burning-moon

moonplay

2012-01-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

Tracey Slaughter

2012-01-21T19:06:00.001-08:00

This is an excerpt of the most wonderful writing. The first time I read this story I cried, and I gave up writing for a while cos I thought, if I can't write like this, I don't want to.

It's a perfect symbiosis of poetry and prose:

A Short Story by Tracey Slaughter

'I think of the policeman who had to take my son from me. I think now, as I thought then, this is the first time he’s picked up a child.
You could see it in his body, you could see where the knowledge was missing … those signals in the collarbone, the wrists of people who know how to pick up a child. He spent a long time kneeling in front of us, just looking at us. The other people in the room must have thought he was moved, he was giving us time. Perhaps he was, yes he was, I think, but even more than that he was solving a problem. He was studying our bodies trying to look for places we might come apart. He was examining my son’s legs, the neck that lay over my elbow, calculating the weight, the pressure, the words needed to break me from him.
It was a task, an assignment: to break us open where my bones held onto his bones, where my milk slipped over his ribs, where my hair & my breath & my fingernails kept asking his mouth to answer my singing.
To pick a child up out of that is no small act. What breaks milk, what breaks touch? He did it through pity.
He said, my sister’s pregnant, & then his breath was very quick & hooked because he thought he’d said the wrong thing.
But almost at once I answered him. I said, don’t tell her about this.
I remember silence. Then I remember looking at this man’s shirt & saying, I don’t want those buttons to scratch him. And he showed me how the silver buttons were on a ring which slid out through the pocket, & he held them down by the baby’s scalp where my hand was fixed through all his hair.
Can you hold them for me? he asked.
That was all I could do for him. I couldn’t move any further … just open my hand & let them fall in like stones.
We were a problem in gravity & he was the instrument that had to solve it. And I pitied him.'

Earthquake Bear

2012-01-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

We feel the dragon,
slender whipcord,
thrust and twist
underground.

Dave has stashed
2 litre containers
filled with water
on top of the fridge
in the kitchen.

Next time there's a big one,
he'll produce them
with a flourish,
like a bear offering his jar.

"Oh," we'll say,
our admiring gaze
filling his sweet paws
with honey.

Becoming

2012-01-19T13:20:00.000-08:00

you are so old
with your head thrust forward
searching the ground

leeched of substance
like a porous bone
with sun shot through

becoming
absorbed by light

Dave loved it, lol

2011-12-22T13:14:00.001-08:00

Waiting for Dave to come
I twiddle my thumbs and hum
dum de dum
hard to do on your back

Today Off

2011-12-20T15:55:00.000-08:00

I left my lazy bones in bed this morning.
Watched them roil and turn, disintegrate
beneath the covers, to a pool of honey warmth.

Immolate sin and protestant work ethic,
my mother would have beaten such decadent indulgence
with the wooden spoon, had she not broken it
slamming it down on the table in temper.

We dared to snigger, couldn't not, regardless
of repercussions. So long ago now,
that fear instilled remains, a lash inside my mind
to drive me on, a length of pain I measure myself along,
always come up short.

The Wedding

2011-12-09T18:30:00.001-08:00

2011-12-09T18:27:00.000-08:00

the peonies

2011-12-08T14:22:00.001-08:00

Our cups are full of petals
from the peonies you brought me.

Slow to bloom,
but a opening into a ball

of pastel ballerina gowns -
globe of wonder

Things to say at a Wedding

2011-08-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

You don't know this,
but at night, when you're asleep,
I sometimes slide my arm around you
and rest my hand inside yours.

Even in sleep, your fingers
close immediately over mine,
like the Palmar grasp of a newborn.
Your love enfolds me in a fleece blanket.
I cuddle in and feel safe, and so loved.

I've always felt alone. Like that legend
of twin souls, split into two at birth,
and destined to spend eternity
wandering the earth searching
for the lost half.

I promise to love you,
to place no other above you,
and to cherish your soul
for the spark of divine
that it is.

After the Blizzard

2011-08-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

The cabbage tree next door
looks like the Star of Bethlehem this morning,
suspended above the fence.

If the Christ-child is out there somewhere
waiting for three wise men to show up,
the poor little mite will be frozen.

Wildflowers

2011-08-09T16:08:00.001-07:00

One of the flowers is like a tiny white bird,
so perfectly formed, almost enough
to push despair from me.

Night Lights

2011-08-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

It's 3.30 am
and my brain just won't shut up.

'Look at this, look here!'
it cries excitedly,

dancing around a big pile of
'things to do.'

Or what about this?
Pointing to
'ideas for lesson plans.'

