All Poems
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For Siggy & Bill
© Ivan Donn Carswell
so I took him too. I flicked them through,
scanned a few pages, gazed at the ancient
pictures, yawned, left them on the bed
and rediscovered them this morning.
Now I have two books to read
Natalias Resurrection: Sonnet XIV
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
His servants opened. None appeared to doubt
How it might happen their young lord stood there,
But led him in. The house as for a rout
Stood swept and garnished and exceeding fair.
For Harry (My College Room-mate who Died)
© Ivan Donn Carswell
He cut his hand and it bled, the flesh
inside was red and the hurt discounted the flood
of red and vibrant blood that pulsed
from the wound. But he was a warrior,
Novembre
© François Coppée
Captif de l'hiver dans ma chambre
Et las de tant d'espoirs menteurs,
Je vois dans un ciel de novembre,
Partir les derniers migrateurs.
Every Time I laugh Aloud (An Ode to Short People)
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Every time I laugh aloud, who springs to mind but Johnnie Howard?
Cathartic laughter eases stress which Johnnie causes in excess,
so when I hum acerbic lines of Randy Newmans quirky song
dont want no short people round here,
Ekka
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The Ekka institution bares us all, though call it Exhibition, Royal
Queensland Show, its that time of year when you will go in
liberal spirit where the spectacle of fantasies escrow.
Burns
© Charles Harpur
MY OWN WILD BURNS! these rude-wrought rhymes of thine
In golden worth are like the unshapely coin
Of some new realm, yet pure as from the mine
And Art may well be spared with such alloy
As dims the bullion to improve the die!
Echoes in an empty room
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The strident sounds of silence echo
in a darkened room, a beggars tomb
of emptied space and barrenness, a
shameful waste, a bitter sadness.
Dreams of better days
© Ivan Donn Carswell
At break of day we rested, the contest of our wills
declined to wrest the peace away and where
the foreign powers held sway a quiet was in abundance;
a ghostly calm entranced the crowd shrouded
Dreams of a lifetime
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Ronald Hi Khong Wong is gone,
sadly he deceased
the commencement of this week.
It wasnt unexpected.
Dont talk to me of War
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Dont talk to me of War or stalk the ground
our fabled soldiers died upon, Im sound
of limb and strong of will, my mind as clear
as when we learnt those gory lessons founded
Does your semen smell like camembert?
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Does your semen smell like camembert? Its just
a thought I had today at lunch, I must have had
the hunch before, perhaps reversed, and then
forgot. Its not the sort of thought youd have a lot
The Voice Of Beauty Drowned
© Robert Graves
'Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!'
The other birds woke all around;
Does the name toll a bell?
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Let them declare Jihad then, let them despair that I
will speak the truth as I see it, and where that truth bears
brutally on their lies I will have applied my brand of terrorism as
desperately as they do theirs. Abu Bakar Bashir,
Do you know who is thinking of you?
© Ivan Donn Carswell
If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way
its little wonder what other people think of you, but
the ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close
in their hearts, whore always thinking of you;
The Exposed Nest
© Robert Frost
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
Dead thoughts of corpses
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The symbols that we use are T shirts of the dead
thoughts of corpses without heads, a rictus
without sound open-mouthed, empty, unbound.
And if you ever write those clichés which incite
my approbation, fuck you, I am not amused.
And if I ever do, then fuck me too.
The Riding Of The Rebel
© William Henry Ogilvie
And the boys were dumb with wonder, and sat, and the Red Creek overseer
Was first to drop from the stockyard fence and give him a hearty cheer.
He raised his hat in answer and --- the golden hair floated free!
And the blue eyes lit with laughter as she shouted merrily:
"You can reach me down my bridle, give my girths and saddle back,
For the outlaw of Glenidol is a broken lady's hack!"
Dead poet
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Im sure it would be easier to survive as a dead poet,
I mean it in the surmise that I wont be tempted
to revise or rewrite the poem I wrote last night, or the
poems I wrote last week (which make me cringe when I
