New Poetry by Terry McArthur

The Sitting Room


The past is a house of artefacts

I dig them out of rooms so vast

That rivers flow between their walls

Arranging these relics like deckchairs to my seasons



I am alone and naked

Playing an old guitar

Singing lines from songs I cannot recall

But for the flutter of wings upon distant rooftops



I sit and write of life

This passing dream

This track of blood and bones


- Terry McArthur 2006




Who Among You


I hear paper thin breathing

The rasp of my grandfather’s ghost singing

A low and painful scrap of song



See me curled upon this bed

My life become a waiting room

All this hurry to arrive all this hurry to depart

Everyone of us will be

Unravelled

Everyone of us will be

Undone

Perhaps this afternoon

Perhaps tomorrow

Perhaps next year

In the fractured shadows of an unseen dawn

By the handsome hand of an unforgiving god

Who can know the moment

Who among you can foretell an old man’s death

Who among you can hear the thin scrapings of my old man’s breath

Harsh against the pillow


- Terry McArthur 2006




Terry McArthur is a Sydney based poet and songwriter. His poems have appeared in The New England Review, Thylazine, Stylus, The Tin Wash Dish ( ABC Books ) , and Holes In The Evening ( Fat Possum Press). He has published Upland, a selection of poems, with Arthur Chaffey and Wayne Von Nida ( University of New England Press) and The Exile ( Fat Possum Press). Walking Skin, his indy book of poems and lyrics will be published this May.

Terry’s songs have been recorded by John Farnham, James Blundell, Faze Action, and Felicity Urquart. In 2002 Terry formed the cube with his long term musical collaborator Phil Rigger as a way of “pushing the boundaries of spoken word”. The cube have released two singles and one album Permanent Scars which has been released in Australia, France and Germany – and is available at www.thecubeonline.com .