You love
The difference is
I do not want to be known for
Only my sexuality
My sex life is private
As is yours
I seal my commitment
As you do yours
But yours is accepted as
Real yet
Mine is denounced as
Frivolous
Unnecessary and
Unjust?
© Sher’ee Furtak Ellis
He was the only one
walking down the street
in the first dusk
looking for his wife.
Curfew hour
sirens screamed
bombs falling near.
Exploding stars.
His steps dissolving in asphalt
Thoughts taking him back
Their happiness framed on the wall
his wife in white
sitting small
he
above her
protective, tall.
A dog barks
at the door
left ajar
drawn curtains
dimmed lights,
unknown men
pulling apart
dark plaits of hair.
She danced naked
from table to table
and offered her husband
what was left.
© Jelena Dinic
I walked down the steep hillside track,
following the path worn by centuries,
stepping carefully because of my load.
Looking out across the valley
where my family and the others
had once farmed together in harmony.
The black birds wheeling in the sky.
Dipped down, again and again,
to the newly turned fields.
Where old ideas, once buried deep,
had been brought to the surface
by the furrows.
I hitched up my heavy pack for the final time
and rounded the corner.
Towards the smoke of the blacksmith.
For the forge work previously agreed.
For him to beat
my ploughshare into a sword.
© John Brydon
In the fairy story
the fate of the wolf
depends on how scared of him
the children are.
He may have…
impersonated their grandmother,
huffed away their house,
nipped them with his big teeth,
or blown their friends to pieces on a sunny July day.
His fate is proportionate:
He may be…
drowned in the cooking pot,
hounded by dogs,
he may meet the arrow of a brave huntsman,
or take a headshot in the cool of a Pakistani dawn.
© John Brydon
I need a way of saying
that doesn’t say anything at all
that hides a fact under a mountain
where no-one will see
or think to search.
I need soft curtains of words
I’ll never open,
pools of words so beautiful to gaze upon
but never swim in,
the doubtful can drown…
I need words that are
definite, precise, and promise much
and don’t embed themselves in anybody’s mind.
I don’t need poetry.
© M Reichardt
Australia, I gave you my heart and you broke it. It’s over between us. This is not about me it’s about you. You’ve changed.
Australia I came to you with nothing, and now I’m something. Why am I not sure I made the right choice? I was a socialist when I was young and I’m not sorry. I marched in the streets. I waved placards. I sang The Internationale. I thought we would grow closer as we got older, but Australia we’ve grown apart.
Australia why do you insist on draping another country’s flag over your shoulder? What is it with you and America? You do realise you’re in the southern hemisphere don’t you?
Australia why do you have a third world country living right inside your belly?
Australia take me to your leader. No. Cancel that request. It’s clear you don’t have any leaders.
Australia why do you let shit for brains shock jocks rule your intellectual life? Why are your businessmen such macho pricks? When will you come out of the closet?
Australia when will you free David Hicks?
Australia I feel nostalgic for Paul Keating. Christ, I’m worried I might even be feeling nostalgic for Malcolm Fraser and Robert Menzies.
Australia, if you were on the psychiatrist’s couch, I think you would be labelled ‘psycopathic’, lacking in empathy for anyone earning less than $150,000 a year. Australia I am being serious. What are we going to do about this, and don’t tell me she’ll be right ?
Australia it occurs to me that maybe you’re not Australia at all. Maybe George W was right, and you’re really Austria. You’ve certainly been exhibiting some Teutonic tendencies of late. Maybe I’m really Australia. I’m talking to myself yet again. Hell, I’m scared – my extremities are about to be colonised by hordes of desperate, dark skinned people. They’re coming to put a mosque on every street corner, to force our women to cover their faces, to impose Sharia law. Australia this is the impression I get from your media. Is this correct?
Ok Australia, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. You can be Australia again. I’m too small for the job anyway. Seriously Australia, you need to make some changes. I’m prepared to do my bit. I’ll put my straight shoulder to the wheel. I’ll give up beer, watching football and staying out late, if you’ll give up shock jocks, spineless politicians and forelock tugging to far off countries. That seems fair to me.
Australia do we have a deal?
© Mike Hopkins
And if you like to hear Mike Perform this poem why not click on his blog below for a recent REBELSLAM! performance of Australia
You can also read Mike’s poetry in New Poets 17, published in 2011 by Wakefield Press. For a copy to be sent to your home please contact FSP at this website. Cost $22.00 (includes p&p) or buy a copy at our next FSP meeting in February 2012.
Young Arabs swarm against the gathering storm,
desperate bodies, bloodied, hurl against Dictators' tanks.
He scrapes his father's tufts of hair and bits of brain to bury,
brother, lover, friends, all dead,
lives smashed confronting censorship and guns,
a terror now so real and bred with Face book words-
the chants for freedom drown the screams of pain.
I blank the television screen, tears in my eyes,
walk into the grey and cool outside,
watch clouds tumble across the sky,
listen to the grieving sea.
I stand among a hundred dragonflies
that soar-up, between, above, side and back-
dragonflies, defiant against the wind, hover;
iridescent, transparent wings whirring, they
dart like light, the thousands of tiny lenses
of their eyes detecting all moving things.
Symbol to humans of clear vision,
its adult life a few brief weeks once
emerging from its larval skin,
with no sting, no bite to harm-
the dragon fly whirrs toward the sea
unaware of the threat to its extinction.
I visualize young Arabs flying
with the freedom of the moment.
Their metamorphosis complete.
© Tess Driver