WA Poets Inc Creatrix 26 Poetry

Indigo washed with blue-black henna hands
wipes tears, hair brushed
she touches pale to powder cheeks.
Glimpsed through a flimsy wash
blue shadows soak trails.
Flat earth reaches Indigo’s horizon of no thing
feet feathers float in black-navy
soundless to beyond.
Planets, stars, align
luminesce skeins streak lightening
worlds drift.
Choose to stay or abscond
glint stars in your mouth
induce moon-dust to dress your threads.
Soar winged Indigo.

Ros Armstong

Minutes in a life

cream-coloured walls close in on sterile emptiness
a stainless-steel-sink and wool, forgotten.
the dishwasher’s mouth yawns open
wordlessness reaches out,
out to a watery sound and swirling.
the stepladder cries in the rain, forgotten.
trees, leaves, shed, stand naked
acceptance of winter’s burden
while the ceiling fan rotates,
rotates above the scallop-boats in Mornington.
silently the picture speaks
crystal glasses wait for the sweet taste
of medium-dry sherry
the decanter sits quiet, aloof, above it all.
it is unavoidable that they are drawn together
all that’s required is acceptance
tick-tock, tick-tock, the mantle clock
minutes in a life.
I grumble in the driving wet,
as I do my chores, put dishes away.
while inside, the armchair awaits my comfort,
the taste of medium-dry
inevitably, the armchair sighs in comfort.

David Barnes

Somewhere in Syria
_________ On the news a man cries to his dead little girls, “Wake up, wake up!”

This is sideshow alley, hall
of mirrors, the gravitron
that pins you to the wall.
Yesterday eating ice creams
now wrapped up like cocoons
they sleep after the spider’s bite
sucked dry
returned to earth’s maw.

Sue Clennell

Crossing The Gobi

South rode Khan’s horses
snickering into the wind
to quell spirit voices sent
by the Jin of China.
At night camel dung fires burnt blue,
wild irises turned towards the moon,
and shamans chanted of treasure
to be plundered from foreign lands
as surely as jade hearts are cut
from the rock’s breast.
Ride, gallop, storm Khan,
south to Karakorum and beyond!

Sue Clennell

From its worn out wings, I measure
the sun’s surrender under the flap of each span.
From its tattered tail feathers, I plot
every course, every direction of aimless
wandering traced on global currents.
From its ragged plumage, I cover
myself with the scent of summer days.
The hot, burnt days when shadows sizzle
on endless plains.

This creature, black glossed and intense
no longer caws warnings or delivers secrets.
Long gone cold and tricked wooden
with dull eyes on its journey to dust.

The closed nature of life.
Everything I am, everything I will be
is dust.

It is the deliberate calculation of what is done
that changes the character of the experience.
The intensity of each venture, each emotion
compounding into the concentration of each encounter
to build a significance that can be characterised
as me.

The combined essence of every moment
to define my contribution to the conglomeration
that is humanity and in the passing moments
when it all contracts and the spark wanes
it is what is left that holds the memory
of who I was, of who I am.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Reflecting

I caught myself leaning over
and looking in the rear-view mirror
at a woman. The day was full of
drivers going single minded to
places waiting but the traffic
paused a moment, for me
at the woman behind the wheel.
I knew I should recognize her,
with that fringe done the same way
for the last forty years, but
strangeness gazed curiously back

at me in my driver’s seat.
How had she changed
so much? I remembered
smooth cheeks and full lips.
Eyes with more lashes than
crinkles. I will catch up with her
someday, and we’ll chat.

I saw her again next day
in the Woolworths window
looking out from between
summer shorts and umbrellas.
She paused while I brushed away
stray strands and she adjusted
her cardigan shoulder, which had slipped.
We nodded, and I thought
perhaps we shared
a brief moment of connection
before I was hurried on again
to all those
waiting places.

Frances Faith

Somewhere Between Greenwood and the City

I can hear
a horn sounding somewhere,
dog bark answering the city growl,
the world’s mutterings piling
the rustling of passing time,
waves of sound,
coin jingle,
bird twitter,
the scream of metal upon metal
as the train under me grapples with physics;
all merging into the whispered
crowded conversations
of hum and thud
beating alongside.

