The smooth force of ****** skin
carresses and moulds me in stone.
I stretch to the contour
groin the hollow
nurtured and naked
for sacrifice.

Grave friend, grey faced
steady eyed friend
shallow edge
great heart
melt with heaviness the torsion
in each of these limbs.

I surrender time to the mother of you,
dry tenderer, assauger of guilt, you
who holds up day, and lets down night,
who bundles and sprawls me
like a rough shouldered parent.

I search for the place of no light in you,
close my eyes to your dreaming
seek out eons you’ve sloughed off
and deeper, how your weight pulls the gravity out of me,

I surrender
and can fall no more into the rocking
rocking lap of you;
mother how can I fold into you
how can I surrender
how can I add my breath to the sigh of you?





MChallis © 2005/2014

When I am crippled by the fear
Of what others may think of me

The kind teacher speaks these words:

Your power lies within you.
Life endowed you eons ago.

Your work today is to know this deeply.

Your power does not lie in the minds of others - you do not need their approval for what you already posses.

As you practice today keep your attention on giving, on being generous without the conditionality of it being reciprocated.

In this moment now and in this breath you are free.

MChallis @ 2015

Crumbs of heaven
fall wing-soft
yet you and I
know nothing of manna or prophecy.

In the midst of
trodden unbidden
inner indivisibles,
habit’s anvils restrain us.

Yet attest this to one small place of untouched bliss
where we may grace the light
now and so often
extinguished
in barren land.

The foreign treader
of a dawn held wish
unfurls from our robes,
hangs us at an altar,
and no-where attempts to keep secret the name of commitment
from the carol of lip or tongue.

Silence the two-headed voice beyond the shroud,
hear this life
and the secret of light.

Entwine and wind
anticipate the suspence
and future of what will be possible.

Hold off
hold off,
stir, sweet one
nurture our convergence.


MChallis © 2015

The way each hill runs down
The way tree-lines suspend the turbulence

My father’s arms are in these hills
taking timber from the gully

The crest of his hat starts at the waterfall
his toes peep through lantana

His advice trickles into pools from the hollows;
as his boots peeled open, dry before the fire

Lizards bask like heat-curled nails in the sun,
billy smoke whispers its tale through the canopy

Through the slow step of a century
he has turned one-eyed squinting toward the sun

The scrape of sharpening-stone on an ancient scythe
sets my teeth on edge

The whistle to the bullock team calls me back
but it’s too late, my ears have gathered for another harvest

I'm already removed from his wilderness

MChallis © 2005

Turn my head
To what is simplest

My heart
To what is true

My body to
it's deep knowing

Each sense
Each pulse
Each rhythm

Intuition anchoring
elemental truth.

MChallis @ 2015

By John Pass


A kick or two out
against the playful waves

then roll over, look back
so often I've done this, summers

without number, friends or family
on the shore, a ledge

of rock at Ruby Lake
or Lighthouse Park, trees behind

and above them leaning out
for the open light

and reflected light
and my delight not simply

to be swimming, a float
but in the perspective

of people in a landscape
beautifully proportioned

enclosed in a moment
as though in another room

but present, whole, unencumbered  -
the sky always blue

( beach weather ) the shoreline reaching
around, away, each way

a point, or cliff, or thicket
of willow, quietly emphatic

of the people, their intimate
isolation, approachable

passing a towel or plum
getting comfortable, distant

but undiminished, and I

alone in the water, ambiguously

proud of them, pleased
to swim in and be counted

among them


John Pass

For the need to watch the breeze in trees

And eye the vineyard climbing hills

As green farrows line such steep escarpments

We sit this while in shaded birch – the grove; this peaceful heart.


MChallis@2015

Had I been kinder

She thought of her love

Long passed


In the fading light of

Our last circadian rhythm

An epitaph might ask

Had we all



Martinos @ 2018

Nothing
Is
Everything

MChallis @ 2015

You
Darling you
Are powerful
As gravity

And I, humbled, to be
constantly
falling
toward you.

