WA Poets Inc Creatrix 68 Poetry

I thought you were an angler fish like me, a deep sea diver prospecting for knowledge,
little lantern held on high peering through the gloom in search of insights.

I thought you were a trailblazer, in pursuit of new horizons
so I followed you upwards
on a journey towards the surface, seeking the bright light
burning high above.

But as I ascended and darkness dimmed, my sight began to clear,
and as I saw you there
scales aglisten in the sunlight,
I realised we were not alike at all.

For all the oceanic zones I had traversed,
I could now see
we were different creatures entirely.
I belonged in the benthic world beneath
and you, all froth and bubble, with the waves far from me.

And so, I took up my torch and all my cares and travelled back to the depths,
knowing our connection
was as shallow as the reef above when I deserved a trench.

D.E. Atlas

Back to Top
____________________
Lenin’s Christmas

Christmas Eve 194
Lenin, alone,
Smiles wryly.
His Australian friends
Are at midnight mass,
His younger self
Would have laughed
At an otherwise
Rational couple
Forsaking
A good night’s sleep
For superstition.
But exile
In a strange,
Upside down world,
Makes you more tolerant
Of comforting foolishness.
Lenin reflects,
Opium is a pain killer
As well as a soporific.
Jotting a note he
Concentrates,
Tying the
Perfect bow
Around a
Gift wrapped
Package…
Ananda Barton

Inspired by Christopher Crouch 2017, Lenin in Perth, Atomic Activity Books, Carlton.

Koorijee Warranup / Upper Warren 29th December 2024.

Knickers off, I assume the position
nurse bustles around, gynaecologist
organises his instruments

Sheet whisked off. Dr. Seymour sits
on a stool between my knees.
I close my eyes, think of Tasmania

He inserts a camera probe.
Suddenly my vajajay is lit up on
screen, in glorious technicolour

He walks me through the rosy, ridged
landscape, pointing out little landmarks
features of interest

I completely forget my embarrassment
and my splayed naked genitalia, as both the
doctor and I focus totally on the monitor

Although an integral part of me
I have never viewed this inner landscape.
There it is, in all its feminine glory.

Like Barbie, all pink, frilly, girly.
A fondant confection. I get the big tick.
Passed my gynae exam.

Maria Bonar

the rocks will split
and blood will flow
and the water turn red
with envy
this is the fault of the sky

the sky will mock
our refusal to drink
from dirty stones
this is the fault of our eyes

the temperature rises
the water turns
the rocks turn
the temperature falls
and blood will boil
this is the fault of our songs

and, oh! the things we will try
when the sky begins to fight back
but blood will not be enough
this is the fault in our bones

Mar Bucknell

A dove sits, brownish-grey
feathers fluffed up,
merging with the mulch.
The sun,
shining on its
little plump form,
lets me see it
sunbathing after a
long cold winter.

Helen Budge

As the eyes of love flutter into heavens,
My touch longs for its deepest realm,
Close to my heart of the purest haven,
As profound music plays its psalm;
The breath of heaven strikes at its softest touch,
My hands long for such,
It breathes into this soul for its intimate serenade it plays,
For this heart plays a most soulful tune;
For the face of love I also yearn,
From the most beauteous sweetest moon,
‘Til these hands learn…
Onto a single touch it earns…
A singing music…
Music to my ears that frolic…
Into an ocean of heaven’s face…
Where I’m brought forth…
The sweetest ever loving place…
…Heaven and heaven into his hands that showed its beautiful grace.

Sherry Caayupan

She was to be my closest, dearest friend,
my hand to hold through the storms of life,
Always there through life’s stages and changes.

My companion in blood to laugh and smile with,
share stories of life in all its glory
and strife.

I was to be her brother, a constant in her life,
because of who we were to us.

The man who loved her without desire,
siblings joined by birth.

An uncle to her children,
a friend to those who cared for her.

Lives entwined in the sanctity of filial love.

She never found her place in my life,
I searched for her in
female friends.

Thought I found her,
never did,
only the grief of loss,
never mine,
feels so much more
profound.

A lesson of life in
the expectations of others,
roles imposed by society.

An understanding found through acceptance:
you could only be born,
not found,

Dear Sister.

