Mark Allinson was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia (1947), where he has spent most of his life. An early interest was flying, and Mark gained a private pilot's licence for light aircraft when he was seventeen years old. After leaving high school, Mark joined a rhythm and blues band, and toured the east coast of Australia for some years. When the small musical talent he had was exhausted, he worked for some time in the Australian civil service, then toured Europe for three years, working in many jobs from the U.K. to Greece.
Returning to Australia to study in the early 80s, Mark gained a teaching degree (B.Ed) and a Ph.D from Monash University, where he taught English literature for some years. Mark's doctoral research was on the English seventeenth century poet, John Donne. Since the virtual disappearance of literary studies from Australian universities - the few remaining courses now better described as politics, French philosophy or sociology - Mark has been teaching literature to adults in his own Adult Education business. Mark now lives in Tomakin, two hours South of Sydney, where he teaches and writes. With several academic papers published over the years, Mark has also recently published poems in Melic Review, Sidereality and Ardent.
Tarn
That summer floating on the mountain-
lake, dark as the tarn in Poe's tale
of the Ushers, was an initiation
into reflection. Lying prone on the air-
bed, looking into your own face, you
could see you were nothing but
a skied image of the deeps, the halo
of gums and wattles around your head
a fragrant wreath sent up from Hades.
The lake was a sermon on the truth
that the way up and the way down
are the same. When a goshawk tailing
finches passed in the tarnished mirror,
by staring down you could see precisely
how high he was. The sun you noticed
was dependent upon a cool-quivering void
to cherish its fire. Upward looking water-
lilies found reflections in cumulus
blooming in the deep black-blue. At evening
the swallows fell from the west and tore
at their doubles with thirsty beaks. Now,
whenever I feel down I float prone on the mind's
air-bed, watching as that tarn stills to show
troubles like bluebirds deep in the sky.
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Moving
It was late, and the rain was coming. I was moving
mentally through all the rooms, touching things
with the hands of my mind, trying not to forget
anything important. And then, after all those long,
long days, and the nights that seemed to grow
like the blackberry brambles - dark and dense
and clotted in sweet-panged fruits - it all came down
to a final wave. And there you were, standing
in the rear-view mirror with your face
in your hands, and all those days and nights coming
down with the rain, and the wipers whispering
and blurring the way ahead.
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Decree Absolute
From grey to grey
the blood
of the shark
blossomed on the sand:
geraniums of anger
growing
petal
by
petal.
I remember touching
the skin
so cold,
and thinking
that even here,
in the places
we are so soft,
so warm,
are teeth:
tiny interlocked ice-
blade teeth.
The shark
was all tooth:
fins like teeth,
skin of teeth,
teeth within teeth:
death served chilled
on a silver platter,
still
expressing rage,
drip by drip
through hooked jaws.
Why,
when I think of you ,
do I see
this shark
I killed?
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Beauty's Truth
"Death I recant, and say, unsaid by me,
Whate'er hath slipped, that might diminish thee"
- John Donne, "Elegy on Ms. Boulstred", 1609.
I went to the football game,
and the players, because they were
dying, played with grace and skill.
The enchanted crowd, who were,
everyone one of them, also dying,
shouted, cheered, and urged them on.
At the concert, the musicians
played with the inspirations
and expirations of their dying
breath and fingers, and the audience,
amazed at the beauty of the dying
notes, dying in thousands
on the floor and flowing down
curtains and walls in gorgeous cascades
of grief, praised them with dying applause.
In the art gallery, the fading works
of art touched chords of wonder
and recognition in the dying patrons.
In the libraries and book stores the dead
forests of re-leaved woods glistened
with words of the dead writers and poets,
and the dying eyes of readers and lovers
of the Truth, gleaned and collected
their words like rich, sustaining fruits.
I walked home through the streets
and saw bushes and shrubs and trees
aglow and pulsing with dying flowers.
And there in the east, the death-mask
of the full moon was lifting
above the houses, and the mauve tinge
she cast upon the clouds was a gift
for the heavens, and for all uplifted eyes,
courtesy of the dying sun.
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Earth Cut
Swapping sheep for canola, and the soil
polished blades of the plough bit deep
into new ground, curling fixed breaking
waves of light touched earth, black rich
as blood pudding. No one warned them,
or they forgot to look in the fine blue lines
of the title map for the warning sign: phone
cable below. Among other cut roots was one
that bled from the jagged end of a ruptured
stump an ooze of particoloured nerve ends,
severed from the mouths and ears of many
locals, including myself, left phoneless. Not
to mention all the emails stranded down lines
terminating now in dark soil, the codes, tones,
pulses of business and pleasure now tickling
worms and black beetles. So when you call again,
just to confirm your new love needs you down
in the city and you must postpone your visit
to me, the earth has been cut and I
cannot hear.
Top of the Page.
Insomnia
The bells quiver-chime
like dental nerves.
Long trains of night rattle
metals in my room.
The tics from the clock
start breeding on the floor.
I feel the pressured fish
swim in sightless gloom.
Police siren scores
little chips from my ceiling.
A dog with a howl
from the back of my brain.
Bottle-shatter in the street
shivers my yawn.
This night's a cat's hunger
for the birds of dawn.
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Waiting on a Change
In Melbourne the wind from the north
in summer, leaches and sucks moisture
even from dust and feathers. Wraps you in
blottered shrouds of sheet, and by 4pm
on a Sunday at 115º would make you scream
for mercy, if you could dust your throat. A stinker-
wind worse than dragon-farts. People are jammed
in pools, in the sea, jammed in their Jacuzzi-
tubs, panting like porky pugs on treadmills. People
are on their knees at windows, scanning horizons
for a blemish or fleck to focus prayers for a change.
People are ready for total surrender, rolling
their eyes, not just from despair, but to keep them
from seizing tight in their sockets. As for me today,
I only feel a vague amusement to see the whole city
reduced to the state I've come to feel
as the norm - waiting for you to rattle my door
with a cool gust from the south.
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Storm Treasure
When great king tides of Easter foamed
the paths and tracks of tea-tree woods,
we were glad to find the world revolting.
The daily grind of waves, tickling pebbles
for grains to the grist of sand, was over-
turned. Like a Mardi Gras crowd the sea
lost its straight persona, exposing new desires.
The moon's new reckless love for the ocean
exposed virgin creeks to a salty flush,
wrapping limbs of myrtle and fouling gums
in brine-soaked straps and thongs. The wooden
bridge on the creek vanished in a rush
of slick milk, cold as the churn of suds
in steel. Dark reports of sailors heaving
up sea-crags in crinkled skins and sea-
boots sloshing bilge, made us shudder. Then
by dawn on Sunday the great miracle of calm
fell upon on the sea and we walked
the beach, silent and racked with loss
of old dunes. But there we found the beautiful
nautilus shells, crimped skin of pearl, miraculous,
as if light bulbs had passed through the mill
of a crusher, and were still and illuminated
on the sands.
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Letter to the Author: Mark Allinson