The Cost – Anzac Day

Someone must identify ‘the missing’.

The line, drawn in sand.

Fretworks.

A coarse curtain

Of stars

To convene beyond

The bay’s deceptive vermilion.

There’s the Provencal

Wilderness voice – and

Flotsam’s

Interpolation extremities

Powered by

Darkly glowing

Caretaker eyes

Someone must

Identify... ascending.

© Stefanie Bennett

Gallipoli dawn service goes ahead despite alleged terror plot

Stefanie has published several volumes of poetry – worked with Arts Action 

For Peace & ‘Equality’. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she

was born in Queensland, Australia.

That Was the MUSE That Was

Anti-politics Thumbnail  + Miroslav Holub

... Whoever’s prophet material

Had best seek counsel

From the nation

Of the ‘northern lights:’

No velure head-hunter need apply.

No Moulin Rouge mudslinger.

No tyrannous protoplasm

Batting an evil eye...

Lucidity epitomises

The cold ground’s

Imminent banter:

“Where man ends  +

The flame begins.”

And we will never

Put Prague

Or Jan Palach

Back together again.

© Stefanie Bennett

Top Ten Reasons to Beware the Ides of March

Stefanie Bennett

Stefanie has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

That Was the MUSE That Was

The Messenger

Arms trafficking. Plutocracy.

Coercion doing the rounds.

Voyeurism

Ad nauseam a la mode...

Is this what you envisaged?

A monotoned universe?

A basket-case of intangibles

Suckling the tilt of darkness? 

If I must, I’ll dust myself off

In the morgue of memory.

Light candles for

The alkaloid Madonna

Then take

Confession

From your limpet moon.

When I return

I expect answers.

© Stefanie Bennett

Australian Government under fire over export of weapons system to war crime-accused Saudi Arabia

Stefanie Bennett

Stefanie has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

The Way of It: 10 Miles

(National Poetry Day)

Seeing as how no-one’s
Tied to any
Shore
Anymore – and
We’re, most
Of us
Kicking over
The traces

Why then has
Grandpa
Got
Double-braces on!

© Stefanie Bennett

'Days they dictate to us are over': Poland vows to build Baltic Sea canal to bypass Russia

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

Writ Plain

Writ Plain

...Since we’ve
‘Bitten
The dust’
Our jaws
Have grown
The most
Improbable
Prose
Garden.

© Stefanie Bennett

ABC boss quits over Australian political interference claims

Freedom's Imposition

Scissors know our healing does not

Always come from books:

Does...
As the wind does.
Does... arch
As the hand raised over-long.
Does... concentrate
On every pose.
Does... cheat
For the sake of comfort.
Does... define
Both prong and tail.
Does...
The daylights from the living.
Does... assign
A dearth stance
Of which
We are too familiar, cut
From the background

What scrap is
To the stock-piling.

© Stefanie Bennett

France, Australia Naval exercises in South China Sea

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

Unmitigated Cycle: War Games Now

This frenzied star of an afternoon,
Heavy with the sway of
Wild flowering ti-tree;
Strands of the last
Mefistofele – its
Liturgy, where
Seduction wrote
Damnation in the sand.

And along the sandstone cliff annexed
To an indigo sky
Passing into violet,
We too have passed
In reticence.
There’s the sojourn
Of ‘39 – wry idioms...
The conscious sceptics.

But I trounce within the space
Of a once common day
Feeling the polar-pulse
That beats out
Accepted crass-Gods:
Warheads: inventive
Poison cowering
A spent Pacific.

Could it be conjectured up – the aged
Dictum? Poetic populists caught
On the rebound – and
Choice made,
No matter
How shrill. How
Contextual... setting
A precedent, now?

A wave hiss quivers its quatrain
To the walker upon it; recaps,
Best let be.
Esprit-de-corps! “Black glows
The sun and solid
Is the sea.” *
Well word trampled,
Mudie. I stop-watch
Today’s necromancy, and go.

© Stefanie Bennett

[*Quote from Ian Mudie 1911-1976]

Russia gears up for biggest war games since Cold War

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace [No Nukes], & Human Rights ‘Equality’. Of mixed ancestry – Italian/ Irish
Paugussett-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

The Spiked Baton

(for James Ricketson “Which country am I spying for?”) *

Why am I dreaming
Of the night’s
Mawkish
Militancy...

A carnation, unwieldy bowed
Receding in a row
Of ‘old woman’
Saltbush

That didn’t turn true-blue,
But peaked
Lacquered
Thin as

An oppressed mortal’s
Herring-
Bone
Shroud

And the stocked-up
Richet
Of attrition
On the run! Must be

Faust’s off-siders
Doing the rounds.

