1. |
Quiet - Cate Kennedy
03:02
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Poem:
turn it off
listen to the cicadas
listen to that knock of branches
listen just to the wind-
here it is,
rolling now
like a pitching wave into the trees
erasing the crazed and cross-tracked footprints of static
in what you took for silence
listen to the dry wood
catching, at this perfect moment, in the stove
stop, and you’ll hear it;
the stretch and crack and tick
of the thin metal flue
expanding in the heat
Oh, you are beaten so thin
and still the joins hold,
still that bloom of warmth
opening up
more than enough
and your hands
still feeling the shape
of the kindling, the axe, the tree;
the flexing
of your own bird-fine bones.
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2. |
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Poem:
If the night is long and there can be no sleep, if the lullaby is nowhere in your heart, if morning comes to its new day exhausted, if all your novels strike wrong tones, if your waking dream is always of oblivion, if those cold coins of regret buy nothing now, and some high court sits in sleepless confusion, if the night is the one who won’t leave you, close your eyes and put your head just here where my own poor heart has learned that the night, poor night, wide-eyed and blind, must cling to you its only companion
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3. |
Blazer - Esther Ottaway
03:11
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Poem:
girls scatter from the hall beetles smoked from their nest
the sun is a black seed in a blood orange the male teachers gone
the women shooing us out as I reach the path the fringes of the
oval combust and all the safety buckles of the world burn off me
I am walking in my hat my gloves my blazer through the hearth
of my own fear, my breath jagged with woodsmoke and sweat my
small arm pinioned under a bag of first-day books
on creek road one whole verge is on fire, fire that dad sets
in the hearth of the living room or for cracker night bonfire
marshmallows and singing how can the sky the road be fire
the air this wind catches me like a demon’s hand I am running but
gaining no ground his black fingers clasping around my legs
my bag dragging like iron jaws on the bone-bright wing of an angel
up the road I see my yellow house like a vision
please I have to get home my cry sucked into cinders
I am Gretel in the oven retching scratching the glass
my house his hands my matchstick legs my hat my gloves my blazer
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4. |
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Poem:
Mallets pound fence posts
in tune with the rifles
to mask massacre sites
Cattle will graze
sheep hooves will scatter
children’s bones
Wildflowers will not grow
where the bone powder
lies
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5. |
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Poem:
Twelve days you’ve been away.
Last night
I couldn’t sleep
for thinking about things undone,
wrote notes in the dark
as if you’d never left,
fooling no one.
Some time around two or three
I heard our neighbour
climbing the stairs next door
and falling heavily into bed,
then muffled voices.
I don’t know what they said.
Much later it seemed to me
I heard the stars
clamber to their places,
clouds
rustle loudly as they passed
later still
the Moon
saying something about the Earth,
the wind
asking the trees where you had gone.
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6. |
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Poem:
sometimes
it’s like a low tide
& the objects
on my desk
are left
stranded
around me
as I gaze
out the office
window
looking
for something
outside of me
to fill
the emptiness
it might
begin
the next
morning
with a small
exchange
in the coffee
shop
where
we create
shared meaning
around
an experience
even if it was only
reality tv
& soon
there’s a density
to things
and the collective
flow slowly
lifts
until I find myself
in a pub
laughing
over after work
drinks
while above us
in a window
in the corner
of the room
I see them
crashing
against
the edge
of this
desperate
to get in
but we can’t
hear them
above
the background
noise
I see their children
drowning
but don’t
mention this
as we wave
goodbye
& take
our separate
journeys
home.
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7. |
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Poem:
The sea is a boat on his dream.
The darkness at the shore embraces
It’s journey to a new land.
His visa is only a wave without a name.
Baxter, desert of long sentences
Locked up his youth.
Now his eyes are broken wings.
Now his heart is a cloud in a cage at the detention centre.
He knew where he was in that white room.
He crashed his dream with a native tree in Glenside’s hospital.
His mind is a wounded hope for all within the wire desert
Within the white room.
His mind is a bird without air or sky to fly.
Please let him be a bird in this land.
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8. |
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Poem:
Shade is a kind of writing, as well as a kind of light.
It passes across the ceiling well after sundown.
A bird lands on the roof, making that racket again
which spooked everyone last week.
Something crosses our path from the back of the house.
We’d feel uneasy if we weren’t so tired.
I swallow water mixed with a solution of mineral grit,
as though it’s a cure. As I tip away dregs, the colder night
pours more water from an ugly tap onto my wrist.
The window is still open and shadows blow in
like diesel and roses. The bird takes off, clattering as it goes.
Then a louder silence roars around the moon.
Will it rain?
The shade is full of itself and nothing. The tap still drips.
I get up an hour later to turn it off. The ceiling is clear.
There’s an owl somewhere near and a goods train
on the other line. It’s scary when it’s calm.
Where do you put morning?
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9. |
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Poem:
there are no people for me
I live entirely
for myself
in this perfect prison
of freedom
at night
in the winter
I talk to myself
remembering the past
about myself
the world within
is all I have
I squeeze it
until I myself
come out
in myriad forms
fainting with freedom
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10. |
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Poem:
the moon looks as sad as a panda
if this is the freight that comes with love
bring on the reckoning, let it be without words
I am wasting my talent on this, harbouring all I can
against good advice, let us slip away into the dunes
I will shine the torch on the whorls of your fingers
swear such exuberant vows, like teenagers we could
hoard our secrets, pin a hot fence around our hearts
or imprison ourselves in a prison tree that grows
the longer we refuse to confess, tonight the blues
hammer the flowers, bring the whistlers down
did the greats ever smoke as much as this
who will be your lover now
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11. |
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Poem:
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead
when confronted by naked emptiness,
better think out the minutes, keep your head.
Time has more value than the tears you shed,
for all they seem equal in weightlessness.
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead.
Even friends who regard each step you tread
Say, ‘Eyes straight, hon, to get over the mess,
Better think out the minutes, keep your head.’
Plan them, from sun salute to wakeful bed,
in case you succumb to regret’s caress.
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead.
Though fine-boned schedules can’t revive what’s dead
or repair fraying love, again I stress,
Better think out the minutes, keep your head.
Oh yes, down that last path I’ve been misled
And found this remedy for heart’s excess:
Don’t kill yourself but the hours instead
Better think out the minutes, keep your head.
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12. |
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Poem:
I will not close I will not let
so much as one petal curl
as long as this light can reach me
so long as the clear rain falls
still I soak up
the song of the world
what does it mean
to own each
day of desolation?
it means letting the soft words
of a hundred birds fly into you
arrows finding flesh
still letting the one sun make you
and in these times of burning
find your fire
it means letting the new leaves
of each other
find an opening in you
though your ribs sing in the wind
and your heart clangs without its cage
bright red like any target
though at times you are thin and waning
pushing through each new day’s gravity
hold wait expand
put out your best blooms
send your colours into the darkness
do not pull back
your life’s
raw nerve.
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Jen Lush Adelaide, Australia
Jen Lush is known for her spacious and emotive, starkly modern folk songs wrapped around expansive storytelling. From her 2017 album of poem-songs ‘The Night’s Insomnia,’ to her 2021 album ‘Let Loose the Beating Birds’ Jen and her stellar band have appeared at festivals and venues throughout South Australia, Victoria, NSW, WA and Tasmania. New album 'Hum of the mettle' is out now. ... more
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