A Wish

Let me not see old age; let me not hear
The proffered help, the mumbled sympathy,
The well-meant tactful sophistries that mock
Pathetic husks, who once were strong and free
And in youth’s fickle triumph laughed and sang,
Loved and were foolish: and at the close have seen
The fruits of folly garnered, and that love,
Tamed and encaged, stale into grey routine.

Let me not see old age: I am content
With my few crowded years: laughter and strength
And song have lit the beacon of my life;
Let me not see it fade, but when the long
September shadows steal across the square,
Grant me this wish – they shall not find me there.

(D.R. Geraint Jones, who died of wounds in Normandy in June 1944 at the age of 22).

Bill Guy writes: I first read the above poem in my early 20s and empathised to some degree with its sentiment – after all, quitting at the top is recommended in many areas of life, so why not of life itself? More than 50 years later, my rather different perspective prompted me to write a rebuttal of Geraint Jones’s death wish and I read it at the Aldinga ExStanza branch’s last session on the theme of ‘Age’:

AGE NEED NOT WITHER

‘Let me not see old age,’ a poet once said.
Fearful of time’s corrosive force,
he could not face the sure decline,
the loss of grip, the fading powers.

Wizened wisdom with a pessimistic tinge
seemed a sad exchange for the untamed hopes
and optimistic leaps that gave cosmic scope
to his youthful philosophy and faith.

He could not contemplate without dismay
the diminished strength of mind and body
that is the inescapable penalty
for challenging the limits to life.

He should not have been so timorous.
Having long since crossed the boundary
into what he saw as an alien land,
I can catalogue its subtle benefits.

Old age gives time a new dimension;
now the clock no longer rules the day;
all schedules, deadlines and agendas
can be set to suit one’s inclination.

Each day becomes a gift to cherish
because it is one more day subtracted
from the total allocated to us by Fate
and therefore must not be squandered.

So, seeking richness in life, not riches,
becomes the goal and, freed from competition, the old now have expanded time and space
in which to savour joys the others only chase.

Thus, age need not be the feared descent
into the valley of cold, dank shadows;
instead, it offers an ascent to greet the sun
from the high peak of enriched experience.

But, note, three blessings will be required
to consummate this golden dream:
good friends, good fortune and good health – with these, the sting will be removed from death.

Genocide and Culture

Genocide - Culture & Colour

A noble humble race?

No, not the whities, for

they devour the land

of ancestors and we,

we are the true owners of

Terra Australis.


What are our memories?

The serpent of the dreamtime

full of songlines, sings

the spirit of creation.

Ancient gifter of this land,

who brought our race to life.


Can we regenerate?

The madness of the stolen ones,

Culture shock and naming cruelly

peeled away, layer by layer.

Bleached bones in the desert;

Endless , mindless,worthless,

broken, promises .....of

nothing worth living for.


I have used this poem to identify with my Aboriginal friends.I apologise for any offense which this may cause to any of you.


Isabel Telford

Irish Weavers DNA

Irish Weavers DNA

I can hear the distant shuttle,

I can see the slanting light,

as it settles on the looms,

in the fading of the light -

a gene fuelled soup, propelling me along.


It’s the sum of history’s past

it’s the promise in the future

in it’s colour, shade and strands.

the weft and warp of life;

it’s the map scratched on my psyche

it’s the shade of

who

and what

and why...

I am

ME.


Isabel Telford

My Cultural Identity

The curlew and the corncrake nightly sing
A song to the music in the heartland of my soul
And stories from a past with joy forever ring,
While the history of my country fills the bowl.
A thousand years of people lived to make me know
The path in pride my culture would then take
And ‘tis the same for each of us to show,
The way with honour we wish to make,
That precious gift, which none would dare forsake.
It is a prize worth fighting hard to win
And a battle that could so easily break
The hearts of many decent folk like sin
But culture just like courage will never let you go,
It is your flag of true identity always there on show.


Adrian Kavanagh
December 6, 2008

Decadence

The topic is decadence
The meaning interpreted, I'm sure
So I opened the Pocket Oxford
Left languishing on the floor-

Deterioration, it said, decline of a nation,
Or of an art or literature after culmination.

When has a nation climaxed
After Shakespeare, Mozart, or a Great War?
Or are we governed by cyles
Like a constant, revolving door?

