[The painting is Magritte's The Lovers (1928)]

Romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth

says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, member of the centre
for human evolution studies, Rutgers University, New Jersey.
After the lust settles, testosterone & oestrogen take a breather,
dopamine (euphoria), noradrenaline (racing hearts, palms sweaty),

serotonin (loss of appetite, obsessing) kick into action.
Love’s burst of chemicals tend to time out over time,
but two hormones bind the hearts as soul mates: oxytocin
gets you attached, vasopressin less promiscuous & primed.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day or a hormone,
Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo & not dopamine,
your sweet little hands sweaty with noradrenaline

sorry about eating the plum in the fridge but studies indicate
given extra vasopressin the promiscuous male
meadow mole may become a very faithful mate.

[A poem from my collection Requiem (Picaro Press) on torture as state terrorism in past and present.]

The Schools of Class. A Thesaurus

Therefore the more I denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.
– Charles Dickens, ‘American Notes for General Circulation’ (1850)

Penal torturers have their own poetic
thesaurus understood across time & space.

The spread eagle crucifies for eight hours
& leaves you paralysed for days.
The tube gag, originally to make uppity
women bite their tongue, forces breath
or bloodied foam through a small hole
in the wooden plug. The scavenger’s daughter
binds you in foetal position till you scream
with cramp. The water pit is a dark cell
with water to your waist where sleeping
is drowning. The cat slashes into the back
with special knots, stops for some extra
salt water bite & resumes to block the wounds
from healing & provide innocent maggots
with a warm home. (100 lashes for singing
or smiling while on the chain). The everlasting
staircase or cockchafer is a treadmill, progress
merging punishment with profit, pain,
the monotony of milling our fine & daily bread.

Further progress moves the site of power’s stark
inscriptions from body to brain. Names are removed
for numbers, charges never laid, shoes felted,
isolation imposed & twenty hour lights,
all self sabotaged with windowless walls
& hoods. The suspects rendered unto democratic
Caesars are outsourced to the white silences
of black prisons where they’re pornographically
stacked in naked pyramids, sexually humiliated,
strapped to boards & water surfed over
gagged mouths & desperate drowning eyes.

Will blind history be the judge, prosecute
the penal lingua franca with no right
to remain silent on the rude question posed
by its secret subtext: can these schools of pain
ever end before class is dismissed? Can class
be dismissed without new schools of pain?

Some topics touched on in the webchat:

The three great stories you can choose between in making sense of the world: Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling, The Great Turning
The inner voice of caring-for-the-world everybody is born with (Bodhisattva, bodhi-citta)
Active hope (the process of doing, action) versus denying/pollyanna ‘hope’
No need for hope, just care enough and you will act (Macy)
Listening to what’s coming out of your own mouth/mind, then helping others listen to theirs
Don’t proselytise, it’s the aliveness of people in movements that attracts
Forget the numbers/majorities fetish: often consciousness shifts when things are bleakest
Art and poetry are becoming more central to our expressing our immense grief/rage and our love for the planet

[The photo was taken in Wingello State Forest near here]

Richie Havens died this week. Here is his enduring legacy, his opening of the Woodstock festival in 1969 with ‘Freedom’. Speaking for an era and and an eternity. The urge to freedom arising from oppression, loneliness, despair, power-within… In such art, such poetry, such music, I find political roots, strength, consolation, stronger than any political tract could ever be since it goes to the whole person, the body, the soul, not just the left brain…

[Above cartoon is by Polyp]. Further to the previous post on global inequality, a few facts from Forbes Magazine’s latest figures for 2013 on global billionaires (the list does not include royalty or political ruling families):

Number of global billionaires 2013: 1,426 (210 more than 2012)
Net aggregate worth : $5.4 trillion (2012: $4.6 trillion; 5.4 trillion is 5.4 thousand billion or $ 5,400,000,000,000)
Number of women billionaires : 138 (34 more than 2012)
US billionaires : 442
Chinese billionaires : 122 (plus Hong Kong 39; ten years ago China had none)
Russian billionaires : 110
German billionaires : 58
Indian billionaires : 55
Brazilian billionaires : 46
Turkish billionaires : 43
UK billionaires : 38
Canadian billionaires : 29
Indonesian billionaires : 25
Japanese billionaires : 22
Australian billionaires : 22

Australian billionaires (in order): Rinehart, Glasenberg, Packer, Forrest, Lowy, Triguboff, Gandel, Neilson, Ramsay, Hains, Stokes, Perron, Fox, Hintze, Buckeridge, Lew, Walker, Ainsworth, Ingham, Harvey, Bingweh, Van Lieshout.

