SuperHero - Jeff Fleming

SuperHero

it’s not the boots
that draw me

thigh high
though they may be

studded, spangled
with stars

nor is it
the mystic bracers

encircling
your righteous wrists

their glimmer
and shine not enough

your fluttering cape
snapping to attention

the golden
garland wreathed

through your hair
with such heroic flair

mirrored
in tiny hoops

through each ear
these captivate, enthrall

but alone are not
dynamic enough

to entice me,
nor the strength

of your countenance,
the mighty

purpose of your
gaze, though hypnotize

it may, something
other is your power

the naked weakness
you try in vain

to cloak
draws the villain

in me from
his veiled lair

Jeff Fleming
http://nibblepoems.wordpress.com/

Kenotic Remembrance - Matthew Hall

Kenotic Remembrance

white thought

coalescing

close / artless / feint parameters

vis-à-vis aphasia

the ruined code of captive architecture

sequence reliance

missing elements [∞]

the resonant line



ontological patterns of red dirt

or granite, or distant regard

grotesque mechanics

in fields of home



lechery in the distance of negative freedom

on edgeless overlays / palimpsest / dimension

stagnant between the adjoining image

a compound enclosure of horizon / instance /

a scream which bears it teeth

and then recedes

Matthew Hall
http://www.cordite.org.au/poetry/matthew-hall-polyvalent

Karl Marx Drowns His Sorrows, 1871 - Justin Lowe

Karl Marx Drowns His Sorrows, 1871

You will no doubt appreciate
the irony, Freddy
it was never to my taste,
as you well know, but
I live in a perpetual state of it
for you, I think, to either
qualify or quantify, God knows...

either way it is ironic, no?
that it should be here
in this dank Brixton flat
I finally eliminate grey from the world

Jenny hovers in the hallway
afraid to come in
we speak like this
her face veiled in twilight
hours days years...

this oppressive London twilight
it seems she lives there
as though sensing I am
the butcher of her world
this grey London world
storms in a million teacups

I could cover a hundred pages like this

please mail me ten pounds, Freddy
and I will send you my notes
my life here is this mountain of paper
like the soot that blackens my windows
ashes of how many cities?

Justin Lowe
(from 'Glass Poems' 2006)
http://www.bluepepper.blogspot.com/

Outside Centrelink - Jane Williams

Outside Centrelink

among the lunch hour execs catching a few rays
a young man with cyclonic eyes aware only of this
fast becoming another day without and what to do
about it breathing through clenched fists the trigger
for anything more taking the usual form
an absentminded brush from a suit filing back
into the system that has failed him yet again or this
(you had to be there) sunlight bouncing off silver
buckled shoes tempting as a free lunch unleashing
weeks of P's and Q's honed into the heels of his
own redundant work boots as he sprints jumps
lands hard on target then simply walks lighter now
uninterrupted steps through parting briefcases it isn't
the stuff of revolutions but on a good day it might
wipe the patent leather smiles from our faces

Jane Williams
http://walleahpress.com.au/FR36Williams.html

Untitled - Brooke Linford

Untitled

After a long time
of being still
he begins to crackle

I can hear
his mind tick
see him kneel
in his robe

maybe
finally
he can call off the search.

Brooke Linford
http://www.holland1945.net.au/

In Translation - Amelia Walker

In Translation

This language is a borrowed dress
I put on,
but never truly wear.

It is functional enough:
hides what must be hidden,
enables me to blend into streets and supermarket aisles.
Still I know -perhaps others can tell-
it is not mine.

It hangs baggily in some places,
affords no movement in others;
is patched mismatching colours -legacy
of countless past wearers.
It has been taken in,
taken out, torn and soiled,
sewn up and let down.
No matter how much I wash it
the fabric is flavoured with moments that are not mine:
spilled drinks and cigarettes,
perfume and sweat,
a million mixed meanings,
minefields for misinterpretation.

Still I walk around, wrapped in this language:
foreign as it is, I know no other.

Secretly, though, I pick at its frays,
trying to imagine what could be
if this language and I were to unravel
into nakedness,
into silence.
Without words there are no rule books,
without words there are no lies.

Amelia Walker

(first appeared in The Mollusca Chain)

http://www.freewebs.com/ameliawalker/index.htm

Tourist Strip Poems - Graham Nunn

Tourist Strip Poems

1. The same old people
walking along the
same old skyline

2. A shell in the window
listening to the waves

3. Ghosts of the Yugambeh
people selling artefacts
in the avenue

4. Tomorrow's sand
waiting in the bilges

5. A seagull deafened
by concrete
on all sides

6. Clouds of sandflies
rise to neon calligraphy

7. The night sky's excesses
pour into
wakefulness

8. Streets of homeless;
suburbs of living dead

Graham Nunn
http://grahamnunn.wordpress.com/