Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 151: Tasmanian Europa Poets Gazette No 153, January 2017

Phil Harper

Who Would Go To Aleppo?

First inhabited in 5000 BC

Important city before Damascus

Taken over by Alexander The Great.

Stabilised by the Romans.

Conquered by Muslims who replaced churches

with mosques.

Besieged but not conquered by Crusaders.

Overpowered by Mongols and Turks in 1400 -

a tower with 20,000 skulls built.

In 1516, a trading centre, part of the Ottoman Empire

and the Silk Road.

Critically referred to by Shakespeare in Macbeth

and Othello.

Part of newly-established nation, Syria, after

the First World War.

Annexed by Turkey after War of Independence.

French declare state of Aleppo in 1920.

Union with Iraq, 1948.

Union with Egypt, 1956.

Syrian Civil War outbreak, 2011.

Car bombed by whoever wants to.

Air bombed by Russia and their associates.

Air bombed by USA and their associates.

7000 years of indiscriminate fighting and rivalry.

Who would take a holiday or a one-way trip to Aleppo?

And we wonder why does the world have refugees?

© Phil Harper

Cathy Weaver

A Message To A Bully

Why do you tease and hurt me,

emotionally and physically?

Would you, the bully, like to be

treated that way?

Would you like to be called nasty names?

Would you like to see nasty messages

about you posted on the internet?

Would you like to live in fear

of getting beaten up on the way

to or from school?

I have feelings.

I have rights.

A right to feel safe

and to live my life without fear

or emotional torment.

Just because I’m different

doesn’t give you the right

to make my life a misery.

So please leave me alone

and let me be.

© Cathy Weaver

Photo montage, Skaters, Joe Lake

You Stood There

You stood there, in front of us, at the lectern.

Dressed in your Gucci suit.

You smelt of French scent.

You spoke academic English as you

Gesticulated your ideas about how

To save the starving Third World children.

I feel my stomach churn;

I want to scream out at you:

What would a person like you

know about poverty and deprivation?

Have you ever been a single parent

And not been able to give your children

McDonald’s or take them to the movies?

Because you and your ilk would only eat

luxury food

And your children would go to a private school.

During the interval of your lecture,

I sat alone, out of boredom.

I reluctantly picked up a book from a coffee table.

On its cover, I see blue-eyed Caucasian

emaciated children

And superimposed over these images

is your photograph

And I read that you were

Born in the Ukraine during the Stalin era,

That your parents were taken to Siberia

- never to be seen again

And that your eight siblings died from starvation.

Further, that you witnessed cannibalism there.

You came to Australia as a refugee.

After the interval, when your lecture continued,

I listened in awe.

I had judged a person by their clothes.

© Judy Brumby-Lake 2005

Collage Figure Skaters, Joe Lake

Patterns

Patterns - where do they begin -

And where do they end?

Are they meant to please, tease, amuse,

or puzzle us?

Only the creator, the artist and God

Would ever know.

The artist dabs and sweeps his brush

this way and that,

Creating a mood - the swirl of colours

Patterning his work to please himself and us.

The writer strings words together -

Single pearls to create a verbal necklace

And patterns and plots evolve -

Subterfuge to tease us -

Who will live and who will die?

And will there be a happy ending?

Intricate patterns in marble, in stone,

In mosaic glass and tile, in wood,

In precious gems, lace and wool,

In earth, sea, sand and sky -

Intricate patterns in life itself -

Threads of experience and emotion woven

and intertwined

In complicated and exquisite colour -

Sadly though a beautiful beginning often belies

A faded, rough end!

© June Maureen Hitchcock

No One Knows What Tomorrow Holds

She came from overseas to Melbourne,

There she met her future husband

I knew the family very well.

After 22 years of marriage, he died.

Every Wednesday and Sunday I visited them,

My family adored them.

So sad, so very sad.

This dear friend of mine has Alzheimer’s

And husband dies while wife so very ill.

Moral: Treat everyone with respect

while they are alive.

Perform kind deeds

For no one knows what tomorrow holds.

© Yvonne Matheson

So the new year is with us. Hooray for 2017! Now we can move on, make a fresh start. Forget about 2016 and pretend it never happened!

It’s all too easy to gloss over the year past, the good and the bad. Live for the now! Don’t ever look back. Don’t pause for a moment and think what might have been, what could have been. No, none of that. Just keep going along, safe in the confines of our little-unit lives.

This writer can’t do that. Not stuck in the past, not mourning over lost fragments of time, not crying “Woe is me!”