Edward Campbell

After ‘The Shuttle’ by Andrew Rovenko

She stares out the window on her way to the moon.
Her helmet is made of papier mâché, but only I know that –
Her father told me as we boarded the bus.

Sitting stiff-backed on the peeling vinyl seat, I wonder
At her tranquillity. Can she really be so calm?
She’s only eight years old – the youngest astronaut yet.

As we near the cosmodrome, the bus gathers speed.
The driver’s excited, I guess. Outside, Earth rushes by
Like it’s upset she’s leaving. “It’s not forever,”

I want to say, but I can’t promise Earth that.
When we arrive, there’s news crews and shouts,
A storm of questions for the little astronaut.

(Will there be storms on the moon? I worry for her helmet.)

At the grandstand, I sit next to her father. His face
Glistens with tears and something like pride.
“She wore her favourite shoes,” he tells me through sobs.

Her sneakers do look cool with her spacesuit, but
I would have thought she’d need boots.
When she enters the rocket, he runs.

After blast-off, I realise my binoculars are wet. At eight,
I knew nothing of space – but the world wasn’t dying, then.
“It’s a shameful day,” I say to no-one.

(Later, I learn there’s no storms on the moon.
It doesn’t have weather at all.)

Ellie Cottrell

Philosophical attempts at logic
morph into a group stuck
on the tempo of noise
beating air to a thing dense
—greater than bankruptcy— until
eyes veer and tongues swagger.

This world where words are confined to loss
and lips dance to confound meaning.
A shuttered utterance working
with the comfort of words as if sounds
can stutter into a conversation
cause dreams to become presentient.

How two plus two can lead to raised voices
as the world becomes the victim and views
are closeted with each ragged step—ascending
descending—pieced together by flimsy until
flesh sweats and reddens in the argument
hiccupped back and forth.

Conspired by excuses it is the spatter
of synonyms that fill the room, collect
confused eyes and twist lips to convolute
arguments and transcend tongues
as hands stretch to strangle
the echo of words.

Gary Colombo De Piazzi

Back to Top
____________________
You hold me
within five fine fingers
your tender touch
slides, glides across the smoothness of me.

I rejoice in rolling
luxuriate in languidly lolling within your caress
falling, folding
into the creases open
only for holding me
within the palm of you
the calm of me
becomes the balm for your voice to be free.

Through your fingers I feel you
oh, how I heal you
as you feel me
I help your pain flow,
let love grow freely
as you guide me
what’s inside you
glides, like a single tear
slowly across the sheets.

(a love poem from my pen)

Melissa Domiati

i can delete
your image
whenever i want
an undeniable advantage
of digital cameras

a moment’s delay
after the shutter is pressed
while the internal mirror lifts
to allow light onto the image sensor
will not capture the second
your eyes

shift

focus
away from the lens
your attention drawn beyond me
your focal point
on some distant object-
ification
of new interest
scheming glint framed
then lost
in a lapse
of outmoded technology.

Kathleen Dzubiel

Lay your head
on dads torn work shorts
grease stained denim, wiped
with boogers.
Relegated to the tucker box throne
next to dad’s oh so important drivers chair
watching the comb of the harvester
cull crackling canola, filling up
a box of black oil seed.

Your head is weary,
your head sees dad’s eyes
that stare,
that thousand-hectare stare,
that thousand harvest stare,
that stare,
dad’s gone mad.

Lay your head on the headrest
staring at an unfruitful harvest
drought ruins us all
it sucks the land dry
causes this godless land to pray
pray, pray
for a drop that contains the ocean.

Lean your elbows on grease-stained shorts
where you’ve wiped boogers
from a runny nose full of
crop dust.
Stare a thousand hectares ahead
stare at a thousand mad eyes in the darkened window
stare at the empty throne beside you
that empty tucker box throne.

