December 2023
Selectors: Kevin James Gillam and Helen Budge
Honorary Selector: Peter Jeffrey, AO
Contributors
The Childhood of a Sexologist
Millennials killed the doorbell industry by texting ‘here’
Villanelle for Strangers on the Shore
crow slips
Bamboo Scaffolding
Armour
the grief in living
From the Dark
No Dry Bikinis
Paperbark
Posthumous
Beneath Mount Agung Not Smoking
Wadjemup Lighthouse
between two trees
Listen
Life is Not a Bag of Marshmallows
The Day Before
Velvet
The Balloon
Amazon basin
Two loves
When I Grow Up
Yachtsman
Glimpse
Intrinsic Tranquility
A Showman’s Farewell
From Narrandera
Ants’ Rise
Like Being
My Garden
Dancing in the Dark
Broken
The Antithesis of Silence
Tagging on, Tagging off
Antarctica revisited … … 2015
Feast
Fritillaries
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The Childhood of a Sexologist
At twelve
Havelock Ellis*
Walked the Zoological Gardens.
With his mother who,
Apparently deep in thought,
Stood,
Legs akimbo under her polonaise,
Leaving
A small pool on the hard packed gravel.
‘I did not mean for you to see that’
Ellis mater blushed charmingly.
Yet
The maternal micturition reoccurred.
When
Ellis fils told his sister
Of these mysterious episodes
He received the sage explanation;
‘She was flirting with you.’
I happen to think this very odd,
But then, I am not a sexologist.
Boorloo / Perth 11th October 2023
Ananda Barton
*British 1859-1939, pioneering sexologist, psychedelic experimenter, eugenicist and social reformer. Thank you to Tim Parkin for your helpful suggestions.
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Millennials killed the doorbell industry by texting ‘here’
Our house was big enough that we had
Intercoms to our bedrooms from the kitchen
And the doorbell echoed through the house.
One day the doorbell broke
At the store, you could choose all kinds of sounds
Ding dongs were classic
You couldn’t go wrong
But did you know you could buy
Doorbells with songs?
My sisters and I made mum try them all
We wanted a fun song
So we could dance when it rang
Mum let us try them
Then picked out a sound
The same as the old one
To our disappointment
When I have my own house- I declared-
I’m going to have Fur Elise
or the Limbo Rock.
Well I own a home now and our stick on
Bunnings doorbell broke in the first few weeks,
My notes to UberEats saying,
‘Doorbell doesn’t work, please knock’.
It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things,
But I do knock on people’s doors to the rhythm of Limbo Rock.
Carly Beth
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Villanelle for Strangers on the Shore
On shifting sand, windblown, adrift
two lonely strangers on the shore
flotsam and jetsam, shells, spindrift
chance meeting, smile, spirits uplift
newborn yearnings to explore
on shifting sand, windblown, adrift
he artfully fashions a sea glass gift
beachcomber jewels washed ashore
flotsam and jetsam, shells, spindrift
spectrum light, midnight blueshift
to coral, rose-gold, peach aurore
on shifting sand, windblown, adrift
affection blossoms, sweet and swift
salvaged hearts serene once more
flotsam and jetsam, shells, spindrift
songs in the moonlight, guitar riff
beach shack on the western shore
on shifting sand, windblown, adrift
flotsam and jetsam, shells, spindrift
Maria Bonar
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crow slips
the crow slips down the wind
he caws and keens
for what his children will learn
his wife has gone
the way all stories go
beginning and ending
and ending and ending and ending
his children will tell her story
they will keen and caw
without ending without ending
without
ending
farming is a hard life
cultivating silence
silences
all the silences
till all told
and old
old as a crow
keening on the wind
keening the old song
the one that goes . . .
Mar Bucknell
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Bamboo Scaffolding
Sun hangs laggard today.
A bloated red disk
beyond mid-April fug (1).
