Calm are the pieces of sky caught in the cow troughs fallen and gentle for holding softly their muzzles against the simmer of flies Calm are the bird chimes, notes and notes piecemeal through the written day; and whorls of butterflies, brown interstices in slatted morning air. Calm is the great pine its rust-red boughs … Continue reading Lullaby →

The ducks are jaywalking again crossing the road with waggles like autumn’s first blush of yellow I can’t tell the kids what do anymore I wind down the window “quarrrrrrk” I croak They ignore me not just like we speak different languages but like my voice is intrinsic to the day and needs no extra … Continue reading Ducks Crossing →

written for The Sunday Muse #252 every child’s face is held in a single bubble eager with destruction innocent, but true enough we rip globes from ribbed plastic to whet their clapping hands detergent like an oil slick in the grass so young for planet stomping it’s like we’re raised to it

written for Shay's Word Garden - Michael McClure The previous owners left a child’s chalk dust galaxies covering the fire places. She dismantles them though, preferring flames, their bloodless hearts wrapped, gentle as love around tree tusks to burn and burn. Between adzed boards, cold air gyres and the bathroom floor is a study in … Continue reading Moving House →

they drive into the dark at a quiet intersection puddles slosh and wink the staggered wash of coloured lights she says “why are they soapy?” “eucalyptus oil” says Mummy, pointing the dark, limp fingers of an overhanging gum tyres splash / this lullaby night she's sleeping in suds waiting for the moon to towel her … Continue reading night drive →

written for Mish's dVerse quadrille "shift" gravel roses in the carpark the laying of rocks and rubber from the bus stop, a feral pack of eyes opaque as tinted windows drill the day heat shifts – like nests of tunnelling ants - and ticklish gum leaves make way for the sun

(WORKING TITLE) Written for Shay's Word Garden (Randy Newman) I met you first on a Saturday we stood on the boulevard winter blunt in the wracking trees the sky (rendered charcoal) dropped a persuasion of rain and we watched the sea rip white lines through the tide; how it undermined a ruined cliff where land … Continue reading for the love of lalabets →

rain on the pavement is the darkness that tickles my nose I breathe it deeply copying how the pink hibiscus flower swallows the morning sun and how the brown butterflies puff into the forest with autumn on their wings my stopped watch holds arms raised in surrender it seems there is no doubt we walk … Continue reading timefulness →

she wants beauty to take its place under rocks burrow-tight and shrink-fast but her eyes are like the wings of swallows silhouetted on dusk’s sky he can’t look away out the window weeds play at being a meadow daisies, dandelions, and clover flowers she says “must I cover myself with grass?” at gesture’s edge paspalum … Continue reading beauty’s argument →

I'm grateful and pleased to announce that my piece for which I had forgotten the title has been accepted by Visual Verse Anthology. If you haven't already read it, you can read it here.

written for Shay's Word Garden & The Sunday Muse #250 She was always explaining fingers busy like a shiver in bare branches. She said, watch how autumn leaves her jewellery in the grass. In nature, she said ripening is not uniform. You have the pink-cheeked leaders, ardent and pretty; or the green speckled crowd - … Continue reading The Tailor →

written after John Malone's poem What IF on a Sunny Day imagine the sun yolk in shades of bursting all those beams would slowly crumple darkness's last petticoat sashays to the floor and reverence comes to find us our knees taste grit in our mind now those little dust mites must tumble in cold space … Continue reading the biggest death →

written for dVerse - Quadrille Monday "Gasp" the grey ute bares a bumper sticker grin “no air bags - we die like real men” from the driver’s window tiny glowing cinders dice with whitewashed air a gasp of turbulence yellow grass snaps its flags we hold our breath for fire season

Written for the Ragtag Daily Prompt - March 5th- "intransitive" At this hour the shadows are manicured as the lawns; even the leaves hang in brushed stillness like choir robes before the song begins. Gangs of cockatoos, chromium glinting, roar in unison down the ripped, sycamore, sky. At this hour thunder is a footnote to … Continue reading At This Hour →

Written for The Sunday Muse #249 the dream by lara zankoul sleep is not escape for she plants her webbed feet on any sleeper’s stomach sits like beauty framed and sure keeper of feathered dreams where muscles wilt to nothing and with wings quite tundra pale they sail and sail alike dread's feet like paddles … Continue reading Dread →

Written for Twiglet #314. "a friendly chat" how deep is the ocean asks the raindrop skin deep says the jellyfish just don’t let it in *. *. * skin deep in morning I run sprinklers sing against the goal posts like breakers: body particulate the sun performs raiki touches gently the graffitied dumpster lights to … Continue reading Skin Deep →

