WA Poets Inc Creatrix 48 Poetry

Madness comes as a lover in the night
red with shades of black.
She slithers and seeps beyond consciousness
to lone stations in our psyche.
A fearsome silent tenant.

Layers of melancholy and distrust
gracefully imprint on one’s reality
or land in clanging armour.
Subtle delusions gain soft traction while
heroics frolic in sparkling grandeur.

She takes centre stage.

Act 2

In a Shakespearean modern-day tale
this Ophelia cascades on to her stage
in bathers, orange skull cap and goggles
swimming into space that is not there.
Ravaged as madness whispers her stories.

Clothed in flamboyant irrationality
she plays to the conflict of her inner/outer self
demanding cosmic freedom and devotion,
painting sanity, seeking pauses
to delay her mind’s breaking point.
Social filters are obliterated.

Act 3

She flaunts, licks and smiles demurely,
hugging and caressing herself to quieten
the flailing of wings in her chest.
Tranquil stage backdrops of ocean and forest
juxtapose with the unleashing tumult on stage.

‘I am the centre of the universe
beginning and ending here and now.
Understand me or leave this theatre
because I am your voice, your cabbage heart.
Applaud me as you would your pundit.’

Theatre goers feel the icy wind.

Act 4

Searching for an endorsement of self,
the actor slivers away known veneers
waving onion rings in mental anguish.
Emotionalism and rebellion are laid bare.
Wide lips and hair are streaked in red.

Stepping into her baroque daydreams
She builds erratic passages on stage,
an unstable prisoner in a wall less prison.
It is an actor’s stage with no applause.
The audience lean together for a final bow.

Madness is indefinable but present.

Kaye Brand

Doing the Hula in Hawaii

They said it would be like this,
those men no longer wearing
white lab coats, though some
think they still look out on the world

through cabalistic mists. Said the Fire
would come, that the whole world
would drown or burn. And now
half Australia’s up in flames,
left as stark as Williams’ Burnt Upwey*.
And humans are dead! Farms …
homesteads … flauna … are … just gone
and recovery’s left up to winds and rains
while our PM’s does the Hula in Hawaii.

Say, too, that temperatures will rise again
that bushfires will go raging on and on
leaping rivers, scaling mountains, blooding
our streets, the horizon and sky.

So more volunteer firefighters will die,
or sacrifice lungs; and kids will sough
long into the night for incinerated dreams,
lost parents, pets, teddy bears, dolls.

For, now, as a poet** once said: all’s changed,
changed utterly, and a terrible beauty
is born. But too many things remain unchanged,
and the PM’s still got no climate plan.

Yet, our children are taking the fight
to the streets, ready, it seems, to make
the world their own. So, hope’s not quite dead
and, perhaps soon, there’ll be real cause
for us all to do the Hula in Hawaii.

Peter Burges

* Fred Williams: Burnt Upwey
** W. B. Yeats, Easter 1916

Nearfaraway 1

a
place
deep
within
where
synapses
and
meiosis
urge
reproduction
and
fish-
like
burblings
birth
aureole
emotions
and
husked
memes
seed
and
sprout
new
synaptic
flares
which
are
seeable
darkly
and
yet
are
too
nearfaraway
to
ever
be
clearly
understood

Peter Burges

Goan Home

It used to end the hippy trail-
you can still see the relics today
of those who sought the holy grail.
It used to end the hippy trail
in the sixties, and no e-mail…

Do those who decided to stay,
detritus of the hippy trail,
question their nirvana today
looking haggard on facebook posts
and smoking spliffs with friendly ghosts.

“Better than the UK”-they say!

Derek Fenton

Blood Ties

Teach us to care and not to care

T.S. Eliot

What happened to days of laughter,
years of accord, communication? Is this a
consequence of lives flowing in disparate
directions, empathy a stranger?

Life becomes a carousel in constant motion
never slowing down to make time for kin
and compassion. The giddiness of where
we’re going unforgiving, makes for forgetting.
There was a time when healing took place
sooner, lasted longer before the next cut.

The ties are frayed, thin where they were
strong; damaged but not destroyed.

Hope hovers.

Caring loses its place over time
until we learn not to care. And yet,
still feel compelled to care.

Margaret Ferrell

Bonded Love

She’s not with us now you know
Whispered the nursing staff
As they fussed around her bed

Her husband cried she is you know
Memories of our seventy years
Are hidden in her mind
When her hand rests in mine
There is a squeeze and smile of recognition
My sweet young bride is with me still
She’s still my wife and valentine
Just can’t recall my name that’s all

She’s not with us now you know
Whispered the nursing staff
As they spooned food into her mouth

Oh yes I am said Ita May
Although the present time is fading
I remember the sweetheart of my youth
When I am wrapped in his embrace
And his lips linger on mine with a kiss
My heart awakes and sings with love
He is my lover from the past
Just can’t recall his name that’s all

Rosalind Franklin

A Week In Suburbia

On Monday,
I smell the scream of freshly cut lawn,
blades severing narrow throats,
green leaf volatiles dragging over matting
to shrivel into hallway runners.

