Connecting

It’s a dry day wrapped
a quivering at edges
a barely being, fast holding
shallow breath day;
quarks fidgeting
streaming through fields
concocting.
Brief me a few lines
a well-tempered brief
wrap me in ideas
and confluence;
be there in spite of,
because we do this daily,
dark deliverance.

Doppler

Who knows where the terror lies…
hand me your sawn-off, your long cries
after the event, that far sighting
drenched in media’s coagulant.

They have supplied labelling:
war, accident, the unexpected,
trauma, ripping placid to shreds,
taking the call that never should have rung

in any house at night, not even ours,
especially not ours. But that’s the way of it,
we think our alarm can be assuaged,
not too worried about yours.

Hand me this weapon, or any;
I’ll build a pyramid, see firearms pile up
and rot, down to the last bullet,
along with torn flesh memories,
ballistic wounds.

We’ll measure these skid marks
on the road surface, tarmac,
count the clean ups, airlifts, listen
to the last collision’s scream, its Doppler
shift, its black lightning frequency.

In The Wake

it slaps
at the face of psyche,
a wet,
flat-handed thwack,
says drop this mask,
subterfuge;
lean into
your east, prevailing,
sail clean
and unremarked.

Linda Stevenson is a poet/painter living in Melbourne Australia. Linda considers her poetry as part of her life; it has been a life-long habit, from childhood through to adolescence, adulthood and now into mature older age. In recent years her poems have been published in literature magazines in Australia, UK, USA and Canada. A chapbook “The Tipping Point” was also published in 2015.