WA Poets Inc Creatrix 71 Poetry

Annie had no children, rarely left her home.
Spent her time crocheting delicate lacy baskets
from white cotton, stiffening them with sugar
starch, drying them on the overhead pulley.

If her husband, Gerry came home
unexpectedly, Annie would nervously
show me the door. She was small
and fair. Gerry tall, dark, unsmiling.

One night, he whirled her to the ground
like a spinning peerie, whipping her
with his leather belt, buckle striking her
face as she tumbled down the stairs.

She landed outside our doorstep, bruised,
bloodied, swollen. When I opened the door
I didn’t recognise this seemingly dead,
bloated stranger, although I saw Gerry

disappearing up the spiral staircase.
My mother called out to our neighbours,
Annie was carried inside, the ambulance
summoned. I was whisked off to bed.

When she recovered, Annie and Gerry
continued to live upstairs, but I was never
allowed up that staircase again, to visit
Annie in her sweet-smelling kitchen.

Maria Bonar

An Open Book

Can you read me                            am I an open book
———or am I an enigma                          to be analysed, reviewed
————————–puzzling and cryptic                                   like a mystery novel

it’s difficult to speak of love                    reveal vulnerabilities
give words to hesitant                                          confessions, weaknesses
——–desires, raw emotions                                          unedited flaws and regrets

to expose a sheltered heart                    naked truths emerging from the subtext
——-to the noontime glare                              at the mercy of censors
———————–and fear of rejection                                 being crushed, pulped

Maria Bonar

Trolley experiment

My diary announces today
we make a 5-hour trek from Perth
to Albany – ETD is 7am – an AirBnB
booking chosen for batterie
de cuisine plus upstairs
reading-nook-with-views of King
George Sound. This future becoming seduces
in flag directives >arrive by 3pm<

But I cancel

The us that does-not deal
with kidney disease takes a road trip
today to perform check-in

Tomorrow morning, ur-us stock up
at the farmers’ market      crusty
sourdough + croissants          asparagus, strawberries
orange marmalade      I cook omelettes
on your birthday

We link hands to imprint pheromones on Misery
Beach where photos prove we were happy: long ago
daughters in water-resistant onesies & sunhats
never-conceiving future work as any gig
economy moments before your diagnosis
at 37, that cardcrump against Olive’s stone wall bruises
with misdiagnoses// turns out, not just a headache,
more than the flu//

Feel tram lines shunting? That old trolley
experiment      no-one dies          how
to collide free of lined diary pages
happy to miss singularity, one terminus      content to stay
at home        planting Vietnamese mint for banh mi, a future
possible// this detour to bow out,
snuff candles//       Announces: eat cake

Samantha Boswell

… birds of the air …

do not sow or reap … and yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. 1 … lilies of the field… (neither) … toil …
(nor) … spin … and yet … Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these. 2

Raised a carpenter, Jesus probably
didn’t have time to count
the many hours a bird spends
trimming and preening feathers;
to measure the amount of energy
required, while on the wing,
to pluck an insect from air.

For shoots to shove clods aside
so they might know sun’s ravelling
of Persephone’s dream.

Even we techno-faddists, repeating
one form or another of our culture’s
repetitions of Jesus’ preachings,
don’t discern how tightly doubt
binds kids’ bowels on seeing:

a chick fall, a seed they’ve planted,
fail to flower. And, how many of us,
watching from sidelines, see
our fledgelings exhausting themselves
in lifelong quests, only to find,
at the end, we are the bushels 3

shading deceptions we’ve hidden
within the crevices of our faiths;
only then understanding it takes
forever to murder a shadow?

1 Matthew 6:26
2 Luke 12:27-28
3 ancient term for bowl; ref. Parable of the Lamp, Matthew 5:14–15

Peter Burges

This antique glass

I hold is etched with roses.
Delicate lines, fragile
yet resistant to callused
fingers.

