building site at midnight

star light bounces off timber scaffolding
illuminating sawdust dancing
in the thought of a breeze
everything smells of freshly sawn wood

i am miles away & will
read of it tomorrow in
a newspaper which will omit
important details
or maybe i will wait
for the despatches
single words carried on
a breath i can assemble
them how i choose

but the starlight is still there
even during the day
like this poem was here
even before the scaffold

 

Mark Roberts is a writer, critic and editor currently living in Sydney Australia. He has been publishing work in numerous magazines and journals since the early 1980s. He runs Rochford Street Review (A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism) and Rochford Street Press (one of the smallest Australian literary presses) . He is a founder and editor of P76 Magazine and is currently poetry editor of Social Alternatives.

 

green balloon

sometime in the late seventies he disappeared into the sky under a large green balloon he left a note behind an almost poetic message of lost love & a shattered heart he floated high above a street he wanted to forget pulling ropes & pushing levers to go higher finding that his heart beat slower in the thinning air

his old word disappeared in a haze he looked down on a blue green sphere as the sky above turned black & the pin pricks of stars grew larger he heard that below great advances had been made in poetry he didn’t care he watched the earth curve as he rushed around it again & again & longed for a straight line

 

October 1933

wish i could get it full
calm & unconscious but
a perpetual little spatter
of comments keep me awake
only a rain drop, a frog
in the bed of an administrator
& i refuse to take life
more strongly & steadily
open eyes open mind
a pot shot with substance

 

You can view even more of Mark’s work at:

http://cordite.org.au/poetry/jackpot/cameraman/
http://cordite.org.au/poetry/transpacific/pacific-solution-3/
http://mascarareview.com/mark-roberts/
http://verityla.com/posthumous-mark-roberts/
http://verityla.com/ishmael-mark-roberts/
http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/mark-roberts.html
http://p76issue1.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/mark-roberts-the-last-day-of-war/