On Tuesday,
Chlorine-green streaks my hair,
it floats like pondweed around my face,
laps stinging a net of red veins,
threading my eyes like untethered lane ropes.

On Wednesday,
The rubbish bins open their mouths,
halitosis loitering a kerbside rendezvous.
Bile-green bowels gorged with seven days
of un-flushable movements.

On Thursday,
Bored bins hang their lips in the rain,
adhesions cling like mouth ulcers
and deep within the mandibles of maggots
are mouth-hooking the intricacies of carrion.

On Friday,
Fish and chips are splashed with cologne,
vinegar scents the arrival of the weekend.
We linger in the Coca-Cola darkness,
tongue kissing salted fingertips.

On Saturday,
I sleep late. The bacon has come home
and spits a culinary commentary
to the blue flame torturing a shallow pan.
Eggs bubble and squeak like young chicks.

On Sunday,
Bronze bells speak in tongues.
Hail Marys whisper confessional garb,
fingered like a rosary garrotte
and the week is silenced.

Ann Gilchrist

Flemington

Flemington is imprinted by stiletto hooves,
they suck cocktails through pink paper straws,
champagne fizzes around fumbled finger foods
soothing the ruffled plumage of fascinators

Undergarments are strapped like saddle bags,
squeezing fashion into the monochrome of Derby Day,
stained with citrus tans and horse whips,
dandy lion lapels pierced by Cornflowers

The birdcage preens like a feathered flock,
tweeting tweets with acrylic fingertips,
they peck screens, divot divas stiletto the turf,
slopping bubbles into Melbourne rainfall

Monday rocks with million dollar horses,
barricades edge the streets like starting gates,
stables house a profitable slaughter,
Humane drops the ‘E’ like a captive bolt

Ann Gilchrist

but they say

they say dust stops gathering after a
time on the fibs and scribbled skies that get

swept under to rest alongside grey balls
of dead slaters and moon slivers of toe-

nail clippings and I had a friend whose three-
year-old kept chattering about the dead

bunny beneath the bed and she thought it
make-believe ‘til catching a whiff of what

the second hand as uncaretaker did-
n’t forget where dark and darkness lie side

by side and a scrunched up bus ticket and
off cuts of prayer compare journeys and there,

a book mark that questioned fate’s page but they
say, after a time, dust stops gathering

Kevin Gillam

dust bowl days

it was in April I believe,
on a Sunday. Frankie was

on the veranda, chewing
his ‘bacco, spitting and

staring, staring into nothing.
“see how spotty that wheat is

out there?” my eyes take in
swathes of rippling stubble.

“well that short stuff shouldn’t be
brindled like that.” “Drought turns 18”.

that was the header of the
weekly rag. our eyes meet.

“these are dust bowl days”. a gob
of his spit folds in gravel

Kevin Gillam

The Promise

Take a coin wrap it in paper,
Any paper with words of promise:
Gold, Land, Sex, Salvation
Sprinkle few drops of blood
Only few
For the winds of destruction to carry the smell

Take a coin wrap it in paper
Any paper not only of dead trees
Virtual paper with words of dreams:
Gold, Land, Sex, Salvation
Sprinkle few drops of booze
To mix with the blood
Shout loud

Take a coin wrap it in words
Sprinkle more blood and more booze
And wait.

The soldiers of bloody coins will be marching.

Ita Goldberger

Anticipating Mothers’ Day

Rounder than ever
her clothes have expanded with her
and the chair she sits in fits her
like a holding frame while
she waits in her room
for time to run out on her earthly contract
the terms of which
she has never understood.
She burned much of what could have been hers
in life-long criticism of those
who might have cherished her
later in life, some of whom
out of a conjured loyalty
still ring her from time to time
or, in a moment of induced charity
send the occasional card.
Her costume of respectability and
social success when she was young
nourished her then, but she was short
on the staples of love and belonging
both in childhood and marriage
so fed herself instead on other
things that filled the void.
Having never had a good example to follow
she sits now at ninety
a longevity that has stunned us all
surrounded by loneliness and chocolate
confused and perhaps still wondering
what it’s all been about.

Fran Graham

Dispiriting

The streets of Perth, Northbridge
blinded by fluorescent lights flashing
and penetrating your being

and the lifeless bodies tucked up
in sleeping bags and newspapers
that line shop frontages

with remains of drink and fast food
spilling their sweetness
onto the sidewalk

as if offerings
to the insects, that will
one day inch them away.

Mike Greenacre

Man In The Boat

You’d hear about condoms,
but not in the same verse
as ‘who you got on to’
or your latest girlfriend.

It seemed that this was the
next level of manhood
that we couldn’t reach,
you had to look
at least sixteen
to get served at the pharmacy.

Although we’d send in the
‘oldest looking’ of us to get
the beer and spirits at hotels,
it wasn’t cool to admit
that you weren’t Errol Flynn

or you couldn’t withdraw
before your body leaked its last
reminder … “Oh, by the way,
this is also how you make kids!”