—————-And, if I gently
rotate its contents, light
falling yellow out the back
door onto the garden causes
variegated frolic

—————-of opacity
and lucence to swirl within,
’til it appears the roses breathe.
Some reveries are like this:
states in which time

————————becomes
a bowl filled with shimmery
pictures, vivid impressions,
obscure coherences sweet as
sauternes, or

—————–tart as those
full-bodied reds best drunk in
Sunday sundown settings. And,
if I lick, run a finger ’round
the bowl’s rim,

—————–mind senses
a nostalgia that rings as crystal
does, so even a fevered heart
must smile, if it pauses long
enough to listen.

Peter Burges

Transit

Since moving in
we’ve watched the wild swing
of the westering sun
through the loungeroom window
as the metronome of winter days
gives way to spring

Every evening objects
in the deep of the kitchen
are illuminated in turn and mark
a moving calendar of days
the knife rack of late August
the fruit bowl of early September
the coffee grinder of mid October

Now in November
the standing stone of the toaster
and altar of the breadboard
align with the axis of the earth
to perform the nightly
last rites of the sun

Mikaela Castledine

Shuttered thoughts where once
was light, trapped images crawling
through dark windows in traces
of words that make non-sense.

It’s as if sentences are cut, jumbled
in a voice that stutters each third word.
Disjointed and unknown in a trap
of sounds that are not her.

How she once fared quick
with a quip, seemed to know it all.
Humble musings that swept politics
and religion into one breath.

Counted out past names with
the certainty of fact and welded
family history into scenes and stories
secure in her words.

Today, over a cuppa, she streams
two names unconnected and the first
half of a sentence.

We are left waiting, unsure
not knowing what. A long ‘mmm’
breaks the cold that settles.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Like Wine Aging

Sauntering from the infinite with air
the longest distance between willows
playing the wind, tasting the sun.

Days when ideas where free, building
dust clouds and paddling lakes.
Where money was a concept and food

always on the table.
Days without the chore of shaving
and girls were companions, never more.

How it all folded to faded pictures
smiling faces smudged with dirt.
It was as if the land was our excursion
and we the explorers, its adepts.

How nothing was a challenge, just another
door limited by imagination with adults
scattered to fringes, occasionally seen.

How wheels allowed our domain to extend—
from pedalled two wheels to gasoline gulped
four—it all spelt freedom and girls became interesting.

And in the courting, trees settled into the niche
of picnics lying under, sun filtering through
mosaics—speckled, shadowed on her face.

It is the circle of familiarity that brings us home
building new memories on the old not noticing
how time worn the willow has become.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

High Way of Sorrows
In memoriam: Adam Hardes aka Mayfield Jesus

Maitland Road shrouded by scraps of rain,
iron splinters pricking him along the pavement drifts —
He marched on a blenched soul of pain.

Under wintered winds, alongside flooded drains,
parsing garbage fuelled by a subliminal rift.
Maitland Road shrouded by scraps of rain.

Slow-motion sleepwalker, a spindly crane
clawing at invisible nets, shuffling the graveyard shifts —
He marched on a blenched soul of pain.

A cross lugged across his shoulders, the strain
whipped him relentlessly past dark slicks deepest.
Maitland Road shrouded by scraps of rain.

Even on the saddest nights, solitude was ingrained
like graffiti the wet cement kept cross-stitched —
He marched on a blenched soul of pain.

They said the incessant campaign
of ancient shambling was a paradoxical gift.
Maitland Road shrouded by scraps of rain.
He marched on a blenched soul of pain.

Susan Francis

Meeting King George

Sitting in the boat,
on the trailer,
sliding down the slipway,
she is six and sassy.
Beaming in buoyant orange,
she waves like a homecoming queen

With a gap in her smile
and sixpence in her pocket,
she offers to buy bait,
but her father says,
“Catch a fish and we’ll call it quits.”

