My writings poems stories and testimonies

I am a member of a Melbourne based Writer's group The Cat's Cry .. we meet monthly to share our work and sharpen our skills

My writing is highly influenced by the Australian bush tradition
 My favourite writers are  Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson   Xavier Herbert and Henry Handel Richardson richardson ethelflorence henry handel writing about the colonial era
Darcy Niland from early mid 20th century Australia

I studied two  years of English at the University of Melbourne and developed a love of Tolstoy and also the Romantic poets as well as American poets like Robert Frost

In more recent years I have become more influenced by Sufi poets such as Rumi and Hafeez and Walt Whitman a spiritual father of the radical faerie movement

and of I am working on an Australian gay romantic novella

Constructive criticism welcome

Collected Poetry

Like the sound of leaves falling on water 

He works in the rainforest alone

At evening a glance of love towards the Father

When we touch his warmth comes in equal measure from his spirit and his body

His heart moves towards those he loves 

Like the sound of leaves falling on water

Great loves are drawn from great silences

Out of solitude comes the most intimate connection 

I have my own quiet wounds ...

 Here is another man 
also affected by circumstances 

Although I am attracted to him
I am also scared 
by the scars
in his body and spirit –
and the wild strength these give him ......
 I ,I only have my own quiet wounds to nurse

Incomparable to the cataclysmic and the death defying.
I fear

If I get too close I will be consumed

in the flame of his engine room furnace

who will redeem us then?

Ode to Doubt 

Go Away! I said to Doubt 

You hang around under my eaves and make my foundations rotten!

Yes thank you for your gift of self knowledge –but I have had enough of you!

Go and find your fertile sisters- Trust, Faith, Courage and Hope, bring them to me

Set up Your camp on the loveless plains with your brothers Despair and Cowardice so I can keep an eye on you –at a distance and in my sight!

Short stories

Recalling my early childhood in Colbinabbin Central Victoria 

My name is Mike

My name is Mike , dad calls me “mickey mack a fool of us “and Mum always “Michael “  Today I am wearing my green shorts where I can feel the cool breeze coming up my legs, sandals and a green T-shirt my nana gave me for Christmas. Everyone gives me green things because I am a redhead but I like red

I can run fast I can walk on top of the monkey bars I can swing like a monkey skip two bars and grab on to the next one.  I’m so skinny I can get the ball when it falls into the squeezy place between the school and the shelter shed. I can climb to the top of the wattle tree past where anyone else can go and I’m not afraid when it bends and droops when I get to the very top –and I spy on people. I eat yams like aborigines do in case mum forgets to feed me. Because my dad is the headmaster I get to play in the playground when all the other kids have gone home..

It’s fun to go fast I run into the tin shed on the oval, I can smell stuff like the Rawleigh’s man brings that says For Man and Horse – I think that’s funny.  A man  is rubbing some of the smelly stuff into the legs of Rodney’s dad –I can smell mud too and mans’ sweat . There is a cloud of steam I run through it. There is a man with red hair washing himself and another dark hairy man ( I think its Billy’s dad )AND THEY DON'T HAVE ANY CLOTHES ON.... I like being here – girls can’t come here and I can go in and out as much as I want

.

I’m back in the playground and Ritchie my brother tells me to look up. A Red aeroplane with wings like a sandwich is flying over the school ground I think he wants to land but we are in the way. He flies in a circle above the town and heads towards the main street

We are not supposed to but we sneak out the back gate. When we get there the man has landed his plane outside the Pub. He is wearing a funny leather hat and a big leather jacket and really tall boots. He is walking around his plane and heads into the pub. We are not allowed in the pub, you have to be a man to go inside ladies don’t go there and the bank manager doesn’t but you can smell peanuts and stale beer like when daddy leaves his half empty glass on the verandah.

He no 1 

He no1 was the most handsome man on the dance floor with curly light brown hair and an unruly beard that softened the lines of his lips. His hips were thin at the waist but when he lifted his arms his shirt road up his muscled torso to reveal a trail of brown hair on a flat belly that emphasized his perfect symmetry – and hinted at more hairy treasures below.

He no2 was also tall but clean shaven and therefore more boyish in looks. His hips were wider and his trousers hung off them, at the back revealing bunched up everyman underwear, at the front forming a pouch over a full-some crutch

He no2 put his right leg forward bent down and extended an L shaped right arm to He no 1 while looking straight at his face, He no 1 instinctively put his arm out in a matching hook shape - for a moment their sleeves brushed and then He no1 withdrew before there was any traction possible. 

There would be no hi-jinks and collapsing in a heap of He’s tonight

He no 1 loved He no2 but not as much as he was loved.

He no 2 drank too much then left suddenly one day for Sydney. 

He no1 got his girlfriend pregnant and they were married that summer.