A friend, Jerie Leep, posted this on her facebook profile, a variation (and vast improvement) on my poem An Ode to my Past.

Variation on a Mark William Jackson poem:

poetic duplicite lines
tides high and low

what is one without the two
life existing subjectively

stand fall
again
lives stall and fail subjectively

can the joyless fabricate
lines of contentment
long lines
transcend
ecstasy rising
ecstasy resting

gone
a line
entangles you
in the past

parting
once
the line held us
held what could not hold

lines broken
lines connected

- JK Leep

Sean M Whelan‘s Love Don’t Live Here Anymore is my pick, an incredible single poem chapbook wonderfully illustrated by Melbourne artist Dyana Gray.

I hope you can click over to have a read and hopefully contact Sean for a copy, I’m sure you’ll love it.

Sean M Whelan - Love Don't Live Here Anymore

The poem was inspired after reading the news item ‘Great successor’ visits body of Kim Jong-il, thinking how sad it should be when a son visits the body of his father, thinking about children as blank canvasses on which we paint our beliefs; every child is a wonder, and how they grow is up to us.

Hope you can click over for a read.

In the interim I thought I’d dress up this very average poem (actually it’s a ‘piss-take’ about people’s perception of poets and poetry) with links to my favourite recent blog posts.

Once Walked Alone Out Early One Day

Once walked alone out early one day,

not the cruellest month but the start of May,

when a stranger approached with a manner so gruff,

stopped dead in his tracks and bade me “enough!”

‘Dost though write the poems?’ he said to me,

what business of his I could not see,

so I turned my head to continue my walk,

but he halted me once more, pursued like a hawk,

“dost write the poems?” he started to shout,

and I knew that no course could turn him about,

“Yes, I write the poems, what is it to you?”

The man shook his body in his humorous pursuit,

then up on a soapbox he started to mimic,

‘bout a man from Nantucket or some limerick,

“how wise you are,” I said to he,

“so cultured in art, so fine of degree.”

for poets know more than to entertain men,

whose soul would be splintered at the sight of a pen,

‘tis for fortune and fame that men may aspire,

but the poet must rest in the shadows of higher

aspirations that one day someone may recite

one line from a poem, like an orchard for one bite.

In response to comments received on The Night Santa Died, and comments I’ve received in the past regarding the tone of my poems.

An Ode to my Past

Every poem is both good and bad,

as any man is both moral and wrong,

all is subjective,

from where we stand

and how our lives fall.

I’d love to write happy poems

but what control would that grant.

So, an ode to my past;

you are a part

as you are now apart,

once you held me

as I now hold you,

on white

hoping for air.

A Christmas poem, of sorts. I think it means that the best gift is a happy home.

The Night Santa Died

I remember the night Santa died,

the realisation that my parents lied,

though this has paled into insignificance now,

since I learned that lies filled their wedding vows.

Image courtesy of ClipartPal

I hope you can click over and have a read, and I really hope the review convinces you to take the next step and buy the collection. Alec Patric is a friend of mine but that didn’t sway the review in any way as I was under no obligation to write it; Alec is one of my favourite writers and I feel strongly about this collection.

Like dropping a brick

into a still pool,

not to read the ripples,

just to hear the splash –

crash, crash, drop the ash,

the I’s have reached the heavens,

the heaven’s caught the cash,

amassed a small fortune

with which to barter souls,

but now the story’s getting old,

and time will run its virtues

as desert nights turn cold,

my Iraq, mice attack,

I’m sorry for your story,

now too silent. Repose.

Copies of Windmills can be obtained by emailing words@deakin.edu.au

For writers, submissions for issue 9 close 1st February 2012.

As always, I will post Removal here after 3 months exclusive rights. However, since it’s been such a long time since I posted a current poem of mine here, immediately after I hit ‘publish’ on this post I am going to post a recent work called Like Dropping a Brick, which is a study in futility. I hope you’ll read on.

I thought it would be better if I set her up with her own space. I hope you can jump over and have a read, maybe follow? leave a comment?

Sonia’s work can be followed at http://soniaschivellajackson.wordpress.com/

Her first poem is Nothing but Silence