The global top ten billionaires have a combined (official) wealth of $451.5 billion. They are (in order): Carlos Slim Helu (Mex, $73 b), Bill Gates (US, $67 b), Amancio Ortega (Sp, $57 b), Warren Buffett (US, $53.5 b), Larry Ellison (US, $43 b), Charles & David Koch (US, $34 b each), Li Ka-shing (HK, $ 31 b), Liliane Bettencourt (Fr, $30 b), Bernard Arnault (Fr, $29 b).

Of course these are only the official wealth figures. According to a former chief economist at the global management consulting company McKinsey (in The Guardian Weekly 12-18/4/2013, p.1), these ruling class representatives and their fellows in government have between 21 and 32 trillion dollars stashed away in tax havens out of reach of national tax systems. That’s $32,000,000,000,000. More than enough to wipe out global poverty, fund a guaranteed minimum income for all, the transition to renewable energy systems…

What these people (perhaps 0.000004 % of the global population) decide to do or not do with their capital decides the shape of our lives and futures. This is where the real power lies, not with the politicians we are constantly distracted by. Their investment criteria are not our well-being or that of the planet or of future generations. Nor the reduction of suffering, poverty, disempowerment. They have only two criteria: profit and power.

Let’s leave the last word to the wonderful Nina Simone:

[This poem has just been published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons, ed. by Julie Chevalier & Linda Godfrey, at Spineless Wonders press. The volume by many writers and poets, and focussed on an irreverent look at Australian 'icons', will be launched during the upcoming Sydney Writers Festival. Given the density of allusions and Australian idiolect, the poem will, for the most part, only be comprehensible to Australian readers. An iconostasis, an 'icon stand', is a wall of icons separating church nave from sanctuary in Eastern Christianity and typically has three openings or doors. I took the photo of Australian war medals at the Anzac Memorial in Melbourne.]

iconostasis

first door: god’s eye webcam

toyota samsung miele ge maccas all sitting together in their second life on a screen in a gaming den in seoul chewing kimchi with roo & a fair shake of the sauce bottle as the webcam scams in over the opera house mumbling NO WAR in a laconic sort of way iphoned out to all the second gen boat people selling smack out west to seventh gen boat people lebs & serbians wearing maori tats on their harleys like hopper on speed or hogan on tim tams as the st johns st pauls st andrews sandstone bogans prepare for their laidback lawyer lives in mosman woollahra cayman islands & the odd pole-dancer taken to a long lunch at the emirates marquee in a pavlova fascinator stumbles her 20 inch stilettos over the dropped vc of the latest warrior & mate to come home in a flag with a 21 gun salute for the lanky governor mate in canary yellow always good for going down mines before they collapse like the oz top order or collateral debt obligations to keep the home air cons burning the sun setting in the west as it still does but who knows for how long so we might take a punt on it if we’ve got a tip or two on the likely moods of the southern ocean index raising a dust storm in the stock exchange of our hearts big as phar lap’s ghost in the fifth at flemington hong kong racing round uluru stoned as a schoolie zoned out as a pokie pensioner cloned as a yank in an akubra made in china licking a wasabi chiko roll along bondi beach coz it sucks like harold holt’s yellow peril submarine we all live in

second door: glossolalia

visuals: face like a dropped pie head like a chewed mintie useless as tits on a bull useless as a letterbox on a tombstone couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag couldn’t organise a fart in a curry house if he fell into a barrel full of tits he’d come up sucking his thumb
as popular as a cross-city tunnel wouldn’t shout in a shark attack full as a corby boogie board bag vanished like a fart in a fan factory

sound check: rain on an iron roof, a creaky gate/an outdoor dunny door banging in the wind/driving over a cow grate/a screen door slamming/galahs coming in before sunset/geckos chattering on a ceiling/splat of a cane toad on bitumen/squeak of a hills hoist/swipe of a credit card/magpies warbling/yobs screaming fuck off poofter from their holden commodore/spreading disease with the greatest of ease /a little each day /is a good recipe/it’s time

song: love me drizza, love me kubra/love me sheila, love me clacka/love me wanka, love me heidegga/love me warnie, love me horny/love me vb, love me tv/love me reffo, love me biffo/love me smoko, love me choko/love me porno, love me adorno/love me ute, love me root

third door: the history biffos trinity

white armband
rum rebellion: officers remove an unsatisfactory governor
eureka stockade: heroic uprising of battlers against unjust authorities of the time
gallipoli: birth of the nation in the heroic sacrifice of our diggers
vietnam: another heroic sacrifice of our diggers in defence of freedom
lambing flats riots: the what?
cronulla riots: minor tussle over correct female beach attire

black armband
rum rebellion: a section of the officer mafia corners the rum market
eureka stockade: the volk arises in a rage over mining royalties
gallipoli: the volk scrambles up a faux-trojan crag to kill turks for the british empire
vietnam: the volk hacks thru faux-coppola jungles killing vietnamese for us empire
lambing flats riots: the volk rids the labour market of competing chinamen
cronulla riots: the flag-wrapped volk bashes beach-staining lebs

grey armband
what: ever
pass: the prawns
what’s: the score have a nice

…
- A white light like a silence
Accentuating the great songs!
- A shining silence wherein God
Might see as in a mirror
The miracles that He must next achieve!
Ah, Light,
That is God’s inmost wish,
His knowledge of Himself,
Flame of creative judgement,
God’s interrogation of infinity…

