It’s storming paparazzi flashy herding in a night grim as fairy-tales perhaps I’ll dream of Zeus’s horsemen the drive and lash sky crumbling to dust beneath their thunder or of tiny Tinkerbell under the pear tree cowering in the wild-lit droplets between the black curls of the wrought iron garden chair the rain like tossed … Continue reading grim as fairy-tales
Tag: free verse
The Liquid Inside Us
Body Memory photos / the pottery of our age / their grainy sediment / clotting untracked tears / we hold ourselves in back then I was lean, brown / wearing my skin like a shuckable raincoat / never knowing that the colours glowed some days image is everything / desiccated fashion labels pinned on fabric … Continue reading The Liquid Inside Us
the problem of feeling ordinary
(I) the wind hustles in a mood for dancing leaves perform an etude quiet but technical I ask,"have you been practising?" (II) scrap of bark in sickled flight enjoys one moment as a lark’s wing before resuming flappishness the tickle of the grass on its scratched brown face (III) Once in a while the bogong … Continue reading the problem of feeling ordinary
Stalking Rainbows
subtlety falls after rain gleaming world tilted to pinwheels each sonorous drip and the rainbow clings from black the pastel sheen oil slick sky tangled in roses
Circles
I never saw until this wet spring those tiny dark purple flowers on the bush near the letterbox the one with variegated leaves it’s bare of blossoms again now, come and gone like crying it’s the washing of time suds like purple flowers or the throat-grip of tears it’s the wetness makes the tears and … Continue reading Circles
The Sum of It
He wonders which came first: the universe or mathematics? In the blackness of time a puddle of puzzles and we, the pupils in this unseeing eye, find the questions sticky as displaced lashes. We rub and rub… bringing on the slow implosion of galaxies toward a single grammar inexorable as starlight (sigma quotient cos pi … Continue reading The Sum of It
Docetaxel* 1
serrated horizon how the mountains carve the sky prick of daggers evergreens' green blades slice white into the blue whingeing bones lean and creak against the west that high whine wind buzz friction zippered in Earth’s old joints the hammers’ patternless bruising *Docetaxel is a chemotherapy drug
Miz Quickly Aug 17
(Photo Prompt + Twiglet) Photo from Miz Quickly This track in sinuous green parallels the river’s rush and the runner with embered cheeks, heaves breath through singed lungs. Stars burn in the sun-touched water
For him or for me?
I try to imagine taking my hips out there the upright the cold like an old piano off tune in the park my timber’s warped splintered and I feel my strings tugging too tight // too loose. The winter boughs clatter like castanets my beanied drums my ears my fog shrugged in a rolled up … Continue reading For him or for me?
Machinery of Life
Oh little worm I cry for you, a brave blue collar hero in the machinery of life. You can’t know that tiny, iridescent spheres of deadly plastic are concealed in the soil you eat so conscientiously and you may not know that your little life keeps the lungs of our planet-body healthy and fit. Oh … Continue reading Machinery of Life
And They Wrote the World
It is no lie that the scrunched fists and inexpert fingers which carved shapes respresenting language, wrought the shapes from privilege causing materials and education to come at a price beyond the common hut dweller. Secrets and power, bore out, stamped and sealed with gold kept for selected audiences. They took their blocks and then … Continue reading And They Wrote the World
Waiting Rooms
the smudge of time insouciant minutes like sentences missing punctuation the run or the muddle therein whittle time like a pencil tip watch grey curls fall littering white paper finger on pause I’m here until called a smudge of time insouciant minutes like sentences Written for dVerse Quadrille #130 include the word smudge
Surreal
some shards clipped onto pine needles i saw others dangling from the cat yard roof and i knew the sky to be a mesh keeping Earth safe from the darkness beyond even in this promenade of souls the counting to eternity is fragmented as the light from diamonds
A Letter Never Sent
you were an eagle rejecting what school told you and climbing ever upward on thermals to those ceilings which I read about but have never touched i plateaued early aspirationally hobbled chewing philosophical cud and hating the race I didn't know for sure it would be the last time we spoke that day when my … Continue reading A Letter Never Sent
Showering
One breast is gone the sickle moon penumbra undressed for the ruler scar beneath - a doctor’s tidiness. Misplaced highway on this smooth bend of flesh and bone. In the shower throw caution plughole deep - damp self pity swirls down cheeks heat like swallowed liquor. Firefly stings on neck nape, the waves pass hopping … Continue reading Showering