What are my words but more notes
pitching among the tide of vibrations?
Why should they add up
to anything?
Your carefully constructed sentences
become babble
and meaning runs
like the hare
before our hounding questions.

Over-priced opinions
boom loudest
next to worthless chatter
mistakenly elevated to sole speakers
over the surrounding crowd
when the wind roar
would tell more succinctly,
expertly,
the true state
of our position.

I would rather ask the lizard what to wear,
or the hovering gull,
take the advice of creaking boards
on building options,
whisper my questions
to snickering twigs dying in the blaze,
or the train rods heaving with
iron groans;
surely they speak with authority
about struggle
and sacrifice.

Drowning
in this sea of sound,
our heads bob like corks,
and I see your arms waving,
gesticulating vain signals,
hoping that my eyes
will help my mind to hear.

Frances Faith

The Great Hunger

This hunger, which the wind cannot carry
nor the ocean’s depths cool, nor the sun’s rays warm
still it blows upon us, through us, in us, numbing us, leaving us stiff, as if frozen
yet it burns in us, amongst us, to ashes reduces us

Leningrad, winter, 1941
For months now the German Wehrmacht has besieged our city.
We are defenseless, broken. Surrender is not offered us, yet still they bomb us. Worse is their wait for our desperate hunger and winter’s blue-white snow pack to slowly devour us.
We wrap the heads of our dead children and all our lost loved ones with brightly colored cloth and paper and with the little life left us place them in the street. A hundred thousand every month. From my window I see them, colorful spheres, glowing below the snows frozen translucent surface, like ocean beacons, signaling in the gloom to the body removers

Today, enjoying the warmth of a sunny Perth’s winters day,
I pick up my son from the milling crowds of fluro glowing at the airport
he’s a FIFO driller in the mines
he has not been well this shift, a feverish flu forcing him to bed
the relentless thump and shudder of the drill taking its toll
so the rig lay idle as he slept for 18hours straight

He tells me the big companies are laying off workers and halting projects
in protest over the mining profits tax. He is concerned about it all and what it might mean, he has just recently married. In the silence that follows
I pray that the great hunger is benevolent to him
And his children, and their children, all children

By the summer of 1943, cut off and with no food,
we are stones, around us
the buckled shells of the dead
slump in houses where they fall
like withering forgotten furniture
so many now that those of us, still clinging to life,
move about them, no longer seeing them,
still the great hunger is not appeased
it rages within and without, as we, like poor accountants
dutifully keep its books

Terry Farrell

Foot note: In August 1939 Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact. Yet, some ten months later, by the fall of France, Hitler had secretly finalised ‘Barbarosa’ the war of extermination of the Soviet Union. On Sunday June 22 1941 four million German & axis troops invaded Russia.

Dervishes at Istanbul Station

If you’re going to see Whirling Dervishes
make sure it’s at the Istanbul station.
Here, there are no distractions
like in a noisy restaurant
where you will only see an impression,
a crude copy of a fleeting moment,
like the few bars of a symphony.
You will miss the silent tribute
to the majesty of creation,
a complete absorption in the creator,
the mesmerising swirling of the capes,
and the ecstacy of the dervishes
whirling like planets through silent space.
You will miss what it means to be truly alive
to know that you will never die.

Derek Fenton

Flashback

waking to ice pictures
on my bedroom window

listening through lace curtains
before falling asleep in Grandma’s box bed

paddling in waves tickling the sand
seeing imprints of feet large and small

shadows in a firelit room
hands capering to make wall creatures

collecting fallen hazelnuts
as I walk up the brae to school

Winter’s bare branches
swan ripples on the loch

the first snowdrops
pushing up through snow

watching children
lose themselves in books

gathering masses of daffodils
on a Spring day shimmering and cloudless

being brought out of sleep
as a blackbird’s music leads the dawn chorus

my soul singing as I walk through
an Autumn wood flamed in golds and reds

Margaret Ferrell

Blink Or Rhyme

but yes, grass is ‘neath us and
cloud high and yes, we’re here

in spooned light of heat and wind
but no, no gulls, gulls have up

and left, though, as I bleed, three
come in to view and yes, there

is a splash of child and those
old, a few balls loose, whiff of

cooked meat, cry from cut knee,
but no, out here it’s fret of

wind and salt, angst of what
white can’t say, bright kiss of now

but no, and yes, grass is
‘neath but not for blink or rhyme

Kevin Gillam

Two Notes

you have this memory, aged 7 perhaps,
in the sleepout and tucked in, your brother

