Writing
I’m fashioning
a poem
fastening
to the page
with bent buckle
of iron thoughts
and cold quartered
steel emotions
with racks of cloth
and freedom string
not in a glass bottle
on a desk but in
Hell’s rhythm at sea.
Tim Collins
Zhuhai
over the wire and the water
big sister, da lu
China proper
more real than the past
(our privilege here)
though we, excused in law and language
have our part too
to brighten the day
Macao 2003
Christopher Kelen
physically fit but depressed
although performing exercises
of a ritual diet of care
i’m merely titular head
of a body possessed by forces
sending intimate armies
to win without me knowing
savage interior battles
and a mind subverted easily
by that sombre knowing rebel
who occupies my wit’s end
and shadows me with sadness
geoff baker
Gravity
Who’s got it
Who wants it
It’s everywhere
While incredibly rare
It can be developed
But it’s a big
Investment and once
You’ve got it, you
Might be past it
B.W. Shearer
Poem In Four Lines
All I wrought in reckless ceaseless deed or thought or
Love to work the damage and diminishment of love,
Ashen I with slakeless fevered longing would make
Not.
Garth Greenwell
Same Crow?
A long way from anywhere.
When I’m there. When I’m here.
The same crow flew ten thousand
miles? The same crow blocked
the songbirds’ trills? It doesn’t worry
me in itself: I love the crow’s caw.
I do get lonely. But I eat and sleep.
I read other people’s poems.
John Kinsella