Making Sense
of the World
Mr Deem’s Year 8.3
Poetry Collection
The news media and poets have different
purposes and different ways of looking at the
world. But both seek to make sense of the world
around us through their use of language. That’s
what we explore this term.
How long does it take you to
write a poem?
It has taken me
5 years
Introduction to poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
3 months
and a day
to write this poem
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
22 daydreams
31 false starts
13 and a ½ bottles of home-made wine
10 farts
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the
shore.
10 hiccups
64 sneezes
3 long distance phone calls
But all thy want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
a day trip to Barry
91 trips to ‘The Tenby’
50 casual conversations
a daily and expensive counseling session
extensive visits to the British Museum
5 notebooks, 6 biros and a perm
and 43 assaults on people who ask
how long does it take you to write a
poem.
- by Penny Windsor
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
- by Billy Collins.
“I come from a land where poetry is like a tree which watches over man and
where a poet is a guard who understands the rhythm of this world. He
travels with history and feels the rhythm of history. By heeding this rhythm,
he realizes the gaps and distances that separate man from man. I see this
separation between men as a darkness which science cannot dispel despite
its transformative power. Only poetry can illuminate this darkness.”
This quote comes from Ali Ahmad Said, or Adonis, a Lebanese poet regarded as the
most influential poet from the Arab world. Here are a couple of his poems.
The Passage
I sought to share
the life of snow
and fire.
But neither
snow nor fire
took me in.
So,
I kept my peace,
waiting with flowers,
staying like stones.
In love I lost
myself.
I broke away
and watched until
I swayed like a wave
between the life
I dreamed and the changing
dream I lived.
Tree of Life
The tree by the river
is weeping leaves.
It strews the shore
with tear after tear.
It reads to the river
its prophecy of fire.
I am that final
leaf that no one
sees
My people
have died as fires
die – without a trace.
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
I
THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.
II
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
*
*
*
*
*
*
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
Bess
by Linda Pastan
When Bess, the landlord's black-eyed
daughter, waited for her highwayman
in the poem I learned by breathless
heart at twelve, it occurred to me
for the first time that my mild-eyed
mother Bess might have a life
all her own - a secret past
I couldn't enter, except in dreams.
That single sigh of a syllable
has passed like a keepsake
to this newest child, wrapped now
in the silence of sleep.
And in the dream I enter,
I could be holding my infant mother
in my arms: the same cheekbones,
the name indelible as a birthmark.
Lightning Tree
It’s stark white in this hard
winter light. At its base
brackish water spreads like exposed film
out through marshgrasses & paperbarksa snapped bone, it punctures the skin.
On its splintered crown
the Great Egret stretches, its knifed beak
piercing the cold blue skyan inverted lightning strike
fielding its wingsa crucifix – hesitating,
as if held by a magnet,
then dropping into flight,
dragging lightning rod legs.
The Bottlebrush Flowers
A Council-approved replacement
for box trees along the verges
of suburban roads, it embarrasses
with its too sudden blush – stunning
at first, then a burning reminder
of something you’d rather forget.
And it unclothes so ungraciously –
its semi-clad, mangy, slovenly,
first-thing-in-the-morning appearance.
And while I’ve heard it called
a bristling firelick, a spiral
of Southern Lights, I’ve also seen
honey-eaters bob upside down
and unpick its light in seconds.
The Orchardist
Orange trees cling
to the tin walls
of his home. A red
checked shirt and grey
pair of trousers hang
over the one-eyed tractor.
His oranges are small suns
and he is an astronaut
floating slowly
through their spheres
of influence.
- Three Poems by John Kinsella
Off the Map
At night headlamps dazzle
the leaves. Truck drivers
throbbing on pills
climb out of the sleep
of farm towns prim
behind moonlit lace, bronze Anzacs
dozing, leaden-headed,
at ease between wars,
and out into a dream
of apple orchards, paddocks
tumbling with mice,
bridges that slog the air,
black piers, bright water, silos
moonstruck, pointing nowhere
like saints practising stillness
in a ripple of grain.
