October 21, 2009 • 10:14 am 0
I am a reasonable man.
I let her be quiet by this reason,
flicking away at the wick
her little blue silences
torture
anger
disappointment;
I am a reasonable,
generous man.
I listen at her pace,
I talk when she wants
I savour our conversations.
Filed under: poetry
October 21, 2009 • 10:09 am 0
Where the sunshine meets the sea,
or in the flicker of a flame,
and the curled finger when I sleep,
wrapped around the stark fabric of bedsheet,
crackling my knuckles, so tense,
the landlord bangs on the door
bell rings with
his raging thuds
shatter and clatter
the sugar glass I store
the world in away
from my mind
WHEN that day comes,
all the mothers will sing
a little lullaby,
and sweep away my sins
with their dusty little wings.
Filed under: poetry
October 18, 2009 • 12:36 pm 0
I spent an hour on the phone with my friend, because she was upset, “just for old time’s sake”. See, she’s been worried lately that thinks aren’t ever going her way, and that she can’t find happiness. She moved interstate to the country’s capitol city, she’s alone;
no friends,
no family,
no pets.
It took a lot of time for her to learn that things weren’t going to be any different for a while: “No one gets me like they do back home”, she says, “I want everything to go back to how it was, where I could walk down the street in my summer dress and not worry about traffic-stuck cars honking and pollution and shore-leave sailors and street hawkers, or guns and mobs, car accidents, muggers, public holidays and bus timetables!” I understand that, quietly, I tell her that.
It’s always something interstitial with her, though – too fat, too thin, too tall, too ugly, too white, too stupid, too maid-of-honour-bridesmaid-never-the-bride-backseat-vomitorium-too-much-vodka-and-punch – she doesn’t want to hear it. She wants to hear herself and my familiar voice.
She’s not happy.
Filed under: poetry
October 18, 2009 • 12:18 pm 0
The world revolves by its melancholy culprits;
that’s the truth.
You cannot be happy without being sad:
You cannot be happy without another’s suffering.
Rich and powerful men have spent years cultivating it.
Gathering
elements
of joy.
But herein lies the fallacy – the harder you try, the less happy you’ll be.
So why try at all.
Filed under: poetry
August 25, 2009 • 10:27 pm 0
So a child will ask:
what is a weapon?
And he learns
that a weapon is a stone
or fist in any form
or a gun and its trigger
whether it hooks to a thorn.
A rose has more thorns than petals, he knows.
So a man will wonder:
what is the worst weapon of all?
And he observes
missiles, pens, planes, bacteria,
fire frenzy ash destruction,
the lens of a camera,
the bottom line,
the dotted line,
the barbed wire fence.
A bomb has more forms than flames, he knows.
So an old man will know:
man himself is the weapon.
He has grown to see his friends
live and die,
the vapour trail sizzle in the sky,
and observe -
man flies the jet,
man signs the plan,
man picks the target,
and the catastrophe left
is evidence.
So it was they laid blame on
God and Country,
but cast them off for peace and sanity.
A man has more excuses than sins,
he knows.
Filed under: poetry
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