She casts a line in the sea,
on the edge of darkness,
where the seagrass sways
and squid sortie,
between outbursts of ink

Sand beds dilute the blue
and the bait follows.
The seesaw drift.
The swell and trough.
The hollow slap of waves
against an aluminium hull

A tug, a shriek.
She is like a motor,
fuelled with nonstop chatter,
accelerating on adrenaline
as the line takes on a new life,
zigzagging between tie-dyed blues

She has hooked a royal.
A King George whiting
and as the fish is unhooked,
she gives it a name.
She watches it swim in the kill tank,
sparkling in silver and bronze,
with freckles like hers

The water slops in the tank.
She opens the lid,
talks to the fish,
this fish she conjured from the deep
and her father is going to clean it.
Her fish called Sam
is coming home clean and shiny

Her father cuts his head off,
slices it down the middle.
Guts it.
She is inconsolable.
Clean is a complicated word.
Historically, cleansing is not all soap and bubbles.

Ann Gilchrist

Snow blind

incremental voices
of bitter fallen tongues
lettering a landscape
and melting through my fingers
between white knuckle clutches
in the corners of my pockets

ice crawl up my tongue
from the raw claw of your lips
and your callous chilblain heart
sashaying a blizzard
of blind verse and blankets
metaphors of madness
in broken drifts and crisis

frost bite rips the litmus
in an acid pause of anguish
a whiteout’s pierced remorse
of fractured ice-pick ridges
crevasses lie bleeding
crimson in the icehouse
gangrenous and gasping
below your black ice eyes

Ann Gilchrist

half past believe
(i)
the exhibits of dreams sit
on the mantelpiece
next to the dead clock stuck on

half past believe and
one dried thorny devil with
permanent grin and

as you sleep the sleep of the
lonely clock hands bleed
and thorny devil winks and

pops the cork in the
bottle and with the blue-tac tongue
and absence of lips

eats the note and says she pre-
fers running writing to print

(ii)

you have interest only
in lingering in
that space between wake and sleep,

in licking spoonfuls
of treacle-like fall as the
anaesthetist says

count backwards, climbing that swing
and kicking out and
kicking in and kicking out

‘til unhinged at the
tip of arc where gravity
is yet to be etched

by Einstein who winks and asks
“the weight of disbelieving?”

(iii)

but when the sea lets go of
you, when the scent of
brine and weed no longer owns

you, yes, then you rest,
forgotten beside a conch,
the pizzicatti

of rain on your skin, and wind
salves your fret, tides lick
your song as I crawl from the

conch and you blurt “be
hides inside believe” and then
scrunch up the left side

of your face and I say “here,
your first lesson in winking….”

Kevin Gillam

Streets of Memory

The streets of Applecross were our domain as kids
early weekend mornings we’d cycle down Kintail Road
as fast as minutes tick to beat the others
to the prizes that lay somewhere from the night before.

The Raffles Hotel carpark a treasure-chest of coins
notes, empty cool drink bottles for cash and discarded
personal items like girls’ knickers flung from car windows
to the throbbing beat of Rock Bands on Saturday nights
or Sunday Sessions, now left for the ravens’ claws.

‘The Highway to Hell’ it was called, that notorious
17 kilometre stretch of Canning Highway from the
Traffic Bridge near Bon Scott’s house in North Freo to the
Raffles – bodies packed like bottles in EH & FJ Holdens and
Panel Vans, beer passed as mateship from hand to hand

radios blaring the latest news – the beat/lyrics as temptation
that lures them near – from Sleat Road they’d put their foot
down as the road dips in harmony, a steep decline to the Raffles
cross-road where cars of teenagers have ended their song.

A Rock ‘n’ Roll Drinking Hole as it was known, Police vans
and truncheons out in force to steer the end of night crowd
with broken glass, fights and cigarettes dragging on four-
-letter words, as bottles from Swan Lager to flagonned
wine hide as passengers for the chorus-line home.