© Stefanie Bennett

Australian film-maker James Ricketson sentenced to six years' jail in Cambodia

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

*Spoken by James Ricketson – Australian filmmaker – jailed in Cambodia

for espionage 31st August 2018.

Rites: The Mojave – Flight MH17, 2014

When all else failed
The great heart
Of the Joshua Tree
Became

A Tepee ‘fire build’
In the desert’s
Empty
Arena...

It was a signal.
It is the signal.

© Stefanie Bennett

MH17: Russia 'liable' for downing airliner over Ukraine

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action
For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

Bird-Woman – Book-Keeper & Chemical Grief

O! Geese of the marshlands

They will spoon you to their

Audacious mouths, gnash you

And suck the sweetness away.

This I saw. I too am called

By the Hunting-horn. Curiously

Enough the skies

Were not made escape hatches.

It – the killer blue, rolls

Like fly-paper.

Like a pliable moment.

Like the diner’s dream...

I’ll say my begotten prayer for

All caught things.

I’ll spy and endorse findings

To set the records straight – then

Put the oven where my mouth is.

Toast black my succulence.

Let them – then – try spooning me

From their throats!

© Stefanie Bennett

Assad parks his aircraft in safety of Russian hangars

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action

For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

For the Record: Syria

You’ll understand

That enough

Is enough

When the stars

Climb down

From The Labarum’s

‘Chemistry

Of change’

Leaving

It bare

Like a hole in

The heart

Of darkness

© Stefanie Bennett

As deadly shells fall, fear spreads anew in Syrian capital Damascus

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action

For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

Diary of a Tear-Cutter: After “Protections for Religious Freedom”

An image lived inside the sphere

Of the tear-cutter.

Her profession taught

This could not be so

Since image stands

Alone as image.

Then I am quite mad,

She sang. I believe

In the micro-dot Magus

And tears spearing

All untruths

Beneath the bed-clothes.

Besides, the tear – oblique

To science – will not

Dissolve in water.

Nor will it suffocate

Within the lands...

“I’ve seen it melt

The most hardened diamond,”

She moaned.

“And explode when told

How useless it is.”

Hand over hand equals the tear

Which is the image

Grossly misconstrued...

“I must,”

She pledged,

                  “Commence a school

Founded on failure – that any

Tear-image can pay

Homage to.”

© Stefanie Bennett

Churches demand new 'religious freedom' law to combat era of 'hatred'

Change.org 20th February 2018 Review into “Protections for

Religious Freedom” with media reporting potential on impacts
for the LGBTQI Community. [Australia]

Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry – worked with Arts Action

For Peace, & ‘Equality’ [Human rights]. Of mixed ancestry – Italian, Irish Paugussett
-Shawnee, she was born in Queensland, Australia.

MIDNIGHT GARDENER for Martin Place 16/12/14

 It’s alright when the world’s sleeping.

Stars sit in the yew tree.

The moon is anyone’s heritage.

The cane-toad turns into an oracle.

The night-bat forgets she’s shy.

The cricket sings with renewed strength.

I plant phlox and azalea in my midnight

Garden patch – and make

Plans for a changed tomorrow

When this mother-land of ours will again

Clothe herself in the language

Of petal and leaf – and the mild

Aroma of musk and all things pleasing.

In the hours being struck

By dawn’s grey fingers, I take

One solitary olive branch and offer

Up my reckoning

To the invisible bearer of us all:

Let there be more elemental magic

As the axis bends.

Let there always be

Fine imagery... and a pattern

To record it.

  

©Stefanie Bennett

 

(2 hostages and the gunman have been shot

dead – and 4 injured. The gunman was a

self-styled Iranian Cleric.

‘Martin Place Siege, Sydney Australia’

ABC.net.au/news/2014-12-15)

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry. Of mixed ancestry [Irish/

Italian/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia in 1945.

After 'Longing, Belonging' by Hossein Valamanesh

The dwindling acres from here to there
And the yellow rose darkened
By crushed light
Is reason
Turned ageless within -.

You want to bark at the moon,
Peak perfect
Your upside-down
Cavatina
But - the handicapped

Past century's
On parole
Bumping into
Radio-active isotopes
That frequent

Our field's ill-gotten
Question marks
Despotically
Waving
'Hey, Joe!'

... No. I'll
Never
Make it
To
Sarajevo...

©Stefanie Bennett

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry. Of mixed
ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 1945.


The New York Times 'The Hague:Bosnia's Trial Nears End' MarliseSimons. (Sept. 29, 2014)