The most majestic tree in the forest is inked upon Stan’s back.
A sunset more radiant than any witnessed this millennium
immortalises his air conditioned gym sculpted pectorals.
Stanley’s Fender Stratocaster once belonged to Eric Clapton.
The backing band he hired toured with Prince and Madonna.
He’s spent more on voice coaches than investment properties.
But he cannot compete with the waif in the second hand dress.
Radios and library CD collections are her only teachers.
With unmatched expertise, Tina tunes her opportunity shop guitar.
She treats it as lovingly as a child rescued from an orphanage.
With the unhurried swiftness of a surgeon, she replaces a string.
Stanley’s lyricists and composers can’t match her haunting ballads.
© Rodney Hunter, 2024
Category: music
Wilderness Sonata
Strolling through a skeletal forest.
Autumn splendour beneath my feet.
A violin piece floats on the breeze.
The source of this haunting melody
is more elusive than a silent ghost.
From one border to another I trek.
The jewel of the orchestra plays on.
In synch with songbirds and breezes.
The source of this haunting melody
is more elusive than a silent ghost.
Slopes gentle and rugged beckon.
Four strings masterfully massaged
A maestro dancing away from me?
The source of this haunting melody
is more elusive than a silent ghost.
© Rodney Hunter, 2024
Psychonaut
From a distance, this place is as bland
as a blank canvas in a plastic frame.
Beyond a boulder pulverising hand
lie sensory marvels you cannot name.
Incandescent, fluorescent virtuoso flies
fashion music in their synesthete skies.
It would take innumerable generations
to grow tired of their sensory translations.
Acrobatic symphonies of scent and taste
pleasure the liberated, scare the chaste.
All those supernovae composers say
echoes in massages throughout the day.
Meditation marathons are the highways
to this mystical artists acropolis.
What shamanic pharmacopoeia byways
could ever compare to this metropolis?
© Rodney Hunter, 2020
Audio Muse
Opal is a wordsmith in multiple tongues,
but music is her primordial language.
Her sonatas animate fireplace phoenixes.
The finger ballet floating from her piano
melts the rage or rampaging hornets,
renders them as placid as butterflies.
Opal’s gently cascading melodies
turn work into weekend escapes.
Her digits are Eden in moonscapes.
Ivory is gold when those fingers dance.
Ancient ruins rise to their former glory.
Deserts turn to wetland wonderlands.
© Rodney Hunter, 2020
Duel
Rabbits as flat as Lebanese bread
litter pothole riddled roads.
Farmhands drink in drought stricken skies
painted on murky remnants of dams.
Cows guzzle cool, sediment rich water.
Jackie Dragons as still as grey lichen dappled shale
study half starved feral cats.
Sun baked creek beds beg for rain.
On wooded hillsides,
the audio water boarding of chainsaws ceases.
Forest regenerators lop African olive saplings.
Purple Haze melds with the horizon.
Fifty years after Woodstock
Hendrix’s Fender Stratocaster feats
are as fresh as the hot one hundred.
As the guitar God fades away
Miles Davis’ sublime rendition of Nature Boy
emerges from dusty silence.
It’s forty in the shade.
Ice water is liquid paradise.
Flavour is as superfluous as overcoats.
The conservationists head for the highway.
Tyre flung clay swarms like locusts.
A Yowie sighs impatiently,
as heat drunk newbies
treat padlocks like fifty piece puzzles.
The Yowie fades from this universe
as a tourist infested hot air balloon drifts by.
And re-emerges with its crystal plated guitar.
The instrument consents to a melodious massage.
“This one’s called the Raptor’s Descent”
it informs the ravens with a telepathic montage.
Wedge Tailed Eagles zoom from the blue,
to perch on the Yowie’s burly shoulders.
Its labyrinthine chords coalesce into guitar gold.
Jimi Hendrixes reply drifts into the earthly realm.
And so the duel begins.
© Rodney Hunter, 2019
The Surreal Art Psychonaut 