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    Thirty-Six Poems
    Thirty-Six Poems
    Thirty-Six Poems
    Ebook82 pages26 minutes

    Thirty-Six Poems

    By Graham Simmonds

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    About this ebook

    In this collection of poems Graham Simmonds is on a journey through dreams and reality. On the pilgrimage he encounters scenes and events showing that all people seek a mythology to justify their actions and existence. Not all seekers have empathy or understanding; some are mere malevolent egotists; others are lost in the roiling broth of uncontrollable circumstances.
    The joke lies in that there is no Pythagorean perfection in life, and that laughter and compassion can release us only when we realise this.
    There is always room for another pilgrim, and always another destination.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris AU
    Release dateJan 14, 2014
    ISBN9781493127672
    Thirty-Six Poems
    Author

    Graham Simmonds

    Graham Simmonds is a playwright, poet and composer who grew up near a polluted, industrial swamp in the south-east of Melbourne. His schooling involved matriculating in English, Physics, Chemistry, Violin and Music Theory. This was followed by three years at teachers’ college and a Bachelor of Arts in Swedish and Germanic Studies. Graham was a classroom teacher who then specialized in the pedagogy of language and reading. There were other jobs as a musician, folksinger, actor, waiter and surrogate customer at a car-yard. Graham’s continuing education comes from the immense and fascinating world that beckons the curious mind.

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      Book preview

      Thirty-Six Poems - Graham Simmonds

      PHILIMOU

      On your brow,

      soft on your lips,

      there is a stillness

      and the lulling sound

      of peaches ripening

      in a new summer

      and on your chin

      the softness grows at night,

      but darkly.

      RAPUNZELS

      IN THE CLOSET

      When the compulsory silences

      that have sat on our lintels

      suddenly sit up

      and yawn at us

      in a season more ancient

      between cribs and caskets

      our eyes will swell

      and hands haul

      at hair no longer there.

      When the lovers

      who never came

      can no longer be loved,

      except in the imaginings

      of surrogate minds,

      (eyelashes graying for autumn,

      fungus thoughts mushrooming

      on senile anger and tears),

      we will regret the freedoms

      never taken,

      never won,

      and the integrity we protest

      never seen turned honest.

      Flame is not new

      to our paranoid skins.

      We will be sad

      but not alone

      in our aloneness,

      each of us publicly staked,

      morbidly afraid of flame or light,

      and in these moments lies

      our essential futility.

      Where to find

      the ears that would heed

      the mutual cries

      we dare not admit

      after we have locked the doors

      and swallowed the keys.

      Frenzy and pain

      will commandeer us,

      will release the inner devils

      we have suckled for years,

      and we shall scream

      for reasons other

      than our release.

      And all this to silence

      the imprisoning silences

      that never should have been.

      NORTHVALE PRIMARY SCHOOL

      The room is empty,

      chalkdust fossilizes on our books,

      tables nurse chairs,

      the air collapses

      from academic fatigue.

      The children have gone

      to catch measles and tadpoles,

      or be led astray by television,

      or the perniciousness of childhood games.

      Their noisy voices,

      sounds of scuffling feet

      haunt on in corners and cupboards.

      On the table-tops

      their greasy fingerprints sleep,

      dormantly awaiting tomorrow’s regeneration.

      I write lesson-plans at twilight:

      winters in a hollow classroom,

      ghostly images filling my finally private head.

      My prisoners of the day are on night-release,

      but their ectoplasms ooze on

      in the school’s perpetually mystifying rites.

      KARMA

      Poet at your night desk,

      you say you seek insight—

      the only path is reality.

      Feel the tears in your eyes,

      Enjoying the preview?
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