Special Australian Section
Spike Rotundo
The Emotion Stone
The emotion stone
Emotion of stone
Hard cold and brutal
When it bangs on the bone
Does just to break it
And bring it on home
To a family just like it
With emotion of stone
Gives a cold cup of tepid
Then leaves it alone
So you go to your cave
For more emotion of stone
Then you're all on your own
Like a bat that's a bookmark
In the dead book of drone
Dreary in its template
Old cold through its spine
Mad in its matter
Thought twisted like junk
Every third and fourth page
Is hoary and bleak
And the book stinks like rat rotten
And your mind glows bright blank
Till you turn off its engine
And put it back on its back
And curl up beside it
And go to sleep in its space
Till the images crawl like beetles
Up to holocaust hill
They've just come to look now
But they'll soon come to kill
As your nightmare crackle
With burning black flame
And your emotion stone
Drops like a pallet
In a wet water pool
As the ripples move towards you
You just can't go on
So you curl up death donut
And loneliness too
In the thin iron pond
As they put the emotion stone
Down gently beside you
You hear them whisper
He's through yes he's through
As they move you in deeper
To make sure if you are really that dead
Or doing a pos sum or two
A fake phoney death
That doesn't become you
Then back in the township
They shuffle through your four quarters
Looking for gadgets and gold
The plastic's put over you
And you're wrapped in its crisp callous cold
Packed in your packet
Of the envelope grave
One step from renewal
And ten steps from your birth
And the emotion stone
Cold soburied in the desperate despicable and dilettante earth
Copyright ©2003 Spike Rotundo
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I wouldn't canooty
The bundy of clout
Even if I knew
What I was talking about
I wouldn't connect him
To a collatelly tin
For the simple reason
He wouldn't get in
He might have the panthines
He might have the skid
How would I know
If he didn't or did
So the safety check measures
In place in the morning
Are alright all day
For the likes of these
But if a blister pouts up
Like a black bottled nitrate
I'm leaving immediately
I can't cope with that
Copyright ©2003 Spike Rotundo
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Bio:
I work as an artist, poet, musician and performer. I found my love of arts as a small child and have been persecuting my local community ever since with my genius for being quite average. My achievements are too numerous to mention on the back of a Catholick postage stamp, so I'll sigh off now.
Sandy Jeffs
The Social Worker
The social worker
thought I was cactus
a dead loss
a blight on the world.
The social worker told me
I had: reached the end of the line,
and I believed her
thought I was history
a story with a crappy ending
a nobody who
walked in the shadows of others
and cast none of my own
a witch who made others miserable
a carbuncle on my friends' lives.
I festered and oozed
and sealed the puss of my madness
in the scab of my life's retreat
which had: reached the end of the line
so the social worker from Hell said
condemning me to another Hell
which had nothing to do with being mad.
Copyright ©2003 Sandy Jeffs
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My Life
My life
is only a breath
shallow at times
barely feathering
the myriad faces
that glide the ways
barely giving comfort
never taming the ghouls.
My life
is only a breath
that fades into
the moon's
asylum of beggars
and angels.
When they frame
the shadows of
the nether world
in a golden cage,
into which I come
and from which I leave
angry and mad,
let them say:
she was the maddest of all.
And I shall say:
my life
is only a breath
its hush speaks words
falling as a crescendo
upon the mad world's deafness.
Copyright ©2003 Sandy Jeffs
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Bio:
Sandy Jeffs has had four books of poetry published. Her poetry invites the reader to experience the agony and humour of madness, the tragedy of domestic violence and the trials, tribulations and celebrations of midweek ladies tennis. Sandy often speaks to community groups, GP's , schools and university students about mental illness, hoping to raise awareness about the myths that surround this misunderstood phenomenon. Sandy lives on the outskirts of Melbourne with her friends and animals.
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