WA Poets Inc Creatrix 40 Poetry

Last moments are not filled with grand things,
but talk of today, tomorrow, Mike and Marg,
the gathering of dust on bric-a-brac and windowsills,
with settling further into chairs, and holding hands,
mine, uncallused, around yours, scaled and crabbed,
with pressing orchids to cheeks pale as pages—

and you had forgotten your teeth
though I think it didn’t matter to you then—

with pulling the green cape about your leathery neck
and seeing, in your sudden-shocking boniness,
grandma, wearing the same cape,
sitting sunlit among yellow jonquils and cacti
as she, too, withered step by stuttering step
into the last wheezing stanzas of her memories.

Peter Burges

Raven

For Carol and David

Aging, we seek again,
beyond the mulish urge of cells,
something more puissant,
closer in.
An affirmation, perhaps,
such as that of the raven
which, droop-limbed, came hobbling
on the arm of a frigid wind
into an al fresco café
one Vancouver morning,

Not as a midnight knock,
yet, still, a messenger,
small, shallow-breathed,
a croakful oracle
clothed in luminous yearning
come to mediate a final reckoning;
a sin eater, once all white,
now a charcoaled afterimage
of a peace dove
having envisioned forgiveness.

Or, just one of nature’s little ones
seeking momentary shelter
against my left foot instep,
and revealing, among its fading feathers,
a ganglion of coppery spurs,
its scaffolding, possibly,
for the answers it has found
to the quick flare and fade
of the glintering creations
in its tremulous, purple-ringed eyes.

Peter Burges

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Testicular Check-Up

I fell in love with my balls
all over again when
they were endangered.

I accompanied them to
the lady who was
to scan them. She

carefully laid my penis
aside and held my sack.
I chattered away,

feigning comfort. ‘How’d
you get into this
line of medicine?’

She separated left from
right, and scanned,
delicately. ‘Been doing this

for eighteen years. I
was scanning other parts
of the body for

some time, but then
they asked if I could
do this.’ She moved the scanner

to the right ball, a
different shape and size
to the left one.

‘The only ones
embarrassed were
the young men when
they became excited.

She smiled and I smiled,
no longer young,
feigning indifference.

‘All done,’ and I put
my balls away.

Andrew Burke

The Wheelie Bin Novel

As domestic duty would have it
I went outside with the recyclable rubbish,
staring down at how many newspapers,
cereal boxes, tissues and cosmetic containers
we chuck out – and all the words with them.
There’s a good novel in there, I thought, as I threw more
into the wheelie bin – nouns, adjectives, adverbs,
prepositions, conjunctions, weights and measures,
imperial and decimal. It’s a variety show or
a beehive of human communications, mixed up
with a denouement – a dollop of yoghurt
and some dregs of wine.

Andrew Burke

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Infinity In a Moment

From a distance I spotted the eagle
Sitting amidst a carcass in the left hand lane.
Approaching it I slowed to 80 before
It looked up and we saw each other
caught in the moment of surprise.
I swam in its narrow killer’s eyes, as they,
seeming clear to infinity,
locked onto mine – we wrestled
in that moment. Then wrenching free
in sudden panic, it flew hugely away as my
bike snatched me onwards.

Graeme Butler

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Domestic on a Train

Kicking stones in the vortex of sweat
and breath in the clutter and screech.
Everyday people caught in the rush of metal
stare away to hold their world together.
Seated, standing, braced against the shove
and lurch. Time measured in clacks
as distance ticks off stations.
A dog with a bone, she gnaws
his words, flicks insult and threat
and he of the mental void
spits inane retorts and flexes biceps.
Uses his phone in a voice too loud
as we stare at windows.
Flee the rabid dog
until they disembark
and the train clacks free
of sticks and stones.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Summer Drought

In Corryong and down Murray
on a cairn of words
shaped into thunderheads
ballooning to flood.

A hundred-year phenomenon
where drought fails and the wet
layered in rivers, rescues arid scapes.
Where white faced heron mass.
Patter dust to mud as edges
grow and waves lap ancient lines.
Spring fingerlings where none were
battle new found currents.

The rippled reflection rages the wind
races its blemish across the pane
as mirrored clouds deteriorate
hold and fall, hold and fall.
And trees dip leaves,
wade as delicate as matrons
to stand in silhouettes
against the rising moon.

