Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 151

Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 158, June 2017

Broken Hill artist, Pro Hart and family, Joe Lake, 1974

Sister's Beach, Tasmania, Joe Lake

The Birth Of Venus, Joe Lake, 1980

Forbidden Love, White Australia, 1966, Judy Brumby-Lake

Don’t Pick The Dandelions

Don’t pick the dandelions

For the bee,

His golden bed,

You’d deprive

And he will return naked

to the hive

Winter sun remains

ambushed by myrtle

and pine

Through leatherwood

the winds whine

Ah! Buds are reborn

In spring

When blossom comes

Dancing in. The bee?

He will survive

and return

with harvest

to the hive.

© Kathleen O’Donnell

The Bloody Swimming Pool

Two brothers with their billycart

Were scavenging in the lane,

Christmas crepe paper

That shops couldn't use again.

"Only get the red bits,"

Said one brother to the next.

The younger boy nodded,

Although he looked perplexed.

Later, when the night air was cool,

The boys put the paper

Into the swimming pool.

Next morning when people were swimming

The water turned deep red!

One boy cried, "I think someone is dead!"

"Who did you come with?"

yelled a frantic Brumbies Hill.

Oh what pandemonium

The boys did instil!

The boys were perched in a tree

To watch the commotion.

Teenage girls screamed

In hysterical emotion.

A rotund sergeant

Was throwing his weight about.

"You've got to drain the pool

And call the ambulance out."

When the pool was drained

They expected to find a body.

Instead there was red crepe paper

That was thick and soggy.

© Robbie Taylor

Try Or Quit

I am a tryer, not a quitter.

When I write poetry I think of Henry Ford.

He never gave up and neither will I.

Life has many ups and downs - but never give up

Some will love your poetry - others will not

That’s life.

What a terrible world if we all liked the same things.

Send your poems overseas

Or interstate,

Someone is bound to enjoy your thoughts on paper.

Do not say you are a failure

Or that you are not a tryer.

Never be a quitter.

© Yvonne Matheson

Yvonne Matheson

Judy Brumby-Lake

How Many Philanthropists?

How many philanthropists

Throughout our history

Have given money

To worthy causes?

Money they have accumulated

From the sweat of the masses

Of blue-collar workers

Who went

To an early grave.

How many philanthropists

In their twilight years

Gave money to worthy causes

As a bribe to their god

So that they, the philanthropists,

Can have a good afterlife?

© Judy Brumby-Lake

Transience

I’m sitting on a park bench with you,

Quietly observing the scenery -

I see white feathers floating above my head,

Twisting and turning at the will of the wind -

Where did they come from and where will they go?

Bubbles from a child’s pipe hold spinning colours within -

Only to burst and disperse in seconds,

Clouds streak across an arch of blue,

Instantly changing form in their quest

To be some place else,

Vivid flowers, in neat beds, wilt in the heat -

They might be dead by tomorrow,

And I think - everything around me now is

so transient -

Except for one white feather that somersaults onto your shoulder

And settles there -

Will it weigh heavily on your conscience?

Why is it that nothing seems to last?

© June Maureen Hitchcock

Michael Garrad

Michael Garrad’s View

On One Side - Part 3

They don’t visit you much, even now.

They never did.

It was always you and me.

Yes.

And Mickey and Smokie, the faithful pets.

Yes. You and me, and them.

Family.

Yes. Love me, love my dog - and cat!

Yes.

And the goldfish!

I just wanted you to be well.

I know.

It never happened. As good as it gets.

I knew that. I don’t know why you stayed.

Because I loved you.

Yes.

“Yes”, you loved me back? “Yes”, you knew I loved you?

Yes. I did get lonely. Why didn’t you stay longer?

Habit. Visit. Go home. Are you lonely now?

No.

We were lovers, partners, friends, companions. Then carer. Altogether.

Yes. You always cared.

Did I care enough?

Only you can answer that.

Yes. I was never far away. I loved you every day.

Yes. I was the happiest I’d ever been when we met.

And now?

I was happy you were there.

I should have done more.

You did what you could.

It wasn’t enough.

I always looked forward to seeing you.

Too soon gone again.

You stayed as long as you could.

Was sad when I left. Could have stayed a night.

But you didn’t. That’s how it was.

You should have said.

I did once but you just wanted to be friends.

The love never stopped.

I know that.

I will care for you, even in death.

Yes.

____________________________

The Fading Mind

The endless ticking of a silver-rimmed clock

gives voice to this place’s heartbeat.

A sound contested only by the cricket’s song.

His mind goes limp, brought to its knees

by the endless questions,

The whispers from behind his eyes.

Like a persuasive anchor, the urge comes again,

Stronger than the desire to love,

Then the will to draw breath.

This was the silent song of sleep,

A temptress never resisted,

Kept from her prey only

By the warm glow of his bedside lamp.