For weeks
the Wat has echoed
with hammering,
high-pitched whines,
slaps and slops,
rendering meditation
futile. So I sit sweating
in a limp-leafed Bodhi’s
bleached shade,
protecting my shaved head,
watching red-brown
women and men
in checked pakomas (2)
climbing straight-
backed up-down
knobby trellises
toting tiles and bricks,
buckets of cement,
nagas and Garudas—
enmity quiescent (3)—
aglitter with glass mosaics.
Observing too, kids
caged by scaffolding’s
angular shadows,
skittering pocked marbles,
brandishing bamboo
off-cuts, playing out
mythological battles
seen on black/white TVs.
Come lunch break,
silence, a charmed
and shimmering cobra,
rises, covering all
with a diaphanous cowl.
But I drift
in mugginess and clang
of pannikins,
drown like talus
in sludgy undertow.
Lacking scaffolding,
to climb back
into breathable light,
heart thumps ’til blood’s
tidal surge dumps me
on a nearfaraway shore
where, floppy
as an unstrung puppet,
I lie weeping
without knowing why.
Peter Burgess
1. hottest part of the year in Thailand
2. cloth (with regional checked variations) often worn while working or bathing
3. nagas (cobras) and Garuda (a giant eagle deity) are ubiquitous protector motifs in Buddhist and Hindu texts, Thai religious art, and temples; the eclectic syncretism of Thai Buddhism is reflected in depictions of them together despite Garuda’s enmity toward serpents
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Armour
He gets up to shower,
perhaps shave his face
or wear stubble today,
dress,
maybe some morning chores
then out he goes,
into the world,
A bread-winner.
So easy for him to prepare
to face the day.
He needs no protection,
no armour.
A man in this world
framed by men,
His sex is sufficient defence.
But She,
starts with a burden of care,
expectations of a society
circumscribed by men,
has to be a creative artist.
Each morning,
with chores to do,
children to care for,
She sits down to war-paint,
Build,
A new creation each
Day.
Her armour to face the world,
Protect her self,
looks back at the mirror,
Draws in a deep breath,
A woman in this world of
Men,
Predators that they can be
and
Women,
Harsh critics that these sisters in life may be.
Her armour donned against multiple
dimensions of threat,
ready to be judged,
Today, as she goes out into battle,
Once More.
Eddy Campbell
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the grief in living
there’s a grief deep within me
I don’t know where it’s from.
I feel it walking past
cafes we only
went to once
I feel it walking by
the house we lived
for months and months
the grief bubbles in
my throat, my chest,
it’s rooted at the heart;
I guess it has
to do with time,
so swiftly in the past
Ellie Cottrell
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From the Dark
It is shadows that hold the eye.
The dark fringe to frame a rose
fence the thorns, hem a Marri flower.
It is the black that outlines the delicate
trace of line that is something solid
to show itself as exceptional
in a world we have become ordinary to.
It takes a unique eye to flip
someone’s world, bend the viewpoint
and come close—detail the minute.
It takes someone prepared to look
within to unlock a world
that is always there—rarely witnessed.
And in the seeing, find the courage
to look inside themselves and draw out
the gem from the trash of everyday distractions.
The you who fits the shape of an entity
beyond ordinary. Grows greater than two-
dimensions into someone above middling.
among the thorns
a flower to smell
a rose to bloom
Gary Colombo De Piazzi
Written in response to “Nature’s Whispers” by Niamh Bowman-Moore, a photo composite exhibited in “My Own Private Universe” (an exhibition showcasing artists living with a disability based across the Southwest, Great Southern and Perth) at Painted Tree Gallery, Northcliffe, 15 September – 22 October 2023.
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No Dry Bikinis
no dry bikinis on a Monday
the clouds gathering incoherently anyway
in this season between seasons
the ocean wavers slick and anxious
beneath a trustless sky
neither one definitive in form or hue
just a faint mirroring of the other
a depthless endless echoing
how does anything hold meaning
in this vacillating between-hood
this nation state of the perpetually undry
if only the sun would collect itself
tip the day into something definitive
and release the swimsuits
from their breezeless purgatory.
