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| Joe Lake as Santa Claus |
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| Joe Lake's Christmas Tree |
Christmas Feelings
Christmas is a thousand kilometres long.
It is meant to save us from our weary self,
give life, peace, happiness, awe and wonder.
Christmas is the hope
to disperse pain and emptiness
before the abyss
where we balance precariously
to fall eventually and to scatter
this ménage of squishy organs
where intruders pretend life
as antithesis and then we decay into dust
to await resurrection and eternal life
that releases us from this cross of flesh,
that entered through virginity
into the tunnel of chaos,
to cleanse and to save.
We need this guiding light to change;
God thought, we could
and from the crib he rose to
fight chaos and confusion
to make it dissipate to glow and shine
from the windows of the stable into our hearts,
as a light-house beacon it shone
on that first Christmas night
and it still shines for all those who see
and dream of an eternal resolution to life.
© Joe Lake
Our Christmas function will be held at the Rhododendron Gardens on Wednesday, December 11,
from 11.30am. $25.
Each to read a Christmas poem.
A Merry Christmas
from the Europa Poets!
Virginal Again In The Market Place
I am a porcelain cup of virginal white;
I am caressed by many lips of all shapes and sizes
and many different hands hold my sculptured form.
Some belong to businessmen who sip from me in haste;
Some belong to chipped, wrinkled, calloused hands
that belong to old ladies who salvage all my content
and let me linger in their hands as if I were a long-lost lover;
Some belong to villains with halitosis breath
and syphilitic lips who have bejewelled hands
and who whisper in devious ways
to like folk, of how to make illicit money.
Some lips belong to little old men
who have their bedding inside trolleys
and then drink from me slowly
because they know that when my content has gone,
so will their reason for being in the warm café.
After having been adulterated by many hands,
I am then being brutalised
and placed into acid dishwashing water
to regain my virgin-white untouched look.
I wonder why they once painted the Virgin Mary in blue?
© Judy Brumby-Lake
Candles
Candles give light,
Love illuminates around,
Many candles were lit
to express love at funerals,
Birthdays show candles of age,
And watch the love around,
All Michael’s life, he was a giver,
So proceeds from the will
go to cancer research.
Cancer candles brightly shine
because one day there will be a cure.
© Yvonne Matheson
Santa And The Changing Times
When I was young, Santa Claus was old,
Now I’m old and Santa, even with his snowy white beard,
Hasn’t aged a day!
Every Christmas, he whizzes with his trusty reindeer
Among the stars, across skies like onyx,
Carrying his gigantic bag of gifts -
From the North to the South Pole he speeds
And everywhere in between -
It’s a wonder he doesn’t suffer from a bad back!
But wait - where are the kewpie dolls and the wooden toys?
Long gone and out of fashion -
For nowadays, children wish for the latest electronic games,
Mobile phones and DVDs -
And poor Santa must keep up with modern times.
He might be old but his spirit is forever young,
And though he may not be as old as
Methuselah -
May he live on in our hearts and minds -
Still jolly - in his immortality!
© June Maureen Hitchcock
Vi Woodhoouse
Believe Me!
If you want to take life easy,
With nothing much to do,
I can tell you this much,
Retirement’s not for you!
Since I retired nineteen years ago,
There’s been little time for rest.
Yet, when I think of my life’s journey,
These years are up there with the rest!
© Vi Woodhouse
Michael Garrad
Brothers Jack and Bob Barnes lived in a dimension of Hitler’s war on Britain.
They were academics who studied at university, men of words and deeds.
They were my uncles. I never knew them.
They gave of themselves to their beliefs and ideals, to family, to splendid achievement. They paid the ultimate price for freedom.
Their parents – my maternal grandparents – sacrificed that they could achieve. Yes, the sacrifice when life is given and cruelly extinguished in such youthful years.
They were poets and storytellers.
This is my homage to Jack Barnes, the poet, his poem. Let it be.
Tempus Edax Rerum
(Time, devourer of all things)
Perched on the last promontory of recorded land
Time sits, plucking the hours with a nimble hand.
Each hour falls silent on the sea of life,
Spreading an ever-widening circle round a world of strife.
Each hour fades mistily away
Unsung and sweetly in the night but loud and bitterly by day.
Each circle irrespective of its heir,
Freezes a soul in death or brings to air
New life, to be built up in a thousand different ways
To face vicissitudes of good or evil days.
Many the burning heart, the beaten breast
That fights for recognition of its worth, to help molest
The neutralising powers of slinking doubt
That, as within, assail each life, without.
Many the sickened soul, the weeping eye
That with a hideous lurch or piteous whimpering, cry
For mercy to the heavens that hold no cue,
Save that old things shall die and be replaced by new.
Must every fresh achievement have an end?
Cannot the luminiferous sheen of love-gay youth just spend
A sweet eternity with voices loved re-echoing through the hours?
Beauty surrounds the booming of the falls like
vernal showers.
