Poems

responding to John Bennett’s love poem

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the legislators acknowledged at last

 

having expelled all thoughts of republic

 

peace declared universally

with every kind of song and dance

guardians tickled to a fit

esperanto

everyone listens

we take turns

 

money’s abolished

the budget is open

machines, but only if they’re fun

 

everyone will get enough

sleep, cuddles, sweetmeats, admiration

and every tree may grow

come koalas!

 

your golden age

the borders gone

Zeus patron of the exiles, cross-dressed

open to all suggestion

 

this is a world of infinite care

acceptance

or do as you damn well please

 

no one is blamed for what they can’t help

everyone held to opinion

 

do we need watches, clocks?

no crimes against humanity!

where no one will remember tomorrow

or read between these lines

 

all this is proclaimed – a NO year plan

must have been the way I slept

 

and those who believed in us

whom we loved

 

the dead shall rise

to our conversation

argue the toss

and call account

 

it’s all looking good from here


.


plus a haiku 


the rain persisting here too

I take off my hat

unzip and join in 

 

responding to John Bennett’s love poem Read More »

Love Poem

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Love poem                                        13 Feb 2021

I am relieving myself, a natural start to a new day
over Japanese Irises, watching a low, sharp light
tightly focused by the foliage, solar rays must be photons
not waves. This red eye rising over the raucous ocean
gives us everything, even the BCC cut out of my back
a couple of weeks ago. I think of our garden, our love,
how I should write a love poem every day, tallying
the magic conjured daily, because 600 million years
away our star will discharge so much solar radiation
that silicate minerals (90 percent of Earth’s crust)
will rapidly weather recasting the carbonate-silicate cycle.
Carbon dioxide will fall below the level needed to sustain
C3 photosynthesis used by trees. Though, some plants
use the C4 method, enabling survival at concentrations
as low as 10 parts per million, but eventually plant life
will become extinct, leading to the extinction of nearly all
living beings since plants are the bedrock of the food chain.

I end my contribution to the nitrogen cycle, zipper up,
notice the ‘clumping’ Black Bamboo is starting to run amok
and stray into the Irises, Austromyrtus and Club Moss,
a fern that popped up two years ago. I should survey
our garden in days, and love in heartbeats, every second. 

Love Poem Read More »

KING OF THE WORLD – ROI DU MONDE

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Responding to Carol Archer’s Sandstone Walk

 

(don’k ask me how this « story » came to my mind !! I guess it’s a mix of testimonies and readings I’ve stored somewhere in my memory and consciousness…)

 

Delivered on the shoulder of the road

you tumble down a landfill

to end up in a lukewarm puddle of water

 

It’s summer

you have been spending two weeks in jail

 

By now the gibbous moon slides out of a stormy cloud

 

Even though treated as a burglar

while you’re just a beggar

trying to get out of the slum you were born into

you feel in the mood for dancing

 

It has been months since a single drop of rain

fell from the sky

it has been months during which flames

by the thousands

have devoured ground and forests

 

it’s a time for celebration

and heartfelt gratitude

it’s a time for ashes to slip from memory

and desperation

 

At this very moment

you’re the king of the world

wading in his golden bathtub(e)

 

Déposé sur le bord de la route

tu dévales un talus

pour atterrir dans une flaque d’eau tiède

 

C’est l’été

tu viens de passer deux semaines en prison

 

maintenant la lune gibbeuse se glisse hors d’un nuage orageux

 

Bien que traité comme un cambrioleur

alors que tu n’es qu’un mendiant

essayant de se sortir du taudis dans lequel tu es né

tu es pris d’une envie de danser
 

Il s’est passé des mois sans qu’une goutte de pluie

 

soit tombée à terre

il s’est passé des mois entiers pendant lesquels

des flammes par milliers

ont dévoré sols et forêts

 

c’est le moment de fêter

c’est le moment de gratitude sincère

c’est le moment pour les cendres de s’échapper de la mémoire

et du désespoir

 

À ce moment précis

tu es le roi du monde

en train de barbotter dans sa baignoire en or

KING OF THE WORLD – ROI DU MONDE Read More »

roadkill – responding to Sarah St Vincent Welch’s ‘the recent burials’

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roadkill

responding to Sarah’s ‘the recent burials’

 

wallaby gone when we came back with rifle

so push off the tar

and days watch by, summer fast

yd hardly see the crows, or who were they (?)