They thunder across country
like daredevil boys
of the ‘fifties who flourished
a pistol in banks,
and rode off into headlines
and hills and into legends
that hang, grey-ghostly, over
campfires in the rain.
Now kids, barefooted, wade
in the warm, hatched tyre-marks
of country dust, the print
of monsters; cattle stare.
All night through the upland
spaces of our skull
in low gear shifting skyward
they climb towards dawn.
A lit butt glows, a beer can
clatters. Strung out
on the hills, new streets that shine
in the eyes of farmboys, cities
alive only at nightfall
that span a continent.
Nameless. Not to be found
by day on any map.
- By David Malouf
In a Time of Drought
Travelling by bus at sunset
on the Warrego Highway
the land lies blurred blue-grey
like a fugue, the smoke
from the numerous fires
drifts aimlessly, amnesiac…
The sun glowers like a furnace,
it is angry with us;
it’s too late now to look to the heavens for help;
the prophets are hedging their bets;
the psalmists have said their piece,
packed their bags and gone;
the past is as distant now as those
economic emperors ruling
from foreign palaces…
Everything is up for grabs
our luck is leaving us
and we can’t believe it
The High Mark
begins with the nod of head
or flicker-signal of fingers
and a run that gathers in
the green day and the
grey crowd that rolls on its
great humble tides
and the run is a thinking
to the ball's end-over-end parabola
that has sinews toughtensioning for the upward
leap,
hands now
eagle claws,
god's hooks, hungering
for the leather dove, the run
among mere mortal men
in time, in place, become
the leaps into heaven,
into fame, into legend
- then the fall back to earth
(guernseyed Icarus)
to the whistle's shrill tweet.
- Bruce Dawe
True Believers
For though they be punished in the sight of men,
yet is their hope full of immortality
Wisdom of Solomon
At the ground early with the trusty thermos,
Seated, if possible, behind the goals,
Rugged up against the bleakest of all weathers
- These are Solomon’s children, righteous souls,
Tried in the furnace of the world’s derision,
Whose home-ground hope is still that there they’ll see
The scoreboard (with the final siren sounding)
Registering some ultimate victory…
No torment, then, shall touch them in that moment,
The years of rank disaster seem worthwhile
- Tears will stand in the eyes of Uncle Clarry,
And flint-faced Agnes crack it for a smile,
For if faith is truly the substance of things hoped-for,
The evidence of things not seen,
Then these are they who have received the promise
As though their misery had never been.
And when their heroes, having wrought great glory
Down the centre-line and on both flank and wing,
Have clattered up the players-race and left them
Standing stunned, with throats too choked to sing
- It will seem then that, of necessity, something
Of that bright afternoon will never fade:
The seventy-metre punt, the lyric ‘gather’
Remembered ever after and replayed
On many a Windy Hill where the odds are always
Stacked against the visitors from the start
(All things are possible for the true believer,
In the fond imagination of the heart…).
Bruce Dawe
Life-cycle
When children are born in Victoria
they are wrapped in the club-colours, laid in beribboned cots,
having already begun a lifetime’s barracking.
Carn, they cry, Carn . . . feebly at first
while parents playfully tussle with them
for possession of a rusk: Ah, he’s a little Tiger! (And they are. . . )
Hoisted shoulder-high at their first League game
they are like innocent monsters who have been years swimming
towards the daylight’s roaring empyrean
Until, now, hearts shrapnelled with rapture,
they break surface and are forever lost,
their minds rippling out like streamers
In the pure flood of sound, they are scarfed with light, a voice
like the voice of God booms from the stands
Ooohh you bludger and the covenant is sealed.
