To commemorate 100 days of Iman Budhi Santosa's death (one of the Flying Island poets), a group of poets and writers in Yogyakarta lauches a tribute book entitled Nunggak Semi: Dunia Iman Budhi Santosa (Nunggak Semi: The world of Iman Budhi Santosa). With the contributions from eighty five poets, playwrights, painters, journalist, editors, and academicians, this book compiles various anecdotes, memories, response poems, and academic analysis of Iman Budhi's life and works.
The book also includes chapters written by Kit Kelen - the series editor of Flying Island Pocket Poets and Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang, the translator for IBS' poems to English.
After reading Kit's these flying islands
and misreading Hornbill for Hornball (Kit's poems flow quickly, like the stream that has appeared in our garden) and Hornbills have a rasping sound a little like cicadas)
Poem written 2019. 'Sail on’ Wolf and Gina
The hornbill observation station The Straits of Malacca
They are seated stoned, gazing on blue vibrations
inlaid with shallow mirrors. The tireless tide
is backing off from torn mangrove transitions.
They are not yet intimate with lives around them,
200 species of birds and 500 types of butterfly
or are these redundancies when love is kicking?
An old Chinese proverb says, 'knowing the names
of things is the beginning of knowledge’.
We are waiting for the Hornbills commuting to roost.
Pneumatophores spear through kneeling mud,
the first in South East Asia to spring from the sea,
inheriting tags like Langa, Langka, Langapura.
I ask how they live on this island that crumples cloud.
Wolfgang’s hand is off the tiller, moored his yacht,
lives in this row of dwellings called Purple Haze
and has found work as a sparky in the new marina.
Gina adds quietly that she works on herself.
‘I’ve given that up’, I smiled, most possibly a lie.
Unable to recognise a missed opportunity,
I flow with no sense of a transect, unable
to a quadrat over time and places, or
tally a discrete muster of people (named),
adventures, artefacts and unexpected
spectral junctures orbiting the circumference.
I talk travelling days, index wildest countries,
complain how age bullies me to safer harbours.
From having timeless fun, time lines my expression,
anxious that green threads unravel leaf by leaf,
tree by tree by forest, drop by drop, river to ocean.
I write, donate and occasionally demonstrate.
Wolf is Austrian, heading the opposite direction.
Gina is from Switzerland’s Italian corner.
I describe crossing the language border,
gardens abruptly sag and tangle, houses relax,
Ticino Merlot for lunch, arousing eloquent
laughter, contingent, unpredictable, infectious.
We’ve lost the destination Odysseus fought to reach,
home is a concept eddying in currents of the modern
that propel ‘a restless itch to rove’, as Dante put it.
I try to remember the name of the commune
we explored above Lake Maggiore, ‘Monte . . .’?
Where they abandoned meat and clothes, where
Isadora Duncan danced naked, Tillich, Steiner,
Lawrence, Ball, Klee, Jung and Kafka ate lettuce
and Herman Hesse lived for months in a cave.
A Hesse novel squats in their rented shack,
‘Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, Glass Bead Game?’
They giggle. They have no idea, it’s in Spanish.
The dream of happiness is readily forgivable
but how come the future keeps failing the past?
Are many
wheels turning? Are ghosts hungry?
A Wreathed Hornbill shoots the margins,
wiry frame clamped to oversized black wings
trailing the burnished goitre and solid bill.
‘Where are the rest?’ I demand.
I love her laugh, it’s fresh as fresh,
brief encounters need not be trivial.
Names are cerebral but absorb possessive breath,
a Black-hooded Oriole hooks gold behind us
sweeping
out the remnants of blushed light.
gone like a cool breeze
frisbee free
strophe propelled
canvas a range of opinion
idea thrust
pastoral comical tragical
hello
find you here
in if you like
a conversation
that’s it
lean in with
tip till
keep a grip
let the string out
breeze take
beats tap
rarely rhyming
who will have the tiller then?
call a tug-o-war
climb!
take in and trim the cat
watch while
we let down ladders, many
sometimes it seems like a pile of islands
lift let
and there are becalmings
latitudes for donkey
mule
a prize
for the most beastly behaviour
allowances age made
here are the ruins
and blow me down –
the annual awards!
on the carpet
or took off by rug
come from the rope
and ever enough
down for the canvas count
won’t you look up
kilting
trapezoid!