Written for VV Anthology. If you intend to submit and haven't yet, look away now! 🙂 ladies’ luncheon: shell crack and finger suck strong red nippers powerless among these white bones, nail crescents gleaming each watches the others lips crustacean shiny pursed to kiss foreign flesh and pale throats like larks the rise and fall … Continue reading I can’t remember what I called it. 🤣 →

Can a found poem be found visually? She is taller than her mother in big doc boots trimmed in yellow with black stitching but she holds her mother’s hand and balances on the bright orange letters that read “Trenerry” her black skirt flapping and cars passing and the man with head phones and correction red … Continue reading Wednesday →

Written for Sunday Muse #248. at the bus stop blue is a desert night’s edge chamfered by glum mist in cold's gluttony and I am devoured knee marrow carved to painful points the camphor laurel holds its brief pink between my fingers from the hot house to this creaking river this newborn colour a flame … Continue reading blue is a desert →

Written in response to the below image from Sunday Muse #207 Saturday among the rocks we don’t cry we don’t clean just hold our faces gently in the falling in the keening a peeled sky we watch the gramophone turn soaking pallid air with bandages the window is a jagged edge holding us in every … Continue reading the window is a jagged edge →

Written for dVerse quadrille prompt "music" and Twiglet #313 "trick of the light" Babies: tiny hairs sprout warmth down velvet skin lips pucker for milk from the planets: their mother’s breasts and growing up they discover the sky glazed with stars - time’s many births trailing a lambent music Hera’s spilled love a trick of … Continue reading The Milky Way →

written for Shay's word garden - "the Legacy of Ladysmith" running into the dark his feet like knockers demanding of the earth to let him in his breath is a riddle the way it keeps coming a repetitive index listing time in – she’s gone out – he’s here the fog opens and closes around … Continue reading night run →

( a bit of nonsense) the crux of it is this: I heard nevers in my ears rumbling blood motes like sea churn, piles and piles nevers at my fingertips dull, distant, flunky you can’t imagine them so skerrickcist, so dumpling and more nevers all down my spine like nuts clunking: shiftily, gribbily the roll … Continue reading neverish →

Written for The Sunday Muse #246. Image from Surreal Photography by Oleg Oprisco. We travelled in silence, your skin a pale net between us and all our stories camped like stowaways beneath fingernail and eyelid. At the cabin, the lake wrinkled slightly with distaste and you, unlocking the door, let that mole on your left … Continue reading safer →

written for Shay's word garden - Arthur Rimbaud At three a.m. she’s not asleep wide-eyed with saluting plovers watching the sky strut by. Everyone knows night hides its face in time lapse imagery, its galaxies all a whirl, and she, stranded in puckered cotton and vagabond stars - observes heavenly washerwomen, exfoliate light - making … Continue reading plovers at three →

from an image published on Aufschnitt which I found in The Sunday Muse's Archives (#244) when I squat the piano wood creaks and darkness stops I am the wall then and my mind smells music if she comes in I hiss at her black as cats her eyes are frayed blue silk she has looked … Continue reading piano girl →

blackberry night I cup the breeze to my bellybutton fingertip cool curtains whisper thought patterns unplucked two stars like boat hooks hold all my fuzzy dreams I watch and I sink the rock of breath legs like ropes I am plait I am fray written for Whimsy Gizmo's dVerse quadrille - a 44 word poem … Continue reading boat of night →

written for Sunday Muse (image below) while war barks its bitter feud I am here a floating form caught between triangles of wind space is but a skirt of dizzy air I have a frame white bones & dents of iron rigid as a military spine imagine a fall, my limbs exacting a buttered pirouette … Continue reading feel my love →

written for Shay's Word Garden - George Hitchcock words: butter, cicada, cinders, confetti, consumptive, exploded, fractions, geysers, gibbering, gong, lions, mandolin, mask, masquerading, pagoda, plumed, revolver, scaffold, syllabus, wag The little girl wanted to know what would happen if she took the light bulb from her mother’s kitchen and plugged it in to God. She … Continue reading The Little Girl with Too Many Questions →

This was written within an hour for Visual Verse Anthology's February Image by Olga Naida (below) on Mars we’ll be the odd fish red-smeared & stumping masks oblate as heaving moons spinning light between obscured eyes we’ll be fish with no water the way we’ll float heavy as bobbing pumpkins in snorkelled air we’ll carry … Continue reading Aliens on Mars →