We hit a peak and then decline
Before we can hit a peak again.
The circle of life goes on
We cannot and do not remain.

And Byron wrote, "I love not man the less but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From allI may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express - yet cannot all conceal."

For Man and Nature are inextricably entwined.
When we take too much, so we decline -
As Nature is bountiful, so it is lean
The boom and bust cycle and all that, that means.

Around the next corner
The moral reality
Of the nature of decadence
And its slide to the sea,

Which taketh and giveth
With pleasure and pain
Byron sought both
As his writings inflame.

Ian Matthews, October 2008.

Protestor Pants (Decadence)

These pants are a badge of honour
Opposed to the world of greed
They represent an alternate view
To meet a real need.

The patches serve great purpose -
Reused, recycled, repaired;
Not your throwaway item here
Whose messages are earnestly shared.

The boom and bust of money markets
Shine no light on one
Who wears these threads with proud abandon
Against the powers she shuns.

The purposeful placement of textural designs
Is all that decadence is not
Neither caring nor compassionate,
Indulgent - society's rot.

Kym Matthews, October 2008.

Childhood Lost

CHILDHOOD LOST


High on the chilly windblown crag, childhood is tarnished:

powerlessness and fear hang in the air like shades of dark.

This trusting spirit child, so full of generous ease,

no longer views her Lilliputian world through hazy,

carefree hues of innocence; but travels now, with hesitance

on tippy-toes, while ....flight, shouts and screams shreak -

discordant notes from every fibre of her being.



A threatening ‘otherness’presses;

menace hovers in the fractured shadows,

nooks and crannies where she plays her

childish games of make-belief and mayhem.



She shifts from innocence and childish play....

too late she minds her mother’s call

"take care my dear, be home by dark.

She bolts like lightning down the scree,

emerging from the crags on to the road.



The terrace, shines wet and lowering;

chimneys plume ; glowing windows beckon -

like familiar beacons on a hill.

Arms wide stretched wait to draw

this child of love and nurture in.


Her identity fractures yet

into shades of grey, while

fear become a token currency

and trust is forever lost.


Isabel Telford

April 2008

The Sea

The sea is scary, the sea is sad
always going and coming back to -
the secret place where she takes
our dead and scours them clean.

The Selkie, sings the sweetest song as
she fills the sails with her breath of storm.
Her sweet song thralls, the seabirds swoop,
Her lovers, she beckons like fish for food.


The song sings on where the sea’s plates
crack, and groan and shift,
deep and dark in the current's drift.
While the sea is scary, the sea is sad,
it's always taking, yet gifting back.

The waiting Room

The Waiting Room


A crowded room;

except for those -

who seem familiar

or warily unknown.

Ten pairs of eyes,

assess me casually

impatience, carefully concealed.

Odd - no clock;

No definition of time measured

to rearrange the anxious tick -

tock of my thoughts

of –

diagnosis -

treatment -

surgery -

or

painful death.


OOps! I’m called;

I’m in -

my worries fade

in sharing them -

Until………

Jasmine's day at the Sea

Jasmine's day at the sea

Snuffs and yelps of
unadulterated joy.
Alluring abandoned wriggles -
and her, so inelegant and
sideways wriggles through -
the sucking surging sand,
amuse, entrance;
as through, the errant foam
and spray she totters;
fearful yet ecstatic.

Tired damp and dripping,
she smilingly,
reluctantly resists;
retreat from her encounter.
with the elixer, the salty;
intoxicating sea of life

Digiworld

In a country far away on a digi-pixel plain
lies a hulk of digi-garbage near the sea.
And the digidrons , they scavage; in the heat,
they slave and hammer, for a few rupees,
they risk their lives in digi-hell on earth.

They separate and desecrate, the sacred cows of digi-land,
no longer sleek desktops, peripherals stripped bare.
Families fossick feverishly, they strip the stuff of dreams to bits,
alongside toxic elements laid bare.T hey work, from dawn to dusk,
to eat; to see the sun rise on another day.

Lead tin, copper, antimony; cadmium and mercury,
a toxic chemi-cocktail poising all who get too close.
They breathe, absorb the PCB’s,compounds-Hexivalent chromium;
chromium VI biphenyls, additives which maim the body mind:
all to meet our insatiable digifix demands.