Now it's in a closet
pulling out Aunt Daisy's
big floral hat,

and my red gumboots
from when I was six.

'Come ooonnn, play with me'
it wheedles,
dangling a poem.

I fumble in the dark
for pen and paper
and the tiny $5 bedside clock,

bought in a LuckyOK shop,
that has the tiny light inside.

soundlessness

2011-07-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

she has a question
and a smooth arm
a kaleidoscope of faces
she is afraid to ask
brushstrokes make a racetrack
nose to brow
a deadman's curve

she has a black dress
and breasts
but
sometimes they disappear
leave only the brain cave
the mask
the strawberry mouth pout

the left eye
central sapphire gleam
is the point
of focus
the focus point
makes the question
unspoken

Misnomer

2011-07-10T02:09:00.000-07:00

If my door is shut, this means 'don't come in.'
I'd write to you, but who wants to read
the maudlin ramblings of a depressed middle aged woman.
A publisher once scolded me for my punctuation.
I thought it was the least important thing anyone had ever said to me.
He said I should choose a better name to be published under. What an idiot.
I resolve never to send him anything again.
Unfortunately he neither knows nor cares about this.
Don'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry chants a litany inside my head
beneath thoughts of lunch, grammar and lesson plans
beneath anxiety about how anxious I am.
The signs of the times are all around us now, every day, every day.
Does anyone else notice this, or is it just me?
There will be earthquakes and famine, wars and reports of wars ...
maybe I will lose my house ... maybe my life ...
maybe my place will be taken by strangers I invited in out of pity,
before I realised they were raptors
their voices pipe like greedy birds
soon my name will change and I think I could move away
and no one would ever find me again
just disintegrate

what I read this morning ... wish I had written this

2011-06-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

What is it about beauty that lands me in the throat of grief?
John Amen

Monday's Quake

2011-06-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
Driving to work
I noticed a house
half collapsed overnight

Wednesday
the stove

Thursday
drip

Friday
drip

Monday
dripping

Tuesday
from the top floor

Wednesday
hanging by its cable
from what was left
of the wall it was attached to.

Thursday
A bulldozer glories
atop a pile of sticks and bricks.

ownself

2011-06-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

unapologetically obsessed
depressed
undressed
in your dark room
listening to
the black
how it slinks
like a curl of cigarette smoke
inside your mind
speaks
dirty words
nicotine stains your soul
drifts of tobacco
remind you

looking for answers
in your mother's eyes
but only a photograph remains
that has no voice
what would she tell?
would she tell?

shut the windows,
but the rumble vibrates
up through the floor
how the ground shrieks
moves so stiffly
disjointed

the waiting waiting
for this to be memory
these days of fear

meandering

2011-06-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

for the lives of even kings
are brief as tears of the sun
in the cavalcade of man

Elementals

earth - air - fire - water

fiery angels rain

have you ever noticed
raindrops are like stars -

slow the rain
as it falls

each perfect drop
each drop perfect.

beneath a blood moon
torn wings of night

cloak sheets of gold -
light of the last dying star

- love guides us, binds us,
paves the path we tread

from breathless night
the powdered seeds of day arise

emerald lines of text
encode growth

each line inspires the next
creates the future

a/spire at a time
the dawn of world/s

Movie Star

2011-05-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

Ramona's got her own movie
glitter groovy

her lips ignite
hearts in the dark

peaches and gravy
bitchin' snap sticks -

hear the beastie roar -
high score

spill your pennies -
heaven

Aftermath

2011-04-12T14:49:00.000-07:00

i

That is what employers want -
to have you jump and say, 'how high'?

The barrel is full of wolves,
licking paws and gnawing limbs.

The cats are playing
here we go round the windows

and musical food bowls,
while strays creep in

through open doors
and absent-minded gaps.

I have become a sponge
because there is no employment.

'Post It' lists of jobs applied for
flutter from my desktop.

I sit in my bowl and water, water -
liquid anemone,

small hands reached out
for sustenance.

ii

The streets are roller coaster rides.
It would seem like fun, but is not.

We are sleeping in dust,
eating in dust, breathing in dust.

Rain brings it down on our heads,
washes it through our hair.

It rises from piles and settles on splinters,
and hills of rubble that rise like burial mounds

on ruined lots between silent streets,
where only the tinkle and graunch of masonry

sounds as it settles beneath the boots
of searchers and demolition workers.

Soldiers and armoured cars
block the way, every way,

and lock the city,
like sleeping beauty's castle,

clocks stopped, buildings
fallen to pieces.

iii

My whole life I've waited
for the sky to fall on my head.