Mike Greenacre

Hannan’s Find

Dressed more as dinner guests
or for an evening of cards,
many were unlikely gold diggers
on what would be Kalgoorlie’s Golden Mile

but word had got out like a bar-room shout
about Hannan’s find of alluvial gold
in 1893 at the foot of Mount Charlotte
and before the week was out Hannan,
Flanagan and O’Shea found 100 ounces,
whetting the appetite for more.

Within days of registering their claim
at Coolgardie, seven hundred and fifty
men and a week later, fourteen
hundred were prospecting there
‘dry-blowing’, driven by fortune’s hold.

Many walked, carrying bags of possessions
on backs, as the swagman carrying his all,
while others pushed wheelbarrows, or
had wives and family perched as royals
atop camels to beat the arid country’s callings

until the town, called Hannans and later
Kalgoorlie, rose as the phoenix from
acts of desperation in depressive years –
and by 1895 over 100,000 travelled here
to try their hand, t’othersiders and

from the world over, as if in a game
of Two-Up, tossing their dreams
from a kip until the last flicker
of hope hits the ground.

*‘dry-blowing’ is a method to extract gold particles from dry soil without the use of water.
* a ‘kip’ is the wooden paddle used to toss the coins in Two-Up.
* t’othersiders are Eastern Staters.

Mike Greenacre

Ordering a sub at Innaloo

the first girl across the counter
mishears my order of ‘Six-inch Turkey’
so I put her right, with—
‘No, I don’t want Teriyaki, I want Turkey
and my choice of bread is Honey Oat thanks’
I offer my standard answers
to the next two questions she’s obliged to ask—
‘No cheese please and I don’t want it toasted’

slick as a croupier
she deals the product along the line
as do the next two girls
until I reach the cash point lady
where refusing the ‘Cookies’ on display
I’m always tempted to add—
‘Since this isn’t the USA,
the appropriate term is ‘Biscuits’

but she’s already flat out
to satisfy the greedy production line
rapidly working wrists appearing
so frail one might surmise
she’s been living on the off cuts
of what the franchise sells

If she’s aware of the notion
of ‘white privilege’ she doesn’t show it
gives me a smile with the change

Ross Jackson

Menora
for Julie Watts and Danny Gunzburg

North of Little Italy
from the thirties

Local historians claim
its branching crescents cutting

straight roads either side of the spine
of Alexander Road
————————-a design representing the Jewish candelabra
————————-inspired the suburb’s name

behind California bungalows
private parks accessed from the lanes
five colour tones of leaves
fallen from tall liquid ambers
wings clattering in the crowns
of date bearing palms
there’s wealth of a discreet kind—
if a roach black sports coupe
should slither by art deco mansions
front doors etched with art glass
would be ever so gently closed

Ross Jackson

Tumble

Took a tumble the other day.
Climbed high to soak up the view;
a wide open sea, white-caps frothing the horizon
and a furious wind tearing in from the west.
Feeling in control, all’s right with the world
before falling, head over, sky and earth shifting.
Limestone and sand crumbled like biscuit crust
sliding away, taking all purchase, all stability.
Down and down I went, a fumbling bundle rolling
to land on knees that bent screaming beneath me.
My hand torn open to flap bloodied skin.
I stood slowly, wincing, vision tilted, shifted
dignity and certainty lost. In front of me
a wide open sea, white-caps frothing the horizon
and a furious wind tearing in from the west.

Veronica Lake

Cutting the Grass

Pungent sweetness of fresh-cut grass,
a woman walking along a path in the park
How can the council mowing men know
that I am a 10-year-old girl pushing
a Victor through grass grown too long,
muttering every swear word I know.
Ungrateful girl, who hid to escape mowing,
my father calling to me, mower idling,
me in the chook house collecting feathers.

