Owen Bullock



towards midnight

“. . . its small / Mill of silence” Sylvia Plath

wheels
in balance
seem still
rush and
halt, at the edge
of the cliff
like the ending
of a good painting

which hangs on the wall
wordless with potential
to produce

grains
feed us
our theories

the history of food
is a shrunken meal
served lavishly

when a full plate of potato steam
and humanely butchered meat
would do well

come friends, into the race
glasses held high
to celebrate

*

fear
curdled your hopes
made them
non-entities

smoke poured out of your
burning dream
tried to stall the landing

to ease pain
which had to grow
into a pendulum

down comes the shocked moment
with the head-gear
of a leper

but you
are everybody’s darling

*

“The frost makes a flower” Sylvia Plath

dew drips the cycle
grass oiled
with unguent clasp

the diamond softened
by a million aeons
into water, obscure with precision
with ratios

sips of bark
taint air waves
brushed off by frequencies
designed for silent weeping

into tests
the way they abandon you
failure, memory loss

my creation tells me
what to create




Owen Bullock has published a collection of poetry, sometimes the sky isn’t big enough (Steele Roberts, NZ, 2010); two books of haiku, wild camomile (Post Pressed, Australia, 2009) and breakfast with epiphanies (Oceanbooks, NZ, 2012); a novella, A Cornish Story (Palores, UK, 2010), and a work of nonfiction, Making Canons and Finding Flowers - A Study of Selected New Zealand Poetry Anthologies (VDM, Germany, 2008). He is a former editor of Poetry NZ, Bravado, Spin and Kokako, and assembled the anthology Building a time machine (New Zealand Poetry Society, 2012). He was one of the editors who produced Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Vol IV (Kei Books, USA, 2012), and is on the International Editorial Board for the online journal, Axon: Creative Explorations (University of Canberra). Owen teaches creative writing for the Waiariki Institute of Technology and the New Zealand Writers’ College. He also likes to play music and juggle.
 
 
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