Turns out, I should've been looking
for the ground to fall out from under me.

iv

Even yet,
the bay curves like a clam shell

while the sun spins - a golden pearl
on the liquid lip of horizon.

Mist accumulated overnight begins to disappear
the same way it does every day,

like silk scarves in a magician's show.
The city rises out of it

full of possibilities.

Tremors

2011-03-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

i
Last week the ground cracked up
underneath our feet.
I haven't seen my little cat since.

ii
Tonight two pictures
and an ornament fell over.
On Facebook they said it was a 4.8.
That's about what we thought too.

iii
I'll shake you till your teeth rattle
my mother used to say.
Last week my teeth rattled,
and fell out on the floor.

My fridge door flew open
and gherkins, eggs, and beer
smashed onto the floor
mixing with sugar
that slid off the microwave
and the five crystal glasses,
three crystal bowls, and two
novelty teapots
that burst out of the china cabinet.
A sharp, bitter cake
combining on my kitchen floor.

A painted, plaster doll
my mother left to me, and the glass
from the front of her picture
lie like shattered teeth
on the lounge room carpet.

iv
Every night and every morning
when I put my lenses in
or take them out,
I remember my optometrist -

A dapper man in a grey suit
with silver hair and lively blue eyes.

He must have been helping out in that church
to have been there on a Tuesday at 12.51-
probably gave up his lunch hour.

v
Another sleepless, sweaty night
full of dreams of quakes
and waking to shakes,
till I'm no longer sure
whether I dream or wake.

vi
The EQC sent me a form
two weeks after I lodged my claim,
on which to list my damaged contents.
It has twelve lines. Lol.

The 'Advice to Claimant'
tells me I should keep or photograph
all of the damaged items I'm claiming for.

And I was so pleased
that at least the rubbish
had still been collected
the week after the earthquake.
Our bins were overflowing.

At least that's one service
that's up and running again,
I'd thought.

Earthquakes

2011-02-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

after an earthquake there's a horrible swimmy feeling where the ground sort of floats and rocks like a boat under you. I really hate that feeling. If you're standing up when it happens you often don't realise there's been an earthquake, you just think you're feeling a bit dizzy for a moment.
It's very hard to sleep because every time you doze off there's another aftershock. I'm very tired, and quite scared.
People are leaving Christchurch, but where would I go? I can't even think how I would begin somewhere else. I'm 52 now. Hard to upstakes and go somewhere else at 52. But I sometimes get the feeling this isn't going to stop. That it will continue until there is not a stone left standing upon a stone and we are all shaken to bits.
My house is probably not worth anything now either. How could I sell it? Who would buy it? My house is all I have to show for my lifetime of work.

Earthquake

2011-02-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

The land -
the beautiful land -
has deceived us -

hidden a fire demon in its belly.

I hear him
as I lay my head on the pillow.
Thomp, thomp,
outside the window.

RAAHRR, he roars,
and the ground twists and trembles.

I know,
as I lie in the dark,
that he's inside my room now.

I know before I turn my head
that he's waiting,
burning eyes and pointed teeth,

RAAHR!

Love is a Trick of the Light

2011-02-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

I entered her world so easily.
A paper sailing ship carried me
from one side to the other
across the motionless basin of water,
and I alighted, dry as matchwood,
upright as a pulpit.

And it was not the second coming of Christ,
or anything like that. It was one
small, plastic chair, a wish
to be incandescent in a world of midnights,
and a flight of butterflies, tipsy tilt
across the garden.

mums

2011-02-20T02:01:00.000-08:00

don't ask me to keep your secrets.
Secrets explode from my mouth
like popcorn from a pan

and rebound around the walls
leaving buttery smears

Font 3 Poems: LOVE issue

2011-02-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

check it out, the funk soul brother:

http://font3poems.blogspot.com/

The Young

2011-01-27T13:42:00.001-08:00

There she was,
bouncing along
holding her mother's hand.

Too young to know
her ginger hair
would make her a target
for pranksters and predators.

Not yet troubled
by her arse being too big,
her thighs chubby.

How beautiful she was
with her careless skip.
How I wished to share -
to remember freedom.

Sunrise

2011-01-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

sometime during the night
rain begins to gather

in misty sheets
wrap trees in gossamer halos

drift in starlit mantles
to cover the grass

cast a grey veil over strangers
wandering home from unknown nightlives

Mercury slides down the barometer
like a stripper down her pole

you cuddle behind me
like a blanket of sunbeams

and we watch the sun
burn darkness from the sky

2011-01-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

I wanna tell people
I can only see with one eye,

before they ask,
what's wrong with your eyes.

Before they look over their shoulder
to see who I'm talking to.

