Sometimes the air is still; The light loses its clarity. This is such a day: immovable. It slouches; it is lazy and petulant, And ripe with indifference. Today it calls and calls. We are veined wet fallen leaves; We are rills of loss and regret And we can not explain: It is a sense of…
Category: Poetry
one day the poet will die…
One day the poet will die and the flowers on his grave wilt, unremembered. The bearer of human longing will falter under that weight and fall or wander one night, and reappear after dead years, a pale image home from the war. Some days I too would lie down after long walks and stare at…
to a fisherman & pukeko
to a fisherman & pukeko to a fisherman with his rod whipping back i thought to ask ‘what, friend, do you hope to catch late this last day of the year?’ the sun of this summer day just a cool glow now in grey going out on the west, the low tide still running deep…
Word
When I moved in to the large, narrow terrace house, a flatmate was midway through the East Sydney College Acting course, and, as a musician, he said, in the pale yellow walls of the red-floor kitchen, ‘the people are better in theatre’. I auditioned successfully at the next intake; and with a poem like this, based on…
from Rehab Walkabout
‘it’s the terror of knowing what this world is about.’ Queen, with David Bowie. Watching, the body feels human, but the mind won’t…
crzay mirror
crzay mirror the funny fellow of nelson street with straw hat and beat-up shoes self-proclaimed ‘poet of birds’ and ‘lord of snails’ is walking to the shops, a wife and two cats whose faces change worryingly one into the other behind the screen door his bank card with a square hole in it the size…
first meeting
first meeting* based on Reiner Stach’s description of Franz Kafka’s first meeting with Felice Bauer (see page 100, ‘Kafka The Decisive Year’s by Reiner Stach, translated by Shelley Frisch) only a few words yet enough to put you out to sea silly boy you liked her to the ‘point of sighing’ you spilled out to…
Love’s Cold Wind
Then when it was done I stood and cried, and the easterly – always the bloody easterly – tore at my face and the tears were just salt streaks, and I saw her red coat recede, saw her shapely legs snap forward – almost a sashay – and the coat blow and lift and her hair riffle,…
death and after
Those weeks alone in her flat were difficult. It was cold and I got sick after the funeral. I had sat on a plane for hours, straight and by the time I wound the tortuous roads in- land to up-stream Latium, I had been on the road, for about 40 hours. It was good to…
the duke asleep
the duke asleep to David Bowie R.I.P. even to you, good duke, the night has come that shadow of the wall over the green, the blue one of your eyes lowered them into darkness stolen you in song 11 january 2016
Sestina for Insomnia
Intruding through the pane, the neighbour’s floodlights throw beams through the fig tree flinging between half drawn curtains patterns like some Japanese wood-cut a panel on the dark wall in a slab of yellow. Pittosporum tree forms a face in a restless mind eyes of street lights winking through eye sockets of branches… the…
Receding Day
The light is fleeing to the night All that is left are the bones of trees A skulking fenceline, The faint breath of the moon, Receding pastels of a summer day. The hill beyond has turned its shoulder; It slumbers, humped and heavy, a faint line. Let it stop now so that the cherry will…