Thursday 25 December 2014

Wye


seventeen wye river haiku philip harvey wrote in december 2014

no haiku is solid as the footbridge straight over the sunned river

haiku is not the word we use to explain the moment of haiku

emptiness no word none can describe even in a useless haiku

right now the blue satin bowerbird collects a blue satin haiku

science rushes through the inlet on four wheels missing bushland haiku

nothing’s more fun than making up crazy haiku near no-one will read

the haiku of the sink after dinner, so many unfinished thoughts

nighttime scrabble K on triple letter score makes haiku out of ha

at night tiny house lights shine but not one haiku forces from my mind

empty beach empty road at sunrise on empty sea a haiku ship

light enlivens every limit free of haiku’s fixed monotony

kookaburra syllables name the sound as haiku frogs pobblebonk

sounds from a passing vehicle reach the car, something like a haiku

direct contact haiku: scribbly bark, banksia fibre, planed timber …

the haiku of sea condensation hits windows in streaming droplets

what do cockatoos screeching decades care for men and their haiku books?

only from lower haiku ranges may we view impassable peaks







Saturday 15 November 2014

Shirtfront



Recently the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, threatened to shirtfront the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. A shirtfront is a term used in Australian Rules Football, a game that originated in the southern states of the country and not Abbott’s hometown of Sydney, where the main winter sport remains rugby. Shirtfronting is actually not legitimate in Australian football, despite the beliefs of some followers of the game, nor it seems Tony Abbott, who clearly has little grasp of the niceties of the game, at all. An umpire could report you if the shirtfront was crude enough. A shirtfront is a brazen charge at another player, usually with the intention of knocking him down or even injuring him so he has to be taken from the ground. When done behind play it is completely outside the law. In Melbourne parlance, any player known as a shirtfronter is, by definition, probably a dirty player and someone to avoid on, and possibly even off, the field. It's about playing the man, not the ball, which is why Abbott's use of the term is so disgraceful. To threaten someone with a shirtfront is to amplify the fact that you don't care about the rules and will do whatever you like to hurt the opposition. No footballer would brag about shirtfronting because it is poor form and proof you don't know how to use your playing skills. Sometimes it's the resort of a coward or bully. That said, there are certain famous shirtfronting rough diamonds who were also greats of the game, including ‘Captain Blood’ Jack Dyer, ‘Mr Football’ Ted Whitten, and that model of deportment Leigh Matthews. None of those men ever won a Brownlow medal.



It needs also to be understood that most shirtfronts are, almost by definition, unpremeditated. They usually occur in the fast tempo of play when a player loses it and decides in a split second that it will be tactically more advantageous to knock this player over by brute force than go for the ball or manage a legitimate bump, which is a lot to think in a split second. This is why the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, a Melburnian and not someone from the rugby capital of Sydney, calls Abbott's threat of a shirtfront on the President of Russia a 'brain snap'. A shirtfront is always the result of a brain snap. Abbott, by using the threat, reveals that he doesn't even really know what a shirtfront is, but obviously its macho connotations appeal to him for some reason. A footballer in Melbourne who seriously threatened someone with a shirtfront would be treated as a laughing stock because it goes outside the rules of the game; the player would be cautioned, if he wasn't banned. This is why Abbott is a laughing stock in Melbourne. Politically speaking, he has made a fool of himself because he doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'shirtfront'. It also reveals that he is someone who speaks first and is advised later, rather than the other way around.

Friday 10 October 2014

Vestige (Philip Hunter)



VESTIGE (2011) Philip Hunter


Waking 

Although art historians and biographers claim expertise in this area, it is often difficult to say what is going on in his private life. He was shacked up with her but was meanwhile having it off with this other person, who was coincidentally (or not) a friend of his best friend at the time, only then, against all expectation, he leaves her, or in fact let’s face it them, and takes up with the disillusioned wife of another artist, that artist meanwhile discovering true bliss in the company of someone who was, up until then, a famous serial monogamist, the accountant, or perhaps secret collector, of the artist in question. All of this was some time ago, don’t we know it, and cause now more for amused information than the tears and bedlam it all caused at the time. It is hard to see this in the work, especially if it’s a landscape, but theories are bound to emerge. The artist keeps drawing voluptuous abstract lines across his works, reminiscent of the erotic contours of his several lovers, or else just outlines of a canola field. Various hieroglyphs and oddity shapes on the side of the painting could be code for the fact that he is having something on the side. Or maybe it’s all in the mind of the viewer, or the artist. Maybe he is not having something on the side, being too busy pressing delicately the fingers of his paint brushes against the soft firm skin of the next canvas, out in the open for everyone to see, somewhere out the other side of St. Arnaud.    