I watch people all the time -
girls who no one will ever
write a poem about,

and wonder how they get
through each day.

How they live with
being less than perfect.

Duality

2011-01-23T17:06:00.000-08:00

In this vegetative state
you are more masculine territory,
while I am sweet grass,
wide awake, and scintillating
with morning dew.

Your behemoth slumber
is gargantuan peace
while I digress with titilations
and ruminations on the ecstasy of war.

The feminine replenishes,
recycled continuity.
The masculine initiates the fireball
and sustains growth.

Essentials both.

2011-01-23T16:49:00.000-08:00

She opens the windows in the morning
and all the winds of the world
swirl in around her.

Poems fill shallow pans of air
that sift dust of a thousand civilizations
slow as January.

Prairie Moon

2011-01-21T17:07:00.000-08:00

lay down in sweet grasses
on this long abandoned prairie

soiled skirts wilt upon the ground
around

the vault open overhead
flaunts pristine daubs of cloud

wagon train trails have tapered
into wilderness

wild reclaimed by silent whispers
of life multitudinous

as it creeps, hops, scurries
through tangled blades

beneath the wilted cloth
skin begins to merge with earth

the rhythm of pulse, artery, life fluids
assimilates syncopation

transformation
through blood, bone, corpuscle

sweets the grasses
deeps the sky

as nightflowers
in glistening abundance

rise

2011-01-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

yeah, that's me

brave warrior, seeker of truth

in there dancin' around

where angels fear

days in the life of

2010-12-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

life in the distance
from my corked bottle
is submerged in marine colours
my view slightly curved
distorted by the glass

time passes
as slowly as the glass
runs downwards

a son returns home
from military pursuits
doesn't stay with me any more
but with friends
who are more lively
not hampered by a bottle

a sister has found a new father
new family
will they please her better
than her old father and family?

today the sun glows
torches my glass
hot ball impossible to gaze upon
rain less frequent lately

today I lunch with friends
movement from my bottle difficult
life from a distance
has become comfortable for me now

my bottle
my iron lung

Dust

2010-12-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

I thought I was familiar with all the details of my life. I thought I knew how the world fitted together around me. I wondered at the movement of stars, the way they strayed aross the vault of emptiness, filling it with glamour, ever following their set circumventions.

I vaguely grasped how the earth holds together instead of flying apart and whirling into the void. The way that mountain ranges rise, and fall back, the way that tides advance and retreat, the scent of trees, the cool, creamy night air, all fitted within its given parameters, despite the sheen of dust fuzzing the outlines. I felt all was in its rightful place, and my daily life fit the patterns laid out.

But last night my sister rang and told me that my father is not her father, and that my mother, long ago, loved another, and dreamed of a different life. I find that with the sheen of dust cleaned away, the stark outlines beneath are not the shapes I was familiar with at all.

Cubist Effects

2010-12-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

In shaded increments,
brown/bronze/cream/gold,
her evolution is uneven,

developed in patches
like a cubist field of corn.

First the heart expands
beneath ripples of satin bodice,
glimmering crevasses of gold,

the neck, revealed,
is an offer of submission
to the light.

Her mouth, half stroke victim
and half coquette,

hopes for a sip of honey,
or at least the ability
to vocalize need again.

But the eyes are still cast in browns,
turned in shadows, the last
to acknowledge change.

Can the blessing of sunlight
dispell the chains of all those winters?

Fairy Tale

2010-11-20T04:10:00.000-08:00

a fairy's heart burns with light,
fierce feathered spikes
luminate incandescent

the art of a fairy spins dreams
in a vortex of magic
pruned from the minds of children

a fairy will be free
and scatter along ribbons of air
to secret forest dells

The Lily Crown

2010-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

Today you stand at an altar
and make vows you once made to me
with somebody else.

Your family, our kids,
and all our old friends
will be there.

I'm at work. Meeting, greeting,
clearing tables, same as any other day.

But around my head
I feel a slight pressure,
as though a wreath of white lilies
rested there.

Narrow Minds

2010-11-19T11:11:00.000-08:00

You look at the world as though
it were a pinhole theatre,

the view of your mighty "I"
so narrow and confined.

How can the universe bloom for you
through such a constricted passage?

The pedestal of your point of view
is spare as the tip of a pin.

Like the man who couldn't fit
through the eye of a needle,

you will never see heaven.

