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2 Melbourne Writers . . .
photo by dave ellison
DAVE ELLISON el deva
photo by vera di campli san vito
DAVID SHEPHERD el snoddograssi
杏
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DAVE ELLISON
to stir the trees
who scattered blossom
through centuries
who shook the forest
who stole through golden leaves?
a hollow moan
who kissed the headstones
of empires gone
who shook the forest
who stole through golden leaves?
the golden leaves
throughout the power
that moved our destiny
all the forest echoed
Eternity, Eternity
till time must sleep
who dried the teardrop
on history’s cheek
who shook the forest
who stole through golden leaves?
the golden leaves
throughout the power
that moved our destiny
who shook the forest
who stole through golden leaves?
our Eternity
Stuck
In winter branches
One soul
Trapped
Inside the overcoat
Of manic dreams
Through earthly prisons
That bring me to my knees
The night is long
Too long for worry
Your precious love
Will set me free
Where captors prowl
In timeworn caverns
As crying tries the hours
And darkened stars
But you still whisper
Of life beyond these bars
The night is long
Too long for worry
Your precious love
Will set me free
Along the wall
Along the wall
They pass
The shadows
Of us all
For love I surely miss
I am in exile from the love
Too far to know her kiss
The one of heaven’s bliss
I am in exile from the one
For there my brother is
So trapped inside the mist
I am in exile from my soul
And terrible is this
to greet the moment
may the Moment
be a friend
the way so windblown
may the Way
help you bend
and bring compassion
may Compassion
let you mend
You move
towards an answer
may the Answer
greet you then.
DAVID SHEPHERD
Love Sick Fool
From the creek
Which flows down the valley
From up there
Where you are now
I dream the tricklings
Cupped in my cracked hands
May have caressed
Your bare bathing body
And I savour every drop
Like mad nectar.
Glittering on the gliding current
I imagine
It may have been tangled
In your tossed hair
Up there
When you are now
And I covet it
Like Cortez did the Aztec’s gold.
Strokes my fractured face
As it blows down
From up there
Where you are now
I smell the perfume
Of your secretly scented skin
And I inhale deeply
Like an obsessed Opium addict.
Whenever I lie in bed
Silently staring
At the moon’s sullen glow
I know
You are too
And I wish I was
Up there
Where you are now
To see its real splendour
Reflected in your night-time
Brown mirror eyes
Like Diana’s dazzling disc
Suspended in amber
Forever.
2004
Abracadabra Mist
Red rock clay staircase
Shrouded tunnel of green
Like a pessimistic peon pilgrim
Lumbering up the path to Delphi
Just to have a gig
At the Oracle.
In her ethereal abode
Surrounded by Shiva’s sacred serpents
Like some minor avataric incarnation
Perhaps of Durgha
Brandishing a dangerous and deadly weapon
In each of her ten hands
Anxiously awaiting to smote
The immanent demons
The Dark One
Her Moorish skin
Burning black as night
Without moon
Flame red pointed tongue
Protruding
Stabbing the air
And anything else
That happens to be there.
The severed skulls of her vanquished
Around her Nubile neck
She bleaches
And arranges them
In her inner sanctum
To admire later
At her leisure
In private semi-darkness.
She inhales the fumes
From her mystic pit
Through an Onyx pipe
A cancer catching catheter tube
Hanging from her crooked grin
Like a lost licorice stick.
But this Gorgon turns men into mud
Not stone
And she’s still not sure why
Her spurious spells go awry
Simultaneously spitting
Barbs and regards
Smiling and scowling
With the odd menacing grimace
Her Obsidian eyes
Cut like dull Aztec razor blades
Yet radiate dark gentle secrets.
She oozes
An invisible Abracadabra mist
An ancient pheromone
Cunningly concocted
With something smuggled in from the East
Designed to melt the marrow
Of mere men’s malleable bones.
That steep incline
Again and again
Not to have a gig at the Oracle
She ain’t there
Only that moot minor Devi
Her Lila
Her magic mumble
And that intoxicating Abracadabra mist
She wears
Around her.
Terania In Black
As black as the grave
I sat
On the stone cold
Creeping crypt slab
Stencilled across Terania Creek.
Of dead silhouetted trees
Pointed their cadaver fingers
At the black new moon
And the stars hid their splendour
In the funereal folds
Of the leaden sky’s
Vast velvet shroud.
Within the thick Indian ink ether
The sound of gushing water
Rushing through the murky vault
Below me
Chattering and guttering
Conjured up the harmony
Of an unknown esoteric cannon
My blind eye
Caught the culprits
Responsible for this arcane spell
Of a thousand Bunjulung bodies
A concealed chorus
Of discarnate voices
Babbling and blathering
A mesmerizing magical hymn
Of endless ecstatic rhyme
Continually chanted
Since time immemorial
This sacred secret song
It’s as if the ancient tongue of Babel
Was being uttered for the very first time
Only to be confounded
By the occult dialect
Of El Shaddai’s
Eternally staunch stones
Their bare bloated bolder bellies
Worn and washed away
By the immortal embrace
Pressing their porus porcelain skins
Into this soulful swirling soup
Roiling and bubbling through the glad gloom
In a liturgy of selfless love
Echoing the very essence
Of the relentless rain
The long lost sap tears
Of the tallest trees
Their rotting rusty roots
Sliding into the absinthe abyss
Incessantly singing
The perfect poetry
Of time passing
In the late dark night
As black as the grave
And I still sat
On the stone cold crypt slab
Stencilled across Terania Creek
Like a cancelled crustacean.
