With the first awareness of morning
I sense the kind of clarity elusive
at other times of day.

She is a singular breath, formless,
offering insight into the endlessness
of something pure.

Yet she moves away as thoughts come:
those dissenting armies that ***** in
to involve me in the containment of opposites.

She will not be held in place by argument.

I long for her when she leaves.

My intention is to attend to her when I’m able.
To be the gardener who loves the flower.

That she might touch me when she will
That she might find me, often

In the gentleness of contemplation.

When attempting to recall what has passed,
or working to see what lies ahead,
our memories and predictions
will only take us so far.

Inevitably, to see all that was and all that could be,
we must humbly and boldly return
to the images that arise,
through the gift of imagination.


MChallis © 2015

Like you perhaps I am the heathen who sifts through the
hazes of a blood soul sentence. One that is forged in an emptiness
that cannot fill or find space between remembering or forgetting past entrenchments.

With the shackles and shapings of exemplary upbringings, coupled with history's ancestral machining hands I am defined by, predictable to and quintessentially fixed in most certain consciousness.

My thoughts are parabolas of yearning sent in all directions to past and past participial futures. As each return without geometric certainty they are repeatedly sent again - missives to unknown or perhaps unfriendly oracles: what is known is that all go unanswered.

Perhaps endemic to each lived experience is the perfect folly of presumption that it is possible to rewrite the past. The angel's kindest mercy being to reveal the conundrum for which a state of equilibrium can only be reached by one anointed practice; which is, to accept that transcendence is in and of itself an illusion.

MChallis @ 2015

sweetly
simple
surrendering
softly
sensuous
simililarly
spontaneo­us
spilling
subtlety
essing
secrets
sharply
shooting
satisfaction


MChallis­ © 2014

In human history
For the centuries
that can be remembered
Perhaps the most destructive force
That has lived among us
Is the human mind
That does not observe itself
Is human thought
That is unaware


MChallis @ 2014

child- small voices sag
bomb-smoke rises from the ground
far off, birds still shake

Billy Striker blown
to Holland, the north sea wind
took weeks to fall

beforemourn chimneys
slate rooves yawn hunger,
one cigarette draws breath

moon crater on the
road to Derry, limousine
sarcophagus lands

siren scream and scrape
tears rigor mortis frozen;
the sea now quiet

hands across water
missing fingers, Gabriel
silent, the watcher

he’d stopped to look
smile asking the time of day,
pressing the trigger

one small death for man
one giant death for mankind,
eyes search behind moons

bicycle wheel turns
awkward lazy arm protrudes
broken flaying skin

obliteration,
scalpel dissects argument
camera’s detail

a.m. paper print
fortresses build stone by verse
each wall a chapter

retaliation,
leopard stalking, counter plot
begun in blueprint

burnt flesh of kingdoms
republic’s frost bitten dogs
bark anger blood ***

interrogation,
splattered kneecap agreement
hands shaking silence

investigation,
no stone unmoved, evidence
a silent quarry

old man keeping dust
one eye swollen, hunching armour
his grief in buckets



MChallis © 2015

Wake Up
To the simplicity, to
The essential stillness
The natural breath
The calmest force
Weaving
Weaving
Dancing

Skilfully
Delightfully
At the heart
Of the heart
of all


MChallis @ 2015

When the sound of life is anything
before the music begins
before there is time to listen; when
a child coughs in the next room

I wake carefully, pressing an ear
to the last beat of a dream,
and find: you're not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

Carriages of wind move past my window
move disturbance above the pool of a tortoise
who periscopes to the surface,
expectant, in the least, for a gulp of air.
I swim and sweat somewhere beneath my bedroom ceiling
somewhere beneath the air I prefer to breath.
But your not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

When children sleep in the afternoon
when grey breezes whisper away the sun,
when an avalanche of crow-call murders the dove
perched on my sill, there is nothing and none to tell
and no circumstance worth repeating at a later time.

You’re not here now.
You’re not in the next room.