The wind sighs a wet kiss
sweeps litter of countless storms
into a ridge, flicks the last sentence
as rocks become sentient and birds
flock in anguished cries.
The down under, up over of seasons
where, for a while, blue drowns red
and green edges a carpet once brown
racked against a cairn,
anchored to a lake.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

If This Is A Brain

– brett whiteley’s the American Dream (panel 10)

if this is a brain
it looks like any other organ bodily
it’s the inner inside-out worms’ turn
it’s only a collage

so i’m a collage
you think i’m not real
how real do you want me?
don’t i bear the marks of the Tree?

i am lean & clean     you face me this way
the way he’s turned me     i am not cradled
i maintain       balance
on currents of blood

he uses me to
shake your complacency
pull time apart
make everything happen at once

like a turtle wrested from its shell
nerves and capillaries branch you think
i think you have always thought
thinking is easier than feeling

the duck-billed painter is my brother
trusting the epiphanies of anguish
understanding artifice we risk
the slippery-dips of flesh

Jenny de Garis

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Night Sky Sestet

The nights were longest before dawn
Her words lay written on my skin
We don’t fit like we did before
Our jigsaw togetherness frowns
Though speech between us remains thin
My love wants to go back for more.

Mike Greenacre

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Form Guide

Some poets veer away from villanelles.
Some steadfastly steer clear of sestinas.
Some are not seduced by a sonnet’s spells.
They definitely don’t want to be seen as
the sort who are fascinated by form,
like postmodernists who see them as chains
clinging to their definition of norm
and pouring outdated piffle down drains.

While others are entranced by triolets,
guzzling ghazals and ravishing rondeau.
Rhythm and rhyme are as good as it gets-
a firm foundation to fasten the flow,
….but both camps adore alliteration:
….it adds music to their iteration!

Derek Fenton

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

The Lalique Vase

There she is,
Art Deco girl in gold lamé, Arctic fox,
pearls to her knees –
blind to rising tension and turbulence in Europe,
unaware of a former German corporal
who may threaten her world.

there she is
about to eat caviar, finger her objets d’art,
leave a trail of Patou’s Joy.

Tomorrow she will buy that Picasso she covets,
wear her new Chanel to take tea at the Ritz,
linger over a Lalique vase in Harrod’s.

Billboards announce Jews goaded
in Germany – unemployed workers
in London demonstrating –
her thoughts are on dancing this evening
at a new nightclub.

There she is,
carefree, cared for –
in her cocoon of luxury she shimmies
the night away.

The world trembles.

Here she is,
postmodern girl in jeans and pullover:
striving artist with Lalique vase –
London blitz detonated
her grandmother’s bubble.

At the Antiques Road Show
an expert quotes
a figure –
more money than she’s ever known.

Her world shifts.

Margaret Ferrell

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

The Fence

The street is empty taking a breath after
another tepid night. I join Carol
in the driveway. The birdbath refilled.

She’s pruning dead sticks from
the photinia that divides the front
of our blocks. I’ve never liked it.

A wattlebird swifter than my eye
swoops into the fuchsia needles
successive flowers with rapier beak.

We talk about the wooden fence
needing a new post or two
and replacement palings, how to keep

it up until the sale. The bird if he
talked human talk would ask
about our obsession and probably

say. More fuchsias. We would agree
really not knowing how to end things.

Wendy Fleming

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Figue

——— my father’s favourite fruit was a fig
——— and, like a fig,
——— my father flowered on the inside

Wagin, 1947, salt lakes and Salmon Gums,
post-war frugality, dance hall, my father the
vamping pianist, railway town, Baptist tracks rattling

——— fig, from the French “figue”,
——— a soft pear-shaped, many-seeded fruit

clattering atop keys, my father’s hands, all the blacks,
not knowing how, the band,
paid in riders, post-gig drinks

——— dun brown the fig or a bruised purple,
——— call it petulant, or shy

sly kinship, the held look, man lingers
over man, my father, call it ekphrastic,
phrases hungering for another’s art

——— fruiting twice each season, ‘breva’,
——— the first crop, on woody stems

my father, Baptist tracks clattering

——— flowering on the inside

Kevin Gillam

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

A Commonwealth Of Salads

you start the buffet race, people stalled in front plating roast chicken with a clack of steel tongs

anxious for a fair share of stuffing-competitors get too close, such pressure from behind there’s no time to estimate if there’s too much mayonnaise for the potato salad

you’re breathing in the smell of those poor hard-boiled eggs being bullied like hockey balls

you proceed, weighing in your imagination how much to take from each bowl bearing in mind the probable tensile strength of your paper plate

increasingly you relate to dispirited looking green peas and to the brutalised lettuce

following the queue going from upstairs to down you wonder how others juggled a cup of hot coffee with two serves of pavlova, fruit and ice-cream, plus their cutlery

past the finish line there’s no room to sit, now with time to study the field-a scrum of hyenas come to mind

in this place filled with strangers whom you’d have gladly taken down for extra chocolate mousse, you better understand your primitive state