Patrick Eastough

his diagnosis is peppered
like buckshot into my chest
two days until Christmas
we are eating out again

my appetite is dull
like a congealed wreath
on a glass cooktop
but he is the family chef
cooking with a shorter portion of bowel

the turkey is plucked
stuffed, cooked
the prawns are less rosy
brussel-sprouts have a highfibre warning

Christmas crackers
riddles with less snap
Jack Horner with no corner to hide in
no pudding, no pie

he doesn’t like
the way I peel potatoes
break eggs
make omelettes

fear nauseates me
like undercooked chicken
I tell myself people get
hit by a truck, a train
someone to blame
but he didn’t send his shit back
in the pre paid envelope

I love him and it sucks
that eating out
is because part of his gut is missing
and he doesn’t like
the way I peel potatoes
he craves umami

before the chemo hits
the waiter picks up my napkin
and lays it in my lap like a dressing

Ann Gilchrist

Ink fish

I saw two cuttlefish pass by
they journeyed south
tentacles taking the lead
they danced a flamenco in winged hoods

their ruffles skirting a seaward passage
translucent between sunlight and rock
sixty million years watching prey
through the rigid lens of iridescent pebbles

how would a poet pump these three hearts
minus the blind spot of his lesser retina
a turbo tube capturing the verse
from here to there before the line was jigged
his ink jettisoned on the boardwalk

Ann Gilchrist

we slept like those grubs that drop from
the boughs of Tasmanian Blue Gums-

loosely tangled, squirming and writhing,
blind to our predicament, but with our

bellies thrown open to the moon for
stories to seed and flourish, for our

hunger to be sated by echoes.
we scurried and swarmed beneath you

mother, you, in the jaundiced light of
afternoons, shambolic, on spangled

summer mornings with butterflies flitting
from your mouth, a rhapsody. we grew

stunted from lack of touch, rubbed fingers
across braille of night, licked at islands

and long grass. we were soluble, bound
to the idea of loss, we were

thickets in drizzle, cropped too close and
with too darker hue for use, we were

dry seeded. and when the leaving came
we jumped from you, a jetty all too soon

Kevin Gillam

she graduated from the ladder chair
to the Ikea stool
in just 3 months
knows not to step sideways
or backwards

I place the old yellow
wooden chair
next to the stool
just in case
she forgets

the work is serious
needs two hands
little blue and red cups
two green teaspoons
sit on a plastic tray on the sink

“teatime” she shouts
I turn on the cold water tap
she throws all the cups in
“more water pease” she says
brown eyes meeting mine

she works busily
pouring stirring
drinking spilling
no barrier
between sink and floor

this two year old grandchild
has been captured
on my iphone
wet topless
so happy

the oldest grandchild
24 years earlier
was captured on film
playing with the same cups
on the same yellow chair
with the same delight
at being topless
shouting “teatime”

Candy Gordon

‘To the outback’ you can imagine
friends would say, as we
headed to our country posting,
two years Country Service
was the tenure for teachers
before seeking the inner city –
the comfort most would crave.

Up Great Eastern Highway to
Northam, Merredin, Southern Cross,
then Coolgardie, our turn off to the
Coolgardie/Esperance Highway
to Norseman – a two laned sealed
road to end our eight hour journey
from the morning starters gun.

It was Laurie Sinclair’s saddle-horse,
Hardy Norseman, that kicked-up
a piece of gold-bearing ore in 1894,
tethered overnight near where this
town, like gold mania, would grow.

Mine shafts (and prospectors’
‘shows’) like the Viking, Mararoa,
Ajax and Regent would litter the
red clay surrounds, diving ambitions
to depths of one mile underground.

‘Norseman was big in the ‘50s’
old timers claimed, the town
was throbbing as a steady heartbeat,
pumping life into the every-day
quiet of this country town.

In the ‘80s teachers would drop in
to our G.E.H.A. houses and soothe
isolation’s brow, join our climbs
up the primeval rise of Mt. Jimberlana
or Dundas Rocks where we’d picnic
and play 12-bar blues guitar, rousing
the camaraderie that bound us here.

The magpies are first up
in the bush, their warbling voices
duetting and carolling –
‘announcing or defending’
this place as their own.

