To blast it out of me – I would die with the blast, some small speck of me remain, fearless, cruising on every possibility, open-eyed, without that soul caving in, without a hundred deaths frog-marching me along to where and when they never say. To blast it out of me, the fear that chokes and … Continue reading
After each voyage has crumbled into ephemera I return to the house and its quay; I circle the edge before skittling off to the suburbs. Come to me, I cry, crass plastic and screaming sail, shining, golden city slumped and seeping tune! This evening my heart’s emptier than a harbour. I gulp down … Continue reading
Up Broome-way recently, I was reading Philip Hodgin’s early poems about cancer and thinking back to my own fights with it, wondering what the poems might have been like had I started writing my own by the time it all began. I put his book down to pick at a nail and found a huge, … Continue reading
do you know do you want to know my people? we’re the ones sitting the hairy legged gnomes sitting by the o cean paddocks sipping moisture from salty scars blee ding the in terminable drift sourcewards opens the wet eye so we can leave the bushy one c losed losen up read currents swells … Continue reading
Off the bus, it’s all light breeze and sea birds, a bit of fish smell, but mostly open sky and an air than lifts you towards it. Later on it warms up and the whole corroding city could be gliding over the escarpment. Things occur at a distance, their sounds barely reach you. Up closer, … Continue reading
The house slow falling makes no sound Cows amble by without regard Inch by year closer to the ground You look away, pull out your working card Cows all around eat on without regard Through the window corncobs on the floor You look away, play your working card Once running feet and laughter kept the … Continue reading
CRIMSON ROSELLA Platycercus elegans A bushfire has let its embers fall onto your back they cling there still red and black but when the light is slanting low on each feather of your stretched out wing there shines a narrow rim of green the bush begins again and grows in flight your breast curves smooth … Continue reading
Selling news and scandal jobs and dreams she sits beside and beyond the roar the ceaseless metal surge that streams in streets morning and midday holding reams of newsprint in arms that imagined more than selling news and scandal jobs and dreams drivers call or make a sign through windscreens are passed their pages … Continue reading
No wind when I push off in the canoe the water easy against the hull I paddle to the far side, past the flooded fence posts and drift watch through the reeds and grasses as the black swans teach their young, the white belly of the sea eagle a warning high in the woollybutts then … Continue reading
It’s the way he stands nearly naked in the winter sun turning on and off the railway station tap. I have seen people look less reverent tuning Mozart. I have seen hands give coins to beggars appear nonchalant compared to the way his hands give this water to his body. Don’t tell me this is … Continue reading
This one is called Grandchild, this Happy Days, this one is Soliloquy, this is Crosby and this one—Maria Callas. Blossoms of light they stand, idle and blessed like luminaries. Soon, in her hands she will hold the spent petals, the public scents— but for a moment she pauses, lifts her head, as if some perfume … Continue reading
At dusk she walks to the lake. On shore a few egrets are pinpointing themselves in the mud. Swallows gather the insect lint off the velvet reed-heads and fly up through the drapery of willows. It is still hot. Those clouds look like drawn-out lengths of wool untwilled by clippers. The egrets are poised now—moons … Continue reading
To produce one kilogram of saffron, it is necessary to pick 150,000 crocuses Soon, she’ll crouch again above each crocus, feel how the scales set by fate, by misfortune, are an awesome tonnage: a weight opposing time. Soon, the sun will transpose its shadows onto the faces of her children. She knows equations: how many … Continue reading
Let us be gentle Tonight: When hordes Of vampires Drift away Before dawn Let me sleepwalk into your eyes Sleep deeply in my arms Breathe my indolent pulse Take the roads Off my mind- This serenity This confident yield Between strangers Is love © Jad El Hage Jad El Hage’s published works include in Arabic, … Continue reading
Dry defying fingers drop Today’s papers before me – A youth drank and bled He made the front page Dotted by the morning drizzle I’d seen him before A rocky village on his shoulders He sang out of tune: ‘I wish love was an open door I wish love was a raining rainbow’ Mad, he … Continue reading
The sky breaks like a mirror And yawns fire A Princess whores the Dragon A straw splits the river in half A pirate drowns in a stream And we stray, rolls of ricks In a storm, Locusts feed on us. Unthinkable that the babies cry The adolescents fall in love The pregnant submit to labour. … Continue reading
Let there be snow My beloved tucks her hair under a pillow of smiles Let there be snow My beloved sleeps in the open like a morning star Let there be snow My beloved shields the olive tree where the Master knelt to pray Let there be snow My beloved tames the wind – a … Continue reading
the hued emerald thickets of desire to lace fling themselves have a cold like at the vigilante this one? in the air doves i’the ask the developed world shade about life & ambitions suffer s punishment for being a lovely per son a weak friend this is not all a mass high-five or even people fatigue mum said rest dream of a in … Continue reading
Attracted to all things electrical, you passed along the way like a weird storm then returned, waxing lyrical about your adventures: the glow- worms that lit up the tropics like guide-lights on a runway; dinosaurs grumbling in their graves; the plethora of cats that scattered when you moonlighted as a monsoon. And what about those … Continue reading
The intervals between trains are shrinking, streetlights shaking — one or two blink out with every repercussion. Planes fly lower and lower, guard dogs whimper, and every so often a seismograph flutters as if to warn us that the orbits are out of whack, that waves rake the ocean floors and the hairs on the … Continue reading
Poem and Dish 