Dreaming


Curiously, it is once we get past conjecture into known reportage that the whole thing takes on the quality of a dream. The main art historian (some of them haven’t been born yet) sees no special need to merge work with life, though privately has always marvelled at the artist’s increased use of a lighter palette after he met his future wife. Biographers struggle with the flimsy evidence of hearsay anecdotes while overcoming his stonewalling statements along the lines of “I am a landscape painter, that’s about the sum of it!” or, “The handling of shades is best left to those with experience in these things.” More adventurous biographers venture into psychology, arguing that vestiges of the work must surely detail the reality of his home life, but then generally draw a blank. She with whom he was shacked up laughs it off as part of the folly of youth; anyway is not a reliable source. She with whom he was having it off now lives in the United States and can only be reached via her agent, though sometimes her face returns benignly to the artist’s mind in his dreams. The disillusioned wife pursued a whole new lifetime of illusions, with her own theories about the artist, his prejudices, his sleeping habits, his brush application, his private opinions, his football club, about all of which she is tight-lipped, except to her long time girlfriend. The other artist is busy commissioning his own biographer, who plans to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth from his client’s point of view: it promises to be hard-hitting. The serial monogamist has given up that pattern of existence as it’s just too much hard work. In fact, she’s given up on artists more or less, is jack of the whole pack of them and their narcissistic self-preoccupations. Including self-promotions. “Tell me about it!” she states stridently. If there is someone on the side no one is saying, though the artist is sometimes seen in Kyneton at unlikely times of the week for no apparent good reason. The children of these people have their own stuff to deal with, while some of their opinions of these ‘old fogeys’ are not publishable in respectable art journals. Avoid having anything to do with lawyers! 


Sunday 5 October 2014

Wye


seventeen wye river haiku philip harvey wrote in october 2014

earplugged high above sea her bramble of wires play unheard-of songs

window jar of shells wait to be tipped back into years’ sheer swirl and crash

inside her novel of cathedral life she forgets, for now, bush beach

one stick of bangalore incense burns down: time taken on this haiku

brain finds words for ‘waves’: inexorable, folding, arched, blooms, final, first

one rounded weed above sludge and leaves: the green light to clear the gutters

hair-skin-bone roadkill on the boulevarde: everything moves for shelter

it’s like the fridge: you only get out of it what you put into it

it’s like rosellas: you have no control over it, they just show up

carefree dogs chase wave foam ahead of owners, dawdling with uncatched leads

winter’s storm wreck chaos is viewed through springtime’s upright theodolites

river ripples, only seen by moonlight, meet tide only due to moon

meals lifted by grace, memories, red wine, coarse clicks of the peppermill

thinking no one sees, green bowerbird picks her fill of white waxflowers

sun transforms morning rooms, only trace of night the black of candlewicks

that slim slip of black inch gone down between stone steps makes mind think skink, skink

