Lost Man

LOST MAN

He went inside, maybe to clerking,
Or accounting, and lost himself in slippers
And nibs, in seconds, the clocked meal
Times, and his moment was lost, his time.

He went to the office, that soft opted
Occupation, as if to keep his hands clean
Of the dirty world, and not only lost himself
A man, he lost direction, his spirit potency.

A search was led by Major Hemingway
Big and game up wild gulllies and razorback
Ridge in the uniform beige of jungle gear
Portraying its every proof expedition manly

As he retreated to the bottle, one he'd lost
Or the snuff and laudanum of pretend divinities
With artifice of prophetic mantles to be a seer
Burnt with the self needling of his bought office.

Anti-lost men appeared like the Lawrences
D.H and T.E. both of whom went to the wild
For primitive vitality, its Acchilian limelight fame
And disappeared in the deserts of their unmaking

Women decided men, lost men were to blame
And so joined them lost, losing gift of parturition
In officing herself as man, as if the bifurcated soul
Of the carrot was not yellow in fork-tongued retreat.

* * *
Only the man of earth, poor man, salt or peasant
Went to the sky and sea, to earthen furrows as always
To keep the wolf knocking, the lion roaring at very doors
Toward which lost man kept throwing away his keys.

His Finest Operator

HIS FINEST OPERATOR


His daughter Kellie left school pregnant
and came home
with the little girl like a surprise daughter
he and his wife
loved like their own and when he had to
tow the excavator
in the yard on the home farm one day
Kellie came out
to drive it and enjoyed the hydraulics
in steering so she
asked him to show her the whole gammut
of lever twist and turn
and within a week she was out on the job
doing the demolitions
by driving the backhoe excavator. It was
a fine thing to watch
the feminine way she had in bringing
a chimney down and
soon walls and rooves were cleaned up
under Kellie's hand
as if swept clean by a proud housewife.

An Issue With Parental Warmth

A PROBLEM OF PARENTAL WARMTH


A hot child psychologist says
that just eight minutes a day
of really devoted warm love can be
enough for a child to thrive

So we must have high regard for such a cold
neglect-trained girl who often bought the alteration
by lighting a literal fire at the foot of their bed
to get her self-absorbed parents' attention

But of course they
charged her a repeat arsonist.

A Dream of Socrates Outside A WIndow With Children

IMAGE: Phoenix, Plato and Socrates with Child



A DREAM OF SOCRATES OUTSIDE THE WINDOW WITH CHILDREN


Socrates came to me with birds on, else
Flying beside
And a throng of youthful children hanging
On his every word
Strewn with herbs and leaves and flowers
Like pages
Torn from some young and ancient speech
And he said:
"After infancy now they take them, take them all
Into a room
And allow them to scribble, draw pictures, to colour in
Or to paint
And only much later to describe in writ words what
It is out
As if the room and window like the page defined
The world
As if the eye and the ear, the lips and tongue know
Not a cosmos."
"Whereas we always taught them outside, without frame,
Out of doors, else
On wet days took them up through the whole great palace
To show them views
From every quadrant of the compass, of what was danger
To guard against
Or grace. They learnt the aspect out of every possible window
But especially to see its frame."

When The Pines Sing Best

WHEN THE PINES SING BEST


Where the dark pines came down is
When the pines sing best, still fresh
As the men sit round opened sky and drink
Hot sugared tea after in tin pannikins
Like bit-heroes slaking a battle thirst


The axes stood shining on their handles
As the two-man machine-saw ticked off
In slowing time after the muscle pitted
At the wood with pine resin oozing out
Of log cut limbs, trees diced off of saws


Cooking a blade-released timbred aroma
That hung on the air like last wind song
Was breathed in quick as the men's voices
As they told tension lean stories of trees
And out again in their sighs and guffaws.

Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus

-MAP: Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus, by Joean Blaeu, 1663

ARCHIPELAGUS ORIENTALIS, SIVE ASIATICUS


Unsettling as is to know I was born and bred in the unmapped blank
Of unknowns on the Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus of 1663

Drawn in the Dikelands by the Dutch master cartographer Joean Blaeu
It's yet humbling for daydreams in a treasure map of might have beens:

Such as the great river of Australia that filled its inland sea
Where the floating islands of reeds carried villages of elder men

Out to the fishing roads where the annual hunt for bunyips
Set fires in the boats with which they hypnotised bunyip eyes

And lured them back willingly to unsecret their impossible cry
From the off the map loneliness of our undrawn Ultima Thule

Where the wait for lost companion men is still a borderless yen
As we yet explore its bunyip reaches, find advent in its mysteries.

A Bulldozer For The Peace

A BULLDOZER IN THE PEACE


Peace, philosophical peace, to tell
The truth, is in no way adequate
To our desire, as we grow up caught
In it; bypassed like most the world,
So we rush out to every passing action.


For the loaded log-truck's downhill braking
Squeal or its ten-gear changes climbing
The other side that breaks the oppressive
Valley schoolyard stillness. It knives inaction
That is a burden to us, the too great weight


Of bland existence, the long littleness of life
As it is otherwise, with its ignoble oppressive
Compromises, its bog earth duty, its unsung
Drudge wrangle below uneventful hills or skies
Investing weather talk to pass for conversation


A bulldozer at its dam-build rip and earthmoving
Is our breaking peace's happily vivid terre-a-theatre.
If a tree falls far in the forest the local boys will
Be all ears to the axefall or chainsaw wasp-hum
Tolling out before its watched and welcome crash.