the orchard eternally

There's something in the anatomy 
of hands that fills you
with chimes, you told me.


That lone gravestone lilac
-part woman in the soil, ever
to be carved around her being.
Driven by the harvest, may 
her stellar attempts haunt
the orchard eternally.


Yet words still sprout as
though they were echoes in sleep
(and I know the chimes you
speak of; they're heard roaming
through winds arranged gently,
half knowingly by a Zephyr
made happy) when she once
smiled at the sight of 
you deep in 
a puddle of memory.

night garden

She snuck out to the garden
at night armed with a
torch to track
down what she was
after. In the morning
though all
was discovered.

The acrid smell.
The soft red smears on
her fingertips slightysticky but
what gave it away was the
smattered trail of vermillion petals
leading up to her
desk (like some forward-thinking Hansel
being led by his parents into
the forest placed them there)
The geraniums sat
dismayed in a Black Douglas tumbler
stolen in darkness.

Harpur

Swept up in a diagonal
rain of yellow leaves and
gleefully eating my avocado I
find the silverwood bench that 
I often fantasized about stealing


('cept it's bolted firmly to the ground)


I sit there as the sun
places her warm hand on
the back of my neck. Above, cirrus
clouds make sweeping 
gestures like a relative
just returned from overseas. Those
ancient bells stupidly ring out
'the Nutcracker' and 'when the saints 
go marching in' so that I cannot hear
grace above their commanding 
echoes. And I do 
not want to go back to
that stifling room of
orange
and 
brown
where the mean
tomes give me papercuts
because they know 
I do not understand them.

Epyrus

hey boy, I watch

                 you take the skyway

while I remain here on the ground

knowing that one day you just won’t come back

so until then…

my mother in the next room

watches videos of the island she left

as a child 25 years earlier

to make her home

somewhere else

she tells me that a lone cypress

tree still stands in the same

place she remembers it being

                        as a little girl

and I’m not sure if it’s

                       a miracle I smell or

those lilies of the valley

imbedded deep into the soft folds

of the woolen jumpers she always wears.

Tess climbs up onto my desk

to watch me work

                        and he calls her

                        ‘the perfect killer’

because she is so small & beautiful

                      and deftly quick & silent

but that is simply

the nature

of felines.

Georgia

It is here that this moment of splendor fails us.

Give me your sight and come now, for we have

both lost. You make ready your shoes

and suitcase (it seems the parting was inevitable)

while I hide here amongst the curtains, clutching

your photography and praying guiltily.

Now sorry I, who failed you,

must watch from the window

as the old glass distorts this last image of you

so that I can’t remember how you really were

(a blemish, something minor, like

the sliding of my hand across your skin

or the dialogue swerving to somewhere

we’d never been)

New tulle of my skirt quivering as we danced

too lost in collected notes to worry. I scratched

your arm trying to stifle the shock that came from

an idyllic clarity disguised as sound

Who was playing that night? All I remember is

you liked my dress, fascinated by the fabric.

Your palm on my wicker-chair, silent.

Then you said you loved the evening

since it held no light, and forced people to

concentrate on the idea of a person, eliminating

physicality which only obstructs.

Wine and darkness you said,

are the two quickest ways to

really see a person for who they are

(you untying the ribbon around my throat,

laughing, then following the stepping stones

of my spine from my neck downwards)

and my hand, perfect

there upon your sleeve

is the clearest of any

regrets I’ve known since then.

the second

December boy,

while you help me find my shadow,  you lose yours

like in some stuffed up Asklepious dream

where it is Holofernes who cuts

off Judith’s head and so

the courageous suffering

woman dies instead

I stumble across your room         

                     knocking piles of records down

trying to ignore the feeling I’m in a

well lit Howard Arkley painting

(god, why does he use those colours?

                                     they make me ill)

And where were you when he tried

              feeding me a line from

              Casablanca?

something about ‘all the  bars in the world’;

it doesn’t matter, he wasn’t even wearing

a fedora while he was saying it.

the first

Here you make sense of the rare moment

                    where the pulse distorts;

turning all into chords

full of Valentines

and sorrow

the storm salt            the peace touch

a lighthouse and I framed indefinitely

(the rare moment;

where the pinstripes have

fallen off your trousers)

have I really know you

            for so long?

a reply to Thomas Stearns;

The phone rings but not for you

and you try to be calm, composed

-but that is not you

You throw a plate to the ground

in frustration

You weep into the crook of your

arm at the sound of the china

breaking. And upon looking up

you see Eliot

waiting with words from Burnt Norton

(and like the best of them, dead

so long) articulating your sadness,

making it all seem so trivial, and so

you sit up, and stop crying

and read well past East Coker.

blue

In the grander scheme of things

you and I are separated by eight

shades of blue. You, kingfisher,

mix it with the turquoises while I am

ultramarined between delft and smalt

And don’t you know that

a little blurring never hurt

anybody?

window fragment

Apollinaire told me to ‘kiss only in elevators
when you become old’, supposedly to
remember the feeling first felt
-of the stomach churning with
enough energy to produce a pearl
Hey love? I don’t know how this ends

Tourmaline eyes, you are
dancing on your own to Carole King
lit by the amber glow of the jukebox
while we sit around tapping our
fingers awkwardly, not having the courage
to come dance with you (lest it
become all too clear how inferior we
really are next to your slow liquid dancing)
So we down another drink to
dull any feelings of inadequacy

You placed a part of Apollinaire’s window
on a lamp post, since it had
served you well. And I could have
cried when you told me I
belonged in Paris.

