Lost
I’m already lost
In Sydney
Although we haven’t arrived
Lost is a place
A facial expression
Mothers recognise
It looks for sympathy
Sometimes help
But finds 'direction'
— Ben-Peter Terpstra
Waiting for Spring
The lights don't work
but I know
I am still reflected in my mirror
soon the sun will come and help to prove me right
It's getting cold and I am worried
about getting through the winter
burning candles in my room to cut the chill
But I can just see myself in spring
dressed up like a past-due notice
pale yellow...
or collection agency green
and I can just hear my brother laughing
when we can afford to go have dinner
There will always, always be a spring
Wherever the sun has gone I will always be me
— Raina Morreau
God owes me Royalties
Do my words need makeup
anti-age cream for my lines
Remixing and deejaying
multiple images of a singular deity
Reincarnated of carnality
cindered in obdurate morality
Pulsing throbbing the ghosts
rearranging
Skeletons like lego
pomegranate love-buds juicing stains
Not guilt but smudged badges of honour
my soul copyrighted for first-use and
the royalties will pay the debt I
accrued on your behalf.
— Vinay Verma
Niche
How I’d like to find my niche
Even if it is just a cliché
I really want to find my niche
And have my own nice little place
Inviting my friends to take their place
At my table
I now feel as stable as the table
As solid as the door
As open as the window
As warm as the bed
Totally at ease
With a brand new lease not only
On my place but on life
As I am transformed in my own
Little world
-Isabella Fels
Folding & Flying
A folded piece of paper floats
My every thought swims towards you
Against the current of netbanking and lunchtime
And essays to write
This life, some kind of unvarnished documentOn which to carve our longing
A piece of paper
Which we fold, at our leisure
Into a plane; we jump in
And take off into some other dimension
Thoughts fold and paper
Flies
— Cecilia Condon
Judas and Jezebel
Did you hear the news today?
Judas married Jezebel;
It was not announced with trumpet calls
or eardrum-rupturing decibels.
Did you see her walk the aisle
with luminescent eyes?
Are they the eyes of piercing truth?
or demons in disguise?
Did you know I loved her once?
But her heart I could not tame,
'Depart from me, I know you not,'
she callously exclaimed.
— Damian Balassone
Donne captains a ship of fools
Let me not nit my net too fine
Thus trap small fish or venal sin
Neither cast it in to deep
As to ensnare Leviathan
Yet guided by shared impotence
Within the seas of what contains us
To then retrace love reconsidered
And choose here what remains of
As if memory could thus divine
The middle point of our lost night
With plumb & sextant plot the sky
Span, count, and wait upcoming light
But if instinct which haunts foresight
Should trace shadow before it falls
Then circumspect mind must navigate
Through the communion of lost fools
So turned and prayed to permeance
Both cartographer and first-mate
One skyward eye then cast above
Its twin below trimming to winds fate
— Michael Healey
Home
In this house divine
the interior
of varnished wood
so sublime
the hinges are
comets, stars and planets
inanimate and animate
humbly by blue sky design.
— Michael Crotty
Loose Change
I’m there in your wallet, lying, it seems,
on the ocean’s wide blue towel –
except that I’m upright, toes in the sand,
looking at you, trying not to squint, naked
without my dark glasses.
While you concentrate on reading the light,
the sea keeps breaking it up, taking
its reading of you. Who’ll be the first
to blink?
I stole a look at the photo last night,
I guess to confirm nothing had changed –
and was almost caught in the act. We are
what people see.
What words would I have fumbled for –
unable to play celebrity shoplifter,
unwilling to play guilty schoolboy –
and you embarrassed for me?
— Michael Sariban
election
on four new walls
the artefacts
of a long marriage
& the routines broken
institutional care
little dirt under fingernails
a cliché of food
& a month’s dust collected
in the corners of the house
you built, you grew too small for
took four weeks to clean
before you left it
the birds got the figs
& on weekend secateur visits
take off the grapes
water the lawns
bugger the cost
& bugger the state election
— Rory Harris
Ben-Peter Terpstra is a freelance writer based in regional Victoria. He has lived and worked in the Northern Territory, Melbourne, London, and Kyoto.
Raina Morreau is the nom de plume of a Texas based writer and owner of a music recording company. She is currently working on publishing her first compilation of poems.
Vinay Verma is a Sydney poet and an accredited journalist with Cricket Australia. His fourth collection of poetry Priests and Poplars is due for publication in the New Year.
Isabella Fels is a Melbourne poet and writer. Her topics include her own particular illness Schizophrenia. She has been published in various publications including Positive Words, Mental Illness Voice, The Big Issue and The Record.
Cecilia Condon is a Melbourne based writer and actor. She works as a development assistant for a Melbourne based television and film production company and is currently completing the Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT.
Damian Balassone is a Melbourne poet whose work has appeared in various journals, magazines and e-zines. He is currently working on a second collection.
Michael Healey is Melbourne based poet and student of theology at the United Faculty of Theology. He has a background in philosophy and law.
Michael Crotty is a Sydney poet.
Michael Sariban is a Brisbane poet and reviewer who has published four collections of poetry.
Rory Harris teaches at CBC Wakefield Street in Adelaide. He won the Satura Prize in 2008.