A Muse

2010-10-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

'she's addicted to nicotine patches
she's afraid of the light in the dark'

wind me like clockwork
I can't stay alive
for your entertainment

how seriously can you take it?
does anyone notice?
all rapt in their own night
sliding up against walls of darkness
breathing water
trying to grow gills

how drowning it is

want to be buried in sound
the deep groaning noises
want the dragon, the bear, for my guide
but got the clown fish
his puffer lips

tight as a kite
fly against the blue joyous opening
seek release
buffet and grind the glass ceiling

god is closed for the long weekend

give your all
soul to the devil

for a guitar rift
that sets fire to the hearts and minds
sweet soliloquy
of tears

moccachino

2010-10-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

you're just another
mother-fucking
son of a bitch
trying to claim ownership
trying to tell me what I should do
think
how I should live my life
thinking I give a shit
thinking your opinion
matters
to anyone
take a look around buddy
everyone's just drinking their coffee
same as any other day

five past ten

2010-10-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

I can sit here till five past ten
and talk to myself
about how destructive my behaviour is
how I should be able to say no
that life's about the choices you make
taking responsibility
god I bore myself
I agree
it's about choices
I can say no
and I will
I do
every morning
and every night
and all the spaces in between
but five past ten I know
I gonna do it again

Riverstone

2010-09-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

When first you came
you were formed from jade
inlaid with topaz

firestones beneath swift water

you communicated through dreams
and our hearts/minds/spirits
interwove frokm silken strands
steel cable

when first I touched you
my skin fused with yours

molecules interlocked
as though finding magnetic opposites

greedy for you
I starved
whenever parted from you

all down the years
I would give you my best day
without question/
hesitation/
never asked any return

so it hurts
to be referred to as
'those people'

silver service has accrued
a slight tarnish

Missing Pieces

2010-09-15T20:12:00.001-07:00

I saw in you a place cut
to the shape of me
and thought I spied
finally
a place where I might fit

summer ends
where fading light
delineates
a paper cut in the sky
that almost fit
the shape of I

Leonard Peltier

2010-09-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

His eyes reflect the cage.
Does he regret?
He regrets the waste
of each clear blue sky
and days watching
the eagle soar above paths
he has been denied.

and so

2010-09-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

the earthquakes continue to rumble through here. I almost sprained my ankle leaping for the doorway as a big jolt hit this morning. Lots of houses are sustaining more damage in the after shocks which have been fairly grunty. Some have been up to 5-5.2 on the Richter scale.

I heard a story yesterday about a little old lady in Kaiapoi who stepped out her back door and went up to her waist into a crack opened by the earthquake, and her next door neighbour who went in over her head! How scary would that be!

The whole ground seems fluid here at the moment. The house feels as though it's sitting on a cushion of jelly. Makes you feel a bit dizzy a lot of the time. My cats are both freaked out and have disappeared. I hope they're holed up somewhere safe. I'm relying on their instinct for comfort and survival to keep them safe.
I'm nervous about going to work. Half of the restaurant I work in is a conservatory, so big thick sheets of glass over my head. Not happy at the thought of one of them breaking.

Dave went off to work this morning, then turned around and headed back to see if we were okay after that big jolt. He said he was at St Martins supermarket when it hit and all the lights in the supermarket fell out and smashed on the floor!

holy shit! 7.4 earthquake!

2010-09-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

Huge earthquake in ChCh this morning. Felt like the house was jumping up and down! 7.4.
We have no water, but otherwise ok. Lots of damage citywide though. Bridges out, buildings collapsed etc. My dad says he thinks his house will be a write off. He has doors that won't open or shut and floor going up and down. His paths outside have disappeared.
My sister says there are cracks in the ground all around their house in Waikuku, and cracks all around the oval next door where sand has bubbled up through the soil.

I heard that Victoria Sq where my work is looks like a war zone! Who knows whether my workplace will still be there?
There are power outages, no water, gas leaks and petrol pumps popped out of the ground. No one killed though, just a lot of minor injuries.

Wolfie 2

2010-08-26T15:31:00.001-07:00

Meet Wolfie

2010-08-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

She's my son's cat and absolutely gorgeous (and a complete nutter), apart from a slight inclination to take your arm off if you try to pick her up!

Night Twist

2010-08-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Tied in shifting shades of lavender
are moon curves,
sizzle fingers search -
his , and hers, and his,
exposed -
the surrender of neck,
spinal arch a bridge
to tumbled clouds
where the thunder roars.

