All Poems
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The Logic Of This State
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Marking time in pencil strokes across a virgin page
and waiting for coincidence of heart-beat and second-hand,
keying to the electronic blips that phase
the passing time; visionary states of grace
O Lord, Our Father
© Mark Twain
O Lord, our father,
Our young patriots, idols of our hearts,
Go forth to battle - be Thou near them!
With them, in spirit, we also go forth
From the sweet peace of our beloved firesides To smite the foe.
The light was always you
© Ivan Donn Carswell
In the beginning there was light,
abundant light that truly lit the way,
time was never lost in dodging flights
of feckless shadows and darkness seldom
The Last Unicorn
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We were never set to let her free
from facile bonds, we fondly loved
mythology too much to let her go
and kept her chained beyond
the scheme of sessile separation.
Advice To Psychologists
© Kenneth Slessor
YOU spies that pierce the mind with trenches,
Feasting your eyes through private panes,
Who, not content with Heavenly stenches,
Insist on taking up the drains,
The last excuse
© Ivan Donn Carswell
What is left now that weve used the last excuse,
what is left to justify excess. The rhetoric at best
was very thin when things began, but to suggest
we must remain and play the hand were dealt
Gray Weather
© Robinson Jeffers
It is true that, older than man and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf
Still cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum;
The Hunt
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The hunt begins at a languid pace
belying hysteria building in place, biding its time
to menace the peace in an orchard where mayhems
scant held on a leash. Abigail Belles the first into line,
Limerick: There was a Young Lady of Dorking,
© Edward Lear
There was a Young Lady of Dorking,
Who bought a large bonnet for walking;
But its colour and size,
So bedazzled her eyes,
That she very soon went back to Dorking.
The Ease and Charm of You
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Theres an infinity of wisdom in your smile that would deny
the winsome wit that lies at back of it; and then the droll and
cheeky svénska troll of you which peeps out from the
flimsy drape in which you sheet your public soul, an urchin
The best days of my life
© Ivan Donn Carswell
What is it about Bryan Adams and his song
Summer of 69? Why do the lyrics linger? Was it
90° in the shade and the harbinger of the end
of the golden weather, or the impending closure
One of the Bo'sun's Yarns
© John Masefield
Loafin' around in Sailor Town, a-bluin' o' my advance,
I met a derelict donkyman who led me a merry dance,
Till he landed me 'n blanched me fair in the bar of a rum-saloon,
'N' there he spun me a juice of a yarn to this-yer brand of tune.
The Beer Was Cold Enough
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It is amazing, while I lay in bed, I had the lines
roaring through my head like locusts on the wing,
the unabashed extravagance of such a flock
of stunning words shocked me out of brittle sleep;
Sonnet XI. On The Detraction Which Followed My Writing Certain Treatises
© John Milton
A Book was writ of late call'd Tetrachordon;
And wov'n close, both matter, form and stile;
The Subject new: it walk'd the Town a while,
Numbring good intellects; now seldom por'd on.
The beans were exciting
© Ivan Donn Carswell
I tried cooking in my new Quicksilver jacket, just
an affectation I assure you no, not the coat
or the cooking but me in the wearing of it,
a form of warped appreciation, and when I think
A Une Madone (To A Madonna)
© Charles Baudelaire
Ex-voto dans le goût espagnol
Je veux bâtir pour toi, Madone, ma maîtresse,
Un autel souterrain au fond de ma détresse,
Et creuser dans le coin le plus noir de mon coeur,
Thank you Ambrose
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Thank you Ambrose for the kitchen door ajar,
a sign your friendship never closed on me, an amity extended
from afar although it was a distant glow I didnt really know.
Terra nullis ignorata
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We came to find the place contained
in legendary tracts, the hidden land
of fulsome wealth that we had sorely lacked,
an empty land of winsome dreams.
Talk to me of love
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Talk to me of love with wonder in your eyes,
of limber magic flying through the veiling air
and soft-edged silks trailing in a vintage plume,
the bloom of fragrant lavender intimate in your hair
