Poems for Money, and No Kicks for Free


Verse 1
The air smells of printer’s ink and cold coffee,
and the page stares back like a shopfront window
where the mannequins wear my metaphors,
price tags swinging from their wrists.

I used to think the words were a kind of weather —
blowing in from nowhere,
soaking me through for the sheer joy of it.
Now they arrive in invoices,
in neat...

Read and leave comments (0)

They name me Cleaver, though I am no hand,
but the patient edge of centuries,
a blade honed by the Southern swell,
by wind that tastes of iron and kelp.

I split the dolerite as kin are split —
not in malice, but in the slow necessity
of tide and time,
each fracture a journal of what was kept,
and what was carried away.

Below, the broth seethes —
foam thick as ghost‑milk,
stea...

Read and leave comments (6)

parched wind, salt‑tongued

from the far edge of the bay,

licks the last drift of

mauve jacarandas.

in the tin‑roof blush,

I hear the slow heartbeat

of soil— patient, cracked,

still keeping the memory of rain.

I walk the market’s narrow spine,

hands grazing mango skins,

the laughter of vendors lifting

like myna birds into a sky

just beginning to remembe...

Read and leave comments (0)

gate mist

in the hour

before names

footstep /

echo /

gone

puddle edge

holds the sky

too still

.

Read and leave comments (1)

Once I was starling voice at dawn, 
A flock of chimed echoes on my tongue,
Wheezing whistles on choralled lawn,
Each verse a mimic so sweetly sung.

Now I’m a lyrebird lost in the brush,
Framing my solos in shadowed boughs,
With heart unfolding in trembling rush,
A lonesome lilting with hidden vows.

With cheeslets and flummox in my beak,
I sift the flock’s bright feathers from my cor...

Read and leave comments (4)

"streambound" 

In the stream before thought, 

a silver thread spills from a cloud’s open palm. 

It beads the air with patient syllables, 

falling into the current where our minds already drift.

We wade in — ankles claimed by the cold, 

our boots drinking more than we do. 

Above, heaven’s ladle tips again, 

its rain stitching ripples into the moving mirror.

Read and leave comments (3)