Hot pies and potato-crisps they will eat,
they will forswear the Demons, cling to the Saints
and behold their team going up the ladder into Heaven,
And the tides of life will be the tides of the home-team’s fortunes
-the reckless proposal after the one-point win,
the wedding and honeymoon after the grand final. . .
They will not grow old as those from more northern States grow old,
for them it will always be three-quarter-time
with the scores level and the wind advantage in the final term,
That passion persisting, like a race-memory, through the welter of seasons,
enabling old-timers by boundary fences to dream of resurgent lions
and centaur-figures from the past to replenish continually the present,
So that mythology may be perpetually renewed
And Chicken Smallhorn return like the maize-god
In a thousand shapes, the dancers changing
But the dance forever the same – the elderly still
loyally crying Carn. . . Carn . . . (if feebly) unto the very end,
having seen in the six-foot recruit from Eaglehawk their hope of salvation.
- Bruce Dawe
The Beach
At daybreak, a jogger, indenting the wet shingle
with the cuneiform marks of his passage.
Clambering over the sullen rocks of the headland,
a boy and a long-haired dog which splashes through
the shallows, dutifully fetching
thrown driftwood.
Then a spartan swimmer, leathery from salt and sun,
braving the chill waves.
Low tide, and fisher-folk are already
burleying for worms.
Then the early lovers, honeymoon-driven, hand-in-hand,
savouring the boom of ocean, compulsive as a dance-band,
then the families: parents strolling like Egyptian priests, toddlers
staggering with seismic joy, small children
racing ahead to gather suddenly around
funny things
to be touched with a tentative toe
or mumbled over, wide-eyed (‘Mmnnh…Errhh…’), the parents
glancing sideways at each other (Worth it? Every bit of it…’).
Far out, the indistinct, appearing and disappearing
dots of surfers.
After breakfast
the crowds arrive, seeking the best spots of sand,
loaded with Eskies, blankets, rugs, towels, umbrellas, trannies,
sun-screen creams, sun-glasses, books,
the impedimenta of culture.
Life-savers man the towers now, below
the parade of fashion begins, the skin-game; from the beach-house
young bloods study form…
Under the boisterous surface of the day, the sparkle and laughter,
larger darknesses, like kelp, move in.
- by Bruce Dawe
Ode to Breakwalls
Breakwalls are like an upturned middle digit
against nature, fixed prisms surfers crave.
On common water they jostle and fidget
before tacking into waves, seeking caves.
Refraction of the swell is the attraction.
The surfboard riders voice their predilection
as the inside low tide hang glide section
barrels, before the next set provides action.
These locked rocks, this compacted cereal.
Man made refractor of the ethereal,
warping waves collapsing on flanks of banks.
Surfers paddle out as their local cranks
while off the breakwall fishermen angle
observing the scene as their lines dangle.
- by Michael Byrne
Offshore Breeze
Many summers ago
on a scallop of sand edging
the bay a mother nursed her baby
under a striped umbrella
a girl gathered shells
to hear the sea’s breath
a father swam where the water
was a deep dark blue
and a boy lolled in green shallows
on the blown-up tube of a truck tyre
the rubber smell dissolving
into memory
Waves frisked
the black ring shorewards
white legs splayed
in homage to the sun
Suddenly the breeze turned
launching the boy on his cushioned ride
out beyond the father’s stretch
out towards the deep sea channel
Mother and girl screamed
the baby squalled in a squabble of gulls
the father began his anxious trek
around the bay
returning hours later
unshaven like a shipwrecked sailor
tube around his neck footprints slurred
the boy asleep in his arms
- by Jennifer Chrystie
Break, break, break
Break, break, break
On thy cold, gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Sand-strewn Caverns
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with uncut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye . . .
- by Mathew Arnold
Municipal Gum
Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls.
Here you seem to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen –
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Altjeringa
Nude, smooth, and giant-huge,
the torsos of the gums
hold up the vast dark cave
as the great moon comes.
