"mchallis" poems
The teeth of hierarchy flash
a scowled curse in quick lightening.
This hard edge does not hunger for food.
His, is a stare into a desert battle-ground:
dry-rasping, gaunt and unforgiving,
A Goliath.
And me - envious of stones in the desert.
The 'Fuck you’ in the eye of his razor.
My punishment waits like a
missionary’s head in a bucket
(its smile still praising in a tribal trophy necklace).
His armoured lips sip hot-dipped darkness
deep from the volcano.
The boy in class with my blood in his schoolbag.
The teacher dripping words of impatience onto my flight plan.
Head down, writing escape from the demon
Furiously - until the last bell.
MChallis © 2015
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 7:01 AM UTC
Listen son
It’s al ‘right to feel
It’s OK to cry
It’s even acceptable to not be perfect
In everything you try
Failure can be positive
If bent another way
A kind of subtle back-burn before
The fire of success comes your way
Its not the end of everything, but the
Beginning of something new
It’s probably the way you see it
Is the shape that comes to view
A mountain so enormous
Never seeming to be climbed
Until you’ve done some treading
Most likely one foot at a time
Some day you get right up there
You’re laughing with the clouds
And at some stage you lose your grip again
Falling all the way back down
So you pick yourself right up
Spit gravel from your mouth
And head to other climates
I’m recommending south
On the way you meet a few kind souls
Perhaps a little wiser than yourself
Some who might begin to question
The state of your mental health
But don’t despair; it’s all good stuff
The journey, the quest, the sport,
Some days you’ll go a long way
On others you’ll pull up short
Just keep going that’s the main thing,
I’m buggered if I know where, cause’
Eventually south goes north
And every other where
Keep treading, keep smiling,
Don’t forget to breathe
It’s important to enjoy yourself
And keep something up your sleeve
It isn’t easy, this I know,
When some old ****** gives advice
You think he’s a little crazy and
He don’t talk so very nice
You’re probably right, he might be mad,
But the thing about this is,
It’s better to keep asking questions
Than be sitting in a tizz
Complain or question or kick or scratch
The ticket is the train you catch
The one for somewhere, the one that goes
Not sitting at the station and picking at your nose
Get on board
Live a life
Have some fun and
Cause a bit o’ strife, now
I’m sorry I can’t say more than this
But I reckon you know why; it’s
Coz you’ve got a good long life to lead
And I’m about to die.
MChallis @ 1999/2014
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 12:13 AM UTC
Lie in the bare-faced sun
savour time
under seige
frittering hours
afor breakfast and
rush ‘round
later
if necessary
under fire
moving appointments
with telephones twitching
anticipation
then forage
the howl
create havoc
hunt the giggling
play for keeps
heads roll
apart
the ultimate shudder
MChallis © 2015
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 6:44 AM UTC
A vista
spiels with neon
Non-essential conversation repeating
Humanity hovers at the entrance
In this shopping centre every need seems urgent
Mouths pause their chatter
To sip at coffee or chow down burger
Gestures are reinforced with nail polish,
jewellery on many fingers
and small change passing across counter tops
In here the weather is neither warm nor cool
and everything seems designed to stimulate my mediocrity
Reflection in the shop-front is on sale at bargain price
but today I cannot afford to buy on impulse
I turn away to blend
With colourful blah
MChallis © 2009 (reworked 2014)
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 7:14 AM UTC
The adolescent Currawong
not exactly stumbling or tripping
is parrot-like as a junior, a
hopper and stepper in
the art of stalking and hunting
In a series of quick-steps and bounces
she moves sideways, most emphatic as
a survival enthusiast
She gazes, investigates and gathers the curios,
insects, rich dark worms
one gesture at a time
She is vigilant and persistent
through the dust
the soil, the grass
with instinct and practise
through her teachers
she thrives
MChallis © 2015
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 8:47 PM UTC
I would like to know you
More than I do
You are a gracious presence that in glimpses I have seen influence the mightiest egos to acquiesce
I stumble across you at times yet would know you more as a constant companion
I forget you often and when in the throes of reaction and defensiveness I catch myself in arrogance or in self righteousness or justification
This is followed by regret
How do I know you?
