DEEP WATER

i’d be myself for you
i’d stumble through fragmented
bits of speech, quick breatht
grabbing words away from silence
stuttering through pause to meaning
then open to your smile

i’d be myself for you
aqua profundo (the sign
at the harbour pool
in weather baked like custard
slurping pineapple frosties
then splash & dive

i’d be myself for you
difficult enough to be simple
harder to be naïve
resurging as if bizarre
wavebreakers of suburbanity
then call us the poets union

i’d be myself for you
embracing puzzlement i’d give
silence the right to be heard
dazzled by grace i’d lay down
clumsy &/or delicate
then smile for you & for myself

MANGOES

mangoes are not cigarettes
mangoes are fleshy skinful passionate fruits
mangoes are hungry to be sucked
mangoes are glad to be stuck in the teeth
mangoes like slush & kissing

mangoes are not filter tipped
mangoes are indiosyncratic seasonal seducers
mangoes are worse than adams apple
mangoes are what parents & parliaments warn against
mangoes like making rude noises

mangoes are not extra mild
mangoes are greedy delicious tongueteasers
mangoes are violently soft
mangoes are fibrous intestinal lovebites
mangoes like beginning once again

mangoes are not cigarettes
mangoes are tangible sensual intelligence
mangoes are debauched antisocialites
mangoes are a positive good in the world
mangoes like poetry

Richard Kelly Tipping 1972
Published in Domestic Hardcore (1975) by University of Queensland Press

Heading North

i love you more than a tree full of frogs or
a bursting creek, because you hear loud ants
the scrape of shaving and the sea
making love with rocks.

you leave rainforests where you walk –
parrots and pythons, intricate orchids
slipping from your freckled shoulders
like embroidered gowns.

you don’t stop when it stops.
i’m axle to your wheel: careering magpies,
mottled doves, quick flapping away
from the first car for hours

ON PHOTOGRAPHY

On Photography

Veil’s and illusions’
reverie. She has dreamed
herself here
for the photograph
to take itself

like an actor is, a sparkler,
illuminating souls.

the literal and the transcendental
working together –

the quality of daring
amplifying the decisive moment

swelling light
the window changing as you move.

the constant ability
to be surprised –

just watching
the discovered forms

light: tonality: frame

to reveal and amplify
the breaking of even space

selection: observation: isolation

the juxtaposition of wonder –
the rainbow in black & white –

you don’t expose pictures
you expose yourself

you)

662256000 secs ago (more
or less) something happ
ened (say that it started
or stopped) a fusion (pro
& con) of cells became (was
already) being (called

*

Richard Kelly Tipping  1969
Published in Soft Riots (University of Queensland Press 1972)
Notes: this was a 21st birthday poem for my then partner
Betty Ross. There were no calculators in those days. The
‘more or less’ is because I didn’t count the oddity of leap
years.

GO ARMY

the poster said        FOR CAREER
the poster said        AND ACTION
the poster said        GO ARMY
the poster said
the poster said
the poster read
the poster bled        GO ARMY
the poster said        GO ARMY
the poster said        GO ARMY
the poster said        GO ARM YE
the poster said        GO ARM MY
the poster said        GOAR MY OR
the poster said        MY ARM YE
the poster said        ROAR THE GO
the poster said        GOYA MR ARM
the poster said        YE ARM MY ARM
the poster said        MY ARM MY ARM

*

Richard Kelly Tipping  1969
Published in Soft Riots (University of Queensland Press 1972)

Somebody claws at the gates mouthing disasters and loneliness
he is not well bred and truth has no status here
where cadets parade in the sun and are taught to faint proudly
where boys learn that sex is something outside
and only graduates in religious homosexuality are ever satisfied
where boarders plan midnight release and weep for cheapthrill joy

where dreams are pickled in tradition and are unbottled years later
when old scholars meet to discuss the rising costs of divorce
where boredom and religion are synonymous and nobody ever has to
change their circle of friends -
where artists are massacred with cricketballs and rise up screaming
mathematics
where good sports get prizes for intellectual inadequacy and somebody
is always dux
where moulds are of one kind only and he who breaks the die
will receive no benediction
where expulsion and the cane are ‘necessary evils’ and fools are courted for
their parents
where chapel bells ring and everything is summerhappy . . .

pro deo et patria *

* For God and Country, the school motto

you leave rainforests where you walk –
parrots and pythons, intricate orchids
slipping from your freckled shoulders
like embroidered gowns.

you don’t stop when it stops.
i’m axle to your wheel: careering magpies,
mottled doves, quick flapping away
from the first car for hours

Richard Kelly Tipping 1978
Published in Nearer by Far, University of
Queensland Press (1986)

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