Friday, December 30, 2011

New Poetry by Les Wicks










Tom Collins

I fall beneath my cart of names
leave colour in the wound.
There is consequence in each unanswered call
silence beyond glance.

So, leave colour to the wound up
Eat feathers in the shade
silence any glance
open up this clever fade.

I eat feathers into shade.
Among birds I am a dog,
silence any chance.
We rut beneath applause.

Among birds I am a god
but children mock my graves.
We cut beneath plausibility
to deliver only ether.

But children are only grapes
we harvest their despair
delighted under ether, a stumpy photograph offered
to the gyprock lusts of life.

We divest their despair
then lose our hair
before their gimpy loves of looting
we are the kings, tossed out of town.

We lost our air
nobody is there
we were the kings, lost in brown
claim nothing just here.

We all fall beneath our cart of names…
consequence assured.


- Les Wicks 2011






Weather

In February, the grey-tinged cuprous-green distinctive black scaled
juvenile Dugite Snake seeks out new territory on the dunes west off
                                                                                                             new money.
One looks for the linear.

Container ships shuffle,
Rottnest Island stakes the horizon. Abandoned leash,
a clipped Husky understands that
Obedience is just
a tufted philosophic conceit. Our owners call.

This contended lasagne
sees the colour of tomatoes, or rust
in paving & bricks.
We refuse the hazard
of lemon light, cornflower
laps along the lapis
our venomous build beside all careful repair.

To remove one’s clothes, we
accept the sun like leaves.
Sand beds, sand castles,
the invert birth each immersion.

The dunes seethe with otherness –
take my photo, take your time –
these minor plunders
are the least we can do perhaps
an aspiration
in our complex little tides.

Melon Hill stands above
our wriggling constructs. Like
the dugite territorial,
we are the seams of cloud that ride
a thigh, radiatus 360°
the tablets of life not
mostly us. Straight can’t
be busy, can’t be still.

These are the lines we own, we
are inked. To understand
sometimes burns, scarification
that passes for writing.

Sunset queues into the Indian Ocean,  to
cave-art Bobtail Skinks on the sand
their indigent homage to the tones around -
gamboge faces above a pale blue belly.

We map the streams of grace,
our hunger paints in the names
that fail to actually affix
(they call this river Swan).
I wait for the colours
we bathe in everything.


- Les Wicks 2011


Les is one of Australia's most consistently interesting poets. His latest book is Shadows of the Read (Krok, 2011) Ukraine $10.00 (Aust) in Ukrainian & English http://krokbooks.com 

1 comment:

Stuart Barnes said...

wonderful words, les :)