All interested responses welcome.

Tuesday 31 May 2016

This poem is from "The Tipping Point"
published recently by Blank Rune Press.

Be There

When, over the course of an ordinary
circumstance, say an afternoon,
the suffering of an epiphany intrudes,
it comes on the instant, darkly indigo,
as if surfacing
from the arcane heart and stones
of a river, a great one, a Thames, Nile, Amazon
...like a river’s perpetual loosening of itself
from its source;
with no holds barred, side swiping its banks,
merciless, not waiting for a change in the weather
to be gone, gone on.  So, like this,
amazement strikes, emanates
from whatever it is we take knowledge from;
a quantum
leaping as briskly as yesterday from the universal moat
into the castle, fortress of personal mind.
We barely perceive it.  In trying to define the thing
we lose its essence.
So we forget.

Now, as we approach the falling away of our tribe
visions may delay long enough for taming,
may divulge the heart of the matter,
telling some of us who we are, how to be.

Many say the tribulation comes
soon now.
Rest then by a momentous river,
persist quietly.  The epiphanous sword
may emerge from the waters, spinning, rising.
She may fall on you, wounding dumb clay,
letting old blood and the holy words spill out.
Watch, be more vigilant
than you have yet been
throughout your uncounted lives.
Don’t risk
not being there
when it happens.

3CR Spoken Word program May 2016

I enjoyed creating this poetry segment with Peter Davis.

Click here to listen to poems and interview:
http://www.3cr.org.au/spoken-word/episode-201605120900/linda-stevenson

Friday 13 May 2016

How Could You Not Know?


How could you not know? about
prisons, when we’ve met behind the bars of several,
brought books in, and denied that mere walls
should enslave us..?

Dear, I saw the covering over your head, the stain
of inherited guilt seeping through the cloth.
Love, I once saw the light falling flat
on your shoulders, your eyes weeping against the glare.
Friend, I heard how you dropped to the Post Office
steps, dying right on them, a heart attack,
no one helped.

Our elder author, lady with
the lilt still when she reads, she says poetry
will save the world. I have my doubts.  But
hope.  As you hope also.
So how can you not see that the pettiness
of blind ego drags us to a page of broken prose,
tramples the beautiful words into bitterness.

Come, be a safeguard now, frisk me, making sure
I carry no arms.  Sit with me here
and we shall write lines so diaphanous and proud
they’ll hold the very air in place.



Friday 6 May 2016

Here's Valli Poole, of Blank Rune Press, helping me talk about my chapbook
The Tipping Point at our recent launch in Frankston.