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Melaleuca

Number 7: January 2010 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis

Table of Contents

After Meng Jiao Adam Aitken 3It Begins Adam Aitken 4

Lyric Adam Aitken 5

Horizon Scanning Magdalena Ball 6

Spirals Magdalena Ball 7

Witness David Barnes 8

Where the Unfinished Things

Go

Kathleen Bleakley 9

Woman the Enemy L. S. Fisher 10

A Place of my Own George Fripley 11

Eyes on the Horizon Matt Hetherington 12

Mangoes Matt Hetherington 13

Winterville Matt Hetherington 14

21, 2008 Janet Jackson 15

He Does Not Make Words for

me

Janet Jackson 16

Listening to Calla Janet Jackson 17

Hem Lines Carol Jenkins 18

Letter to Denmark Rae Desmond Jones 19

Wooden Bridge Les Wicks 20

All works are copyright by their respective creators, 2010; the arrangement of this collection iscopyright by Phillip A. Ellis, 2010.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works

2.5 Australia License .

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After Meng Jiao

Who's not sad thinking of home

no emperor there

wants our poems

growing old meanswe're just much smarter

no ink spilled

to make a living

you wait for me

with a case of wine

why waste time

on the what-ifs

of going back

to a glass palace?

Adam Aitken

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It Begins

It begins with letters strewn across the carpet.

It begins with never-to-be-repeated

acts of love, and ends in winter,

and begins again in summer.

With love

there is of course the romance

but also the recall:

it begins with looking backwards

and leaving out the boring parts

of which there are none.

Coming home

the bird will come to this, a bird in the hand,

a bird in the bus queue

the little bird at the bird bath

the bird who's heading home

across a field of unpicked vines.

Adam Aitken

From:Adam in Cambodia

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Lyric

First there is the picking of a rose,

then the theory on what it means;

or, if there is no rose

there is no symphony,

just empathy, a deeper

arresting of the sense, call it

epiphanal, rather than digitised

indolent gesture

an article of clothing so loose

a breeze blew it into a pool of swans...

Light will not do - it must be

cultivated light

inflected through

a mild cloud of darkness...

like the first tentative attempt to say "I would like"

in French or Italian

brings a faint blush to the neck...

but there is never quite enough time

to see all of the Uffizi

and like Keats there is the threat

of an early consumptive death

but not before

he teaches you everything you need.

There are the interiors,

then the interiors of the interiors

and what comes between us

is precisely the subject of the poem:

be it a sword or hesitation:

more interiors

padded with medieval tapestries,

perhaps the mineralised torso

of a God,

or even a country that can't address us

as is lacks

a studio or eery and so

needs no mention of us,

or, perhaps, no shared lingua,

no roses either

no half buried garden shed

at the back of Regents Park

in which to skimp on our portraits

(nude) in an unfinished poem in October.

A great deal is about to happen

but not yet.

Adam AitkenFrom:Adam in Cambodia

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Horizon Scanning

Your eyes squint at glare

wavering between dreams

imaginary lines

or clear delineations

from this point

its not possible to judge

take a stand from your degraded platform

speakers corner cardboard soapbox

microwave radiation

blocking your ears

you can shout your head offuntil everyone gathers

it wont change reality

or will it?

28 billion light years

one edge to the other

there you are

explorer without a map

scratching your head

the horizon problem flakes those broad shoulders

Atlas in messy hair

and bell bottoms

every mystery you solve

invokes another.

Magdalena Ball

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Spirals

NGC4736

take that

a dirty incoherence of numbers and letters

your identity

crushed into a spiral galaxyempty of dark matter

an absence of darkness

your exotic invisible substance

denied

some would call that light

shake unwashed hair

and swear

no such thing exists

you hold tight to darknessthe hardening addiction

that clinks

against the side of your glass

each night as your hand drops

in spiralling slumber

rotation slows as you move

further out

from the crowded inner reaches

of your galactic core

your motions sedated

gravity weakening

it might be the big bangs

afterglow

that leaves you gasping for air

a stones throw

from one galaxy full of dark matter

to another full of light

pulsing

as you drift into anotherdark sleep

Magdalena Ball

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Witness

Light, sunlight spits, splits

in disorderliness,

to the upsurge of the

roof above;

in this

cathedral enclave

scales glint.

rainbows, colour

glides

in sapphire waters;

this is the kingdom,

and I float, suspended in Heaven,

cut off

from the worldof

golden setting skies:

Such brilliance

enfolds,

captivates my soul,

reef fish dance under my feet.

Circles of leadlight

gracefully encircle me,

filling my heart...

Spellbound,

I see within me my fathers father,

and his father,

and I,

I am the ocean,

calm before storm,

the reef,

Great Barrier Reef, dying

building,on bones of ages past

cathedrals.

David Barnes

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Where the Unfinished Things Go

David, I dream

your unfinished things

are floating

in the harbour

out to sea

in a little maroon boat

after eight years

all the lingering conversations

songs yet to be heard

books half read

scripts unplayed

places not travelled

are returning to you.

In a sea-garden

you play

your fiddle

to the mirth

of Neptune

dance amongst the coral

hold court with

mer-maids & men.

Afterwards

send messages

songs complete

in shells

to the living

loved ones.

Kathleen Bleakley

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Woman the Enemy

But the beauty that laughs and weeps,

the living beauty, the beauty

of women, is anathema.

Being poet, he cannotbut feel it,

"the lash that stings his soul",

being man, he cannot

but desire it--

indeed, in his diseased nerves,

the desire is terrible.

