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

Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                 #12/thyla12k-th AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 12 The Poetry of Tim Heffernan Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Tim Heffernan by Elizabeth Patricia Heffernan, 2005. I Reasonable Delusions of a Religious Nature I Escorted to Jerusalem I With the devils I Mainstream communion I Fallout Shelter I Winter Sense - Cooma I Reasonable Delusions of a Religious Nature Reality or phantasmagoria, desperate love on a rented bed. Insanity or elated perception, a numbed litany that will be said. Lie that winter freezing on oil stained concrete. She would not let you in nor anoint your wearied feet. Dreams escape from night time persuading you to begin to see the visions from without as the visions from within. Lyrics spiral from your head and you tell that they too would see, but your mind is jammed on 45 while the world revolves on 33. Thirsting for guidance at 4 am you tear the news from blinding twine. This will be your medium now you are drawn to the divining line. Escorted to Jerusalem Spit syllables at your father and blaspheme the missing Lord in the antiseptic stench of some sterile casualty ward. Wake up in an ambulance moving somewhere they won't explain. Escort lights pulse blues ahead and charge the wiper-scourging rain. Pause in a half-way hospital and repel the dribbling syringe. Feel the weight of mocking wardsmen: needle stabs to makes you cringe. Strip past your nakedness once they've pushed and shoved you in. Squat in the blurred baptismal bath while some angel records your sin. With the devils Scream at the threatening needle as they hold you down again. Gag on your spastic tongue and shudder in epileptic pain. Scream too loud once too often and be bound for the blackness cell. Thump cement and howl at walls, sit and shiver in soundproof hell. Pester that nurse for more than your hourly cigarette. He's had it up to here with you so this time feel his threat. Parade from doorless showers in your pyjamas for the day: the mismatched communal costume for this acute, imprisoned play. Mainstream communion Smile weeping in the Rec Room as music sings your fame. Each new lyric is offered in devotion to your name. Queue for mad-house confectionery fed from gleaming stainless steel. Pick-me-up on obscured mornings: at night-time so you-wont-feel. Attempt to read her letters through dazed, dilating eyes. You cannot write the answers as you know that someone lies. Walk rigidly with Parkinson: you are dealt another pill to counter common side-effects of chemicals that hold mind still. Slouch the light-time in a stupor in between the times you are fed. You wish to obliterate the hours before escape - a ward 12 bed. Fallout Shelter Listen to the farmer as he preaches the Holy Word. He only spits out retribution but that is why he's heard. Furtively inhale the weeds collected on shepherded walks. Peter says they're just like dope and more tumble-dry as he talks. Observe straight-jacketed Magdalene spray the nurse with mashed cuisine. When untied she beats her pretty face in Kenmore's unmoved canteen. Watch Matthew once more try suicide as he adopts his familiar pose. He stares out the blackness window with a cigarette lighter stuffed up his nose. Try to talk to Thomas fresh from an ECT blur. Believe the tell-tale dribble and his mouth's paralysed slur. You look into a mirror and recollect a face. Confess your grand delusion: leave this unholy place. Promises of Armageddon to be unleashed when you were dead. The asylum had been your shelter: the atoms split inside your head. Read six sane years later, 'How we just missed World War III'. This was your mad delusion. Is it truth that you now see? Winter Sense - Cooma Morning indefinition as crystallised landscapes are diffused by moist grey seeping from higher ground. Colour loses identity. By mid afternoon brief blues brush clarity until the rapacious shroud pilfers the incomplete day. At night, walking alone over frost veneered footpaths and creaking wooden bridges, the air has frequency. Crisp sounds amplify. An icicle shivers through me as my feet leave the concrete and print my meandering with the crunch of breaking grass. About the Poet Tim Heffernan Tim Heffernan lives in Wollongong on a hill between the escarpment and the sea with Karen and their daughters Lucy and Elizabeth. He was born in Hay (New South Wales) in 1959, into a teaching family. He grew up in the country villages and towns of Swan Creek, Dalton, Uranquinty and Wagga and spent twenty years teaching English in high schools in the Riverina and South Coast. During this time he published educational research for the National Schools Network (Innovating and Changing Together, 1998) & (Reflection in Action, 1996) and was a workplace activist for the NSW Teacher's Federation and contributor to their journal, Education. Tim began writing poetry in the late 70s and was published in 1985 in The Wagga Daily Advertiser. Tim’s poem ‘Machined Words’ was selected for the OZPOET Showcase in 2002 and his peace offering, ‘In my tree’, was part of the Poets Union’s anthology of poems delivered to John Howard prior to the invasion of Iraq. Tim is working as a carer for people with disabilities and has been appointed as an ambassador for The Black Dog Institute.    [Above] Photo of Tim Heffernan by Elizabeth Patricia Heffernan, 2005. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.12 (June, 2007)