I Home I About I Contact I Guidelines I Directory I World I Peace I Charity I Education I Quotes I Solutions I Photo Gallery I Archives I Links I

AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS & WRITERS FOR PEACE
terms antithetical by Patricia Sykes

[Above] Photo of Patricia Sykes by Deb Lewis in 1999.

Patricia Sykes

terms antithetical

at funerals the hands of mourners
emptying and regretful

we clasp each other's for peace
sincerity is everywhere

in continuum in extremis
the latest suicide bomb

as a sample of proof
the latest military assault

as an armed conviction
each broken life preserving

the chain of violence
between witness and act

the infinite techno eyes
of satellites never asleep

their indifference a sky
weighted with metal stars

and what the safe telescopes capture
might only be distant light

but clever lenses can be confused
about a source as by hope

its bright winged milligrams
persistent as a galaxy

and how could glass enlarge enough
on the terror or the grief

or on the strewn bodies who lifeless
can most deter or spur the living

un-ironic and true the pincers
of crabs could be truce flags

we pass each other like evidence
on carrion ground

the brutal of what is killed
and what is grown

About the Poet Patricia Sykes

Patricia Sykes is a poet, editor, performer, and teacher. Her first collection of poetry, Wire Dancing (Spinifex Press, 1999), grew out of her experiences as a performer with the Women's Circus for whom she co-edited Women's Circus: Leaping Off The Edge (Spinifex Press, 1997). Wire Dancing was commended in the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmour Awards. She is working on a second collection with the Assistance of an Australia Council grant and is mentoring a book on improvisation by Al Wunder, the director and initiator of Theatre Of The Ordinary based in Melbourne. She lives in the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria, where she shares an acre of "Land For Wildlife". A particular interest in birds was stimulated by an itinerant childhood in country Victoria and Tasmania. A more general interest in Australia's flora and fauna led to her employment with The Wilderness Society's Education Unit in the early 1990s. She is currently writing full time and visiting as many wetlands as possible.
   [Above] Photo of Patricia Sykes by Deb Lewis in 1999.

I Home I About I Contact I Guidelines I Directory I World I Peace I Charity I Education I Quotes I Solutions I Photo Gallery I Archives I Links I