The Selected Your Friendly Fascist
From Your Friendly Fascist 18
Copyright 2012 Rae Desmond Jones (collection) and individual authors.
Published by Rochford Street Press Rochford Street Review PO Box 5399 West Chatswood NSW 1515 Email: rochfordstpress@optusnet.com.au Website: http://rochfordstreetpress.wordpress.com/
ISBN: 978-0-646-58605-2
Cover design by Rae Desmond Jones
John Jenkins page Reminiscences of childhood 5 Maybe 6 Mike Lenihan 1984 subconsciously
5
Rob Andrew i taught myself to learn
5
Denis Gallagher Sydney
7
Adrian Flavell When we were… is this the best way… Universal Pizza Parlour I was found drifting The girls were competed for A stone age arse A summer night’s breeze Peter Brown Sheriff of Nottingham Debbie Westbury Out of the blue these days Wise & Anonymous Carol White Threads Billy Ah Lun 3 little poems Prayer Pubs shut/ railway stn It was said Song Peter Brown Friendly Fascist Quizz
9 9 9 10 10 10 10 10
11 12 11
12
13 14 14 15 15 14
Lis Aroney The writer
15
Patrick Alexander In the Mirror At a bus stop Fidelity
16 17 17
Steve Sneyd For a nosey parker Kamikaze A healing art A sense of duty
19 19 19 20
Contents
Anne Wilkinson A thought came to me…
38
Carol White Threads
20
Ken Bolton Days For Ana & Stefan The trees were … Haikus
21 22 22 22
George Cairncross (UK) I have declared war … Night Rider
45 46
22
John Peter Horsam Horror Story
46
Steven K. Kelen The koala motel dream Words Toyota Corolla
47 48 48
Irene Wettenhall The maid’s song
49
Nigel Saad Academics
Jenny Boult (aka MML Bliss) To the minimal memory… 43 Python’s Pool 44
John Edwards Bond 7, tomato sauce &.. Moving house The dance of the bones… Poem for Diz Falsies
23 24 24 25 25
Robert C. Boyce Death by misadventure
24
Chris Mansell The Star Ball Contribution
50
Rae Desmond Jones jungle juice dig gas
26 27 29
Robert Carter Overheard order
51
Trevor Corliss When shit turns to gold
28
Kit Kelen In memory of Robt. Lowell Suburban paranoia Punks travels
31 32 32
Rob Andrew Blues Bummer
33
Jean Rhodes Oedipus Complex
34
Larry Buttrose The poetry reading 34 The corona 35 I see your face 36 The fruit salad tunnel of love 36 Joseph Chetcuti ...Bark … Dragging his shadow…
37 38
Alamgir Hashmi The Banquet of the Century 40 A Country Saga 41
Anne Davies Love with the other woman 52 Nicholas Pounder Christmas A historical fact In the catalogue I look …
54 54 55
Cornelis Vleeskens ROAST CHESTNUTS The importance of elegance OWN THIS First & Last poem
57 58 59 59
Andrew Rose She America! America! wish I had the blues To Shiva Repeating you come with me … Rhymes gone by
61 61 62 62 62 63 63
Joanne Burns rip off gypsy me i waited a very long time Heel on Honey
65 66 66 66
Les Wicks She shimmered Fragment 9 Sand Castles
69 69 70
Eric Beach Fuck me the dawns drag her down… dreaming my way out of .. australian very: poem not..