a breath away across the lino,
and you have the scene before, counting

cowboys in the bricks, Dad on the piano
with the hymns for the week, and you have

the lighting, kitchen fluoro milky through the
crinkled glass window atop the sliding door,

but most of all you have the moment –
two notes, minor third, descending,

the mopoke’s call, random perhaps, or on the
minute? matters little, the wooden two notes

of mopoke, through the slivers of louvres,
clear as moon, as yesterday

Kevin Gillam

Rewriting You

I wanted to tell them I’d been
away, caught another metre
and slipped between their lines:

Good, but as verse it’s hopeless –
it’s practically prose

Your poem was certainly evocative
but I wasn’t sure of what!

Comments that shape
and suspend literary culture – squeeze
perception through a tiny hole:

Too much statement
and not enough poetry

You must breathe the classics
before you call this voice your own

Makes me grieve for poets
absorbing encouragement from
the curl of paper and words alone

Mike Greenacre

‘Wind-hold’ Day

From our ski lodge window
full-breasted eucalypts erupt
from this whitened alpine
landscape, refusing to let life be
smothered by the coat of now.

It’s a ‘wind-hold’ day at
Falls Creek where the way-ward
wind has closed all lifts, skiers
and snowboarders (suddenly)
pedestrian as precipitation’s
gentle artist hand counter-
points the dark tones
of Snow Gums with the
bright melody of snow.

We sit in Café Max sharing
Tapas plates, chewing over the
‘What the’s and ‘What if’s …
as fog surrounds our conversation,
crowded on the outside glass
as eager ears wanting to help
shape the dalliance of plans.

‘This day cannot be wasted’ –
a resolution unsaid, but in each
mental frame, as we catch the
shuttle up to Windy Corner,
swill down large coffees
to charge our inner linings
and look hopefully up the
slope of Wombat’s Ramble.

As we battle the freezing wind
that shoots up your nose as
a precise radar – even as we
reverse like the Over-snow
vehicles and walk
backward up the slope –
we are pushed down
two steps to every one.

We pass a lone worker who
calls out ‘you’ve gone a third
of the way and there’s two
more to go!’ so we turn around
___________________________ on a unaninmous decision
___________________________ without words, allowing
gravity to seduce us
and lead us astray

down to the Harvey Wallbanger
Hour at the Falls Creek Hotel –
the guitarist thrashing back
the past just like a ‘white-out’
hits you head on: ‘Summertime’,
‘Hotel California’ and
‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’
blasting memories through.

We ended up at ‘Tom, Dick
and Harry’s Bar’ where tables
are packed with huddled voices
safe from the wild wind
that wouldn’t let go, now
dissecting their frozen day:
‘Well, there’s always champagne!’
Carey smiles across from the bar.

Back at The Elk ski lodge

we open the sliding glass door
to the eager appetites of
magpies and carrawongs, as
the snow waits patiently below.

Mike Greenacre

One
small word
that falls
thru Life
like a titanic stone.

A sun-bleached bone on desert sand
________________________ where no life grows.

Waiting to be discovered collected
________________ classified or discarded
by some future archeologist
________ searching for clues to a distant past.|
What does it tell them ?
Something once died here.

This they already know.

Kenneth Hudson

Cambodia

I read Cambodia is full of ghosts.
Actually “Spirits of the dead”.
Are these exactly the same ?
My head is often filled
________________ with spirits of the dead.
Sometimes when I sleep at night
______________________ ghosts creep out
and I wake up in a prison bed
white coats telling me :
______________________ You’re not well again.

Perhaps I’m really Cambodian ?
I shouldn’t read such things
before I go to bed.
Under the blankets
the dead of night.