We care little for the digi-trade, in India, and places where
Slave traders far and near abuse the poor.In our hunger
for the latest, we don’t care the cost in human live, we want
it now, no matter what or where it’s done.

It’s not our fault the DNA of digi-slaves will damage foetal cells.
All those who struggle to survive from hour to hour; while their
death sits listening anxiously, the door begins to close,
as their tortured lungs expel the welcome fumes of death.


So let’s think about the planet and how we live our lives,
as we let our lives be driven by our wants. Can we make
a change, we have no choice, we need to think of children
who are slaves around the globe. Let us work to modify our
needs, live simply from today, turn the lights out, turn the TV
and read!

Change

Change

With careful aim,
the smooth, flat stone
skips; -
and, skimming across the surface,
falters,-
timeless suspension,
in the moment.

Saturn-like concentric rings,
ripple, like graceful tutus;
while soundlessly yet rhythmically,
the eddys roll and levitate;
unstoppable, while at the vortex –
we watch, and wait……….

This is how change is meant to be!
An invasive, subversive assault of
the deep and murky centre of the whole:
striking,
cracking,
breaking open,
laying bare:
releasing the clangourous minutae of
dangerous, closely held and
tightly clutched humours,
predudices and values,
which turn us into-
withered , loveless souls.

Bloody death and Betrayal

The blood sings,
while in a distant place
a drum calls forth it’s dead.
Out on the hillside - all is still.

“Upwind man, always up” the Ghillie cries.
The eagles soar to dizzy heights above us,
on the updraught, waiting for the drop.
eager for the kill.

Look! Pitted antlers, etching
throat exposed,caution like a mantle;
we crouch, guns primed, like fallen.
eagles, exultant in ‘the chase’.

The canvas of the moor turns red;
the brutal decadence of violent death
rears like bile spilled. Forces dark,
malevolent, sing out to greet his passing.

This glen has seen it all before as
kith and kin raised high the claymore;
swung it wide in brutal swings
to murder.....and for what?

The drum beats true and clear
while others spill the quafe
of blood’s betrayal in this place.
I ‘keen’ my loss for beauty rich and free;
for decadence and death are all I smell.

Songs of life and liberty float downward
to the lifeless eyes of the dead beneath.
Those who'd dreamed of honour
and glory in this cursed glen, Glencoe.

Dante's Glade

The dappled landscape dips - like a graceful teapot,
pouring logs down devastated hills;
sticks of licorice bound for hell.

This is no silent dignity of death!
Tortured limbs split, bruise,
and crack on surface rocks
while shrieking splinters
scatter like stormy bees.

Death glazed eyes of creatures here,
reflect a mindless, wantan desecration.
Habitat torn, where forest giants sway like
ladder -bridges to the sky while,
on the gorest floor,the night sky weeps

Bridge across Time

Through the moonlit wall he came -

a lumininous decadent dew

suspended through his hair;

caressing his shadowed face.

Impaled upon his back,

a fairy sweet and fragile.

Love taken; love lost forever

in fairy dells beyond....

far beyond the tumbled

broken walls of knowledge,

safety,

and sanity.

Decadence

madeinchina.com


Is this a word for decadence

where babies die a lingering death

fed poison in the food of nourishment?

Is this a word of decadence

where the vanity of bulldozer

eliminates the home of a lifetime

to show the dazzling glitter of a

culture in frenzied freefall

to unbrindled capitalism?



In the birdcage of captivity,
in the cube of Tienaman;
fresh from the sewers
like lemmings, they appear.
shuffling hopeless penguins.

A block away,the diamonds sparkle

in the Beijing Shopping Mall;

country peasants labourers scramble

on the bamboo scaffolding,

like the detrius - expendible

for life tomorrow starts afresh:

morality is absent:

long live Mao who feeds us.

us to economic remodelling

In the birdcage of captivity,
in the cube of Tienaman;
fresh from the sewers
like lemmings, they appear.
shuffling hopeless penguins.

Decadence

Before the florid portico
I watched the gamblers come and go,
While by me on a bench there sat
A female in a faded hat;
A shabby, shrinking, crumpled creature,
Of waxy casino-ward with eyes
Of lost soul seeking paradise.

Then from the Café de la Paix
There shambled forth a waiter fellow,
Clad dingily, down-stooped and grey,
With hollow face, careworn and yellow.
With furtive feet before our seat
He came to a respectful stand,
And bowed, my sorry crone to greet,
Saying: "Princess, I kiss your hand."