Ross Jackson

Karragullen

Red gully

a rainy night, a triangle of old grass trees
flying ants’ nests in their spiky heads
in moonlit silhouette-someone bent over
where a walking track disappears
a sudden noise, a startled bird, rustling leaves
a rainy night, three shivering witnesses
deaf to the grating spade
insensible to the smell in damp soil

Ross Jackson

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Primal Haunting

A primal tune,
Haunting, seductive,
Reaching within
To long hidden echoes
Of rhythms past.
Of flowing robes
And dancing feet,
An hypnotic beat.
Familiar,
It envelops us,
Holds us in its tight embrace
With its welcoming touch.
Enticing,
No threat.

Oh, so seductive.

The feet move,
The dance is known,
Instinctive.
Felt from somewhere deep.
We do not think
It does not allow for thought.
The senses take over and further we sink
And reach the source
Of cultures past and
Tribal connections
The earth beat.
Till nothing is left but
The dance.

Nada Kesic

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Conversation Piece

Our static conversation
sparks, melts, dissolves
in languid summer air:
Two wives, whose children share a father;
now deceased

His memory lies between us
fine threads pulling;
his hands on our skin
eyes smiling blue for each of us
alone.

So bizarre, this, us
sitting in my garden
wisteria dappling our faces
while we chat about our children;
his children.

Our voices range across their lives,
their varied wants and needs.
Past love connects us,
his blood from our blood
united in them.

Duty done this day, you rise, leave,
drifting into your whirlwind life
Here where it remains quiet.
ashes, buried in my rose garden,
turn to flowers.

Veronica Lake

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Marco Polo

I wish it weren’t so
that you were so scared of me
and
I of you

If it weren’t so
we could splash about in the pool
like kids
float waterlogged in cossies
rubbing the chlorine from our eyes
hold our breaths underwater
diving

———- down to bubble-talk
make whirlpools with our bodies
getting pulled along by giggles

play Marco Polo
until our
whispering
lips

met.

Peta Morris

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Dark Roses

They say that roses own no gene for blue
but I have seen indigo flowerings

in skin of children shivering twig limbs,
in kitchens sunned by globes that barely glow,

where mothers stunted as weeds keep gin bottle
and glass sticky with repeated drainings, tabled

in place of porridge and salt; hide coin purses
starved to mute from fathers slamming home

long after eleven, who bedding their budding
darlings, call it love, and if a young one cries,

well, everyone knows you have to bash green
stems to get the water in.

Jan Napier

Short Rant

hey lord not so fast you give this rasta no class
my head just five foot from the grass      mo’s a string strand
why you do that man?      hey I do that barrio swagger show off
that inked on dagger      check that dragon flying my spine red and
black and mighty fine      throw back my pecs get a pain in my neck
— hitch hip slipping jeans ‘nother uncool scene     flash a grin at the girlies
dresses so short and swirly      they turn away eye up boys surfing bay
— all white zinc and rashies sunsmart slip slop slappy      say they’re on
trend don’t jive talk never end?       I say hey my tan’s built in that sure ain’t no sin
— wanna ask a chick out maybe break the drought      how’m I gunna do it ?
gotta think gotta chew it      gotta bustle gotta hustle ‘for she
checks out the muscle      hey I got hot wheels can ya hear ‘em squeal ?
— faster faster faster I’m the 360 master      if ya get my drift
I’m wicked sick swift      hey she’s walking my way got no words to say
— ‘cept she’s soft she’s smoochy she’s kangaroochy     see them long brown legs
make a man sit up and beg      loves my sheepskin covers told her wouldn’t
have no others      asking for more speed she’s the lady I need
— but half hour on the clock hey gotta shock     ‘cos she’s just a bitch
told her my daddy’s rich      all she wants is money money guess
I don’t want no honey      gonna treat me like that leave this good man flat
— so I drop her at the beach take off with a screech      she’s shouting my name
but too late old flame      she don’t light my fire ain’t got no desire
— just hit another brick wall lord why you don’t make me TALL?

Jan Napier

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Sisters

The women in the house on the hill
snipe with careful manners, like orange hornets
darting round hydrangeas on the porch.
The sting is swift, heart stopping, but pain
is relative and hidden, more delayed
than flaunted,
they are adept at lip reading
insults quietly mouthed.
On their dresser teacups
rise in teetering fragility,
the leaves from pots
are read with wonder and sometimes
sweet malice like honey touched Earl Grey.
Should a stranger broach the verandah
they are swept away like desiccated insects
with a stiffened millet broom.
There is no room for other considerations.

