funeral arrangements, john west

6 Comments on “funeral arrangements, john west”

1. #1 Julianne Higgins- vasiliadis
   on Dec 1st, 2009 at 8:46 pm

   John I won’t be in Chelsea Heights …..Now live too far from there, near where we started reading and workshopping, and bumping into eachother at the Safeways Delis! For You Westy!

   “Undelivered Mail Returned To Sender! 15/11/2009″

   Why this November’s Quadrant?
   I handed over the $8.50.
   To be Stunned, Stung
   Unannounced Contents….
   “I’ve Ridden Slipshod Over Mt Life”
   Tucked up,
   Neatly packaged…..

   And I saw You again
   for the first time, years back.
   Low voiced, bashful……..as you read of
   a man “dog-legging, and dog-legging, skirting outer obstacles, perhaps…..
   …..when all you ever wanted was a window.”
   30/11/2009

2. #2 Ralph
   on Dec 1st, 2009 at 10:37 pm

   Note from K:
   I spoke in length this morning by phone re what John was achieving up to his death in the early hours of last Wednesday morning (25th November). He was feeling positive about life and his writing, he was planning a new collection and was looking forward to seeing his grand-daughter, Darcy for their weekly get together on the Wednesday evening. He had some good news back from the doctor after a colonoscopy and gastroscopy that there was nothing sinister apart from a hiatus hernia.

   It is believed he had a massive heart attack, unfortunately, he was alone.

   He was to turn 58 this Thursday 3rd December.

   I’ve just gone through all the lovely books he has sent me over the years, some of his own work and other writers in the hope that I would be inspired, which I was and will continue to be. Almost all his dedications read ‘ to my amazing friend, thank you for your love’. I would like to send that dedication back to him hopefully via Garth Madsen at his funeral tomorrow.

   The thing I loved about John is he wasn’t afraid to show fierce love for his loved ones and the world around him. We should all reflect and learn from his enormous heart and generosity.

   Love,
   K x

3. #3 Ralph
   on Dec 1st, 2009 at 10:47 pm

   Girl Folding a Dishcloth

   She lays it, doubled over
   on the ledge above the sink
   the way I do at home

   and then she picks up a price list
   for milk or cakes or pies
   while the guy she works with

   finishes making my coffee
   and I consider her smile
   at four o’clock

   on this Friday afternoon
   and then I think about the fan
   which stands

   at the end of every day
   mercilessly blowing away
   a million moments just like this.

   J West, ‘Stuttering Towards Love’, [2000]

4. #4 Ralph
   on Dec 1st, 2009 at 10:58 pm

   John West

   FOR MAL MORGAN

   ‘The first week was the worst, waking up each
   morning and remembering I was dying’
   [Mal Morgan]

   1.
   Finally
   I step into my car
   and pull up outside your place,
   knock
   and meet your body
   packed
   with its handgrenades
   of dying.

   You’ve chosen badly, Mal,
   you should have gone for something cleaner,
   a deent heart attack or stroke, now you’re facing
   all the sweaty little jigsaw bits of dying
   that no-one thinks to mention, waking up
   100 times a night, how it feels to lose
   a pound of weight a day, the cramps, the way that time
   flows like red-hot lave.

   Yes,
   you smoked,
   but, I drink;
   people who die old
   have merely
   picked their vices
   carefully.

   I begin on the subjects
   that we have always talked about,
   working as a pharmacist,
   a nurse, Di’s paintings,
   your shiny colour printer
   but then it grows before me
   that now
   these are not your interests.

   People ring,
   catch taxi cabs to visit;
   Di
   is suddenly at home;
   is the house
   of someone who is dying
   always so damn busy?

   We part,
   hugging
   with all the awkwardness
   of men.
   I rush home
   to scribble all this down,
   running late for work,
   running out of time.

   2.
   This is the poem
   I didn’t write
   last time,

   it has the greyhound in it,
   staring from the car
   parked across the road

   as I drove away,
   it has the shapes that moved
   but were not there

   when I looked
   as I lay along my couch
   attempting

   to listen
   to Bach,
   it’s the one with the line

   ‘All we own
   is the taste in our mouths’,
   the one containing

   the terrible
   wind-over-ice whistle
   your cough didn’t have

   when I saw you
   three weeks
   ago.

   [Dec 1998]

5. #5 Ralph
   on Dec 1st, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   John West

   ‘Putting People to Bed’

   Puddling around in the pad between Mr Johnson’s legs
   I see as if for the first time in twenty years
   what it is I do, cleaning the coated scrotum,
   watching the bristels on his legs,
   the random pattern of the bruises on his skin, my eyes catch sights
   and my ears sweep sounds and my nose sponges up smells;
   his frailty, his humility, his sorrow.

   They lean towards me so I can peel away their clothes,
   fibres oozing with the sweat of their afternoons;
   I wipe their faces, wash teeth; they forget
   between the two ticks of a clock but I remind them
   that this is their bed, tell them that they live here now,
   that I am a person in this house,
   that they will never go to their own home now.

   I feel their warmth through pyjamas, nighties,
   touch the wet of mouths as I feed in pills;
   I see men who wander corridors, line at doors
   waiting for a bus or train to go home,
   to go out to their job or the pub,
   I hear them wondering about children,
   I hear women asking ‘Who can stop that baby crying?’

   I taught at school for a year then midnight flitted, next
   a factory, then a lab assistant’s job, then this,
   meeting these people, feeding and showering them,
   putting them to bed, people with pockets filled
   with the marble chips of dreams, the bluestone chunks of age,
   dry sticks jammed into earth while my life spreads,
   a paddock blowing green.

   [June 2000]

6. #6 Ralph
   on Dec 1st, 2009 at 11:46 pm

   Tasmanian Poetry Festival: Oct 2002

   … Collections by Lyn Reeves, Stephen Johnstone, Martin R. Johnson and John West were launched during Saturday afternoon. Tim Thorne launched John West’s ‘All I Ever Wanted Was a Window’ [Pardalote Press], mentioning how he’d been pretty well hooked from the first poem of West’s he’d read. ‘So much so that the first opportunity I could, I invited John to take part in the Festival, a couple of years ago. When you live in a big city, there’s a need for a great volume of energy and compassion, though along with that comes a greater freedom to fail, to be a loser … demanding a compassionate attitude. This collections represents some of the most compassionate writing by poets and artists – those using language as their form – that I’ve read in recent years, yet it’s a writing which loses nothing in terms of skill and cleverness.’

   West responded with a reference to his sense of interconnectedness with things Tasmanian. ‘People ask me, “Why Tasmania?” and I say because I have always had such great vibes, such warmth and love from you all down here! I email friends here daily, sometimes twice a day. I almost bought a house here some months ago, you can’t get more connected than that.’

Leave a Comment