New Poetry by Robbie Coburn

Young In the Old City

flood of winter morning. the bleak city skinned by daylight.

transfusions of colour and shade

thrown from an absolved sun against embodied streets.

at the edge of the footpath 

you release the day into delusions.

breath protrudes the breeze.

coerced into a position to hear, to listen. you walk through streets of pattern-work designed by years

lost in the parade of bodies

with a throat of toxins, your eyes bottled by sobered hands. the outskirts are a transition, a distant solitude.the lightless city strangles them with smoke and time. crowds revolve, there is no fixed life form. nothing here is staying. you see yourself statistically.

parks and gardens are imagined sites. sit down and then walk again through the repeating clutter. an ocean of cloned shadow.

these people do not recognize you. cannot name your face but know all about where you're going. expect nothing articulate from your mouth. to discover  the generation you're a part of is lost obliterates you.

- Robbie Coburn 2014

Paddocks of Rain  - for Matthew John Davies

I walk alone in dark rains. thick wires empty
from a greying sky
traced though the air onto the grasses
striking open paddocks

every voice ringing from the rain is imprinted,
seeping into the hollowed fence posts beneath
the smoking clouds
within the night yards
dogs snarling at a faceless prey

this far from town, waters set a barrier-
a distance between bodies, separated flesh.
a single pair of
footsteps immediately covered by
the dampening ground

transparent threads filling trodden soil
like breath in a cold paddock,

silent in the rain, a car
persists down the road.

- Robbie Cobuen 2014

Robbie Coburn was born in June 1994 and lives in the rural district of Woodstock, Victoria, Australia. His poetry and critical work has appeared in many publications including Going Down Swinging, Cordite, Voiceworks and Rochford Street Reviw. His first full collection of poetry Rain Season (Picaro Press) was published in 2013. He is well into a second collection, titled The Other Flesh.