Poems
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Initial Impressions of a Pakistani-Australian in London
By Maryam Azam1.
Walking along Westminster bridge
was like walking along Wahdat road in Lahore
with hordes of people instead of cars - -
On waking in the bed of a novelist
By Richard James Allenmaybe the real
definition of love
of who you love
is the person -
The Fire & the River & the City & the Bush
By Mark TredinnickA MORNING in the city is a couple of packs a day:
fires ring the Big Smoke, a habit heaven finds it hard as hell
To break, and clouds won’t break and rain won’t fall, but ash falls
On dinner with your daughter en plein air. -
My Mind as a Dutch Tilt
By Richard James AllenYou have been away
for many weeks,
but I am only gradually
losing my mind. -
The ocean's lullaby
By Richard James AllenHere’s another whole way not to panic.
Despite human beings’ natural tendency
to misunderstand one another, especially
in groups, the default position being -
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Dream Management as a Product Placement Poem
By Richard James AllenThe experience of losing your dreams is akin to having
your handbag or wallet stolen except that there is no perpetrator.
Go ahead and blame someone or something if you like,
but let’s face it, it’s a natural phenomenon. Dream dissipation -
Bush Philosophy: Rivers and Pools
By Richard James AllenHeraclitus said you can never
step in the same river twice,
but his mate and arch-
rival Parmenides -
Bodyland
By Richard James AllenMy body is not my own.
It is like the land, an inheritance.
It contains traces,
incubates traumas. -
My father's portrait
By Sarah RiceSometimes you arrive like a sudden storm
or stay like a stubborn thought
Have you outgrown this frame
Are you climbing out -
Fun Fact
By Richard James AllenYou needn’t worry.
The universe doesn’t know
how to end.
First of all, it doesn’t know, -
Suicide Dogs
By David Stavanger1.
There is a bridge in Scotland where over fifty dogs
have inexplicably leapt to their deaths, plummeting
from parapet past green stone. Many believe it to be -
Grace at the Edges
By Richard James Allen(after William Carlos Williams)
the pellucid beauty of a book
you never pick up
but looks so delicious -
The lifeguard is taxed
By Susan Bradley SmithHer drowning was stranger than the story of Eden. She’s on the hard
sand now, waiting for the emergency services to arrive, but there is no
doubt she’s dead. Her ovaries are sodden orchards, her lungs choked
billabongs, separated twins. The lifeguard, who is really a very nice kid, -
Here/Not here
By Tricia DearbornThe dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny
alterations of consciousness … which mental health professionals,
searching for calm, precise language, call ‘dissociation’.
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery -
/ Under Lovely Curtains / Maya
By Richard James AllenI wasn’t sure what I liked more,
fucking Maya or watching her
sleep afterwards. The moment
she would come felt like the whole -
...Patsy Cline in the desert
By Richard James AllenOur souls are waiting for us,
but they will not linger
for our emergencies.
They don’t understand time. -
Blue Carbon
By Caitlin Maling15 of all the world’s species of sea grass –
Genii Halophila, Halodula, Zostera, Cymodocea –
live in the Great Barrier Reef covering 15% of the total.
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What the Gargoyle Said
By Richard James AllenI can feel the hollowness. I can feel the emptiness.
I can feel the vast hole. There is a gap in my chest
the size of the Grand Canyon, the Windy City,
as lonely as however many single room
