Vale Matthew John Davies (1985-2014)

It was with great sadness that Bluepepper recently learnt of the untimely death of Matthew John Davies, a frequent contributor to this site and an extremely gifted poet. Below are a few words penned by the poet Robbie Coburn in Matthew's honour.

Matthew John Davies sadly passed away this month.

Born in 1985, Matthew was a Brisbane poet who was published in many journals including Rabbit, Page Seventeen, Regime Magazine, Bluepepper. He was educated at the University of Queensland. His favorite poets included William Blake and Francis Webb and he adored Leonard Cohen. He also had a keen interest and knowledge of cinema. 

I first became aware of Matthew's work when we shared the pages of the first issue of West Australian magazine, Regime in 2011.

Revisiting his work now is difficult, as so many signs present themselves. His poetry has a raw and haunting quality, filled with longing, yet he would often remove himself from the text as if writing about someone else. 

On the night I heard of his death last week, I read through all of his poetry I could find, and felt the devastation of it all. There was a prevailing feeling of emptiness within me that uprooted any notion of understanding and amplified the shock and Grief. 

His poem 'Shortcuts' is one that encapsulates the trial of a life clouded by an unrelenting darkness, discussing attempts at positive change, culminating with the character's death in order to 'find a heaven'.

I was aware Matthew was struggling and depression was a battle he was fighting uphill, but was shocked when the news came through of his passing. It's not something any of us wanted to predict. Most of the poetry community, the connections of which exist largely online, only knew parts of Matthew, and it is harder to accept when we only see a poet who is with us one day and gone the next. We feel we know the poet, but in fact only know parts of the man. 

Matthew's parents have stated since his death that "his poetry and the friendships of his fellow poets  sustained him" and it is clear his short life was one of significance to many people all over Australia.

He lived for poetry as so many of us do, and his life was rich with his art and love for those who influenced and loved him.

The widespread outpours of love for Matt are astounding, with so Many of us moved and effected. So many poets and writers have expressed their sadness and condolences and we come to realize matt was never alone in life and certainly isn't alone now that he has left. Many poets have written poems in Matthew's memory.

We still have Matthew, who exists through his work and the memories his loved ones hold of him.

Bob Adamson told me something regarding the situation, as we shared our grief, that has stayed with me and helped to heal immensely. I told him how pointless everything felt and he Said that " It's not pointless, it's up to us to keep alive his lovely spirit and his work, that's his legacy and his love.  As long as we have him in our minds and hearts he will live on."

Bob is absolutely right and I think these words apply to everyone looking for answers and closure during this difficult time and beyond.

It serves no good to remember only the hell that claimed him; we instead can rejoice as Matthew John Davies has found his heaven and is now eternally breathing poetry in paradise.

- Robbie Coburn

New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Young In the Old City

flood of winter morning. the bleak city skinned by daylight.

transfusions of colour and shade

thrown from an absolved sun against embodied streets.

at the edge of the footpath 

you release the day into delusions.

breath protrudes the breeze.

coerced into a position to hear, to listen. you walk through streets of pattern-work designed by years

lost in the parade of bodies

with a throat of toxins, your eyes bottled by sobered hands. the outskirts are a transition, a distant solitude.the lightless city strangles them with smoke and time. crowds revolve, there is no fixed life form. nothing here is staying. you see yourself statistically.

parks and gardens are imagined sites. sit down and then walk again through the repeating clutter. an ocean of cloned shadow.

these people do not recognize you. cannot name your face but know all about where you're going. expect nothing articulate from your mouth. to discover  the generation you're a part of is lost obliterates you.

- Robbie Coburn 2014

Paddocks of Rain  - for Matthew John Davies

I walk alone in dark rains. thick wires empty
from a greying sky
traced though the air onto the grasses
striking open paddocks

every voice ringing from the rain is imprinted,
seeping into the hollowed fence posts beneath
the smoking clouds
within the night yards
dogs snarling at a faceless prey

this far from town, waters set a barrier-
a distance between bodies, separated flesh.
a single pair of
footsteps immediately covered by
the dampening ground

transparent threads filling trodden soil
like breath in a cold paddock,

silent in the rain, a car
persists down the road.

- Robbie Cobuen 2014

Robbie Coburn was born in June 1994 and lives in the rural district of Woodstock, Victoria, Australia. His poetry and critical work has appeared in many publications including Going Down Swinging, Cordite, Voiceworks and Rochford Street Reviw. His first full collection of poetry Rain Season (Picaro Press) was published in 2013. He is well into a second collection, titled The Other Flesh.

New Poetry by Michele Seminara

Everything

Everything's so full of lasts,
quivering, on the brink.
Time thrusts forward.
The body vehicle will not cease
decaying, children growing 
ever distant, the umbilicus unraveling 
to unbearable lengths
 as we circumvent this world. 