dragonflies tangent above our heads as we stand in hard surf rush



Sunday 10 August 2014

Melbourne August


seventeen melbourne haiku philip harvey wrote in august 2014

tiny lady near huge sculpture buttons her coat waiting for old friend

outside office entrance smokers share a flared match and compare the frosts

south yarra schoolboys on peak trains flat chat without end algorithms

front seat drivers swap family foibles all along dawn freeway

new york truths fuse their double fantasy who’ve never been to new york

last night’s tax form face stares at bronchial planning sunshine holidays

park bench world’s one daylong parade: cyclists, ipods, walkers with their dogs

laughing in midday café unaware their jokes rode last night’s nightmares

passing smiles between customer and seller get them through the minutes

his eye signs of thrilled awareness notice his wintry look of knowledge

two talk outmoded existentialism on tram stop of mobiles

man and cap on pavement unwashed beg man whether he gives what loose coin

lovers separated on tram have all the time to reach their next stop

unknown refugee stares at well-showered face that will not return her look

1 a.m. god dreamer tends to the loss of a dead man in drug lane

closing time: long lost friends rave their past near the café window, alone

cold outside: after mild tensions, in each other’s arms, they fall asleep

Thursday 17 July 2014

Discobbolos


 
Discobbolos

agnostic adjectives
blue boss-woss
child’s-play conjunctions
detached diction
epileptic ellipses
friend foss
galapagos grammar
holman haunts
incongruity inconsequential
jerusalem journeys
knock-knock knock-knees
lear-like lear-ning
mostly meaningful
nosey nouns
ornithological outsider
perspicacious pronouns
questions queer
runcible rhetoric
scroobious sentences
torrible toponyms
universal uncertainty
valuable verbs
white watercolours
xerxes excursions
year-like year-ning
zoological zeugma

Philip Harvey

Saturday 12 July 2014

Xanadu


Xanadu



                    auspicious air
barley barracks
                candelabra cacti
                          dilapidated dragonstones
   erstwhile estates
                          four-sided flow
                          gusting globeflowers
                    herbal halls
                          invisible infrastructure
         jade juts
   kublai khan
                       leafy layers
        mongolian marblemeadows
                          nothing now
        overgrown oblongs
            palatial pastures
                                       quiescent quadrangles
        rush ruins
                        stupa shrubs
                 tumbled tilework
 undertakings undone  
 vanished villas
                   weed-choked waterclocks 
              excavated exits
   yet yurts
                         zoomorphic zephyrs

Philip Harvey





Saturday 28 June 2014

Wye


seventeen wye river haiku philip harvey wrote in june 2014

black pink rose grey sunrise reveals for sale signs, empty caravan parks

wake from city corridor lost script dreams to ocean house open books

melbourne recedes to french parades, english façades, american skyline

sourdough is warm, coffee good as we windowgaze the cold grey sea

where did such great waters rise, from earth or sky, that seethe and surge and swell

a log, a seal, it’s winter surfer leaping tall waves in single bounds

white heron stands waiting for river fish to swim through its reflection

solstice high tide leaves twigs kelp bubbles in lines feathers along sand grass

fresh rock alone fallen in high winds down cliff for cars to swerve round, brown

quiet hotel soul music as red ball thumps into corner pocket

bridie on wye: a good thing is when you wave at a car, they wave back

silent deckchairs sit one on top of the other looking out to sea

at grey horizon’s long end of cloud mist waves showers shade: a rainbow

green tops of eucalypts reflect in rainwater on sunlit decking

containers with all latest software hardware steer clear of shipwreck coast

emma thompson starts stops her lines on scratchy dvd, starts again

under doonas after goodnights lightsout, the heavenly sound of rain





Saturday 21 June 2014

Keaton


Keaton


                    acclaimed absurdist
balance buster
                camera charisma
                          droll daredevil
   eloquent eyes
                          flickering fallguy    
                    gigantic gags
                    halo hat
                          irrepressible improviser
         judicious juggler
   knockdown knockout
                       locomotive leaps
        motion maverick
                          nonplussing non-stop
    original optimist
            perfect pitcher
                                       quicksilver quips
        roughhouse reelers
                        salvation somersaults
                 timeless timing
 unforgettable unsentimentalist
 vaudeville valentine
                   weightless weight
               existential exhibitionist
   yearning youth
                         zany zenith




