Melaleuca 012

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Melaleuca

Number 12: June 2010 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis

Table of Contents

alice street Ashley Capes 3

glissando Ashley Capes 4

impossible to doctor Ashley Capes 5

Blue Petals Justin Dent 6

The Cavalier Rae Desmond Jones 7

Midday Jocelyn Ortt-Saeed 8

Gig at the basement Sonia Tubb 10

All works are copyright by their respective creators, 2010; the arrangement of this collection is

copyright by Phillip A. Ellis, 2010.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works2.5 Australia License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/au/>.

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alice street

dawn is a weight against curtains,

bright at the edges

like a nuclear holocaust

and feet are thick, hands

seem to wash the air

grumbling and buzzing

a television from next door

pulses through the wall

and far below the gardens stir

leaves curl round spiders

and their dark twitching

while water dragons

with super-glue tongues

dance after butterflies

in the street taxis line up to purr

and wind carries petals down

to bake on the tarmac,

sunlight sinking into the veins.

Ashley Capes

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glissando

the cello is alive – its bulk is like a wall

or a door into which sounds disappear

then reappear as someone else’s,

the skin of a finger sliding on gut

the slow scuff of stool-legs on floorboardsand even, uncertain vowels from the musician,

all are sucked in and performed anew

as it slides you from one place to another

as if carried on water.

Ashley Capes

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impossible to doctor

I wash ink stains from under my fingernails

and fish for notes caught in drool,

the dream still warm on the pillow.

the sky is thrust up against my window

but there is no music, no grace

shot through the bone of my hands

only an ache impossible to doctor

and spring with the lightest footfalls

now distant, like half-remembered dance stepstaken on smooth grass.

Ashley Capes

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Blue Petals

for Isabel

In the breath of one sorrow

she made room for the dawn.

A cracked mountain assembledtwelve stars in a jar.

Above this tall midnight

time no longer spoke.

And a nimble-limbed lake bird

drank stones dropped by sleep.

Then a swan and a virgin

tore straight through the moon.

And your fallen blue petals

crushed nymphs in my arms.

Justin Dent

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The Cavalier

For Helen

The self portrait of Dutch master Frans Van Mieris was stolen from the Art Gallery of New

South Wales in June 2007. The 20 cm X 16 cm small painting, worth an est. $1mill +, wastaken from a room without a guard and without a camera. It has not yet been recovered.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/dutch-master-

stolen/2007/06/13/1181414383922.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/dutch-master-

stolen/2007/06/13/1181414383922.html

It was her hesitation as she stepped from the escalator almost tripping:

She adjusted the blanket across the pram & paused, confused,

Before the Brett Whitely scrawled across the wall.

She looked so guilty with her starched blonde hair & thin hunted faceAs though she was stealing lollies in that pram,

(She was remembering the last time,

When a shop detective pulled her in just outside the 2 dollar shop

& all she could say was the boiled lollies looked so lovely

With all those stripes rippling, some deep gold, some dark,

Silver & blue.

The detective was small in a dark plain suit & his eyes were cool

Although his voice as he asked her to come, please,

Was not kind) so she was waiting for another man in a suit

But there was no one -

Except for three boys clustered around the anal end of the giant Whitely

With their elbows tight as though they’d like to take her home

Or make her their own with a stubby texta,

But there was someone coming up the escalator behind her

So she tightened her fingers around the handle until they were white

The shiver was a deep knife inside

Although she kept pushing the wheels wobbled on the granite floor

Past the middle aged attendant who was watching the boys

While speaking on a mobile phone They are about to touch the private partsbetter get someone here but he glanced at her then nodded at the wrapped baby

So she smiled & kept walking

With her own tiny masterpiece still sleeping in that blanket.

As she bumped down the stairs onto the path she knew

Through the clear winter light the painting was breathing at last

Beneath the blanket the sky the free renaissance air

Rae Desmond Jones

http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/dutch-master-stolen/2007/06/13/1181414383922.html









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Midday

In an hour-glass

held for an instant,

memory is

sunlight on glass

and the inarticulate between

is dialogue

which does not pass.

Silence is

for the sake of speech

to catch

the tone of time

vibrating through

the sound of meaning

recurring in each borrowed rhyme.

In ballad,

psalm and liturgy,

I go back

beyond birth

searching a self

to inhabit

as summer scorches

heart and earth.

I take stock

by the desert shoreline

where sand acquaints my bone

with traces of each seasonal change

where blue comes

like rain or leaven

to make in me

another mountain range.

Suburban bredwere my first visions −

life touched by light

behind a cloister wall,

where one could go

like Abelhard for absolution

in unswerving faith

that masters all.

Sometimes, then,

birds about St. Francis

came with threads of peace

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to line my breast.

And eyes closed

on Veronica’s fair linen

opened in my depths

the timeless quest.

Time chose me,swept me high to heaven

where John is Donne

and day is night

in the all consuming

brightness where

life learns love’s

paradox of light.

There sun and moon

prostrate on water

as time stigmatas joy and pain

in love’s last vow

to sow itself

where heart and earth

cry down the rain.

Jocelyn Ortt-Saeed

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Gig at the basement

He’s 31, but looks about 18,

won’t look at the crowd,

tiny smirk,

fiddling nails, notes, notes, notes.Root girl.

shuffling feet.

[lyric insert – ask Simon Kelly for set list.]

funky beats.

Swaying dreadlocks.

And fingers.

Monkey chant.

See that guy there? plays with his dick.

- J.B

‘these are the days,

we are the moments’sang the stall door.

can’t hold on her own feet.

Take my hand,

take me home, till my days are old.

Sonia Tubb

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Melaleuca 012