Free Verse - Melinda J. Irvine

The most recent free verse poems by Mel Irvine.

Art or Autobiography (4/19/2019) - Is it possible to see a piece of art and not look for yourself? Or arrange each piece without turning it into your own autobiography of lost toys, lost time lost poetry, and lost vindications? Not today. Blogging-U: This blog was prompted by the WordPress online course Writing: Shaping Your Story – 1.3 How can you mine your personal […]
Wretched Heritage (5/20/2017) - i am living a tradition my eyes pieces of tin, metal scraps for hands feet (torn nails) just look at my toes! but don’t get too close you don’t want to see all i’ve got © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Weekly Photo Challenge: Heritage
Botanical gardens sprinkler (3/2/2015) - you 3am stalker thrusting your jets upon my wide open windows GO TO SLEEP! © 2015 Mel Irvine
A Simple Island Life (5/9/2017) - Each morning begins before the sun appears over the cliff raining daylight along the leeward living below our 21st century sun. Monkeys grab at fruit scraps (sometime pets) a few chickens and fecund dogs wander a small shore. Children squeal to the high tide where fathers disappear aft along the rough netted and roped they […]
Vanish (12/7/2016) - I can vanish the moon. Oh, it’s so easy to delete moons, sand spinifex grass and old memories. Keeping stuff is much harder. © Melinda Irvine Daily Prompt: Vanish
She Was Light (12/21/2016) - I saw a happiness in her, a change in fortune. Tiny pieces radiating colour from inside. And she again heard bird sounds and saw midday sunshine above trees. She felt something and believed again, she was light. © 2016 Melinda Irvine Daily Prompt: Fortune
At the Back (6/28/2017) - decades turned this wheel like clothes worn, falling into that place at the back © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Post: Wheel and Knackered I’m part of Post A Day 2017
It’s been a long time since my hands have held my little sister (9/3/2014) - my finger tips are dry but feel well against my cracked lips today they have silenced a whisper parted barbed wire picked wattle and broken a fall cut words from a book older than my mother held a cup of coffee and spilled white, paper-wrapped sugar they have disappointed me in their appearance and stayed […]
My Younger Self (10/9/2018) - I saw myself at the bottom of a pink camellia bush stretched out and flailing as my younger self (a perky pink bud) looked away in disdain how could she know? that actually she was looking at herself © 2018 Melinda J. Irvine
I Went Looking for Piglets: a One Versed Mystery (11/2/2016) - © 2016 Melinda Irvine My contribution to the Blogging-U course Photography: Developing Your Eye II (Day 2 Mystery).
Praying for a New Moon (2/1/2017) - This moon has a scent black and pungent a small crack surrounded in smoke. It slashes at your door when the lights are gone, and demands a daughter. She bargained herself for her small sister’s stead (did the little girl see what her sister did not?) while we’ve locked into ourselves. Some of us inside steel […]
The Old Steel Gate (7/23/2017) - How many little boys have passed tickets shouting their delight through this old steel gate? © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Prompt: Gate I’m part of Post A Day 2017
New Horizon (12/11/2016) - “I will come back here, new horizons, wildflowers and rest call me.” As I promise to my cousin I do wonder though … … will I come back here? © 2016 Melinda Irvine Weekly Photo Challenge: New Horizon
Beneath Us a Poem (6/26/2017) - frayed texture almost silent poetry under foot © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Post: Yarn I’m part of Post A Day 2017
Reality (8/8/2016) - The window is open The curtains are curled The sun shines brightly I can’t hear a sound Nothing is broken All lights are on No-one inside I am not afraid of the four rapid gun-shots © 2016 Melinda Irvine
The Colours of Day (12/26/2016) - Wandering the last of the roses, her festive garden colours Christmas days in mountain blues, lilacs and the tiny shades of bees. © 2016 Melinda Irvine Daily Prompt: Festive
Click here to permanently delete your account (11/12/2015) - Feeling strangely like cyanide The killing of my digital self I am afraid So bold hours ago I made lists So I would do it properly Not miss a thing Kill everything Insecticide myself Yet here I am I am still here Here and here Both of us Still here Corporeal Digitised Is it murder? […]
Hands (5/22/2018) - His hands opened Her’s holding onto love mine filled with photographs another’s rasping my shoulder for money © 2018 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Post: Awkward I’m part of Post A Day 2018 Location: La Paz, Iloilo (Philipppines)
Where Hands Fall (12/1/2017) - where my hands fell (a single blade extensive by the wind) as much a knife as the anthropod animals eat their lunch in tiny bites © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Post: Bite I’m part of Post A Day 2017 Location: Beunavista, Guimaras Island (Philipppines)
Disconnectivity (12/30/2018) - connecting each to each building to building house to house pole to pole pod to pod me to me you from you post from post tribe from tribe boozer from boozer each from each disconnecting © 2018 Melinda J. Irvine
Early (5/19/2017) - light passing torn clouds palm leaf rags tattered hut poverty a man into rice fields out the window of the bus © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Photo Challenge: Reflecting
Over This Wall (6/22/2018) - Over this wall is a shopping centre aircon and security guards thousands of people over this wall Over the wall is a gasoline station aircon and fancy cars thousands of drivers over the wall Over that wall is a man washing his t-shirt in a puddle near a family on cardboard behind thousands over that wall […]
Unknown Artists (6/15/2017) - city speaks her name lurid voices piss, the stained human shit a siren behind their streets his only triumph © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Post: Triumph I’m part of Post A Day 2017 This is my contribution for the Blogging-U course Photography: Developing Your Eye II (Day 10 Triumph).