L. S. Fisher

Found poem derived from: Christopher Brennan, "Studies in French Poetry, 1860-

1900: II: Baudelaire".

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A Place of my Own

There must be somewhere I can sit

and ponder how the clouds drift by,

where only untamed creatures cries

break the whisper of the breeze.

A leafy glade, a mountain top,

a rustling stream, a sandy beach,

somewhere that I am out of reach,

a place to sit at ease.

I ask you, where can I just sit

without some worries finding me,

just sit with my own company,

accept my every flaw;

a personal place thats mine alone,

an hour of time that never ends,

allowing me to finally mend,

and find myself once more.

George Fripley

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Eyes on the Horizon

and your face in every distance

we have travelled

so far from so near to our aim

each beside the other

a labyrinth of solitude

absently dreaming of rest

retreating to somewhere theres no tracks

or a bridge between sides

it costs too much to cross

i trusted a lie

which was naturally my own

now i carry my darkness under my eyesMatt Hetherington

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Mangoes

inside

fruit shops

he finds them

waiting there takesas many as he has

money for bites into

each skin and tears off

with nails and then teeth

the flesh is like sun

inside the tongue

Matt Hetherington

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Winterville

i wake from the sheer boredom of my dreams

the sun is a childs toy lost in the past

our trust is where the sky and sea just meets

the town groans like its let its lifeblood freeze

but things fold inward to where they heal best


my tongue lies like a carcass in the streets

released from freedoms indifferent fist


in the hungry grey garden without trees

a horse was resting its hoof on my chest


beyond the work of any new techniques

she wont kiss me if i dont kiss her first


the rain stays in the same limp clouds for weeks

the wall isnt listening to each list



Matt Hetherington

Previously published in:fourW.

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21, 2008

Lipstick your mouth, then open it.

Speak clearly.

Finish your words and leave spaces between them.

Be big-eyed and soft-lipped in pantyhose,a powder-blue twinset, newsreader hair,

a beret, and a knitted scarf.

Wear a silver cross at your pushed-up cleavage

to promise him godly motherhood,

safe behind tall gates

in beautiful BMW McMansionville.

Pronounce your full-stops as 'stops.'

Not 'ellipses...'

Not 'questions?'

Not questions.Janet Jackson

Previously published in:AustralianReader.com

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He Does Not Make Words for me

He does not make words for me.

He makes me a mirror,

frames it in jarrah.

He makes a coat-rack

for my long black coatand the children's raincoats.

When I ask him to,

he installs tracks and poles

for my curtains, moves furniture

to where I want it,

devising solutions

to the problems engendered

by these eccentric walls.

On a mandolin,

with its pairs of strings

too taut for bending blue,he plays music that shows me only

itself.

He asks me nothing

but the open question of skin.

He makes tea and toast every morning.

He does not make words for me.

Janet Jackson

Previously published in: Cottonmouth.

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Listening to Calla

I want to write

like this guitar

with its shimmering folds,

lime juice,

explosions of cut-off flowers...Devil-may-care has the best songs.

I want lines your lips can dance to

and lines to lay you flat.

Lines to make you want,

to take you out,

to satisfy you.

To touch you. Just to touch you.

Janet Jackson

Previously published in: Creatrix.

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Hem Lines

and our hems forever crooked?

El izabeth Bishop- House Guest

While my spoon scoops up porridge

thats sweet from sugar, pinked with rhubarb

that flocks the milk, Im reading Bishop.

Elizabeth and I concentrate

on the sad seamstress, both puzzling

about her penchant for misery,

so we arrive together by that kink

where the road disappears apparently

from view, with us three on it.

Then there is the art of finding

that all my own crooked hemmings

arrive, milling, fluttering, in the passage,

till the sift and dance of light in the room

Im really in fills all dimensions.

The time away as Bishops guest, while eating

sugar, milk and porridge, delivers me,

properly, into this seamless, present, moment.

Carol Jenkins

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Letter to Denmark

It is spring in the South, &

Purple flowers spatter the horizon,

Breathing out their dense syrup of light & life.

Things look not so differentThough were upside down, star gazing

From the fragile venerable earth.

It smells rich & soft, as though we could

Drop back into the fat cloacal mush

From which we writhed

(& thought we rose)

A few seconds ago, in the time

It took the eternal clock to factor the passage of light

Through matter, into consciousness.

Sitting in this most ancient garden I contemplate

The pregnant predestined chemistry

That made possible our vulgar growth:

Millions of us, wriggling & squirming,

Worms eating into the carcass

Of this tiny ball of mud & fire

That has sustained us, despite the chance

That some great lump of jagged rock could

Flick us with nonchalant indifference,

Knocking us sideways into some turbulent emptiness

A few million light years away.

Rae Desmond Jones

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Wooden Bridge

My feet move like the negotiations

of a containership approaching berth.

The eyes are the city building glass

they slip beyond the treesscratch the humming sea.

Know so little

oyster.

My fingers are ferries

teeth are loam

my back is gantry

this hair is an introduced flowering weed

ears carry the wind.

I am this harbour neither whole nor unholy.

In free supply but undrinkable

lantana manana

man in a mangrove

embarrassed cluster

an afterthought.

National Park railings keep me up,

keep ground down

Serious injuries may occur at cliff.

Beneath a rigged fig - down to the beachwe must have our fun

food acid/sugar

sand castles & tinted society-mums.

I go to the change sheds

to embrace change.

Les Wicks

Previously published in: Polestar

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Melaleuca 007