She gave him such a gracious smile,
And bade him linger by her side;
So there they talked a little while
Of kingly pomp and country pride;
Of Marquis This and Prince von That,
Of Old Vienna, glamour gay. . . .
Then sad he rose and raised his hat:
Saying: "My tables I must lay."

"Yea, you must go, dear Count," she said,
"For luncheon tables must be laid."
He sighed: from his alpaca jacket
He pressed into her hand a packet,
"Sorry, to-day it's all I'm rich in -
A chicken sandwich from the kitchen."
Then bowed and left her after she
Had thanked him with sweet dignity.

She pushed the package out of sight,
Within her bag and closed it tight;
But by and bye I saw her go
To where thick laurel bushes grow,
And there behind that leafy screen,
Thinking herself by all unseen,
That sandwich! How I saw her grab it,
And gulp it like a starving rabbit!

Thinks I: Is all that talk a bluff -
Their dukes and kings and courtly stuff:
The way she ate, why one would say
She hadn't broken fast all day.

by Robert W. Service - thanks to www.poemhunter.com

The Muddy Puddle

I am sitting
In the middle
Of a rather Muddy
Puddle,
With my bottom
Full of bubbles
And my rubbers
Full of Mud,

While my jacket
And my sweater
Go on slowly
Getting wetter
As I very
Slowly settle
to the Bottom
Of the Mud.

And I find that
What a person
With a puddle
Round his middle
Thinks of mostly
In the muddle
Is the Muddi-
Ness of Mud.

by Dennis Lee

Obama

NOW AMERICA’S 4/11
(Barack Obama, first black US President, elected 4.11.08)


The slaves are now the kings:
A shaft of light pierced
Three hundred years of dark despair
And in one momentous day
Power passed to the dispossessed.

Words like ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’,
Long corrupted by rough usage,
Suddenly took on a newly minted edge
And people dared to believe again
They spelled out plausible ideals.

How remarkable that a democratic brew
With such dubious ingredients
As hate and ignorance and fear
Should have distilled a liquid
Infused with great humanity and hope.

How remarkable that the agent
Of this transformation,
Like another man before him,
First had to cauterize and cleanse
The stigmata of a coloured skin.

So, like Mandela, Obama sets a noble pace
For humans of every creed and race.

This Word Dec-a-dence

I have spent a great deal of time expending much mental energy,
pondering this ancient word, calculating in my mind the many
and various methods on how to formulate the very finest poetic
lines, which would best portray, without abatement or discomfiture
these three, individually, unpretentious syllables, to you, my good friends.

Combined they conjure up a potent and abhorrent image on the
most detested form of human thought and behavior,
which is directed at the lowest outcome of our nature.
Moral, social and personal decay, brought about by
seeking uninterrupted and excessive, immoral indulgence.

Yet, when I studied further those explanations within
the hallowed covers of some excellent encyclopedia
devoted to the language of the English, I found locked
therein a journey back in time to lands so far removed
from that lexicon, I thought anew about my task.

This word then dispatched me to the most serene of places
for my disturbed imaginings, therein to perceive from
the muses of antiquity a lesson in its journey to our times.
Could not Cato, nor Cicero, nor Epictetus have given me a better time?
I would have been by far the wiser then to count its form anew.

Ah! Italia, my friends, ancient and bold Italia, in that place they knew well
how to say it keen and all the religious Latin I did learn at school
would not prepare me for its pollination to make of it
what now we do; this word to so describe such vile and demeaning
a thing as we humans could bring ourselves to act upon!

The French, they say invented a quaint description for its many
ungainly attributes; methinks the Romans by far outweigh
the diplomatic Gauls at making up a rambunctious triplet to
passionately display the core of this very base and unwholesome
set of characters. Let me tell you now in a few last lines its story.

You will know it is a noun: the process or manifestation of moral or
cultural decay. Far better it sounds this explanation: luxurious self-indulgence!
The origin I will share with thee; it’s said to come from the French decadence
And from Latin Decadentia; related to decay; you did not know don’t say!
Yet before all, from the low Latin this is how it made its way: de – down and cadere – to fall!

How apt I hear you say. To fall, to fall indeed and thus the story ran
Oh! How sorry am I, that ever a word on Decadence I began.