so you want to write a poem

2010-08-21T22:42:00.001-07:00

start with paper
fine as glaze of resin
on a violin

sit beneath the surface
at the flowing tap root
of a Rowan Tree

begin a dance
of pen and thought
over the pale wafer
till it resembles a soiled
ballerina gown

step and turn
pirouette, grande jette
joyous romp with
corp de ballet

write an image
etched in seventeen shades
of grey

wash a faint trace
of eggshell sky
with overtones of sunset
and the dying sun's
baleful eye

heroine stitched up
with herringbone
should writhe a little
and faintly scream

let the last line shaft
like the hornet's sting

watercoloured

2010-08-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

there's nothing about butterflies here
just a scatter of poppy seeds
from green pods dip/swayed by the wind

tiger light arcs above
claws of grass

amidst mulberry shades of petal
washed away by the rain flurry

lost at sea

2010-08-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

what looks like a tiny red-laquered heart
has been cast off on the floor
and rolled under the couch
reflecting bars of amber light

this is where all the lost hearts are

in a lounge room far away
on a carefully vacuumed sea of carpet

Night Suns

2010-08-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

unleash the beast
the squiggle bug

night strong
beneath silver sun

we are carnal
ego laden

massive in our
degradation

each body adheres
to its station

flesh stirred nation

Bedfellows

2010-08-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

I stir in the night
and wake freezing,
even under a mass
of covers.

The bear has crawled,
despite the glass needles
that thread his spine,
down the hall
to sit all night
in a chair because
he can't lie down.

NZWell has refused to pay
for his operation
as they claim it is a
'recurring injury'
even though they paid
the first time it happened.

So now he must wait,
another month at least
of dragging along with
broken glass piercing his back,
while NZWell, ACC, and the surgeon
slug it out as to who will pay.

And if none of them will -
fifteen thousand dollars
that neither of us has
is what it will cost.

I snuggle deeper,
not wanting to get out of my bed
and face the cold day.

Roses

2010-07-31T22:05:00.000-07:00

Although the ground may be frosted,
petals show brave - vibrant against cold.

From the window where you sit
the rosy blooms glow
and carry vistas of spring to your mind.

Hedonistic blossom dances on days when the sun
dips toes into the sapphire lustre overhead.

We make coded stems of memories,
crossed and re-crossed, away and back again,
from bud to bloom to fade, but always

the seed will begin again, memory
coded into stems,

pinking with freshness, the brush of faint rose
against cheeks we'll not forget.

Rose Red

2010-07-24T16:31:00.001-07:00

No fleet of foot elven lord
with silvery mane and glittering eyes,
his raggedy carpet of fur is mapped
with old scars and infiltrated by dust.

Four paws planted about her
he shakes back his shaggy mantle
and roars defiance to any who would
harm, or try to claim her from him.

And she glimpses, through the pinch eyes
of her terror, the first glimmer of princely jewel
beneath bear hide.

Half bred

2010-07-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

She wears her white lace dress
like a novitiate
wears her first habit,

but her eyes proclaim
she was born in a trailer park -

fringe element, ill-starred,
under a half moon.

Borders II

2010-07-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

Outlines have lost their distinction.
I used to have firm borders,

solid black lines
made everything clear cut.

But now the colours run
to muddy each other.

I must learn to cope
in a state of fuzz -

squinting
to recognise familiar faces.

Native

2010-07-17T16:33:00.001-07:00

Your hands are glass -
smooth cold slippery.

We rub our Buddha bellies
together and roll like ocean swells -
undulations.

Your tiki god is hot and tight
pulses blood beats.

I am Tierra del Fuego -
land of fire.

Passing

2010-06-20T02:44:00.000-07:00

I've tucked a smile
into my face,
taken my brain
to reside at the rest home,
and expect to blend
with the vanilla people now.

Kindness has been
a distraction,
so I've removed the heart
that sets me apart.

If I cement my eyes,
and whittle down my thighs,
return the dream receipt -
I can pass.

Light of the Moon

2010-06-20T02:42:00.000-07:00

I am the moon,
white blood light
through scratchings
of winter branches.

Rusted leaves lay
bole of trunk
and soul of twigs bare.

You might think them red,
you think of them
green and in bud
when spring comes,

but in the night
all colour withdraws
to shades of bone and ash
only I can gild with silver.

Whistler

2010-06-11T17:23:00.001-07:00

The whistler anatomical
is conical,
helter skelterish,
whistles with polish
and meandering
through melodic interchange.

How sweet, though birdlike.

She doesn't like birds -
the beakness of them,
fluttering mothness of wings.

How the tunes burst forth,
multi-directionally,
a conglomeration of feathers,
disgusting beak, aberrant claw.

Eye ever seeking worm,
and as it turns,
softness, trembling underhand.

Hunter/hunted, creator/destroyer
paradoxically juxtaposed.

The Pond

2010-06-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

She dwells in a millpond now,
views the world through
eyes of water,
beneath
reflections
of sky.

When she stands
mud seeps away from around her feet
shifting
unstable.