Catriona Della Martina
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Paperbark
Loneliness
is hollow
a shallow sound
that echoes inside me
as I sit empty
breaking, aching
in the shade of her fragility.
She fades before my eyes
paperbark falls to the floor
floating fragments of frailty
branches break one by one
her journey back to earth has begun.
It’s the slowest agony
of privilege
to hold her hand
now she no longer understands
thin, soft papery skin
like the bark
we peeled from the trees together
to write stories on
smooth, soft silvery sheets
are her fingers that squeeze mine
strong, gentle, fine
she sits with me
while her mind slowly leaves
to other places
traces
of her stories remain
whispered in the wind through the leaves.
It’s the fading that breaks me
she would never forsake me
by choice
but now
from one who always bloomed
no new buds are growing
and I must be her voice.
Her eyes reach out to the distance
as if she cannot see meamongst the trees
yet she is grounded
roots so deep
surrounded
by her ancestors
as she slips in slow
slumbering steps one by one
her passage back to country has begun.
Melissa Domiati
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Posthumous
I worry about being left behind
The novel an author wrote before me
Mine in my mind, not in print
Characters never brought to life
Dialogue unspoken
Storylines succumbing
Perishing on the thought
Cremated and ground into my bones
Buried with me
De –
Composing
Inscription
Of the deceased
On the headstone
Aspiring author
Name in capitals
Book inside
Dates of birth and death
Chapters cut short
Relationship to the deceased
First draft
Epitaph in lower case
Shallow plot
Scripture
Heroine’s days were numbered
Verse
Pages missing
Closing phrase
No hope of resurrection
…Letters engraved by someone else
Kathleen Dzubiel
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Beneath Mount Agung Not Smoking
Mount Agung, standing guard over Ahmed
and, at the moment, no stomach trouble,
a crumpled cloth cap of cloud on its head,
long time since its gut began to bubble.
Sometimes it will be so bad it’ll spew,
bright orange and red mucus pouring down
its chin over its obese flanks through
to extremities, burnt rain shadow brown.
For the moment, this Falstaff is caring-
locals and tourists enjoy his embrace
unaware of great Goliath’s sparing
save for a tiny tremor, a mere trace.
For now, we know there is nothing amiss.
How could it be, bathed in such bliss?
*Reference to a line from’ The Snake’, a poem by D H Lawrence.
Derek Fenton
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Wadjemup Lighthouse
this lonely lamp of darkness
lit by flesh and broken bone
black and bloodied handprints
across every quarried stone
spine of ship and spine of man
wrecked on rock and reef
floundering like netted fish
in shoals of penal grief
an island scarred with stolen lives
the men, both young and old
tribes of song, blackbirding
Dreamtime bought and sold
six seasons deep within the soil
foundations of a lie
they built an ivory tower
with a lamp to light the sky
six seasons is a sentence
their bones scattered white as mine
to light the lamp of Wadjemup
that burned through darkest times
Ann Gilchrist
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between two trees
ache of sky where a troubled hand
scribbles in white crayon
a spider’s quarter acre
stained glass of fable,
a god’s attempt at why
something modern, in sap perhaps,
or dew and angst, something forgotten
scent of wet soil,
seeds of ideas
the breeze and squeals of children and
rusted song of swing
slack canvas of unthinkings
book of ends of bark and the
unwritten blue
Kevin James Gillam
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Listen
pain doesn’t listen
it hovers
drone-like
just out of reach
it shrinks
expands
fingers curl
uncurl
you hold your breath
count the seconds
one
two
three…
stabs on four
BASTARD
swearing doesn’t help
prayer is useless
all those wellness
advisors
are wrong…
give in to it
they say
breath in the pain
release relax…
don’t they know
that I will continue
to rage
against pain
against frailty
against the fading
of the light
Candy Gordon
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Life is Not a Bag of Marshmallows
What happened to pink marshmallows,
flotsam on foam and froth—
warm chocolate milk with sprinkles on top?
Hot sausage rolls with tomato red lips
dipped in bowls of sauce.
