Month: September 2022

Just letting you know; I’ve been watering your garden.

Just so you know, I’ve been watering your plants all winter. You remember, those plants that you plucked feverishly from Bunnings clearance trays, the seedlings we pilfered from torn plastic planters piled outside for Council pickup,

            remember

before you crept inside your mind and made a nest with your demons.

I’ve been watering your ferns, your monsteras, your Tahitian bridal ivy, your ornamental orange tree that flowers but never bears fruit, and I’ve been watering as an act of ritual,

and what else is such a ritual but

an act of love and

 perhaps an act of resistance?

through that confusing damp, wet, winter where the black mould crept along our concrete walls and the tomato plants flooded despite their adequate drainage,

I watered,

crooked stalks that looked like dandelions but weren’t and plants that were possibly invasive species

or simply just weeds.

Even while you swaddled yourself with weed and booze and spent your days scrolling through doom-scapes [and yes, they would call this enabling]

[the AA, the co-dependency experts]

I’ve been watering your plants

 as ritual,

                                                                        as rebellion,

but I thought you should know about those plants we rescued, the ones wrapped in black plastic with flat angular leaves, the ones we rescued on a hopeful night-

Those plants are blooming.

I think they’re irises.

If I stare at them long enough, they look like silken lilac and gold origami cranes,

gazing up at the lightening sky.

Steal time. A letter to my fellow creatives

To my fellow artists, writers, and creatives, I implore you:

that this is what we must do, so as not to die while our hearts are still pulsing and our breath still escapes our mouths in laboured gasps disguised as whispers,

this is what we must do:

steal time.

Yes, this is a particular type of thievery, but in this world, what other choice do we have?

Steal time from whomever demands your lifeforce at minimum wage, from whomever leaves you feeling more machine than organism, from whomever leaves you trudging rather than dancing.

Steal time because the moment we are born into adulthood, time is stolen from us,

and you can always earn money, shag someone on Tinder, binge-watch that Netflix series. There will always be more groceries to bag, or data to input or reports to write.

Time is the most precious natural commodity there is and if they could, they’d float in on the stock exchange like water, or power or other things that should never be

monetised.

I implore you, this is not merely a moral imperative, it is an act of resistance, to…

steal time from your employer, who won’t give you sick pay, won’t give you time off with a dying loved one, who won’t pay you what you’re worth

because it offends their sensibilities, their new religion, their worship of the bottom line.

And this is how you steal time, call it what you like, quiet quitting or just retrieving your humanity from a machine that assigns you a number that’s not a unique datapoint:

write stories in your lunchbreak, compose symphonies in endless meetings, imagine landscapes during the back-to-back shifts you’ve been asked to work,

write on the backs of report templates, on the backs of invoices, on the front of student exam papers, reclaim what it is that makes you human,

resist because the world needs your light,

 more than it needs company men and women, marketing gurus and hedge-fund managers, more than it needs people who only see living beings

as resources to exploit.

load bearing soul

a letter to my mother

Still, still I am a load bearing soul, 
So, I will carry your wound sack  
across my shoulders
chisel space in my skull
for your sadness 
and if this isn’t enough, mum 
I’ll keep trying, I’ll sell
my spleen, a kidney, a lung-
so, your suffering can live
comfortably inside me, 
I will weigh my flesh and give 
you a kilo (2.2 pounds) the
metric system balances the pain 
			
Even then you will say that 
I don’t deserve the springtime, 
though my soul has buckled
and my skin sack is empty
my kilogram of flesh 
bloody on your scales,
I mustn’t laugh at the diving swallows
mustn’t inhale the lustful jasmine or 
finger magnolia flesh turning to leaf.
	It’s not enough to bear your load.
	It’s only fair that I suffer as you have
	and there’s logic in your metrics
	but what mother loves her child with kitchen scales?
	what mother calls this love
	at all.

