Picture Poems and Poetry of Terrell Neuage

Windows open

curtains possessed by the wind

laughter in motion

I remember her walk

everyone did

the movement of her skirt

swallowed my thoughts

her chemise showing more than could be veiled

as my senses were captured

       imprisoned in her smile

She was freer

than any wind I had ever felt

slipping

passing my mind

like curtains

possessed by the wind

in open windows

enlaced memories.

3-21-94 Victor Harbor SA

I was just a step from eternity

A-top Tower Eiffel

When I saw her enter Grand Palais

and the choice no longer was clear

       end this life

       Or try to make it

With the girl entering Grand Palais

We got married

Had some children

Got divorced

She sued me for everything

       ran off with the kids

       the yacht

       Porsche

       jewels

       credit cards...

              and my latest girl friends too

At least I have something to analyze for eternity.

       5-5-94 Victor Harbor South Australia

I was selling picture-poems

alongside Jackson Square

in New Orleans

reading astrology charts to the lovely ladies

(telling each how well our charts matched: "my Mars to your Venus - what a night we shall have")

and selling esoteric sacred secrets to the Christians when I saw her standing there reading my picture-poems

She said what my poems said shouldn't be said

she came and told me that every day at noon

But I paid no attention (like any man would)

Until the day she took me to her home somewhere north

in the constellation of Andromeda (the chained lady)

I met her anthropomorphic parents

a tree and a shirt

Then I awoke twenty-years later

in this small harbor town

on a large island North of Antarctica

where I began selling picture-poems (poems saying what shouldn't be said) in a park again

(come and purchase your picture-poems at Rymill Park on Sundays in Adelaide that aren't rainy or windy 9-5)

But I watch for her like a criminal does for justice

knowing someday it will all make sense

and I will be like everyone else

free of me.

4-17-94 Victor Harbor South Australia