‘Wham! Bam! Thank you Ma’am!’
we’d see the rise and fall of bodies
at the pictures or on TV
and hear the shrieks and groans

but nothing of the man in the boat
and how ambitions set sail
with the right manoeuvres.

Mike Greenacre

Flashbacks

In the night
memories haunt
stalk
voices impugn.
Terror sown in their minds
keeps them awake
sleep impossible.
Guilt drenches every thought every dream,
shame and fear all yelling into silence;
holds them captive;
frozen in place and time.

In defence they followed orders
kill or be killed
death was in charge
life a cynical notion
the only escape….
Luck.

Ann Harrison NSC

Back to School

Christmas tinsel gave way to January sales
and now it’s back to school,
little snail under flouro pink and yellow back-pack,
not creeping but running, limbs whirring
to the kissy chasey game in the playground
stops, looks, changes direction
pulls out a purple skipping rope
rushes to a giggle of girls under a gum tree
eager to chant and chart and sing and sum.

Come home quickly to a summer garden,
we’ll freeze a little time
before the kiss chasers catch you
or you them.

Jenifer Hetherington

Cabala

now she has gone
he weeps

we tussle for her story
theirs a finished work

certainly she and he loved

she dreamed

(perhaps)
a deep forest
an amethyst vase filled with lily of the valley
crisp white sheets
the silent sheen on a glass mandala

maybe he knew this
he dreamed
(it seems)
a hero running torch aloft
of battling fiery dragons
a lighthouse on a craggy rock
of filling time with ringing song

maybe she knew this

she dreamed
(he’s certain)
of church and children and cakes

maybe he knows this either was (or wasn’t) so

certainly they loved
(possibly)
doubltessly most or at least some of the time
(perhaps)

Jenifer Hetherington

Dies Irae

scorched earth
the wind has burnt the jasmine
tossed down the almond blossom

acacia on the dunes are burned black
close hugging melaleucas ripped from the ground scream
roots gape

the banquet was prepared
we gorged, satiated
but threw no crumbs to the beggars

books are sealed
obdurate
we pluck the eyes from our children

the well is fouled
barbed wire cages hold
women and men to be flayed

we are gold’s fools
strutting buffoons
who takes away the sins of the world?

let there be reverence here
we stare into dust and ash
there will be no phoenix

oh fragrant earth
we will go gently, bring balm
clean water, garlands

we will make a cloud house
high above noisy haste
to listen when trees speak

wearing robes of silver green
bringing bows of, olives, figs and honey
we will tell new stories
to ease earth’s aching soul

Jenifer Hetherington

Psalm

This is the day that I remember you;
In my waking hour and my end of day, I recall you.
How wonderful is your grace;
Every moment I delight in your presence.

Time and time after time I did not look for you;
My life, the years and the journeys, were not yours.
I went forth, lost and unsure of my path,
Yet seeking no sign to show me the way.

I know you never abandon me;
Whatever road I go down, you are there.
My cry goes out, craving for peace;
Where in this vastness is sanctuary?

Only in the end when I forget myself, do I find you;
At the still point of surrender, you find me.

Ruari Jack Hughes

Rain falls here occasionally

Slip-sliding in choreographed arcs
Swooping behind dunes of water
Sea eagles race toward their fishy prey
Talons tracing the lacy spray.

Here cliffs rise in columnar slabs
Above the sea’s surge and recoil
Their torn edges stretched in serrated span

Flung across half the world
In desperate desire of something else
Travellers lately wrecked in disappointment
Lie in unpredicted reefs.

Waves roil in raging explosions
Erupt in silver spikiness up the rock face
Fall back in gentle benediction.

Descant notes in the tide rise and descend
While a desolate bass dredges
From deep in the heaving ocean
A fugue for time within time.

Rain falls here occasionally
The vasty sky cracks like a commandment
Slashes of electricity whelming the earth.

Ancient walls of stone and shell
Carve the air in sheets of sound
On aching choirs of wind
Exhausted refrains sing the land’s immensity.

Scruffy grass and straggly bush
Grey-green quilts of vegetation
Grasp the wind-seared crags.

On the great serried parapets
Spattered with tenacious lichens
Spirit guardians stand timeless watch
Over wide earth and deep sea.

Defeated time lies forever unchanged
Under the shimmering blanket
Of scrub and sedge

Ghosts of older generations
Slip between the whispering outcrops
Where antique stories lie etched
In songlines scraped across the rock.

The land folds back and back
Reaches for the vague horizon
Uncertainly marking a limit.

Ruari Jack Hughes

The code

Why is higher maths
so full of the names of men?
Godel’s theorem,
Cauchy sequence, Hilbert space,
Gaussian, Hamiltonian, Lagrangian.

Highschool calculus wasn’t like that.
The derivative was not
the Newton function,
the integral not
the Leibnitzian.

Irrational numbers, imaginary numbers,
complex and transcendental numbers
all have names I can think with.

What was a Hilbert space again?
Last week I looked it up
I thought I took it in

but now in my brain the meaning
has come unhooked
from the word

I look it up again
but the image persists
of Hilbert:

not an abstract space,
angles, distances, lines
in n dimensions,

but a middle-aged gent in round specs,
a floppy hat on his bald head,
chalk-dust on his professorial
trousers, his beard hairs
pointing to nowhere.

