Category: Poems

Trying to Leave Something Behind



My old pen is a blunt knife

Scraping along the edges of life

Hanging on by my fingernails

To the ancient spirits that fill my empty sails



My days are Leis of greys

Yesterday’s clouds a sky ballet

Today, here comes the suns soothing rays

Turning my grey horizon into a rosy bouquet



My pages of endless blue lines

Are becoming tomorrows book of wisdom and rhymes

My volumes of dreams are now to be a reality

Retrieving hidden debris from under my courtyard fernery

Ivor Steven (c) October 2020

Hello dear readers and followers. During these days of continuing restrictions, I’ve been preparing and typing madly, to produce my Twentieth Tullawalla Poetry Booklet….. For new readers that don’t know about these booklets, they are basically the reason why I write poetry. I produce these ‘home-printed’ booklets for the sole purpose of raising funds for my favourite charity organisation, the MS Society, in Australia via the MS Charity Shop here in Geelong. And actually all money’s I receive for any of my poetry .via, submissions, I donate to the MS Society…. I’m proud to announce, that the sale of my “Tullawalla Booklets”, have now gone pass $1300.00, … to all the lovely readers, who have donated, to help achieve such a wonderful amount, a big heartfelt thank you, from “us” and the MS Society … …..Amazingly, there is now a total of “822 poems”, in my collection/series of 20 Tullawalla Booklets. This booklet is finally completed, and ready for sale now !! As always, they are available for purchase, either as a hard copy or a PDF format….. All proceeds go to the MS Charity Shop, here in Geelong West….. Please contact me here through my website page and I can chat about arrangements from there…. Oh, the booklet is called “Tullawalla”: “Trying to Leave Something Behind”… …. And here is the link to my website >> https://ivors20.wordpress.com

Ivor Steven (c) October 2020

Did you see my fiery faerie in the sky

Hitching a ride upon her giant dragonfly

Half a mile above cloud nine

She was there! Clutching todays sunshine

And burning towards never-neverland

Shying away from the captains crooked hand

Desperately looking for Peter Pan’s lost boys

And their purple suitcase full of magical toys



Below on the water she hears muffled cries and a loud “tick-tock”

“Beware!” Tinkerbell declares “That’s the Crocodile’s clock”

Fearlessly my faerie swoops and snatches the boys off the pirate-ship deck

And the boys yell “We’re saved from the jaws of those roughnecks”

Ivor Steven (c) October 2020

Fifty years have flown bye

And I’ll never forget ‘American Pie’

It’s True, old rockers never die

Their music shall always fly

There above in Leonard’s Tower of Song

Where they are all singing along

Imagining John’s words were not wrong

Will our new lyrics be as strong?

Ivor Steven (c) October 2020

From here in Australia, I’ve been reading the stories about Mr Trump and his having contracted the ‘Covid’ virus this week, and his subsequent “miraculous/cure” recovery…. which seemed to remind me of this poem I wrote back in October 2017


Not Here nor There

My time is slowly passing.

Age is creeping, not lasting.

I’m frail and growing older.

My body shivers when it’s colder.

And sweats like hell, in the heat.

My mind is feeble and weak.

I don’t seem to remember.

Whether it’s March, April, or September.

Here I sit, what am I doing.

There I look, where am I going.

There I ask, what’s for tea dear.

Oh, I forgot, she’s not here.

Well best I retire to bed.

Wrest this weary head.

Under a linen sheet, like a white hood.

And lie here, on this piece of driftwood.

Ivor Steven (c) October 2017