Faces In The Storm is book of poetry published through Ginninderra Press. The work is a meditation on the shapes and impressions left behind after both the subtle and ravaging storms we face as human beings.

Faces In The Storm is is officially available through Ginninderra Press from the 16th of December 2008. Copies of the book can be ordered online or found at select book stores.

Below is an excerpt from the book.





Anatomy of the Ocean

If the ocean was the water inside our body
Then 90% would be salt dried and possibly cloudless
Sea sickness would became the joker,
In an intolerable vessel balancing a derelict plain
Our throats bright pink would cry with thirst
Wooden skiffs our tonsils,
Our skin suffocating showing no signs of desire
A kiss another burning sand hill,
Each bay another hand or finger a lost fugitive
This salt tongue would have to swallow its pride
The eternals of a dry land.

All Summer Long

Feeling the constraints of light
Sunning warm by the window sill
Aging in a silent vigil,
Thirst for water holding the tongue
In a ritual of begging and worship
Euphoric heat, stimulus for another
Strange dream where the matador
Becomes the bull cloaked red and
Dry mouthed, this yearning till
The afternoon lets go to night.
And the sweat lightly dries seeping
Into cracks and sculptured shadows
Wrestle deep into the after hours.

Old Graves

Think about the mine shafts
East wind, blazing heat,
Distance of the colony, dug out bunkers,
Dehydrate, Hydrate

Keep walking…

Think about cogs spinning, west wind,
Sharp contrast, gold rush declines, hunger

Keep walking…

Think about the drunken brawlers, northern sky,
Abandoned railways, quest for local residents

Keep walking…

Little eating,
Poor crops,
Dwindling gold yields,
Loss of land,
Deserted plains,
Watering holes, visitors rest and the dead.

Dead Weight

The marks on his flesh zigzagged train tracks
Rolled over under his veins,
Nodding feverishly I saw his glimmer of hope
Transfer to my smile,
His life had been one long dream sleeping
Quietly in the back of his mind
Surfacing only in time to fall asleep again,
Sipping on coffee I could taste the materials
Of shopping centres between my teeth,
Looking at him I questioned our addictions.

Scent

Such a strange child inward hands did face
Floss entwined around a loose tooth
She dreamt of Japan once,
Said she’d been there in another life
The devils got her good
Struck her down still sleeping,
She talks of the skulls sensing a danger
Falling down before her eyes,
She inhales the scent of blossom
Carrying them into her lungs
In the morning when she awakes
She remembers nothing of her starving times
Keeping quarrels neatly filed in secrecy,
Now flushed cheeks seem renewed
Her eyes light with halogen lamps.

Every Morning on the Train

Making the shadows long
This train led you away
In a place you no longer call your home
Smoked in silence windows blurred
By the transience of the outside,

On the opposite seat her skin milky white
Draws your eyes lower to her leg
She prostitutes a little flesh
Mapping out veins on her arm,

The eye’s of others pretend not to see
Tracing fingers on the ‘x’ marked graffiti
While in your dreams you place
A helmet on her head and
Save her from this waste.