Saturn high V
one bean for a cow and grew to this
pitch a tent skyward
fee fie on’t
sniff
not for profit
so let’s swap
I’ll show you if you’ll read mine
Louder
damn those hornball cicadas
islands are all second guessing
they are the dead flock
each go alone
above my nation
bombers have held a fete
call glissement
a capture of say eau d’imagination
or not
often as slap in the wet belly fish
come catch and toss again
time wasted!
not me off the hook
sail on!
and then the thousand years
sail of the line ride finest
little books for a world come ever smaller
pack fairytale
they’re seasonal
cast like coins two up
friends in the head
and many the tricks of presence are
wrought for the warmer world
so
blow me down
then a line gets out
sticks for instruction
mantra or an admonition
self to self
go go
toys and islands
in the bath once
was the whole of a harbour
storm safe
in the aeon till everything begins
you can take the machine apart
islands flutter by mechanical
wound as the heavens once must have in
a twinkle up for stars
never the same together but twice
see under them the workings
flowering all
come in a burst of cloud
propel the self as if by fart
or the how-they
pulleys sprockets
cogs rags oiled
toes grip the rung
slippery devil
then float free
ringside for angels falling
lit
and every weather
dance up in the air like this
others clear blue
and Christmas again
the Sunday month
I’m opening a door here
part your own mists, will you, won’t?
make births as from the undersea
and who will say volcano?
from all walks
many more in mind
sunk ones too
and islands down
someone hid a sneer behind
soon outed though
and back to task
we better a world as we go
make it up as
we’re here
we’re gone
ready or not
loose
and here we come
high as fast as who can fly
as is the leaf uplifted
a vapour trail and gone
World Poetry day today
‘It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.’ WCW
Flight QF 2101 8.3.2021 Extract
From the
air, creeks reveal themselves, dark veins
draining the landscape, wandering uncertainly
a brief revelation before we climb into ribbons
of grey-white clouds, the horizon smeared pink.
Cloud free, the rivers and creeks are painted
with mist, some dendrite sharp, others languid
snaking. There’s so much water floating here
on the edge of the driest inhabited continent.
Now the sun
positions himself to show the creases
in the wooded mountains, the land buckled,
tempting the word wilderness, but down
there
lie scattered ruins of old tracks, rock shelters, sacred
trees, ceremonial sites, hunting grounds that look
so far away from up here. A wide valley spills sour
milk everywhere, small white dots, tombstones
are cherished homes, sheds or barns, fragments of
our immense footprint on the planet hard to realise.
And your absence is almost visible.
~
We were close to flooding our ground floor on Friday. Natural disasters focus you on the news. I have just read that people within low-lying properties in Bulahdelah have bene told to evacuate due to the Myall River rising. Thoughts go to Kit and Carol and hope they are secure in their beautiful property.
Three more terrific poems by Magdalena Ball, Clark Gormley and Steve Armstrong have been premiered on the Flying Islands YouTube channel in the past week.
You can watch them below.
To date the channel has 5 subscribers.
Youtube will monetise once our subscriber count reaches 10,000.
Still a way to go … nevertheless
Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and please CONTRIBUTE your 1 minute (give or take) poems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuLG-cOnfd8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEHsihWweE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX994_T-GYo
the Clive
Palmer Monument
will be smaller than life
and careless thereof…
it fronts the museum of
where the workers were never paid
what they are owed’s colossal!
some say kitsch and some grotesque
something for everyone
dinosaur bones!
both thumbs up
loves a lie
things he touches turn to shit
the Clive Palmer Monument
features the pineapple’s raw end
it is less than a lawnmower
or see-through Anzac
man that is
cut down like a green blade
in his prime…
here’s not the Brahman bull
but steaming product thereof
served on billboards
and – while misboding – here’s
the missing pizzle part
(you’d need a microscope
that’s how fast he drives, flies, litigates)
really it is a hole in the ground
plenty of poison for everyone
the Clive Palmer monument
is being erected by the legal profession
(kind of a thank-you note)
It’s where ‘Midas has ass’s ears’ is buried
and there to this day the grass is singing
it’s all about Clive – always was and always will
be
trunkless
makes great
the lone and level sands stretch far from…
General Clive’s drive
by the church called Saint Clive’s
statue of the sleeping Cross-Bencher
Clive is a one man rotunda
a sun comes out of his nethers to shine
best of all
Clive is still alive
what a rascal!
delightful mischief! boys own
takes so long to wipe up there
the tropics their own monument
why try to make any sense?
the Clive Palmer tribute is something
not quite biodegradable
was thrown from a car with much deliberation
a kind of minor trumpery, before and after that
avatar
there was a time when you could vote for this
and because you ask me
I can confirm
yes this is all personal –
we call the highway Bruce
Goths are having a séance
in the Cubby House at Bunnings.
There are Skinheads in the Potting Mix.
Hipsters cook cow penises
at the sausage sizzle. Lowest
prices are just the beginning.
*
Epistemological, Ontological …
I look these words up
every six months.
But I still don’t know
what they mean, not really.
Couldn’t define them if asked.
I think it’s something like
How do I know
that what I know
is what I know?
