Treat Day

Like the whole world
wrapped in glossed
orange and
deep grooving
gold...
and fused in
togetherness wedges
is a pumpkin present.
I wish you
a patch
and two and three
and more...
of ever mendable
patches
to cover
to cure
the dun
the dolor
lands.
Like the sun's
invitation
to Aurora
every day.
Like a vast
carpet of
remember
the next day
to moorish aim.
Like a pod
of everything
alive
in the plenty
of seed
and the
invention of a
pulpy cook up.
I wish you a traveller
with the fire of Brumby Jack
in the lantern
heart-
the high water
of home.

Little Big Sky and the Tiler

Big Sky
Big cashmere fleeced
Big tiler in the sky
Whatchya makin' today?
Hey...
Big polychrome
glaze under a white eiderdown
adventure.
Little breeze
at ya fingertips
Hey?
Little soft light
for the big fight
for the soft flight
in the dark storm
in the grey grit
in the deep grout
in between bright.
Whatchya makin'
hey?
In the sun rise
in the cool slate
of marbled wise
to the terracotta
lights show
sun's low
to the little by little
to the pastel to vibrant
You
Hey You...
Little big sky
Little big sky
The Tiler.

Calling Windy Weather: Hillary and Trump

Yesterday in the afternoon, ripples without crests began the stirring. It did not arrive all of a sudden but a sense of what the wind can do whispered sonic guises low and temperamental. I sat down listening for the outside and the wind began her rise. I sat down inside on a windy day in October in Australia. I was rather ready. We all expected a showdown of sorts. I even went so far as to imagine the scene, all in the middle of a great golden Bonanza set on horseback with complementary gun-smoke at the Ponderosa theme park. And we all got an invite! The whole world.  After all America’s such a long way from here and it’s easy to see everything from afar as a flat pack you never get to assemble properly. At times there’s that feeling you arrived to a film after forgetting to bring three dimensional glasses, don’t you think?  I even went so far as to savour the moment at first. What’s not better than a great antipodes in point of view while a raging, fight to the tooth and nail and down to the wire, kind of deliberation blazes wild. I suppose, contextually speaking, it was perhaps always going to feel this way. You know, all of it was brewing for so many long months and all of it different to the politics of home where I live. Days upon days, upon weeks, upon months of achingly expensive campaigning. It all seemed, in part,  to have become a microcosm of war itself , in all its seedy revolt and sad divisions. You know I expected a show down but I never expected to feel so very sad.
 The wind seemed to hear me too, on the roof turning home into a child’s rattle, at the windows like blind memories escalating, smudging the borders between music and noise. I love the wind – restorative and an experience worth going far to see, as the naturalist W.H. Hudson, once suggested. The wind also seemed to feel the depths of a tiny rectangle in my living room where Hillary and Donald would fight to the mistral of a most fierce and rather frightening battle and I have to say, in my lifetime, the most divided of all political debates. I’m quite certain that kind of politics is not what the world needs right now.I’m a woman-once a girl, many times privy to the double standards my sisters (and brothers and others) have faced and fought against in the road towards gender equality. I love history. I absolutely love history. History is like the ultimate scholar. History has been there. History knows. History has given us the keys to our future. History has taught us about love and history has made a lot of mistakes. We need to listen to history. History has opened us up to opportunity and choices. History has told us that women do better, as all human beings do, where choices are available and free to make, where shaming and blaming is removed from the dialogue and where decision making is seen as an individually important and complex process with loving arms at the ready. History has taught us that any person coming at politics with fundamentalism and a “blanket rule” on deeply emotional and seriously psychological issues surrounding a woman’s body, will cause harm within, what is, in fact, a very socially irresponsible and forcibly religious approach.  If we are to go back in history it is to see where this kind of doctrine suppressed women, had women’s health placed at risk, had children born to a cruel fate (google F.A.S for a start) where traditionally the bucked stopped at them and still does in fact! History tells us that the rate at which young women are left as the primary caregiver to an unplanned pregnancy (or even one that is planned!) is grossly disproportionate to the rate at which a man takes hold of his responsibilities in love and equal care. This is a fact. Until Donald Trump has conceived a child, given birth, raised a child as a sole parent on the poverty line I do not want to hear another word form him on this issue.I say this in the context of where the debate reached cyclone proportions. The twister arrived for sure as though Dorothy was up on the top looking down for a birds -eye view of a place much bigger than Kansas, building momentum and funnelling this way and that through the Middle East. Yeah and if Dorothy had of been there she would have realized her kind of displacement paled into insignificance then. Sanctity of human life? Wowsers, tell that to the many thousands upon thousands of human beings who have lost their loves, their life force, their reason to be here on Earth, while a war rages in the belly of a dogs guts, determined in the darkness of everything futile. And Mr Trump wants to return with troupes ready for combat? What Trump seems not to understand is that ISIS exists, partially as a consequence of young angry Iraqis renouncing the intrusion of American forces into their country. So sending US troupes back, in the way he seemed to be suggesting, will only again further inflame the situation, not to mention his deamonizing of the Muslim faith. He will almost certainly make America and it’s allies a greater target for Muslim extremism.

