Penguin's Poetry Palace

Spiderwebs

I see the way you spin
little threads that stick
into my hair and eyes and mouth./
suffocate here, again
and again waiting for the tremour
of your legs against this wire.
spindle your legs, collect me
up into your jaw,/unhinge for me.
I am nothing
when I am curled into this
your sanctuary. One fine web
melting against my skin.

I spin these threads
into your hair and eyes and mouth.
Stalk the brave walkway between
branch and leaf, meeting
the points of inception here and there.
The temour of my leg begins again
and I know you shake inside
this fine steel. I unhinge my jaw
and wait for you to close, to cover, to sleep.

Poetry Recital

Audy slit my tongue in two
words sliding by the gap
into my throat, I am surrounded
by her, the image of sound
reverberating into my lungs and toes.
I watch her watch, the small shade
of her hair closing down
on her smile. 'For the best'
she offers to my mute lips
and I am done.

Sabre of the South

Thylacine stripes echo of past
scratches biting deep skin
and thick black blood messing
through sandy fur. I want to ask,
tiger nose, do you love the desert
where your skin cover meets ground
and you fade. I could not see you
in the deep spinifex but heard
thick growls like opening mountains,
seas caving in. I could not hear you
but the memory of your footprint
on rocky plain pats down my spine.
Thylacine, tiger toes, where did you go.

Pretty Bad

I cluster stars in myths
I wish had happened;
Elephants' fighting tusks
clashing over waterways,
the wind collecting eyes
on the way to the south,
you and I curled together
on a nameless verandah,
you and I pressing palms
to the old wooden cracks,
you and I.

This is not a poem

This is a word
- a word inside a sentence inside space.
I want to deconstruct – reconstruct but
I work letters in my mouth so quickly
I forget what they mean before I have even
conceived them. Like so many others
I find forgetting comfortable.

This is not a letter - this is

I cannot articulate any more
than I can guess the meaning
of words I've known my whole life.
What does 'no' mean to me –
beyond the qualification I am obliged
(Obligation which I know by heart)
to say is really 'maybe' 'one day' –
Were I mute, could I be free of lamentable
linguistics? I could read but not roll
the incomprehensible around under my tongue
until the taste of it censors the meaning,
tells my belly what to think – what to say
in return. I cannot say the spaces
I am most interested in, the clavicle
of desire, constant between throat
and heart; the bridges between one syllable
and the next. I can say;

I want to invent a new language
without ever learning this one.

I can say – this.

My first attempt at spoken word poetry, spoken in the link.

Poet (to be a)

I am not damaged goods,
my blood does not run ink
or paper or thin-covered electronics,
my breaks are air-tight as any other;
seals still waiting to be popped
(or locked). This slim wrapping
of skin over muscle – sinew over
bone – crackles with energy
like a child or mother or
I think we have different ideas
of what it means to write, to sink
into words easy as sheets, pillowing
our doubts on titles and structured
confessions. You think it means my heart
is broken, those spiderweb crinkles echoing
through my fingertips. I think it means
I exist.

What is your name?

My throat is made of ash;
trembling black fingers wound
across my collar bones and deep
inside my chest. It is hard to breathe.
Here it is quiet but for the soft
wheeze of my mouth opening on nothing
and closing empty. I feel wrong,
like someone carved my name
into my nape and left it there so everyone
would know it but me. I don't know
how to say my name, all I can do is breathe.

Sisters

I remember you standing on the pier
on Manly beach when the ferry docked.
Watched how the wind tried to steal you,
your hat circling upward just out of reach
as you noticed the waves bouncing our ship in.
I wanted to shout at you but couldn't,
people hung over the rails and my fear of them
(for them) sat heavily in my chest and so
speaking seemed alien and unreal.
You waved, I cornerd myself against a pylon,
coiled there until the crowds left, I worried
about accidental departures and bolted
down the ramp. You waited at the edge of the beach,
I watched your skirt shudder in the salted breeze
and thought 'this will be you in twenty years,
this is your laughter and sadness rolled into one
empty body being lifted off the spintery boards.'
We embraced and I felt warm.

Completely love "What is your name"
lovelovelove

Then that will be my final competition poem.

Hi, everybody, I am a new friend.