Springtime in D Minor

As all the northern poets pin fall to page, 
you are playing with colour again. Your client
squirts gold onto butcher’s paper like Jackson Pollock 
and the wisteria tresses dangle from rotten 
fence palings and timber eaves. You too 
like to flirt with refraction smearing 
rainbow across your eyes, while the
wattle shakes her ringlets across the motorways. 

His father posts online. Four years since
L’s death date, but he never noticed springtime 
when there was a goon bag behind the Ajax
and Smirnoff behind the curdled milk. You are done 
with half formed motherless men grasping 
at shadows and fainting in the sun so
you ignore the hashtag and make 
vases out of cleanskins,
slipping lavender into wine bottles,
twisting scent into song.

What they don’t tell you

Prose poetry in three movements

What they don’t tell you (movement one)

…is that you’ll be clutching at the edges of life, ripping nails clean from your nail bed, leaving bloodied fingertips too wet to grasp ledges. What they don’t tell you is that it’s a loss, nobody tells you that you’ll rake the fur lined, dust coated carpets for powdered residue, that you’ll sneak into friends’ bedrooms just to hold their prescription Endone in your hands, just because…

because there is hope in the holding.

What they don’t tell you is that instead of poppy seeds, you’ll be downing opened bottles of Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay, three months opened and more vinegar than wine, that you’ll be eating when your body is not hungry, grease drenched burgers and cardboard fries, but that there is more than one type of hunger. And you’ll run by the river, through muddy, waterlogged grass, around and around soccer fields until your knees lock in protest and the lactic acid paralyses your calves.

That when you can no longer run, you will crawl home and lie on your rug weeping, that the weeping will collect in a pool around your foetal form. What they don’t tell you is that sobriety is grief-stricken, a period of mourning.

That gear was a life partner that held you,

and that person is no longer there.

What they don’t tell you (movement two)

….is that your skin will curl and break, that wounds will weep, and an infection will break, that the compulsion to create will seep from your body. Boils will open and pus will leak, and you will write in a way that you have never written,

in between students and clients, on office note pads, with scratchy ballpoint pens, on pizza take away menus and envelopes screaming overdue bills,

you’ll write

in a grasping, clutching way, and you’ll be driven to sound, to rhythm, to the edges of life, that your ears will sharpen to your violin, attune to the hidden notes on that fretless instrument you play. That your ears will recognise that B is shrill, stern like an old school ma’am, that D is resonant but calm, a yogi and

these are moments you don’t crave opiates,

moments of softness or heart, your cat’s paws on your chest for instance, a friend who buys you Thai chilli basil tofu and steamed rice for lunch, and laughter,

yes laughter, untethered.

What they don’t tell you (movement three)

They use the word clean, but that’s a misnomer, as though passing a drug test means your body is free of the impurities and that’s not true,

the body remembers.

cells remember.

And how can they not remember flesh breaking and heart calcifying and a child running to the corners of breathing so nobody can break her further

Flesh and bone hold your own trauma and the cells your parents’ and grandparents’ trauma. And what do you do with this epigenetic fate?

You pick up your violin and play the saddest of scales, D minor, the musical key for dirges and laments until your neighbour bangs on your ceiling and you stop, but the knowledge is there. You’re working out how to live with the library of knowledge trapped in subcutaneous fat, you’re working out how to hold yourself when gear was the only love who knew how to hold you.

The runner

From The Human Mammal (2020)

The undutiful daughter/errant lover
is always running
she runs, and
is it the movement or the cadence or the stride that keeps her safe? 
You can meditate to your footfall, they tell her. 
Leave the tunes at home and 
listen to the sounds you make in the world. 

And-
trust is this, it’s the thud of her feet on the pavement. 
She’s never been a speed racer, preferring endurance races. 
Trust is being able to run at a moment’s notice- 
she has always judged women who wear high heeled shoes harshly. 
Always wear shoes that allow you to run at a moment’s notice.