Joe Lake

Sonnet

The tired sun expires in the west

Towards another realm to droop its head,

Ashamed for leaving as it has to rest

Forever seeking for its own sweet bed.

Precariously it has slunk away

Considering its age, it had to go

Where wrinkled cares, tattooed as marks will stay

Needled with pain and hurt of long ago

But, when from memories we pluck for youth,

As a newborn’s dream races towards its life

This heart will tell you how to find the muse

From vantages before one has arrived.

When then our souls are seeking for their rest

We should not let them die on vain request.

© Joe Lake

The Little Windmill

The little windmill was born in China and was sent here with children’s toys or garden ornaments. little windmill had always thought herself as special. She was given as a present to a four-year- old girl who whooshed her about or blowed at her sails, her wings. The little windmill ended up stuck on top of a fence post where, with a gentle breeze, she happily turned and turned her many-coloured little sails. Sometimes the colours of her sails would merge into white. With no wind, the little windmill would sit on her fence post forlorn and yet would dream of being able to fly like the birds, bees or butterflies. Those times were for meditation. She would sleep and in sleep would conquer the universe beyond the clouds and the stars, and would whirl on forever and ever but soon enough the wind would come again and the little windmill would happily rejoice, turning her sails into the breeze.

Then, one day, the sky darkened and thunder and lightning broke through black clouds. The little wind mill was frightened. The storm tore her sails half off and when the storm had moved on, the little windmill was all in tatters and her sails wouldn’t turn anymore. The little windmill cried for having lost her purpose. She was taken off the post and put in the garbage where she ended up right in the middle of the city dump deep under other refuse.

Four billion years passed. The sun exploded and with it the Earth, where all particles were dispersed. The fragmented atoms of the little windmill were now blown out into the universe towards the stars where she now dances and sings, and whirls with the stardust of Heaven for all eternity.

© Joe Lake

Letters to God will be answered by God next month.

Dear God,

I’m writing because there are some minor problems in our lives. First of all, I must tell you that I had a left hip replacement. It went smoothly. It’s been some weeks now and I practically walk without crutches. There are so many questions I would like to ask, for example, did you really make the world in six days? Awesome. You said in one of your last letters that you wouldn’t interfere with foolishness because that would only make us worse. There are many good things happening down here but you know all about that and some bad things are happening too. I suppose they are to test us.

How is Vi and all the other people we have lost? She used to write letters to you and you said, I believe, that she’ll be sitting beside you as an earthly adviser. Could I write letters to her and would she answer? That would be nice. I have so many more questions. How long is it before Jesus comes and would then the Earth be a better place?

Remaining Yours...

_________________________________________________________________

Gazette No 157, May 2017

Scene

Through bedroom window

What do I see?

Just a roof symmetry

In new suburb

Not a tree - yet...

But maybe

Little blue wren, superb

Against green

Of the newly-mown scene

And above in the deep blue

of the sky

Cumulus and jet trails

Gently lie

And below

Roland, sleeping.

© Kathleen O’Donnell

Heaven

Silken cords running down my back,

Diamonds and pearls flash before my eyes,

Heaven is happening to me right now -

I do love my hot showers!

© June Maureen Hitchcock

Irish-Catholic Betrayal

What did my great uncle Clyde

And other Irish Catholic Australians think

Whilst they lay dying in the trenches

On the battlefields of the Somme

Policed by a bayoneted

Protestant English sergeant

Fighting to save their motherland?

Did my great uncle see his gran’s sad eyes,

Those eyes that had shed tears for a country

That she was forcibly removed from

And transported, shackled to Van Diemen’s Land,

For having, during the great famine,

Received one piece of corn, forbidden in Ireland?

Did he remember her cooing and cradling him?

Did he resent those English, righteous people,

Those who took him from a gin-lactating mother,

A mother that grew up in orphanages

On derogative remarks towards her

Criminal, corn-recipient, mother?

Did he hear the cries of the wailing corpses

Who pave the streets of Limerick City?

Did he see the small, limp arms outstretched

Next to their skeletal, frozen glazed-eyed mother?

Did he, as his own life ran out,

Hear the small corpse cease to wail?

Could he smell that which had gone before

Those decaying rat-bitten corpses in Limerick?

Did he feel that his death would be punishment

for the betrayal of the Catholic Irish?

Dedicated to his grandmother, Bridget Foinnerity, (Eliza Maloney)

Irish convict, 7 years for receiving corn during the great famine, circ. 1848.

Clyde Ford’s mother was Alice Appleton-Riley-Ford.

© Judy Brumby-Lake

Wynyard Show

The girl with the sun-kissed lips and tousled hair,

stands, statuesque, at the showground’s north-west gate,

counting the crowds, charging the modest entrance fee, ensuring all are welcome to

the annual Wynyard Show.