Virginia O’Keeffe

There … She Is.

On the flood paddock a bull pushes out an agonising bellow,
such pain and and anger he thinks, if it were a woman
you’d know she was in labour.
On Wheelers Hill he watches with a rheumy eye, the blackberries:
his defeat. Boy, lover, he wrangled but nature and the birds
have won. At least they’re green though foxes slyly lie gully hidden
while cockatoos file the dusk above with raspy tongues. In softened haze,
he hears a foreign bird, black, yellow orbs;
listening slaps a mosquito and smiles at voices in the sky.
Bernie used to try and count them, box their throats
in her red notebook he keeps beside the phone. Inside,
the radio tells him it was hot today as if he didn’t know, couldn’t
feel the sweat splashing as he tugs weeds from her mint beds.
He boils up beef pink and streaky, drops in the spuds, no need for herbs
but, there she is, just slipping round the corner of the dairy in her yellow skirt.
Will this ache ever end? Up the valley Harry ploughs, the putter of the tractor
is his balm as empty night sidles down on berries, foxes and the birds.

Virginia O’Keeffe

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Black & Blue

shaved, drugged, cut, bandaged, drugged.
just another thursday –
or a fork in the road
on the way to nowhere.

or, like just another Saturday
at the moon café
where poets go to bleed
and laugh and cry and

fondle words as
they caress their crowd.
in a post truth haze, i blame
the operation. two bulging hernias

poking out as issues must,
getting in the way
of an otherwise half-decent day,
coming to my lower groin

to stay awhile, protruding greetings
stung by pain. then
part conscious feeling
vapourised by anaesthesia,

tied up by a surgeon’s stitching
as a long night flags
and my balls sag
and two days later

a purple-rich sunset clouds
this man’s aching groin. here is
where the tourists go, they
love turbulent skies of violet

and black, it takes them back,
way back, to where turtles rise
at sunset and stroll upon a salted shore –
with nought on their minds but freedom.

Allan Padgett

Just Passing Time

Sitting sunspangled in a backyard washed by time,
a moment which ordinarily transports me to wheatbelt dreaming
but today, digs into fallen, thriving nature afoot and waiting,

seduced in by the sirens of cricket song –
a murmur of clicking thighs
deep inside cork oak leaf litter,

like a compass set to freedom. A decompose
of fallen twigs and leaves, digested blind
via hidden protozoa, bound by swelling fungal hyphae,

fed instructions by a hint of cloudfallen messages.
Invisible threads of subsoil connection,
softly dividing, tying sunstruck memories

to this swollen afternoon –
where ravens caw, butcher birds mimic
and sodden clouds roll in then just as swiftly,

disperse. Like leaf litter in a field of dreams,
my saprophytic tendencies dissolve
then absorb the remnant day

as it tumbles westward,
scraping like cricket thighs
with a hint of gone.

Allan Padgett

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

The Reef, the Reef *

Under the gazes of January
and February, March
heard April tap, tap, tapping

on May’s door,
questioning the folly of
coal-fired power

stations. Favouring
carbon-farming, wind, hydro –
electric, and solar, power,

and battery storage,
June and July plead for
tenable tomorrows, asking

sojourners and dwellers
to reduce global warming.
Please, please

cease acidifying the Reef,
the Reef,*
the rainforest of the sea

Joyce Parkes

* The Great Barrier Reef: 93% bleached.

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Dualisms

the poet,
a collection of
of chipped antique alphabet and
headstone-grey saunter,
has upon himself a
courtship with the heart.
he recognises its voice.
(language that
swoons in rich delirium
and embraces him like a reflection;
pregnant in rimbaudian interlude)

because of it.
he can touch the most unreachable woman
and melt them with
storms learned from hearts lust.

there,
the warm river of their sweet ancient muse
connects and
soaks the
celebration of his dancing tongue,
who,
on swollen clitoris,
orchestrates
——————————————– their submissive stuttering song.

Mike Pedrana

Politics

you
my dear,
can have
any side of
the bed
—————————– you want.

Mike Pedrana

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Capital Punishment

Groups gather
in stormy darkness
claim their space
near the garrison gates

the prayerful
——— the curious
——— the bitter

ghouls just there for the show
——— Press with the hope of
——— a story from the pavement.

Clouds, laced with brine
roll in from the sea

sharp rain
——— needles thick stone walls
——— tries to scour them free
——— of shame and secrets

cold wind
——— fingers and picks
——— at locks

teases and pries
——— at cracks
keens mournfully
——— through razor wire

snatches prayers
from the lips of the prayerful

drowns them in the rain.