I dunno. Maybe if Noel Coward
turned it into a song
I’d start to understand.
*
Her poems are never ending
compendiums of comparison,
like pin cushions for similes.
Yes, it’s a nice poetic device.
But you don’t have to detonate it,
like a cluster bomb, at every line
*
There’s a hobo living in the Big Potato.
They can’t evict him,
though it’s made of asbestos.
But he doesn’t care about OH & S.
Someone’s sprayed a dick and balls
on the big prawn
the big banana just got smaller
the big koala is angry
at the crowds drawn by
the big lump of coal
and the big jet ski
and the Big Clive Palmer, with
the café in its head, is looking shabby,
its eyes chewed out by cockies.
Kia ora ki katoa [Greetings to all].
Cornered by Coronavirus here in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wonder if any other Flying Islands contributors are Kiwi and might wish to share a reading, even if it is via Zoom...? Looks like we will be here for a while, despite escape plans being drawn...
Meanwhile a poem to warm everyone up, eh.
good old summer
summer
came
back
with
a HUGE
grin
s p
r e a
d e a
g l e d
all
over its face;
a
panjandrum
paintbrush
of
lucent hues
imbued
with
emollient
flourish.
its
chortling
prodigal
sun
flayed
us all
i
n
t
o
happy submission -
skin
peeling,
smiles
reeling,
balmy
healing,
&
a
sort of
ubiquitous
mellow
cadence
crooning
through us all -
that
winters’
frigid
casuistry
had forced
us
to forget.
Te pai katoa [All the best].
Vaughan Rapatahana
 |
Archer’s drawings and prints celebrate the sense of immersion and wonder one feels when standing with trees. Meanderings near the artist’s home in the Myall Lakes region of N.S.W. and further afield have moved the artist to make these pictures. A preoccupation with light suggests the ephemerality of human perception. The viewpoint, towards ground rather than sky, underlines trees’ resilience and rootedness in ancient earth and rock.
More about Carol Archer at www.carolarcher.com
myth of a-semism
there is no mark without meaning
neither made nor found
try to make nonsense
go on
those who set out
do just that
they have tumbled an ark into stone
they this that
here’s the picture of nothing at all
it’s tinkle whiff
the chimney slept
the life raft leapt
like lightning spread
clouds gone from the page
one day some one will cypher it
one day someone will know
I'm very excited to have been warmly welcomed into this community and blogosphere as an honorary member after launching Steve Armstrong's latest pocket book of poetry What's Left.
I'm a poet, and emerging literary critic, living on Darkinjung country on the Central Coast of NSW. My chapbook, A Fistful of Hail, was published by Vagabond Press in 2018.
Here's a poem from that collection, which inspired the title:
Acrocorinth
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed...
Psalm 128:2
Time has scalloped and tightly crimped
the hill's stone — all the troughs
and rifts of its flanks studded
with cypress, laurels. The Acrocorinth
juts into wind above the yellowed vineyards
and timber pig-sheds, the fish
like wands of garnet or black-spotted quartz
carving the shallows at Vrahati beach.
My grandfather's people
coaxed
clusters of bitter-and-sweet jade fruit
from the vines, while time – like a god's
hand on the hill – tapped off seams
of limestone with the rain's pick, or pounded out
trenches with fistfuls of hail, lightning.
In the village, pines drip
resin in the brush. I walk
dirt tracks where hens pace for seed. In dusty
gardens, in olive groves, the goats swank
oily beards, the hammered scrolls
of horns, gnashing thyme thickets — the Acrocorinth
pale as whey to the south. From here
I make out the old acropolis extruding
from the hill like blunted teeth; I probe,
till my eyes ache, for Aphrodite's
temple, nesting somewhere in the high
ridges. The Corinthian Gulf flickers
down a north-east road, and I know
this evening the sun will strut there like a peacock
trailing long feathers across
the water. Soon, I'll walk back
to my great uncle's house.
He'll empty wine from a barrel.
He'll tell me stories of his brother's fist.
I've seen the x-rays — my mother's
dented wrist, forearm — all the fractured
bones. And I'll think of those hands,
coaxing, on the vines; and I'll think of a god
with a fistful of hail. I'll drink
the cool, bitter pink liquid, and currents
of sweetness will twist
through each mouthful.
Acknowledgments
‘Acrocorinth’ was first published in Philament Journal — Precarity, Vol. 22 December 2016; and appeared in The Best Australian Poems 2017.
a door in
the day
for Lou
Smith
none thought to lock
bring the bones
come flesh
do come in
you’re welcome
say I, the inhabited fancy
step through the city
take this pill, melt
a fall of sunlight here
just where the day grows over
come seasons, turn
roller skates
prepare me a piano please
or any strings at all
not to show you
just to say
the only way
to make the door
is to open it
and step in