And beauty cannot die while youth eternal springs
Clear as a fountain, nay, like a rainbow flings
Its colonnade of glory triumphant ’cross the sky
Unconquerable, invincible, not a quiver in its eye.
Yet ’tis but pale memory that outruns this great athlete
Glibly mocking in the breeze around his turf-bound feet.
How contradictory this life, for even memory fades
With every hour that infiltrates all lights and dingy shades.
Planning the future on heightened necromancy:
Delving into the past with cherished hopes that fancy;
Never to grasp reality while roaming paths of
avarice,
Clouding each stark and sentimental vice
With notes that drop like falling emerald snow,
Raising veils of soft blue smoke from a glimmering glow
To touch the very chords within the heart,
Tethering them to knowledge, truth and art.
For there is nothing made that shall not last,
If to these three God’s wisdom is bound fast.
Yet circling, ever circling at a giddy, thumping speed,
The hours listlessly enclose animal, man and seed;
None save God can stop this ever-changing, earthly show
For Time sits cynically letting drop the misty hours below.
So has He ever sat contemplating? Yet know
The hours will fade when God takes Time in tow.
© Jack Barnes (died in action, World War 2)
Joe Lake:
We’ve had our annual Europa Poets and the BRAG boys event with MC Geoff and poetry readings with music at the Burnie Regional Art Gallery with Peter Stratford, Loretta Gaul, Cathy Weaver, Yvonne Matheson, Judy Brumby-Lake, Lauren Hay, Vi Woodhouse and June Maureen Hitchcock. I launched the book, Europa Poets Anthology 2013 by attempting to smash a gallery-donated bottle of champagne over it.
Robin Baker recorded the event on video and you can order a DVD through us for $20.
Lauren told us how she went in the ABC Poetry Slam competition in Sydney and Peter won a Henry Lawson prize on the mainland while Cathy Weaver won $1500 for her fashion poem in a magazine competition.
It is Christmas again. I have photographed our tree on the front page and have attempted a poem.
Vi Woodhouse has her birthday on the 29th of this month. We wish her another hundred years at least!
Judy also is going to her book published. She has a preliminary copy we could all look at.
It has been a good year for the poets. Next April we’ll publish Gazette No 120 which means that we have published 120 times and that makes us ten years old. The Europa Poets had been going for a number of years previously where we met and read our poems at the Café Europa in Burnie, hence the name but also because most of us come from a European background. Vi Woodhouse is from Scotland, Mary Kille is from England, Michael Garrad is from England, Joe Lake is from Austria, June Maureen Hitchcock is Australian and so is Cathy Weaver and Judy Brumby-Lake, Lauren Hay; whilst Peter Stratford came from New Zealand and Yvonne Matheson came from King Island. Bill came from Holland. We’ve published approximately 150 poets, mostly locals, over the years to vent our creativity. Again, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for 2014.
Fear Of Darkness
A serial novel by Joe Lake.
(So far: Julie meets Susan, who is from five hundred years in the future. She gives Julie a ring to travel in different parallel universes. Julie turns the ring and journeys through space and time with John, her husband. Susan appears later as a hologram and threatens them. Julie refuses to listen when the van begins to shake violently. John tries to file the ring off Julie’s finger. The began to rock and objects began to fly about. Julie was hit by an object and John dragged her out of the van.
Julie lay on the ground, on her back, next to the van. It was dusk.
John knelt next to her. He had put his right ear to her chest and had listened to her heart beat. “Julie?” he said, shaking her. “Julie!”
She opened her eyes and turned her head towards the van that had gone quiet. All she could hear were the waves rolling and crashing onto Cooee beach. She looked up at John, “What?” She sat up and brushed her long blond hair from her eyes, twirling a strand in her manicured and painted blue fingernails as her forehead turned into a frown, John’s mobile phone rang. It made the sound of a galloping horse.
“Yes?” said John. “I thought about it and I feel that our holiday here in Burnie has come a an end and I left you a message to call me back because we thought that we may spend time up at your house in Devonport...”
“Help me up!” called Julie. “Who is that you’re talking to?”
“Your sister,” said John. “Let’s get out of here. I would prefer to go and see her, even if she is your evil step-sister who’s always so negative when we talk.”
John took Julie’s right hand and lifted her up off the ground. “As I was saying...no, no, you heard? Julie never means it about the negative and she’s joking about the evil step-sister - you know Julie. Anyway, what I was going to tell you is that you’ll never believe what has happened to us here in Cooee.., robbed? No, worse. We’ve been haunted by nightmares. We’ve decided to leave for Devonport. I’ll call the RACT to fix the van, must be something electrical. And don’t go to any trouble, we won’t bother you for long. Bye!” John dialled the RACT and gave his card number and location. “How long?” he said. “An hour? All right.”
Julie looked through the door of the van. “It’s quiet; the poltergeist has gone. You go in first, John. If it gets you, I’ll call the police.”
(To be continued next month)
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