Jackson

In early Djilba

. in spring sunlight
. the silver lizard’s
. ancient skin

The skink is five million years old
Chasing a three-hundred-million-year-old bug
it runs under the raised base of a steel post
The iron is as old as Earth
The fence: two winters

The skink emerges, scampers, pauses
Filtering the rain of wavelengths
its scaly integument glistens,
passes heat into blood

It’s day one of Spring
in early Djilba
On the post’s hard body
at the edge of a weld
rust shoves aside grey paint

Jackson

Sun glides from eastern hills

having rolled gold across the Nullarbor
sun glides from Eastern Hills
an ornament it hangs off Greenmount awhile
wings over river land, makes gleaming fans

of duck thrash, its light sieved through
eucalypt canopies
pale deposits on foreshore sand
silver fires on olive trees in East Perth yards

blisters seats in garden cafes
fiddlewoods bronze lines of streets
glistens awakening suburbs
in Northbridge when nightshift all burnt out

a bakery skylight whitens
Hung Tran sighs, unrolls verandah blinds
smiles glinting, suns of saffron children
risen from the East

Ross Jackson

Tawny frogmouths in Bold Park

above us, not a single balloon of cloud
fooled by our immobility
you walk along, not looking up
eyes on The Zamia Trail
which falls away in chalk white blaze
everywhere today, heat haze
edged with blue tongued shadow

your reconnaissance along a scarp
of salt grey bushland
you’re looking out
beguiled by that view
to a saucer of turquoise ocean-
blinking incessant
jumpy with diamond fleas

we stay behind
in drab summer silence
still safely tethered
to our weathered tree

Ross Jackson

Bodytalk

I keep my head close to my trunk,
watching my legs run away.
My arms lie unfolded by my sides,
my hands rest within convenient reach.

At bottom is the exit for the passage of my waste.
Hanging nearby is my point of fluid elimination,
as well as being my connection to a next generation.

My feet flatten that beneath,
to make my way in the world.
My toes help me keep a grip
on my preferred situation, upright.

My penis points the way
to the fulfilment of its desire,
and I follow.

And so it grows,
create, grow, seek,
wrong, repeat,
wrong again, retreat
into my thinking meat,
my wriggled convolutions and connections,
my grey brainbox of flash tricks,
my insoluble maze, my imaginarium,
burrowed deep into my fleshed-out conceit.

Peter Knight

pantings of a mad running man

– run, run, run…

armed with teeth, i set out
to tackle a dangerous world,
Hack the Knife strapped
to my inner thigh
for some assurance,
let’s see what there must be to see.

i run, run, run, i must never drop,
believing that if i do a pedestrian sadness
will bring me low, so i never stop.

life gets you in the end, i’m told.
Should i ape the courage of those who,
after trial by battle, die with defeat
and do not submit, cowardly, to death?

i have no recourse other than to run
against the automated pace of the clock,
its hours and minutes and segments
mark its relentless pursuit of me.

hopped aboard a magic roundabout,
around and around i go,
in a spin, until popping out,
fired by my spring,
not to be ground with a halt.

i am wary of my oxygen starved collapse,
life’s race record is held before my face,
projecting agonies into mind
that I would not otherwise know.
I fear my fear of what will come next.

let alone to myself,
pacing,
i remain a beserker,
i know, a howler,
devouring myself
in my narrative.

here i go again,
run, run,
run some more.

Have you met me
before?

Peter Knight

Old Friends

During the holidays we arrange to meet for lunch;
a pool of time culled from busy schedules.

We talk; about how tired we are
and how our daughters have grown…(beautiful, wilful creatures.)

Together we wonder if it really is their star sign,
Or are we responsible, having encouraged them to speak out.

The river twinkles in the soothing light of sun.
A toddler takes tentative steps along wet sand.

We contemplate our lives, and sigh.
Our jobs consume us, so we bitch for a while,

finding it hard to let go. Finally we arrive
at ease together in the comfort of shared silence

Veronica Lake

Open Heart

First cut slices cold,
carving deep, filleting flesh
through bone to core.
Sudden exposure.

My heart is splayed,
open for your inspection.
It is revelation time;
that moment of disclosure.

Here lies the truth of the matter;
heart’s blood thick with secrets.
Truth throws down puny defences;
denials, delusion, and self-doubt.

I’m coming clean with you,
taking a huge risk.
I’m standing in the present
right here, unprotected.

This is who I am;
no pretence, no bluster.
I’m offering you my open heart,
the gaping vulnerability of love.

Veronica Lake

Unearthing Sunshine

I want her
to take my hand
lead me into the garden
tell me she’s sorry.

That if things
had been different
we would have been
good friends.

That her harsh words
were barriers
to clarify her lack of interest
rather than insults.

That the sunshine
she unearthed in me
deserves to shine
once more.

That she can lift
this heavy burden
of being unloved
reinvigorate my passion
for life.

But as I watch her
flit about, laugh with others
I know she doesn’t care
about an insignificant guy
who had a crush on her.