In the buffeting gale, the back and forth between a woman who is already working in a related field of expertise, that being in foreign policy as the Secretary of State to a man who isn’t, when pressed on his feelings about Mr Putin the response seemed rather casual and congenial where I myself began to cry on the lounge-room floor. I write from the truest place without feeling over-bloated with sentiment. Did he forget? It seemed to me Mr Trump was running into very dangerous territory here, not realising the seriousness of Syria’s plight in which Russia supported the Assad regime whose blanket bombing of Aleppo is causing a humanitarian disaster, endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Remember this, thousands of innocent civilians are trapped in this warzone. People are starving, people are without electricity and water, people are mourning the loss of life and the loss of love. No mention of human life and emotion and the ache of loss was documented in these moments. It should have been! 

I’m sure pitting Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton served western economies very well. In his, to the very right alliances with the gun lobby and christian pro lifer’s and border control extremists, it was clear a media circus could prevail and bolster the coffers for those in the business of owning the news. But It wasn’t in the best interests of peace. We need peace. We need togetherness. Hillary speaks of this. She has also has the experience from the community out to understand how to be a peacemaker.

Make America great again? Let’s think bigger than that please. Let’s come together to find peaceful solutions from home to far and wide and everywhere. All of us. It’s not an easy suggestion in a globalised world, but it’s possible. It’s everyone’s job and we can help in our own ways by practicing love, peacefulness, togetherness, understanding and inclusive practice, by talking, by putting our weapons away and finding fair solutions. We need to keep trying. Even Yoda makes mistakes. There is a try and it’s ours for today and tomorrow. The answers are blowing in the wind. Let’s find them. NOW…

Double Hearted

Quick beat
flutter- fly
rest well
little while

minikin pulse
to litte double
hearted
to flicker
flaming
tongue to
fire started.

Topside
flutter-fly
under cover
bowed tie

Figure eight
to sky write
your art show
to wild height

flutter, flyer
quiver, shiver
flitter, linger
flutter hither

To sweet life
to probe in
warm fold
the landing
hold

Fine flares
and little dares
flutter-fly
in wonder
wares.

Oh My Hat!

Dearest Nixie,

In time travelling the lost frontiers might it be in history that we find our future? I am here to say it is so and prithee may we ponder and in pondering may we remember this:
" When in doubt mumble. When in trouble, delegate. When in charge, ponder." James. H, Boren

It seems I am in rather a good spot of trouble Dear Miss and I've come forwards ..."Where the world is ancient, the world is new, the dreams are yet to come true..." Howard Draper , in rather the bit of a mumbling mess.

Regretfully, I, all but an afterling of neither grace nor finery and from the year 1128 Anno Domini,  must but soul serf a practical peasants lot in the trantles of my wenchly wattle cruck, knowing full well, resistance is all but feudal. You see upon arrival I was named. I was titled lowly. I was given little of nothing and my birthright only toil and depreciation. And yet.... I found everything and more in the cockles of a good hat!

Might I make your acquaintance as a certain Miss. N, Imue (Serfly Peasant of the lake and milliner to the Knights of the Round Table). Oh my hat! I do love them. Perhaps it the idea of what lies beneath, for surely it has been said and thought that such an organ connects in throbbing harmony to every other organ of the body. Oh it is like a presents wrap on the top of a noggin and I have stepped backwards forwards and somewhere in between in search, always searching for the perfect hat. And all of them with something of a story to tell, a tale to spin and a lesson in life at the ready. Bucket, bowler, cloche or cap, helmet, fez, courbeen, top of the top hats or yellow bonnet, cowboy or hajab  with ear muffs or without, in sickness with a warm beanie or in health with a good sun smarty of the wide brimmed variety,  the adore fedora, felt or le fur or le bucket sheik, with fruit or with drinking straws attached and a lovely chortle of good humour and on and on does the list burgeon into brilliant possibility, interconnectivity and, and, and ....well magic!

