Life poems
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Growing Apart
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We knew their names
or thought we did, we knew their faces
from an album of places wed played
in a fabulous lifetime of childhood shared.
Stoves and sunshine
© Eugene Field
Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea-
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired-as I can see-
Is that which teaches that this land's the land of lands for me.
La Vierge Au Donateur
© Edith Wharton
Here by the ample rivers argent sweep,
Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls,
Frogmouth biker
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The biker was a menace on the farm, a madman bent
on speed, intent on leaving all for dead (it was fortunate
he never left the shed). This biker was a frogmouth owl,
a petrol head who sought to ride the biggest, baddest bike
Free from intrusion
© Ivan Donn Carswell
You awaken this time with a welcoming smile, an experience
sublime, not a dream the boner from Hell
has presented itself like a prospect of fate, and reasoned
debate be damned, youll argue its merits later.
Forsaken promises
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Nothing came to claim my muse, instead I dreamed
of freedoms neatly folded in a treasure chest lying in the debris
of a crater; the best were simple choices, the rest forsaken
promises bombed to shreds beside their makers.
The Swiss Alps
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
YESTERDAY brown was still thy head, as the locks of my loved one,
Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar.
Forever Alight
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Were meetings destined then this was one
to take a leading place, the oracle decreed it fate
in a matrix of moving matter, and the signs all clattered with
chance fêted as a sweet benefactor. When we were separate
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!
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
The Voice Of Beauty Drowned
© Robert Graves
'Cry from the thicket my heart's bird!'
The other birds woke all around;
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.
Consciousness Of Our Return
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Night's grating of steel on stone and splash
of water crashing from the buckets
brings back that moment in a flash;
the night burnt bright in limb's caress
and flesh yielding flesh in passions
blessed by sealed lips.
Faustus And Helen
© Arthur Symons
HELEN
Have I slept long? You waken me from sleep.
I have forgotten something: what is it?
The Reply Of The Fountain
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
HOW deep within each human heart,
A thousand treasured feelings lie;
Things precious, delicate, apart,
Too sensitive for human eye.
Whimper Of Sympathy
© George Meredith
Hawk or shrike has done this deed
Of downy feathers: rueful sight!
Sweet sentimentalist, invite
Your bosom's Power to intercede.
Being old in the game
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It was a half-life that seemed like a genuine world
wielding hard symbolism over those who ruled it; we
lived vaguely in teen-easy ambivalence whilst our peers
took their chances in ordered existence, wearing
Love's Prayer
© John Hay
If Heaven would hear my prayer,
My dearest wish would be,
Thy sorrows not to share
But take them all on me;
If Heaven would hear my prayer.
The Tipler To His Bottle
© George Moses Horton
What hast thou ever done for me?
Defeated every good endeavor;
I never can through life agree
To place my confidence in thee,
Not ever, no, never!