To the PM
(i) Words are like glass jars, my friend. At some point, their being empty becomes blatantly obvious. (ii) i cannot see at all this place is steamy Now you're cooking with gas and it feels like nobody is watching A month or so ago, somebody posted a prompt that involved finding an old poem and … Continue reading To the PM
moody afternoon
as I drove I saw a mood in colour the clouds took on the shades of autumn leaves puffy and rouged tinged with bronze against a canvas of washing-day blue the leaves themselves became ruddy lanterns warming softly the light and in the distance the sky glowered school uniform grey thick as a duffle coat … Continue reading moody afternoon
Winter Morning
ceiling of domed glass and great the fall through blue nothing to trees-tops where we lie shredded & flossy our splattered jewelery cast about us feigning preciousness a gauzy net of moisture
Letter to the Editor from Earth
you have the Darwin awards that you wily survivors may feel better about yourselves clothed like irony in the intelligence of your decisions. oh sad species unclip yourself from false reflections and wash, nay scrub, clean my air of your putrid carbon abuse. run your tea strainers through my oceans like lice combs through the … Continue reading Letter to the Editor from Earth
Decisions
She suggests I get it frozen and we'll plant it have a ceremony choose a tree invite the girls around, she'll make scones. It is so left field my jaw drops and my mind clamps on an image of my flesh in some box red and pulverised and dropping petals on it in the hole … Continue reading Decisions
Unlanguaging Hurt
after another month of silence I dial the familiar numbers “I was about to ring you” chirrups sweet as solvent from her prosthetic tongue tight-lipped I dream of reversing this silent discord this dull new texture in our friendship some inconstant breeze riffled without cause our yummy sharing, the sweet gurgle of late night conversation … Continue reading Unlanguaging Hurt
Secret Club
i opened a door and there were wigs on sightless mannikins and a mirror and racks of lingerie with pockets in it for prostheses and the woman said "come in" and i stepped through into this new club a secret club for what is more secret than lingerie with pockets in it? so don't tell … Continue reading Secret Club
Humble Beginnings
Oh dandelion your little valued flower explodes into stars - such cosmic pretention.
Carpark Beauty
This autumn splendour singular and incandescent like a lotus flower in a concrete billabong.
Stopping at the Incense Storing Temple
A shooting star doesn’t plan its trajectory anymore than us through infinity’s fathomless maw. I’ll walk a while in the desert, feel the horizon escaping me and absorb honestly the resounding gong of my humility as sand cries small streams into the holes left by my heels. At night, under the cooling gaze of a … Continue reading Stopping at the Incense Storing Temple
autumn
under the plane trees leaves kiss lips brown with long summer swinging where the piles are deepest, children raise reckless chaos faces collapsible in mirth suspended russet plummets like eyelashes flirting, resting a moment rakish & Bohemian on a head of curls and then a breeze (or specious jaguar?) arches its patchwork spine in colourful … Continue reading autumn
A True Story
Summer and if the sun were a smoker its ankle would be twisting its knee describing satisfying arcs as it squashed us butts under its big chunky-soled boot but it's not the sun that's smoking. We've been to the markets and we're walking back to the car grass crunching underfoot like natural-grown cellophane. Rain has … Continue reading A True Story
Exhaustion
bodies have tide marks where time's ocean drops detritus on our shorelines - their smashing crush bringing wave after wave to submission living oceans inside & out we're being fished drilled and littered bankrupt spirits like the quiet decay of diversity
Bowing to the Brindabellas
She overtakes us on the hill her hula hoop over her shoulder bizarre in this setting but as confident as her shiny leggings. I huff and puff at the end of the dog's leash the steep incline pumping full of acid the backs of my legs But the view makes me feel alive and I … Continue reading Bowing to the Brindabellas
Snowite (parts ix – xiv)
This is the last post in this series. For post one click here and for post two click here (ix) imagine planning to poison (innocently) your neighbour's noisy dog a BBQ, their stiff blue chlorine pool, a juicy piece of your chop “poor sweet thing look at those eyes” etcetera etcetera this was worse (x) … Continue reading Snowite (parts ix – xiv)