How do I find you in the moments when I am alone and embattled?
How do I find you in that first breath?
Of surrender
MChallis @ 2014
Nov 19, 2014
Nov 19, 2014 at 5:29 AM UTC
take rain from sky
take the way tall men straighten your stance
take the students of dance
see the little ballerina stretch her toes
see her mother warm with the floodlight
take your plea to the judiciary
take your eye to the statue of David
smear on the dust of Somalia
rub raw the frost of Croatia
refresh your aim in the heights of Angola
but do not stop only at this
breathe every impediment
trust every promise of clemency
stumble if you will
fall under cease-fire
take it all
take the watchmaker
bent over time
with fine tools
clasp each second
take the sculptor who
chisels and scalpels for the grandiose
later in your armchair
fold creases in your newspaper with care
be with every nourishment
be with the cloth of your nakedness
make sail for your harbour of origin
remember the milk of your mother
warm or cold or sweet if it is so
appease hunger
with the ambidextrous mouth
of a soldier
fed with death in his jungle
be the bystander, be the bi-partisan,
the ******* the timeless,
the dancer
be it all
breathe each increment
do it now
measure the infinite
the possible
MChallis © 2015
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 8:02 PM UTC
In the heat of the night
When everything is cool Is when
I miss her
The most
It was raspberry tea
No
Peppermint - I don't know
Lips wet longer when an afternoon
Came after
Noon
And went like clouds before clouds before…
You know
It is interesting to meet some…
Someone you can
You can
You know
I don't know
We touched, like others
Like all others
Nothing new
Nothing new anymore
You want it so much
To be new
New for old is what they say
What do these old hands hold?
Old …
You want it so much
To hold
It slips
You never did hold on very well
Its like its like
I don't know, you want it so much
I miss her
MChallis © 1995/2014
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 10:16 PM UTC
they call us in
the women
who bring us
through the eye
the elder-wise mother
who is sister
daughter, lover, all
holding space apart
for us to enter
feminine shape
at the beginning
brightness resting in
and upon the earth
the tender choice
bringing light
to being
bringing cause
MChallis @ 2015
Jan 18, 2015
Jan 18, 2015 at 1:54 AM UTC
Perfect with gravity
fuji-like mountain
above which hangs heaven
star full and bursting
beside which she sits with a mouth full of flattery
quipping alacrities with ease
'you’re a man with a very smooth shirt’, she says
‘thank you’, he replies almost inaudibly
The breeze brushes an inner thigh with its lycra tongue
she shimmers
like a clear-lake breeze kissed
He grows to become a campfire on her shores
she laps at his embers
reflecting and flickering
He encompasses the perimeter with stealth
Sniffs the wind for fear and for warning
none comes
they bathe naked, ever watchful, for
a shift in the rushes, for the
fish in their sleep,
for the shadows
in the deep
not yet awakened.
MChallis © 2015
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 2:20 PM UTC
I saw
An ant
A walk
Along
A grain
Of yellow
Sand
And as
He walked
I sang
To him
An ant-hymn
To him sing
Oh ant
Oh ant
I see
You crawl
As here
I stand
So straight
So tall
Oh ant
Oh ant
Yet as
You crawl
I am
Not seen
By you
At all
Oh ant then
Ant then
Who is small?