That it’s me who’s responsible
for unearthing the sunshine
buried beneath
this rubble.

A.R. Levett

Suitcase Caper

Side-lying suitcase,
black and blue.
On the handle
a tartan ribbon tightly tied –
bright admonishment
to barcoded self-reliance.

Alone on the carousel
you weave around again
with weary patience.
Your unpartnered dance
a ticking off of taking off.

You have outstayed
your fellow travellers,
and only I remain
to give you new directions –
to name you Found.

Your colours mark you
a seasoned traveller,
your ribbon
a hint of nationality
In this multinational place.

Jenny Magann

Substitute

My mother gave me her pearls
and matching clip-on earrings;

said to me one day
Here, you’d better have these;

a strand of glowing beauty
tossed in my direction.

She also called me Margaret,
a name meaning ‘pearl’.

Her Mother of Pearl love.
All I wanted was a hug.

Mardi May

Golden Grain and Silver Fleece

They came their skirts a-swishing ‘round ankles in the sand.
They came supporting menfolk to clear the virgin land.
In tents of flimsy canvas a-flapping overhead –
Scarce shelter from the freezing wind, in winter’s dread they lived,
But then the summer searing heat sun turned pale-skin into brown –
As menfolk sweated, swung the axe to bring the forest down
From daylight until dark men fought the wilderness by hand –
While women stoked the campfire, to feed her hungry man.
She swished the flies and wiped the sweat, and settled in the coals –
The heavy cast-iron-oven, to cook the ‘roo-meat stew.
The blackened, billy boiled on chain, hung down from crossbar pole.
There was no one to talk to in this far and lonely place.
And she missed her city lifestyle with its fashion and its grace.
Brave her choice to follow: to farm the land they planned –
While babies born in agony: no hospitals around …
Her help could come in horse and trap – once birthed she was alone.
And Edward: Steven named his son, to plough the land with him.
At Dangin Springs of needle bush, the Parkers pioneered in –
Was land of primeval people who watered at the springs
eight-hundred Aborigines camped, and gave no grounds to fear.
As slowly on the Parkers slogged: the stubborn soil they cleared
To feed the sheep, to sow the crops, and harvest fields of golden wheat
Then other pioneers followed––on conditional-purchased plots.
As neighbours, they had come to work their government granted lots.
A third generation followed, Jonah Parker, Steve’s grandson.
And the property grew extensive … hard-earned and rightly won,
So Dangin town, as founders the family in ninteen-nine-0-two,
and being staunch abstainers: as Methodists, will do
They built a temperance hotel before Quairading transpired
And soon like-minded settlers their farming lots acquired
(And Dangin lives today, a small and loved community just seven miles away)
And following footsteps (three years later was the date)
Jim Callow opened a bushland store and it wasn’t long to wait
Within two years, nineteen-nine-0-seven, the settlement had sized
And demanded its gazetting – a new town recognised.
Now things have got much easier – a hundred years along,
With railway lines, swimming pool, hotel, a co-op is among
the other shops and services: a school, sportsgrounds and Shire
While Parker House is famous for its excellent loving care
We wondered if the ladies, their men, all pioneers that dared
Were justly celebrating what their hard fought life and had won
Recorded by their modern peers what they had bravely done.
So celebrations rightly give, to those who worked: esteem –
Who built the town of Quairading, current pride and new-found dream.

Glad McGough

Bibliography: Title and storyline adapted from: The Golden Grain and the Silver Fleece: A History of Quairading from 1859-1930 by Frances Eato

Night Orchids

Our rainbow shatters the dark as lucent teeth spark. Here, we do not use words like love. Instead, we speak with hands that hold as shoulders tussle in a way that makes the roughhouse rougher. In the absence of daylight, we are just two young men, silent save for giggles and shoe scuff: we do not rouse suspicion when touching.

In the park we whisper sanctuary. In the dark, we kiss, disturb crickets. The moon pours itself into oval stygian pitch, latches to your hair, brings blonde to brim as if stars are contained within: an equation curls from out your scalp. You fall onto and into my tongue. Beneath clothes, your alabaster muscles harden my palms.

As if summoned to speak, a benediction of sprinklers cut the grass open, lift. Water arcs to spray and hiss as we grip. Bearing down, the bore empties over us. We allow ourselves to pull the other into the other, wetter. We laugh. And then we dance. Across the road, house lights flicker, cause curtains to twitch. We ignore them.

Who knew that running would be our rhythm. Our feet squelch before pavement slaps and we whoop from out the stoop of our mouths. We become kids wrapped in a mine of nebulous time. And there, in the middle of the street, halogen inside the other’s eyes, we kiss. Again. Here, we glisten, as if sacred. The whole world bows: if this were a poem, wildflowers would luminescent the road into a ribbon, tied around us. Even as dawn encroaches, we do not unfold our bush orchid hold.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

She Knows No Spell To Quell

Mother learnt magic on the picket line. Curses were verses scratched into car doors using iron nails from shipwrecks: Europa; Alkimos; Cervantes. How she would paint sigil onto placard. Superglue was always blessed. As were chains, padlocks, causes. They’d walk out into a sacred circle, bless that place, their pagan space, a glimmer across asphalt. Then they would begin chanting.

ii.