Kenneth Hudson

Breakaway

The rider races into the melee
Desperation striving to turn the mob
Futile endeavour in the face of blind desire
The rush to consensual calamity…
What do we do any better
Trying to hold on to our lovers
When they cruelly make their breakaway

________________ Out on the plain, the air so still
________________ Nothing moves, the scene etched in iron
________________ Grass, trees, leaves, clouds
________________ Engraved items in an indifferent landscape…
________________ From an open sky a sudden squall
________________ Changes all that, throws everything
________________ Into haphazard disarray

________________ I help him gather the salvageable stuff
________________ From the ruins of capricious wind
________________ Discarding the detritus
________________ Good things gone to rubbish in a moment…
________________ We haven’t lost everything, you seldom do
________________ Yet what we have left is random
________________ Not all that is needed

It’s hard to keep it all together
You expect things to follow a prescribed path
Confidently anticipate the next hour unfolding
More or less comfortably…
The world does continue to spin
Seasons come and go
The days are not so accommodating

________________ Almost daily you hear the nostalgic claim
________________ Back in the day, they say
________________ Dragging up a tired remembrance
________________ Something that was supposedly better…
________________ Love’s like that, mad energy
________________ Inventing rickety maybes and shaky somehows
________________ Tomorrows that will be wonderful

________________ Hot imagination stirs up wondrous mirages
________________ Sets headlong flights to ethereal green oases
________________ Fantasies lying behind the feverish screen
________________ Distorted views along the track…
________________ I keep seeing them
________________ Impossible ghosts walking towards me
________________ From the well of memory

Nothing stays the same, everything changes
Tired yet true cliché, providing no consolation
Because you want another version
A courageous breakaway straight towards hope…
In the end none of them left me
I was the one who walked away
Believing that would make it better

Ruari Jack Hughes

Hollow Heart

Easily sliding from day to day, one thing to another,
unaware of the shifts in the space between the hours;
there is a deftness in the way we move through our lives,

strangely confident when all the signs suggest caution.
Invisible to us because we don’t care to see, don’t care,
easily sliding from day to day, one thing to another

in a constant state of pretence that all is well, all meant,
despite the plan being awry almost from the beginning.
There is a deftness in the way we move through our lives

which must be a kind of defiance, a retort to the word
that said henceforth there would be limits, no longer
easily sliding from day to day, one thing to another,

enjoying the paradise made for us, fools too foolish
to be content, already arrogantly wanting everything.
There is a deftness in the way we move through our lives,

strutting lords of creation, clay feet walkers over the earth,
on and on through time and a story of infinite contradiction,
easily sliding from day to day, one thing to another.
There is a deftness in the way we move through our lives.

Ruari Jack Hughes

Pinocchio

I can’t walk around without making a clatter
I can’t sit close to the fire
I can’t give my father a soft embrace
I can’t even want to

I can’t help being made of wood
I can’t stop my nose growing
I can’t work as a marionette: I have no strings
I can’t say what truth is

I can go a long way from the town
I can live in the belly of some gigantic fish
I can live without oxygen

I can sharpen my nose to pierce the fish and escape
I can use my special nose to dig the earth
I can maybe become a tree again

Jackson

Valentine’s Day In This City
________ February 2013

Valentine’s day in this city
has the worst weather, so hot, so
hot, so hot, so hot, the
airconditioner, growling, grinding, rattling
when the vanes turn north,
I can’t think, can’t
breathe, I can loudly cry, like
the mating call of a frog, nobody takes it
among all the motors roaring.
________________________________ I kissed him on a train
in the dream I kissed him on a train rattling
down the middle of the freeway, racketing
over the Narrows Bridge, going south,
going to Mandurah going to Margaret River going
to Denmark going to the karri trees going
to Ocean Beach Boat Harbour Peaceful Bay going
to my old boy-watching window in the school library going
to Antarctica.
________________ I hate this city
with its violent February
weather, its once-a-year humid
Valentines, its noise-cancelling
Skype-fuckers, its rattling grinding
vanes.
________ I hate this city where I cannot kiss him.

Jackson

Leap From The Zoo

Stray vervets tear up a tree
fling torrential gibber for a

child’s kite wandering above the
cyclone fence and listen to the

kite’s seductive, cutting whispers
remonstrate, fever the air amongst

the leaves. Each neighbour bristles
black pearl eyes covet that

flourishing swishy pigtail.
Standing below I spy a

limber arm, spin the lid
of the sky, casting a line

to relatives down on
Angelo Street.

