COVID-19
How can I say, my love, the days
denied us have been nothing to us?
I walk where you have walked.
And you watch me wherever I go.
Your videoed smile, livestreams
of the best of us, a casual ice-cream
on a pier where my shadow does not
fall, as yours may never cross,
though its virtual touch runs through
my body running along the shore.
These are no less us than the lips
that defined our every kiss.
Devices they worried would halt
our lives, holding them on ice
in a faraway bay all glistening and
white, have kept us alive. Kept us all.
My love, you may not touch my hand,
but your palms surround my heart
in its febrile beat seeking your heat.
The ear in the dark knows
the temperature of our love,
if not situation. Check it by daylight
and it’ll clock the same, outside
numbers and fever and pain.
Were we never to kiss again
I would hold you in our heart:
our heart of hearts. You
no girl of memory, me
no less your
breathing soul.
26th March 2020
Poem by Donald Trump
I haven’t learned
yet how to write
Poetry
but I’m a very quick learner
very quick and I’ll have
the best people
the best people around
me I mean some of my
best friends even are Poets
are even Poets and they’re
always telling me what
a great Poet I’d be
and really how really
difficult it would be
for me not to be so great
not to be a great Poet
and when I become Poet
they’ll just have to forget
everything they ever learned
about Witman Eliott Yates
Oppenheimer Heiney Otto Plath
and all those other Muslim rapist
Mexican women and letterists
who are terrorizing this Great Cuntry
of Ours that is not a poem
in our eyes but will be
My Poem Trump Collected Inc.
pasted on every goddam
mile of every goddam wall
of My Great Wall Cuntry
You can bet your bottom
$
on that ass
facker
January 2016
Note: Donald Trump is not the author of 'Poem by Donald Trump' and the poem
does not express exactly any of his opinions, views or comments.
Punctuation Points
The Comma
A stepping stone,
in the pond of meaning.
The Full-Stop
The smallest and largest
point in the universe.
The Colon
A pair of identical twins:
balancing.
The Semi-Colon
A comma;
with a chaperone.
The Hyphen
One of many bridges
across-the-pond…
The Dash
A hyphen on holiday –
Inverted Quotation Marks
“Side-burns at the
face of language.”
The Exclamation Mark
Surely this could not
happen to a full stop!
The Question Mark
But can this key, as you say,
truly unlock the world?
- from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017).
Note on Text
Around the time of writing
a cat brushed his knee,
demonstrating for one
and all how the most
resourceful creatures
make their opinions
known in silent messages
surrounding the truth of words.
- opening poem from A Force That Takes (Cinnamon Press, 2013).
Reversing Sonnets
‘Is this love?
A cure for the visible.’
~ Lavinia Greenlaw, ‘Winter Finding’
Until she lights on somewhere to arrive
box-cut hedges in a cul-de-sac drive
smart her sense longing for impatient cliffs
without a view but within a minute
photographed traipsed to know them there the skiffs
the anchored bay the clouds that suddenly fit
the frame of bobbing hulls and blent sea air
how stepping backwards from a wintry edge
is almost to ask ‘Is this love?’ or care
enough to touch a painted window ledge
as much a cure for seeing as to know
face-to-face the visible betrayal
of winter gone that melting ice will show
the harbour master’s hands unfurl the sail
The harbour master’s hands unfurl the sail
of winter gone that melting ice will show
face-to-face the visible betrayal
as much a cure for seeing as to know
enough to touch a painted window ledge
is almost to ask ‘Is this love?’ or care
how stepping backwards from a wintry edge
the frame of bobbing hulls and blent sea air
the anchored bay the clouds that suddenly fit
photographed traipsed to know them there the skiffs
without a view but within a minute
smart her sense longing for impatient cliffs
box-cut hedges in a cul-de-sac drive
until she lights on somewhere to arrive
- from A Force That Takes (Cinnamon Press, 2013).
Beijing in Bright Spring Light
Willows of the Fourth Ring
sprout little shoots of green.
A girl idles in Chaoyang Park
flanked by a scampering toy dog
guiltless of impressions
or so we say.
The babies come
swaddled to near suffocation,
sweating in the new spring light
in immaculate pushchairs.
The unframed enthusiasm
of a child…
An old woman
beautiful in age
sucks the juice from
a peach insatiable,
travelling at remarkable
taxi-driven speeds.
It is impossible to desist
guiltless of impressions
though we are innocent
and may crave
the unframed enthusiasm
of a child:
which lives for us
in the ice-sculpted months
of memory or in laughter
unleashed upon a face
spontaneously in the
bright spring light amazing.
- from A Force That Takes (Cinnamon Press, 2013).
Fragment: Unaccountable
I lean towards
your city
but do not move
…] as China floods
past, its floods past
in the present metal.
The continual ships
of the continuous river
…] the metal of our days
to you I lean and see
today’s tomorrow
yesterday
- opening poem from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017).
From Our Own Correspondent
From winter smoke
and the cracked earth
of the peasant fields
toiling…
to the highwayed
apartments of cities
of unimaginable complexity,
where light-skinned city folk
brush obliviously
past dark-skinned arrivals
from those same
cracked fields
disembarking at
bewildering terminals.
A new dance writes
its marks upon
the kaleidoscopic lights
of midnight floors
where youth moves
on bubbles and adrenalin.
The sleek high-speed train
touches 300 kilometres per hour
rushing obliviously
past channels of lore and algae.
That we may each move
upon the earth and leave
such marks with ease
and be forgotten.
- from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017).
Sole Food
These tattered old boots still
grip the pock-marked tarmac
and have traipsed, I reflect,
the streets of Moscow,
a Queensland pineapple farm,
the dust-caked alleyways
of Beijing… to arrive
at this point where,
stumbling from memory,
I read my mother’s deft
needlework stitched into
each lace-etched tongue
a name in red capitals:
mine.
Eighteen years on
my tongue is initialled
with those same hands and
inscribed with what lies now
between the knots of our reach:
the Mongolian steppes,
the Eastern lakes,
the curious cathedrals
of her origins in
needle-box Swiss chalets.
So if I am ever lost,
she may nominate
my unspoken state,
hauling unspeakable loads
across the broken curbs
of a foreign city.
- from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017).
Path Finding
Leaving Mount Barker
in a borrowed four-by-four
along executed routes
we edged toward Margaret River.
Where tarmac yielded
to the skittering stones
of a freshly levelled stretch,
the low winter sun
flooded our retinas,
the speedometer dropping
like the sunken ocean
until, gingerly, you strained
headfirst out of the window
to look ahead…
This faith was faith as faith
because unreferred:
the unseen road,
my love for you
the same,
only the same.
Believing no less
in parable than in fact
for what seemed days
and still may
today in the years
you have guided me
and guide me
I know not where.
- from Holding Unfailing (Cinnamon Press, 2017).
For a full list of Edward's publications, please download the PDF.