Pause pause pause!

People pass by in a slurry 
of incessant transformation.

Surely there must be a limit?
(There is not.)

Death, inbuilt in those I've born
is yet half grown in me; 
close to flowering powerfully out 
of my grandmother's powdery furrows.

Routine lends the illusion of solace:
tranquilised to truth we sleep
fitfully, swaddled against horror.

- Michele Seminara 2014

Michele Seminara lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and three children. She has been practising and teaching yoga, Buddhism and meditation for fifteen years. Her writing has been published in many online and print journals, and she was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her passions are emptiness (the Buddhist kind) and poetry. She blogs at http://micheleseminara.wordpress.com/ and is on twitter @SeminaraMichele

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Surprise, Surprise

The mother's dead. 

Thirty years later 

you meet the daughter 

and realize the daughter 

is the mother again, 

poking her finger 

in your chest half an hour

after her plane lands. 

The same laugh knocks

folks in the elevator 

back a bit.

Every time the daughter 

grabs your arm 

to emphasize a point

the way the mother did,

you want a ticket

to the Maldives

or maybe Bulgaria.

Sofia in the summer

might be nice.

This time, however,

you stay put.

She found you

on the Internet.

You must admit

the freckles 

across her nose 

scream she's right: 

You are her father. 

Surprise, Surprise.

Her mother never said.

- Donal Mahoney 2014

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

New Poetry by William G. Davies Jr.

At The Cemetery

 

January is such

a conducive month

to die in.

Its cold, dark.

The trees are blank

and that uncle

who's cheating

on his wife

invariably arrives late

to a chorus

of vapory exhalations.

- William G. Davies Jr. 2014

 

 

The New Year

 

Snow endows

January's torpid light

with a CFL aura

as if the incandescence

of Christmas

had been so long ago

and those four packs

of GE colored bulbs

never looked better

than strung on the tree.

- William G. Davies Jr. 2014

New Poetry by Michael Brownstein

Entertainment

I am not at war now,

I was not at war then.

The music of air and fire

warmed us, the cascade

of flames, the river

light and glitter

and the balconies where we stood

looked over the black clouds

of gunpowder and beauty,

of harmony within screams.

Along the road, along the high rises,

glass and concrete melted

and everywhere around us,

symphonies ebbed and fell,

changed cadence, changed notation,

and cannon fire added confirmation

and just the right amount

of counterpoint to the composition.

- Michael Brownstein 2014

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011) and Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011). Brownstein taught elementary school in Chicago’s inner city (he is now retired), but he continues to study authentic African instruments, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators, designs websites and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.

New Poetry by Sharmagne Leland- St. John

La Kalima

Like swallows they return each year
their vermilion scarves stirring
in the relentless,

oppressive, scalding Siroccos.

They come amber scented
from Tunisia
the hems of their lilac kaftans
fluttering in Zephyr's
white-hot breath.

They come from Kashmir
with mehndi stained hands and feet,
physical graffiti,
their silk saris whispering raginis
pitched to sultry winds.

They come from Cairo
their kohl eyes
searching the bazaar
for the delicate spider web lace,
the rondels woven by

needle pricked fingers.

They come from Andalusia
with jessamine and geranium
pinned into the lustrous ripples
of their burnished ebony hair

They come and they go
to return each year like swallows.

- Sharmagne Leland- St. John 2013

(Prize winner Ina Coolbrith 86th Annual Poets Dinner Berkeley)

7 time Pushcart Prize nominee, Native American poet, concert performer, lyricist, artist, film maker, Editor-in-Chief Quill and Parchment.com

Widely anthologised.  Published 4 poetry collections Co-authored Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artis.t Co-editor of Cradle Songs: An Anthology of Poems on Motherhood (winner of the 2013 International Book Award) 

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Zodiac's Form
         Setting: an outback station

 Washed dry by rain
 on this dry earth
 under our sun,
 bull's skeleton--
 Zodiac's form--
 on this hard earth
 under our moon,
 crumbles to dust.

 When the sky's cloud
 loudly mutters
 thunder under
 summer stars, there
 bull's skeleton
 waits for the rain
 tumbling, fumbling
 to coax new growth.


- Phillip Ellis 2013

The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hundred Years Ago

 James Marquette was born at the ancient seat,

 he was very desirous of conveying
 Canada and its savage tribes
 on the banks of the St. Lawrence,
 upon which no eye of civilized man
 had ever yet looked.
 At certain seasons of the year
 the Indians came by hundreds,

 endowed with their store-house,
 and, most prominent of all,
 canoes, light as bubbles,
 between the two parties
 of civilized and uncivilized

 sins of the world.