Ross Jackson

Invading Indonesia

It’s precedent – you know,
We do unto others and all that jazz.
Of course Indonesia is so corrupt that
anything, and I mean ‘anything’, is available.
But like it would have to be some sort of
reformation on the Muslims.
That would have repercussions.
I mean giving meaning to a
“I’ve been to Bali too” T-shirt
doesn’t mean that you have to invade the place.
Ten minutes ago our Prime Idiot was praising the place
What the fuck? Now
they’re sending jets to the boarder.
And we send armed and belligerent ships to theirs.
Ok. Diplomacy sucks at the moment,
but an invasion? Forget it.

Wittgenstein and Tattoos
If you study something
you have a problem with it.
I have no problem with philosophy
yet wonder what Wittgenstein
would have made of tattoos?
If you have one you are violent –
if only to you.
Angry that the world
not reflecting your art,
you, perhaps, reflect art back at it.

Chris Kennedy

Stream Of Life

My eyes plumb the cool clear depths
of silent pools along the stream
revealing rounded polished stones.
This soothing steady flow evokes
a peaceful contemplation.

________ Floating leaves and bark from trees,
brightly coloured dragonflies
follow the meandering stream –
eddies now appear,
here some froth,
there some bubbles.

Its flow quickens in descent
approaching nearby waterfall
where spiders’ tenuous silken threads
glisten in the misty spray –
placidness returns.

The course of this winding stream
mirrors life’s journey
alternately rough and smooth
turbulence and tranquillity.
Our final destination, one
with the vast sea of infinity.

Meryl Manoy

Northbridge

The sense of a shadow
falling across my path

a footstep too quick
too close

a breathing heard
too warm

stains on the footpath
that might be blood

c r a c k s
in the surface.

Walking at lunchtime
one sees these things.

This edgy town
seedy in daylight

bright as a knife
in the neon night.

Mardi May

Young & Old

The young poet
discovers his hands
are spilling with jewels;
gems uncut, unset –
job for a craftsman.

He rushes to apply
with no work experience.

The old poet
walks through words
as if thru autumn leaves,
hears their rustling chatter
papery at his feet,
feels still the kick of joy.

A slow savouring
on the walk to winter.

Mardi May

Wind Is A Gypsy

Wind is a gypsy
clouds shapechangers
stars hotspots
and love a charm.
The sea’s blue rhythm
hymns spirits unsung.
So quaff your mead
and rock your children
all else is goosy tales
penned by the spurned and lonely.

Jan Napier

The Moon

________________________________ reflective
Who could love a face like this?

Pale features pocked and riven
as La Vielle Heaulmiere
_____ exert a strange attraction
upon minds that roam beyond the known
_____ navigate mauve seas of misfiring neurons
by means of star maps never marked on vellum.

And we mostly made of water
_____ are unable to resist that unsubtle tug
blood wish within response enough.
Dark side denied neutral aloof
_____ she rises above earthly concerns
cross hairs the sniper’s heart
_____ hides pot hole from doctor’s horse.

Cold    unworldly
_____ this spinster reflects
nightly upon passion’s raw bite
_____ considers odes composed by bards
the myopia of romance which leads lovers
to sigh her silver    serene    a goddess.
Wonders      is it the mercy of distance
_____ or just a passing phase?

Jan Napier

Wrath By Rote

Their very own Viet Nam my brother says.
Mum snipes. Dad shouts.
Firefights where those closest retreat scorched.
Wounds that show bone and drip pus forever.
Canker of unkindness grown green and thick
between them.
Each day bayoneted on spite.
“He started it.”
“She nags and nags.”
Love a fizzle. Sand on campfire cinders.

Gutshot he falls.
Bloody monsoon bursts
from bowels stopped
by fear of letting go.

Pinked up after transfusion.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Dunno. Didn’t think you’d care.”
“You stupid man.”
Awkward macrame of fingers.
a hitch in breath armistice.
Together they huff on grey embers.
Feel the first warmth.