Sunday 1 June 2014

Rabbit


WORDS BY PHILIP, BRIDIE AND CAROL IN MEMORY OF FLUFFY

Quietly at the frontdoor with a glint in his eye.
Guardian at the doormat.
Very fond of carrot sprays, the leafy ends, not the vegetable itself.
We minimise carrot intake as not good for plip-plops.
He is a soul inside a firm body.
Warm to hold in your lap.
Never says a word, but you know he might want to say something.
Placid.
Some claim to have heard him speak.
Completely black like something friendly about the night time.
Midnight.
Even his eyes, black.
But his fur also brown underneath, auburn-like.
When we look very closely.
Hops out of the way when you come near.
Likes to hide in his closet when you have to change the hutch paper.
His nose sticking out.
Able to leap at will great distances, once placed on the ground.
Sits still.
Likes to sit on a couch in the warmth and not move for ages.
Never can be sure what he is thinking.
Enjoys the cat’s company when she comes round the corner.
She visits when the humans are away all day.
He likes the company.
Peers through the hexagons of wire at his hexagonal world.
The cootamundra keeps him cool in summer.
She sits on the armchair beside him.
He is cool from sharp rays under the lovely shade cloth.
Sucks ferociously on the water bottle.
Sometimes leaves water all over the floor.
Arthur built the hutch out of some stuff he had lying around.
Sturdy palings and solid foundations and perfect stretches of wire.
Gaps for the droppings to fall through.
Plip-plops.
Arthur said we could hose it down.
A little bedroom or closet for cold nights and snoozes.
Always impossible to say when he might be taking a nap.
Sitting with his paws at rest.
There is the garden setting.
In the run he goes backward and forward for an escape.
When he gets out everyone dashes about in a state.
He never gets under the fence.
Most times he is too busy digging a hole.
He wants to dig holes.
Big holes which he creates in no time flat.
We go round asking the neighbours where.
He never wants to run away.
But sometimes we fear he might get lost.
Maybe he just wants to sit in the hole.
Maybe to him it’s just a game.
He loves sitting on the bare earth.
Earth is soothing.
We find him in the shed or under the fallen timber, digging.
He makes no effort to avoid us.
Up in the air with all fours he is returned to his home.
A happy outcome.
Would never survive five minutes in the wild, or out in the street.
Sits chewing some pellets.
Once on his own he mulls things over.
He is a hermit in his hermitage.
We come and visit him.
The wisdom he imparts is to hold your ground.
Stay where you belong.
Learn the beauty of silence.
He is extremely clean.
It is not apparent when he washes but he’s always clean.
The black glossy fur is like the sea in the sun.
The swell is smooth and seamless.
His floppy ears are always silken.
Like silk ribbons.
Sometimes he goes to the sea.
On the decking at Wye River he gazes out at the horizon.
It is very refreshing.
Exhilarating.
Bowerbirds scarcely glance in his direction.
There is a seed cake to nibble on.
We watch him through the panes of glass.
He watches us, sometimes.
His lop ears reach almost to the ground.
Most times his tail is very discrete.
Rarely does he cause a scene.
Except when the newspaper is rough.
Or he hasn’t enough fresh grass taken from the wayside.
He jumps at our hand and nips us if he is cranky.
When his paper is being changed.
He scratches and jumps about making chaos.
He came from Victoria Gardens.
Of all domestic rabbits he is one in a million.
No one may compare to him.
His silences are long as a summer evening.
He sits in the corner like it’s no-one’s concern but his own.
He is not concerned.
He lopes over to deposit some more roundy plops in his tray.
Even at the bathroom he is dignified and indifferent.
Black fur bristles in the light breeze.
With his tray he is 90% accurate.
That is, 10% inaccurate.
Which is pretty good going for a rabbit.
High ratings.
His paws have lovely pads due to evolution.
Little fur comes out between the padlets.
He misses the earth his forebears sat upon since before time.
Arthur’s floor is custom-built but is not sandy.
It is made of sturdy planks.
Thoughtful at rest.
Fluffy watches the humans carry on like idiots.
Later they admit to one another they were idiots.
He chews some very good food mix, consistency of muesli.
Who knows what he wishes.
Sometimes he ails and we take him to the vet.
He gets a pill-pusher and some pills.
He is told to eat more straw and pellets for roughage.
But he loves the other seeds.
Particularly the coloured fruit pastilles.
Whatever, is he worried?
Sometimes we have to trim his nails.
Very carefully.
If we aren’t careful his nails bleed, if we trim too low.
Also, we have to spray him for mites.
