Stefanie Bennett - Two Poems

Anti-Politic's Thumbnail     

Whoever's prophet material
Had best seek counsel
From the nation
Of the 'northern lights':

No velure head-hunter need apply -

No Moulin Rouge mudslinger -

No tyrannous protoplasm
                      Batting an evil eye -

Lucidity epitomises
The cold ground's
Imminent banter -

'Where man ends
The flame begins'   *

And we will never
Put Prague
Or Jan Palach
Back together, again.

*Miroslav Holub



Tolstoy: Renunciation 2

Best forget why he's here
And from where he came;
If his step thundered
The blunt black bloodstone
Of gunfire
Amid the roses...

The Crimea wasn't a parking-lot, then.
A September suburb
Pummelled
By a double
Or nothing
Sequestrator.

Now, eavesdroppers
Unerringly
Find him
             Defrocked,
                               Servile
And beating
Tellable ploughshares
Into words -,
Into a peace

That shatters.



Stefanie Bennett has published 18 books of poetry, acted as a publishing editor and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/ Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Townsville, Qld., Australia. Stefanie's latest title 'The vanishing', Walleah Press is due at year's end.