Coffee shops serve almond milk and soy,
skinny caps, decafs, babycinos,
turmeric chai latte teas.
Faceless masks pose at tables,
snap plates of food—untouched;
arms outstretched
capture
angled brows
pulled cheeks.
Mouths gape, spew empty words—
how hard life is:
to work
take a mortgage
think of what has to give—
the gym, the nails, the coloured tips,
the brunch and coffees,
bubbles and fizz,
the trips to Bali
short stays down south.
In my lap hands fuse, set as stone,
tears freeze—too cold to thaw,
snap frozen by evil’s net—
children snared
children butchered
as plague of bad men grows.
They fight over land that shifts—
borders breaching vitriol,
acid leaches north, south and west
burns a million people in its wake.
Rocket blasts, missiles stream,
guns and tanks shoot
metal bullets into clouds of ash
and sprays of blood and flesh
graffiti splintered rooves and crumbling bricks.
The wait person stands with restless feet and tapping pen,
to take my order for the day—
a shake with marshmallows: white and pink,
to mask the bitter in the world:
block the cries of children torn from parents’ arms.
Taken.
Taunted.|
Tortured.
Sip drinks from seats with ocean views—
look on
and turn away.
Elizabeth Green
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The Day Before
You hadn’t finished
with our lives, even
right up to our last visit
you asked of family
as if checking the books –
your own four and their fourteen
and the great-grandchildren
now numbering sixteen.
For sixty odd years
you didn’t let a birthday,
school assembly-item, sporting
event or award presentation
slip through your grasp – you
wanted to catch them all.
No, you didn’t want to let go,
even when the doctors
told you your heart couldn’t
carry you any further
down the ninety’s road
but you’d already defied the odds
when we all had gathered
by your bedside twice before
and you came back
like a determined protester
who wouldn’t be dragged away.
The morning’s call brought us
back by your side with tears
of love and regret and
as the others went I leant
forward and kissed your cheek
“Thanks for everything” I said
and left, wishing those words
had reached you the day before.
Mike Greenacre
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Velvet
We leave the pub and the rabble babble
of voices, shake hands and go in different
directions. Silence cuts in sideways. I stop
and look at the stadium; a boiled lolly on the
black satin sheets of the inlet.I could drop into
the water, sink full-blooded and rest carapace-
heavy on the wrought-iron bottom; but I walk
instead, in the darkness, to the bus stop.A green
optic-fibre flash of bus arrives immediately.
On the bus a woman smiles, gives my guernsey
a weak-fisted thumbs up and whispers we won.
I get off the bus and walk, away from the light
fading like milk. The sky is porridge. The clouds
have been pushed away by a spoon and the moon
has leaked in. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right.
Among shadows and the mysteries of darkness
microcosms flourish. I follow clicking-heels-guy,
in an expensive suit and with a nervous walk,
until he turns off to find his own sorrows.
The streets stop talking and all that is left
are the shoelaces of overhead power lines.
Rhian Healy
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The Balloon
High in the sky
the balloon floated
And higher still
a satellite spun through the heaven
Stars glinted on and off
All of it was a wonder
He was surprised at being here
How had that happened
He remembered a party
the foods, the fun, the music
And one strange game
A challenge to win a fortune
or to lose something precious
Had he won or lost
There was also the question
Where was he
It wasn’t home
That much was sure
He needed to unlock a puzzle
Something before
Something about the game
he’d been called to play
Had others also played
or was it only him
The string on the balloon
had slipped from his fingers
He looked about
The balloon had fallen away
down and behind
Stars continued their patterned dance
a pattern he couldn’t interpret
Yet he was curiously unconcerned
Ruari Jack Hughes
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Amazon basin
since the tap for the drinking dish in our park
won’t stop making water
then no matter how many tongues
and no matter how long it takes
for each visiting dog to be sated
a steady overflow begins
trickles surge beyond concreted apron
wet trails reaching sand become mud
tributaries branch on and out
ants and beetles
so soon overwhelmed – they drown
in realms of flooded grass
red-tailed cockatoos tear out the hearts of surrounding trees
screeches may be heard by the natives
a long way down a river coiling deeper and deeper
into the interior of
an as yet unexplored
council lawn
Ross Jackson
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Two loves
Although your head says you’re from here
your heart knows
you’re from there
You’re a scion of two countries
known as nature and nurture
together
battling for the love they both have
and cannot see
For six short seasons
like a birth mother there
cradled you in her arms
before surrendering you
to here
Where for seven decades and more
you’ve been nurtured
away from her beating heart
Still
her mountains
and valleys course
like rivers
through your ageing veins
Nourishing
absorbing
love in abundance
from two countries
two mothers
Rita La Bianca
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When I Grow Up
When I grow up,
Nobody is going to tell me what to do.
