Happy New Year
from the
Tasmanian
Europa Poets
Old Man Sitting On The Beach
Old man sitting on the beach;
Old man sitting on the beach,
Not thinking of his decrepit form
But of the physique of his youth.
Hearing the laughter of coupling youth,
he closes his eyes to see
his Venus and himself frolicking in the sea.
He then sees her sedate smile
and innocent, seductive eyes,
as they rush in haste to the valley of the
sand dunes
onto a soft carpet of pigface flowers,
soft like their youthful flesh
as they unite in rhythmic harmony and become
one.
It was on this day that the seed
of their first-born son was sown
and for four decades, he and his Venus
returned
to the site to re-enact their first moments
of ecstasy;
Even though she is now deceased,
he is glad of those memories
as he wipes the tears from his eyes.
He opens them and thinks how lucky he was,
unlike his comrades in the war,
to live and to have such cherished memories.
Even though to many,
he is just a decrepit old man sitting on a
beach.
© Judy Brumby Lake
So Again, We Comment
I don’t need a template to animate my heart
to be nothing discreet. There’s no underneath.
I do not beseech - their own, to each.
But this is not what we teach.
Society, a production line
Some face
For that you’ve misplaced.
You order online an identity.
You call me but what is this? Model 2013.
She’s a kit including charms of illusion.
Flaws? She can prune them - all…
Cut and paste in
monochrome
You forge yourself...undone...a clone...a clown:
You mime, perform this act...a tragedy.
And hearts compact
like retreating dendrite
stalagmites in the cold dark,
in the cave behind your eyes where you hold
yourself prisoner, where you hide behind a mask
of your hypocrisy and fear…that maybe, in your
quest to be your own, these are but words society
has stitched onto your tongue, branded;
Like a newborn with a tattoo.
And so, you land once again with that impossible
Question in this dizzying, disorientating loop…
“Who are you?”
© Dripping Ink (Lauren Hay)
ThIs
Is Your Life
On
the stage an object,
And
it was a subject,
Applause,
applause!
“This
is your life!”
In
the forest once was my wife,
A
carver smiled,
In
his hand a photo of
a
tall stately cedar tree,
“Couldn’t
make it today,”
written
on the bark,
“Remember
me,”
A
neat pile of
beautiful
perfumed wood,
Glue
in a jar,
Beside
the little jar,
Latches,
locks, keys and screws,
The
crowd applauds
the
huge perfumed box
so
proudly and even thought
it
smiled,
On
the stage...
©
Yvonne Matheson
Life
Life
is an adventure,
Full
of many twists and turns;
So
you need to be a good dancer!
Life
is full of surprises both pleasant
and
unpleasant. If you have an
unpleasant
experience you need strength
to
get you through to a better place.
Be
grateful for the pleasant experiences
you
have. You can cherish those
memories.
Try
to banish the unpleasant ones and
not
dwell upon them. If life is a dance,
then
it’s important to stay on your feet!
©
Cathy Weaver
Paper Love
The day we met, you told me you were born in Iran
And you described your childhood there -
I was utterly charmed by you and that very night
I dreamt you were my prince and I your princess,
And for me you built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
As I so missed the hills and valleys of my beloved Persia.
There were fig, quince, walnut, date, pear,
And all manner of trees and aromatic plants
Growing in ascending terraces, among great overhanging rocks
And deep, watered crevices -
But no archaeological evidence has ever been found of our
gardens,
So was it real - were you real?
Or did my dream surpass reality?
The modern-day you found me in an Australian café and we “talked”
For many months after you returned to your distant home -
I didn’t expect anything from you,
But when you began to sign your messages with love and many kisses,
I wondered what was in your heart.
I thought finally I should respond and sent you one lone kiss
At the end of my reply -
And then you disappeared!
Did I contravene the rules of your culture, your strict religion?
Was I too forward?
Where are you, my Persian prince?
You and my dream have vanished,
So was this only ever -
“Paper Love”?
© June Maureen Hitchcock Dec. 5, 2013
We blow hot and cold – with our jobs, with relationships and most
especially with the weather. That’s right, the weather!
Here we are in glorious summer – sunshine, cool breezes, picnics,
barbecues, slipping into Elastine bathers for a dip in the sea or the pool.
Holidays at the shack or in the campervan (and the caravan) or gone fishing on
a placid lake, or simply boating for pleasure.
Just relaxing, wonderful holidays! Great life – great Aussie life!
But God is it hot! Slip, slop, slap and wear a hat. The earth is baked dry,
livestock is suffering, veges are shrivelling up. How we need some rain, some
blessed rain! In other words, we blow cold in summer. It’s all too much – sweat
and sunburn.
So when the last of the summer wine has been drunk, we think about
rekindling fires for winter. God, it’s so cold and wet! And rain, rain, rain!
If only there was some warmth in the sun! We blow hot in winter because we’ve
forgotten how great it was in summer.
Are we ever satisfied? Answer: No, we’re not. It’s never just right!
Long summer evenings become ho-hum – will it ever get dark? Short
winter nights too terrible to cope with – if only we could sit outside right
now but it’s premature night!
The doors are shut, shut all right, because only some like it hot (that
could be a movie title) and some like it cold (no movie title in that!)