That Screaming Silence
in a barbed-wire cage
when someone pulls a shiv
sinking it in
with quiet rage.
after ringing a familiar door bell
of a house which seems empty
but you really can't tell.
at night
across an empty back lot
after the crack and echo
of an unwarranted pistol shot.
after the last death rattle
when your mate gives up
his life verses death battle.
after the final bell's toll
at the funeral in the rain
feeling fucked and fucking cold.
alone in bed at night
wide awake after the nightmare
sweating in fright.
That screaming silence
in my own bottomless ears
when I ponder my precarious life
and the soundtrack just disappears…
The Saints of Sloth
in the lazy afternoon
in June
waiting for the monsoon
chasing ancient wisps
with silver tubes
gathering the sacred slithers
of soft, grey smoke
behind blue Bombay walls
under black plastic
bicycle-tyred roofs
surrounded by brown match-stick men
peddling their rickshaws in circles
creating rings of soft brown dust
soft, sweet brown
brown, red horned cows
brown trunked, red-circled trees
replete with fresh orange garlands
brown crumbling temples
Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles
still guarding the front steps
painted red
glowing red
in the sunset
like the match
burning my thumb
under the foil
of this selfish Arti tray
burning brown incense
offered to self
by self
for self
and the soft grey clouds
scatter across the warm sky
like the halos of soft grey smoke
now lingering above us
canonising us
the saints of sloth
yet,
we pass the time
in the lazy afternoon
in June
waiting for the monsoon.
2002
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BIOGRAPHIC
DAVE ELLISON
My earthly events and inner happenings? I only know part of what’s really going on. But some of the script goes like this: I was born in 1953 and have lived near the Maribyrnong River since then (with only brief travels, and holidays by Port Phillip Bay). David Stewart, the great Melbourne devotional poet, once told me, ‘It’s your homeland.’ People who grow up in this area are notoriously reluctant to leave. There’s an inner connection with the land that’s partly conscious, but definitely felt. There’s no substitute for walking through the autumn leaves of your homeland.
My earthly events and inner happenings? I only know part of what’s really going on. But some of the script goes like this: I was born in 1953 and have lived near the Maribyrnong River since then (with only brief travels, and holidays by Port Phillip Bay). David Stewart, the great Melbourne devotional poet, once told me, ‘It’s your homeland.’ People who grow up in this area are notoriously reluctant to leave. There’s an inner connection with the land that’s partly conscious, but definitely felt. There’s no substitute for walking through the autumn leaves of your homeland.
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DAVID SHEPHERD.
I was born in 1949 above my ole man’s Aquarist’s shop in between Liverpool and Manchester on the River Mersey, the dirtiest river in England.
In 1961 I was sailing through the Suez Canal aboard the S.S. Fairsea with five thousand other emigrants to Australia. When we finally arrived in Melbourne it was January, 100 degrees in the shade with blow flies the size of lobsters.
Before my incarceration I had been a ‘client’ of a drug referral centre in Carlton called Buoyancy. It was more of a meeting place for junkies and other deadbeats. A place where transients could have their mail sent to, see the doctor or get legal advice. It operated on the pretext that drug addiction was a medical problem and that crime was just a side effect. June Bryant ran the place and she got to hear so many humorous anecdotes and stories she posed the idea of making a film about our nefarious activities in the Melbourne narcotics scene. A friend of mine, John Hooper, whose sister was married to film director Bert Deling, got him interested. John and I wrote the whole story, based on fact, in 3 days. Bert liked it, submitted it to the A.F.I. (Australian Film Institute) for a development grant and the cult classic ’Pure Shit’ was born.
Then, I directed Terror Lostralis which was nominated for best short film in the 1980 A.F.I. Film Awards. Mitchell Faircloth wrote the script and acted in it. Mitchell and I created a cabaret act called ‘Dr Cloth, The Most Intelligent Man On Earth and Douglas, The Living Experiment.’ It was completely different from anything anyone else was doing. We were even on ‘The Mike Walsh Show” and ‘Night-Moves’ I started a stand-up comedy routine, a character called Yonny Stone, a knockabout crim, just out of gaol who spoke in rhyming slang. Then a group of us formed ‘Punter 2 Punter’ a comedy racing/tipping radio show on 3RRR. We were the top rating show for years then we got snapped up by 3XY where we actually made MONEY! We did Melbourne Cup Specials on A.B.C. 2 for a few years. I made some small films/videos for a one man show I directed for Tony Rickards at the Universal Theatre. I was also acting in plays with Motherwell and Lindzee Smith and doing lights and sound for cabaret shows, plays and bands. I was still writing poetry (and burning most of it) and film scripts that would never be made. I gave up comedy and read poetry instead.
My blogsite:
the original movie poster
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An outstanding Australian writer
Vicki Viidikas born 1948 died 1998
Vicki Viidikas born 1948 died 1998
Published by Transit Lounge 2010
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American Catfish McDaris's latest chapbook.
cover painting by karl gallagher.
Published by leah angstman's propaganda press.
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