Poems

Sonnet no. 5

Why

New morning sun brings forth her warming rays
while dying leaves drift gently to the ground.
Approaching winter soon will dampen days,
when ice will hang from barren trees abound.
Korea’s changing beauty I have seen,
penned every scene for all the world to read.
I miss so much your sparkling eyes of green,
while for your love, my heart again will bleed.
The freezing snow will cover all that lives
I hope I will survive this daily fight.
A priest once said that Jesus Christ forgives,
though what I do, he could not see as right.
My helmet sits upon my weary head ─
My rifle, now replaces pencil lead.

David J Delaney
27/12/2009 ©

For my Uncle, Lawrence George Delaney, 1st Battalion RAR, who served in Korea.

In the Shadow of Ghosts

To all and sundry I hereby attest
when writing stories, I will pen my best
to literary heights I will aspire
and write like poets, those that I admire.

To stroll with Lawson under silver moon
and sit with Dennis in the early noon
ride with Morant along the Condamine
inspired by Parkes, my rhyme I will refine.

Then walk with Kendall, hear the bell birds song
stand with Ogilvie, view the rushing throng
watch Evans write his women of the west
read Boake, great poet and one of our best.

There’s Esson’s tribute to the shearer’s wife.
the convicts who sang their rum song of life
then Song of Australia was Carleton’s view
I hear Paterson, and that Geebung crew.

Verse caught the time, the man rode Snowys side
viewed Sydney town when ships moved with the tide
rode Cobb and Co. along a dusty track
traveled the bush, where some never came back.

All master poets, experts in this craft
read so many, I smiled, I cried, I laughed
published in many a books well read pages
their words are still resounding through the ages.

I’ll keep on writing well into the night
knowing one day, I’ll pen the metre right
the flow of my rhythm will be like a song
the beat will sound its perfect soft and strong.

With help from writers, present or the past
my writings' true perfection, I will grasp
when all’s left are my poems and my rhyme
I would love them remembered for all time.

By Wendy Strain

The sun spreads rosy light throughout the land
Creeping over dull gray concrete roads
Reaching out with bright determined hand
To wake the sleepers from cold abodes

The light grows stronger each passing hour
Insists sleeping eyes open to day
To see the beauty of field and flower
Before progress takes it all away

The cars are started in the early light
The workers progress to buildings dim
They lock themselves away from daytime’s sight
And feel they’re safe from warnings of the sin

Of warming gases and resources lost
They never see the fallout

By Maggie Secara

Not everything is a lie.
Tempers flare, birds fly south
(not always for the sunshine)
even love, while it lasts,
is true as the blood
on the canvas walls, the relic
of someone’s Guernica afternoon;
but the truth is only important
when it’s useful, or harmful
in the end—
every word a felony.

The lies sift somewhere
between friends and murdering angels,
dropping from
the oak trees
like fireflies and morning dew
contaminating the crossroads,
virtue tied up in a kitchen rag
disguised as cloth of gold
tarnished on the battlefield
of casual death and idle weddings
without charity
or kindness
or grace.
The sword is quicker
but this will do.

voices, not voices
the shades of voices
bitter and muttering something
that sounds
like my name in a shadow

I should, if asked,
weigh my heart against a feather
defend with honour, apologize
with grace, bear a sentence
if earned. Instead,
I shout from the wall,
fling up my hands, and die
anyway.

I glide thru papyrus on a flat
reed boat
hunting water fowl startled
to stillness, flat
on the flat sky.
My brothers and my sisters, tiny
figures at the lotus prow
pull down the stars
and eat them.

By Anne Millbrooke

(In demonstration of the superiority of Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird")

I
Animalia
Chordata
Aves, Passeriformes
Corvidae
Pica hudsonia

II
Common and conspicuous
In fact, ubiquitous

III
Black-billed like the relations
Crows, jays, and ravens
Yes, a big family.

IV
Wock wock-a-wock weer weer.
My ear not tuned for the noisemaker,
I cannot translate.

                                                                                ➞

V
Tail raised for walking
Straight for flying,
And dropped, descending.
Am I as obvious?

VI
Black hat, coat, and tie, white vest
Iridescent and flashy and formal

VII
The magpie is a scavenger
by occupation, but why, what
do we scavenge each day?

VIII
Following people through centuries
along paths, dirt roads, and pavement
Finding carrion for carrying on

IX
Dine on ticks and mice,
fruit or seeds, or roadkill,
Just as omnivorous as
the literary magpie.

                                                                                ➞

X
Flight.  Flying.
Take me.

XI
As spring snow covers blooming flowers,
go easy, go to the feeder, take the handout.