MChallis @2015

When struggle comes
as disquiet,
discomfort or pain

sit with it
see what it has for you

perhaps a seed
will be born into your wisdom,

with patience you may nurture
a fertile bed, soon to see within you

new shapes arising
hitherto not possible




MChallis @ 2015

for JR



at the grove’s edge

you meet them all, each one

dripping hurt, steel eyed

dusted and luminous



moss trod and lichen lipped

you go on, forgiving and seeking forgiveness.

looking back, you see that

none follow and alone you go

liminal in the margin



at the dipping point

each river pool clears of whispering ghosts

your trinkets, tokens, icons of memory

are placed in offering as expiation



each gesture a steady movement

each step up the mountain, lighter still

you are deep prayer moving steadily

toward foresight,  toward reclamation, toward flight



ascendant

you are golden haired



loved by the gods

you are sweet-breathed



as friend, father, brother, as joy-bringer

you are seminal and unbound





MCHALLIS © 2015

where cedar creek
falls
love of river rock
stands

my gaze follows
one wayward drop
sent further
by the breeze

the story
of this place
is told by clear water rill, and
by a multitude of cicadas
who chorus their cacophony of daydreams


she sits
slightly away
I see the graceful bend of her back
the fall of her hair

and the delicate way
her feet
touch the water



MChallis © 2015

for Jan*

In the artist's nascent frame you're the perfect idea already imagined.


MChallis @ 2015

Your thoughts are your prison
Or your prairie

Your body is a signature
Of the decisions you make

Your family
Is humanity

The expanding universe
Is a metaphor for your consciousness

Breath and space in your heart and mind
Becomes an infinite resource


Martinos @ 2017

The boy who hangs his story from the bridge.
As if by fairy tale told minutely to a desperate lover.
Her tormented eyes
picturing this broken neck;
his story told in the lingering art of death.  Or

he who faces the train to Ferny Hills
and each commuter who remembers
that day’s monotony as bits of him
slapped against a carriage like
someone throwing wet fish.  Or

the pass-over traffic
grumbling at the fall of tragic demonstration - a
boy not welcomed anywhere except by the earth
that took him in with a kiss of bitumen.  Or

balanced on needle point, a
thousand thousand weights pressing death
into an arm embracing the TV-cable guide and
a torn photograph of Jennifer the mud wrestler.
And all this waste
sending little statistic waves of shock that don't anymore.

Gone to sleep like the boys who left us.
Early sleep. Early rise and forget the
sons who disappear in a magician’s finale.
The cloak of social history that accepts this.
The magic
abracadabra of disturbed unhappy youth.

For ****, Monica & Jan*

coming in by the side road
a winding path
to the stream
took us down where
we sat for a while
feet bathing in cool water
attending the natural theatre
so many quavers and characters in
the movement of rill and brook,
ceaselessly purposeful, over
stone, sand and moss

this going around, under, through
us, here as we gather, and have gathered for millennia;
we are the ancient flow
from first mothers first fathers first family
the tribe are near
coming out of the ages we
hear their call and chatter,
in time we come to know
this all of us, our story



MChallis © 2015

when the child comes to you as the voice of disquiet
will you sit with him? will you hold his heart in yours?
will you say to him – you are loved and i will hear you?
and will you tell him that he can come again
as often he needs – until a time when he does not?
will you show him love and kindness, and have him know
emerging from that new quietness
you are sure to find the solace and the guidance
you both seek?

martinos © 2017

Returning to you sylvia in the black week of no moon:
the carapace
the awkwardness
aflame with evidence
the jew-net of Poland
-- your rack of guilt.

to fly at the sun or burn in its shadow
emptying pockets before you leave
you reap an abandoned harvest, but

the acolytes who call and call hear the ringing of rocks;
bells around the necks
of ghosts
lying down in
hallowed halls,  somewhere bellowing

their words
        like yours
punishing  me
punching  me up the middle,
every image jagged remedy
my **** to my heart
jammed with grief,
throat swolen with loss

the case of your broken bits;
crockery splintered
in capsules or
shoeboxes or drawers carefully there,  there

you are lips pressing
cold glass,
to kiss you to drink your warmth
impossible

after death I hear you;
crow sends your messages
but sweet sister that’s not why you call

inimical oven:  cavern and synagogue,
I am undone
discovering buried treasure.

