Poets & Poems
All of the lights
By Joelistics
All of the lights
All of the lines
All of the liars
All of the shadows
All of the shapes
All of the sirens
All of the minutes
All of ...
Magpies
By Joelistics
I dreamt I was a thousand feet tall and I could see all the way to Sydney
And I could smell the desperation and the fear and the excitement
And ...
The Disappearing
The Disappearing has been redeveloped and we invite you to submit your poems about fading and disappeared places and spaces. Explore now »
Whole (if it is all one thing)
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Kate Liston-Mills
Whole (if it is all one thing).
Synchronicity flickers every step –
match
match
match
light.
The whole place is burning now, I thought myself right, I thought ...
Disappearing Act
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
I was going to be a role model.
A real model I thought,
So I changed into every colour for I’d give you a slice in every direction. You ...
Welcoming Party
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Sean West
You watch them wade
out over sandbanks between
low tide and high. Lucky
families flock like gulls
to a chip then evaporate
faster than fiddler crabs when ...
Sydney Town Hall Tree
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Steve Denham
In my teens, Sydney’s flora
brushed the inner city and CBD
with green - but the first tree
I really ‘saw’ ...
curtsying to a zephyr at the ...
Byron
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Stephen Thomas
Wind rushes through the car
Shadows carpet the road
A narrow line of jagged grey
Curls through the trees
A house nestled in the slopes
The world ...
Aubade to Fading City
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Jennifer Chance
To dis/appear
to cease
to get so small
that a puddle becomes an ocean
and the ocean becomes a universe
I walk the edges of memory ...
King River
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Bruce Waddell
We relax in the evening light
on his fluid banks.
The William Hovell dam
tames him until,
like the young girl in the park,
he defiantly tumbles ...
The gate swung wide
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Bruce Waddell
Deep in the valley misty pastures
thrive on the swirling tide.
A young pioneer labours tough, ranchos.
The new gate swung wide.
Spatially isolate, feeling alone,
ground ...
Palestine
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Jahin Tanvir
Acknowledgement is a crutch,
that helps us stand up for a second,
But the rusty manacles still cackle,
A generational burden,
dusty and devastated.
In a distant ...
Salt
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Sarah Watters
Salt
We bathe in its oceans
crispy as it settles.
Marking your skin with mapping of the earth
exposing the labyrinth of your being
Our soul bleeds ...
Passing Through
By The Disappearing Public Submissions
By Jennifer Chance
Clouds capture
the movement of our bodies
a quick, simple flash and then a dance
with crawling police cars
and death happens,
lone people in masks wrapping ...
My Grandfather’s Ice Pigeons
By Robert Adamson
My grandfather would walk into the house,
on a summer evening after his work, then empty
his catch of mudcrabs into the bath-tub;
they'd flow out in a stream ...
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
By Robert Adamson
'Meanwhile I was sinning more and more'
Saint Augustine
I suffered when Una my first love
was torn from ...
Alofa at the Vai
By Christine Afoa
First day in Sā
Us fia-palagis go swimming
At the vai during low tide:
My four younger sisters,
Two uluka’e brothers walk behind us.
Our cuz from NZ,
Teine ...
Missing Persons
By Adam Aitken
From Tokyo to the Gold Coast they’d come. They were in the
papers, instant scoop, apologising, and on the box. In the
lunch break we talked about the old ...