Metta
Today at daybreak walking on the footpath the air brisk upon my face, first across the quiet road, down the avenue stepping on young-autumn leaves, past a cat on a roof, then round a corner I gaze forth toward the sky. The moon — wide, generous, exuberant, so large and so low I could touch …
Street Person
He bends and places a bottle of booze On the ground. Dirty pants sag To expose a white, resigned bum. He sits his fat body down. When I come back round the same corner A woman drops a coin Into his blackened hands. The alcohol is Half-drunk. “Spare change?” he looks up, Not at me …
Film review: Nomadland
“I am house-less, not home-less,” says the main character near the beginning of the film, in response to a well-meaning probe. The notion that one’s home is something you carry with you — and in this case, metaphysically and literally — shapes the transcendental heart of Nomadland, a serenely visceral work based on a novel …
Creation
Is there any question the carpet of leaves on the grass, on the path has heaps to teach us about spiritual generosity? Would you ever doubt the great, beautiful elm senses your presence from vibrations you make in the air? I walk like this each morning, around the reserve, across the bridge, over the lake, …
Song
Six o’clock, upon rising, You put the music on: Meditative beats, spiritual mantras, Classical tunes. It is not to fill the space; There are voices of crickets, Early taxis, the whistling wind. Even the resident bird has woken up To take its place at the corner Of the parapet. No — You put the music …
Leaf
I read between the lines of my heart While a red leaf floats like whisper upon my lap. And is there any more clarity than before? Only more conflict, more questions, more uncertainties. Nothing like the delicate truth of trees, through time. Dense, tedious heart, too many layers, too many possibilities. Tome of inanity, I …
Threads
Is a connection man-made, like a highway? Or is it preordained, like To whom we were born? Does it only run between us and Real objects or people? Things you can hear or see. I think about the grandfather I’d Never met whose spunkiness Courses through my veins. I think about the imaginary characters Of …
On Foot in Fitzroy
The two-storey terrace houses Have been conjoined At their sides A long time now Their arched balconies Framing lit windows where Love mingles with disappointment, and Anguish dissolves into peace this Is Fitzroy, Victoria the last trams For the day Roll on here Past alleys of street art Across the pain of the bar’s Remaining …
Book review: The Scarlet Letter
“Truth is to power what fire is to wax, that’s why power and truth are mortal enemies,” says Bangambiki Habyarimana, a Rwandan author of the book, Pearls of Eternity. The book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850, is concerned with the relationship between these two adversaries, in whose battle we see inflict untold suffering upon …
Twenty- twenty
It’s Sunday morning, so I go for a walk on the lockdown streets. First, down the footpath, crossing a driveway, where a black cab waits at the McDonald’s window, blowing white smoke, a masked face peering out. Then onto the avenue, where a glossy sign advertises a mansion for sale, where potted flowers are hanging …
Review: A Canary for One
We all know he is a deceptively spare writer — Ernest Hemingway. The famous six-word fiction: For sale, baby shoes, never worn has been largely ascribed to him. And his complete collection of short stories, comprising 71 stout-hearted vignettes, is spread over just 650 pages. This brevity is never diminutive in substance. It was Hemingway …
Theatre review: Homer’s Odyssey
The image of captivity litters Homer’s Odyssey, and is keenly represented in Loucas Loizou’s staging of the Greek mythology, casting himself as Odysseus. The production unfolds within the ruins of an enclosure, its walls exposing crumbling brick and ancient decay, with no door or windows in sight. In this digital event, the camera is fixed …
Theatre review: Shadow Piece-Alt. Shadow Love
Staging a play in which one or more characters is a shadow demands courage and cleverness. Indie artists, Antoinette Tracey and September Barker, take this adventurous route. They present Shadow Piece-Alt. Shadow Love at the Melbourne Fringe Festival as a digital event, taking the audience to the suburbs, rather than bringing the suburbs to the …
Continue reading Theatre review: Shadow Piece-Alt. Shadow Love
It’s Like
Words that misunderstand the heart’s native language The moon in daylight An invitation that comes in the middle of the night Loving with intelligence A fireplace, tropical home The sucking of a lung ventilator after the heart stops pumping Into a candy-floss dawning sky columns of smoke billowing The last chapter nobody reads because the …
Lockdown Poetry
Curfew Excepting an all-night globe palely burning the corridor at 5 A.M. was dark but for my iridescent shoes and a ribbon of light under the door three rooms away where a flush choked and swallowed as I strode past in silence not knowing this poem is for the interrupted-sleeper or early-riser who also perhaps …
A Family Album: An Exhibition
Her Por Por’s (maternal grandmother in Cantonese) kitchen wall, sporting a flip-calendar, transistor radio, and condiments shelf is how artist-photographer Pia Johnson, of Chinese-Italian heritage, has chosen to honour her family history. Julie Dowling depicts herself and her twin sister as cheeky four-year-olds peering out from amongst their aboriginal relations in a colourful acrylic painting. …
Closer: A Short Film
“Watch us cope, watch us try to cope, watch us.” We do — we can’t help it — as we find our psychological being exhibited so vividly before us, through raw, limpid physicality, in Adrian Berry’s short online film, whose title conjures human’s innate desire for connection, (no more so than) at a time when …
Forest Walk
I love walking through the woods On a spring morning, Alone, naked Under a dress, exploring The footpath Straggles onward into The mystery of the Primeval forest There’s the smell of Damp leaves, Of wombats, sleep, Slow air, infinity I can see All the dark places where The sun has not yet reached, where A …
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