Jan Napier

Bombed

Some footballer pumps himself
full of something he can’t pronounce but that’s ok
cos he gets paid anyway
more than you or I for being able
to run a bit faster and belt a curve
of leather sewn in a sweat shop
by a kid of nine who earns even less, no overtime.
Radio’s full of it, do I give a toss
but it’s so overwhelming we Must
be bewitched by this unmitigated media self indulgent crap.
Sport chucked it in years ago.
It’s about TV rights and big casheroonies now;
who gets their suit6s styled and look at
their sunnies, his car, his robotic girlfriend
with legs like Barbie and no brain to boot.
Once upon a winter I barracked for a team
but they faded like fog onto
creased footie cards. Hard men whose
hard vice was booze at the pub and a punchup
in the ruck. You have to wonder was it
worth it, stamping freezing feet behind the
rails, night closing in at 4 o’clock
and your mum wondering where you are
and your dad, twitching his hands on his belt
while you wait, hoping for a word or a
fleck of mud as they come off up the race.
Gods of muscle, wool, skin like boars,
boots that cracked open the ground they
trampled on. Gone.
Forever gone in the salary caps and
quarter million dollar rookie contracts.
The town ovals dry over.
Dog trainers whistle on them now.
How apt.

Virginia O’ Keeffe

It’s Graduation Night
at the Uni
Ceremony is in the “Bush Court”
We are invited guests

Darkness dawdles its way in
Cockatoos dart through the trees
silhouetted against the night sky
in an endless display
of precision flying

Graduands row after row
Carefully ordered|
so that the name announced
is the person beneath the Mortar Board
The Academic Community
file in to take their place
on the platform
A brilliant display of coloured gowns,
sashes and head wear depicting
academic achievements

Chancellor welcomes all
Graduands visiting academics
proud mums and dads
families and friends

Cockatoos swoop in for a better look
Looks like there’s something going on
down there

Vice Chancellor presents the Charge
_____ The privileges your Degree might
_____ give you should be balanced
_____ by the recognition that many
_____ have contributed to make it possible

Valedictory Address

Mortar board askew|
Face alight with a smile
_____ G’day
_____ How can I highlight four years in ten minutes
_____ Well I’ve loved every minute of it
_____ Making new mates
_____ Sharing our learning
_____ Exposed to challenges to our thinking
_____ Plenty of fun times
_____ Skinny dipping in the Uni Pond
_____ But don’t forget those who
_____ have gone without
_____ to make it all possible

High above it all
the cockatoos are still
exploring swooping and swerving
as if they were part of all the action

If they could talk
would they speak in the school
of Environmental Science
and tell how their world seems
to be closing around them.

Fear not dark voyagers of the night
these are the men and women of tomorrow
who surely have learned
that their survival
is intrinsically bound up with yours.

Ron Okely

Balanggarra

Driving fast on the Gibb River Road
dust beating up from tortured corrugations
cockies tumbling and screeching –
flashing hard and white toward paradise.
Panoramas to die for,
ancient layers sedimented in waves
against a burning dusk –
deep culture locked within,
multiple aeons of geology and early
human –
especially that.
People lived here for tens of millennia
knitted to earth sky water wind
sustaining life and care and culture –
singing lines of connection and meaning.
And we came to these fatal shores just the other day
with western science on our side,
the might of empire in our pens,
savagery at our fingertips –
and a plenitude of toxic diseases
to die for.
We thought that in describing
the layers of sandstone sedimenting
in a primaeval turbulence
and then decomposing
under aeons of drenching downpours, leaving
humped and banded structures that ache with beauty –
we alone deciphered meaning.
But above and beyond that,
the deep layers of Balanggarra living
that make sense of time
and a mockery of text –
with a bustard lurking head high
in the grasses beyond the verge –
shape all this beyond our understanding, except:
the old men,
and the old women, they
know, and they tell me –
why it is as it is.

Allan Padgett

After Ephesus

Hepta heard
Heraclitus weep
in the square
and whisper
in the tent,
the flap closed
against the elements
where an estimated
9500 people
in Western
Australia
sleep
in a doorway,
on the pavement
or in a park,
in a car
or under clouds
and the stars,
some without a swag.
or on pavements
our homeless
sit and sleep

Joyce Parkes

Linden and Leschenaultia

Though unable to hear her,
the mirror sees her stare
records her glare, prompting

Linden to resolve or parry
glances of j’accuse, disdain,
critique, acclaim and query,

learning to acknowledge
argument known to lean
on certainty, labouring

to lift discussion and
consider hibernating
shades of contiguity,

congruity, concinnity,
seen to leave for a party
given by Leschenaultia.