But they can’t see a woman walking
the meandering path of her memories,
breathing the sweetness of a family together
on a Saturday morning, or know how willingly
she would mow to bring her father home again.

Mardi May

Cattleman

Weathered beneath a Queensland sky,
the cattleman tilts a sweat-stained hat,
squints up at the burning tropical blue.
See that bit of a cloud up there, he says.
He’ll puff up later; give us a storm.
We shake our heads. No way! We say.

We drive all day through crackling heat.
At the outback station, a violent sunset,
spear of lightning, kettledrum crash,
a torrent of rain, his prediction pouring down.
Warfare on the iron roof, all of us shouting,
the cattleman smug with a Four X beer.

Mardi May

Glimpses of Childhood

1: Animals

In the tunnel of poplars on the flood plain
we’re riding to Clarry’s for milk.
There’s the shed and bails and muddied hooves
in the the yard and here, beneath the trees
the overflow of river lapping broken tar.

A narrowing vein home to small turtles
the boys are hunting, hoping to catch one.
Poke it, watch its retraction to safety,
but between Clarry’s and home it turned over
and gave up, its back was cracked.
Mum said crossly bury it down the back
wash your hands and don’t go out that road again.

I cried.
Next weekend the boys
went chasing snakes down the river.

2: Climbing

A schoolyard with a peppercorn tree
and Ronnie climbed the branches
and Jenny looked up and sniggered
and I didn’t know why.

The bigger boys: some laughed
some slapped him on his shoulder
and two asked can you climb higher
and still I wondered.

Ronnie had flaps for ears
and a collar of stains
sand-shoes the scent of overripe fruit
and I knew that because he was my brother.

I never climbed high.

Virginia O’Keeffe

A Round With Mum

A Blitz truck pulls up, tyres straddle the gutter.
Vast tarps hide rough boxes black stencilled,
spilling with cherries, plums and last season’s apples.
Mum swears so the truck portends discomfort
Mum never swears.
The witch climbs out, black trailing skirt stiff
dirty boots clomp to our gate. Wizened skin scary
but not as much as the veggie man, his face a moon
black flaps of trousers and a full plait down his back.
I hide in the paper cupboard under the sink.
Mum is cross, is sweet talking, nervous, not like Mum.

Witch dangles a pair of cherries over my ears.
I’m easily won, Look at me Mum. Look at me.
Unsweetened Mum slays with a glare.
Now I’ll have to buy them,  hissing.
The witch comes into our house
When she leaves the toilet is scrubbed.
Cherries are on the sink along with some plums.
Wash them first yells Mum. That old one never bathes.
When Dad comes in he says,
All good, she’s taking the kittens.
To the orchard.  For the mice.     Oh.
Thank God for that says Mum
Worth the price of a bag of cherries
and a pound of  blood plums.

Virginia O’Keeffe

Boundaries

The Grey-Headed Flying Fox
for Pteropus poliocephalus

Last night I stepped into the dark beyond
the circle of light at my back door, startling
you from a feast of figs; regret a canopy
of breath. My daughter waits
in her room for a bedtime story. Not one
written by me for her but a tale we find
in other people’s pages. How do you

apologise in your language of chirrups and chuckles?
Do your offspring understand sometimes
you have to carve a slice of time out of their need
— spend a moment in the garden, alone with the stars
and the plants and the earth and the trees —
so that you can stretch back into shape
feel your edges again. The places where

you and they meet, one ending and another beginning.
Although sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.
The figs on the tree sharp with teeth marks,
saliva-stained seeds and your sighs. I wonder what
you would say to me if we could speak the same language.
I wonder what I would hear if I stopped a moment to listen.
The sound of your heart in its chest, the blood in your veins

or your stomach digesting your feast and this moment. I shift.
The moment passes. There is a pause silence
from the leaves solidifies. Is the observer being watched?
The listener, heard? Can you hear the sound of my breath
as it paints the evening air? Sense the hair on my arms rising
to the cold of the gathering dark? The neighbour’s dog barks.
Heralds the loss that is to come as you gather yourself. Ready

to leave this moment which has only just begun.
My feet are cool on the damp grass and I wish
you a safe journey home your wings clean the sky,
your russet fur a shadow as you ride the moon —
gravity a spinning top you left behind when you learnt
not everyone belongs on the ground. You remember
what I have forgotten — that forgiveness of self

is our most radical act.