Mike Greenacre

I am twenty-one years old,
a scrawny kid – limbs too long,
embarrassed in my skin,

heading west into the great
silence of the Indian ocean.
The ship crashes through waves

like an axe through rock, shattering
shards of salt water skywards
to whip across my face. I’m up

in the mainyard, tying off the mainsail
because a storm is coming. My arms
hurt and my legs shake from fear –

the ship rights with a sigh and I
look up at the horizon. The sun
is melting into the ocean – the storm

is a charcoal line. In that brief moment
of stillness a school of fish launches
out of the liquid stone, whirring fins

reflecting the sun, shards of silver
frozen in time. No thought of skin,
sea or scale, only of light.

Rhian Healy

Bird Seed

The pigeon lofts of Chungli are blue and perch
on tops of buildings. They are miniature
doors to miniature worlds. Here, blue

is the colour of dreams. We are walking along
the river bank. The city is luminous; the river –
forgotten absinthe; concrete blocks like sugar

cubes. The whole world is on its knees beneath
the blade of a cloudless sky. It is cold. Cold
enough to steal colours. You take a photo

of me, taking a photo of the pigeon houses.
The pigeons are taken out to the wine-
dark sea and released. Taken away

from everything they know – imagine
the eternity of that. Absence in every
direction. No time to think. Their lungs

burst and they fly for the safety of home.
You walk further along the river and turn
back towards me. I have fumbled all the days

until now, but not today. Not today.
Today, I know the comforts of home. My tiny
heart is bird seed in the palm of your hand.

Rhian Healy

I wanted one more night of lights but no–
this wasn’t the time for lingering in sugar plum
promises, flying reindeer, azure days spent
with the eternal hope of scaling the book pile–
packed the lot away in early January
not a waft of heart tingling pine as we body bagged
the prickly branch into to the drive.

Better early than late, risking the wrath
of the sprite who hovers, records names of all not
adhering to the rule of the season: decorations down
on the twelfth day–the old ways still drift on the wind
stories of wisemen, gifts and a star mark the last day–
but is that Epiphany, on January sixth, or Twelfth Night
on the fifth or, as some claim, Candlemass on February two.

Danger, however, may not simply be averted by prompt
removal of wreaths, inflatable Santas and trees–
be they foil or the real deal. For a while ours was verdant
we gazed ardent, delighting in its mystery and bright shining
angels. Yet what of the Oreiades, now it lies crisping?
What apotropaic act can assuage the nymphs of Mountain
Conifers as it turns russet, desiccating by the bins.

*having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck.

Jenifer Hetherington

I lined up to see the Sunflowers.
That rare work. That masterpiece.

I was dressed to impress,
drawn to the glittering gold.
Then, I bumped into Eleanor.
Vibrant Eleanor with her green dress and curly auburn hair.

She was there to see the Sunflowers.
That beautiful bouquet.

We exchanged a quick hello.
Her boys were restless,
my friends were waiting.
We made a whole-hearted promise, certain we would catch up soon.

I gave Eleanor just a moment,
before she was tugged elsewhere.

Since then, I have wondered,
was I mistaken?
What is irreplaceable?
How was I beguiled by those golden sunflowers?

I waited in line for one hour,
to gaze at that illuminant.
Whilst blinded by its brilliance,
I failed to notice,
one fragile sunflower head.
A single bloom bowed wistfully among the golden bunch.

The next time I see Eleanor,
We are dressed in our best.

I wait a whole hour,
stand on tippy toes,
to catch a glimpse of her white box
draped in sunflowers, as the mass of mourners carry her past.

Jennifer Hudson

It is time to go.

Hasty farewells are made;
the train lunges from the station.

For a moment time is in arrest;
a quietness pervades the scene,
then the mind fastens on
the world again.

Life is equated with the noise
of living and we must make
our contribution, by whistling
for a cab.

The anonymous vehicle
moves fitfully from street to street
across the city,
seeking out the particular way,
the specified number.

The ritual of fare and gratuity complete,
we enter the familiar domain,
the old pattern;
tea and biscuits before bed,
but forgetting to set only two places
instead of the usual three.

