Booranga Writers Centre
Writing - Poetry
Selected Poems
- I Have To Work At Myself - by Derek Motion
- Dead To The World My Body Was Sleeping by Alison Eastley
- Touch Lines by Felicity Lehmann
- Is There Any News? by Graham Wood
- Termite by Graham Wood
- Policy Launch by Graham Wood
I Have To Work At Myself by Derek Motion
(almost hypertense what with cultural reports
& consequently there is writing, reading &
viewing (this new ‘easier & kinder’ television format
keeps me awake too (you, too tired to talk
(i am also struggling with the web memory is:
a context driven map: but the instances almost random
(preconfigured strands light up / others die though
like the weather surrounding a first kiss, something
ostensibly still present as synaptic datum)
(your sleep is as passive as allegiance.
impressions are only a game now (but i am close
to solving things i am close like a really close thing:
your pyjamas or the moon not a care / the air thins
as the years relate&separate
(intensity isn’t what it used to be
poems about the work (the effort at me)
are steadily posting the results (&
there is need of this – something to prove
at each point in the career (the most potent of lives
to examine whenever we really talk (maybe next wednesday)
i have to work at myself
Dead To The World My Body Was Sleeping by Alison Eastley
except it wasn't my body, it was yours
which is to say I realised we
weren't together, that this has nothing
to do with a Patti Smith song.
You didn't like her lyrics.
You preferred something you could wear tight
jeans from the hedonistic 80's
which made it difficult to suffer
so you doctor-shopped until your blood
pressure dropped your pulse
into transparent
silent spaces filling the room
with knowing old habits die
hard when you turned to me and cuddled in
as if this was our beginning
and not the end.
Touch Lines by Felicity Lehmann
I went out with a footy player once,
not that we did it during the footy season.
Well, they don't, do they ?
At least that's what he used to say.
when we got together of a Monday.
There's no training of a Monday, see,
'cos they're too sore.
They're just supposed to lay around
and do nothing.
So that's what he did.
He used to put his arms around me, mind,
and call me his little "chip and chase,"
but if I started making a move
he'd tell me I was inside the ten metres
and make me back right off.
I didn't mind really. Not then.
I just reckoned we'd have a real hot session
in the Sin Bin when the season was over.
That's until they brought in that comp -
the summer one with the funny jumpers.
That was a bit offside.
That's our time. Us women's.
I gave him a miss then.
I mean, who wants to go out
with a Man in Season?
Is There Any News? by Graham Wood
The French King on his short last walk
with guards and gaolers at his side –
was worried less by his coming end
than the loss at sea of his grand design.
No clutch of courtiers round him then,
no word returned for several years –
the last despatch from Botany Bay
before the troublesome coup occurred :
“A last wish, Countrymen, if you choose …
Is there any news of La Perouse?”
Termite by Graham Wood
Like a termite
time gnaws away
starts to eat us
quickly gathers pace
chews
and spits us at the universe
It nibbles north time
against gravity
through feet legs genitals
stomach
heart larynx eyes head
all they mean falling away
sloughing off until
at end there is nothing
no thing –
not hinge
or screw
Feet go first
and walking kicking fate
swimming against tide
and streamflow
Then legs
our essence now
upon the earth like lizards
no towers
to push us heavening
Genitals then wet
hard against hope with them
succour, slew of smiles blast
of warm stars exploding no more
in joy or betrayal
Stomach then solidity and strength
ample meals laden tables
hunger now full at bay
beyond the world fold
Next the heart uncharted
on open ground falls prey
feels itself consumed but can
no longer bleed nor yearn nor break
Larynx then and the need
to sing and shout
rage against the dying … but cords
fray dumbstruck
Eyes and ears next the sound
of darkness falling the long night
we all curl up in drawing down
cloaking
souls alone
And in the end
nothing
but the spark of thought
before the moment
when light dies becomes
again darkness like
the start
Termite time turns south
then
begins again
to remake
another world another
fear of death
Policy Launch by Graham Wood
From the front of the ‘Four Seasons’ room
across the faded green of winter carpet,
a policy spring begins to bloom.
Coloured overheads too small to read
shine like sunlight on the room’s front wall.
Speakers drone in monotone above
the nodding heads of invited guests,
reciting frameworks and guiding principles.
How best to pollinate minds drifting
from the bright petalling of policy?
The man from the Institute begins with a joke
but soon falls into somnolent step,
sowing the policy context on winter ground.
From tiny holes, the policy itself spills seed.
In the background, glasses chink;
canapés and finger sandwiches
sprout from the kitchen on silver trays.
At the last, after formal blessings
from a Minister and senior bureaucrats,
new policy, like a shaky lamb,
goes forth into the world.