I have a love. Secret without squirrels although if they want to conjoin in our adventure so let it be. Merlin the Entertainer is his name. Merlin is more important than many could have ever known and key advisor to King Arthur. Merlon's  a confidante of mine too though and all of it behind the scenes of course . We spend many evenings together and yet he must only look down where i but look upwards. Must it be so set in stone? Give me class. For god knows I've given him classes in everything under the god dam sun. He's of higher station than I and while my designs for both combat and leisure ware have always been received rather favourably, not enough to win a heart, alas. I shan't be offering coins and any golden chalice but I could be in the business to giveth a golden heart, and that be mine.

Do you know,  he comes to me, throws rocks at my window, in a state of practical underdress in a dither and hither to ask of help with regard to a sword removal from a stone, sleighing of dragons and the missing wear-a-bouts of a certain holy grail. And I've even had to offer relationship advice via Merlin to the King on the wandering eyes of lady Guenivere. I've gone so far as to teach him about playing music and jocular gaieties to win the King's approval, even to the point of his given title "The Entertainer. "All if it worked and still here I am practically relegated to the stocks.

Could you lend a hand or a hat perhaps?

Yours Miss. N. Imuer

Dear Miss Imuer,

I love the drama of a good hat too my dear and don't you be intimidated by crowns now for the design isn't exactly rainproof is it? Might I start by saying I loved what you did with the coif dear. It was rather progressive and non gender specific of you too! Well let it be known I am most willing to be coiffed and it should not need to be hidden in any sentiment around eating spatchcock in the halls of silver service.
And speaking of service, I'm not sure I can be of much help to you malady, although might points  and peaks be an idea perhaps, for a change. Take a design turn and bring it to his head. Think Sonny and rolling mountain top thoughts:
"It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again. Sonny Rollins.
Make a pointed hat for this Merlin fellow and let the magic of love take flight.

Yours

Ms Nixie.

Little Puddle Duck

Is it a wild fanged goose and the gander at the top of a tall tower looking to little puddle duck with all those rooftop angles pointed high to low from the windows of eyes looking down noses?
In the depth of it all, past the hink and the honkity honk of tattle tales only bred in the belly of their own back biting, Shingebiss lives. And even when, from time to time, confined to a blushing violet puddle, puddle duck lives! Puddle Duck sees life and knows love and cries and moans and laughs the truth at least, a-joined to sea and sky by the victory of resourceful coloured paper chains that mean togetherness. For it is those that survive a harsh winter as such who can look up and not as much down on folks. And looking up is so often the wonder of more. So then I might not mind to be puddle duck or the pelicans from my favourite childhood tale who, depending on the day, in the storm or the lull, live in that puddle or that vast outdoor morning bath in the great symphony of the bird call to each new day.

Stricken

It was an uninvited
guest falling headfirst
horns forth
wretched iced
elephantine heft
and the all time
submarine low
landing on chests
drilling
the heart
the lungs
to the pits of
yearning.
It was the worst day's
worst year's
worst life,
fighting oceans
in the weeping,
riding breakers
with all of that raging lip
snapping chops
curled into a
howling
knowhere
or an auction
with the heavens
for retrieval.
It is the ball
of wire
savvy to open
cut love,
threading ache
and wrapping pang
in the stranglehold
of the joyful
seamstress.
It is the distant
relative to joy...
but a relative
and sister clocks
tick them together
as the war wounded
veteran might still
smile
somehow
some day.

A Couple of Wings

Capsulated air
like a good pick pocket
of oxygen,
balloon bright-
life in there
from inside
me to you.

Gulls in the take-off
like 25,000
feathers
on the arms of
life come to life
from the outside wing
from here to there to you.

In scavenger spirit
thrifty searching
for more
besides..
in the ease of float
in the teehee pearl
Birthday balloon
in the shine of your
next cycle
in the lift
in the wishing wing
in the waltzing wild
and shaping new
in everything you
and two.

Why (Y) ?

Why?
To the pools
To the stars
and back again.
To the low ebb
and high scent
of slight sulfur -
a pinch of green
all coated in
briny finish.
Peer deeper
to the
looking glass homes
there in the
ocean's
down time...
in the well spring
of hardy
LIFE.
To the rock-ribbed
scurf
but tender
in the hallo
edged burrows...
sheathed in
magnified
tiffany silk
Look down
then up
then down
and again
The Why is
there with
answers.