Aug 3, 2023

Poems by Owen Bullock

 RAIDERS


ram raiders
501s
cat containment
its gentle invasion
(of the bed)

           winter dew glistening in the grass

lanterns and leaves

           deep winter
           not all trees
           are bare

            hour before dusk
            the tattooist
            takes in his sign

            as bright
            as you can bear
            red of winter leaves

“Your creativity will expand into as big a space as you give it.” – Patti Miller

rich with
leafflurry
our walk to the café & cake
the shirt, scarf & papier mȃché pig I bought at Vinnies
(a Rescue Pig
with a money box slot
the plug taken out
liberated from the world of corporate finance
it will spend the rest of its days in meditation
contemplating Derrida’s idea of the absent centre)
new shoes
lasagne dinner
hot chocolate supper
the chess challenge
poems in Vallum: Bridges
grief

It’ll all be beautiful – and it was!


*

             20,000-year-old shelter
             the smoke paths
             through the rocks

             up mountain
             the man in front
             talking about taxes

             the hand slides
             down the stick
             these short steps

             tors
             orchids and forbs –
             we look out

             granite boulders
             some with rows of
             teeth

             the elusive lyrebird
             we find
             its sound

             down mountain the scent of cassinias

             downhill
             passing the places
             where we stopped

             return
             finding the map
             lost on the way


WORTH

          worth getting dizzy for
          I stoop to sniff
          the first narcissus

“Nobody on earth can prevent me from doing one particular thing: celebrating my lofty dreams.” Shri Chinmoy

today’s graffiti:
he didn’t do anything wrong

           gym –
           his muscles as he looks
           in the mirror

I accuse her of fears
also mine

blaming her for a complicated world
instead of accepting it’s complicated

“captured, distorted, breath & rain” – Valerie Kirk

         a bird flapping
         through this urban
         sky

maybe I’m some use
someone from Ukraine looks up
my bibliography on PTSD

           sun
           through the trees
           through trees
           

Poem by Stephen Bett

Novel Lines 101:  101 alphabetical poems, each riffing on the opening line of a postmodern novel or metafiction. Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act o...