Ruari Jack Hughes

daylight’s boom gate closing ahead
as he steps out from shadows
of the defunct Sandringham Hotel
into rainy afternoon’s leftovers
(make of this, pilgrim what you will)
river borne wind stiffening flag
at The Flag Motel
L.A. palm tree silhouettes
against drab wintry sky
highway begins filling
with benzine stink, artificial light

his mindfulness being phone shots
of grainy pavement
(make of this, pilgrim what you will)
his chattering suitcase like a dog on a lead
‘Watch yourself, Man,’ it warns
with a bark
when trucks braking too close
jar loose his solo, starlit reverie

he misses tracking full moon’s dive
into a balloon of cloud
tethered to The Crown Casino
a pair of long armed cranes
grown like tv antennae
from the far bank of the cold, old Swan
when next he looks up
the river’s throat swollen
with moonlit gold

ready for this worn-out visitor
to roll right in
(make of this, pilgrim what you will)

Ross Jackson

1. You say
your pain drives
you to desperation.
How can I tell
when I don’t feel
the same?

You tell me of your pain
as if that may be enough
for me to understand.
Prove your pain, I say,
so that I may believe.

I stepped on you
once, by mistake.
You yelped and
objected without restraint.
I then understood that pain.
But the pain that you say
blights your existence,
seems yours to bear alone.

2. Now I see you blacked out,
spread across your bed,
barely drawing breath,
having invoked death
as your resolution.
You overdosed,
your reasons not spoken,
left to me to speculate.

Now I can appreciate
the magnitude of the pain you suffered,
that it was unbearable and unrelenting.
I did not share your pain.
Now I must attend to it alone.

peter knight

Leaf litter crunches underfoot.
Everything is so dry,
waiting to ignite.

There is no wind.
A deep blanket of silence
settles into pockets of space.

On the horizon, night nestles.
Shadows sidle between saplings
where filtered gold shines round tree-trunks.

One final ray of sunlight
sparks a flash of red tail feathers
as black cockatoos flick through tree-tops.

Their warning cry heralds darkness.
Chittering bats tumble into the air
filling the sky with fluttering black.

In their wake the forest night is still.
A mopoke calls, one mournful note
reminding us to stop and see the stars.

Veronica Lake

all the old streets and all the old houses
all the doors I once held keys to
all the clotheslines I hung my pillowcases
all the letterboxes I peered into
all the buses to all the workplaces
all the books and all the poems
and all the poems and all the people
and all the people and all the love

and all the love
is paused
high over my head
a sun setting
an ocean’s spray
sand splitting the wind
and my voice
singing into the air

and you are always with me
and you were always there

Deanne Leber

When the rock beneath you
crumbles into sand
and you start slipping
feet unable to
find purchase on once solid ground

arms wave around
seeking balance,
purchase,
the attention
of someone nearby
who has the power
to pull you out
prevent the
inevitable slide
into the oblivion
of anxiety

but they just
stand there
blank faced
offering platitudes
that have no effect
and don’t move
a muscle.

A.R. Levett

Back to Top
____________________
Jump

I leaped into the sky, trusting;
the ground two minutes below.

Blast of air, drag of gravity,
the ripcord a tenuous lifeline,

and then the billowing white,
my lonely cloud in all that blue.

This anxious plummeting to earth
is far from the flight of dreams

Below, a geometry of wheatfields,
the white cross for my landing,

but I land alone in a farmer’s crop,
crush of grain, scent of the earth.

I laugh to think I almost flew
through the vast, unbroken blue.

Mardi May

The Odd Couple

You could pick the troubled girls
hovering on the edge of groups,
the ones holding secrets close;
see a shadow fall across a girl
between English and Arithmetic,
who. after Geography, went to the
tuckshop with heavy pockets, for
pies and sweets to fill her emptiness.
That girl abused by her father
who went off and shot himself.

The other girl, whose father left home
on a torrent of angry words, who went
through school with empty pockets.
They drifted together like flotsam,
sat like wallflowers waiting to be
picked, so they chose each other.

We met a few times in later years,
salvaged a few good memories,
wondered if those privileged girls
called us The Odd Couple, and
decided it didn’t matter anymore.

