It comes from all directions

 

 

Rae Desmond Jones

 

 

To Garry

 

the foam on the beerglass rising

before it spills

down your chest, seeking out

your languid generous heart,

 

that smile on the flabby face of the bouncer

as he knocks the cheeky little bald guy

to the floor then kicks him

in the nuts,

 

… O yes, you leave, but

that toothless pantsless woman

in the lane lifts her dress as you cruise past

then opens her hollow mouth

& gargles

(as in a vision a 1963 chevrolet creeps

away slowly on stumps bleeding petrol

like a skewered turtle & you drop

a cigarette lighter in the trail

 

when a wave of crushed glass

rolls towards you melting

as the tarmac rips open to gurgle fire

on smouldering tonsils of

tormented love

 

 

   

 

                Self Portrait

 

A delicate sniffer of flowers

He weeps at poetry & music & bad movies.

 

He is rumoured to be a little queer,

Yet enjoys the company of women

& believes that is his business.

 

Never cared about money & is often broke,

But manages to survive (so far).

 

Worked in steel foundries three times

& found the experience significant.

 

Worked as a cleaner a clerk a factory hand

& found the experience insignificant.

 

Worked in the Commonwealth Employment

Service, when there was a CES,

& got some people jobs.

 

He would be a Marxist if he could be –

He is much too irrational.

 

He is one of the few writers to be

A mayor of anywhere &

Still succeeded in being a pain in the arse

(for authority).

 

He was significant in saving two suburbs

Which have now become gentrified,

& wonders about it.

 

He doesn’t like applying for grants

Although he regards himself as a socialist.

 

His Father worked in a mine:

He heard the earth grumble &

Never wanted to go there.

Now he wants to write something

Before he dies

That will explode.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-Portrait, with Bee

 

 

Andrew Burke 

 

 

In all this long back garden of vegetables

and blossoming roses, a fat healthy thistle grows

sturdy, spikey and green. Atop one

of three green bulbs on reaching stalks, a colour

bursts through, a colour like light purple or dark pink –

a first blossom among the green. It is so vibrant

in this autumn sunlight it attracts a bee

who lands and buzzes, turns around

to another angle and buzzes again, and repeats

this manoeuvre a few times, specifically three,

then flies off. I am standing here, watching,

as my wife talks about what we should do

to the garden, how the cat over the fence

is crapping in our vegetable patch and not covering

its own shit well enough. Wow, I say, wow,

look at this. And she turns to see me fascinated

with a thistle bush and its attendant bee.

Yes, I left it there, she comments, I know

the funny things you like, thistles and things.

 

 

 

Good Friday, 29/3/2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.gillisfineart.com

–
Samuel Gillis
Gallery Swarm, LLC
www.galleryswarm.com
galleryswarm@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the forest

 

Candida Baker

 

 

in the forest we say

listen to the silence

and

it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop

and all the time

the Rose crowned fruit dove and

the Wompoo pigeon

call to us:

wom-poo; wom-poo,

whoop-whoop; whoop-whoop,

and the Bell birds

sound their lone clear note

high above the spotted gums

and the white cockatoos,

trapeze artists of the sky,

scold us as we walk in

their forest.

 

Listen, even the butterflies

make a noise

in the silence.

 

 

 

 

 

Wind

 

Lizz Murphy

 

 

My coat hurling around my body my calves all my

doubts Hair whipped into snarls Tawny thistles

scratched into ochre flats The wind-vexed

farmhouse crouched hay-dry A single rankle of

geraniums tacked upright with a choke of chicken

wire A washed white porch My knocking plucked

away Collar and tie under overalls been-to-church

smiles His snaking hand guides me across the river