She has always hidden
her attraction
to pools of darkness
where shadows gather,

now
it seems not to matter so much,
though she understands it less than ever.

Weather doesn't reach her here.

Regrets

2010-06-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

Regret is a bitter cordial
in a bottomless gourd
where the sun dissolves.

I try to resist
however my lips cry
from thirst.

Doodly Doo

2010-06-05T02:54:00.000-07:00

Her sister was a lesbian
who slept with a chef.
He was judged by Gordon Ramsey,
and came in second best.

Her hair was a mess,
her lipstick was curled,
her breasts were furled
and hung at half mast.

She came to stay
in my small country isle.
We sceneried houses
and swilled lots of gin
at the local Inn,
after that we stayed in.

She was always a bitch
with a hard to care tongue
and bushfire hair -
she slashed at my feelings
and brought them undone.

Though I loved her so much,
in the end, she went home.

Holy Rollers - Sunday Morning TV

2010-05-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

If
such fervent hearts
cannot call forth
a response from God,

what hope is there
for a half-hearted
doubter like me?

Beneath the moving stars
cycling through aeons -
crazy beautiful -

I'm lookin' at the sun,
comin' in strong as strong
over shadow hills,
making its own golden well
to soak in,

rolling it out over the wet grass,
the low horizon still dark with sleep -

so beautiful it's making me think of Michael,
and how he will never see this.

Bulimia

2010-05-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think, right, that's it,
I'm not going to eat any more.
I'm just too fat, it's ridiculous,
embarrassing,
hideous.

I make plans for survival without food
and engage with life renewed/refreshed.

Then late afternoon, after
laundry, dishes, shower,
scrubbing bathroom,
students,
rushing home eating a sandwich
and danish I grabbed from a cafe
I remember mid-bite -
it's then I understand bulimics.

Sometimes I wish I were a starfish,
or something spiny with no flesh,
in a tidal pool, where waves glide
back and forth, back and forth,

and no one to point me
to the fat ladies section
where I'll find jeans in my size.

Scientific Method

2010-05-07T15:39:00.000-07:00

I have the fat heart,
suckled on love juices,
swollen in my chest.

Doctors measure with their machines,
size, rhythm, flow, staying power,
and shake their heads, tut tut.

Shut out the wild world
with its infinite breezes
pulling this way and that.

Broken topography of cities,
people in pieces, birthed in ruins.
Angels indeterminate
beneath slick facades.

Doctors with long probes
and ticker tapes of doom converge,
but I am listenenig to the universe within.
The succulent honey of love sustains.

Smalls

2010-05-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

Lucy

About three weeks after her death
Lucy finally acheived the figure
she had always wanted.

Numb

Fuck me till my buttons fly off
in every direction.

I want to know you're there -
like Aries, God of Ram.

Make me feel something.

Butterfly Chase

Sleep is a blue butterfly
lazing above the pointed tips
of water-flower stars

far away
in the middle of the pond.

Ice Age

2010-04-28T20:42:00.001-07:00

Little Bear's tears
have turned to glass
on his cheeks.

Webs of frost
cover the palm trees
and waves of ice are frozen
along the shore
where the gulf stream
finally rolled over.

The city looks like
a construction of sugar cubes,
shrouded in shades
of gunmetal and lead.
The day star's brightness
is concealed by
unremitting gloom.

This is what is manufactured
from free will -

funeral sky and sea of ice,
too cold to break
upon the world.

Twilight Zone

2010-04-22T05:01:00.000-07:00

There are cracks in the moon
where reality creeps in.

She doesn't care about Grace Jones any more.
Can't remember the concerts she went to.

How funny it seemed to get stoned and try and drive places;
pull up in the middle of the expressway thinking they were at a stop light;
become transfixed by the magnified fish in a tank.

The joy of animals is in the physical.
They don't sit around and ponder the purpose of existence.

Their purpose is to be.

They aren't afraid of the glimpses beyond
that show through gaps. They don't close their eyes

and pretend not to see the reflected echoes
of moon that sequin the edges.

Cutty Grass

2010-04-18T01:47:00.001-07:00

How they hold their small candles
brave
spikes of blonde
stiff
from pale cones.

They would light the dark,
gold
with autumn seed.

The House of my Father

2010-04-15T14:46:00.000-07:00

I have consigned him to memory -
finally.

Dust settles on him
like the haze of light
as it falls through trees
onto a clearing.

I will strive to be at peace
with the knowledge that he
is not really dead,
just dead to me.

And that after all the long years
of growing up, a treasure
in the trove of his love,

I am no longer welcome
in the house of my father.

Heavy Ness

2010-04-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

When I sleep I feel long and slim.
Bones rest light and fine, glowing slightly,
like phosphorescence on the night sea.

