Month: January 2018

A Plumber In The Trenches

I received this interesting post from Janebasilblog today. Starting this week, Calen, at Impromptu Promptlings, invites us to revisit the Sandbox Challenge. She begins with a loosening up exercise, asking us four questions about ourselves. Here are the questions and my answers:

If you were asked to choose seven words to describe yourself, what would they be?

* Happy

* Empathetic

* Trusting

* Loyal

* Romantic

* Determined

* Emotional
`
If you were asked to choose seven objects that have meaning for you, what objects would you choose?

* My photo albums and picture gallery

* My Music collection

* Dad’s orchids that I care for

* Carole’s memorabilia

* A poetry book Melpomene, in which a poem of mine, was my first published works

* The bookcase my grandpop made for me

* Mum’s round brass antique coffee table.
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If you were asked to choose seven colors that have meaning for you, what colors would you choose ?

* White – like a dove, the sign of peace

* Red – the colour of Carole’s hair

* Blue – like the sky above

* Ocean Blue – the origin of life

* Green – the colour of Mother Nature

* Orange – my colour of happiness

* Neutral Gray – wouldn’t it be nice for the whole world to be neutral
~
If you were asked to choose seven places that have meaning for you, what places would you choose?

* “Tullawalla” our old family home in Ocean Grove

* Port Fairy, south west coast of Victoria, “Our” favourite camping holiday destination, special glorious times, and the friends we camped with are still my besties

* My home, probably my final abode, now proudly called “Tullawalla”

* The Ocean Grove surf beach, the sands of time here, soothes my soul.

* My sporting/football Club “Bell Park”, my lifelong community involvement group, and where “our” wedding reception was held 42 years ago, and where I still socialize.

* 27 Logan St, North Geelong, the family home for the first 20 years of my life, my childhood was blissful and it’s where all my dreams were born and fostered.

* The gorgeous site where Carole’s ashes lay…… It’s the old Geelong West Cemetery, for me the most beautiful place in the universe.

 

For Jane, Thank You for the inspiration to write this article…..

Featured Image:  Ivor and Carole on the beach at Port Fairy, 1978.

 

Ivor Steven (c)

Morning Whispers

Whistling palms

Visions of calm

Looking up and over

My verandah roof

Above, neighbouring wind-break trellis

Through the whisperings

A drooping willow tree

Sheltered aside

By darkened-green cypress pines

Beyond their leaf’s silhouette

The sky’s a clear

Morning blue

No gathering clouds in sight

My future arises bright

 

Ivor Steven (c)

Red White And Blue

Featured Image:  Bing search, Red White And Blue: signalbrands.com — 818designco.com

 

I’m leaving the party

My friends have all gone

Standing alone

Holding an empty wine

Maybe it was red

I’m thinking a white

Stains on my shirt

A lipstick collar too

Cannot remember who

Blurry visions

Red White and Blue

Time to shoot through

Before the morning dew

Pick-up my jacket and shoes

Tip toe out

Quiet as a mouse

Head for my house

If where, I only knew

And it’ll be the Hour soon

To sing a psalm or two

And openly confess

My personal mess

There ! Kneeling in the pews

I’m remembering who

She’s wearing last nights dress

Red White and Blue

 

A special mention to “Mel Gutier” and “Ward Clever”, for keeping me awake until 3.00am last night, and inspiring me to write these words. Also to Leonard Cohen’s song “Leaving The Table”

 

Ivor Steven (c)

Arctic Winds

A big thank you to Vita Brevis Magazine for selecting and publishing my poem “Arctic Winds”. I am truly honoured to be represented in this wonderful Magazine for poets, and to all my readers/followers, I sincerely recommend that you visit/follow the Vita Brevis site,
https://vitabrevisliterature.com.

Vita Brevis Press

Submitted by Ivor Steven

I’m winter hibernating,

Inside an Eskimo’s hut.

Feeding only on fish oil,

And frozen blue blood.

My heart’s cold and dormant,

Cowering under a dampened vestment.

Pumping only yesteryears rust,

And icicles of my dust.

My eyes are swollen rocks,

Amidst polarized sockets.

Terrorizing all that’s passed,

Like forgotten arctic icebergs.

My veins are hollow crevasses,

Inside a glaciers ice-flow.

Sheering and groaning chasms,

Like my memories deepest fjord.

Are you a poet? Send us your best work!
Photo Credit: An Arctic Landscape At Dusk – Herman Herzog

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Broken Plates And Rabbit Stew

Have you every had that weird fantasia sort of dream.

Where you can’t see beyond the silver screen.

The infinite edges are no-where to be seen.

Greyness is black and red is green.

Straight lines are wavering slivery beams.

Stitched inside your brain’s sewn-up seams.

Bagged and tagged a pale corpse unseen.

Blueness in blood and plasma in streams.

Like chunky bittersweet rhubarb pie and cream.

Being injected directly into your open arteries.

Hallucinating a mad, mindless vortex of fun and games.

Spiralling outside in moonshine, as bleak bedroom coldness reigns.

Over mountains made of bland home-style rabbit stew.

Slowly eaten with a wooden teaspoon, hundreds of times.

Digested, your tummy gurgles and ejects buckets of spew.

While a hairless dog chases the postie’s bike, a whistle screams.

Dawn awakened to ice-covered broken plates and frozen lakes.

Shattered upon creek-bed rocks and your floor’s underlay.

This nightmare dream begun in April and ended dismayed.

 

Ivor Steven  (c)