NICHOLAS ANTONIAK - POEMS

Nicholas Antoniak, is an 18 year old emerging Australian writer. He writes both creative fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. He has been included in the 2015 Lane Cove short story anthology and will be published in the 2016 Questions Literary prize later this year. In July he will commence a bachelor of arts majoring in philosophy and sociology and hopes one day to become an author/poet/philosopher.

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                                      Feelers. 

These soft gentle feelers
weave around
my rocky garden beds
where dirt clumps and crumbles
and crows come to sing.
 
They engulf me these feelers
as I close my eyes
and lay there half asleep.
 
They stroke me with fragility,
and cold, silent warmth.
 
I don’t mind.
 
And no, I would not change it.
 
No, not a thing.
 
For although grotesque,
these feelers and I,
have comfort, in the dirt, the world, and the wind.
 


                       Something About Nothing 

And we’re not sure what it meant,
I guess we never were.
 
A palate of colors
confusing.
 
While I lost everything
in high-rise apartments,
late nights and bars,
and became oh so blue.
 
So I sped down freeways
towards the starlit cities
imagining the rush
could take this away.
 
It didn’t.
 
And when you finally asked,
what’s this all about?
 
I chuckled and turned
spoke, quite plainly
 
"I do believe,
it's something to do with nothing"
 
And we laughed
Oh,
How we laughed
 


                        We are the gods now
 
I stream along empty highways
arms spread, eyes open wide
and the sun greets me
running its warm fingers through every crevasse in my skin,
as if saying hello, I have missed you.
 
And when the sky turns grey
and tiny balls of ice
hurtle into my body, I realise,
in their own way they are merely
extending a hand of friendship
through awe-inspiring power and grace.
 
People ask "why?"
and I respond "why feel, why be?"
I searched through millions of bones
to find my ancestors, my tribe
yet they were here all along
beneath our ageing horizon.
 
The dawn does not break heavy but smooth,
do not mistake me.
 
I scream at nobody,
for why need to expose ourselves
to greatness,
in order to feel great.
 
Is it not simple?
 
We are the gods now.
 


                            The Joke Explained
 
I drive down these twisted roads
with the blue moon grinning
into my bottle of gin.
 
Do not judge, you stranger.
 
A claustrophobic night
filled with stillness and fullness
of deep purple skies
and the one star who glanced awkwardly at the moon.
 
I think of Rome,
upon realizing
that its’ grandiose empire
was falling apart at the seams
would it have reached for a mobile
and called?
 
Saying
“I am not ok”
“It is falling apart”
I would have responded,
in a cynical style
“why?”
 
Rome would sigh and talk
nonchalantly about the weather
and everything that started
falling apart
when the walls came down
crumbled and fell.
 
Build new ones
I’d offer,
for they’re only walls
and never-the-less you’re ok,
because beyond the structures,
of these great beings,
these emphatic offerings to reverence
beyond the shell of the
quiet tortoise
lies us all.
 
Like Rome
I had built up
a house of cards,
the fragility of which
was hidden behind the illusion,
of strong, gentle grace
 
But now the blue neon clock
smiles nakedly,
teasing me, provoking me
as I rush down these roads.
 
“I can see you,”
he says
“we can see you”
they say
“that’s it”
they laugh
“that’s it”
and the blue moon,
keeps on sharing the joke
with my gin my book and I.
 
But I’m happy for them,
and their sick love affair.
 
The understanding, the jokes
they couldn’t share with me
but I will not stand still
in the jungle of night
or the jungle of desolate alone
 
The gin tells the moon
of where he grew up
his molten glass
melding into something more, something great.
 
The moon is refreshed
by his youthful honesty,
I’ve been here for a while, she says
seen these things
come and go
Rome rise and fall,
and I’ll be here a while soon.
 
I smirk at the moon
while I kiss my gin
forcefully and entereing willingly into the void,
yet the moon just shakes its’ head wistfully
at my ignorance
and my rage
in knowledge and understanding more infinite than I could ever hope to comprehend.
 
“You know nothing, I am here, and I am whole. I refuse to fall.”
the obscenities they fly from the back of my throat
like birds, they attack
but powerless, they reign, to the skin of the moon
and she laughs
they just laugh.
 
The glass is cracking
my windows are cracking
black acrid smoke spews from every corner
of this metal coffin,
spews with disgust
 
I take the bottle, now silent
and hold it up to the moon like a battlefield trophy
“I matter. I matter”
and out of the window it goes.
 
“Murder”
It cries
“Murder”
they cry.
 
Merciless anger is here and it's’ now.
 
The moon revolts
the stars revolt
and the car revolts
sending me downward into the trees.
 
The bottle gleams on the road
under the blue moon
and the moon gleams back.
 
The awkward star
slightly north of the sky,
sheds a single tear for me.
 
Sorrowful Sympathy.
 
And now, only now
I look to the sky
and I grin
and I laugh
at the joke explained