“It will be light soon”
“He’ll be with the priest now”
“God rest his soul”

“No More Hangings”
shout the abolitionists

Morning
seeps from blackness
into the miserable grey
of a new day

——— One minute past 8
——— ——— ——— it’s over.

Those who felt called
to the vigil of death
are subdued

a curious flatness descends

rain plasters hair on heads
trickles down necks
bounces off shoulders

ruined leather shoes
squelch
people turn

trudge their separate
ways with bowed heads

Norma Schwind

Capital punishment in Western Australia was abolished in 1984

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

The Decision

Ah
the wood stove.
Inviting hobs
that smell of soot, ash,
red-gum reduced to tar
and half green wood
charred only so far.

Marred
by an eyeshot
of a gas stove docked in a corner.
Clunky chunky module with blue afterburners
incongruously perched on Chippendale legs.
Labour-saving gift exuding vapours that drift.

Spooked
by all those bakelite knobs.
She can’t remember which one to choose.
Is it push down and twist
Or simply turn?
Hates the invisible hiss
and pungent pong.

Hesitates —

invokes humdrum rituals:
crumples paper sets kindling
and yellow kero flames creep.
Mind-drift in concert
with glowing coals
as she sits.
Happy at hearth.

Waits for the whistle of the kettle.

Laurie Smith

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Poetical Correctness

poetic offerings
are not always
the pleasure
you’d expect,
neither the uplift
nor inspiration
you hoped for
or the joy
of recognising
concepts and ideas

some encounters
appear so complex
they require manuals
‘Post Modern Poetry
for Dummies’
or consumer
protective legislation
against the
hard hailstones
of verbal dissonance

of phrases obscure
like views through
fogged up windscreens
that produce nothing
when words
that find no echo
come to grief
like acrobats
in a circus
without the safety net

whatever happened
to eloquence where
words are friends
lines of weight
and wisdom
that walk with us
on life’s stony road
between fleeting calm
and the next
hundred calamities

where are you
lyrics that sing
and smile and dance
give rise to delights
and challenges
of meaning and thought
able to resonate
unimpeded by
seemingly serious
poetical correctness

Traudl Tan

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Compass Termites

Amitermes meridionalis

Their mounds thrust high above the ground,
ochre-hued, free-form as any Gaudì chimney
architecture, aligned north-south to limit
summer warmth, catch cooling breezes.

Each nest claims soil as well as air,
tunnels deep and wide beneath the surface.
In a labyrinth of chambers, the core a queenly
boudoir, the nurseries for eggs and nymphs.

Tiny, blind and wingless, workers
cut and haul below sweet-scented grasses
to line the regal chamber, keep
teeming hatchlings fed and warm.

Generations inhabit each subterranean
site; for a century, or more, communities
tend their sovereign and territory, constant
in their bearings, their toil.

Rita Tognini

The Upright and the Fallen

What did you do in the war, artist?

In liberated Paris (1944), collaborators
were the worst transgressors;
those who’d lain
with former occupiers, for love or gain
accused of collaboration horizontale.

Chanel, Cocteau, Piaf even,
other bright comets too, were suspects;
but evaded the shaved head,
tattoo and tar, beatings,
the parade of shame before compatriots.

Arletty¹, loved for her ‘sauce’ and ‘lip’
on screen, fell hard and long
for a Wehrmacht Adonis, young and strong.
At liberation, he offered marriage,
escape from coming purge, from Paris.
She stayed to face her patrie.

Tried, she blamed her anatomy for her fall.
Playing her most audacious role,
she quipped, ‘My heart is French,
your Honour. But my arse –
it is international.’ ²

Jailed, she served most time in a chateau.
The righteous reluctantly conceding,
that for collaboration horizontale
the famous should not fall too low?

Rita Tognini

1 Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat, known professionally as Arletty, whose origins were working class, was a French actress, singer, fashion model and popular star of pre-World War 2 French cinema.

2 ‘Mon coeur est Français, Monsieur le Juge, mais mon cul – il est international.’

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Hands

Hands come with maps    tracks
palms peel stories away    a thumb touches a strong path
strokes a face    the scar its own adventure

mottled hands
are dry in flame licked air
or folded in alpaca warmth
they reach touch old names
recognize a child’s breath

secrets etched in hardness
wait to be softened
hands that will always forgive
enfold the touch of you

Gail Willems

_____________________________________________________
Back to top

Level	Price
Supporter	Free now, free forever.	Select
WA Poets Member	$45.00 per Year.	Select