Eye to the Telescope

Eye to the Telescope is an online poetry journal that is calling for submissions for its next issue. I intend submitting some work. Unfortunately for my friends outside the Antipodes, entry is limited to poets from Australia and New Zealand.

More details here: eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html

An important announcement

Well, it has happened. Tomorrow I pick up the hardcopy of my first poetry collection, Conversations With Myself.

This is only a short run. So short, in fact, that it only has one volume - in total.

What I have done is put together a small volume of my poetry as a Mother's Day gift for my mother. It shall be spiral-bound tomorrow, ready for posting off.

It is the thought that counts, isn't it? :-)

High Street

High Street

I remember the early morning milko.
Clip clop! His horse’s hooves rang out as
its breath misted in the cold morning air.

Further back the baker also came,
his steed as brown as crusted bread.
Will that be a loaf of white today ma’am?

Dragging mum by the hand to street’s end.
Look – there – a steam train hauling grain.
Wave, just in case the driver sees us!

Pennies were no longer the currency,
but polished up with fine steel wool,
we dove for their glow in the blue-green depths.

These are some things from my past,
when I was just a fey wide-eyed child,
unsullied by life’s foul realities.

Just a few reflections from my childhood when we lived on High Street.

spider's haiku

I found this female Garden Orb-weaving spider frantically spinning a web just on dusk and managed to get a reasonable picture of it.

Rain

drumming, thrumming
percussion on a fibreglass skin
beneath which I sit
while kettledrum thunder
rolls in the distance
as rain hammers down
relentlessly

toxic black natural poisons
flooding rivers that swell,
rising against banks
gathering pace
foaming like crazed latte against levee walls
sweeping people away when the levee breaks
desperate fingers clinging to street poles
while a frog rides a snake's back to safety



Inspired by sitting beneath a fibreglass shelter during the rain while up north, Queensland suffers a staggering degree of disaster by flood. During all that, a frog was actually observed clinging to the back of a snake that was swimming to safety.

To help those affected by the terrible floods here in Queensland Australia http://bit.ly/fQdQ9n

This poem was published in the speculative fiction anthology, Masques back in 2008. I might as well share it here as well now. It was inspired by an unusual self-portrait I saw where the subject was actually hidden behind a strange, plastic mask.

Outside the frame

Hidden behind multi-coloured plastic,
shaped as molten wax -
devil’s deal to hide a world?

Eyes agape through carven holes as
bare mouth hides behind that slash.
A scream or laughing out loud?

Might you be sneering at the world
within your visored fastness of
flesh and petro-chemical bricks?

Or screaming to be freed from
plasticised alien embrace
in colours like bad acid?

Maybe it is ET’s dreams,
drawn across your human face as
beautiful, insane nebulae.

Hey – any room in there for me?

A Christmas Ode from Ross

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

And the children lay sleeping, all tucked up in their beds,

Dreams of their Christmas day loot, dancing through their fat little heads.

Mum and Dad sat up worrying, having been desperate all day,

'Cos to pay for their Christmas, a credit card bill they'd now have to pay.

It seemed a good idea at the time, all the food and presents they'd bought,

But when the bailiff comes calling, it's off to the bankruptcy court.

Upon the night breeze, from a long way away,

Hark - hear the sounds, it's the bells of a sleigh.

Gasping with amazement, everyone rushed out into the cold

And to their surprise, Santa showered them with gold.

When I say gold, I'm afraid that I really mean lead,

You see old Santa's gone mad, gone quite queer in the head.

The sleigh flew on by, the reindeer all puffed and tiring

While Santa leaned out, with a machine gun a-firing.

"Take that ya greedy bastards", he was heard to scream out,

And laughed at the corpses, lying there all mangled about.

But alas for poor Santa, he then slipped in the dark,

For as usual he was drunk - yes as pissed as a fart.

He fell down toward the roof, down through the chimney he fell,

Into a fireplace blazing bright, like the flames down in hell.

His whisky laden breath, the sparks did then ignite,

And with a roar he exploded, the flames lighting up the dark night.

So that's the end of my tale, my sad story's been told,

And it's a sign of the times, that Santa's paranoia took hold.

I had a moral to relate, when I began this grand fable,

But I forget what it was, so I'll just say ..........

Have a Merry

Christmas,

and a Happy New Year!!!