Mardi May

we reserve “murmuration” for softer beaks,
those who startle with aqueous wings,
a firmament fluidity dense with beat
and thrum, haunting underside of heaven,
weaving modern myth of cinematic augury
caught on the film of our heart, gasping

we dub a clamour of cockatoos a crackle,
broken song electric on evening’s telegraph
spitting a fuse-like symphony, one flock
jolting another flock to uplift screech,
reflected in feathered limb’s undercarriage

catching golden hour glow, this cacophony
a herald for day’s end as sun pitches purple
and pink to coax dark gently into dome’s
elbow, the terror of white feather a ricochet,
tuneless cascade, tumbling between clans
as they circle further and further, the distance
a hymn of beaked shouts that settle to sleep
among eucalypt leaves, a lullaby of rustle

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

a star drip sky
TOO CLOSE
floating ghost skitterclaws
scrabbling at strands

flinching eyes wide
slam door
run for spray.

spy through panes
close lids take a breath
kill it quick

come to see an alien
grace
in your splay

set down insecticide
decide
to let you feed
on

moonlight.

Jan Napier

The waters of Lake George lie shallow over sheep paddocks.
Behind, low hills tumble in summer sun, a fence line shimmers.
Mystery waters, thing of myth, rising and receding at will,
travellers speculate but rarely stop beside its homestead elms.

Far behind we left the mountains of the south;
Grey Mare Range and its cool upland air,
for the winding narrow road beside the lake.
Your hand rests on my thigh, we don’t say much.

Came up over the pass above Thredbo,
left your mother’s home before dogs awoke along the road
and distant farmers made the trek to town for news and bread.
It was so hard untangling sleepy arms to leave our bed.

If only we could cocoon desire and dreams
buttressed by uplands, sturdy as granites,
but love is like smoke. It shifts and streams
and disappears like the waters of Lake George

Virginia O’Keeffe

1
In the high horizontal window
a red-tailed jet is flying by
accelerating faster than a magpie’s
wildest dreams. For the watcher,
tinkering with words on a page
to avoid breakfast, migraine & nirvana –
it is all just a bit of a thrill, like a substance
squeezed from the pulsing, juicy cells
of some glowing golden object in some
distant autumnal pine forest memory.

The window is high, way up & beyond
the reach of the world’s tallest human,
even the chap who plays basketball for
China. He goals from above, peers into
the basket, jags another score. Games
& me do not get on, competition bores
me stupid & rewires my brain to anxious –
who wants to lose, or even win, why chase
these dubious outcomes, when life itself
is a race against the clock, steering faster
& faster as the days melt by to oblivion.

Aah, such a ragged, jagged word, one we’d
all rather prefer could bide its time & never
arrive, that creaking door to nowhere fast
where no matter which god one prays to
the result is the same, just as it is for quokkas,
koalas, quendas & kangaroos: nothing.
Except for memories – & they have a habit
of fading fast, just when we need them most.

Allan Padgett

i am a poet!
not because i know how to rustle up freedoms
from inside the myriad of words that shape like weeds untamed and wedge
between the harsh evolutional smudge of literatures bold shadows.
i am a poet!
not because i am the loneliest man in a crowded room full of empty and echo –
mid-wifing the little voices madmen birth when the army of the world is a round
broken down dissection.
rabid circle! how suicidal it is.
i am a poet!
not because i fill the spaces with the collections of other dead poets whose
books imprison their sharp -ailed insanities that lean like
little headstones on my
dusty garage-sale-chipped shelves no bible can ever fit.
i am a poet!
not because i group with others in front of night time microphone
listening to their unrehearsed gate-open words to a dishevelled and torn nicotine-stained empty-pocket beatniks crowd.

i am a poet!

not because my tools include solitude as long as lonely highways, crumpled-up
stained and torn note pads that collect fragments of those confessions and
unconnected pathways ink dances to on those lonely heart nights.
i am a poet!
not because i conduct the pen’s orchestra into sharp pictures only wounded
words polish,
sometimes the word breaks again and the reader leaves the poem red faced
with tears.
i am a poet!
not because my name sits at the bottom of a poem you read
when searching for sentences that untangle you from your dead ends.
i am a poet!
not because academia blankets the literatures heart with libraries full of dead
victories and late nights where the grave of ones eyes rub under dim gum-
smudged desk lights enriched with the miracle of the poets alike.
i am a poet!
not because i am related to solitude and drink cheap wine under a cocaine
dream in parks
where i have no name nor bus money home.

no!
i am a poet!
simply because i too felt the warm dark brush of madness’s wings swoop
above me and since,
i replaced the world for ink
and imprisoned myself inside this mind,
i do not own.