Adrian Kavanagh,
October 7, 2008.

Last Text from New York City

Christ it’s cold up here Nadine –
I can barely hit the keys
To send you this quick SMS
And put your mind at ease.

It’s hit the fan – it’s on the news
Wall Street’s shot to Hell –
Hong Kong’s gone and Tokyo
Is down the tubes as well.

The Nasdaq, Footsie, NYX
Are all in mad freefall.
Oil’s relapsed, Gold’s collapsed –
There’s nothing left at all!

This howling wind is freezing me
High up here on the ledge.
I’ve talked the talk, I’ve walked the walk
And now I’m on the edge.

Over there is Lady Liberty
Her torch held high and bright,
As the streets plunge into darkness
On this most awful night.

The Lear Jet’s gone, the condo,
The beach house up in Maine.
The yacht in Monto Carlo –
We won’t see that again.

The swank hotels, the ski trips,
The limos, dining out –
We’d have to start again my love,
We’d have to do without …

Remember down in Vegas
We met that broker Joe?
He’s just two guys along from me –
He says to say Hello.

They’re like lemmings on this ledge now –
They push and shove and bump.
I’ll text you later sweetheart –
Hey! They’re forcing me to …!


John McCallum

Space child

On the far side of the moon
You can’t go out to play:
The air’s too thin, it’s far too cold
And you’d likely float away:

On the far side of the moon
You have to stay indoors
In metal rooms with metal walls
And tables, seats and floors:

You sleep in zipped-up thermal pods
That hang down from the wall
Your meals are tubes of gooey paste
That have no taste at all.

Your Mum and Dad are boffins
Who’ll work six months or so –
If was either travel with them
Or stay with Auntie Flo.

Outside it’s pitch-black day and night
The dust and rocks stretch out of sight
There’s nothing there for you to see
Not a single blade of grass or tree:

There’s nowhere for a dog to romp
Or chase a stick or ball –
On the far side of the moon in fact
You can’t have pets at all.

You can’t spend the whole day texting
You can’t surf the internet –
You’re on the far side of the moon
And they haven’t reached there yet.

You must stay inside and let time bide
In your spaceship’s tiny nooks –
TV? Forget it kiddo –
Just as well you brought those books.

So on the dark side of the moon
At least your mind can roam –
But please – don’t touch the buttons
Or you may not get back home.


John McCallum

When the chips are down

Let me see now – the subject’s Digital?
Now there’s a chilling word if ever I’ve heard one.
As hard as ice: bitter, freezing: frigital
The sort of word that would flash
Past your eyes in Antarctica
As you plunged down a crevice into the darkness.
A word that gives me the shivers
A word that leaves me cold.

I miss the simple life we had.
I regret the Internet, I dread the Web
I’m up to here with Graphic Logic Controllers
Multi-protocol Gateways and
Selectable Source and Sink Models –
Driven mad by Production Information Terminals
Software Line-ups and Hot-Swap functions –
I’ve had enough of all that stuff –

Though I’m ashamed to admit I once wrote
For a multi-national computer company –
Digital Electronics Corporation to be precise
And attended a day of personnel induction:
Level 32, Theatrette B, horse-shoe table
Nervous newcomers, name cards turned inwards,
Tiered seats each side, no place to hide
From the seduction –

A breezy guy with an eagle eye strides in
And hits us with an avalanche of spin:
Loyalty’s the key to greatness –
Long hair’s out, likewise lateness.
You’ll live and breathe and dream high-tech
And very soon you’ll meet – our Chief Exec.

Coffee break. They file from the room
I stay behind, hide in the upper gloom.
And watch a stranger casually stroll in
Silk suit, white shirt no tie and buzz-cut bold:
Pick up one name card, glance at it:
And then depart – the air goes cold.

We re-convene. Of course it’s him
Just in from New York Worldwide HQ
He’s electrifying, mesmerising –
And he turns to one fresh face and says
‘Isn’t that true, Charles, isn’t that true?’

And Charles goes home that day
Agog, aglow
He’d caught the eye of the CEO …
He’d caught the eye of the CEO!

Next day he changed his name to Chuck
Procured a flash new car
Bestowed his wife with diamonds
As befits a rising star.

