("Lonesome Day Blues", 2025, original encaustic)
My life is in a rut
Without direction or purpose
All I want to do is eat and drink
Escape into books and travel
All around I see society stretched
To the breaking point of collapse
The good persecuted for trying
The bad rewarded for lying
I don’t know what to do
Or where to turn to find a way through
So I’ll just eat and drink
And escape back into my novel…
(5/31/26)
They sell us a closet and call it a suite,
With views of the garbage that rots on the street.
The "sun-drenched" appeal is a bulb in the hall,
And "charming" just means that the ceiling might fall.
We barter our heartbeats for four plaster walls,
Ignoring the unknown collector who calls.
The ledger is hungry, the paycheck is thin,
A game where the tenants are unable to win.
So listen to prophets with gloves on their hands,
Who shouted the truth to the deaf, city lands.
It echoes in hallways where dreams go to die:
The rent is, frankly, too damn high.
As DRCongo is the first World rich country,
Congolese could be sleeping over the seas daily.
Now some Congolese run hear and there
Because of injustice systems
which empowering some people
to continue destroying others.
Reality of this World
which is not welcome.
October 04/2023
Mother is My first World
Philosophy of Mother
Mother is a Nurture
Nuture of Father
Nature of Brother
Mother is a Creator
Creator of our
Creator of Suffer
Mother is a Minister
Minister of Progenitor
Minister of Look after
Mother is a Mater
Mater of predecessor
Mater of Foster
Mother is a Procreator
Procreator of Culture
Procreator of Other
Mother is a Teacher
Teacher of Translator
Teacher of Devoter
Mother is a Doctor
Doctor of Grower
Doctor of Trainer
All the Anzacs have faded back into the past
And the old men now rest with their mates
We can hope they play 2 up and still have a beer
Now they’ve entered the heavenly gates
We have cause to remember the men who died young
How they fought to ensure we live free
How they looked back at home for the very last time
As their ships pulled away from the quay
They went for adventure, for country and King
Their country still mourns for their loss
They died in the trenches and on the barbed wire
So far from the great Southern Cross
They couldn’t have known as they sailed far from home
Just how cruel would be some of their fates
But they lived for Australia, a land of their own
And they died for the sake of their mates
And each life extinguished still burned like a flame
In the hearts of their loved ones at home
And their memory lives on in the pride of the nation
In respect for the flag that they’d flown
Their young eyes look out from the passage of years
From the old pictures, tattered and torn
And their nation looks back to the past and remembers
How the legend of ANZAC was born
From my PDF book "Bush Ballads and Bulldust"
Famished and flagging footsoldiers;
facing fatigue, fitful fever,
faeces and foul, foetid fungi.
Fostering feelings, frustrated,
for this faraway, foreign field.
Forays so fraught with fine failure;
forfeiting furtive and fiendish,
fatally fettered from the first.
Forged by such fatuous fawners,
for folly to feud for a field.
Forced forwards with fleetness of foot;
firearms flash and fragments fly far,
feigning the firmament aflame.
Forces fight so ferociously,
fratricide set free on this field.
Forthright and filial feelings;
families of fine forefathers,
fought fiercely, for fear we’d forget.
Familiar flora forms focus,
for the fallen in Flanders Field.
- - - - - - - - -
8 syallables on every line (www.howmanysyllables.com)
November 2018
Entered in Brian Strand's "Contest No 515".
(1st Place)
I wanted to do something special - and a bit different - to mark the centenary of the end of The Great War (11 November 1918). This poem is dedicated to all the brave souls lost defending freedom during that terrible conflict (and all conflicts since).
Dilemma
Cold air of winter nights
Breath a visible mist
Gloves protect from frostbite
From fingertips to wrist
Ringing phone in my hand
Alerts important call
Now a flaw that’s unplanned
Gloves create a wall
Screen is shielded from a touch
This call I must now take
Removing hand from warmth’s clutch
Tough decision I must make
Snack attack
Squeaky clean with a hint of mint
Colored white, plaque is absent
Placed the brush by the sink
Now my stomach starts to think
A grumble calls from deep within
Hiding where my hunger’s been
What to do? The taste won’t please
Why does my stomach want to tease?
Hunger waits as I ignore
Thoughts of food and drink galore
With resistance I make a snack
And I brushed again, I’m back on track
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