Wednesday, 12 January 2022

Five Sublime Poems by Terry Wheeler

 



timothy leary

 

don’t fill

each hour

 

leave some

blank we

 

all need a

 

little slack

to find

 

the unintended 

to let moments

 

leach through

 

and reach

a quiet stretch

 

as the bottom

falls out

 

 

open the hive

 

a big ask

the weight

 

shifts in

between

 

the shoulders

 

push beyond

the doubts

 

to the raw

ingredients 

 

of experience 

 

the only judge 

that matters

 

looks through

your eyes

 

 

dark ages

 

if scientists 

are our eyes

 

to see what

we cannot

 

then why

 

do we damn

our eyes

 

choose to

be blind

 

and lionise

 

false prophets

mediocrities 

 

who lie

and lie

 

 

‘there is no

end of talking’

 

all their 

verbal

 

upholstery 

yet never

 

a chair

 

worth 

sitting in

 

all effort

designing

 

execution 

 

leaves us

sighing

 

nowhere

to perch

 

 

sound effects

 

(1)

 

blessed with

average luck

 

and a hard

head concussion 

 

doesn’t come

 

as easily as

the knocks

 

derailing trains

of thinking 

 

boom gates

 

down red lights

blinking ding

 

dinging wait

it will pass

 

(2)

 

we cannot

outrun our

 

natures each

generation 

 

stamped with

 

minor notes

of variation 

 

attempting 

to perfect

 

the score

 

written long

before we

 

came here

to perform

 

(3)

 

louis armstrong 

blew true as

 

an arrow before 

the vibrato grew

 

sentimental 

 

miles davis was

startled behind

 

charlie parker 

then changed

 

the music half

 

a dozen times

emotional 

 

but never

sentimental 

 

(4)

 

polka was

more popular 

 

in corinda 

when ed

 

and chris

 

invented their 

version 

 

of punk

that volatility 

 

of incompetence 

 

and desperation

prophets aren’t 

 

accepted in their 

home towns






Terry Wheeler - 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.

 

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