The years crawled by. He never heard.
He turned into a backroom nerd.
He’s there today. You’d never know
He’d caught the eye of the CEO.

Digital Age? Digital Rage is more what it’s about
And like Cecil B De Mille – and Charles –
I say … Include Me Out.


John McCallum

Happy days are here again

Poor Dorian. Left in the attic
to fester and decay, unrecognised.
An unlike likeness blistering away
in oils, not blood and bone, while
the flesh escaped downstairs
to toast the Queen.

Old Hieronymus Bosch got it right.
Torture, carnal desire and death
stuffed in a sickly landscape
oozing from the frame.
'The Garden of Earthly Delights'—
No way out. We are what we are.

That’s what he said when he left me:
‘We are what we are.’ Pompous prick.
It was sex and the sixties that bound us.
The good old days.

My portrait doesn’t work, doesn’t suck the flesh
and smooth the lines. I’m still the same
when I open my eyes,
still in the Garden.

It’s time. Wasn’t that what Whitlam said?
The pills are kicking in, I’m outta here.
We reap what we sow.
Bosch and booze.
I’ll drink to that.




Cathy McCallum

Kaleidoscope

The Golden Book of Astronomy illuminates my bookcase still,
‘An Introduction to the Wonders of Space’
given me at five years old by my parents
playing out their own Wars of the Worlds in our lounge room.

I wanted a bride doll and had prepared her space
on a shelf near the window. No marital bed for her.
She would inhabit my room in a perpetual state of readiness
for her phantom groom:
my doppelgänger, drawn in Derwents and denied materiality.

Resigned to my loss
I quickly found the planets offered more escape.
Rings more interesting than a bridal band were Saturn’s
and the clouds of Venus moved across the page
as gracefully as a wedding dress through ether.

Mercury burned and the canals of Mars were dry. No matter.
They held the infinite possibilities of farness and survival.
Light years fell away in my room in Delbridge Street.
The moons of Jupiter were more like home.

In Room 40B of Brighton Nursing Home a shaft of light
strikes the glass beside my bed.
Prisms of memory pierce at unexpected moments
reducing me to tears, or worse,
non compos mentis.

I am eight years old and running with Spike
through the Fitzroy streets, away from Dad,
towards the stars and Jupiter.


Cathy McCallum

Meltdown

The monitor is male, and my mentor,
The genial host of my virtual world.
He tells me what to do, to think,
And I, like a novice, respond accordingly,
Hanging on every word.
I ‘Embed All Fonts’, ‘Include Linked Files’, even
‘Create New Action’. Like God.

He monitors my movements.
I click on ‘Shut Down’ and, distracted, drift away from my desk.
He beeps, urgently, and asks me
‘Do You Want To Save The Data for Other Applications?’
Yes I say Yes! Momentarily reverting to type.

My counsellor suggests a week or two away
‘Recharge your batteries – do you good –
Come back refreshed – new start.’
My pet rodent, a rare black rat of the species Rattus rattus,
Has no time for him. She Invades his Personal Space,
Condemns his Cognitive Behaviour Therapy from my shoulder.
‘Take the rat with you. She’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

I don’t think so.
Anyway, he’s crazy the counsellor – talking to the rat, for a start.
She doesn’t talk to strangers.
I end the session.

Back home, the monitor is not performing.
He’s been unwell, looks blue.
A virus, I’m told.
I’m told to ‘Rebuild’. Delete his memory and ‘Reboot’.
‘I’m not God,’ I say to the keyboard, ‘I can’t just kill him.’

Distressed, I ‘Shut Down’ for the final time, and weep.
Beep.


Cathy McCallum

Dastardly games

Dastardly games played upon the credulous senses,
Exploring all the detestable facets of human nature,
Causing limitless consequences for those malevolent
Actions that make us pay an inordinate and
Deadly price for all that is maliciously premeditated.
Except, of course, by those who ultimately feel
Nothing for the pain they consciously or otherwise
Cause the naive poet, who has spent endless time and effort,
Examining the first letter of each first word herein, as you will now.


Adrian Kavanagh,
September 26th, 2008.

Early tide

‘Between the sea and me
There is no degree
Of separation …’
He paints the blue ketch
Alongside the wharf,
Bare feet on wooden deck
Solid, certain, matter of fact.