Remembering instead this woman’s long struggle against all the odds, who made her mark on 2016 and will never ever be forgotten. The woman who could smile through ongoing pain, who survived more than most of us could have endured and who held the next day precious, if despondent, on what could not be driven away with scudding clouds.

Death waited at her shoulder. She may have known this but others around her did not. This writer looked to every passing second with hope, blind to the prospect of there being an end. This writer implored “Don’t die” and this woman replied “I’ll try not to.”

Last roll of the dice on that Sunday, when the black crows flew close by the house in two circling movements. The Sign! The portent of something being very wrong, very final.

This woman had died - and died alone, utterly alone! No comfort of an encircling arm, no cooling against a warm body. Just the last gasping breath and then chill until that chill became very cold. All was so still.

Oblivion - or maybe something better. This woman believed.

I cry for what could have been, what might have been, but most of all, I cry for myself and what I have lost.

I won’t forget 2016 and all the many years before. I won’t forget Barbara.

Cruel And Gentle

I heard the cry above

the scream of death,

It echoed and lingered

on summer’s breeze,

Cruel and gentle,

Inviting the sun

to puncture clear blue

in a frenzy of black,

A cry of pure agony

that begged another gasp,

Death eager and loud,

Consuming every mundane hope,

Nothing to hear

but the fury of oblivion,

Dark time descends, vengeful,

upon ghost days

that beg forgiveness

for the breath of a second,

In the maelstrom

that definitively challenges

one shard of fragile morning,

Dark time calling

from the sun’s grave

where every light

is captive in eternity.

The rage of starlings

silent now in perpetuity.

Eyes are not delighted

in the blindness.

I heard the cry

through parchment lips,

And the din of dying

sucked blue to black.

Black took it all.

I could swear I heard

a cry above the scream of death.

Reality

From out my window, through the sea of air,

I see the shadows on the grass below.

The roses paint their red with compliment to the green.

The grass was cut and packed into plastic wheels.

The breeze strokes gently at the eucalypts

As bottle brushes wait for birds to feed.

I hear the television in the other room

As Judy gives a rare and instant laugh

On something someone must have said

From out the screen.

The laptop that creates the symbols I type,

Hums gently with its fan to cool the CPU.

Judy is about to feed the whining dog

Who has been fed by me.

Summer has arrived,

I don’t need the woollen jacket anymore.

Outside my window the lime and the orange trees

Have flowers to invite the bees

And then, next winter, I will peel and eat.

The camera sits patiently next to me,

Containing images and views suspended

As in memory but accessible.

My left hand has a slight attack of future pain

As in old age disease sneaks in unseen

But I have lived and I have, overall, lived well.

© Joe Lake

Bill’s Life Of Adventure

A short-short story by Joe Lake

Bill’s mind had been drifting even as they took their nightly walk against the homeward-moving traffic. His wife, Gerda, walked a few steps behind him and his ‘walker’ as he shuffled along the footpath. Gerda had been distracted by a red rose in one of the gardens and had stopped to smell it. Bill had continued his hobble. An old dog, a terrier, Sniff, who normally hung around the old-people’s home, trotted just in front of Bill. On the other side of the busy road, Bill noticed Martha, a lady whose terrier was pulling on its leash, barking angrily at Sniff, who had stopped with his ears up and tail rigid.

Then, for whatever reason, the dog’s rheumatic limbs rushed him recklessly into the traffic to get at the terrier. Bill’s reaction was automatic; he staggered after Sniff into the middle of the road. Gerda looked up from her rose and saw what was going on. With eyes focused on Bill, she didn’t see the car heading towards her that screeched to a halt but alas, the SUV had hit Gerda and smashed her head into the bitumen. Bill stood dazed, staring at Gerda’s form until the ambulance came then someone took him back to the home.

Months passed. In his Alzheimer’s-foggy mind, he had survived the funeral and was made to exercise. Supported by his ‘walker’, he hobbled around the yard of the home until someone left the gate open and Bill proceeded onto the busy road. He was nearly killed and his ‘walker’ was destroyed. The management of the home decided that he was not, ever, to leave and had to exercise in the secure part of the home.

He escaped another couple of times, each time the cars were able to brake and Bill survived.

Nothing happened for a few months, then Bill got out with just his walking stick. He was determined, in his Alzheimer’s mind, to find Gerda. The traffic was heavy as he stepped into it, then someone grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. ‘No Bill, you must remain on the footpath. Listen to your guardian angel.’