Indrani Perera

Boundaries

On the Verge

The oxalis is flowering again.
Wedged between wheel and wind
it flourishes on the strip of green
holding weeds and some grass
in a tender embrace of waiting
to be seen.

Patient it has rested winter long
in the earth’s skin.

Knowing this reckless moment
of breeze would come calling
pulling it up out of a dream —
although perhaps a little earlier
this year than of late.
The children are too old now

to pluck a flower and suck
on the end of the stem

while we spend our days exploring
the parklands, building shelters
and making fire by friction.
As I drive past, car filled with groceries
those golden petals wave
as if to say

See
— we are still here.

On the podcast
voices talk
of scats and tracks
of weaving baskets
and tanning skins
of ancestors and place.

As I drive past, those sunbursts
of spring wave wild

calling in the yellow of joy,
bringing down light,
bouncing off clouds
doing a happy dance
right there in the middle
of lanes of traffic

and I think of you.

Indrani Perera

King’s Birthday Public Holiday

September in Perth, the Royal Show’s on
and the Ferris wheel has spun another year around.
Suddenly after winter, pink everlastings popping
and a myriad of colourful annuals turn
their gleeful faces to the crowds
and the scented freshness of green grass is just lush.

As a child I would welcome these days,
the sense of fun and excitement.
Pocket money saved for entrance fee and show bags,
each year begging harder to get my parents to go.

But little by little, the mystery has dissipated,
like air from the colourful balloons
I carried home to make the moments last.
The rides now too fast and wild, the bags of goodies
not full of surprises… available anytime anywhere.

And in a matter of a weeks, the perky flowers will be full-blown
and the grass already tending to straw.

Elena Preiato

Jumble Sale

Early morning spring sundae sunshine
affectionately taps the side of my face,
awakens me to the possibilities of this day.
I catch a glimpse of a random side alley stall,
a glorious still life tableau coming to life.
On a makeshift plant stand of planks and boards
a hodgepodge of bee loving plants and fruit.
Cinnamon scented candy striped carnations beam,
brightly coloured nasturtiums bugle into the sun,
and luscious oranges and mandarins coquettishly
poke out from cuffed brown paper bags.
While a black and white splotched Marmaduke walking by,
stops to sniff at blossom and bud.
And scrawled in crayon on a piece of card
a dollar sign curled up to a “fiver for a bag…cash only.”
Way to run a business these days.

Elena Preiato

The wattles bloom too soon this year,
gold flares under a sky that can’t commit.
Mornings bite at my ankles,
but by noon I’m shedding sleeves.

Djilba never settles.
She stirs, unfolding sideways,
a land in the act of remembering
who it is becoming.

My sons have grown
their lives stretch wide now:
cities away, years ahead.
They once flew down this track,
barefoot, breathless,
mud on their shins
and stories spilling from their mouths.

Now it is just me
and the dog,
wading through silence
like smoke.

The banksias split open,
fire at the centre
of their brittle hearts.
Some things wait decades
to bloom.

This land has taught me
how to be alone
without vanishing.
Its silence steadies.

I see myself
in the peeling bark of ghost gums,
in sheoak limbs that lean
but hold.

I miss them.
But I no longer ache
to be needed daily
to belong.

Djilba whispers:
Change is not a thief.
She clears the way
for what comes next.

And so I walk,
gold at my feet,
and something new
rooting softly inside.

