Fashion Cleanser

every Monday it's wet surfaces on knees with washing cloth and liquid cleanser bathrooms and kitchen wipe down chairs and vacuum some days the refrigerator we don't often say much beyond hello how are you but once she said this is no be forever Frenk is for my children is not what I do for all …

meeting Nola

oh god she said oh Christ the three steps loomed looked set to defeat her bony fragility her walking-aid an impediment to balance she leaned against the rail and grasped with both hands and a shaking tremble oh lord he noticed the desperation the death-grip on the railing the bunching of stocking around each ankle …

my place in nothing

and how could I not worship when I turn my face towards the sky there are stars there designed to over-fill my head with an idea of what small is and my place within the scheme and I know I am nothing but who else is there to gaze wide open to the colours within …

chooks ‘n kooks

no I’m sorry madam it was an easy mistake to make simple case of misplaced consonant sounds we are the kookaburra orchestra you’re after the chookaburra’s down the road we do uncontrolled yet light-hearted laughter tracks they are the henhouse p’layers exotic artistes © Frank Prem,2009

Whirley-gigging the coffee

I’ve always been a drinker of pretty scungy coffee. As a young man newly in the workforce, I first became accustomed to drinking powdery institution coffee that we jokingly called ‘the sweepings off the floor’. It was warm and it was wet and it was free, and I didn’t know much better at the time. …

learning to kook

a whir of sound like the wet rub of stone against stone a cranking attempt to turn the motor over that fails to proceed all the way to ignition an undercurrent swelling to overpower both stone and motor but drawn back from the point of outburst of no return there are three of them in …

festivals and words and illusions and threads and air

finally I realised today that I will never feature at a writers fest looking at the names their bios and their well-known works I knew it’s taken time but five hundred dollars and a hundred and fifty poems for competition entries and magazine submissions a hundred dollars more for the price of post stamped self …

a new calendar

on the first of opportunity seize the day on the second of chances confront risk on the third of cautions peer around each corner on the fourth of actions pursue the great on the fifth of inadequacy rue what you cannot on the sixth of decisions you may be certain on the seventh of appearances …

Reading Modern Poets

I'm reading some modern poets because somebody said I should or perhaps it's more true to say that I'm glancing at them peering through their lives and between their verses I really don't care for poetry but maybe there's an interest in the reasons why they wrote this line or that (if someone's done an …

In Blue

with the dying sun before me and water barely to my knees I am among a gaggling clutter of clinging children dragging at me while I stand solid to watch the yellow-white of cloud lines streaking from the deeper oranges and reds of the westernmost sky with its ball of vibrant vermillion and the silhouette …