in the breath of trees you are
somehow there,
in the quick-slip of feet across smooth linoleum
my mausaleum agrees with your arrival

but in the hour before dawn
in the silent roaring volume
you never hear of my love for you

we are cold lovers
both agony


MChallis © 2000/2014

Look up
Where the sky sets down

See for what
It is and differently

From every view
The same sky

Dark
        Light
                 Lustrous
                               Ambivalent
Spectacular

See all of this
that no one
can



MChallis @ 2015

she said
of his passing

'You know
nothing is seen to change
and yet,

everything does’

Later at the window

She spoke with the wind

Sharing her invisible

Sweetly to the end



Martinos @ 2018

i love you i said
how is that she said
i just do i said
but why she said

why is the sky i said

why prove it she said
how can i i said
so you don’t she said
yes i do i said

then why is the sky she said

it just is i said
that’s what you say she said
just look at it i said
but it’s not there she said

yes it is i said
then look up she said
so i did
she was right
it had gone
and when i looked back
so had she


MChallis © 2015

The loving stretch of your cloudy fingers,
your welcoming cob-web eyes.

How they haunt,
shake salt from the limb,
sweep up leaves in courtyards, and
carry their eclipse to the brink of me.

Tree’s circumcised by gardener time
poke forks at you ,
scrape your soft full plate
with the chafe of spidering knuckles.

Everything the flavour of sun-set is a plea.

What can I do when the wing of you
has nothing to say
but fall in reverse,

have you no pity,
you do nothing but sleep, yawn
and blink back your triumph.

Where are the places
I might squeeze you
into submission:
windows only take in so much.

Just once I’d have you secede at my feet,
break bread with the best of me;
release this enthralled impatience.

I starve for some light conversation
but you practise your zen enchantment,
practise it right in front of me
day after day after day.

Show mercy.
Crush me,
     do something.

I want you to fall.


MChallis © 2015

for my darling jan*

I woke at 2.30am and left you sighing gently as you slept,
checked the trap but found only droppings on the floor
I set the trap again and hoped the rats would leave –
I would prefer not to **** anything.
The dog mawed and moaned at its fleas
rubbing against the rail on the back verandah,
it settled when I whished it back inside to sit
(my mouth made that wist noise, the one you know the dog will hear but won’t wake the sleeping).

I lay on the red couch in the study and read Ray Carver.
A return to Carver simplifying me. If not by sleep I was
comforted by his weave of innocence and knowledge.
Ray started writing poetry in the year I was born (1957),
I don’t know why I mention this, perhaps I feel him like a kindred
spirit and am warmed by even the slightest connection.

Between the living and the dead are the sleeping. However being at rest
is no excuse for ignorance. Ray is at rest - some 18 years.
His poems like me are alive and breathing.

The magpies begin their morning carol as I return to bed at dawn.
Your breath and skin have waited for me.
When we wake, I tell you,
I am grateful our poem continues.



MChallis © 2010/2014

writing
stopped

the pen lay still

then

I read
you: deeply

and

lifted up
lifted

with shackles
gone

none writing
ceased


MChallis © 2015

extrapolate retaliation
to

age of suffering

end game

nil
all


MC2015

You have outstretched arms
You are on the beach
You are receiving the towel
That will wipe the sting of salt and glare away
You are relieved in the moment this occurs
And look back to the waves that have just released you

Later that day after bathing
You recall the moment
Your skin
Your nature
And what has washed away

Martinos @ 2018

I put my author
On the bridge,
(There's going over and
There's crossing),
He will say that
I'm looking for starlight
Or direction,
Of a place to find
The voice between worlds

In the event of success
He imagines Einstein,
To live longer in the question
He foresees Ghandi, wishing
To converse upon ruthless compassion,
He will seek the mother also,
Her cradle and her rock,
To speak of that which has gone unsaid
(As a special favour)

All this and  
To fix at the intersection
The elements of a story:
Beginning, middle and end.
He will return with insight
With composure and understanding
To write the mind upon the bridge
Under which, life flows.


