Five Poems by Terry Wheeler

 

things that splinter

 

(1) nomenclature 

 

to find yourself

walking without 

 

knowing how

you got there

 

some called it

 

somnambulism 

as if a word 

 

could explain 

anything put

 

a label on it

 

but what if

some of those

 

insects wanted

to break free

 

(2) who

 

the seemingly 

in tol er able

 

with dint of

per sis tence

 

becomes trite

 

a smug face

greeted with

 

an tici pa tion

of broken glass

 

is missed when

 

real iz ation

registers its

 

vague whatever 

happened to

 

(3) omelette 

 

breaking eggs

calls for a

 

light hand

performance 

 

not suited to

 

highly strung 

brutes who

 

think winning’s

an arm wrestle

 

and remain

 

ignorant of

egg shell 

 

things that 

splinter

 

 

murakami

 

at murakami’s

end of the world

 

bob dylan’s

singing a hard

 

rain’s a-gonna

 

fall the cat’s

long dead all

 

whisky drunk

vinyl records 

 

played cassette 

 

in a rented car

on repeat neath

 

a drizzling

tokyo bay

 

 

shadow play 

 

shadows fact

and fiction

 

dance before

the light 

 

moths attracted 

 

refracted by

prejudice into

 

indistinct insects

some that haunt

 

as others play

 

making their

way through

 

this blur

of history 

 

 

After graduating from law school in the late 1980s Terry worked in the Australian public service for decades. He was inspired to write after seeing Michael Dransfield poems in The Australian newspaper when a teenager. Terry has been published in Australia and abroad since retiring. He lives in Brisbane when not travelling.