Car poems

 / page 615 of 738 /
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For you secular needs

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Somebody please explain, can you help
me understand; I’ve watched the weather
radar creep its colours on the screen
and watched out of the window for the band

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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

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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,

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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 Newman’s quirky song
‘don’t want no short people ‘round here’,

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Ekka

© Ivan Donn Carswell

The Ekka institution bares us all, though call it Exhibition, Royal
Queensland Show, it’s that time of year when you will go in
liberal spirit where the spectacle of fantasies escrow.

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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!

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Echoes in an empty room

© Ivan Donn Carswell

The strident sounds of silence echo
in a darkened room, a beggar’s tomb
of emptied space and barrenness, a
shameful waste, a bitter sadness.

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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

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Dreams of a lifetime

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Ronald Hi Khong Wong is gone,
sadly he deceased
the commencement of this week.
It wasn’t unexpected.

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Don’t talk to me of War

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Don’t talk to me of War or stalk the ground
our fabled soldiers died upon, I’m sound
of limb and strong of will, my mind as clear
as when we learnt those gory lessons founded

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Does your semen smell like camembert?

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Does your semen smell like camembert? It’s just
a thought I had today at lunch, I must have had
the hunch before, perhaps reversed, and then
forgot. It’s not the sort of thought you’d have a lot

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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,

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Do you know who is thinking of you?

© Ivan Donn Carswell

If you start out every day in the same old gloomy way
it’s little wonder what other people think of you, but
the ones who matter most are the ones who hold you close
in their hearts, who’re always thinking of you;

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The Exposed Nest

© Robert Frost

You were forever finding some new play.

So when I saw you down on hands and knees

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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.

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Dead poet

© Ivan Donn Carswell

I’m sure it would be easier to survive as a dead poet,
I mean it in the surmise that I won’t 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

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Dead man’s clothes

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Growing up, I propose,
is like wearing a dead man’s clothes.
Death has a way of levelling the ground.
I have found the closer your relationship

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Days of the slow roll

© Ivan Donn Carswell

It was the days of the slow roll,
times when we dextrously dressed
our hand-rolled cigarettes
with a dearth of fine-cut tobacco,

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Crying to be written

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Dawn has reached the ridges to the north and a thin
line of light chased the night west; it is the best
time of day for me – a cup of coffee, Benson & Scud
pretending to sleep in their baskets at my feet,

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Courage is a motherless lamb

© Ivan Donn Carswell

For a small child crossing the pen alone was a courageous feat,
occasionally, with a maniacal bleat, the wether would burst from cover
and butt whomever graced his yard. He meant it in fun, something
he had done since his bottle-fed youth, he knew no other form of greeting.