He is happy to be sprayed.
We rub his tummy.
He likes that.
Fluffy freakout!
This occurs when a cockroach enters the hutch.
When he has a digging tantrum.
When things are less than satisfactory for a rabbit.
When attention must be drawn to the water level.
It’s bad.
Floor paper rises up into paper cathedrals.
Bowls of grain are tipped over.
He runs around in circles.
Straw is tossed in disarray.
The world must be brought to order by his humans.
Smoothing of the black coat.
Placing in the large armchair.
Filling of the water feeder.
Gentle words.
Fresh paper, fresh everything.
Or, if clement, a hop in the run.
If we don’t carry him in our arms correctly he kicks.
Correctly is with all fours safely tucked under and body cosy.
He watches the garden go by.
Long slender grass is of special interest.
Sometimes we sing him a song.
We change the words of some pop song by Neil Sedaka.
Oh Fluffy I am but a fool!
To avoid Fluffy freakout in the car, hang cloths on windows.
He sits quietly.
His carry-coop is neat.
Mozart from the radio and human voices calm him down.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Fluffy likes to nibble his seedcake.
The Western Ring Road, interesting.
He watches the You Yangs go by with minimum stress.
Visits to the vet, no worries.
The nose is the most active exterior feature.
The heart and the nose work at all times.
Twitches are moderate, steady, or rapid.
Even slow twitch is regular.
No twitch is a bad sign.
Twitch of nose causes the cat to run out of the kitchen.
The nose is primal.
Standing on his back legs the first thing we notice is twitching.
His nose cleaves the air.
He is like us, a creature of this one Earth.
Flight might be interesting, but the ground is good.
We will all go back there one day.
Sometimes there is a breakout and we don’t know.
We walk down the path with our washing.
There he is sitting outside staring up at us.
Even the slightest gap can be slithered through.
It is just a game.
He will always come back.
Twitches at the sight of us.
He is a peacemaker.
The sun shines in his eyes softly.
He gazes up at the moon like you or me.
Up is where the moon is because he bends his neck.
Witness of the street.
Presence on the veranda.
Children visit and want to pick him up.
They lift the hutch roof and stare into his black fur.
Humans do this for quite some time.
Adults must tell children not to poke the rabbit.
Poking is unpleasant.
Adults are charmed by the presence of a rabbit.
Children are excited.
They want to carry him around and see if he will jump over things.
He doesn’t.
He sits quietly.
A charmed child may watch the rabbit for half an hour at a time.
Adults like him to sit on their lap while they gabble on about nothing.
But then he starts digging into their knee.
This is the sign of things to come.
Namely, he has to do Number Twos.
They plop him quickly outside.
Then continue gabbling about something or other.
Rabbits don’t gabble.
This one doesn’t.
He keeps his own counsel.
He dreams of more carrot top at supper time.
This is not Beatrix Potter.
No one is hiding under a flowerpot.
No one has left their jacket to be hung in the vegetable patch.
Australia is overrun with rabbits.
Not lop-eared black rabbits, but lithe brown English rabbits.
They are an absurd nuisance.
Their ears stick up.
They even gambol when the cat is away.
In his hutch he sometimes puts paper on his head and runs around.
His hutch is a stately pleasure dome.
Well, not a dome but a sloped roof.
The stand is two solid timber blocks.
These are joined at the base by lengths of hardwood.
The floor is perfectly parallel separated planks.
At one end Arthur has fashioned a cell for the rabbit.
It has an opening for exit and entrance.
Also a tin roof so nothing can fall in there, twigs, rain.
The rest of the slope roof is wire net.
The roof lifts up and down.
It can be fixed in position by a metal rod, when we change things.
Ventilation is excellent in summer.
In winter on cold mornings he comes inside.
He is the person superlative.
Saturday the last day of May.
Today we had to place him in his new home.
In the front garden near the north fence.
We had a ceremony.
We visited his old homes, the indoor hutch, the run.
His favourite home, the veranda hutch.
Rigor mortis had already set in since Friday morning.
He was in a pillowcase with his feet sticking out.
There was deep respect.
Words were said.
Others had silent thoughts.
Above him we planted a Grevillea Superb.
Low, spreading, evergreen shrub.
Bears large, reddish-orange flowers all year round.
Grevillea banksii x bipinnatifida.
He is at rest in his long-lasting home.
We read out a celtic prayer about the wind and sun and rain.
We will miss him.
We will think about him again.

WORDS BY PHILIP, BRIDIE AND CAROL IN MEMORY OF FLUFFY