I need it.

Don’t believe this has no meaning.

                                                        

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

12:05 - Sunday 26 July 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Now Wipe The Mirror With The Chicken, Clockwise..."

                for JGSKILL

Hah! Never take anybody's money
or their hat for your best advice, mate.
About the only thing I'd say to Bill is —

Lively up yourself, ascribe to your knack
a better use, a different version of the world
you can live with, stop messing so much
with other people 'cause they're not as bright or tragic.

Take another hard look at the training
wheels of money, sex and self.
Have another glass of blueberry juice or wine or whatever.
Hell. That's not even the problem.

Bag a pineapple got a sweet Polynesian babe
with plenty of real juice comes with it.
Give you a real problem.
Means not a thing in the world.

Sometimes harder to veil a truth.
I once shot an innocent beast in the head
100 meters with an old .303 just the sights
old anthills and a goanna watching me on top of a log.

The summer light was getting poorer
skinning him deciding not to do that anymore.
Plainly no sense being a good shot
you don't want to hit anything anymore.

I'll leave behind a thousand loaded poems
my strong, brave and funny son
and a few other good people who knew
loving me was mostly worth the effort.

We won't go out too soon. 
But should we die with a poem on our lips
when we're roaring, you know
the very last word had better be our own — 

Always Number One whatever you're up to. 

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

18:08 - Thursday 23 July 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

L'Angina #12: Mark Rothko, "Untitled" (1969)/THE POEM

 

I can't help but look at this

then see the new edges of life

the curvature of circumstance

the hand in front of your face

what lies beyond the bedspread

the next move you make to get going

to the next room, the next moment

steadies the horizon that always looks

more forbidding from far away

there is so much reflected here

though if new love grows on trees

if it's true, nothing can stop that

neither harrowing nor too dark

something's always coming.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

            

11:49 - Thursday 2 July 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "A Fragment Text Of Taraxacum Officinale IV"

 

                                            for Ted Hopkins

 

It typically forms a prostrate to mounding rosette

Which we once knew the use of but have now forgotten

And it will depend on wind direction and difficult terrain

Whether the winds will typically form our way again

Adding another mound to the way of the courtly poet  

8 to 12 inches tall and wide, and usually wider than tall

Alone in the company we keep but that's only history

Spreading the little shade we have wide around ourselves

Taller should we discover the perspective isn't wide enough

Foliage is dark green, deeply lobed, and hairless

And is it really here to make deception with us?

It's called a weed and it's usually everywhere you look

The pissabed, lion's-den, teeth, the big breath and augury

The dark, deep-lobed intelligence of what we nearly see

The flower head is made of many small yellowray flowers

The head of a flower being its busy headquarters I guess

The rays of yellow made of the sun and our pleasure rays

From the forehead of beaches and narrow mountain tracks

Seeds are attached to a pappus for facilitating wind dispersal

Which is the whirling parachute the boy used to fly away

Which is still one ardor we'll remember on a windy day

The dispersal of disorder for the dreams that followed

The fevers, the fathers, the dogs, the old pavements... 

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

02:02 - Monday 8 June 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Heaven & Earth"

Imagine that you are there —

Tanks filled with nervous soldiers

The square filled with friends

Relatives weeping and shouting

 

(You’re holding a couple of bags

Imagine what you have inside them)

 

You move off the edge of people

Angry and scared and trembling

But you don’t go out there very fast

Every other step of yours is wrong

 

And your reason’s getting slower

Until suddenly you’re stopped

Now in front of the wide world

With loud-speakers and flashes

 

(An American reporter wins

A Pulitzer Prize for this shot)

 

In one bag is a long letter

From a very lovely gentle girl

No charge for the time you spent

Sitting under her special light

 

But the light looks different now

You cannot allow this tank to pass

You want to take an extra breath

Now you want it to last forever.

                                       

                                        ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

         

13:03 - Thursday 4 June 2009

POEM: "Calipers On A Different Face"

 An old mate who sometimes reads this stuff tells me that whenever he reads the word calipers he sees great big sharp alligator clips fixed on sensitive parts of the body. Sometimes I see kids with polio braces on their legs. We'll interpret that how we like. I suppose if you can see anything it's OK.

                                                                                                 

As one dear soul to another is like —

But you forget the micro-adjustments

You need to make to say it clearly,

The jumpy dials of brow and nostrils

Above an empty purse of mouth.

Adulterers are a parade of fools.

Instead you try your very best

To remember the precise hands

That could measure all of space,

Remember those caring arms

That held you with sweet voice

That told you there was no end.

What do you still hunger for?

The tight body that moves closer

A millimeter's last year of light,

Lips that touch the invisible one

In the stilled air of any day —

Which you think you'll never mention.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

19:49 - Wednesday 27 May 2009 - comments {2} - post comment

POEM: "The African Comic Reflects"

             

I tell the one about a tree,

A burning tire and a goat,

And somehow the irony

Gets lost in the simile. Think again.

Funny indeed are the uses of the word.

Nonsense turns into mango boobs,

A bicycle disappears in the dark,

That sweet fruit might be a bomb.

The bloody taste of language.

Kids I know have to disregard

Their shit of horrible screams —

Fear of ghosts so bad they are

Ghosts themselves. No irony

I can see in the spirit-world. 

Never again to weigh that up

Against the penetrable imagination.

But the timing's difficult.

Allahu Akbar.

                                                     ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

01:29 - Monday 11 May 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

L'Angina #10: "The Wife"/THE POEM

Angel Franco/The New York Times

                                                                                                                

Some photo. Skilled eye that took it.

The many smart and sorry things

Around its premise. They said

None of it was real. It didn't really happen.

The new rectification of names, is it?

They must be right.

But to save your husband's dignity

You grab all the housekeeping money and your kids 

And you run from your country. For good.

Carefully getting out of bed this morning

Suddenly I realise it's the year 2009.

I take a shot of cigarette and coffee.

I write maybe 30 poems a year. 

I get a reasonable return.

I think maybe that's pretty good.

                                                                                                                             

             ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

13:45 - Friday 8 May 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Missing In Japan"

 

                                                    for Craig Arnold

Why does a good man disappear?

The aggregate of good deeds knows

and each sad tale follows too —

We should all like to tell of lyrical volcanoes,

a young son, a sweet fiancée,

but perhaps just when a man moves wrong

and slips by his own attention...

There, there no one says it yet.

No argument with salvation, just the need

to keep looking for a poet,

I would not stop until I found his hand.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

13:00 - Monday 4 May 2009 - comments {2} - post comment