Mother taught me that semantics are a form of magic. Incantations are merely emphasis, inflection Detection is a difference between words like here! and here. How strike once meant surrender. A captured ship dropping sails in submission. This same technique used by keelmen and colliers on the Thames to bring stoppage to the flow. Sailors; lightermen; coal-heavers; glass-grinders; watermen: fourteen thousand of them marching toward Westminster. All for fair pay. But now a strike is 1.4 million pupils walking out of class to reduce fossil fuels and the fossils who advocate for them. Dinosaurs thought they had time too. A mass of angry children will wake up the entire world. Stop denying the Earth is dying. This September’s strike: there were more, us. This deterioration of our Earth is something we endure and wear: see how we are weathering. Us, bound in movement, our destination a matter of degrees. Mother says our tongues curve to find new words in words, spelt exactly as they were, always have been.

iii.

Mother worries: she knows no spell to quell a tsunami, calm a climate. How easily a man can change his mind… or be made to think he has, she says, but a planet? She scours texts, converses with what is left: of her coven; of her grimoire; of the white-knot ocean’s top, pockmarked with plastic. Klimatångest is rife. Eco-nihilism has become a way of life. But the youth have stood up, walked out, lain down: wisdom quickening before tide. And now it is our turn: Ragnarok’s lullaby is haunting everyone. Mother wants to help, but she – like Nature – is ancient: they both struggle with large crowds. All she can do is offer me her hand. When I ask if she wants to come with me to the Global Climate Strike, she refuses, says she will stay at home, watch the ocean. In case the water begins to recede, then rise.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

90’s High School Sex Ed

The penis is a weapon
it’s a gun
and if you load it
then you’d better be prepared
to take its bullets deep inside you
’til it’s empty
’til there’s nothing left
to shoot

Rebecca J Moran

Existential Vertigo

Time slices
like dissection slides
colliding in my consciousness:
all that has happened, and all that will
all at once
This leaves me miniscule,
standing deep within my giant self
on the skyscraping precipice of comprehension
I feel the falling brush my cheeks with cold
the reeling, the yielding of my mind
as all terms are changed -again
This year of babies and corpses vomits me out
bruisingly, gaspingly aware
of mortality

Rebecca J Moran

Bluebird Endings

As spiderlings drift on wind, so too intent.
. A softening of focus compasses hours and days till
.   we rouse ourselves from utopias glimpsed at peripherals,
face front as market forces name slaughter a growth industry,
.   trembling lamb later plated with gravy and mint sauce, enjoyed by all.
.   Sunk in some mauve grey reverie we insist that unlike sheep,
we will not become one with those motes floating unnoticed through
.   every moment of our breathing, instead mean to keep stepping
. seasons not ours to own. Dreamers, we choose to linger aloof beyond
jostling shoppers, decline to recognise winos rich in vomitstink,
.   so that dwelling ensorcelled in worlds of vanquished dragons
. and blue bird endings we are not disturbed. Boys bold with gods and bombs strolling banana markets remain mythic as waking
.   raw, exhausted, clutching some ex lover’s crumpled note.
. Will it take windows blown in as shrieking begins, a glass pinned eyeball
dribbling to chin, before damsel and minstrel busily romancing
.   the rose see that falling stars are mortars?

Jan Napier

Street Girl

Clouds have painted your artist’s eye,
the face you called fine boned was thin
the waif you plucked to daub in rose,
tobacco breath, sheets, urgent skin,
shoved sleeveless back to streets of rime.

And here I lope in this ghost brimmed night
through alleys and lanes with open mouths
fluting blue winds from the blowhard South,
as cloaked in frost and unseen by men
I stare from the outside in.

All that’s sacred is locked and barred,
rain’s backhand slant scripts the dark in grim,
the moon’s a fish scale flaked and pale,
but I am the figure on the dream’s far rim,
sleep the key that lets me in.

The run of my days is dwarf and wan,
a cobbled wash of coarse home spun
rags wrapped around the egg skulled son
cursed from your door as beggar scum,
his milkless plaints now chilled to none.

The street girl’s picture made your name,
spider bone hands scritch scritch the door,
in brandy wine you drench new fame
‘tis only the wind you hear, no more,
but lights burn late and sleep grows small.

Jan Napier

The Civil Servant’s Ode to His Dog

You met all the selection criteria.
You are a highly acceptable dog
in most respects.
You meet and frequently exceed
performance targets.
You only need light redrafting.
Your policy suggestions are
well-considered.
You help to raise morale.
I find you responsive
and resilient.
You brief in a timely manner.
You have a low carbon footprint
and you recycle well.
Your position is secure.

Julian O’Dea

A Watch and Act Notice ….ignored

There’s lead, there’s a deadening inside.
Unfriendly, it
settled like a wound; raw, sore, indifferent.
The anger rises, the more I know the more blood roars.
Family fade in, out.
Hugs wrap incoherent rage in soggy bundles.
When my dad died I sobbed. Now I sob for his creation,
a pioneer of corrugated iron and battered weatherboard
cut apart with his artist’s eyes, his designs of glass.
The egret and magpie have melted,
the birds wont sing above the door again.