Despite the lactic acid building in her calves, and her aching arches, 
she will keep running… 
Away from rather than running to?
Away from the relational goalposts that are always moving 
(at least the finish line is fixed in a marathon) 
the steps, the rules 
one step in front of the other-
The not good enough rules that she can never predict 

Eggshells: all those eggshells that she teeters upon-
At least.
At least when she is running, 
she is fifty percent airborne, 
it’s the closest to flying without being in a metal jet-fuelled box, 
and
 unlike all the accusations she cannot predict.
what she didn’t do right, what she did too much of, too much, not enough
	youdidit yesyoudid

Anger that hovers as fertiliser, 
the easiest type of bomb to make 
that’s why Bunnings won’t let you order online, 
no they won’t, not even during Covid.
You did it on purpose, you’re fucked in the head-

Just keep running.
When she runs, she sees anew, she sees the river, 
and with each footfall, the houses crumble at the foundations, 
the Moreton Bay figs disentangle their roots, 
and the mangroves rethread themselves, cleansing the river 
And she keeps running and she keep seeing,
where Pemulwuy fought those skinless devils, who harnessed fire for evil:
where the river fed the people like a mother, 
serving up feasts of shellfish amongst the old salt flat marshes and swamp oaks.

Just keep running, she tells herself, 
gravity is a game of flying and falling. 
Just run, when you run,
you’re free
to fall 
like a human mammal.

Obituary

an industry secret: a
monarch’s obituary is written
years ahead of death, 
yes, same with other
heads of state, 
revolutionaries, 
A listers:
in the event of sudden expiration,
just click send

this your day, of single wrapped
stale Arnott’s, delta creams crumbling
in tannin-stained mugs of tepid Lipton tea 
and who were you on this day
that may be your last
a friend who could have been a lover
leaves her glasses on your crochet throw, 
and you 
breaking again 
fold into yourself rocking gently on 
your faux deco rug, teal and soft

did you love enough
were you enough to be loved 
did someone love flesh and bone you
and not just the idea of you:
were you enough?
it is easy to think of yourself 
in the
 past tense.

lifenoise

so these are the sounds we archive:
two fences and three houses away
a border collie howls for its pack
and you feel the keening the cruelty 
dogs are not built for solitary life and 
an average of three per career your union mate says,
train drivers see three jumpers
on average and you knew a woman once
at university she had three kids and threw
herself in front of a train metal crunching steel
momentum arrested in the air
desperation archived into ears

and we stand in the darkness screaming
arched backs and tilted skulls 
howling at dead stars or space junk or sulphur
all rhythm begins in the belly an exhausted rumble
because children/work/partners/capitalism
because a woman only has two arms
but labours as though she has eight
and the night running men
(yes, men because only men feel safe without light)
ignore the lifenoise, the life screeching-
it is no surprise that a woman can scream forever.

skinless

and like all the other skinless 
you slide through your days unnoticed 
remember that army obstacle course you entered with old school friends, 
when you ran through mud and manure and contracted flesh-eating proteins
that removed your epidermis
how easy it was for the skin to peel, for viscous fluid, 
clear, bloodless, to roll down your calves
and how easy it was for the cardigan to rip the interconnected cells
from your flesh

you have no skin and yes, there are strengths how easy it is
to feel the young jonquils unfurling from your flesh
with a glance and you are stamen and stem
how easy it is to exude sweet spring musk
horny jasmine and magnolia on heat
and to sit beneath the soft skinned melaleucas
and imagine coccyx reverting to tail, bones emptying and 
hair reverting to feathers
how easy it is to flit amongst the mangroves

also, how difficult it is to the be the skinless amongst your predatory race,
you cry beneath those paper-skinned trees, 
and you think of a friend’s client or a client’s client, 
the one who swallowed razor blades
and apparently the oesophagus is resilient
and you hate that word resilient,
a word used as both blindfold and gag
to ignore scar tissue and shrapnel in the belly
to avoid asking could life 
be lived another way.