XII
Build a nest for speckled eggs
But winter roost among the trees

XIII
Birds, branches, snow:
piebald bird in piebald scene.
Where’s Waldo?

By Nina Romano

Your first line must be a still life,
a table of ripe fruit awaiting an artist’s brush
or the part in the movie where a character
moves towards the Lexus,
and you want to interject,
“Don’t turn on the ignition!”
but of course you know he will
because the hero rigged a bomb
about to go off.

You could also begin with an image of a man
coming home in the middle of the day,
approaching the house,
seeing fire trucks in his driveway,
hearing blaring sirens and the screams
of the neighbors he usually ignores.

You might bandy about words
like halcyon or peripatetic,
speak of Chinese brush paintings
where gold glints to gilt the frame,
that house silk or rice paper art—
mountains crested in snow,
mica, dust and diamonds in the sparkle.

A deaf and mute scrawls words like music:
queedle or crenulated wing
to help slip backwards while the feet
try to gain purchase in the scree of a slope
in the foothills.

Being neither deaf or mute,
you are crippled and so you run
toward the car parked in the high grass
at the edge of the forest,
dragging one leg, the assailant’s soft verse
or Latinate words segue,
but need a perfect fracture
to end the phrase or line,
to slice the imperceptible silences
between stars and sky
that deafen a scream of terror
at the dropped keys,
the growing shadows
in between trees
the snap of broken twigs,
the crush of leaves
of quickened,
following steps.

Perhaps

Wallace Stevens mused
“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk.”*
Yes, perhaps.

*Wallace Stevens in his “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction,” in The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, edited by Jay Parini (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1995), 337.

Winter Day
      
Neither plane nor bird in the air,
yet lots of soft landings:
Snow is flying.

by Amanda Kunz
 
Black asphalt or brick lain streets
The Bayer sign erratic in the distance
Baseball fans from the Park
Groan
In disbelief of another thrashing
 
Running along the banks of The Point
The account of battles past bleed in the soil
Above, children bathe in the fountain
Their parents
Surveying
The joyous soggy faces
 
Aged city sidewalks carry the journeys
Of busy people on their own itineraries
The urban decay of this town
Corrodes no one

By Kirk B. Young

I’ve misplaced my voice, my vocal chords are silent lacking speak and the floorboards here creak under the willowing weight of a ghost, phrases are a feat and my tongue it can’t compete as communication comes through in the dark these concrete abstractions of time and space and if I were to erase the letters before these it’d make just the same amount of sense, which is to say somewhat striking as the sun shines in during the midnight hour. The crisis of a life that hasn’t seen much strife amounts to little more than identity, formed and fitted and impulse transmitted through fiery arches of synapse and sync until I start to sink into sleepy eyed persistence my resistance to the distance is a polarized existence watch the light go on and off and on and off and before you know it there are four and twenty of the years gone by and I cannot comply with the call to cease the words even though it’s just a surge of nonsensical data points with syllables through and through. But what does it mean to you, because words are just a collection of sound emotion is interpretation even when smiles abound, so hopefully I will fall asleep soon to join my lady in her dreams, it’s an oddly soothing place where everything’s as it seems and you can play with clouds until you move the earth. Ramble and rest and return to the river of consonants and constant couplings of letters and phrases and if you can’t forge or find any meaning in them then no worries be had for more will come on down the line, we’re only playing with this language you and I, this is just a dream and since we’re in these fifteen walls encapsulated we can make our own world. I will move the earth. I will move the earth. I will move the earth.

By Laura Schultz

Often in a shroud of whispers
entrapped in a world of echoes
my inner companion
my muse
conveys its oracular interlude
as it saunters casually
randomly
beside me
adheres to my voice
and places me in bondage
to its whimsical fancies
 
Thy prosody
is powerfully controlling
my thoughts
my voice
my inner companion
always beside me
stroking the keys
stoking the embers
of words and plots
burning flames
beneath me
enter more deeply
and have no fear
I will not fight you
any longer

Could Be?

Graffiti gravitates to broken, chipped cement,
Where garbage, lids, empty cans, roll as they torment.
Pushing hard through mini cracks, searching for respect-
Some resourceful weeds acquire terminal neglect.

Their lineage is forever; their family tree- strong,
They spring up; take over, although maligned life-long.
Their enemies are legion, it’s “kill on command”!
Still many weeds flourish and beat the odds- unplanned.

Dutiful flowers- predictables- grown from seeds,
Do they envy this freedom- innate to all weeds?
Fertilized, pampered, confined, birthing buds galore,
Do you ever wonder-if-could be- less is more?

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