Howard Firkin

25th December at the home

1000W Smile


🅐

Accompanists

A first cartographer remembers his lost love in her bath

A Hopeless Land

A Landing At Sunset

A letter to Walt (Whitman not Disney)

A long time until morning

Alphabet Poem

Already last week's paper

A mail boy returns to St Kilda Road

A Modest Proposal for an ex-Mother

And as you age

And Incidentally You

And in the end

Andy Warhol’s portrait of you

An Old Tom Addresses the Great Trade Union of Cats

Another Evening Out

Another nothing

Another of my funerals at Melbourne Uni

Another Way

Anywhere but here

Anzac Day 2009

A Personal Archaeology

Aphantasia in Geneva

A prayer for George Pell

Architect

A return to poetry

A short note pushed underneath Apollo’s door

As I lay dying

A snapshot of the day nothing extraordinary happened

A Thousand Things

Atlantida

Aussie Backpackers

Australia

A Villanelle for Chris Mansell

A Vision of My Dying

A visit to the Comic’s Lounge

A week’s awakenings in seven couplets


🅑

Backache

Back to school

Balmoral Beach

Because I woke up early

Bed of nails

Before the visit to Mad Aunt P.

Behind the mirror

Belonging

Beograd explained with kajsijevaca

Berlin on Sunday

Black

Blank white man

Blue dish cloth

Body over time

Brain fuck

Breakdown

Bungee walking

Butcher Birds

Butterfly

Button song


🅒

C&W Song

Cat

Cathedral of Venus

Cavern

Cemetery in Lund

Christmas Adam

Copper Man

Corona Virus: a sentence

Cuneiform

Cutlery Drawer

Cuttlefish


🅓

Dags and Fat Kids

Damn Nearly Melbourne

Death

Death of sorts

Departying

Dirty Carpet Ride

Discovering the mirror

DNR

Does anyone know I’m alive?

Dog Days

Don’t Worry, Bob

Dorothy Porter skipping game

Drawing Lessons

Drayton’s lost sonnet


🅔

Eleven minutes later

End

Epigram

Eternal Love, surprisingly

Evening Star

Everybody drowns alone

Everything you need to start


🅕

Family Life

Fifth Wheel

Finishing School

Firkin’s first space walk

First Dive

First Generation Airbag

First poem in ten years

Five Hours in Denver

Five white shirts

Folk Song

For completeness

Forever

Fossil unremarked

Four Swallows

Fourteen self-explanatory lines

Fridge Note

Full stop


🅖

G.G.F.

Genius

God is my (only) judge

God loves us ugly

God saw

Google air miles


🅗

Hampstead Heath

Happy Endings

Headache

Hector’s letter home

Her body sprinkles adjectives

Her cat is called Ulysses

Here

Here comes the son

Hesitation Wounds

HIV +

Hoodie

How to get on a plane and leave

How you say goodbye


🅘

I've spent my life

I Contact

Idea for a poem

Ikea Sappho

I lived for art

I miss the you

Imperfectly heard love song

In my way

Instructions for loneliness

In the Hard Chair

In this box

It’s Pez

I walk your legs

I want to die alone

I wave at trains


🅙

Just a fuck (and not a very good one)

Justice

Just walk with me


🅚

Knot me

Known

Kristine, because I lost the poems


🅛

Lamb

Last train to Dumbsville

Leave Me

Leaving Daylesford

Let’s eat

Let's all feel sorry for Les

Lily

Lines from songs

London

Lonely Planeteer

Longitude

Lost Heart

Love of your life

Love on stage

Love sings


🅜

Male Bonding

Mars replies to Venus

Meeting John in Lygon Street

Melbourne

Melbourne Cup, 2011

Memories of a blind man

Merimbula

Missing you

Molly watches and writes nothing down

Moving

Mr Cut and Run

My attempts to learn another language

My calling

My House

My Letters

My life in amber

My lover’s lover’s name

My tattoo

My wait


🅝

Narcissus checks his mobile

Nicking the Picasso

Night sky wanderer

Noosa Beach Retiree

Nothing New (again)