Run for the shade! Run for the burning log! Run for our lives!
Re-arranged
Proud staff, high,
And there she lie,
Of purple hue,
And she knew,
A dog barked
by the car, parked,
As if in warning,
Beware the morning!
Her world has changed,
This body re-arranged.
© Michael Garrad November 2013
Hearing Aids
She said, “I’ve noticed lately, dear,
that sometimes your hearing fails.”
He said, “No, I don’t want to go,
I’m sick and tired of clearing sales!”
“Oh dear, that isn’t what I said,
your hearing’s getting worse.”
“It’s just that I don’t want to go
and I am not being perverse!”
“You really do need hearing aids
before you drive me crazy!”
“I told you, I don’t want to go
and I am not being lazy!”
Eventually she managed
to get him to a hearing test
and as she had suspected
his ears weren’t the best.
Yet, fitting up with hearing aids
he was far from being humble;
“Since we went to see that specialist
he’s cured how you used to mumble!”
© Pete Stratford
Joe Lake’s View
“It’s coming,” we say, “like Christmas.” We
mean the next one; always there is a next one until we die as the world turns
and we sit on this decaying star like flies.
The
Europa Poets Anthology 2013 is selling slowly.
I don’t believe that most Tasmanians are
bogans with tattoos who wear Ug boots with definitive pride in their ignorance.
This is an island of much perspicacity and as long as we sell minerals to
China, we’ll all continue to drive our SUVs, watch TV and play footy.
I
believe that the problem with poetry is that education is condescending by
throwing away structure and discipline. Why? Well, what all the great poets
have brought us are two world wars and the death of millions. Now we don’t walk
in step but let our inner animal run free, which may be the way to go, or is
it? All religions are poetry: Joseph Smith, the writers of the Bible, Mohammed,
the people who believe in dreams. Alexander Pope said that those dance easiest
who have learnt to dance; at the moment, we hop up and down and wriggle our
arms or bodies to the beats of our hearts.
Sonnet
We’re sitting on the edge of our demise,
Where one, afraid of heights, should never
be.
One stares into the void with frozen eyes
As darkness spreads across, our home, the
sea.
There, through the curtains of the clouded
night,
One wishes for the moon and stars to see
That they may bring and shine a tempting
light
For us to wriggle back into the sea.
But when one looks towards the stars,
there’s calm,
We hold our breaths that they may show the
way
We tighten, then relax our will as balm
Where suddenly a focus may take sway.
The brain may be a quaint construction’s
game:
I sink therefore I aim - is not the same.
© Joe Lake
Fear Of Darkness A serial novel by Joe Lake.
(So far: Julie meets
Susan, who is from five hundred years in the future. She gives Julie a ring to
travel in different parallel universes. Julie turns the ring and journeys
through space and time with John, her husband. Susan appears later as a
hologram and threatens them. Julie refuses to listen when their campervan
begins to shake violently. John tries to file the ring off Julie’s finger. The
campervan begins to rock and objects fly about. Julie is hit by an object and
John drags her out of the van.)
Meanwhile, in
another part of Burnie, Tammy, Julie’s daughter, shook her head, and then took
out her pocket calendar and counted the days to her next painting exhibition.
Julie, her mother, acted as her manager and had filled out the entry form for
TASART, the Tasmanian arts prize that Tammy wanted to enter. “Oh, well, people
seemed to like my pallet-knife paintings of Tasmanian scenes,” she thought. The
wonderful thing with acrylics and the knife was that one could work at a fast
rate and needn’t wait until a layer of paint had dried; also, the paintings
looked mosaic-like with their swirling applications of impasto paint which made
them come alive and much in demand. Normally she would plan each composition
but with a number of photographs in front of her, she would construct a
passable landscape with a few strokes of the pallet knife to be executed quickly, if necessary.
As she looked out of the window at the
overcast sky, now that it was late spring and still only 12deg. C., summer
would appear suddenly for blossoming trees were splattering their colour and
perfume outside in her garden. She sighed and then nodded to herself and said
aloud, “At least it’ll be warm soon and then the paints will dry even more
quickly. I hope, for mum’s sake that the buyers in Hobart aren’t going to be
too fussy.”
But just before she could make
arrangements and work out how many cups of coffee it would take to finish all
these paintings, Tammy’s mum rang to tell her that Joe, her adopted brother,
had just returned from the mainland where he had travelled in the warmer
climes, up north, as a “tattooed nomad” all through the Tasmanian winter and
had now come back to spend the summer at their house in Burnie while her mum
would be off to Devonport.
(To be continued next month)
Happy
New Year
from the
Tasmanian
Europa Poets
The Tasmanian Europa Poets: Secretary, June
Maureen Hitchcock, treasurer, Peter Stratford. Committee: Vi Woodhouse, Mary
Kille, Joe Lake (publisher), Judy Brumby-Lake. The editor, Michael Garrad,
accepts responsibility for any comment in this issue and reserves the right to
edit accordingly. The Tasmanian Europa Poets gratefully acknowledge the
assistance of Bryan Green, MHA, in the production of this gazette. This
publication may be photocopied for educational purposes as under the Copyright
Act.
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