- Phillip Ellis 2013

New Poetry by WG Davies Jr.

Death on I-81

The sunset was a patchwork
of discarded shawls
as if a church bus
may have crashed
and all the women
went to heaven together.


- WG Davies Jr 2013


Juxtaposed 

Imagine a sky so blue,
that from the throat
of a saxophone
new silk and Creole musk.


- WG Davies Jr 2013

WG Davies Jr has published in The Cortland Review, Bluepepper, The Wilderness House Review, Diluted Ink, Jellyfish Whispers and many others. He is on the cusp of having a chaplet of poetry published. WG Davies Jr lives on ten acres with his wife, Theresa, of thirty-nine years and in good years they produce some fairly elegant red wine. WG Davies Jr is also 2013 Poet Laureate for Perry County, Pennsylvania. 

New Poetry by Jonathan Hadwen

The Spring

the printer flutters, deals its cards
there is a machine 
inside the machine
it eats with a spinning brush

something is starting
        lifting from a hill
                like mad brothers
                        bird-envious and proud 

I could lift from here
        a word-engine sputtering
                into the sky

summer starts
      on the spring of an ancient clock
            the oldest thing ever wound


- Jonathan Hadwen 2013



One for Li Po

My ritual
     is to sit on the porch with a beer 
          when I get home from work
all the windows open
     the door propped open
          as I wait for the house to cool
a breeze at my toes
     sometimes beside me
          the drunken moon. 



- Jonathan Hadwen 2013

Jonathan Hadwen is a Brisbane poet.  He was recently named runner-up in the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript.

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . ."

New Poetry by Michelle Seminara

Three Haiku

blood orange skies -
sirens
from burning blue mountains

a wicked westerly 
wind blows in:
we all run for water

black ash blooming
as I swim;
embers falling
on combustible skin


- Michelle Seminara 2013

New Poetry by David Ades

I Am Yours Forever

Even if you never speak of me again,
if my name never passes your lips,

you will not be rid of me:

I will be the genie in your bottle, 
contained within the hold of your silence.


- David Ades 2013


Turning Back After Turning Away

It’s a trick of the eye or sensibility: 
turn away and the place you thought you had reserved 
for yourself in this life, the place it had taken 

so many years to reach, vanishes.  
It isn’t that anyone else has taken it – it’s more 
that you were fooling yourself whilst everything around you

moved at different speeds in different directions,
whilst you let yourself forget that constancy 
was just a construct, a way to absolve anxiety.  

You remember that now and wish you didn’t.


- David Ades 2013


Waiting at the End of a Lit Fuse

Contentment is a kind of death.
Let us have a little, since we’re dying anyway,
a little break from our constant wrestling, 

a rest to stretch our bodies, ease our muscles.
Observe how we ask from others what we cannot give
ourselves, how we lean in, as if towards a secret.

Observe how we want to know  
only what does not confront us
with what we seek to deny, how we look again

to the mirror, how the mirror lies.


- David Ades 2013


David Ades is an Australian poet currently living in Pittsburgh.

I am afraid that while the bush fire emergency remains critical in this corner of the world, Bluepepper will not be posting any new poetry or comment.

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

All I Did Was Admire Her Aloud

 

“Quiet, please,” I tell her,

“I want to hear the music.”

She is sitting next to me again,

this time on a paisley couch,

a woman in a lime bikini I met

only this morning sprawled

on the Morse Avenue Beach.

All I did was admire her aloud,

not recognize her age, and an hour later

she brought me home with her.

Now she is curling into me again

and moaning at a remarkable pitch.

Finally she spits into my neck

what it’s all about

this time and every time

“Honey…I am…coming."

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

New Poetry by Louise McKenna

Cumquats

Outside our gate she pauses to admire the cumquat tree

with its frozen juggling trick of orange balls.  It proffers

an illusion: the fruit delicious to the eye yet unpalatable as truth.

Bent double by her crippled back, she is close to the branches

as if she might hear conspiracies among the leaves.  I have

no cure for her crooked spine, only these sour little remedies

for a sore throat, or ingredients for the conserve she tells me

she makes, her voice brittle with age.  I tell her she is welcome

as I place them like ballast in her rheumatoid hands.  She fills 

her handbag then turns, shuffles away, vanishing around the street's bend.

A kind of sweetness hangs in the air, conjured from her bitter load

- Louise McKenna 2013

Nurse's Hands

Unlike angels, we have only our hands

to blunt the razor edge of pain.

We need to administer a bitter pill or needle,

to make a poultice of salve and sting–

kindness and cruelty in variable doses.  I have grafted

lightning bolts on to somebody's heart.

I have pulled out the stitches in a wound's hem.

So yes, my hands are more culpable than kind.

But look at the callus and the band of white

where I daily remove my wedding ring.