Martinos @ 2016

If by fear
I am contracted

It is only the gentle wing
of forgiveness
in courage
and love
upon which,

I can again expand


MChallis © 2015

music in the magic in the mystery
of softness in the footsteps
that your voice takes
to the place within my heart

brings a secret fascination
for intrigue's imagination
where enchantment chords a yearning
willing obstacles to part

but if the music is discordant
or I'm drowning with the tides
fear is overpowering
for the little one who hides

yet with childish laughter promising
the joy of trusting smiles
I wonder for the soft heart
set free from all denials

I wonder for the joy of things
as they bubble as they soar
and I wonder for the song of love
on the path of evermore

music in the magic in the mystery
of softness in the footsteps
that your voice takes
to the place within my heart

Neither this nor that
A perfect in between
A single breath
The simplest stance
The compression of a universe
into one point
The expansion of a universe
into all points
A noun for oneness
An infinite stillness
An experience
of now.


                                                    Martin­ Challis 2014

for J

she has a heart of light
she will touch you
with her radiance

when you see this
you will realise
your own illumination

who is she?


Martinos @ 2017

What night-bird sings across the river?
What bear of winter whispers
low and deep in the cave of its mouth?
And who is she who moves toward the many mouthed artesian,
invisible to the clouds and stars that live in her reflection?

We stand on our heads;
the world turns its duplicity to meet us as
our imagination ventures beyond the beyond,
before it rushes back to be with she who has not yet released us.
She spins her arms in all directions;
our mother, calling with the night bird says
“here children you’re safe with me”.

We walk the southern bank of the Ballone.
Before the weir we imagine the river
mirror to all the world.
Then the weir-gates reveal her power.
Broken water announces our birth
and friendship;
a turbulent opportunity to bright with stars,
to carefully wake the sleeping bear.

Beside this river
Our future is brought together,
And like her, this unseen strength
Will flow potent, low and deep
and with our mother
nurturing.


MChallis © 2015

one's
attachment centre

.


MC©2014

Our words were mesmerised, unable at
each attempt to describe the end of day
the sun took its story - the spectacle of hues and ribbons between gold fire and greyblack crimsons - beyond Wolumbin - reclining grandmother - crag head facing skyward - omniscient - pausing inbreath grandeur

Taking our gaze, the cloud hummers went westerly - tribal souls migrating in unison -
their mentor and guide a following breeze
and curiously the stars appeared above them
as if flying in formation against the trend
missiles or satellites - not afraid - in awe - we saluted the spectacle - swaying in silence and wonder
Martinos @ 2018

In the spaces that once held the ones we loved or loathed
are rooms where silence sits to wait upon us;
to precisely bring with it the thought that can caress,
if needed, or spur, if wanted.
And upon reflection the memories that have shaped us, and
subtly the choices within them to hold or unmake each one.
A centrifuge the potter’s wheel - the mind.
The choice always within our crafting gifts to mould,
to throw, to release or to refine.
Which memory will I spin today?
What forgiveness to bestow or fondness to befriend?
Such is the choice that with silence my contemplation brings.


MChallis @ 2015

Night’s armaments
tethered by a lone street light
wait as a patient carnivore
watchful and certain

A cigarette glows
in one man’s mouth
as others blow fog, puff into their hands
and shuffle - shipping out tonight

Arguing up the hill
a truck in the middle distance
comes to take them to the rally point

Whistling in this town
will be left to young fresh faced boys
when they think on their fathers,
the soldiers

Tenements in formation stare unblinking
each window an eye transfixed
******* bins, curbside, seem to anticipate
instruction or disturbance

A gathering mist pads the rooftops
as the townsmen heave aboard,
with one last glance - slightly checked
each man searches for the loved ones
who are
        silent,
        asleep
        or at prayer

For all our conversations
It’s the silences I remember
Quiet times
In rooms together

You attentive to the preparation of a letter
an essay
or considering carefully,
music you're about to play

And me sitting on the sofa
Reading Carver or Whitman
Quietly appreciating your contemplation
Pretending only to be interested in what I'm reading

I do not tell you that your presence completes me
Or
How you feel from across the room

I do not say,
I am grateful for your company


MChallis © 2015

with morning's breath
soft kisses touching
lightly the nape of love

MChallis © 2015

I climbed down through coastal scrub
Sandstone nub and turkey scratch,
Purposefully counted into the hundreds
And then became distracted for caution
And for possible misstep. On safe arrival
The foreshore held its mysteries
Within the wash and cliff and ancient sands
I did not inquire or pause to study, yet committed and turned again to climb knowing afore each rise I would descend

Martinos @ 2018

Morning

Soft light

And light sleeping

She sighs and lifts
and sighs and falls


Her breath
the gentleness of day beginning

I sit and watch her

more lovingly
than a child could

in bed - he lies awake
pleading
for sleep's soft death
the laceration of each fragile memory
is a
knife sharp
theif
come to steal
thin peace.

in time
desperate
measured

sleep
comes,
his only suicide.


