sounds
puzzles, faces & spaces
We hear the news on the radio
long lines are being formed in the street

vision
twilight
capture a smile
We draw into the silence

Handwriting is on the wall
the soul vexation of the terminally ill
like a cold clap in the dark
you lit the spark to what I need to know

news, views & blues
We each have been given a talent
use this for your benefit
to stand in line

These nights are lit by the fires of coals,
so said a tragic lover of macabre translations

But here, the night is a quiet shoal,
that ebb tides good and slow
through my window

Letting loose the music, on the wing,
to fly in here, not mournful nor
melancholy

No, it is slowly rising up,
through the sick street vapours
into chilled air of evening stilled

The shared azure blue that met and mingled
in eyes till twilight, transmuted in silence sung

This strangely downcast smile,
on marble angel’s lips,
which stands here all the while,
in shadows that eclipse,
beneath a rippled cross,
a dark and baleful sky;
still mourning some great loss,
or does she wonder why
we humans as a rule,
don’t treasure every breath
and live life to the full,
or come to terms with death?

Your love for me,
still an upcoming poet
well over seven decades old

‘‘Sends electric currents up my spine
I shiver
but not shudder''

Poetry, beauty, emotion,
archaicism
and
God, divinity
will be reconsidered
if the poetry is
not transformed

back into hibernation
into its nascent cell

As all oysters
can't produce pearls,
few alone
produce
invaluable gems.

chewing the stick of gum
wrapper shiny as the metal
of a gun
a paper filter tipped dangles
dancing with each masticating
rumination

ocean green stargaze up through
the cracked skylight
the elevators doors shunt open
on the lobby below
the push bar creak
traffic and noise and the heat
of the day walks in and lies
still

people ask us how we feel
when they don't want the real answer.
my family doesn't want to know
my friends don't want to know,
YOU may not even care about
how I feel, but I've cooped this up inside for far too long.

I explain how I feel by saying
that everything in my home is "on fire".
the tile that I used to walk on is burning,
the carpet that I use to lay on is now flaming,
and what use to be a mirror is now just
shattered glass doused in gasoline.

I
The nagging prey
The nagging prey
of the rain window at dawn
is a storm grey worming in
from the north;

expedience in such dreariness
should produce words
mellifluous describing precipitation,

but here, in Sydney, a blackout in Blacktown
leaves us voiceless
and unheard in
light shattered hotel rooms.

II
Limbo-land, where
quiet airports have their own
special horror-
the stasis of one hung moment,
waiting for the call.

What's your preference

In all my long life
of seven decades
plus
I have learned
only a thing
or
maybe two

first is this
''only a blind man
can have sympathy
for a deaf man'''

Question
to all of you

Who is better
a blind one or deaf
I am both

fifty fifty
one plus half -eye
one half
the other half -ear
divided by two

How would you rate me
if I ask you to do