Poetry of Raewyn Smith

My favourite...
The Chicken Crosses the Road
Kinetic sound, noxious fumes
Vrooming, zooming, howling.
Feathers, static, waiting, watching.
Impatient impossibility.
Clawed feet scratching concrete
Ever forward, furiously frantic.
The goal, the goal -
Traverse this stretch of hideous highway.
The reason? Quizzically questioning.
The ubiquitous unsolved paradox.
Past unparalleled steam rollers.
Menacing Mercedes.
Squawks, feathers flying
Bird's blood splattered.
Still, beak progresses. An incomplete
Task, a shattered body.
Striving towards the place of paradise.
The other side.

The Teddy Bear
Soft, furry, indefinable animal,
Eyes so wide, not expecting.
Forever faithful, comforting companion.
No heart, no mind, just stuffing,
Still loving, intelligent, never cheating.
Once new, proud, golden glory.
Played with, sat on, chewed by the dog.
The kind confidant.
Balding, deformed, one eyed teddy,
Stuffing falling from cat clawed wound.
Tossed to the bottom of boxes.
Discarded in favour of ninja turtles, talking dollies.
Teddy, damp from single river of tearlets,
Contemplating the forever future.
"Don't cry Teddy", worldly words.
"I'll be your friend". Teddy smiles
And places his paw in Humpty's held out hand.

The Lonely Hand
The bodiless hand digs into dirt
Worms writhing, screaming.
Small mouths of maggots thrashing.
It rains, mud forms.
The bodiless foot treads on soil,
Tripping, tumbling. The foot falls
Down the hole of the hand.
A trap, a collection of bodiless
Parts of the body.
The hand wants a home.

Peanut Slab
What do we do Rae?
The words of wisdom.
Chocolate, nuts and crunchy.
Sickening.
Multicoloured browns
Like the uniform of a derelict school.
Chocolate in maths.
Eaten but not forgotten.

and the all time classic...
The Squashed Mouse
Under foot, the elephant
Vast, massive, the whale of the earth
Foot down.
Help!
Mouse, tiny, insignificant.
Squash, squash
Ouch - flat
Body negligible
Soul gone.
Bad elephant.