Poems written by me; poems by others.
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
Men
are made to invade and to hit
grim-faced and intense, they force me to feel
nothing but them: they bruise me
then leave me
pleading for pain, and all abused flesh
like meat on a spit
Some lamb
so when I’m empty
I want to be beaten
down, again, or to slash my face
which men have seen but
Men die
with grace, head held high
she carries herself serenely
(King Charles walked and talked
half an hour after…)
unassailably regal as those who have learned
to ignore homemade bombs peasants
pitch in their faces
she carries herself
no support
she knows
she knows
she believes them, and believing
will never trust again
moving?
as if on castors, slightly stiff but
caring?
unbowed. Steadfast, her face composed
grey-eyed
she must know
dry-eyed
who’ll help?
dignity a shell
fashioning roses
You restore my hand from a crown of thorns
starfish into petals
I could hug you; so crude
when your is an origami touch
as if I were sheer and white like
a nautilus shell pure
coddling, coaxing growth
from an African violet bella
donna prima donna temperamental
unearthing a fossil, living coral
flushed with myriad gasping, sucking mouths
breath
taking: life-giving, sleight of hand
a healing touch – herbs and tenderised nettle
by moonlight, calm and soothe
smooth
cultivate concern
It shouldn’t be like this
not
so long after: the hunter and the hunted
oppressor and oppressed: so much later
but now
still playing games with mirrors
still replicating that face
you look
in every crowd
you note
the set of her shoulders (whose?): the way
she moves
the planes of her features: tense
all symmetry and conspiracy
all over, so much later
over now:
it shouldn’t be like this
This is warfare
I could get what I want but it would only
Backfire: this is a doomed
And ignoble cause. In victory, defeat
But this
Is a cold and protracted campaign
More casualties (mere carnage)
More self-inflicted damage
This is my Crimea: a wearying, putrid, recurring
Night horror. We play over
The same sequences, we make
The same moves. Too studied, too
Well-practised: the positions are
Entrenched now.
We are buried
In trenches, our consciences deadened
This battle, weighted no way, is fought out in
No Man’s Land. This is an exercise:
We order reprisals for guerilla attacks
In cold blood, turning violence on
Innocent civilians
We use their wide eyes for target practice.
Elly McDonald