Category: poetry

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.

we do not know ourselves

let me tell you about us, all five million of us:

we are a city allergic to the damp, when waters rise, we forget to flee

instead, we gaze upwards

searching for sky fire, mistaking light mist for feather embers.

we are a people programmed for brightness, in this postcard, bridge framed city

coaxing bud to open into wisteria and mulberry and

shoving tufts of jasmine into windowsill jars

herding spring like sugar fuelled children onto greyhound coaches,

and all the school fetes and blossom festivals,

fairy floss and food trucks:

Turkish gozleme and vegan donuts

a Filipino family singing

on open mic:

a high school teacher brings her newborn to the festival and

the basketball boys/the almost juvie knowntothecops boys

clear a path for her child,

space, space they call to each other

shrinking as a sign of respect,

let me tell you about us,

without sunlight we do not know ourselves.

ways of holding space

Mark the calendar:

the 29th of August, the day you failed her. After years of trying, imagining yourself a one-woman Marvel multiverse, you have turned out the lights,

and curled as adult foetus, beneath your fur lined, patch work quilt, one hand on your Calico cat who has curled beside you. Another hand on that blood pump other people call a heart.

You will not spend 12 hours in A & E in the bustling inner-city rooms where it is not uncommon to see a half clothed, stale breathed man handcuffed to the bedframe, a uniformed officer at his bed, and neither will you spend 6 hours in the smaller suburban A & E, where traces of blood have not been cleaned beneath hard plastic chairs-

You can no longer hold space for her, though this is your job. Holding space. Leaning in and listening to the themes that reverberate in the pauses and the sentence periods.

Because the way you listen can speak tomes,

listening as echolocation,

as homing device,

I am here, I am here

you are there and I travel beside you,

but tonight, you scream to be the heard, the listen-ee, not the listener,  

instead, you rest your ear against the Calico, letting her breathe softness against your chin, and she shares her purr with you, the vibration that travels through her when she is in her vet carrier, or when the neighbour’s Chihuahua ventures not too close but close enough,

she shares her purr, that self-soothing soft rumble from deep within her larynx,

come, the Calico says,

there are other ways of holding space.

a week of seeking kindness

will AI one day make men redundant, he asks, not humans, I mean just men because women will always be useful, and do you know how existence travels in cycles, and men have been on top for millennia, well it is probably women’s time now-

and you can’t get rid of him, the college student who arrives in your class before you, and leaves after all the students are gone, despite the torrential rain and the assignment deadlines, he likes to follow these threads of thoughts, likes to ask your opinion-

the day before you are sinking your own fingertips into miniature tubs of sticky acrylic paint. Your client is drawn to the IKEA bottles that squirt paint like tomato sauce and he is delighted with the swirls of gold and silver and fluorescent orange on the A4 paper. Earlier another little girl is painting a sunrise with glow in the dark rave colours, and there is colour everywhere. On everyone’s hands, on the table, on school uniform, hijab, wall, floor mat

and these are children whose minds slip-slide from surface to surface. Never settling. Yet here with this beautiful, fractal rainbow mess they are calm, and it makes you wonder whether therapists should simply be replaced by artists and acrylics, watercolours, oils, pastels available at every medical and allied health service-

before the colour smear, you sit three hours with a grandmother, a guardian of a teen whose mind doesn’t conform and therefore no one else will have him, but the grandmother talks and you lean into her talk, which is both direct and circuitous, and anyway

you have been trained to hold space,

and she says, no he cannot tell the time or understand his multiplication tables, but he can play the piano by ear just by listening to a song once. You tell her that perfect pitch is rare, a unicorn skill,

and she says,

yes,

my grandson has a gift.

**

Later, you remember what your mother once said, that nature seeks an equilibrium, where one talent or gift is outweighed by a deficit-

earlier that day you had called your own therapist because there was that familiar hatred, the urge to slam your skull against a jagged stone surface and over and you would do it, damage the parietal and temporal lobes to have a moment’s respite-

because you were never enough for people who charged inflation prices for their metered love.

Then you think maybe this is nature’s balance, that your patience, that your ability to hold space and colour and meandering thought, your patience with paper cup water turned muddy with children’s paints, your ability to delight in strength over deficit-

Is nature’s counterbalance.

Or, or as you want to tell the other therapists, the teachers, the condescending colleagues who say you are too kind, as though kindness is an intellectual deficit-

Maybe this is nature’s law, and there was no gentleness, no kindness in a home that forced psychic and bodily submission, that now, as an adult, you would sell your right eye and left lung and excess haemoglobin to live in a kinder world.

Five year plan

For Asha

“In five years, I will meet
strangers who wear my words as talismans, 
and those that cast my tales as anchor or sail-
I will cram ten lifetimes into five years 
brimming with laughter and rhythm and kindness, 
and my factory violin, sticky with rosin, chin rest 
fastened by lurid purple tape, 
will consume the cadence 
dormant in my bones so
in five years I will sit in the Gaelic club and over too many 
half spilled pints play a fiddle reel 
to time…

And in five years, Asha’s van will be a lighthouse, 
smithing journeylines into reclaimed 
carbon, metal, and stone.
Holly will have her pick of Othellos/but Mia will be her own Portia 
Kat K will travel lightly/but Gin will travel with abandon
and Nadia will speak sound into undulating air 
from the back room of a sanctuary
for animals saved from slaughter-
and why not include your friends 
in a five-year plan, though there is no
career enhancing movement
no property ladder on which to 
teeter dangerously.”

In the end I look at the doctor
measuring my meandering mind 
against standardised norms. 
“No,” I reply. “I have no five-year plan.”

a week of seeking solace

I feel broken, I have not felt broken like this before,

and the wise woman that reads your whispers,

 the one who breaks into Italian when she is delighted or drops her guard,

 she says maybe, maybe you are simply aware of these long-broken parts

and you speak these beautiful, awful truths to a forever friend

whose fingers are always moving and she says

think of pottery though

when the ceramic is being glazed, it looks like it is breaking,  

but no, it isn’t breaking,

and you’re not breaking, she says,

your surface is splintering but your interior is still intact

as she drives you to the ocean to comb moss

that grows like human hair on sea rocks

and there’s your friend with the renaissance soul

the latest one to make a new life and weary and sleep stolen

she introduces you as a writer first,

 not a teacher/therapist/ academic,

not a failed woman nor a would-be wife

and she says we must create because

nothing is secure and

life is uncertain

and life is short-

and this same week you are running to the river, and you are never too

quick that you cannot stop for the burst of cherry blossoms ushering spring

and this is a delight,

a kindness,

that you can stay still enough to capture the bees

dancing across blossom and bud

and across the road

you hear the man you cannot stop loving for his improbable love of unlikely song

and he’s playing the uillean pipes across the field

and you are breaking

still and the river

will take you, broken or cracking you are mostly organic, and your banyan tree will hold you amongst her buttress roots and will remind you that

all that lives

is prone to break.