0104

the queen’s birthday passed
there on that bench
where you touched my arm
and everything changed

winter passed and
you are no longer here
wrapped around me like the twine
you use everywhere
-but it won’t lead me back to you

in this city everyone is tall
and I don’t even reach their elbows
looking for a thread
of twine to pull
and lead me back to you


0104

September skies

the terrace floorboards creak and groan
seems like me, they don’t want you to leave
you know I’m right, beyond these bones
and houses disillusion reigns and reminds
me of a time when you turned back to trace
those words into the moisture on the window pane
-words like now and time          new and touch


and how you hated the strong heady smell of
jasmine in summer it made you spin when
I wore some pinned in my hair
but I always liked it
-words like sigh and hands        wish and stay


I watched your shoulders as you walked away
but now those September skies
don’t mean as much these days

for caspar david friedrich

she asks me what use are words to her when
the perfect place has none
and mentions that if you
just separate yourself into
the seasons you become scattered
like a ruined cloister graveyard in the snow
and can begin to see that
poetry is nothing more than
words in a jar
melted wax on your skirt
a poor companion whose words fall short
a wisp of a dead man’s hair found inside
some second-hand coat pocket


and when I find my voice I tell her
that it is a fragile touch
a lantern hanging from a tree
a corridor with doors to the past and
future at either end
and a universe in
twenty lines

something soft (for Kenneth Slessor)

something soft stunning supple
eternal
survives silent keeps nothing
not even the years
lingers limber
perfect and just
sparkling kissed
gloved weightless
mute fair
soaked in sun
knowing loneliness is like
salt on the tongue knowing
something
soft something
stunning something
supple something
eternal


0901

herald

your heart is made of moss,
mine of mud;
together we breach
the silent gawking
with a look, a beatific look
to counter the cynics
and i knock the
ashtray over and sigh
-it's too early for promised
late night conversations
and drinking
situations

we are dry

four

I had that dream again
last night,
where my front tooth is
reduced to a stump, and
the fragments are lodged like quartz
in my strawberry chewing gum.
I'm wide awake
by the window and
the light outside is
that shade of blue we can't pronounce.
I get the fever to leave
this city sometimes
with just the clothes on my back
and come home to you,
but I find myself
just sitting here
listening to the antagonistic hum
of traffic and drunkards
on the street below.


I've been awake too long
and I hear their staccato
shouting, but
I'm too weary to care.

village

here in this house i peel
potatoes with a knife
place wood into the fire
plait a little girl's hair
and focus on the layers
of crumbling paint
watch my thumb blister
from the burns, arch my
neck towards the mountains
and wonder how you cope
on your end with all
the humidity


there is room enough here
for both of us.

good to know

It’s good to know that you

aren’t the person I
will be most happy with,
and my children won’t look like you
or shrug the way you do.
We won’t stay up till dawn talking,
dancing in the kitchen, red wine lips
or console each other after a crap day at work;
run around new cities
nor hide in the pockets of old ones;
light each others cigarettes and
grow sleepy in the back of cabs.
You won’t make me cups of tea
while I remain under the covers,
or read me parts of your favourite books
as my head hangs over the mattress
and my arm rests across your stomach
I won’t remind you how brilliant you are
when you feel so insignificant,
or sing the wrong lines in songs
to try coaxing out that grin of yours.
There will be no midnight walks or
stumbling up stairs, no hand against
my back or oversized jacket on my
shoulders. Arguing in supermarkets
and sniggering quietly in art galleries,
rolling eyes at parties and blinking
too much in the bleached sunlight.
sprawled on the fuzzy grass in the evening
while our friends are across the road at karaoke
waiting for us,nor fat raindrops
under heavy tree branches that hang over us.
No wondering if
everyone feels this way or
is as lucky as us, and our voices won’t change on
the phone to each other, growing soft and playful;


It’s good to know
I have been spared all of this
because it’s not you these things are meant for.

mix tape

in this room there is
space for you yet,
beyond the silver foil
on the walls, between the
cracks of stained Victorian floorboards
(after the flood the roof caved in).

Your feelings too retracted, once
I reached the same page you
were at.
Melodies fill my head, but I won’t
allow myself to give them to you
just
waiting
for some semblance of
reciprocation.

an afterthought

The lightbulb shrieks at me
inconsolable that you’re
not here
-lightweight.


The room goes dark, save
for your memory;
smoking in my armchair.
Am I cursed to always
be around the distracted?
never a time to shine
and dance around my room
(boysenberry lips, sleeved heart)
always hoping,
dark eyes overlooked

featherweight.