MChallis @ 2015
Jun 19, 2015
Jun 19, 2015 at 2:00 PM UTC
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
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 12:36 AM UTC
the crescent moon, bent
like Arjuna's bow
draws her ink-dark arrow across all heaven
she is first to intersect venus, then mars,
then on in one omniscient arc to trace
the centre of being
across skies, across eons
across all beginnings, endings,
all that is and was
long to outlast all human experience
and all that can be foreseen
MChallis © 2015
Jul 27, 2015
Jul 27, 2015 at 9:35 PM UTC
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
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 7:34 AM UTC
for Dennis Lee
By the river
at night
burned stubble
of sugar cane
feathers the air with a lick of caramel
a quiet earth underscores
crocus and chorusing cricket
as curlew weep their distant sonorous calls
********* the stillness
we pluck a string of starlight
to pull a gentle breeze closer
we tug on orbiting moons
in the darkness of deep
we become motionless
intent to watch worlds
and enter the symphony
MChallis @ 2015
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 4:41 PM UTC
'you only know what you've got when its gone'
J Mitchell
at first learning
grief brings the un-returnable message
there is no un-reading
no un-learning
only unbearable immutable fact
in solitude there is no escape
in connection there is no solution
over time the seven stages are traversed
and while there can be no forgetting
with acquiescence
there can be acceptance
and with it
the gentle light of loss
to illuminate
the deepest gratitude
MChallis @ 2014
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 5:47 PM UTC
and
you will know space
as an intelligent resource
so discovered
through the power
of the pause
MChallis © 2015
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 6:32 AM UTC
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
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 8:12 PM UTC
Cedar Creek
a moonlit evening
looking up into sparkling eucalypts
After rain
The moon is reflected
In every droplet
On every leaf,
Simplicity has sent her messengers
With the brush and rustle of an evening breeze
These celestial missives begin to fall
To leave
the moon more eminent
MChallis © 2015
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 7:50 PM UTC
My father shouting at me
loud enough to wake my dead grandfather, the
red air is frightening I try not to tremble,
it makes him worse,
he hits me with a strap - but his anger soon passes
Tonight the moon seems old,
if it cries it can cry for me because
my sadness is deeper than tears and
the old man I will one day be will remember this.
--
My mother, happy in her freedom swims naked in the bathroom
Swims an olympic record from the tap end
to the end where we keep the shampoo.
Beneath the waves she can't hear the
crashing and shouting from the next room.
The bathroom light is turned out,
the moon fills the bath with its soft-milk.
--
Sad is my sister crying tears like wet feathers.
Crying for a pain she wants to, but can't feel. Her tears
are starved birds that never learn to fly.
--
My sister cries the guilt of an expert,
My mother tends herself with soft lotions,
My father, a helpless bystander to his own rage,
wears spectacles passed down by his father.
--
Tonight the moon is my quilt
Heart-beats are held and all is muffled
The rage is the sea
My skin milks the light now.
MChallis © 2014
www.martinchallis.com
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 8:34 AM UTC
You fly high
in the night
seeing nothing below
or above
but the absence
and abundance
of light
Ancient wing;
stroke of genius,
deliberate cruelty,
you preen each red feather,
particular to the
last breath
before flight
MChallis © 2015
Jan 10, 2015
Jan 10, 2015 at 9:22 PM UTC
Neither this nor that
A perfect in-between
Spirit breath
Cosmic stance
The compression of a universe
Into one indivisible point
An expansion of a universe
into all points
A noun for oneness
Unanimous stillness
The experience
Of now
MChallis © 2015
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 8:01 PM UTC
Catch them
The subtle grabs of thought
Those judgments
And opinions
Those contractions
That divide us
Catch them
And release them
Return again to
quiet mind
MChallis @ 2015
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 4:45 PM UTC
with the shadow of the beetle
comes the simplest truth:
everything has its season
just as the cast will lengthen
to fight change, ultimately
will overwhelm you
MChallis © 2015
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 2:53 PM UTC
Past and future mirror one another.
Fixed at their crossing point
Is an infinite and uncombustible present:
Isness as an endless ocean.
An ocean made of words
Fluid words endlessly mobile, where
Anything can be described
Anything foretold.
In deep and shallow utterances
Live all the metaphors
In cycling currents
All allusions ebb and flow.
Some tales are down for deep remembering
Some swim fertile yet unborn,
All the while the ocean shares her stories
Allegoric and relentless as they wash ashore.
MChallis © 2015
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 11:08 PM UTC