Noticing these

Not the last trump

Not Written in the Bodleian Library

No wonder

Nursing your bruised heart


🅞

Oasis

Ocean Blue

Old car

Old news at the end of the pier

Old Undies

One last poem

Only Scum

On The Sea Bed

Open letter to Bill Clinton

Orthodox Christmas Card

Other men

Oxford Physic Garden


🅟

Painter, retrospective

Paolo’s dream of Francesca in the second circle

Paralysis

Perfect black dress

Perigee moon, Cottesloe Beach, 2011

Phantom Limb

Pocket Australia

Poem for my children

Poem in a moleskine journal

Poem written for a moebius strip

Poet

point of departure

Postcard from Ghent

Postcards from my daughters

Postcard to my Dad

Poster Paris

Prayer at a bus stop

Prayer of a brick

Prayer to the University of Queensland Press

Predictive Text

Preparing to drown

Priest, dying


🅠

Quantum State

Quickgold


🅡

Radioinactive

Rain

Rain Check

Refugees

Renaissance Music

Returning Virgins

Richmond Station, Winter

Rock Pool

Rubbish


🅢

Salt water cure blues

Scrap

Selfie

Sex takes sabbatical

Shadow Poem

Sheffield

She Never Flips

She says she says

She seems now

Short Messaging Service

Sick

Sitting still

Sleek

So many ks

Sometimes I’m tired

Somewhere

Sonnet 29

Sonnet for a superfluous man

Sorted

Sort of moon

Spaceman

Sparrowhawk

St Andrews

Star girl

Still in pursuit

Still no haemorrhage

Storm

Stroke

Sugar muse

Summertown, Oxford

Sunday Morning

Sunset on two trees in different gardens

Super hero me


🅣

Tarzan of the Leaf Litter

Teach me to dance

The Apology

The Barnacle

The beauty of body language

The Bequest

The Botanic Gardens/Sparrows/Ruth

The children touting

The Coastal Poet

The days I ache

The day that daylight saving ends

The deal was truth, absolute truth

The Detective

The differences between me and Shakespeare

The Doctor’s Garden

The easiest addiction

The Estate

The falconer

The girl with smacked out eyes

The Godless

The Lost and Con (ten lines of eulogy; four lines of prayer)

The make believe

The mathematics of your legs

The not looking glass

Then they expect you to pick a career

The only man on Skype

The Only Wisdom

The Opening of the New Parliament House by H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth II

The other judge

Therefore oranges

The Rescue

The Rich and Hungry Still

The river Derci

The scholar’s epitaph

The Schwebebahn By Night

The sculptor’s model remembers herself

The secret island

The Serial Farewell

The Shift Workers/Barmer Anlagen

The Sugar Generation

The text of the poem

The Unmapped Hamlet

The world returns

The X

This dance

Three Thirds of a Day Without You

Ties

Time and Motion

Today

Today I greet

To George

Toilet Paper

Tomb

Too tired for more than 17 syllables

Tow Truck

Tranq’s for the memory

Tripwire Town

Tristan’s Commission

Turning thirty in the morning


🅤

Ukraine 2022

Universal submission guidelines

Universe

Until you


🅥

VA 894

Vacuum Clean

Victory in the Falkland Islands

vitamin d


🅦

Walking in the Botanic Gardens as My Life Was Collapsing Somewhere

Watching the tsunami

Well, fuck the fans of Keats

When a patient is dying

When I am empty

When I could fly

When I travel

When other people die

When words run out

When you’re serious about love

When you understand

Where’s the Denkmal, boys?

Whisky ago gone

Whore writes a sonnet

Winter morning

Winter Sun

Without a single sparrow

Without your silver iteration

Woman exercising on Red Rocks beach

Woman in burqua

Woman with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome

Worm


🅨

You

You get depressed

You only use those legs

Your presence


🅩

Zoo