71 72 72 73
Ian We delight in the pleasure Gig Ryan (For Herodotus) Cruising Lis Aroney For a rock star П. O. Roast Colour T.V. Barry Edgar Pilcher Here she comes Andrew Darlington Love Pome The Holy Bible …BLUE SUEDE SHOES (ON THE RADIO) Holding my prick / Dorothy Porter From The Nashville Poems
73
74 74 75
76 77
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78 78 79 79
80
Gary Oliver Bogus The captain The captive
82 83 83
Richard Tipping Noah’s Monark FASCIST COOKING
85 85
Micah DOM
86
Carol Novack Velikovsky’s Dream The last of the sirens Love Poem No
87 88 89
Peter Finch three quick glances into .. Films without voices Looking back, June
90 91 91 92
Evan Rainer Brightly Lighting
92
Graham Rowlands Ego and alter Lavatory pieces The pupil Irene Wettenhall My Azalea is alive and … Christopher Pollnitz Hunt Educating the ego Variations on a theme all my sperm Robert Carter After the nine o’clock news Philip Neilsen The Wedding Ballad of a selfish man Andrew Chadwick The Queen’s Lips
John Peter Horsam Spectator
105
Peter Murphy Colour-leaves Things Dies irae evil love You lose yourself in a poem
106 106 107 107 107
Karen Ellis Reality
107
Richard James Allen In praise of bodily functions 108 Rudi Krausmann Marching Song
109
93 93 94
Paul “Shakey” Brown Car Car Blues
110
94
Michael Sharkey Poems for littlies
111
96 96 97 97 97
98 99 99
STEPHAN WILLIAMS We argued of possessiveness 101 Meat 101 A late night poem 102 Rollin Schlicht Merry-Go-Round
103
Philip Hammial Girls Seven sighs, one grunt
104 105
Karen Hughes Contentment is a horrid state 111 Susan Hampton It
112
Rory Harris Four poems for women
113
Pie Corbett All Afternoon
115
Billy Marshall Stoneking Without a fist A MAP OF THE ALICE…
116 117
To any virginal poetaster who has wandered to this site, Your Friendly Fascist was a poetry magazine so deep underground that it caused tremors among persons of a pious literary persuasion on the dread occasions of its appearance. It could only be found as a result of personal acquaintanceship with the editors, or an expressed desire not to receive it. In the latter case, it would be forced into the victim’s post box, if not elsewhere. The magazine served as an outlet for views and feelings which are not expressed in polite company. Your Friendly Fascist was not the only outrageous small literary publication of its time, but it took pleasure in divergent views. Poetry can tend to sombre pomposity, or the self –consciously polite. If there is a secret to the Fascist’s modest success, it is in the energy with which it rode on the unironed coat tails of unruly expression. Rae Desmond Jones and John Edwards remained at the helm of the magazine despite frequent inebriation, from the magazine’s beginnings in 1971 to its final burial with absolutely no honours at all in 1986. Other persons shared in the dubious editorial labours intermittently. The late Carol Novack, Ken Bolton (also listed as Artist, typist and bottle washer for the 11th issue), Billy Ah-Lun, Ruth Saunders, Stephan Williams, Sandy Clark. Generous assistance is acknowledged from Nagel Kent and Johnny Stephenson, both of whom kissed several hundred copies of the magazine while Rae Desmond Jones stamped and stapled the infamous airmail issue of 1973. In selecting from an unruly pile of ancient magazines, I am indebted again to John Edwards and John Jenkins for their valuable suggestions. Your Friendly Fascist may have achieved more than it intended. Many of the poets represented here went on to literary respectability (one hopes not mediocrity). The experience of their youthful exuberance should not be painful. If it is, they deserve it. There are those who were disrespectful, who have died, and often died young. In publishing their disrespect I do not disrespect them, because they were alive when they wrote these poems, and the poems live on. Your Friendly Fascist enabled freedoms often stifled by the pieties of literature. As well as clustering the work of individual poets there are energetic and interesting poems by some poets who have only published one or two small poems, or who have left no trace in the googlesphere. We have scattered these brief gems throughout, because they are essential to an understanding of the frisson of the magazine. The irreverent nature of Your Friendly Fascist unleashed some writers from inhibited sobriety of premature middle age. Not all of the poetry here is consistent, but it should be read at a time when poetry appears mostly tame and tedious and terrified of an audience. Rae Desmond Jones For more on Your Friendly Fascist, see: http://rochfordstreetreview.com/2012/04/16/lotsof-energy-here-not-much-control-your-friendly-fascist-1970-1984-rae-desmond-jonesremembers/
John Jenkins 1984, subconsciously So we have Free love On tap Only old men Go to the Whores It’s wrong Squirms the press With relish But poets sprout Of a modern Eden Far away A bitch drops A man dog -
Mike Lenihan
I taught myself to learn
John Jenkins is not anti-German and believes The War should be left behind. In fact, all wars - though he's not holding his breath. He's still politically affiliated, however: a reformminded social democrat, in the tradition of the Fabians, of which he is a member, and also of The Greens. Back then, however, in the stormtrooping, stapled-together and instantly roneoed days of YFF - yes, in the heady 1970s around Sydney's Glebe - he drank mostly Bin 54 cardboard laced with boofheadish humour and an anarchic streak. He still does! Though the beverages have improved, now he's living on the rural fringe of Melbourne, near the beautiful Yarra Valley. He remembers Herr Gruppenfuhrer RDJ and his boof-headed gang of sturm and drang troopers, waving poems of great delicacy on YFF's rare, sepia-printed silken parchment, with great affection. Thems the days!