I will be defiant and live in exile if I must.
I shall walk barefoot upon the littoral,
letting sea foam swirl around my toes.
I will eat croissants with apricot jam for breakfast.
I will wear baggy shorts and a too large t-shirt.
I will let my hair grow long and unkempt.
I will spend a lot of time reading books
and having short naps in the afternoon.
I will write poetry that includes a lot of metaphors
and read it out loud in the park.
I will watch bad television as I please
and laugh at its content.
I will dance down the street singing Deborah Conway songs.
I will say what I feel, when I want.
I will be true to myself.
Veronica Lake
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Yachtsman
The southwest wind
riffles an ocean
of plunging blue deeps
where ships plough
the surface sure
of safe water.
A yacht, like a gnat
testing tension,
skims the fluid
crust of the sea,
blue and white spinnaker
the colour of oceans
and broken waves.
The sail fills with wind
containing its force
like a glass blower’s cheek
at full billow.
The man at the tiller
peels off his cap
to let the briny breeze
stroke through his hair
like a hand
rough with affection.
His lips and nose
are white with zinc
startling against
the leathered tan
of weathered skin.
Alone on the ocean
like a Hemingway figure,
he braces himself
against the elements
buoyed by solitude.
In the hazy distance
of his early morning,
the city skyline
is a colourless smudge
almost erased
from sight and mind.
Mardi May
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Glimpse
Silver-tipped sunlight
irradiates edges
of emerald leaves
and bent boughs
Light dissolves in an instant
an eager heart clutches
at such brilliance
but cannot hold
its promise
Glimpse and remember
as you trudge the byways
fated to live
between slivers of ecstasy
Helen McDonald
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Intrinsic Tranquillity
Tranquillity of a mirrored pond
Calm-coolness of a morning mist
Serene stillness of dreaming babe
Alighted butterfly’s breathing wings
The floating of free-falling petals
The perfume of a perfect rose
A suckling babe on mother’s breast
The silky softness of a well-loved pet
The meditative peace of prayer
and wafting harmony softly played
The silence of a clear-blue sky
The gentle pulse of a shore-bound sea
The stillness of snow-bound slopes
and melting icebergs in placid sea
A campfire’s glow on moonless night
deep caverns of burning coals incandescent red
Luminous sparks soft showers of light
the tempting taste of billy tea
The star-jewelled heavens and Southern Cross
Insist for me tranquillity
Glad McGough
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A Showman’s Farewell.
i.m. Doug
His 1890’s Cotton Candy van is shuttered.
Floss shrinks in cellophane. Hot sugar’s dotted backs
of hands red. Checking hurts, I trip over a tent peg, swear.
Laughing clowns stare straight ahead. I turn down my mouth,
limp past The Tumbler, the tumbly umbly umblerrr, crumple
tissues. In the grass street, merry- go- round zebras with broom
bristle manes swing unridden. I stroke a wooden nose, wipe
my eyes. Wind rattles orange flags on the shooting gallery.
Covers are up, storm ropes taut on our dart joints. A pause
before joining crew gathered at merkos. I nod, crack a can.
We leave space, hoist a beer or two, relive gypsy miles,
breakdowns, campfire lies. Last toast: safe journey mate.
