Selected poems
One more step
ISo ... this is our next step along the sad and brutal path we've chosen. Even if they make landfall, even if our labyrinthine procedures and processes find their lives are hanging by a fraying thread, we won't let them stay here.
IIOf course they can't stay here. There's no way we can take so many on our own. This flood will never end. And half of them are shonky, playing us for suckers. Fair go, you lot, you've worn out your welcome. Time to move on.
IIIOne final step remains for us to take: shoot them at the border. That might go down well in certain marginals and, anyway, an expert could be found to say it's more humane than drowning.
But we'll not go that far — for now.
Bob Morrow
Unholy Sonnet
XIIIStrip out my heart, three-personed Gina; As yet but truck, prospect and seek to mine; That we may improve, export and ourselves refine Your ore, to the US, Europe, and 'specially China. I, like a usurp'd town, ignore union dues, And admit labour, from all quarters, Let them all flock, to the mineral slaughter, That holds us captive, lest wealth you lose. Yet dearly I love you, and would be Rineharted, But have unwise ties to ideas green; Divorce them, untie, or render them obscene, Take me to you, make me minehearted, Except you extract me, I never shall be free, Nor ever rich, unless you ravish me.
P.S. Cottier(John Donne-over)
A nation
Of exclusion Of isolation (I-solation) Of rejection Of alienation Of dumping the waves on their own heads Of seeking asylum elsewhere, e.g. where no families break up Of offering asylum inside its own body to its own body parts Of self-hallucination Of policing so much that heaven's gates are constantly under lock and key Of irrevolution Of irresponsible solution Of no Of no sharers Of nay sayers Of yes slayers Of dreaming for its own sake Of white on white Of calculated cons Of a scheme designed to last longer than long itself Of hate boats Of hate eyes Of hate ears Of love that contains a hole in it Of hope that does the same
A nation Of no asylum to others but its own people
Asylum sought Asylum given Asylum, the size of a continent, lived and being lived
Ouyang Yu
Bob Morrow lives in Melbourne and fell into writing poetry while in Ireland searching for his forebears' roots. He is