Rob Walker 

Rob Walker [“Daytime teacher and night-time poet”] was born in Adelaide, South Australia in 1953.
His poems have been published widely in poetry journals, anthologies, websites and other media in Australia, NZ, UK, Ireland, Canada and the US, including Best Australian Poems 2005 [ed. Les Murray], ABC radio’s poeticA, poetry and music on Cds and a small collection sparrow in an airport, [Friendly Street NEW POETS TEN.]
In 2005 he co-edited THIRTY, Friendly Street Poets’ Thirtieth annual poetry anthology.
His collection micromacro [Seaview Press] will be released in September.
He also teaches music and drama in a state primary school. 

Flood and desert.

for Yahia Al-Samawy *

The country you love is flooded with tyrants who abuse the name of Allah and liberators shouting Justice and Freedom whose faithless bullets and bombs kill just the same.

you said
the tears
you shed

as you
wrote
the poem

would have
filled
a cup

yet
you turn
these tears
to ink

spill it
onto the desert of a page

and oases grow

where once
there was only
grit

to irritate
our eyes.

• Yahia Al-Samawy is a highly respected Iraqi poet who now lives in Woodcroft with his wife and three children. Imprisoned and tortured under Saddam Hussein's regime, Yahia fled and spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia before seeking asylum with his family in Australia.

Jesus, the sequel

reborn in mesopotamia
in a new millennium
to an oblivious world

a diaspora to
the spice islands
and south

He celebrates
His third birthday
in detention

a crown
of razorwire

or crucified on
electrified
cyclone

as retailers
rub hands
at post
xmas sales

Choice Theory.
Outskirts of Delhi, Jan 2005

Strange
that they should choose
to live in homes of mud and sheets of
plastic

Picking over the rubbish mounds
sluicing from trucks
for remnants of food,
plastic shopping bags to
wash, recycle, sell

Strange
that they should choose
to die so young

The bird leaves its cage and enters another

for Juan Garrido-Salgado

1990.
english was in the air.
the air
was english

blowing on a sea breeze at henley or glenelg
one sentence floats near you

but it will not come
into your mouth

tortured barred
in & from your homeland

mute in the newland
your heart bleeds mâ„®taphors
exiled from your tongue

alien vowels/ consonants
fill your ears
elude your mouth

your heart an injured bird
one wing
plastered to tarmac

an impotent flapping
in spanish

advice to a politician

the fact is

what follows
is inevitably

opinion

the reality is

mine is

different


colin powell addresses the UN

it’s powerpoint of course.
all power. no point.

microsoftware
before the macrohardware

all stylâ„® no substance
erect an argument on flawed foundations

holes the size
of bombcraters

a colon
: pregnant pause before a war

lives reduced
not to dot points


but bullet points


Jordy's balloons

after the funeral
outside to inevitable
sun

watching his eight year old mates release purple/
white balloons shrinking into a perfect blue sky

a week’s
grieving
spent

relieved children smiling laughing faces upturned sunflowers seeking
light warmth celebrating his life intent eyes on diminishing orbs

but on
fear-engraved
faces

the aching eyes of every parent on their own
child seeing them disappear in an instant

like balloons.

[from Blur, Friendly Street Reader #29, [ed] Shen & Amelia Walker, 2005.]