Slow drift into caravans quiet but for change jangling
through coin machines counting out tomorrow’s floats.
Night rain stains windows, dogs are walked and brought in,
generators brrrr, cleaners’ rakes scraaape butts and drink cups,
while somewhere, you sleep dreamless as the plush teddies
and silver horses waiting silent behind striped canvas.
Jan Napier
*Merkos are twenty cent machines.
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From Narrandera
Night rain had darkened the road
on which a galah lay freshly dead
splayed with pink and grey feathers,
a splash of paint tossed on
the day like a sunrise
A shaggy dog of wet overcast
weather greeted us in rolling
hills and followed us home
after we had left the semi-arid
plains
Nearing Canberra, splashes of
creation’s sloppy brush:
sheep ochred by the clay, and
a natural black-faced breed, and
cows with markings like mud
spray on the hobby farms
of Murrumbateman
And our white Outlander
has muddy flanks from
the holiday.
Julian O’Dea
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Ants’ Rise
Ants can carry fifty times their own
weight.
Their architecture – the mound of white
gravel –
is strategically erected in one wheel
rut
from which their travellers, hunters
trappers
relentlessly scurry, tiny legs gouging
deep tracks
into scant grass where insects feed and
fall
The citadel swells in summer heat
radiating
light. Deep below the baked yard, are
caverns
sculptured, craggy, hollowed in clay
antechambers
cool collections of seeds, wings,
beetles.
When autumn rains fall pale
chips
are replaced by darker pebbles
hauled
to the surface, mounded
higher
by female workers preparing heat
traps
for winter cold, icy rains, moonlight
hoars.
The tracks grow even deeper, storage
vital
rush rush, stop, antennating, message
passing
Hurry on up the hill -stones warmed by
weaker sun.
This awesome super-organism, this
civilisation
crushed daily by tyres, impartially
rebuilt,
grows imperceptibly wider by
moonlight.
Neither fire nor freeze
defeat it.
Such minute creatures.
Such magnificence.
Virginia O’Keeffe
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Like Being
Like being in a pot of tea searching for the bag
when all you only ever wanted was a string
Like being pulled over by a bluebeard copper
for doing 110 in a 40 km zone
when the only thing on your mind was freedom
Like rising far too soon from a restless night
of seeking a formal apology from cctv cameras
plaguing every sleeping moment of your day
Like wishing you could be born again
and start bawling again so as to be noticed
again and have Enid Blyton and gumnut theories
read to you as when a bout of minor bawling
led directly to a minor lapse of mollycoddling
Like being in a mate’s fast car on a blistering Hume
and being in this MG B GT and going far too fast
and in a nano instant being smacked against
a steel bridge rail and somehow being alive
in a post gumnut bristling midnight dream
Like tearing vagrant hairs from a nostril
and savaging the other with adjustable pliers
in order to avoid tripping over yourself
or its shivering shadow when you step on stage
to receive a golden star award for being
the most perspicacious person ever found living
in a cul de sac of faded dreams and busted bodies
Like escaping a roadside fine for careless driving
and hurting a tree far more than self
and being arrested then let go without penalty
because the smiling copper let you … Go
At the bottom of the Col du Tourmalet
my mind is cycling hard
through narrow, twisting streets at 90 kph –
someone needs to slow down.
Allan Padget
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My Garden
My garden wouldn’t be so dull if I dreamed it –
my eye wouldn’t be so flat and my limbs
wouldn’t ache so pitifully with reluctance –
for in a dream its shabby corners would be mysteries
the haze of popped seed husks and pillows of webs
a bed for a hazardous day sleep –
weeds that have long usurped the grass
are green enough for a squint pretend
and when I drop my rake I will lie
and watch the blue between the tree squiggles –
watch and drowse, until a cloud rumble a terror
I can never survive waking.
My garden if I dreamed it would mean love in its thickets
wisdom in its beds, peace in its leaf littered rockeries –
I would work in it every day, all day,
and even as the shadows stretch
and the haunting quality of afternoon toil troubles me
I would never abandon it.
