Cycles

Tags

Australian poet, Cycles, Formal poetry, Italian sonnet, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetry, Rise and Fall, sonnet

Cycles

All things that rise up to a peak must fall.
Even the tallest towers of Earth’s empires.
The strongest life-force, given time it tires
And slows and dies – it matters not at all.
A being or a mountain or a wall,
Churches and mosques with heaven-pointing spires –
They all must yield to death, to rain and fires;
All things will be brought low, that now are tall.
The rocks will one day all be ground to dust.
New rocks will rise and reach towards the sky.
The world will once again be clothed in ice,
And steel that girds the world will turn to rust.
Yet what is low, in turn will be brought high,
Until the time comes for its sacrifice.

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Choosing Sides

Tags

Australian poet, Civil War, Divided nations, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

It’s come to this – you must choose where you stand.
No longer can you sit upon the fence.
You must comply, or join the outlaw band.
Become a drone, or keep your soul and sense.
And if you choose the later, your defence
Will need attending to, you’ll be attacked;
For you will be a threat to order, hence
Be on your guard, and counter lie with fact.
The former by their powerful friends are backed;
They have infernal forces on their side.
With “useful fools” their rabid ranks are packed;
You’ll have but logic – and no place to hide.
The choice is yours – I hope you get it right;
You’re not the kind of guy I wish to fight.

Powder Keg

Tags

Australian poet, Balkanization, Civil War, Fragmented Western nations, limerick, Limerick poem, Limerick poetry, multiculturalism, poem, poetry, Powder kegs, The Balkans, Unstable nations

Powder Keg

It’s doubtful that it’s now a nation.
It’s really a hotchpotch creation,
All split and fragmented,
With nothing cemented –
A model of Balkanization.

A Hero Dies

Tags

Australian poet, Courage in war, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, Unsung war heroes, War heroes

A Hero Dies

Oh yes, he was a hero – that is true.
But in that conflict there were thousands more.
The recognized among them are but few –
A careless hand deals out the cards of war.
Those who still live, and those now buried bore
That burden, and returned to start again;
They’d not let bitterness bite at their core.
Our hero rose above those common men,
(Or should I say uncommon) even then
He didn’t show what he had locked inside.
But came defeat – and later, that was when
What gnawed at him, no longer could he hide.
A hero? – sure, such men are spawned in wars;
They’ve measures both of courage and of flaws.

Nietzscheisms 2

Tags

Australian poet, Formal poetry, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity, poem, poetry, Pontius Pilate, Rhyming couplets, The Antichrist by Nietzsche

Nietzscheisms 2

By syphilis his brain would soon be diced.
With girded loins he wrote “The Antichrist”.

“What think you of us Christians?” they asked Nietzsche.
He said: “One I admired – he was your teacher.”

He said the gospels died upon the cross.
He thought the man who died – the greater loss.

You don’t agree, he thought the clergy crooks?
Then it is clear – you haven’t read his books.

He doubted Paul had had a revelation –
Just that he had a wild imagination.

Now Pilate he admired, he would confess –
To Pilate, what was one Jew more or less?

Quest

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bird with no feet sleeps on the wind, Days of being wild movie, Formal poetry, Orpheus Descending, poem, poetry, Song lyrics, Tennessee Williams, The bird with no feet

Quest

There’s a bird with no feet – only wings,
And it sleeps on the wind, and it sings
All day long as it travels the skies,
And it lands only once – when it dies.

{I first came across “The bird with no feet” theme
in an obscure Chinese movie “Days of Being Wild”.
I believe it comes from the Tennessee Williams play “Orpheus Descending”,
but I think its origin may be much older.
I wrote this little poem after watching the Chinese movie.}

Botany Bay 1770

Tags

australia, Australian Aboriginals, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Botany Bay, Captain James Cook, Discovery of Australia, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, The British Empire

Botany Bay 1770

Well it was bound to happen – with your undefended borders.
If it hadn’t been the British, following their monarch’s orders,
Then it would have been the Frenchies or the Dutch or Portuguese,
Or the Maoris, or the maniacal murderous Japanese.
When you haven’t any fences and no army – no defences,
Then it’s clear to any sane man that there will be consequences.
When you’re hunters and you’re gatherers in small nomadic bands,
Standing on the bay’s grey beaches with but spears in your hands,
Don’t expect that stronger peoples with their empires all expanding
Will just say: “Hello”, and sail away without making a landing,
Planting flags, and claiming sovereignty to land on which you’re standing.
It’s the way it was back then, and there’s no sense in you demanding
That we change the past – you lost, but look upon the brighter side man –
Had it been the Asian hordes instead, they would have tanned your hide man.

Trace

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, death, Formal poetry, Ghosts, poem, poetry, Shades

The creaking of his empty chair.
In dead of night, a muffled moan.
A faint footfall upon the stair.

And though I know he’s cold as stone,
And too, I know there’s no one there,
These sounds I hear when we’re alone.

Rebound!

Tags

Australian poet, big bang, Big Bang Theory, Eternal Recurrence, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzschean philosophy, poem, poetry, Rebounding Universe, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Big Bang to Crunch – a singularity
It is once more. How many billion years
Have passed? Now but a point, but can it be
A point? – time stops, and space it disappears,
As physics’ laws break down and matter smears
Deep in this place that holds the galaxies
Compressed. Gone for an instant, reappears
The light – as bang! – the tortured matter flees
Its cell – exploding like a swarm of bees
Released from the confinement of their hive.
And what or who, in that split second frees
The future stars and suns, men still will strive
To know, here on this obscure planet Earth –
What force drives life, and death, and then….rebirth?

Slavish

Tags

Australian poet, cause and effect, epigram, Friedrich Nietzsche, Master Slave Morality, poem, poetry

I am a slave and so I have a slave morality.
You have a slave morality and so you are a slave.