"...your muscles are an equal wisdom, that's how I will feel you tonight And yet we enclose this inside a box for fear the earth will walk away from us in disgust at our transformations..."…

....Made it into the local paper for winning a young adults poetry competition. Over a hundred entered, the theme being family and culture. Awesome! :D

http://www.csu.edu.au/go/cwc

Somewhere in the inspirational past an erudite lecturer of economics introduced me and my fellow inebriates to the maxim ‘there are lies, damned lies and statistics’, it has remained with me as a guiding light throughout my working life, so much so that, with apologies to Mark Twain [1835-1910] I often paraphrase it into support of other arguments.

I use the term argument not in a contentious way, a dispute where there is strong disagreement, but as a fact…

Colony--from Latin colonial, via colons ‘the farmer’ from colure ‘to cultivate’.

the politics of age is a nasty old sage that nature rejects

while the intellect perfects with concepts of veneration

where the pensioner accepts what’s left of mechanization beyond the range of superannuation

-where the purpose of success lies beneath the nature of regeneration, like need and want a colony of succession is established through an act of implementation,…

Partners

moving forward

Out of the mix

Into the crowd

with the plastic bits

of the finger tips

critically engaged

at this early stage

this emotional age

with the screen

the street seam

kurbing the landscape

with the bitumen strip

inside the chip

the connection

engaged

with velvet hits

the emotion fits

the limousine trips

and language tips

ribbons of…

Keep an eye out for The Southern Highlands Poetry Anthology, edited by Peter Lach-Newinsky, which is about to be released at a very affordable price in good places that believe in good poetry. Mark Tredinnick, Jennifer Compton, Peter, yours truly and a few other Highlanders and ex-Highlanders are in it. In the six poems included of mine, you'll find everything from Adolf Hitler to rice flowers. My thanks to PLN for all his vision and generosity. LJ  

The cloaked elan of a swerve, it took moon curve, foundational blue in blue, a swarm of swell, cantankerings of elation, not a personality to be seen on a wide tabularity. All that is vertigo is not cathedryllic, this numen is too vexed for spirit.



It will not be so for demons' voice hover low. This turn full of words lasts as long as the dance.



The pallour of your ethics needs the cloak. The stellar you've become requires the cloak. For…

I've just finished reading Anthony Lawrence's multifaceted fresh poetry collection 'Signal Flare' (Puncher & Wattman). It's an engrossing affair filled with darkly humorous, disturbing and poignant short stories, bird references, arresting imagery, human truths and ambiguity. He's using less punctuation and considered line breaks this time around - there's a Beat quality to it all. Anthony's lyricism always grabs me. Check it out asap, LJ. 

POST-SCORCH, 18 OCTOBER 2013

We float through a world

that's surrendered to

sepia-infused Gothicism.

Yesterday, many were handed

loss, confusion and statelessness

for all their years of hard work.

On my windscreen wiper,

a raven-dark praying mantis,

as big as the word Lord

in a hymn book,

desperately tries

to cling to air.  

LJ, 18.10.13

To celebrate Pete Spence’s birthday (30 September) Rochford Street Press is offering a discount (for today only) on his latest chapbook Kynetonbury Tales or Dog Days. The special birthday rate is $6 within Australia and $10 outside Australia. If you want to celebrate Pete’s birthday by buying this book please email us at the email address on the website…

Has anyone here read The Monkey's Mask, by Dorothy Porter?

The Monkey's Mask is a 2000 thriller film directed by Samantha Lang. It stars Susie Porter and kelly McGillis. Porter plays a lesbian private detective who falls in love with a suspect (McGillis) in the…

Working on a series of Aussie nature poems for a particular purpose... enjoying every minute of it... will reveal more soon... LJ

 With the coming of every election, confusion reigns supreme at poling booths all over the country. Each party's dedicated faithful hand out a form of instant litter known as 'how to vote cards' and the ever-growing army of floating voters ignores them.

The 'how to vote card' is a political paradox. It can be very useful when deciding how not to vote, despite the unconscionable vitriol spewed out daily in the gutter press of the Rupert the Dirty…

A POEM FROM A HUME HIGHWAY STRETCH BETWEEN BELANGLO AND CAMPBELLTOWN

Sun-fired wattle like god descending.

Between alien python tyre shreds,

scorched bitumen, shattered longnecks,

wombats with bloody skid marks,

the sleeping b-double veers

into a family's wagon. 

Sun-fired wattle like god descending. 

Slick black streets
Finks on every corner
With eyes on prizes
Hands in the pockets
Of lushes
Bare money thrown
On pavements
Bloody
And creeping
Others know that
The hand and murking
Is lurking on every corner
Eyes on your gold ring
Eyes on your prize.

For a long time I didn’t know if I was saying

God or Hello,

Till someone told me it was ‘k’.

I’m still saying Bog to both locals; farmers, elders or tricycle riders,

and to the strangers, never seen twice, in my streets.

 …

The tower rises out like an obelisk:

a pin in a sea of terracotta roofs.

We rush to it, exploring the church courtyards

away from the sweeps of shutter speeds and blitzes. *

My sister tries to act casual as she puts her hand on the handle,

frozen in that pose, the perfect D.P for F.B,

till the green doors

crack open.

We slip between the folds

of church spire…

Finding the Orion,

that first night in Brisbane,

caught my parents by surprise.

             Looking up: which land am I on?

Every year or so their fingers point

and retrace specks to me,

coordinates of home.