Chris Palazzolo
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Dancing in the Dark
Sipping on Vice a skinny cap confection
Crowned with a whorl of cocoa waiting for a toasty
The Boss is singing “Can’t start a fire…”
Yes, but how do you tame one?
Look what happened to Prometheus
And his long-suffering liver
All that just to pass on enlightenment
Ragers don’t go well down under
Dancing drama queens curb the angry gods
With cryptic puzzles and words of wisdom
Beware when you release that light from under its bushel
Eagles will start circling and you’ll be chained to a rock
Be content to pretend to sip on Vice
Elena Preiato
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Broken
I can’t fix this.
It’s been smashed,
never to be put back – the way it was
sparkling and shiny and full of life.
Like glass on a concrete floor
shattered to every corner
with impact unimaginable.
Too late for restoration.
The perfect imperfection gone
with broken hearts and scattered ash.
William I Reid
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The Antithesis of Silence – the Blowholes
incessant motion
curling white capped rollers
come on the swell
from beyond the horizon
which unlike the frenzied waves
is drawn straight – horizontally
across the scene
while the sea – a bubbling cauldron
of irrepressible surging activity
constantly crashes over the reef
and collides with the little island
forcing towering spumes of spray
upwards in speckled whiteness
before collapsing back onto themselves
the constant roar comes with the wind
like a train in a long tunnel
always approaching but not emerging
this movement is all along the coast
sometimes hard against the shore
mercilessly pounding the beach
but often on distant underwater barriers
the washing machine effect of
tumbling water and rising spray
forming long lines that push the ocean
in turquoise confusion over rocky outcrops
it is the antithesis of silence
as nature sculpts the headland
Barry Sanbrook
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Tagging on, Tagging off
We’re still waiting for ‘Metronet’
to pull into the platform,
tagging on, tagging off,
no longer science fiction.
Those 1950’s greasy diesel jobs usurped,
my memories of shunting, grunting, megabeasts,
now faded, always black, always numbered,
you got to know and greet them as they pulled in.
Ticket sales: personal service,
tilted cap, legs planted akimbo, for balance.
On one shoulder, a heavy leather purse,
he looked like a ‘bookie’ at Flemington.
First it was a clipboard with coloured tickets,
the nippled – rubber thimble did the job; where to?
Kids half fare and how do you
fool the conductor now you’re shaving?
And on the other shoulder, a ticket machine
that dials your ticket on request.
Our man is a footy fan, ‘WAFL’, of course,
he keeps repeating last week’s results – exactimo,
then foreshadows next week’s round
telling you which oval you need to visit,
all depending on how deep your loyalties run.
Clickety click, yakety yak.
Before moving to the next carriage an announcement:
everyone got a ticket?
Anyone want another one?
Laurie Smith
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Antarctica
revisited .. .. 2015
Carrara white
marbled
blinding
Chiselled ice quarry
unending
dazzling
Belief suspended
silence
aching
Towering black mountains
shrouded
brooding
Dwarfed Quest
driven snow
dream fulfilled
Geoff Spencer
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Feast
Sunday—another outage—
all that whirrs
now dead;
a morning bereft of a buzz, and I—
aggrieved of my morning mug;
and so, I spend my privileged rage
spooning soggy cornflakes over
absurdist comedy from the comfort
of my overcharged device
while contemplating a life devoid
of meaning (–ful indulgence)
as nihilism grows whiskers,
purrs—
time for her ladyship’s Fancy.
She cries for soggy cornflakes,
never satisfied.
Jill Taylor Neal
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Fritillaries
Do you mean the Butterflies – or Flowers?
I mean Both – and the Ambiguities
between them – when Butterflies hang
pendulous as Flowers – or Flowers lift
on Wind light – as Butterflies – I mean
the dappled Pattern of Light on Dark –
swivelled in the Wind upon – a Stem –
I mean how Sunlight and Shadow fleck
my skin – in the Water-Meadow when I’m
somewhere in-Between – and looking out for –
Them –
Giles Watson
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