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 '*******’ 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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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 mothe?r
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'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

and
you will know space
as an intelligent resource

so discovered
through the power
            of the pause



MChallis © 2015

complete insanity       and time ignoring the clock ticking       backwards
and forwards a child shunting a cart full of       blocks tumbling      down a cliff       face at the window  where I see a river running through   to the end of year specials where christmas    cake always made with old dough before baking should be let to        rise and fall of the capitalist       approach to sand mining in Kakadu and lead poisoning in tuna       fishing on the lake before breakfast slapping at mosquito’s exploited by greed overcoming the rest of us who are just as hungry and        waiting at the table where i’ve waited for       days has nothing to do       with me can we please take the attention off me        it’s all i ever       here and there is a way forward follow me this way        down children in the deep dark woods lived a little dwarf with a pocket full of thumbs cut from little boys who didn’t keep their noses clean and out of somebody       else’s business to come here today and talk to you about the theory of relative *******       which as you know was discovered by Captain Jimmy the cook or Captain courageous Columbus or Hugo weaving    its way into history before being    put out to pasture to grow fat in a paddock full of Nowegian Wood       isn’t it good that your father is coming home after all these years i’ve waited        so long  for the time to wait       for a cup of tea would be very nice       thankyou very much for coming ladies and       gentlemen please start your       engines of the new age       old methods of brewing       handed down to you on a platter and what do you do you throw it back in our faces       made of broken glass shattered by the news crowds stand outside the palace for days mourning the nations       lossst and found is this way sir broken feet repaired daily  broken hands twice daily  broken hearts sir that’s down the hallway second door on the left in the cliche department sir   thank you sir your time has come i’m sorry it had to end this way      look i’m sorry       enough of that sir       button up       there’s a good chop to the bottom of the neck       cuts air supply and results       instant lotteries are the way to think of the       future is what you make of it       son before you make any rash decisions       go and stand in the poet’s corner and fill in the forms you’ve been given make sure you answer every       question is you must understand the rules of inquisition        without question you must answer every question and make sure you complete every form you’ve been       given make very sure that       every form  is complete 
insanity.

MChallis © 2015

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

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

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

One

The body is a song
Beat after beat the drummer keeping time
Saves one beat for you and one for the heart of the world

Two

When humans care for orphaned gorillas
They are human beings – being human
The gorillas
Witness to an endangered species.

Three

Three wise men arrive in Las Vegas. They're confused. The city of stars accepts their gifts in return for chips and exchanges their camels for Pontiacs.
Eventually the three men run out of goodwill and are asked to leave the star-city.
Now each of then wears self-correcting sunglasses, far more cautious when following the brightness of artificial light.

Four

The world is a box with clear sides
Through this we see the sky dark and the sky light
We see four directions on all horizons
And constellations that rise and fall
Shut your eyes and listen carefully
You can hear the lid open every time one of us enters
And one of us leaves.

Five

The lad in the schoolyard solves a problem with the same
Mathematical precision of his father
He counts on his five fingers and divides them
Into one tight fist
With this math he gets a perfect score and
None argue with the result.

Six

When all the world clocks stop ticking.
They will each tell of a different time: during rush hour, before the interview, at the moment of martyrdom, just after take off, when war is declared, the date and time of your birth.
On any given day each one will tell the truth - at least twice.

Seven

Seven sons were seven suns a'shine on everyday
Yet seven suns one day went dark to shine another way
Seven dwarves in darkening hue imminently benign
No longer to bright any sky and none would see the sign

Eight

Eight accounts of starving populations
Eight charity organisations seeking aid
Eight million raised per quarter
Quartered by eight reasons to extract a share
Before the rest is shared to the rest
Who continue to starve.

Nine

Nine millimetre cannon kills you with a slightly larger calibre than eight millimetre cannon. Makes a slightly larger hole, travels slightly quicker, has a slightly longer trajectory, provides a slightly louder thud or thwuk when it hits the target.
This knowledge may not prevent you from coming to harm; but at least if killed by nine millimetre cannon, you'll die well informed.

Ten

How many cynics does it take to change a light bulb?
As many as it takes to be satisfied with this as an ending.



MChallis © 2015

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

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

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

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

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

The ebb and the ebb and the ebb of your sad heart dear friend.  The
smooth wet weight of river stone;  those sleek dark ears in their grey-green window.

Clear-water sadness all the way to the bottom of the bed
where small grains furrow over the nose of an inquisitive predator.

I know so well your course and turn and how you stir
like an eddy above the tail of a hungry fish.

I see you rise and move. And swim
to another bend to curl into fronds that stroke you.

When you reach the surface, I fin-tickle your belly as
you stop the wing of a succulent dragon fly.   I do not...

I do not want you to go just yet; to the drenching wilderness,
stay a while and bask in the shallows.  Rest,

before you turn to the deep to hunt the elusive figment.
Stay a while and rest with me; empty your ears of whispering watery ghosts.


