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ARTS AND CULTURE

A landscape called humanity

  • 06 August 2018

 

Selected poems

 

 

a landscape called humanity

guided by divers and ropes

via a birth canal

from the womb of the cave in a dark mountain

through the tightness of crevasses

hold your breath   to clamber the choke point

surrender fear    inner light

heave in the labour from death to life

why is it disasters create heroes

 

under monsoon darkening skies

one cannot rely on the mercy of rain gods

it is tanks of air

and an international team

navy seal divers  engineers  scientists

technical expertise

medicos and teams of supporters

that garner our attention

 

surrounded by a world of tragedies and suffering

it is the challenge    the pull-together

that we marvel at

holds our focus   holds our breath

its peaks and troughs

with all hope mustered

its sheer beauty

this landscape of humanity

— Colleen Keating

 

 

Battle Tales of the Accidental Soldier

It always starts with congruence between empty paths.

Concentration on further introspection proves that

our disaster awaits us in tandem with the last Supper

The machine suffers from a train wreck and contributes nothing to the cause.

What lengths do we go to try and gain some higher ground?

Now. They are at it again, those wily harbingers.

They are driving up to the side of the house carrying your belongings in porcelain veil,

And their tongue held together by splinters and filled with Pierce Lipped Venom.

Yet I see an Absence of Malice in your eyes.

Why must it always be this way?

Can’t you show me something new

Why not embrace transcendence with a smile and a remembrance?

I have only cascading ionization to offer at the peak of my natural course

Though they only crave perfection through gestures of excommunicated expression.

And so, embarking on the ultimate strategy in my purest form,

I meet together, I agree.

— Joshua Ryujin

 

 

July

The highway opens like a hand

the slip steam rhythm hiss song of tyres

as the pasture lamb clouds in green wave past

 

The long stare towards what it is that drives us

early morning smoke breathe drifts across the footpath

 

A history of behaviour hangs on the NGV

mapped & named into the gags of our lives

drum beat credit card on a wooden counter top

outside the street freezes in a wrap of daughters

 

The next day the bitumen shimmers through its cold

 

The early evening half dark is dog bark romp on a patch of green in the shade of the housing commission flats blocking what sun

 

Gelato just makes it colder

 

The wide boulevards drawing children

under the wings of winter coats

 

A young man waits for the knock

this is not another day in paradise

your portraits hang around us & every parent’s nightmare

stretches a heart to breaking point

 

Myuran Sukumaran we have
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