(from Hugh MacDiarmid’s ‘A Moment of Eternity’; for ‘God’ some other less masculine/personal symbol may substituted like ‘the Tao’, ‘the Void’, ‘the Universe’… MacDiarmid, son of a postman, 1892-1978, was an atheist communist and Scottish nationalist. The photos were taken at East’s Beach near Kiama.)

[The photo was taken near East's beach at Kiama, south coast. The poem is an older one.]

For God’s Sake

for God’s sake
who in hell
is that

you say
as you look
in the mirror

grimacing
under the puffed up mask
of your grandfather

or watch
with amused
horror

as you perform
the daily rituals
of polite constraint

lunatic lectures
your thoughts
chasing themselves

into admiration
as you cut
grass, vines

and lines
at the end
for God’s sake

['Five Storeys Down. A Travelogue' was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize last year. It documents my journey from bowel cancer diagnosis through operation to recovery in 2011. 'Jimmy Dancer' is Australian rhyming slang for cancer. 'Sprinter' is a time (July) between Spring and Winter here in the highlands of SE Australia. The photo is of the Beijing smog catastrophe this winter.]

Five Storeys Down. A Travelogue

i.m. Mal Morgan, Jennifer Rankin & all the other Jimmy Dancer poets

[…] for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’

1. Diagnosis

As for eleven thousand others
in the nation this year, how easily
things fall into before & after.

The winds bring down the trees,
power out for days of candle
& reading out Nabokov, waxing

half-moon smaller in cold-star fields,
assembling the new shelf rack
in a neon garage closed to the gales.

The auguries you ignored in your
own elegies, the ruby red splatter
in the bowl you wished into piles

fecklessly fleeing from the shock,
the strange hole in the sky, a sphincter
in a perfect fan of cirrus spreading

from some invisible point below
the south-east horizon, a frozen swirl
like the ultrasound image of your

first grandchild made on the day
your first positive casually arrived
in the mail. These meanings missed,

trite hindsight limping in late
like an oldie on a marathon, Orpheus
turning to lose his Eurydice.

All this before the calm day placid
as the storm’s eye, the black hole
that hubs our galaxy’s diamond wheel,

as the c-word hidden inside ‘tumour’
leaps from the surgeon’s mouth
like some loud jack-in-the-box

to frighten the child you still are
as much as not. Afterwards,
it’s all disconnect. Winter’s winds

have picked up again. It’s porridge
& black tea on rising to roar
& tree-bend, two ducks rising

from the dam spray-sprung, giving
themselves over to the wild ride
of wintry air leading where it will.

2. Pre-Admission

On the farm it’s ‘Sprinter’, readying for the hungry gap:
rabbit guards round apple trees, some extra grain
for the hens on lay, moving the sheep to fatter fields.

Dawn a grey goshawk in grey rain over Hobson’s wood.
The night has gurgled up its murk & froth: you’re in
Japan peering down a stairwell you’re to descend

five storeys down, or your wife squatting in the bath
weeping helplessly towards you as you sit on the loo.
That day, waiting, reading, at Pre-Admission suddenly

the door opens to emit a groaning dwarf, hunchbacked,
hooded, black tights taught with a spinnaker of growth,
her slow-mo shuffle lovingly led by a woman walking

backwards into the shocked pause after your last line:
Plato, on love. Later it’s down the vile drink, part plaster
of Paris, part warm lime with milk, your anus pistoling

out its juice. Would that your mind be emptied as easily
by drinking some white glue beyond ennui, disbelief,
your daily lack of love led backwards from book to life

as you descend five storeys down, five storeys down.

3. Admission

Three days later in admissions an inaudible TV
with medical Oprah, a studio of women ecstatic
at slim Dr Oz, flanked by a botoxed bimbette
on high-wire heels teasing out bits of dried bowel

on a cold metal tray. Bedded, a belly tonsure,
shiny white wrist tag & the Institution
hands out its bum-free smock. Thankful
as a kid for the warmed blanket imagining

winter rain on the roof. Here it’s all septic
& air con, a sudden change to Theatre Four.
You’ll miss Disney Dalmatians in No. Three,
desist from making a pallid joke à la chinois

about the number four as surgeons Gan & Ho,
bonneted like kitchen hands, awkward, squeeze
your trembling paw. Calm gas lady Lynch
makes up the trinity team & another nascent

gung-ho gallows joke is lynched before arrival.
Left arm tourniquet’d for the welcome hit,
the rest is total absence among dancing knives
& proverbial machines that, hopefully, go ping.