No Extra Charge for Ants (8/20/2016) - i know we think our medical system is flawed (most likely it is) BUT have you ever seen an australian baby in our hospitals fanned by an old piece of cardboard, their IV drip hung on a window latch, and ants crawling over their little body while their tired mum wonders how she will pay for […]
A Poem in the Morning (5/17/2018) - I woke this morning to the sound of a poem. It rained in through the night words and images. And yet even my first response was not to scramble for a pen, but merely smile and seep into a new voice, and allow the poem in her own time. © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily […]
Ignoring Safety Advice (10/4/2016) - in the beginning i remember thinking … i will never ever board one of those dodgy carnival rides circling fiestas their steel support posts levelled out on rocks and pieces of concrete rubble. but yeh, i did. and yeh, i do. you change your perspective ignoring safety advice you allow yourself to become, to be part […]
Layers of a Tree (1/9/2017) - Infinite layers of years, of bark, of living. Yet he can be told. © 2017 Melinda Irvine Daily Prompt: Infinite
Echo (12/3/2016) - Sound travels differently under the water. The familiar becoming noise, or the nothing become sound. Under the water each breath becomes a bubble, strangely reverberating I am an echo. © 2016 Melinda Irvine Daily Prompt: Echo I shot this video at Wolf Rock off Rainbow Beach (Queensland) Australia in 2007. Wolf Rock is enclosed by a […]
Lichen (8/5/2016) - bold lichen grows. no matter how many ways i look at you, i still don’t know what colour you are. orange, red yellow. who are you? © 2016 Melinda Irvine Pondering the photos from my trip home to Australia last month.
Rice On the Road (8/30/2016) - We walk along wet roadside picturing the new sunlight on rice farms, fathers and hardwork. Barefeet turn drying rice as trucks beep confused alarm at the white woman and small brown boy out in unsheltered heat. Flood water rushes through our pictures, seeing all green and green and green until three heads stand staring (like the […]
You Do Not Burn (10/9/2017) - When everyone ran, you remained the grim landscape the same colour as your dress and quiet genius as bushfires licked your garters you laughed that same laugh for decades. Old years pass and turn though just your slip remains you do not burn. © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine This is my response to the Blogging […]
Smile for a sack of rice (11/3/2015) - they know exactly why they are smiling why I was arriving at 10.30 in the morning why they had to put on pants and shoes eldest sister points her little brother to the camera light smile for a sack of rice starving mamma sold their blanket smile for a sack of rice “i know there […]
The House of Ants (5/4/2018) - I met a man today on a wooden ferry boat and between the two islands he told me a story. His story, of two boys once seven and once nine when their mother who died. Unable to make a sound (their torn faces, tears contained yet completely silent) the smallest boy fell completely unconscious to […]
The Magic of Ebor Daisies (11/30/2016) - Tired driving hands turn the wheel exploring white roadside flowers. Calm is their magic and, soothed by their spring arrival, those same hands return. © 2016 Melinda Irvine
Sunlight (11/5/2017) - for weeks our sun lay hidden, inside rain and obscurity fragmented and forgotten she lunged piercing tree leaves penetrating mountain tips and cutting cutting fine each new stem of rice banana leaf torn and palm trees shred like ribbons above the cane inflorescence and tassel all we had forgotten to now simmer in a broken […]
What is Rain? (10/3/2017) - Feeling athletic we scramble down (jackets off, hats on, sun hot) to the popular spot we rest among passing long weekenders and languages we don’t understand. Rain lands on our shoulders rain lands on our hats rain lands on our trail, then up, up, up we go above the rain above the rain we sit […]
Dark Carousel (8/15/2017) - pointing i followed his vague directions into some dark parade until a graffitied street, red stopped, then turned me out © 2017 Melinda J. Irvine Daily Prompt: Carousel I’m part of Post A Day 2017