We are all homeless and a Firey died,
his truck blown over on its head.

Emergency warnings wake my mornings:
Jinjellic twice hit
Burrowye burns, burns
Cudgewa half gone
Corryong bitten
Thowgla blazes on high alert
Towong is disappearing
Walwa crimson cowering
Tooma surrounded and
Khancoban evacuated.

Oh why didn’t someone on The Hill,
Listen Watch and Act?
My son tells me Pentecostals like Apocalypses.

Virginia O’Keeffe

Viewpoints of war

Ten years after the second carnage she found the book
haphazardly stacked among the cowrie shells and photos
[slack breasted New Guinean women with bones in their noses
and grass skirts around their slung hips], she didn’t look.

If it was a book it was strange, no Dick and Dora, no dog,
the covers were wood, a varnished brown and edges beveled
although she did not know that at the time, held together
with narrow white ribbon along the spine.

There were no words so was it a book? Many pages
but tissue thin, indeed tissue between each nubbly page
and flowers, real flowers, glued in arching sprays.
Purple and one like gorse, a cheerful yellow with brown eyes.

She loved this thing and instinctively despite her little years,
knew with utter conviction its holy connection,
inside the cover a man like Joseph on the Xmas cards
squatted, and Cairo in black ink was written.

Her mum said it was a souvenir, returned with a kaki man
with grit in his turnups and a nervous squinting smile.
Put it back, get a Golden Book, we’ll read the Big Brown Bear;
don’t tease yourself about a wooden book, or cowrie shells.

Her dad said it was Ned’s, he got the cough from sand and drinks too much
but he’s alright; now my advice to you young one is never stir
your tea with oleander sticks, and always bang your boots before
you put your foot in, a mate on Kokoda was killed by a scorpion.

Virginia O’Keeffe

A December Morning

As your electric fingers
start their tinkling run
upon my fevered mind
along my tingling legs
toward my thighs
and who knows where
beyond –

I start to wonder
where the rest
of my life
is headed,
and where it’s
been till now.

Sometime later, with
a seismic shudder –
the answer shivers
into view:

it is you.

Allan Padgett

sky puff

on the far edge of an exotic tree
ripe with summer’s energetic fertility
cascading with scrumptious berries
rimmed by jagged black scrarking shapes
silhouettes of survival and hope
this northern rim pressed into
a soft cerulean sky filled with rows of puff
small vapours in their multi-tufted thousands
streaming as pushed by the flow
of a northern cyclone
force-fed by runnels of blasting air
and pulsing rain but here,
no more than decorative fluff,
streaming overhead as vapour-fed emissaries
telling us down south of stormy times
signalling strife and chaos

just as these cockies marked with
extravagant slashes of crimson tail
flutter eat stutter fly
up and out,
deep inside their cyclone’s weeping eye,
as a neighbour sends spade-smacked
tremors of go away
to these tremulous
partly-adapting
remnant flapping bits
of dna and biology’s
rapturously rampant diversity
as like a dozer chewing trees
and waiting for the sky to fall,

we keep on keeping on, fed by greed
chomping into waning gene pools
turning complexity into scraps of gone
as double helices unravel into dust,
reaching like a brontosaurus
for the life that comes from light
as its skies and future darkened

we wait, too – but not for the comet

Allan Padgett

Law and Physics

To get the car I have to sign.
So easy; five quick squiggles on forms
to bind me and the machine
in a kind of circuitry of power limits;
traffic codes and capped explosions
granting me free passage on the roads.
The terse friendliness of the salesman,
his steady hand lifting the forms
for my shaky hand to sign, declares
that the birth-right of all men
will be conferred on me
when those forms receive my unique
ink-marks; the constrained freedom
of internal-combustion propulsion,
the precision bleed and concentrated
firepower that opens the cosmos
like a fruit. To each man in this yard
it’s as thoughtless as a tendon flex –
a wrist flick that pushes a pen
and turns an ignition key
starts another industrial revolution.

Chris Palazzolo

Outside Newman

The conditions of the men
who explored this land
can only be imagined,
but I have passed through it
painlessly, a little strung out
on caffeine perhaps,
a little traumatised
by hours of sedentary tension;
minute modulations
of muscular contractions
to swerve this way and that
but not onto a shoulder
or into a road train’s axle.
The land, inconceivable
miles of it, streams past
near the shoulders,
turns steadily, slowly
further out, while that strangely
detached spar of trees or mountains
on a waterless sea
doesn’t seem to move at all.

Evening. I count the seconds
by the listless flicking
of motel tv channels.
Outside Newman, men move
around like showered phantoms
texting spouses to relieve
the arid hours –
men food piled high
in the bain-maries,
men quarters smelling
of potpourri and farts.
I feel so frail amid all this men
hardness, though hard workboots
make men’s feet soft
and easily wounded.