driving by each day

 

dog of my childhood

in a backyard gone

and the time capsules (late sixties) must be there still too

damp mouldy remains of still live and breathe

important things forgotten now

but smell bad

and straight to the bin

 

sometimes you’d think the whole planet bones

sunk further toward the molten core

but some were smoke before

 

no one buried the dinosaurs

that was a sad sad day    

roadkill – responding to Sarah St Vincent Welch’s ‘the recent burials’ Read More »

the recent burials

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 Inspired by  ‘Is this the Azure Kingfisher’ Sarah St Vincent Welch


the recent burials

 

last year it was a friend’s dog

old fella still warm

her child’s best friend

one of her family

bundled and wrapped

 

we were weak

the soil clay

we smiled at just how weak

we were 

 

my cracking body 

could still pick axe  

with a shallow swing

chisel head drag

into fractured rock

 

we made a superficial grave

anchored it with broken bricks 

 

La Niña keened over Queanbeyan

we talked on the verandah

the wind rattled the carport loose

we remembered that a fox 

tried to dig up the bird

that drowned in our lazy rain-filled bucket

the bird grave in our front garden


today a felled cockatoo

beside the road

her yellow crest still raised

we saw her at dusk

 

we dug by torchlight

remembered

 

how the cockies talked to us

when we visited this house

swinging upside down

us looking up to hear

just who do you think you are,

who?

the recent burials Read More »

BE-FORE — AVANT

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 Responding to Brian Purcell’s “in a time of lockdown”

 

Before                                                              by Béatrice Machet

 when it doesn’t mean in front

when it doesn’t show ahead

when it looks back towards  earlier

these « before » times

were they more happy

 

the before masks

the before

not only perinatal and neonatal asphyxia

but also before

premature

and globalized suffocation

 

before main streets were emptied

before roses and princes lived apart

on faraway locked down planets

because of covid zones

 

before half of the population was turned into beggars…

 

 

Before

belonging to the past

it points out bewilderedness caused by constant belligerencies

beyong believability

 

before loneliness is the norm

these « before » times

were they more free

 

Not being owlish but nevertheless aware enough

                                                                                              I assume

before  human kind becomes wise

simultaneous bewitchments and benevolences will constitute

the « between » times

before an harmonious now begins

so we can simply be

 

 

Avant

quand cela ne signifie pas devant

quand cela ne montre pas l’en-avant

quand il regarde en arrière vers plus tôt

ces temps « d’avant »

étaient-ils plus heureux

 

l’avant les masques

l’avant

pas seulement de l’asphyxie péri ou néonatale

mais aussi avant

une suffocation prématurée

et mondialisée

 

avant que les rues aient été vidées

avant que roses et princes  soient séparés

sur des planètes lointaines confinées

à cause des zones covid

 

avant que la moitié de la population ne devienne mendiante …

 

Avant

appartenant au passé

il souligne la stupéfaction due aux  constantes belligérances

au-delà du crédible

 

avant que la solitude devienne la norme  

ces temps « d’avant »

étaient-ils plus libres

 

N’étant pas devin mais cependant consciente assez

                                                                                              je présume

qu’avant que le genre humain ne devienne sage

les sorcelleries et les bienveillances constitueront

les temps « de l’entre »

avant qu’un maintenant harmonieux ne commence

pour enfin seulement être

BE-FORE — AVANT Read More »

destination Belanglo

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destination Belanglo

 

responding to Tug’s

 

the Belanglo joke: coming through the forest at dusk, the hitchhiker says to Ivan, ‘it’s getting dark and scary in here’. Ivan replies, ’You’re scared? I’m the one who has to walk back on my own’

 

it’s always coincidence brings us

atoms to the cell

moments pile

 

the girl in the boot on the highway    

the narrow escape of her friends

 

have to imagine thrust and parry

the bundling in

 

and that these people were, not of their nature, newsworthy

 

some will say good as she got

 

warrant outstanding in a twist (interstate)

was this an over-zealous citizen’s arrest?

a knife for compliance from the dream kitchen

 

so many known unknowns here

and so on, vice versa

 

narrow, lucky

dizzy in the dark, forced

minus meds in there

 

though bloody and still bleeding

could poke out a tail light

wave a truck down

 

would no news have been good for them?

had she gone quiet?

was it all screaming?

 

so many questions the courts are for

and can have no doubt this was justice

lurid albeit

 

once were like sisters

and some sisters are

merely acquainted

but you cross a line

 

motives still under investigation

 

we do know

it was her own car

 




 

destination Belanglo Read More »