New writing 2001- 2002 by CD Hunter
Easter Sunday
Barren heart shivers in the plague's tension
No temple grows where fire harrow smoulders
The body arches up to its three-crossed master
Death's cold bed makes the soul's arrow quiver.
Across nomadic sky streams of plasma thicken
From fugitive plateaux winds whisper Armageddon
By Grand Central Station she lay down and wept
Now her dragged dead fish sinks to lowered heaven.
On the cornerstones of Prague orphans brave
failure
Above the heads of Rome an actor craves redemption
Yet this seat of redemption succours only favour
So the dragged dead fish is never resurrected.
That vagrant on his tree is slowly choking
carbon
Beggars near Jerusalem oppose resuscitation
Shadows of contempt rake the bars in Rio
As the needle thieves of Sydney repossess their angel.
Undercover cops offer rides in old Jakarta
Civil wars' contagion underscores their suspect reason
Moscow cons appropriate the spruce of dark Chicago
While Lhasa dragon's turnpike reinflates its toll.
© C.D.Hunter 23 Jul 2001
The Childrens' Plague of Moonta
The body aches in its nimble grave,
Drawn flesh cannot revoke the shock,
Devil's drum reigns on the blind stone's head,
For typhoid inspires no epitaph.
Curbed buds darken within the sheet,
Stooped heads press in a senseless vague,
Comfort eludes the cheated groin,
While the uterus howls its numbing pact.
A mother's womb can't recall its spring,
Nor a saint be reasoned in the absorbing pit,
Raw mounds row beside the limestone wall,
Brings knowledge of the act but answers none.
Sad verbs devour at the funeral gate,
One hundred years yet unrehearsed,
A tourist click captures never the scene,
For the chiselled grief deprives the lens.
Can time's stark claw unfurl its grip?
Should a God be known to purge his hand?
Will life's contempt revisit its doubt
On the innocent hearts of faith's abound?
© C.D.Hunter 2 May 2001
Survival?
Hollow of stone
hollow of stone
from which taut weave
can you be cast
now flax is thinning
on the coast
hollow of stone?
Taut weave
taut weave
from whose hand transpired
your flailing art
and what soul becomes
your bounty?
Hollow of stone
taut weave.
© C.D.Hunter 27 Feb 2001
Xmas Eve 1915
Green lights flared in the Very night,
Stark eyes stared for a thousand miles,
In Somme and Ypres and Passchendaele
A rich mud soup betrothed them all.
Young Richard and tall Bill, Carl and Frederich,
Too cold this eve to slam the bolt
And trigger kids from hell;
Their fingers gloved, most crooked to kill,
Tonight would flatten out in prayer.
"Five minutes," Sgt Stacey said,
his stubble
White with ice, "we'll give old Fritz
Our lungs me lads and slake their hearts tonight."
And over in the German lines the story was
replayed,
Pre-war young Hauptmann Kruger was a singer
Of some fame.
Then sudden without warning heaven was revealed
It rippled down that thousand miles;
A ragged celestial choir.
In German and in English, in voices high
And low, in frozen holes, on frigid knolls,
That deathly hymn transpired,
Silent Night the British sang and Stille Nacht
Replied, those broken shattered boys of war
Became as one; not sides.
© C.D.Hunter 5 Jun 2001
X rated
Smacked across the mouth
crossed over teeth facing interior
catering no privacy here
in the unstable broth of man
A mullet's death secludes interest
where the cold fish implants its quill
(a place devoid of growth)
the soul exists only by numbers
Since the bandylegged fish rose
from the ocean
crying triumphant over the broken ground
the winter's fulcrum has rusted
Now opponents darken the sand
whimpering in self pity
trembling their exhalted flesh.
© Chris Hunter 19 Apr 02
Poem for New York
New York the worst
Is over now
Rebuilding has begun
Though not in steel
But wounds which heal
Beneath your brightening sun.
© Chris Hunter 25 Mar 02
Mateland
We don't fuck around in Mateland
We get on with the job,
Self-pity and lovey-dovey don't
Change a thing -
Boats get sunk!
We don't fuck around in Mateland.
Come to think of it,
We never did -
Why use those smallpox blankets
When you've got small bore?
We showed them ruddy blacks
That you don't fuck with a fellow
From Mateland.
We don't want big trees in Mateland
So we chip 'em off to the Japs,
Plus we throw in a few of them ferals
'cause we won't cop their crap,
Believe me -
We're not goin' green in Mateland.
There're no free drugs in Mateland
To hell with HIV,
No junkie gets a free hit from our hand
Unless it's a blow to the knees,
As I said -
We don't fuck around in Mateland.
Dobbings the sport of Mateland
So get in and dob,
Catch up with the times in Mateland
And be on the same side as God.
© Chris Hunter 26 Apr 02
Death of a Marine
Badly hit, Jim sought refuge
In the cramped trench,
Where under ruins of sky
He appeased the bloody ritual,
Cursing in whispers...
Decrying his murdered youth
To the dust of Iwo Jima.
©Chns Hunter 25 Mar 02
Early Worship
Night retires from its planchette scheme
As salt spray billows with the tidal flow,
Sun stirs to the moon's shiver
Now thought is born in the new sun's glow.
But thought which remains within its ken
And does not lead to repeated ways,
Thought that creates yet kills with a knife
Such thought in which no thought sustains.
© Chris Hunter 25 Apr 02
All works Copyright CD Hunter