Australian Styles Suite

I. Bush Ballad — “Ridge-line Riders”

Dawn spills across red plains, colour torn from sleep
We mount on heavy boots, the saddle’s silent prayer
Stockwhips coiled like secrets we vow to keep
Ghost gums drape our breath in cool morning air

We follow lichen trails no map can convey
Our shadows stretch with burdens we won’t name
Wind-carved ridges remind us of yesterday
Yet every sunrise asks us to hone a new claim

We ride until the horizon bleeds awake—
harbinger in dust, each heartbeat a vow we make.

II. Modernist Imagist — “Shoreline Glint”

a silver sprawl collects beneath my footfall
chips of oyster shell and phosphate light
a gull’s call splits the horizon

my shadow arcs like a question
broken on pale sandstone
I gather fragments—salt-scorched glass,

a mosaic of unsaid farewells

pause:
the ocean’s edge holds nothing
and everything

III. Urban and Multicultural Verse — “Concrete Currents”

city bends around midday heat:
air shimmering above tarmac rivers

I trace graffiti tongues—
kanji strokes, arabesco curves, creole gloss
each flourish a diaspora of longing

footsteps sync with tramlines’ hum
voices overlap—electric, urgent, borrowed
conversations stitched into neon seams

beneath skyscraper fibre-optic veins
I carry my own accent:
a push between sirens
searching for a street-light poem

IV. Aboriginal Oral Tradition Style — “Song of the Red Earth”

Sing the earth in ochre breath
long before we learned to speak

Dance the path where ancestors’ feet
hollow ground beneath our souls

Sing the earth in ochre breath
while the sap of ghost gums sears memory

Listen:
the red earth remembers your name
though wind might carry it away

Sing the earth in ochre breath
and let old rhythms guide your blood

V. Performance and Spoken-Word Poetry — “Echo Chamber”

You tell me to speak softer,
but my voice
is a fist
pounding the centre of this room.

I carry a mouthful of arsenic truth,
each syllable a defiance
against silence.

We all live in echo chambers—
our tongues echoing other tongues,
preaching to empty pews.

I step forward—
heartbeat thunderous,
and let every word
shatter the glass.

Your clapping is a ripple
I would ride
into tomorrow.

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