4. Return

Coming out high, a cloud of voices calling your name
from some other star, your wife repeating foggy disyllables
of welcome news: ‘success’, ‘smaller’, ‘lower’, you all ear
& unseeing, laughing hysterically for more fresh air.

Later it’s waking like Gulliver pinned to the bed,
some human valve cabled between two drips & two drains,
an oxygen bridle puffing its plastic subtleties right
up your nose. To your left you discover two lovely

remotes: morphine on tap & a nurse or TV, some
healing illusion you’re back in control. You’re not.
Nights heave punctuated with torches wandering like lost
campers, fishing boats on nocturnal seas, as some nurse

enters to pump up your arm, clamp a heart peg
to your finger, thermometer your ear, anti-coagulate
belly or thigh. Air con’s fake susurrus of windy leaves
sighs its counterpoint to the thump of your oxygen lead.

Between bouts of ear-plugged sleep finessed with
the odd squeeze of morphine your frazzled brain
coruscates with a diaphanous flow of surreal images
you can never quite grasp, a cinematic ghost grabbing

at water that goes up in smoke, eyes gazing inwards
on the swirling membrane that passes for your mind.
Suddenly something whispers: be kind & gentle, &, shame-
-tinged lightning, you think tumours may flower with rage.

What if it’s not the two hundred chemicals Dow, DuPont
& Bayer have added to old boomer bods, the fumes
along Parramatta Road or the fallout in the fifties
but your failure to face your fear, contain your rage,

be more gentle & forgiving, starting with yourself?
Was the tumour a failure of character? Either way,
meaning twinned to metaphor, sooner shall conjecture
pass a needle’s eye than this camel make sense of life

the kind & gentle need as much within as without,
TV’s trash & gore now causing sheer disgust, even
the news quite hard to bear. You’re an open wound
& crave the warmth of human care. Enter the nurses.

First it’s Emma, then Terry who shifts the night & turns
from woman into man in the very first light. Thank-
fulness bubbles for each melding mother with machine,
a name, smile, assured movements all the balm it takes

to soothe a prone & vulnerable mess of mind & cells.
Let all eleven women & two men be here named
who get you through the first raw days, a tally
of thirteen kindnesses trumping Jesus’ entourage:

Emma, Terry, Kirsty, Sue, Barbara, Cathy, Kate,
Rob, Maria, Tricia, Sarah, Robyn, Katrina. Fourteen
appears in the dawn window in the gnarly folds
& wide gut of a centenarian cedar, strong solace

of evergreen limbs swaying fragile solidity in a muck
of focus on the cesspool of self, as, obsessive as
Narcissus, you wait for the Godot of renewed rumble
& fart signalling your slow-limp return to the living.

5. Recovery

Home, recovery, weeks of ignorance & pain
fusing of nose, bowel, eye, mind into a shaky
world that runs on empty & pure disgust

your inner chaos annoyed by every outward
bit of fluff, a crooked carpet, your beanie
not where it’s supposed to be, suddenly

you understand the mad compulsions
of OCD: every crack in the pavement
could echo the one inside, raw, unanchored

you need the moorings of external rules.
Tossed between blind blockage & smear,
anal pressure driving you up its wall

for weeks, food reduced to bland pap, five
weeks of agony till, bless her, a community
nurse suggests ‘constipation’ & you get it right.

Stuck in half of Moby Dick, pumping
weights, eating well again courtesy
of your wife’s culinary poetics, you begin

your slow ascent back to square one.
Twelve kilos lost, at six weeks it’s ecstasy
to manage a walk around Magnet Mart.

Spring is on cue & its bounties roll in,
fruit tree blossoms, a new bird species,
the eye dance of new green’s potential.

All this a gift, nurses, wife, gut granted
yet all too easily taken simply as such,
familiarity breeding the ignorant patina

of contempt & habit that grinds us,
willingly, into its daily dust till now
you’re thankful for each gurgle & fart,

the body’s unknowable wisdom eating,
absorbing, passing waste, a universe
of mysterious flows slowly reforming

the healing ruins of the surgeon’s knife.
Relationships’ gifts felt but fade in & out
like weak signals from some uncertain star.

In truth you’re back at square one
minus some gut & arse, no wisdom felt,
no sweet Eurydice sung back up from

suffering nor duende dealt from Jimmy
Dancer’s sado-touch. Seems you’re still
the old apple-tending pain in the arse,

scribbling grump, ‘kind and gentle’,
like any revolution, as far away as it ever was,
the daily miracles of clouds & people again

seen through the diurnal glass darkly,
that passing squint of skylight from
five storeys down, five storeys down.