A small group attracted
Watches attentively from above.
Fathers, as though knowing, point
At stowed sails, ropes, anchor
And wide eyed kids soak it in
Yearning that the world be theirs
Yet tied to the shore by family cares
And a web of obligations …

‘I head out tomorrow.
Come and see me off if you like …’
They stroll down after breakfast
but he’s gone, pier empty, berth vacant.
He’d caught the early tide
And the wings of the morning
To sail down the bay and on his way.

In his element, peace and solitude
He sets a course far out to sea
He skips the waves and carries with him
His invisible crew, their dreams set free.


John McCallum

An old one(untitled)written in tha W.A.Desert

Waters slowly fall
Through the valleys of the east,
Dreams found revealed
In the whirlepools spirial feast.

Love crossed my way
In a volume crisp and clear,
Leading my feet onto
The waters of your wier.

Waterfalls run inside
Touching emotion strings,
Feelings hidden away
Fly on silver wings.

Rapids swiftly rush
Through the canons of my mind,
Waves swish and splash
In a rocky island chime.

Along the way I stumbled
Along the path I rode,
Over the rivers bubbles and mumbles
To loves warm and contented abode.

Water

Water
Flood over me,
Pound the sea shore.
Let the sun
reflect those diamond sparkles,
Coloured prisms,twinkling.

Oh! the years go by,
Sandcastles crumble,
The grains washed smooth the years.
Moments and memories
Ebb and flow
As the tide on a distant shore.

Water
Flood over me,
In the naked light of dawn,
Set my soul free.

Ian Alias,The(once)Naked Man

My Home

How you calm me
With your pounding.
How you ease me
With your strength.
How could I live without you?
Or even attempt to try.
You were my companion during youth
And also my advisor at certain times.
So much power I feel
From you.
Your music is sweetest
On silent summer nights,
Accompanied perhaps by the shrill song of cicadas
Announcing their arrival.

Your beauty is boundless.
I sit here, still at awe
By your unyielding temperament.
Let your waves lick my wounds,
For the ocean is my home.

Kym Matthews

Rain

Outside the rain falls
And as each new drop descends,
Does the supply lessen?
Or does the surrendering of that drop
Give rise to others.
Is this then the anser toall - even ourselves?
Does surrendering not lessen the supply,
But merely gives rise for more?

Kym Matthews

Drowning

If I ever died a million ways
The way to die I wish would be,
To be born just once then taken and drowned,
And lost in eternity.

To have just emerged from a water-warmed world,
And taken just one day of breath,
Then taken away by a good set of hands
To greet water again at my death.

Knowing no thought between these two ends
Only glimpsing by the touch of that air.
Ending my life just as pure as the start
Nothing else would be fuller I dare.

Kym Matthews

*********************************

WATER - a suite of two poems by Isabel Telford

I Aqua Vita

In the dark and weightless space,
my home is sheltered
from an unforgiving world
as yet unknown; as time and motion
hold it’s breath……just for me.

I am a miracle of cell sufficiency, yet
by the knotted cord, she binds me to
her mother’s hopes, and loving expectation.
Through pulsing turbulence,
she whispers “come.”

As *REM sinks into tranquil sleep
within the muggy pond of nurture
which confines, constrains;
my aqua vita spills, gushes out
in primal force:
she strains, I weep. she grunts, I toil,
bearing forward to a tender meeting
with the singer of the songs
who gives me birth.
I feel her salty tears of life
upon my wrinkly skin…
and in a heartbeat,
water tolls the sorrow
of a watery end.

REM =rapid eye movement


2 Aqua Morte

Death enters in,
yet ‘life’ soars
in weightlessness,
all pain extinguished.
This sagging,
lifeless form
is but a ‘shade’
of much loved,
well worn landmarks,
sites of love’s caress
and sweetest kiss

Obscene and probing,
the canula violates
the flacid inert body,
still warm soft and pliant.
Internal fluids, blood, urine -
all the rest, quit; through orifices
great and small as one last tear
slides slowly down his sweet
and careworn face in silent tribute,
and as it leaves, we share a
moment till eternity.

The temple priest

Hiroki was our friend.
We introduced him to the surf at Crescent Head
and watched him nearly drown in the addictive foam.
His inexperience of waves surprised us.
Later, on the beach, he retched and lay
and let the sun dry him to the bone,
his enthusiasm for wetness spent.

