Skip to content
Back to issue
From: Vol.06 N.02 – Intersecting Energies

Masculinities

by Ryan Prehn

i) policy

 

Fingers rap

on cedar desks, tappity tat,

Business spreads,

four corners, ashen beds,

forecast projections of profitable

nothing. Tick

Trifling men rub kindling profits;

Fire imbued value

 

Office seats cushioned kafir green, a favourite

soft-senate touch afore the parade prances forth.

Platforms of healing and property defined –

sit, submit, (repetoir), succum; fuck; candy-sized emnity, suck –

disparate to the slurrp! Tock.

 

Succor facade ergo superfluous placard; incorporated neo-individuality,

Be free; sit, succumb, uargh! cum

The space to contrive tomorrow’s blinding light,

Words and policy, worms are poetry. Change, a paper cup,

on the streets filled with piss – no braves to empty, only the rain brims calamity

 

ii) masculinities

 

Requip as stoic

Toxic earth/man duality

I have listened with cut off ears

Your cries stymied

as such the mind/body problem

Worked out as long division

 

Requip as aggressor

Moxy man brutality

I have and you have not

My lies are bitter pills

as much yellow as you can swallow

Hard work for a berk imprisoned, rambler

 

Requip as tender father

Locks children in misgiven smother

Stops cogitation pushing farther

Heaps pressure unto boys and

Girls unto boys

Unto sons, unto sons

Dying alone one day,

Nucleic pride hap desperation

 

Requip as quiet imaginary

Watches

Sees but does not speak

Dissent in whispered hush

Scarpered shame and an apathetic

Prick on the Weltschmerz belt

 

Requip as cynic

Lies politic

Tock, tick, Tock,

Got to imitate

For means are false

Romantic failure, As expected

Look around outside your woe,

Look around

 

Quip as the first

Suffering at a geo-locale distance

The ebb of wealth come care

Sans project

A hope for more is writ optimism

Sans project

A dream for more is benign, without a brimming cup of piss

Published: July 2019
Ryan Prehn

is a Worimi poet and writer living on Wurundjeri country. Ryan was a runner-up in Overland’s 2016 Nakata Brophy poetry prize, and worked with Red Room Poetry & Australian Poetry on the New Shoots project as part of the 2017 Melbourne Writers Festival.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED