here, I am uneasy
this place is strange, this space
empty. This incubator, sterile compound.
your unit. Myself glimpsed
in glass (in fragments), a full-length window pane
Ghost image on a TV screen
you disturb me
the air –
so sharp it hurts, this high
vertigo –
you make my eyes smart
Far removed, a burglar siren jams
(you alarm me)
the heavy breathing of cars, below
you oppress
like a radio not quite tuned to the stations
a shadow pall –
a phone left off the hook
In summer, while tanned, blue-eyed girls in
white cotton frocks planned weekends on the yacht
(the harbour danced with white, teasing sails)
he went up north
a country boy, he’d shyly confess
no time for cultural gorgings, for opera
in the park – a backwoods poet
raised among canefields
Never been farther than Cairns:
such yearing – as soon as he’d had means
he bought a neck of river: his boast, his own
human clay, his land
of parakeets and snakes. As a child the sky
seemed uncontainable: horizons so wide, so far
out of reach
now, driving north, he sleeps alone
on the beaches at night
counts the stars, then, satisfied the sky
has not contracted, he softly hums
The restless rhythms of the car tune
his days, and he sings, low and gentle
as he never could down here
bright red
wounding the hillside, once
twice: every year
the dust billows down through the gullies
from up north, from the desert
dry-red flatlands, red dust clogs
cloaks the sky
so heavy, day smothers
so light, night fades
desperate-hearted nights, of throbbing sticky
heat: a bullet-hole
moon bleeds over soft lands –
bright red, like a bushfire
casting a pall
A neon script emblazoned on the skyline
And the bassline from the car radio
Reverberates
Throbbing like the tremor of a long-bow string
After the arrow is loosed.
God is starry-eyed in the heavens
Tonight, and the streets down here are paved with gold
Light gilded – a Byzantine mosaic
Our city, bejewelled, wears a halo.
Driving through the night (through a pageant)
We are silent
We are blessed
We are wonders in a world
Of precious detail-work, of graven
Images: richly-inlaid mysteries
From the radio the bass emanates and
Envelops
A textured mantle, dark
And warm as blood
and here
all manner of miracles explode
red paint on violet canvas
full fields aflame with sun
all colour
stained-glass images
all light
molten metal
all energy all action all
emotion
is here, for a moment
all intense, comet-flight
At this distance memory jumps
the bad times like a child
jumping puddles It skips
takes the mud in stride
making rocks into playthings
to dance over oceans
skimming the depths
a dare, a defiance
skittering cheek
flying
brave cheat
inflicting no damage quick
sharp as that smile
He was just too expensive emotionally
I couldn’t afford him
A friend is expected to act like a friend
But a lover (I loved him)
behaves any way
He wants – I want
him, but not at any cost
:Repetition:
in the kitchen, the tap still drips
the rain still patters and the clock
still ticks
:Wait:
through the window and the drizzle she can watch
cars go by; through the late news and the hours
she can sit alone and
:Hold:
this never happened, this never could
and if she thought it likely, you know she’d leave for
:Reprise:
Insofar as he is my friend
He is my friend
Only because I insisted on it
Fighting for everything
Fighting over everything
Eight years on and not yet exhausted
He says
Why do you have to take everything so hard?
You make
Everything so hard
And we laugh, we both believe
You must fight for your life
Be fierce
Fight tough
it’s easier with a friend
My friend
around here, they speak a language
whose vocabulary is familiar but
the words have different meanings
I can’t communicate
Commonplace expressions require foreign
interpretations; facial movements, social
gestures carry different connotations
I can’t convey
how at odds I feel in this Rubik’s Cube of a
World, how petrified
I am by this Rosetta Stone
Establishment: its every interaction
codified – each move feels false
A game of chess, post coup d’etat
A loaded dice, a snakes’n’ladders board
whose symbols have been reversed
I can’t decipher
An ever-changing cryptic crossword
I can’t control
An environment demanding that I speak in tongues
I find this neighborhood unnerving as the sight
of a dingo gazing down over Woolloomooloo
it’s there, at the top of stone stairs
a watcher flanked by rows of ochre terrace houses
it turns towards me (expectant
satisfied, cynical): Your yellow eyes betray you
square peg
He thinks he recognises her
the smile slips out before he realises
this stranger, fleshed with her features, has borrowed
her body and sits in challenge
there, across his bacon and eggs
her breath between them
lips moving cheerfully, over his coffee
eyes alight (a smart trick, that)
this routine relies
all normality depends – on his not revealing
he know the truth: the truth he knows
he will not betray
the smile freezes; she returns it
patient
This man
who I wanted to hold
and to rock in my arms
(tell him it’s all alright)
stands in the street
smiling down at me
tells me it’s all alright
and all the people part around us
I can’t hear them
He’s all there is as
the sun comes behind him
His lips
touch my cheeck, and almost
my mouth
mine on his, soft on soft as
the sun warms my face and
I’m so proud of him
standing there, smiling
as if
he loved me
For someone who insisted she would
Not do anything she couldn’t admit to
midnight copper cockroach
crouched on asphalt pavement, inner
city face concave – erratic dark vermin
in the alleyway oblivion –
across an empty lot, strewn with rubble and tattooed
(the shadow-net cast by the meshed wire fence)
she scurries, feet scraping
alert: rapacious watcher
metallic and uncaring
She does know (or course)
It’s a dreadful thing to do
Time repeating: a face stripped
white in the sunlight
still (unrestored) he stands
uncertain
his shirt the violent red
of the venomous: of stonefruit
fresh blood
or old-fashioned sweets from the corner store.
Hope in a vacuum?
never believe these people aren’t dangerous
They lie They betray the curve
of jaw neck shoulder
from you I wanted tenderness
Trust and dependence I recall the nights
spent waiting
in cyclindrical gas chambers, backstage
With the band The elite
this might be hell, this doomed this
Damned this Dachau I
can’t live can’t breathe this
Poison bitter this
this spited air
Elly McDonald