mics is all, ringing
in my head
mornin’ tones
pushin’ sweet peas through earth,
seeds, roots are
lost on me, my clumsy fingers
even babes know, (nooot the smile monster)
run to a near doll
one night i’ll escape,
it won’t hurt to speak
no frail electricity -
until balloons lift
like tears, that weight, at the pistol
of time and all you’ve done there, no the sea
until the sea lifts,
in fear, or loss or light
sometimes i just cannot bear it
you knocked
your good lips – i watched the
conversation lull, no
winter there
in the cool of your skirt,
a sound;
maybe
a possum
in the copse of tree-legs
when it’s the weekend
and nothing beats
the view
as I look forward
like a child
feet tip berries
birds dropped,
ohh let’s see the songs that wash up
if we
let the rope just
go,
(those kids
had the right idea
shaky hands
beneath
the jetty)
a bunk, an eye-tongue
under the rugs
with complaints from the neighbours
but you’ll turn a page, thin-mouth
i could taste the place
when the earth moves
we hold death in like a warm face, and
i pray
the way a
bird leaves
wings out,
africa’s winds
she comes
and goes
in some ways
you are mine,
the rip
catching
in my belly;
fiery
acrid
plums
on walks
the trees,
(surreal in
their basins,
caves)
those wombs
of air
not sad,
like a child
with new
teeth & old dolls
but ripe
for it
and those
black nights,
afternoons
the stars out;
gave it up
for paper butterflies,
horsemen still as
music boxes
before hell sounds,
chewing me
open
i take the same roads
even when they don’t
change
even when
you don’t say a word,
never known
the brave, sacred
arms of
those trees;
the heart’s emaciated
woods,
suckling the raw sap
of her autumn
in walks past stone walls’
hints of graves, ducks
at rivers with shining, flying lungs,
but i think of warmth, balancing
the pale yolks of
scarring roads, thin
altitude –
the possibility of
difference,
or anaemic loves,
without a holy
thought before a
doe moon,
the sky’s
dead seas
where all
that is
can be blinked out,
when i saw the boat
i started slipping
you helped me in, washed
my bloody head;
if i am strong
it is not here…
i don’t know how to say
that the bare, rangy gums,
the long hill home with the
city lights beneath
(even in daylight)
are ours, and that the
fox that killed nine chooks
is in my bed,
got under the fence
like a jailbreak,
the lights are stunning
they blind and conceal you
unpacking in
bunks, they make
soldiers for nights like these
the catch in the sheets,
a holy ghost,
with the same blank meaning:
are you
life in
the topsoil,
a boy walks,
thick breaker trees,
the folds of a rose
like a hurricane;
on a good night
coins of stars,
i can blow them away
teased out
under the southern cross
like lilies from the
scrub - blood belly, of flame,
we warmed on our fingers
moorhens blow the sand out beneath me
the wind changed
from ash,
poems in your voice,
tonight i felt grief in the pounding tide,
what sleep death may bring
but finding courage
within a father’s reach
i will be so good,
(as good as i can)
between
my sea
and you
if you keep shells there,
the stone-thrown moon
When I began to bend,
an old friend touched and touched
my soul that billowed around.
I can’t find the words for his arms.
I take it away...