Furthering détente,
amends — parenting
descant, dissent?

Joyce Parkes

Tiers of Address

T T T T T T T T T T T
T                            T
T                    T
T               T
T         T
T   T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T T T T T

Joyce Parkes

Difficult Love And Complicated Kisses*

difficult love and complicated kisses;
My love burns electronically elusive and hard to get to know.
the unrequited essence of consummate loneliness is closer than
compassion
a confusing tangle of words between us and no-one can find an end to untie
them all.
why can things be simple, an unvarnished love without the
painful
peccadilloes of primping prima donnas.

Difficult love and complicated kisses:
Bent out of shape in a spiralling emotional pretzel,
Wanting to be together but failing again and again iteratively,
Stretching out further in search of unity,
Missing the subtle signals of secret love in gesture and speech.

Difficult love and complicated kisses:
Aching with baffling passion for an unknowable consummation,
It‘s near to impossible when love consists entirely of
hesitation

so fleeting the flirting that hints at an ending,
I may just give up and settle for befriending.

Tim Parkin

Scared ‘ N’ Get’n Scareder!

Who’z Believing there’z a Significant amount of Worry to be Gleaned from Current …… .. ….Trend’z of Encouraging All to be Embracing More Assertive natures
thus alleviating previous trend’z of BULLYiNG of the Marginalized & the Introvert

…. …WHAT’z an alternate Philosophy on self-Actualizing Assertion I hear you ask

Be caught in a Wrong place Right time, in a Line of Fire, Between a Rock & A Hard Place scenario? Whilst thus most likely Having one’z Head beaten to a Pulped Throbbing, Pulsing Hematoma mess, one’z Torso & extremity’z Punctured & Pockmarked with Bludgeoning’z from Fist’z & Toe & alleged light Handed restraint Techniques

All of course Whilst STILL Blaming it All on Society’z Global Village of Peaceful Ideology

Mother Nature SHALL Be Sad

{*:-)

Neil J (BRiLO) Pattinson

An older woman
with a wicker basket works the street,
her customers the lounging packs of youths
and older men who seem unhealthy
gaunt and grey.

Jim, Juni and Nimbin: pole stars of our youth
when it did seem possible we could keep goats
__________ and hens make candles barter
___________________________________ wipe away the world of 9 to 5.

There are still communes in the hills
but in Nimbin rainbow flags
and painted shopsfronts are faded now
tie-dyed clothing of the locals tired and torn.

We came to Nimbin:
watched hens scratching in the rubbish
under bushes at the kerbside as we sat
__________ drinking coffee
____________________ in just another dusty country town.

Flora Smith

Lake Inle, Burma

Young Burmese woman with a sprig
of dark blue Hyacinth in her hair
washing at a window on a cantilevered sink.
Eyes down, intent on cleaning dishes or
perhaps to dwell on pink lotus flowers
floating below her feet.
A chiaroscuro portrait framed in rustic teak.
Not a wasted pixel and each one in its place
captured in an instant by a single camera click.
An image reminiscent of that Dutch master
so meticulous with perspective
when painting women engaged in kitchen tasks.
So different, so similar, look closely,
I think you will agree
the difference is but chromatic
for the camera has captured blocks of primary colour
dramatic against a jet backdrop
while Vermeer’s eye saw splintered northern light
with just a hint of pale pastels.

Laurie Smith

Flying

The fuel was pungent
as I waited for the
plane to take off
curling my nostrils
in displeasure
waiting seemed forever
as the engines
reeved its turbo motors
causing the plane
to vibrate
my body shook
against the seat
as one was belted in
fierce roar as it taxied
along the runway
finds its upward thrust
an assault
like rolling thunder
in the distant sky
in the air it cruises
with a continual hum
chatter of cabin crew
often disturbs ones silence
as curry wafts into isles
the cuisine stimulates my
hunger pangs
I stir to the occasion
I select my meal
with wine, savour
every morsel
then relax
until touch down

Faye Teale-Clavi

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