Category: Poems

As of October 2011, I’d posted over three hundred poems on this site, including many sonnets and search poems, as well as numerous poems that didn’t make it into chapbooks such as Abendland and Morgenland. I then ceased posting poems here, choosing instead to distribute them via my poem of the week newsletter. Then I stopped doing that too. Every now and then I post a poem here … but not as often as I’d like.

  • Revered master Dear Walt, my beloved master, my friend, my bard my prophet and apostle – Dear Bernard My dear master! Your good, long varied and loving letter came yesterday and has been welcome and nourishing to meh. My dear master! I cannot reply properly, we have been treading air since Dear Bernard O’Dowd (and…

  • revered master dear walt, my beloved master, my friend, my bard my prophet and apostle my dear master my dear master my dear master my dear master and (may I say?) comrade my dear master my dear master B. O’D.

  • I am 24, red hair, plain features, and a little too backward for my own good. B. O’D. 24yo dawn-red hair western districts oz poet seeks 80ish NS/SD amerikan dusky-grey hair ex-civil war nurse poet for inter-continental correspondences & hero worship – must heart ozpo philo/sci-fi &/or long walks on beach FYI both parents RC…

  • “Similarly, poetry (e.g. the Psalms) can be written in such a way that it looks like a cat wrote it.” —LOLCat Bible Translation Project

  • Envoi

    Brennan’s contemporary, Bernard O’Dowd, espoused the cause of nationalism, and attained a far greater reputation in his day; but unlike Brennan’s, his work has dated badly. Judith Wright, A Book of Australian Verse (1968)

  • Fantasy I

    oh yea! let us go then you & me to a tavern & drink meade there mumble through a manuscript of runes & pull on heavy chain mail sharpen our swords (let the orcs come now for we are ready here in our makeshift campsite cloaks compulsory tales of yore yea of bravery (other words…

  • I may have a thousand hands but that doesn’t make me a Bodhisattva – in fact, the only things my hands are good for are mundane things, practical tasks, not spiritual enlightenment. I use my thousand hands to play five hundred games of solitaire against myself and whenever I win the cards cascade like a…

  • Zandvlieg

    the arrow or the target set alight in a carpark at night woot! meet me there ————————–>

  • aramis information dawns on this computer world we’re stuck inside this outside the computerrains modelling suggests my hard drive skips a beat & becomes a snafu feelings & love now widgets send up moon batteries for my flat earth theorist the sound hollows like an earworm in spaces that collide in servers named after planets…

  • in the heart of your mouth there’s a tongue there’s a beat there’s a heart shaped like stars & that’s where you are (& valentine’s day lasts for ten more hours when you’re on the line you’re mine i’m whining about how time will neither speed up nor slow down & here we are in…

  • okay so i was watching sunrise (the day heath ledger died surrounded by pills they said first he’s dead & then the ads & then in breaking news, this: so jo, what does this mean? cut to wednesday’s expert from new ikea magazine (who brings h. ledger back to life no suggestion of suicide &…

  • you were only ten years old when billy corgan had hair. & youknow, i can barely remember that time myself – it’s as if i wasnever actually there oh but i was at selina’s in coogee wherebilly corgan had lots of hair & he screamed & yodelled & shookhis mane of greasy sweaty hair (he…

  • a lot of empty places at these tables here-ah our drummer jumped off the brighton pier (ha count me in with the beats mark e smith (ta dah! screw my lightbulb honey brat sonically sophisticated buy a round of drinks-ah sorry your services no longer etc … squizzle! boss says “random quote generate-ah” live at…

  • over there where you’re laying down down amongst the styrofoam cups & album cover broken glass bra straps honey power coming all over me me & you with your oh fantastic english got me high & left me there stranger with a honey tongue warm between the vinyl EPs wet beneath the stylus rooms in…

  • Bruises

    he bites into the apple eats the bruises soft & brown like sugary endings (rayon bites the bruises cuts them clean out & spits the skin onto the crusty pavement sucks the bruises (swallows them whole into the apple of his insides & scratches & bruises yes just there soft like blisters just beneath the…