The burly farmers in their chequered shirts,

their plump bejewelled wives, unruly kids,

and denim tattered-trousered teens, and babes

in arms, intelligentsia so casually dressed-down.

The mayor, in battered quilty-sweat-soaked hat,

greets one and all with that ingenuous smile,

he knows the battling families, the farmers’ woes,

their fluctuating fortunes, triumphs and their trials.

The nostrils prick to fragrant dung and straw

as all encounter cattle, bulls of stupendous size

exhale with noise and trumpeting ferocity,

as owners burnish cloven hooves and bovine tails.

A detour to the nursery, the favoured place

where children cradle day-old chicks, stroke donkey ears, ogle Alpacas, importune for rabbits,

marvel at the downy weightlessness of ducklings,

or attempt to feed a lamb.

Thence to the equestrian ring, where jodhpured limbs,

immaculate dark jackets, leather knee-high boots,

black velvet reinforced crash-hat, white stock,

proclaim the centuries of subjugation,

or partnership of rider and the rider’s horse.

This year, a hundred sheep in woolly pride,

the rams stand for the judge’s hand and practised eye,

and later, winners join the bulls and cows,

with handlers, sometimes little children, in the grand parade.

The handicrafts pavilion brings the folk

to marvel at the knitted dolls, embroidered quilts,

pneumatic sponge-cakes, lamingtons, banana bread

and decorated gumboots, longest carrot, quintessential spud.

Pumpkins disappoint, this year of puny size,

the cultivars of gardeners too ignorant, or too proud

to use the secret formulae of former years,

and so subversively achieve gigantic but inedible

success.

Thence to the bird pavilion and cacophony of chooks, Black Australorp and Leghorn, Plymouth Rock,

and snowy Silkie, powder-puff upon its head,

and Cochin with white feathers on its feet,

and Isa Brown, a most prolific layer,

the hens reward you with three hundred eggs a year and Hamburg, sometimes striking silver-spangled,

and Ancona, Pekin, Orpington and gold Campine.

And very soon, the axemen’s woodchips fly,

as muscled men in singlets wield the shining steel

of favoured axe, or one or two-hand saws,

to tame the unforgiving eucalypt of standing-block,

or underhand, between the legs, or insert boards

in spirals up a tree-trunk, thus to demonstrate

the age-old skill of foresters who cleared the land

for farming, with their forebears’ fortitude.

Immediately behind the axemen’s fence

lie the remains of Wynyard’s pioneers;

the graveyard stones record their lives and deaths,

Quiggin and Moore, who ran the earliest mill

beside Camp Creek, Fenton up on the Cape,

and King who chased the Tommeginer off his farm,

and Richard Gutteridge, Peart and Bugg and Bock,

Dallas and Sams, Abell and Holmes, and Patterson and Bauld.

The day wears on and melancholy cows,

their udders unrelieved since morning’s milk,

moo mournfully and low, whilst their exhibitors,

exhausted, hunker down beside their beasts,

and talk of their success, their accolades,

their shiny purple ribands and rosettes

which soon will garnish walls of spidered sheds.

“Come off ’er, mate, y’re much too young fer that!”

as a young Ayrshire bull attempts to copulate

with a recumbent Hereford brown cow in

the adjacent pen,

her brown eyes pools of passive acquiescence.

The crowds disperse with fluffy ducks and fairy floss, their pockets emptied of the cash for jumping castles, slippery slides, and gravity-defying rides,

and shooting galleries, dips and dodgem cars.

Ignoring piles of the still-steamy dung and straw

adhering to their boots and shoes and stroller wheels, and once so-polished hooves, and hocks and fetlocks, they acknowledge champions and farewell friends, and satisfied, the families head for home,

and tell the sun-kissed girl with tousled hair

still at the gate,

they were so gratified that they had come.

Michael Garrad

On One Side - Part 2

Did you see me leave?

Yes. You looked better.

I was. I am. You needed to know.

Was I dreaming?

You saw what you believed.

I believed it was you saying goodbye.

Then you saw me. No one else would.

No. Just you and me.

Yes.

I found you that awful day.

Yes.

No one else called.

I’m glad it was you. Did you call an ambulance?

Yes. It was a houseful later.

Did they cry?

Yes, a bit. I cried a waterfall of tears.

Yes.

You were so cold - and alone, and cold. Should have been there with you. You never did get your weekly TV guide. Or lunch.

You kept me company.

I kissed you and held your hand. Said I loved you.

As you did every day.

I do love you.

Yes. What would I have done without you?

What will I do without you?

You will survive.

It’s such a struggle. Wish you were still here but not sick anymore.

It was time. It was just everything.

If I could reach across death I would.

You still have life to live.

No more visits to 32.

You still visit me now.

Yes. I know you had to go.

Yes.