MChallis © 2015

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

there are none so blind
who are
wronged and righteous

there are some seeing so clearly
who are
wronged and compassionate


MChallis @ 2015

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

dingly fingly
wickety wackety
overflow going up
crickety crackety
and all of the dangen, the
dingin and dongin and
on and on and onagain onagain

snippety snippety
spinagain spitagain
flatabout backwardsing
flatabout forwardsing
sobusy thisbusy
toobusy stressfactor
not stopping till rictus
or blowups and messfactor

notlearning notlistening
gofigures upratcheting
notseeing nothearing
ambivalence hatcheting
all in dingly the
wickety wack
the edge up approaching
from whichety which
will be no coming back


MChallis © 2015

To wonder where on beaches or in skies
Lives freedom
Or to contemplate of clouds
The nature of their making
In this
I am moved
To mouth the names of ancestors
To call in song dear kindred, for whose imprints
I sweep the sand
In fragments of faltering dreams
A search for meaning
Where breathes an origin of founding stars


MChallis @ 2015

To my dead son or daughter
I left you
Let you pass
Kept you out

Frozen
The mark of
the palmist foretelling five children
I climb this hill now with four at my side

Your memory: A shadow on the distant range
where eucalyptus is to its last
the blue mountain

Though I climb and four grow
the wife that was then is now gone
her grief and her echo

Still I sense the soft pad of your call
the tug of your passing
and then almost
the first breath of greeting


MChallis © 2015

How will you show up today
Will your burdens badge you
Or will they anchor
A simple purpose
And from gravity
And with sinew
Will you continue, with will
To rise?

MChallis @ 2015

Between grey sheeted sky, and
Grass green covered fields

Among dips and contours
Of clear rain water pools

Magpie and Currawong
Engage the other in carol and furtive call, in

Clear precise statements, morning reverie,
Tuneful trill and soulful segue, their

Full repertoire of robust conversation
Brings song, community and particular joy.


MChallis @ 2015

... I think I'm pregnant to you.
I think our hearts have joined.

A poem is worth so much more in the delivery, so
I place my trust in Australia Post
and the efficacy of the clearly marked post code.

I heard that love is intoxication:
so I purchased a bottle of wine grown in South Australia
and hoped to savour just a taste of you.

There’s a chemical released in your brain when
you meet someone you love;
its dying to meet other chemicals.

But I can’t cope with that kind of expectation,
and I’m too young for equanimous adjustment.
It’s too much like needing a sedative after the *** you almost had
when you thought your girlfriend was coming to stay for the night.

Don’t think I’m bemoaning the fact that you’re not coming to stay for the night,
you live on the other side of the continent.
I accept the disparity of our geography.
I accept the arterial nature of the freeway system in human relationship
after all, we’ve all been told where roads lead.

Did you know that if your name was translated in Spanish?
I'd be interpreted as a conquistador with no hope in the tropics.
And did you know that I’ve always wanted to wear a superman suit and
keep nothing out but steady rainfall?
If you think about it, this is a potent philosophy.
  
Mephistopheles considered certain questions and theorems.
He found the intrusion of chaos theory and the disruption to the order of the work ethic unthinkable.
He found the mature and calculated response simple:
he told the ******* to articulate and pontificate elsewhere.
So please don't get any ideas.

This brings me back to my remaining piece of news:
Regardless of the fact that it’s medically impossible
I think I'm pregnant to you.

Please write soon.



MChallis © 2015

In the world
I can get busy
busy mind
getting distracted

away from where
the centre is
away from where
what matters

this poem
these poems
we share

these poets
saying hello to poetry
keep bringing me back

to what's essential
to belonging

MChallis © 2015

I look over my shoulder
you’re watching me,
with a green tree-frog sitting on your  shoulder.
You’re both smiling.
So am I.
Your photograph goes on repeating its smile, day after day,
it never tires
or has a day off,
just waits to share a bit more of your enthusiasm.

You’re there as I wake each morning
reminding me we’re inseperable.
Even now I can hear you say,
“you know the river finds its way,
you know the tree was once a seed..."

Two thousand kilometres, seperate cities, seperate lives
serve the paradox of our closeness.

Your photograph reminds me
love will reveal itself with each day.
The 'I  that loves you'
is beyond us both,
to understand it
is as impossible
as interpreting the smile of frogs or the speech of trees.

'I love you'
lives outside a definition;
there’s simply no explanation needed
as we inhale.

MChallis © 2015

I was
presumed missing on
an angry afternoons walk
across an ocean
of bitter pills
that swallowed themselves
in brown bottles
labeled caution
keep away from
me
and I feel
the scream of an angry after-blade scraping
across the glass that
keeps me
in this cell
you listening through
a telephone
grown surgically
from the hand
of providence
longevity
switching tables
when the waiter
wasn’t looking
to eat the camembert
the cream
and all the opportunity
that was supposed to go around
like loaves and fishes
but I only see
an empty pond
and you floating
fat belly
full of everything
except the guts
to come clean
and to even give
a good ******
but you don’t
and now I’m out
and you will
‘cause you’re *******
razor blades
and I understand
because
I would be to
if I were you
but
I’m not
don’t say I am
don’t ever say that
you know
that makes me feel good
when you’re on the floor
like
the ****
I ****
saying
“fark man
you’re free
you’re out
you’re clean”
and I’m all over
you
forever,
I am so over you
I’m all through you
I am you
I’m the lane
in your vein
‘freight train
to the brain’
I’m the reason
the mirror
barks back its bite
I am the only reason
you're out at night
I am your only ******* reason,
don’t forget it or
good night!


MChallis © 2015

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

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