MChallis © 2015

Trust Life
It will bring
You fortune

Comfort
Joy
Discomfort
Pain

All is such, and
All will pass

        -

Beyond the yang
Beyond the yin
The dao

Within the yin
Within the yang
The dao

        -

So it comes
So it goes
To peace

MChallis @ 2015

In this room at four a.m. where the universe sometimes meets, I cram some thinking time into the stillness that does not occur at any other part of the day. A wall clock scratchily taps its one-tone metronome in a time signature discomforting to noisy thinkers.

My quiet contemplation is possessed with a version of unkindness, arising out of unsteady dreams. In the most recent frame; invading forces stay out of sight to threaten as the unknown enemy. We burn candles for those who plead the safety of our dwelling. But suspicion becomes our ally and neighbours are offered no solace.

I notice a small moth as it circles a candle avidly craving the feast of light. I think of those who have struggled with a near-death experience. I’m told the dying enter a beautiful light when called to begin passage from this world to the next. Does the small moth feel the same sense of awe as it prepares to feed the candle?

The lifeless screens of television and computer, (sometimes channeling the universe into this quiet room) hold their square black mouths agape, but offer nothing more than mute obedience. The only living pixel in this room is worshipped by the fervent wing of a moth: and is unaware of being a metaphor.

I hear at distance, the first bus for the morning passing by, it is mostly empty of the silent ones it will carry later in the day. I wonder how many of today’s travellers will have been awake at this time, pondering fate and future in the shelter of an urban meditation.

The early hours of the morning, I’m told, are when most passengers depart for the next world as they sip or gasp a last breath.

Slipping by and above me, some adventurous souls are carried by a hot-air balloon: the rushing light and sound of the gas-flame is a jet of life which heats and sustains the commercial moon as it drifts by in close orbit. The balloon then changes metaphor and mimics sunrise.

Perhaps moth and balloon and empty screens are pre-cursors for all that is to come today: all that is furtive, all that is futile, all that pretends omniscience, all that is agape, all that is sufficient for those of us who assume we will live on and on and on. And for those of us who repeat each day secure, content and satisfied: completely taken by all the fuss and noise of living for successfulness.


MChallis 2005/2014

for Daniel*

the country singer has gone to the city

packed all his chords and a harp

how the voice of love sings

in New York

his part in the harmony

stepping between tramways

along avenues

he finds a new stanza

picked like a flower, put

to the lips of new promise

and her meeting with soft eyed

recitals in cafes and bars

the tenderness

singing

awakening each heart


.

MChallis © 2015

In the dim light of the forest's heart
That is my own heart*. John Pass


Looking back
Long into many memories
Are seeds and tender shoots
Upon my awakening

Looking sidelong
Into many happenings
Are flowers and reaching branches
Upon my flourishing

Looking headlong
Into many eventualities
Are husks and drying leaves
Upon my returning

Looking forward
Long into many possibilities
Are seeds and tender shoots
Upon awakening


MChallis @ 2014

When we work with love

We're doing, the

Real Work.



MChallis @ 2015

Let us take a position
of composition
a dance friends, together
of non opposition
of flow.


MChallis © 2015

I your mirror as you are mine
On reflected spiral
We climb
On breaths
On wings
Of light

By light
Most wondrous
Unified
With space between
This connection in simplicity
Of pure intent


MChallis @ 2015

In the homecoming

joy

in the barring

regret



of letting go

freedom

of craving

imprisonment



at the welcome

belonging

at the termination

abandonment



with waking up

insight

with shutting out

ignorance



in kindness

compassion

in aggression

self harm



upon reflection

knowledge

upon dogmatism

blindness



with helpfulness

endless option

with ill-will

limitation



and

remarkably

within each experience

the possibility

of discovery





Martinos © 2017