Mike Pedrana

Once almost all wheatbelt towns and farms
had a forge celebrating the bronze and iron age.
Humankind had long found how it could wage
war on metal, keep fire well out of harm’s
way, mastering it to ride the world’s sway.
From ploughshare to horse harness, iron made
nations mightier even than the war sword’s blade
that never rivalled the spade! Let us say
you enter grandfather’s forge: on dark walls
hang the blacksmith’s implements: tongs and awls
above anvil’s huge iron block. Nearby
bellows loom—asking our arms to supply
fierce air for the firepot. Here will await
spigot and bar to heat to white hot state.

Glen Phillips

My mother fell – not for the first time
That something so fragile can fall so hard
Can damage so many parts
Can portend so much
Can change the climate of the day
Send chills down the spine
Her wailing raises my shackles not my empathy
Always on tenterhooks
But it’s never enough never enough
Panic and fuss panic and fuss panic and fuss
“I’m sorry I’m sorry” she whimpers her mantra
Why are you sorry?
Pick her up gently and rearrange her like a doll on a couch
Check for breaks bruises flaring blue
As red raw rage burns through every particle of me
Tamp it down tamp it down tamp it down
Still guilt leaves its big black boot imprint in my guts

Elena Preiato

it was a long time ago
the mud on my boots still wet
from traipsing the narrowing lane
hedgerows enclosing me
small scented flowers glistening
amongst the bracken and weeds
lifting the gloom
for gloom it was
both where I walked and in my mind
the prospect of losing you
intolerable
taking my thoughts from shadow
into the deepening despair
where no sun shone
that came upon me occasionally
but that day so long ago was different
this time I sensed no return
no words of comfort helping
when heard just platitudes
uttered by those
who failed to understand
the hell that engulfed me

but salvation takes many forms
from the far end of the tunnel
she appeared
a shadowy shape at first

slowly consolidating as she neared
her white mane flicking
a vivid contrast to the many greens
her eyes bright orbs of umber
her coat luminescent in the morning dew
she did not pause until
standing before me
she nuzzled into my chest
telling me she was there for me
and asking to be touched – caressed

what miracle was this
how could she know my needs
my want of simple compassion
a sympathetic ear
yet she did know
her mood an echo of mine

she whinnied softly
and I asked her to help me to
shatter this darkness
to smash this night
to break the shadow
into a thousand lights of sun
into a thousand whirling dreams of sun

Barry Sanbrook

We order at an alfresco restaurant in Parapat
overlooking Lake Toba, northern Sumatra,
can’t see either end no matter hard we crane
our necks and its far too deep for toe dabbling.

Alfresco dinning: brown berry waitress takes our order,
straddles motorbike, scoots to market,
splut-put there and hastily back again,
fresh as can be for every client, chef says.
Chef cooks as he chats with us, we are his only customers,
we eat in a fractured prism of misty cataractic light.

Brown-berry askes would you like to come to church?
Meet me here at ten o’clock tomorrow,
its shanks mare, an hour’s walk, a narrow path with hedgerows,
our church in the distance is in the Dutch Reform style.

The belfry: joists, bolts, mortices, I absorb hymns, take it all in,
God shipped in a prepack,
this fits there, that slots there,
It was a long hot walk back to Parapat.

Laurie Smith

What would you say to me
as a part-owner of my being?
Could your Irish brogue bridge the years

and converse with me about your seeing?
Your breath was damp with the places you sensed
and your touch warm with the presence of the living.

So, let me clear a space
where no natural light penetrates as
my thoughts settle on an unfamiliar place.

Ruminations of your sweet Donegal
and you, the son of a cordwainer
whose shoes you would never fill.

The streets of smooth cobblestone
where you played into long afternoons.
I imagine your father’s shop, then it’s gone.

I never knew you nor recognised your face,
never heard your voice, your accent
but still, I feel a connection, a sense of your place.

My mind glides over the waves to experience
your sailing ship journey to Australia,
surfacing in a fog two hundred years away.

The smell of fresh salt air,
freedom to walk the decks and
hear the hull creak and groan.