But in the teaching I forgot what I knew
Reminiscences of childhood
And in staring proudly At the mansions of love I had built I forgot how to lay bricks.
-
Rob Andrew
flicking the occasional (off target) snotball at two unsuspecting flies which, quite oblivious, continue to copulate on the rim of his weeties bowl. Later, he will prise the sticky stuff from his pink belly button and gurgle with laughter in his paleblue backyard kiddycage (the one with white mice and duckies) before peeing his pants in the sun.
5
maybe if a knife could stab itself scorpion twist its sting around into its own brain redoubling bitterness strung out then like salt in a filthy sore we might hate enough to give a shit, maybe.
6
Denis Gallagher
While sharing a house with Ken Bolton and Rae Desmond Jones in the inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe during the 1970s, Denis became actively involved with poetrywriting and reading, leading to his first collection, International Stardom, published by Sea Cruise Books in 1977. He is the author of three other collections of poetry. He lives in Blackheath NSW.
Sydney it has taken weeks wandering backwards and forwards wondering about the clear summer sky how to say it looks appropriately nervous i can’t do it looking at it unable to forget it sitting at home looking out the window at it above the city in the morning away from it at work looking up from the bus stop missing the bus lying in the park and gazing looking down from the bridge on the weekend seeing it in the Harbour yachts sailing over it trompe l’oeil is that why Sydney people say so gladly good one the days so fine the bitumen footpaths forgiven like the enormous traffic the people so polite they say excuse me good morning lovely evening get fucked as they cross the bridge backwards and forwards looking for money knowing the Opera House is down there the breeze smoothing their faces dogs like it cats like it ranjipanis can’t help it like excitement the day grows remembering the sky everyone at the races shouts Raoul Dufy wouldn’t paint us he couldn’t
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Your Friendly Fascist Number 15
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Adrian Flavell
This photo of Adrian as a sumo instructor courtesy the Whyalla News http://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/news/local/sport/other/locals-enjoyregional-little-athletics-carnival/1441337.aspx We have been unable to contact Adrian, but understand that he lives and writes prolifically at Aarbark in South Australia, despite a denial from Southern Ocean Review No. 50, New Zealand, 2009. During the Fascist years, he published a small but slightly less grubby magazine, Fields. His work has appeared in The Weekend Australian, Linq, Social Alternatives, The Canberra Times, (Aust) Takahe (NZ), Famous Reporter, Idiom23. When we were among the trees she undid the one remaining button of her shirt and pulled her jeans down below her bum. I fell between her legs and pretended it was you is this the best way, to bash at pain and see your own way through? Rest before you answer. Your hands are bloody With the tears You cannot forgive. Universal Pizza Parlour (Carlton) Through the rain and steamed up window I saw the guy Do his one-man-Zorba-dance Flipping his pastry And finally laying her in 9
The greased-round tray, Slammed in the oven And sizzled And then The final coffin of the take- away box
I was found drifting after swimming the length of your sweet water dam The girls were competed for, coins tossed and the winner out of three could take the two.
Sherriff of Nottingham The ghost of Belle Starr Jezebel the nun Hoot Mcgroot Julius Caesar
Were all finks - Peter Brown
Never lucky, you were left. We watched you from the carport, You and the pumping hand. (the rhythm of one man’s dream thumping out on the same sorry organ ) you were like a brother they said, as I folded between them like a sandwich. A stone age arse Opens up To the roll of drums And the treacle whispers Of unlovely lovers A summer night’s breeze outside Rustling paper in the next room Distant slamming doors And you alone, with him Somewhere.
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