Scroll down to the bottom to close this window

LES WICKS    has been published widely in Australia & elsewhere. His five
books are "The Vanguard Sleeps In" (Glandular, 1981), "Cannibals" (Rochford
St, 1985), "Tickle" (Island, 1993) & "Nitty Gritty" (Five Islands, 1997) &
"The Ways of Waves" (Sidewalk, 2000).

"varied, nimble, humane & well timed" - Jennifer Maiden.


He's performed at at festivals, schools, prisons etc. Runs workshops & Meuse
Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects.



Email: Leswicks@hotmail.com/
http://leswicks.tripod.com/lw.htm

ALWAYS AGAINST THE ODDS

The winter sun
is a mild old fogey
that mixes with beer
& makes our oldest tales
fresh born & blanket wrapped.

Beside two brazen sparrows
a new friendship ignores the rules -
like the unseasonal budding tree
leaves go for broke,
roots chance a warmth
down at the deepest earth.

                                    Les Wicks

GREEN SACRIFICE

In a moment of COMMUNITY,
of red rosellas & roaring current
down a carved river's edge.

In a spray of GRATITUDE
beneath a sandstone poem.

I extend PRAYER
to nothing more than this simple incandescence.

Offer myself to this one complete moment
& for my grandiosity
only a mosquito responds.

A laugh, arm an extended smorgasbord.
This tithe to you more substantive
than any plastic cross.

                                    Les Wicks

GUYS & DOLLS

On the way home the wives swap tales
of male desertion, our funny
little caveman flaws.

The men make jokes
about tottered steps forward -
women no longer abandoned for the beachside
shack/poem desolation.
They're invited to come along!

When the Goddess pops up in conversation
dogs move inside, the trains stop running.
She's dead! No guilt, who cares?
Atlantis sank & architecture got pointy.

Now this Jesus guy is all forgiveness
in small confession booths
& blood stained carpentry.

The secret really is
that He FORGETS as well!


So the world turns quietly
on the oil of its old mistakes.

                                    Les Wicks

the PEANUT SORTING MACHINE

1948 - his words
were like bleating sheep
yapping dogs/
no more demanding than the wavelets
on the shore of this bay.
Giorgio clung to the edge with nothing
but a few pounds & slow mail links to island predecessors.

Today he tells his story, explaining
the glimmer he seeks in the eyes of job applicants -
those who sit before his chair, his rings, position.

The first job was a snack food factory.
To scrape the floor.... no broom for this world
of fat & food encrusted linoleum -
Giorgio's grime was scooped up
then sheets of it dropped into tin buckets.
He finished at one end to start again at the other.

The Aussies stood at their production line/
breaks & cigarettes. Holidays down south.
His words so clumsy around these sharp machines.

Invisible.
A shuffle past the workers' grey eyes to
a corner of the pie/gravy cafeteria,
wings folded around a carefully packed lunch.

One day the technician was sick so everyone
was dormant around the wrapped equipment, serene as merinos.
No cleaning to be done, Georgio told to peel potatoes.

He peeled them, loaded the machines
& started everything working.
Astonished, everyone went to their positions &
the manager (his suit - gentle Australian folds/
striped brown double breast)
stood useless at the margins.

Three weeks later Georgio designed a better
peanut sorting machine. Though he had no English,
he was in a new job.
That invention sorted him like the peanuts.
He could buy a home,
carefully grow time with a family
in some concrete back yard, vine wrapped & sleepy.
Own a future.

"To be a pirate"  he once said
"like on the television
but no rape
& all stealing done by rules".

Today, turning sixty, he surprises us:
"I wanted a bouzouki"
stares sadly at the gold watch he got instead
& we cannot cheer him up.

Good wine, this world with small sadnesses
(& a little pride)
his (even his (even now) bitten fingernails cling
to the same weak cottons of family, God & money/
keep time to an afternoon busk of sun.

Les Wicks

SATURDAY SNAPS

On Saturday something broke.

I didn't stop, no one
was embarrassed.

But it was audible to me, something as deep down
as a childhood best friend or the love of power.
The real bones of the beast.

It was there
then gone.

Partly umbilical, partly rope.

I started almost immediately
the process of adaptation.
""A nice day, no problems"          laughing to air
(those problems were all loitering by the trees).

Disabled & disengaged
the next day was inevitable.
I was in the queue of days stretching
maybe thirty years & not a single place
where a limping man can sit.

Les Wicks