Chris Palazzolo

Fair Fare

An antioxidant nonpareil,
a palate’s grief or treat
chillies occupy a corner
of her plate, adding spice

to her fare of kang-
kung and ikan teri sautéed
in oil extracted from se-
same seeds. At her table

made of wood she would
discuss with a friend
from another homeland
the subtlety of a European

meal versus the fire in
the fare of another country.
Same language.
Different accents.

Joyce Parkes

Place, Pith, Tiers of Address

Saying farewell and fare well
to her friends and acquaintances

in Darlington after thirty eight
years of parenting, partying,
argument, discussion, debate;

sojourns to other States and
countries, she moved
to dwell in Ballajura (sob/
hooray). In a dwelling
with a garden planned she

continues to write of place,
pith and tiers of address.
Noting scant shelter
for the ones experiencing
homelessness in four or forty

degrees Celsius, she aches
to ask parliamentarians
inhabiting spaces with
multitudinous gazes for
their view on largesse.

Joyce Parkes

* There are more than 116,000 people homeless in Australia.

Leaves of Life

(Ekphrastic from installation ‘Fallen Leaves’, Menashe Kadishman, Jewish Museum Berlin)

eyeless metal masks
extinguished lives
scattered leaves of lives

obsidian tears, restless
in vacuum cold stasis

mausoleum’s cold hearth
filled with rustling
whispers of millions

entombed choices
shroud vaulted faces

shoe clad feet now tread
this jagged metal shore
invading silence, tearing

coarse, shuddering groans
coruscating shards of sound
from grating metal masks

misplaced masks
force steps away
from any charted course

minds of witnesses
seeking understanding
searching

all perspectives
defying explantation
shredding reason

Yvonne G Patterson

Mist

at first, a few things just disappeared
not stuff we missed, too much

photos of holidays, families, celebrations
erased from the ‘cloud’, still, we had memories

when cold evening mists descended earlier
we curled up in bed keeping warm

when bedroom curtains disappeared
we hung up sheets, feeling exposed

our daughter’s stolen jeans were unreplaced
shops no longer sold jeans for girls

police took theft reports seriously, at first
but thieves were never caught

when swirling mists hovered till midday
we stumbled in mornings’ half-light

after our cello and sheet music disappeared
we noticed empty bookshelves

then we knew thieves had broken inside, but
thefts had been reclassified as necessary

when mists grew darker, hung about all day
afternoon naps became a thing

the day world movie channels disappeared
we whispered frantically on phones, texted

then overseas internet access was blocked
it was necessary ‘for public harmony’

puppeteers pulled etheric strings
a seething miasma, political spin

while we just slept

Yvonne G Patterson

Budgerigars

Dark blue sky over endless bleached grass plains. Hot dry silence swallows the sound of my motorbike. On the ground surrounding a wide shallow wetland, thousands of green and yellow flowers – or perhaps pademelons. As I pass they rise whirring into the air to envelop me. They fly at my speed, slowly rising – I feel I am sinking into the earth which binds me. They wheel as one and are gone.

. for a moment
. I could fly

Fern Pendragon

Winter Sun

the winter sun
hovering
close to the horizon
like an old railway
lantern
offering light
without heat

.   light
.   sparkling on a
.   grey wrought iron
.   gate
.   gently lancing
.   newborn crystals
. of ice

crystals
slowly losing
their appetite for angles
dissolving like
kangaroos
in the distance
on a summer afternoon

Gregory Piko

Puffs of gold

Avenues of oak
branches twisted in unison
straddling the driveway
with heavy foliage and green lichen
forming dark mysterious shadowy places
where slaves are forbidden
and southern belles
in polka dotted dresses
parade in their barouche
waving white gloved hands
in disdainful gestures
as they emerge into the cotton fields
at the end of the oaken path
where precious white gold
picked by other hands
black and gnarled
funds the weaponry
that keeps them enslaved
They pick
despite Manchester refusing the yield
protesting the Southern cause
their empathy
the beginning of the end.

Barry Sanbrook

Today
Friday the 13^th

morning begins badly—
bushfires shroud the sky—
hang a brown mantle over the land

in the departure lounge resignation
settles on passengers—wears its weary
mask on faces—a spiral of deterioration
seeps in—claims ownership

we cannot land in Melbourne
we cannot take off from Coolangatta
babies fretful—parents frazzled—
children bicker

schedules in continual confusion
I miss my connection—air quality
worst in the world more deaths
—homes lost

skeptics rally—write diatribe to the
papers—like the flat earth society they
are in deep denial their mantra
there is no climate change

Norma Schwind

Incendiary

I spend my time
drenching scrub
at the fence.

A rogue fire
you jump the break
ignite grass at my feet
transform me
to pillar of flame.

Rita Tognini

Mutation

I see them as I drive across the bridge
. pure white with pink-striped necks
. or rusty red all over

lanky scaffold see-through legs
straddling the estuary banks
containers stacked around ankles
like Lego in a child’s play space
. pin heads aloft
. out-craning every crane on the horizon

far-sighted transcendent

savannah outcasts
toiling in the post-industrial port
. —Fremantle giraffes—

Rita Tognini

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