As my hands alight on you, soft as wings,

look at my face.  It will never betray the agony

of your burden.  I heave it up, like a feather.

- Louise McKenna 2013

Louise's work has also appeared in Cordite Poetry Review and Mascara Literary Review. This year she was shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize.

New Poetry by B.Z. Niditch

Playing in a Budapest Cafe

The clock goes off, 1999
in my cold Budapest room
at the Autumnal Equinox
I'm late as usual
for my rehearsal
of Bartok's sonata in C
without excuse
know this music
pierced my sleepwalking
rush downstairs
with a strudel in hand
comb the river
with a cool breeze
by quivering hilly trees
on my tucked out shirt
bells turn up from roofs
where at first light
a cyan blue sky serves
us another color
of unconsumed sunshine
feeling like a third horseman
holding my violin case
sonata notes and rosin bag
close to the poet
Atilla Jozsef's statue
suddenly recalling
as if in a mirrored epiphany
in another world
a critic who telling us
the trio we practiced
underwritten by Szigeti
was influenced
by Benny Goodman
when jazz modulated
our composer's music.


- B.Z. Niditch 2013

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Porgy On The Stairs

She said;

"You're here looking for redemption just like the rest of us..."

I shook my head and ordered a drink, she did not believe me and laughed, whipping her own shoulder in penitence with the bar rag she had just been using to dry the glasses with. I had the photo palmed in my hand, I gave it one last look before stuffing it into my pocket. From my perch at the end of the bar I would see him as soon as he came in but as I had the taps in front of me and that was where the staff gravitated to when not busy, chances are someone would be talking to me when he came in,the perfect camouflage.

It was tough making my drink stretch out but I could not afford having a buzz on during work, bloody memories of the puppy brothers incident still lingered with some who used to regularly employ me. Finally he came in, stale air and a worried look which rapidly flurried around the room akin to a wild animal that suddenly finds itself inside one of the places of man. By dumb luck I was in the middle of giving a waitress some change for the phone when his eyes fell on me. It took but a second for them to move on, well worth my newspaper money. He made a bee-line for the rear, going out the door with the backwards handle. I counted to twenty five then followed. Years of practice, i opened the door softly but fast, not all the way of course, that was an amateur mistake. As I squeezed through the opening I noticed that Little Walter had started up on the juke box. Stairs, he most likely had gone up to higher ground as most people do when in trouble. I did not want a mess but more importantly I just wanted to be done with this piece of nastiness and collect my fee. I made sure my shoes were tightly tied and pushed back my hat as to better see if i need to glance above me. Soon now it would be over one way or another.

- Wayne H.W Wolfson 2013

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Continuity

I'm just a dog barking,

I tell my wife who's upset

with my yakking on and on

at our weekly meeting

on a Saturday morning

stationed in our recliners

facing forward as if we were

in the same row on a plane 

with the middle seat empty.

I tell her eventually

any dog will stop barking

if you give him a bowl of kibble

or let him in the house

or find his ball and play fetch.

Or do what my mother did

when I was an infant bawling 

and woke my father who faced 

work as a lineman the next day.

My mother would get out of bed,

grab her old bathrobe

and whisk me to the rocker.

Even to this day,

many decades removed,

it's the best solution:

Put a breast in my mouth

and silence will ensue.

Eventually I may even coo.

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

The word is not Schadenfreude

Once again the Oz literary scene has been embarrassed by two blatant acts of plagiarism. In this case both the perpetrators are poets - Graham Nunn and Andrew Slattery. Neither has offered anything resembling an apology for their blatant pilfering of other poet's work, merely the most egregious dissembling. Slattery defended his crime as a "cynical experiment" in the spirit of the hoax poet, Ern Malley of the war years. Nunn merely made some wafty claim to precedent. I think someone needs to point out the italics key on his laptop. If the Avalanches have had to spend a seeming eternity getting permission to sample other people's music, then why should a writer think it appropriate to simply cut and paste the work of others without due acknowledgment, passing it off as their own for their own advancement? 

I will quote the words of the three poets responsible for exposing this travesty, Anthony Lawrence, my good friend Margie Cronin, and David Musgrave. Note the use of italics, dear reader. They denote that these are the words and thoughts of a third party:

Serial plagiarism seems to imply a lack of empathy and, in extreme cases, something like sociopathy. When exposed, some plagiarists say they are simply paying homage to other writers or use words like "collage", "cento" or "sampling". It seems that, even when the game is up and the evidence is irrefutable, the word "plagiarism" just can't be uttered".

Meanwhile, I am still awaiting an explanation from Mr Nunn for my name appearing as a judge at one of his "celebrations of the word" or some such a few years back when I was safely shivering in the mountains well south of the Tweed.