MChallis © 1998/2015

when it's time to write the words again
they come one by one
filing in through an opening,
it might be that they've waited patiently
for a right time or an invitation
but not always
I like it best when they rush in, fervently needing attention

hearing them coming, I
lift my head
and with a certain kind of tightness in the belly
begin to place them quickly,
carefully
in order or progression, to
ensure that for the reader,
they carry meaning

from time to time I
go back to the beginning of a line
and review the order
review the syntax
the scansion
the metre
or perhaps re-order or re-use or remove one or two
as necessary

repetition can be a feature of this process
as sometimes words
want to come in twos, pairs
or repeated phrases,
to create emphasis;

and of the words upon arrival
I marvel as they move a line
to connect and weave and work to
lift from the page a story

as a poem
as a promise
as a possibility

crash the barriers
test the waters
ask the curious question
make a list of to-do’s
include
-  put the weapon down:
abuse
glock
razor
fire-cage
gelignite?
whatever
just put it down - if not
how should you proceed?
terror rises in the east
fear rises in the west
does each
respond in kind?
curious word, kind
no kindness in retaliation,
do solutions exist?
crash the barriers
test the waters
grieve the stricken
forgive the horror
whatever ways you decide  
remember
this is not a poem.


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

Your power lies within you. Life endowed you eons ago.
Your work today begins with knowing 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 © 2014

the first line of a poem is a window,
to let the light in
across the sill

through each imperfect pane
swirls in the glass
amend perception

to look in
alters the view

the next line of a poem enters further
into a room, many rooms
where light falls diffuse;
to pass down a corridor and touch patchwork, or

thread edges of fabrics
of lived in textures

and in so touching
alters the view

the third line of a poem makes a home
for the heart
to take up residence,
to visit where spaces and shapes partly familiar,
alive at the peripheral,
perpetually shift

and most importantly,
alter the view.

Martinos © 2016

Two friends circle the air
three moons from Monto;
friendship is measured in wingspan
in the joined eye of spiraling hunters.

Dusk before the day breaks,
loud cloud red
overlooks the dark steer
as it stamps its metallic breast
along the great snake’s back;
its voice of tumbling rock
in a throat made for slaughter.

Hearing this and the language of insects
Peewees, Currawongs, Crows  hop  clear,  but
the wedge-tail’s majesty mistimes its ascent
and the impervious steer is unyielding.

Now one friend circles the field.

The dark steer moves on
hungry for interpreting silence.

Two moons reach into night
and for a third up near Monto.


MChallis © 2015

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

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

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

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

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

writing
stopped

the pen lay still

then

I read
you: deeply

and

lifted up
lifted

with shackles
gone

none writing
ceased


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

i read:
do not read these words

too late

i read:
wet paint do not touch

too late

I read:
open your heart open your mind stop reading

just in time


MChallis © 2014

For Jan*

as
a breath will happen by itself
as
water will find the way to flow
as
gravity will hold us to the ground

I will love you always
and this will be as
natural

When he, Wei Wu Wei, says...

Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 per cent
Of everything you think,
And of everything you do,
Is for yourself -
And there isn't one.

How do you respond?
What is your mind doing right now?
What do you set yourself free from?

Great heart lives
In the sea of dreams, where
The gentle soul knows
The wonder and power
Of even the smallest ripple, and to
Touch just one
With love's caress
Is testament profound
To a life well lived.


MChallis @ 2015

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

From ambivalence to ferocity, she
Touching everything at times
Gently her soft hair over
Follicles and skin through
Reeds in marshes and then
Grassy planes
Across thresholds
To the leaves of autumn
From antipodes to tropics
From arctics to alps

Even the immovable
Will feel her
And they too
Will tremble

MChallis @ 2015

You
Darling you
Are powerful
As gravity

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

MChallis @2015

His fixed black eyes,
turned, like a mother's to her sorrows
eight metres down in a hole
dug for concrete.

His workmates call hoarsely from the rim
but only see and hear
his nothingness

- “he was just here a second ago"

His neck is a broken spirit,
fingernails are torn away
he'd flayed against the earth
falling indefinitely for one and half seconds.

The young concreter,
carefuly finishing his glide work
at the edge of the slab
had stepped back to admire
the reflected perfection of the sky.

His mother receives the news before the slab
is no longer a mirror,
she pictures him falling and
thinks of the last time he called,

- “I only spoke to him yesterday"


MChallis © 2005/2014