Gulls flock near land,
fish leap with life,
and whales vent and breach.

Sounds that are as natural
as wind in the sails and
water rushing past the hull.

The brassy sound of the ship’s bell
regular as clockwork drifts
over waves like a ghost in the night.

What folly it is to dream such thoughts
that tempt then evade a dreamer’s gaze.
But when I stare at my family tree

branched in ink on paper,
my eyes search for something
lost, that I know I’ll never find.

Michael Stevens

Trying to remember the last time
safe meant more than a strongbox;

when secure meant more
than a ten-digit PIN;

when trust opened easily,
swung freely on its hinges,

tumbled from my tongue
without a rising intonation;

the last time these eyes
looked upon the world
with awe and curiosity,

alive to the sting of it,
hungry for the salt of it,

to know its heart, see the whole of it
without repulsion or recoil;

a time before I knew the world
and relished its unlocking.

Jill Taylor Neal

I had two… two what?
To think too hard.
To care too much.
To make. To break.
To bring. To carry.
To watch. To listen.
To chop and stir daily.
Motherly cog in the system.

I had two choices.
Or were there always more?
To walk tall or collapse;
Break down under sheer sorrow.
Yet ‘easily felled by microbes’ 1
I found myself a depleted vessel of self-reliance;
Ending battle front pleading of each
new cause.
Always fighting with my reason,
Planning projects; pushing closed doors.
“It is fatal to be a man or woman
Pure and simple; one must be
Woman-manly or man-womanly” 2
Waxing and waning energies for

Peace and harmony in this One World.
Too much, too much.
Too intense. Too smart to just
shut up.

Too far down, falling through depths of ocean
Into the deep deep darkness.
A mer-Persephone to
Where the beaten and the broken
Lie, like a whale’s bleached, bare bones
In cathedral submerged
Under silt, sand and stone
For perpetuity to rest in this
augmented reality.
But wait, I hear the clock ticking on the wall
I reach back and you pull me through
Water, earth, air
Two-gendered brain
Two minds
My androgyny reconciling
Not too late; nor too soon.
The hope in me reading the hope in you
Renews.

Undrowned. 3

Jill Turner

1 Robin Ince- “Last night” page 295, Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Book shops of Britain. 2022. Atlantic Books

2 Virginia Woof: A room of One’s Own.

3 Alexis Pauline Gumbs. 2020. Undrowned: Black feminist lessons from marine mammals. AK Press.

When the power fails
first the darkness. then
a silence overwhelming.
We fumble phones
finding the torch icon.

Later, a dusty gifted candle
illuminates a single sound –
the wall clock, battery
replaced, its blank face
ticking a heartbeat rhythm.

With no distractions
we talk of journeys gone
and possibilities yet to be –
like hands of the clock
circling an endless path.

Maggie Van Putten

Jacinta and her mother
lean forward, the shop window
ancient in glazed eyes

weathered boards collect
October sun, burnished panels
unfold cedar of late autumn

above their heads a coach lamp
restores the old path; calligraphy
spells words only guessed

a creeper, buffed leaves
cerise flowers, more popular
than the sum of its parts

bristles in potted sunlight
trumpet flowers retune
withered parchment

Jacinta and her mother
lean closer, what hides behind
coach-house doors

cannot be guessed—
a wooden horse carved into memory,
its secrets sealed for another century.

Rose van Son

Upstairs a small hole appeared
on the newly painted wall
no one could say the exact cause
ricocheting edges from a family stopover?
or sliding mop buckets?

Like a hole in a tooth the tongue keeps probing
the hole attracted    fault lines    edges
like her voice before the sickness
ruptured the whole conversation
     slow fading summers
grandchildren great and great
    shrugging off a sharp word

Her face mapped the roads she had travelled
her bones near as hollow as the wren she was named for

With the shattering of age
her sharp edges splintered conversations
needing to be reassembled

Like the hole in the wall she is static
neither growing nor mending
cracks and creases wait

wait for someone to putty the space
smooth out the edges
paint over

Hole In The Wall

Gail Willems

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

Creatrix 68 Poetry

Patrons

Poet Programs (Pre-selcted applicants only)