Poems written by me; poems by others.
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
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?
As a shadow, she’s much bolder
than I – looms much larger
takes more risks, stretches out and
intrudes: she
ignores bolted gates, and enters
other people’s homes; has no fear
of anything concrete, anything private
anything closed. Unafraid
and irreverent, she touches
those I love
has no shame, no sense of place
reaches out: no restraint
In a mirror she’s much sharper
than myself – she’s much
lighter, more quick; so much more
the creature of light
being of colour
Of angles, much more
somebody’s dream, someone’s
image – a reflection, my opposite number
laughing back at me, wherever I
look: winking up
from whatever I make
I create
spotlit flirt, knowing
on paper
she’s more brilliant, so much braver
much more startling, more broad
for your dollar
(more a tease)
more alive, even disguised
even dismissed, even derided and
tossed off as a
cheap poem
Back in business, in tycoon form
touting like a hustler for what
the day may bring: bring noise bring
heat bring dust and it smells
like the street (my private property my
Wall Street, my bonanza)
bought and sold, selling now
on competitive terms: my sharp
my shop-worn challenge
on a day like today, on my street
feeling strong: feel cunning (lazy malice)
and sly: feel like laughing –
wanna rip somebody off
Cathy laughs best
her lips tie a bow
an extravagant, impulsive
christmas present flourish
her eyes go bright green they
gleam like a scarab
a bauble dancing, as jaunty
as brilliant a yuletide
decoration: a gift, an excitement
as frivolous, as generous
sparklers ablaze
Cathy laughs, lights sing
Everything
flies upward: we cheer
and with a flourish, her lips
take a bow
glowering in the gnarled clutches of a malleetree she’s
bent, that cat
my mother tries to reason with her
only the dog ever responds to her logic
the dog and my father, four focused brown
eagerly uncomprehending eyes
the cat resists.
She veils herself behind a silt-heavy spiderweb not
one of us would broach
we discuss deserting her
my mother sobs, tired
hoping she’ll feel pity
(it’s late, it’s dark, the mosquitoes all gloat)
she feels contempt.
Fetch! they command me, the visiting child
the dog and I bound into ropes of corpse-flesh web
it clings like rolled rubber: we imagine many
armed spider hugs and fear
a beach-scrub Kali, slapping her hands across our eyes
our cat has eyes
like a goddess of destruction. She sits,
spite incarnate, in the backseat of the car
She and I, we dislike each other
intensely
all the way home
You with that silly, happy smile on your face
Your Luna Park expression
The night the bridge astride the Harbour
jade structure: onyx waters
A photo in the negative, inverse vigour
Oil-slick black
Your laughter your face
Lit up like the foreshores
Glisten lights dazzle: blare life
A night studded gold and incorrigible red
These ferries (marine glow-worms)
Humming purposefully by
Your eyes wide and shining
Firefly city
burn bright
I don’t want you to leave me
Janie is a sea monster
On the beach, they don’t know yet
serpent in the brine, green-eyed and unholy
She cuts breakers to size and devours
the shore with each wave. She slashes
bitter salt-whips across the bone-white flesh of the
sand. She smashes
fists of glass; they shatter they pierce callous shrapnel
assassin blades of foam
Janie threshes barbed, brutal coils
causing dangerous rips, gouging depth out of
shallow. The froth, a frenzy of jade
Sun-plated, chill as armour and rage
She’s a deep-sea dragon, malice embodied
She is vengeful
The wrath of the excluded, elemental
force. An agent of retribution
She eyes the beach-towels, beach-balls, umbrellas
all the people in all the lycra-bright colours
judgmental
Janie in the ocean
Elly McDonald