Melaleuca

Number 38: August 2012 Table of Contents L. S. Fisher L. S. Fisher Michael Lee Johnson Prof Vat Lech Paul Williamson Paul Williamson You Alone Your Romantic Interlude Ends Now Fig Tree Closing the Window Finding Direction Spendthrift Mall 3 4 5 6 7 8 Editor: Phillip A. Ellis

All works are copyright by their respective creators, 2012; the arrangement of this collection is copyright by Phillip A. Ellis, 2012. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/au/>. You are free to make and pass along copies, so long as you do not charge money or goods for the copy, and as long as this and other issues remain intact. Submission guidelines: email 2-5 poems, any length, any style, any genre to phillip.a.ellis@gmail.com in the body of an RTF or DOC attachment. No bios are needed; cover letters are welcome. We accept previously published material and simultaneous submissions; if work is published prior to its appearance in Melaleuca you must advise us accordingly, so that proper attribution can be made.

You Alone The lusty, decadent delights of Imperial Pompeii have never been in my dreams of you, only a mountain lake, clear and true, as its water runnels of your drying back. When I think of you, it is with desire, a longing to taste your hardness in my mouth, and to taste your kisses on my breath, as is meet for a man to ask of another. Not for me are the pleasures of women; not for me are their kisses and delights: of you alone do I ever fill my dreams with, and you alone do I desire till I ache. L. S. Fisher

Your Romantic Interlude Ends Now Clarity is essential when seeking to see for miles in the summer evening, as silence is when someone is speaking about what is akin to reasoning when the drinks are poured (perfect sundowner on the porch), and she for whom you've a torch is looking for an argument sounder than the wan one she would normally teach. But before you have had the chance to speak, the rival to her affections will lean over and touch her wrist; she'll smile, and crack, and before you know it you are alone with the tropical flowers in the dusk, and a half-written poem upon your desk. L. S. Fisher

Fig Tree Fig tree, fruit to all those come and gone, stare down your branches with your human eyes: God give us this day; our distressed fathers, deceased mothers children chatter on sidewalks, play hopscotch. In the forest, construction men cut the wood, make naked landscapes: strong men, strong lives. We all stop to contemplate the theorem. Michael Lee Johnson

Closing the Window Let me know. Look, bud, the Bud Light's outthrown, I looked through windows at the racing track, and avast, me hearties, but Bach is back towards my house of plaster. His knee's stone. And, um, a rabbit eats wood. He's alone within the shadows. Now, white's red, no: black, there was some missing aspect. Arses lack the wheat that hasn't pinged. Baby, it's grown. Chew me, chew me, say that you'll chew me there, but it wasn't the sheepdog that I shunned, because the beans gave me the windy air cast in the shape of shadows from beyond. And, with the window open, heads unrolled until I heard red rats the mad monk's told. Prof Vat Lech

Finding Direction The stretch is skyward; the eucalypt fifteen metres tall, and strong standing in short grass in a park to offer hospitality to rowdy rosellas shade and protection from rain. The trunk of light grey is half a metre thick with minor angular blemishes, smooth sporting a spread-out laurel crown. Side branches are gone close to the ground where the trunk sharply arcs; a relic of difficult early years. Paul Williamson

Spendthrift Mall Passers-by stare ahead. Their eyes dont seem depressed just slightly hooded as their minds tread water. Most dress in older clothes, subdued in shades of blue denim, charcoal, brown, grey with a few bright splashes that raise the mood. Some float oblivious to the downturn. One arrogant face makes an exception perhaps the face that greeted guillotines in Paris. A woman emerges from a bargain shop. She looks happy to have paid a tenth of her normal label bill. Crowds are smaller now even in the food courts. Shoppers are saving for their upturn. Paul Williamson