No more endless days.

No.

No more weary routine.

No.

No more pain and anguish.

Not now. And you?

Listless, in limbo. You were my life, my hope, my inspiration. Every day, morning till night.

Yes.

You still are.

Yes.

Hooray for Barbara! That’s what I say! Where would we be without her? Where would I be without her? It would be the end for me.

You made me smile when you said hooray.

It was tough for you to smile.

Yes.

I need you to be there. Will you be there?

Yes.

Know I should let you rest.

I’m resting now. TV on. Book to read. Fruit bowl next to my bed. Orange juice. Incense burning. Can you smell it?

Yes.

Michael Garrad

What Is In A Name?

Philip, Phil

Fiddle, Tipple

The Sarsaparilla kid, The Plodder.

Lucky Odd Eyes, Always Happy

Pommy Phil, Pommy Bastard.

Man Of Peace, The Survivor

White Trash, Brother Phil.

Abacus, Bean Counter.

Phil The Pom In Exile.

The Fly In, FIFO.

These are all names that have been ‘penned’

to me, at some time in life.

Some recall happy occasions, some of strife.

Life is not always the same

And there is an awful lot in a name.

Sonnet

I much prefer the summer’s warm caress

Yet feel the winter’s echoes in my mind,

Annoying, chilly drafts that cause distress

There, hidden pain that no one else can find.

For this allows all dreams to live

But always stalls the effort when I try

For then as now where stress should find relief

In pleasant meadows by the stream and sky.

Few men of pain are sadder than they seem

And see the future in a life abused,

When meditation turns into a dream

To trust in light that never was confused.

I then may open to myself a door

Where many rest and dream inside their core.

© Joe Lake

K Market

I cannot bear new clothes.

I can smell the little Asian fingers all over them

Threads pulled loose, unravelling

As would the machinist’s mind

Toiling and boiling

Making clothes on a production line

For Western countries who quench their thirst

As though it were an eternal reservoir

Of black sweat.

I will always go to an opportunity shop

And step into another woman’s world

Wear her discarded designer clothes.

Sometimes I don’t wash them for a while

So sweet is charity’s perfume

The most sought-after garment,

is one that is Australian made

Beautifully stitched and crafted.

These I dare not wear.

They are to be donated to a museum

So that future generations will gaze in wonder

Over craftsmanship superb

And mourn a culture lost,

All at the price of cheap labour and cloth.

A short-short story by Joe Lake

The Contest

The problem with Max was that she had a dream to be a pop star. A further problem was that she had taught herself guitar from a book in the library. The instrument was a present from her aunt George, whose name was really Georgina, not like Max, who was supposed to have been a boy. Max was born with a weak heart. She was skinny for her ten years. She had a heart-shaped face and sparkling blue eyes that were enlarged by her glasses that sat precariously on her button nose. She had a botox clown mouth, only there never was any botox. To an observer, she looked like a wind-up doll. Her mouth, when smiling, looked as if it were a thing in itself, a hypnotic fixation to the viewer whose attention was re-directed when she projected the bell-like voice of an angel.

She had entered this singing contest run by a major TV studio a number of times. Each time something had gone wrong and she wasn’t allowed to perform. Max’s aunt never wanted her to enter as she believed that entertainment was the work of the devil. At one time her guitar string broke, at another she had stumbled and fallen at the audition. Eventually, aunt George, who had taken her to the big city for the contests, suggested she should sing Costa Diva from Norma. Aunt George had said that Melba had told other singers who came to Australia to perform, ‘Sing ’em muck’. She should, nevertheless, aim high so as not to be ashamed and if failing this time, she at least had given her best. Aunt George wanted Max to fail.

And now there she was before this huge animal that was a crowd, daring her to control them for a few moments, or else be condemned to ignominy..

The orchestra was supportive during rehearsal although Max had held back so as not to antagonise anyone. The arrangement featured a supporting instrument, an alto saxophone that introduced the music and would give her the cue through the plug in her ear that connected Max with the producer.

She began to sing, gently at first, then rising and falling with the melody. The audience was hushed

expectantly. After Max had sung the first refrain, the saxophone literally sang in the higher register and when Max joined the melody as she sang in Italian, the music rose and rose to a pitch as if walking up a staircase.

‘Don’t even try it,’ the director had said behind her back. He thought of her as a second banana bolster to the real pop singers who were expected to win and sell lots of CDs for the show.

Max was excelling now and as the music reached its climatic pitch, she closed her eyes and with the support of the saxophone that lifted her, there was such a fever pitch of intensity that, on the final note, the audience jumped to its feet, howling with appreciation.

Max held her stance for a little while, raised her arms in the air and then collapsed in a heap.

End 157

Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 151

Thursday, 25 May 2017

Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 158, June 2017

Sunday, 30 April 2017

Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 157, May 2017