Laura Rowan

concrete covers my green space
the place I grew up,
where my burrows were
and my family thrived.
Before the bulldozers,
the tree felling machinery
dug scars so deep
we had to flee to
places unknown.
They built a bridge
for us to get across.

Such condescension.

Access to somewhere else
we never knew
never wanted to.

Now we are endangered
and the highway that speeds them
hastens our extinction.
Isn’t that ironic?

Barry Sanbrook

Galleria Borghese

Pundits claim art
is the child of excess.
Visit Galleria Borghese, see this principle
played out to its best.
Corridor on corridor of marble busts.

Stern taciturn physiognomies,
confident, egoists, every one.
Movers and shakers of a long gone empire.

And then, at the end of one corridor,
in a spacious cul de sac,
lit by Rome’s conservatorial light
Bernini takes centre stage
with his vision of an ethereal myth.

Imperious Apollo enraptured
by Daphne’s ravishing beauty
aglow in Bernini’s
hard, yet forgiving marble.

River bank, Laurel tree,
Daphne transformed,
skin dimpled by Apollo’s grip,
half tree, half woman, impossible
to quench. her mesmeric aura.

Commissioned by Cardinal Borghese
patron of Belini and Caravaggio,
nephew and secretary to Pope V.
Mendacious, insatiable appetite for art.
Laud his taste, not his iniquitous indulgences.

Laurie Smith

A Half Cord of Oak

a half cord of oak
stacked on the back porch
burns hotter for longer
we are by the fire

needs a little more wood
quickly onto the porch
a couple of pieces of firewood
and back inside

15 degrees
not cold enough not to go
not cold enough to put on a jacket
too cold to stay very long

flames flicker yellows and oranges
firewood crackles off and on
calls to us both
brags about its warmth

my favorite time
we are side by side on the sofa
her head rests in my lap
her soft blond hair outlines her face

she loves to read
every Christmas I give her a T-shirt
about not enough books
she is wearing one of these

in time I hear her gentle breathing
in a peaceful rhythm
more of a purr
then it is quiet

her book falls forward
mine falls closed
the fire burns down
and falls asleep

Thomas Smith

Back to top
_______________

The Boy From High School …

The Boy From High School
whose cheek was endearing,
prom king, and college captain
sanguine in those teen years
when hormones were harsh
but girls were harsher,
that in-between of having been
a child; mild-mannered and boyishly coy
growing perpetually, meticulously managed.
On the fringe of full-grown –
his father’s clone, his mother’s worry
his teacher’s talent, his girlfriend’s garland.
Wearing the expectations of a nation
where boys like him – brimming with gifts
were gifted premeditated prophecies;
a house on the water, a daughter
(when it was meant to be a son),
conversations with Dom Pérignon and caviar,
cigars late at night on the alfresco
a manifesto, of an innocuous existence
handed down on a gold platter
just a matter of time, of blood line,
of following a predetermined path,
if he can stomach the pretence
the life sentence, an unfair ruling?
other options are optical illusions
in his family of affluent industrialists.

The Boy Who Ran Away
whose independence was penance,
atonement for an authoritarian regime
a scheme of poisoned patriarchy
placation and performance.
The perfect storm, a family torn
a planned escape, long-awaited,
baited into believing there was nothing else
astounded by what else there is.
His freedom, finally and wholly
totally unimpeded by preconceptions,
a direction change, rearranged priorities
seizing every opportunity to be more
than The Boy From High School –
fooled into thinking a big house
and an even bigger trust fund
was enough – the ultimate bluff,
that his children will never endure
as sure as he stands on far away shores
trying to forget a time and place
effaced in years past.
A moment caught only in a fleeting reflection,
the last recollection,
of The Boy From High School.

Shayne Solin
_______________

Level	Price	Action
Supporter	Free now, free forever.	Select
WA Poets Member	$52.00 per Year.	Select

Creatrix 71 Poetry

Patrons

Poet Programs (Pre-selcted applicants only)