Fast forward some years and I’m looking
at an image on the internet.
Hiroki faces the camera beside the garden he tends.
No water here. No tides.
He stands undrowned in a sea of sand,
not missing the swell. Rake in hand,
he creates safe shallows around islands of rock.

Does he remember the assault of the sea
the concrete waves
the passion of drowning?
Landlocked, does he dream of an ocean
formed by ebb tides and the moon?

Having lost his innocence of breakers,
does he crave the violent ocean depths
where currents rule and lovers drown?


Cathy McCallum

Water Words for Kym and Ian

Water that we have to drink,
Water we pour down the sink,
Water in the washing machine,
The water that we’ve used has been.

We waste it each and every day,
We exploit it in such a wasteful way,
But do we ever think to say,
Thanks to the gods who make it stay.

Now what, I ask you, can we do,
To save ourselves from the coming stew,
We will find ourselves so quick bereft,
That such little water we have left.

There’s water waste in every home on earth,
You’d not think there’s ere a dearth,
But just you wait my friends and see,
Until we have to guzzle someone’s filtered pee!

Oh! We’ll moan to him oh high,
When this wasteful world runs dry,
We’ll beg and beg, oh give us some,
It’s the water that we crave for dear ol’ chum.

Not to you, you holy roman pope,
You’re such an aqua silly dope,
You didn’t bring a drop to share, and
Your half a million mates they didn’t care.

For all the water they slurped and spilled,
Down all the gullets they with our aqua filled,
So now dear popie we have an Aussie dry,
You can clearly hear our farmers cry.

Out loud for help from old man Murray,
To send that flow in such a hurry,
But problem is, you see, ol’ mate,
They’ve shut up tight that old sluice gate.

Yet somewhere out beyond the great divide,
It’s hiding there, there is no doubt,
It’ll come one day with a vicious clout,
To flood the plains and land about.

The parched and dusty trampled ground,
We have battered without a halting sound,
No words of ‘wait’ or ‘woe’ did I wish to say,
Not thinking there would ever come that fateful day

When water would be such a scarce and precious drop,
That new charges, oh so high, we’ll have to cop,
But now the time, my wasteful friends, is nigh,
For all of us, to turn a leaf and keenly try

Another way to save that liquid cache,
From fast disappearing into ash,
Put on you thinking caps me hearty friends,
Get all those buckets and other odds and ends.

Then gather every drop you can,
That takes a fancy to fall into your pan,
And save it, crikey! for money or for love,
For it’s all the water you’ll ever gather from up above.

If not the world will surely come undone,
Then all these Water Words that I’ve begun,
Will shrivel up beneath that burning sun,
And make this verse not worth the fun

I had when writing couplets oh so grand,
For in my hurry to complete them here I stand,
Before you all in angst and trepidation,
Waiting for your grand applause and the jubilation

You would share in a tremendous burst,
For such a flow to quench our poetic thirst,
Of all ExStanza’s hopes on what oughta,
Be written here for Kym and Ian’s requested Water.


Adrian Kavanagh
Sunday, August 03, 2008

ExStanza's Blog

We have a Blog for the ExStanza folk
Been set up by some Irish bloke
Prepared with care and put to rights
‘Twill be much better than other sites

Around the traps and on the net
All you scribblers can have a bet
To see what comes from creative thirsts
And other sorts of poetic bursts

So do you best and damn the lot
What you write will hit the spot
So type herein a new creation
Go now and work without hesitation.

For all the world would love to see
What ExStanza’s board can come to be
With verse aplenty for examination,
Each and every word writ in trepidation.

Be fearless of any half-baked crit
Their words, my friends, are a load of….
Rubbish, it really is a well known fact
We will mock you with the utmost tact.

This ExStanza Blog is to enjoy
Why, do you think we would employ
Some crazy half-cocked poet’s time
To make a page that’s too sublime?

So, in time to come read all the hallowed pages
You better know they’ll be here for ages
That one and all can share the glory
Of Bill and Adrian’s hoped for story

From this day forth you will see in it grow
ExStanza’s furrows that we few sow
With words of love and loss and more
This Blog will surely open up the door

To many lines of hoped for verse
If not then this idea’s a curse
Upon the poor old sod who thought
To many poets he had brought

A new way to explore with ease
The words with which they hope to tease
And place before their comrades true
Some excellent verse for me and you.