Car poems
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Shirley of Serendipity
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Where were you Shirley of the Sanguine Lake?
Where did you disappear? The echoes of your empty house
Were almost stilled yet held to soar the scheming rough
And quaver in a hollow fear. We raked the mirrored water's edge
Share of obligation
© Ivan Donn Carswell
If the debate rages in the pages of the news today
then Im confused, Ive searched and found no evidence.
Perhaps the anger of some residents about a Catholic school
thats due to close because its roll has fallen lower
Seven suits
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Seven tailored suits, matching shoes and socks,
a brace of muted ties with subtle breast pocket
handkerchiefs descried, you wouldnt credit how
badly they governed you in days gone by.
Sends the wrong message
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Whats in a song John (or is it Knuckles), whats
in a song about an unemployed, suicidal bum, caught
in the act of sheep theft which defines the Australian
psyche? Ill bet you dont know but whatever it is
To Roosevelt {2}
© Rubén Dario
It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.
Remember with affection
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Theyll always tell a story those
obscure mementos stacked on
dusty shelves, demure and silent like
the other gaudy tributes tacked
Ready to step into life
© Ivan Donn Carswell
This morning, coffee in hand, standing at the kitchen
window thinking of things that need to be done
I contemplated the post with a lean at the front gate
which I should right one day and wondered why;
Rangipo Desert
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Whangaehu waters, hot-spilled from the cauldron
of Crater Lake, swirling mud-green from the cup
between Tahurangi and Pyramid Peak,
sulphurous, sibilant among purer daughters
Pumpkins in our time
© Ivan Donn Carswell
For months on end the pumpkins lay at peace,
their parent vines had all but browned and died
although a stubborn tendril here and there had
tried to grow again glyphosate soon ended
Puissant Morons
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Clean your glory glasses, scrub the lenses clean
and see the puissant morons stare;
garbed in common guises far from unfamiliar,
guises fair as anyone you know or care,
Possums came at night
© Ivan Donn Carswell
You could see the signs which said that possums came at night
and fed upon this tree, they left their mark in fruit discards
and broken twigs and shredded leaves spread randomly
in careless piles beneath its ravaged canopy.
Political nonsense
© Ivan Donn Carswell
I asked my fellow listeners what they thought
about his claims that malfeasance was soured
within this state by parliamentary representatives
but not, of course, those members seated where
he sat in opposition. His disposition was to blame
the government as if he wasnt part of it.
Piscine kind of kinship
© Ivan Donn Carswell
To glibly say that Joe was sort of odd
quite missed the point. Peculiar in many
ways and kind of weird, I would have
been afraid of him were I a child (if I ever
Pedestrian ambitions
© Ivan Donn Carswell
My thoughts are like the boots randomly arrayed
in the rack outside the window, some in pairs neatly
stacked, comfortably worn with a relaxed air of
confidence, some scattered in patterns of bizarre
Desires that you can only tame to know
© Ivan Donn Carswell
"Zipless sex" one cynic called
this festival of fornication,
this celebration of new-found sexual strength
and urbane honesty, of sex for sex as sex alone
Partisanship and politics
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Were I not a patriot, which of course I am, I would explain
just how the term remains a sticking point within my craw,
how it contains a core of prudish mockery, dissembles jingoistic
claims. But I am and not ashamed. I love the land, the people
Paper towel
© Ivan Donn Carswell
She wrapped a paper towel around his softened cock
in what he thought was quaint affection, that was new,
an after-thought perhaps, refined appreciation?
She had never talked a lot in bed just let her actions
Out of The Annexe
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It grew out of the Annexe and our Corps in a world at peace
while our army trained, magnificent in its heroic pretence,
for an implausible war. They were halcyon days
in the shelter, days that combine in easy recollections
Out of ideas
© Ivan Donn Carswell
If I dont write something good tonight I will sleep
without the comforting Canopus of deep believers,
if I sleep at all, and this light which ignites
my enormous poetic conceit and guides my muse
Other side
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The dung was recent, not an event
unusual in itself but difficult to explain
of cows grazing the other side of the fence.
Too new to be dismissed without a thought,