Shock-headed black-boy stands,
with rigid, thrusting spear,
defiant and grotesque
against that glistening sphere.
In clenched, contorted birth
black banksia agonise;
out of the ferns and earth,
half-formed, beast-boulders rise;
because The Bush goes back,
back to a time unknown:
chaos that had not word
nor image carved on stone.
Roland Robinson
THE LAST OF HIS TRIBE
He crouches, and buries his face on his knees,
And hides in the dark of his hair;
For he cannot look up to the storm-smitten trees,
Or think of the loneliness thereOf the loss and the loneliness there.
The wallaroos grope though the tufts of the grass,
And turn to their coverts for fear;
But he sits in the ashes and lets them pass
Where the boomerangs sleep with the spearWith the nullah, the sling, and the spear.
Uloola, behold him! The thunder that breaks
On the tops of the rocks with the rain,
And the wind which drives up with the salt of the lakes,
Have made him a hunter againA hunter and fisher again.
For his eyes have been full with a smouldering thought;
But he dreams of hunts yore,
And foes that he sought, and fights that he fought
With those who will battle no moreWho will go to the battle no more.
It is will that the water which tumbles and fills
Goes moaning and moaning along;
For an echo rolls out from the sides of the hills,
And he starts at a wonderful songAt the sound of a wonderful song.
And he sees through the rents of the scattering fogs
The corroboree warlike and grim,
And the lubra who sat by the fire on the logs,
To watch, like a mourner, for himLike a mother and mourner for him.
Will he go in his sleep from these desolate lands,
Like a chief, to the rest of his race,
With the honey-voiced woman who beckons and stands,
And gleams like a dream in his faceLike a marvellous dream in his face?
- by Henry Kendall
LAST OF HIS TRIBE
Change is the law. The new must oust the old.
I look at you and am back in the long ago,
Old Pinnaroo lonely and lost here,
Last of your clan.
Left only with your memories, you sit
And think of the gay throng, the happy people,
The voices and the laughter
All gone, all gone,
And you remain alone.
I asked and you let me hear
The soft vowelly tongue to be heard now
No more for ever.
For me
You enact old scenes, old ways, you who have used
Boomerang and spear.
You singer of ancient tribal songs,
You leader once in the corroboree
You twice in fierce tribal fights
With wild enemy blacks from over the river,
All gone, all gone. And I feel
The sudden sting of tears, Willie Mackenzie
In the Salvation Army Home.
Displaced person in your own country,
Lonely in teeming city crowds,
Last of your tribe.
- by Oodgeroo Noonucal
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like the thunderbolt he falls.
- by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Sweater Weather: A Love Song to Language
Never better, mad as a hatter,
right as rain, might and main,
hanky panky, not toddy,
hoity-toity, cold shoulder,
bowled over, rolling in clover,
low blow, no soap, hope
against hope, pay the piper,
liar liar pants on fire,
high and dry, shoo-fly pie,
fiddle-faddle, fit as a fiddle,
sultan of swat, muskrat
ramble, fat and sassy,
flimflam, happy as a clam,
cat's pajamas, bee's knees,
peas in a pod, pleased as punch,
pretty as a picture, nothing much,
lift the latch, double Dutch,
helter-skelter, hurdy-gurdy,
early bird, feathered friend,
dumb cluck, buck up,
shilly-shally, willy-nilly,
roly-poly, holy moly,
loose lips sink ships,
spitting image, nip in the air,
hale and hearty, part and parcel,
upsy-daisy, lazy days,
maybe baby, up to snuff,
flibbertigibbet, honky-tonk,
spic and span, handyman,
cool as a cucumber, blue moon,
high as a kite, night and noon,
love me or leave me, seventh heaven,
up and about, over and out. –by Sharon Bryan
Ooly Pop a Cow
My brother Charles
brought home the news
the kids were saying
take a flying leap
and eat me raw
and be bop a lull.
Forty miles he rode
the bus there and back.
