Close out 2011 or start off 2012 with a visit to the Orchid Room! It is always a special night in the Orchid Room when you join us! For New Year’s Eve,  there may be some special guests and certainly room at the mic for those who would like to participate. Jump right in! Don’t be shy!

Also should you imbibe a bit too much,  or if you simply get too drowsy during your stay, remember the Dew Drop Inn is located a mere hop, skip, and a jump away.

Sincerely, Art Predator

Dust stilled over the memories

under echoes of laughter

their ghosts dancing

as maestro

scribbles in the rafters

mind resting on a pile high of

what was and what will stay

and ghoul hunters pale

turn tail

as pure love blinds their way.

I see a heartbeat.

Much love.

First she will be seen at one end of the garden, by a Tree. Next time, should you see her, she’ll be talking to the Owl. The next moment she will whistle her Marshall-amplified tune, and enter the large sand dune on the swiftly-appearing beach. This, a place which can also appear as a bar, is the front porch of a house on which I left a gift. A card with glitter stuck on with glue. You coloured outside the lines too.

The yellow aeroplane which hung above the bar had little propellers which spun whenever the door opened. Simultaneously, there was a bell that prompted an anteater to fire a projectile peanut at a bongo drum, and the others to applaud the trick.

Soon came the tapping of rain onto seashells and piano keys, and the scent of coffee throughout day and night. A leak, or a hole, in the roof that we had decided to call the sky, provided the addition of stars to the already fine ensemble.

The kids were tearing up the seats at the picture house. The projectionist set the place alight. The young and rampaging teenage delinquents, in black leather jackets, floated three centimetres or so above the orange cellophane torching the plush patterned carpet, towards the smoking exit. They escaped, tin eyes gleaming, to the Orchid Riot, where everyone, it was generally agreed, had the time of their lives. The delinquents grew up – and Angus, in his wisdom, kept on his cap, tie and blazer.

The maids in the garden giggled at that curious phrase, “To plant a kiss”. Their faces were still fertile soil, their cheeks had seen no tears. They sang,

“How many songbirds fly to and fro?
We’ll tell you now of some that we know…
Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, forget-me-nots,
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Kookaburra, Emu,
Rainbow Lorikeet, Bluebird, lark, and thrush,
Zebra Finch and cardinal, nightingale,
Tawny Frogmouth”.

The song was harmonious.

It was like summer at Christmastime; something that a man at odds with England had always struggled to grasp at another side of the world. He fumbled with the red curtain of the Moroccan archway, into the Room. There he saw that even the chief catalysts of The Orchid Riot had been persuaded to wear purple platforms. Inevitably, everyone found them impossible to walk in, and instead walked bare-footed and innocent, on tip-toes. The jet-lagged Englishman asked for a whisky, took a sip of it and coughed. Embarrassed that the beverage of riches and experience was too strong for him, he nursed it while sharing the warm spirit of conversation with the others, in the idioglossia that is common to this exotic room.

One other thing – I heard a story about the baroque fountain; we remembered the hope and happiness that came of first drinking and filling our bottles there. They say, if you’ve cupped your hand in the clear stream once – that moved the ornate miniature steamboats on the water, that made each frog jump from each lily pad to play their didgeridoos in sandcastles and on marble bicycles – and the dragonflies circle around the drinker’s head where words flowed from golden mouths and he, of course, laughed his heart out with every laugh, they say that drink will be enough to sustain you for all time.

the bracelet on my wrist rattles and bangs
it is beautiful and binding

I can’t get it off

your last words to me by email
“Any guest poetry gigs paying airfare costs coming up?

I have a passport….
HelloOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I drank all the whiskey in August
and you know all the rest

there now, gone

preceded by pockets of pacings on carpet
tenderly personal papers undogeared
yellowed manila held etceteras
like so many be-bopped emotions.

A man on a walk by a walksided tree
conqueratised in cement to the breeze
with a generous chuckle
of big hearted leaves

places to do
and things to go
and things to keep
on pinky-purpled-tipsy-toes

I don’t know how you all feel, but I think it is time for us to start writing here again as a tribute to Paul.

Let me know what you think, or just start posting.

Much love.

                                         shhhhhh: let him sleep
                                         if you wake him he will goad games with the piano tuner
                                                 
a velvetheavy curtain falls - skims feathers into swirls and flurries
bottles whisper

                                                                        a glint 
                                                                        starlight on a bell jar
                                                                        lidd ed watch
                                                                        petal.stillness

Time ticks
the dust motes dance
and gather, grey swathes whisper over every surface
breath bated

seasons circle, dragging days through balmy nights
and over frost~cracked pavements.
all is still and muted
for now