The dog and I met him
at the door, panting
for hoke poke, hoke
de waddy waddy hoke poke.
In Cu Chi, Vietnam,
I heard tapes somebody's
sister sent of wild thing,
I think I love you
and hey now, what's that
sound, everybody looks what's . . .
Now it's my daughters
bringing home no-duh,
rock out, whatever,
like I totally
paused, and like
I'm like . . .
I'm like Mother, here hands
in biscuit dough,
her ears turning red
from ain' nothing butta,
blue monday, and
tutti frutti, aw rooty!
- David Huddle
Homage: Doo-Wop
There's so little sweetness in the music I hear now,
no croons, no doo-wop or slow ones where you could
hug up with someone and hold them against your body,
feel their heart against yours, touch their cheek
with your cheek - and it was OK, it was allowed,
even the mothers standing around at the birthday party,
the rug rolled back in the living room, didn't mind
if you held their daughters as you swayed to the music,
eyes squeezed shut, holding each other, and holding on
to the song, until you almost stopped moving,
just shuffled there, embracing, as the Moonglows
and the Penguins crooned, and the mothers looked on
not with disapproval or scorn, looked on with their eyes
dreaming, as if looking from a thousand miles away, as if
from over the mountain and across the sea, a look
on their faces I didn't understand, not knowing then
those other songs I would someday enter, not knowing
how I would shimmer and writhe, jig like a puppet
doing the shimmy-shimmy-kokobop, or glide from turn
to counterturn within the waltz,not knowing
how I would hold the other through the night
and across the years, holding on for love and dear life,
for solace and kindness, learning the dance as we go,
leering from those first, awkward, shuffling steps,
that sweetness and doo-wop back at the beginning.
- by Joseph Stroud
Dying quietly
These children die quietly;
No headlines screaming across the page,
No rage from politicians blaming others,
No mothers appearing on our screens,
Seen waving banners asking why
Did her child and forty thousands others die
Today.
The way they die is quietly,
Not for the want of a miracle cure;
Pure water, food, simple medications are all they’re needing
So proceedings will not be taken out;
Without a voice
No choice but to die
Unheard.
The words must come
From others.
- by Pat Moon
Soft Riots/TV News
6pm july 4
theyre marching on the american consulate
be / cause
theres nowhere else to go
its cold in the city wind off the water
trains on time
marching
marching for
marching for reasons
in adelaide a man takes off his coat
in melbourne a man sits down and sighs
in sydney a man changes channels
in brisbane its windy southwest change max 65
THE CAMERAMEN ARE READY
the spotlit streets
spit back cats cars
action
action
action
action
a spearhead of radicals bearing red flags urged
on and led by other students a drawing of the prime
minister was also burned a petition police wielding
batons kicked and punched 1000 independence day
ball with 99 arrested and constable green hit by
a stone & allowed to leave
I tell ya jude
you cant beat the sheriff
che che che che
che guevara
che che guevara
che che che guevara
che che guevara
che
angelic hip christ holding
bulletholes to his poems:
crucified dead & buried
after three days he didnt
rise / no rock rolled back
who live out your lives
who live out your lives
in darkness
in darkness
a match
three butts
ashes all
on a box
of pins
the police were unable to find a motive for the killing.
they suggested three alternatives:
READY
up against the wall
they pin the target
to your chest & share
your last cigarette
up against the wall
clawing at
AIM
spotlights arclight gutteral swing bark
blinding the wire ripping through your outstretched
fingers tearing at your machinegun gut gut to
shredding clothes a shirt flagged above bones the
wire flashing with the sun wire barbs gas sssh ing
when i shut my eyes its dark in my brain
zzzoooooooooooomm shot
reversed to full screen
panoramic wall
strung by the hungry prisons of
FIRE
Click
goodnight melbourne
lights out adelaide
brisbane shut your eyes
sydney
see you in the morning.
- by Richard Tipping