But when I get up in the morning -
same lumps and clumps in the mirror -
same press of gravity.

Suburban Contagion

2010-04-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

Madness spreads through neighbourhoods
from yard to yard like black flowers
of deadly nightshade.

Written in the language
of tags I can't decipher,
sprayed on the fences.

Subliminal contagion -
don't make eye contact,
keep walking, head down.

This is what you get when you
write with your eyes shut.

The Game

2010-04-06T15:41:00.000-07:00

I can't see what to do
because there are different colours
and I cannot seem to get my brain
to conceive of them going together.

When I run out of ideas
the machine gives me hints,
but you have to be wary
of following the machine's suggestions
because the machine lies. It's not trustworthy.

The machine has no intuition
and can't seem to strategise or plan ahead.
It has no ability to sacrifice
an available move this time
to get a better chance next turn.

But sometimes the hints unlock
possibilities I hadn't seen
and progress the game much farther
than I would have unaided.

Using the machine's ideas
means that I can relax
because the outcome
isn't my responsibility any more.

The machine likes mixing the colours.
It only senses numbers, is unaware of colours.
It doesn't care that once you put
a black on a red the line is stopped -
can't move any more until you find
a logical numerical sequence to unlock it.

Sometimes the games have doorways,
boxes, or different pathways to choose -
options, options, too many.

I always want to know
what the other options were.
Did I make the right choice?
How would thimngs have ended
if I'd moved the black queen
instead of the queen of hearts?

There's never a five when you need one.
I have everything down to six on one line,
and everything up to four in red,
but no five ...
I have five in black.

I deal again
and despite the fact
that there are three red decks
and three black, there are no cards
that follow consecutively.

What are the odds of that?
If I were any good at maths
I could work it out.

Break Up Christmas Morning #13

2010-04-06T03:02:00.000-07:00

Take your cage of white mice
with you when you go -
preferrably first thing in the morning.

Don't give me that sad voice,
heartbreak hotel (old song by elvis),
forgive me routine.

I'm washing my red lace thong,
donning the glittering marabou feather
I stole from that bird in the palm tree,
and setting out in search of my
crazy horse roots.

I've stitched on the fin from a mermaid,
cast a net of stars over my hair, and tonight
I'm dancing a salsa on the wild wet ocean
at the door of Neptune's lair.

Passed

2010-03-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

During the night
the wind blew over,
disturbing the density
of sleep like the call
of ghosts in a graveyard.

This morning we find
gardening gloves
spilled across the lawn,
and a body finally at rest.

Otherwise we would
have passed it off as
a wolf howl in the miasma
of dreams.

Grimace of Death

2010-03-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Laughter from the other room spooks her,
as if there's a den of thieves in there
crouched conspiratorily round the table
plotting obscene acts.

The laughter seems immodest and inappropriate -
far exceeding the humour of any joke
she could imagine -

sullying the dignity of a funeral day.

Some for After

2010-03-20T03:34:00.000-07:00

Laura's heart
is scraping up sunshine
from the mint-coloured leaves
and butter-soaked daisies,
gathering warmth from the long lay
of lawn, saving sun in a golden well.

Laura's heart shines
with steadfast radiance,
emitting motes of light
to dance in sunstreams
all around us.

Moon

2010-03-04T03:03:00.000-08:00

Imagine me -
queen of diamonds -
in the blackest midnight sky -

transformed by time,
transformed by light,

following the feathered span of clouds,
dragging tides behind me
like a bridal gown,

spoiled,
rolled in sand,
stitched into my velvet chrysallis.

Tender This

2010-02-27T16:35:00.001-08:00

My breast -
the veins in my breast -
numbered and tender
at the bone.

Beneath a graze of dust,
a lattice of wintered branches,
glaze of snow like dust.

How powdered we grow.
Thick with animal cells -
dessicated, insectoid, skeletal remains;
unmoving, transfixed.

We share fairytales, pyjamaed feet dangling,
laze at memory's bedside,
bones tendered,
breast laticed with veins,
irrelevant, powdered with dust.

2010-02-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

I Confess

2010-02-01T02:17:00.001-08:00

Your face is a dark mirage,
and I, a sylph of light, shimmer
before the jungle thoughts
where tigers haunt
in dreams and visions.

I own my own reflection,
cast before me,
green swathes upon black,
guilt-framed, and bound by vines.

I fear the creepers' cloying shadows,
fear the bare confession chair
where I gut my heart.

Second Generation Once Removed

2010-01-24T02:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a man with his teeth sucked in
and space in his skin where eyes should reside.

He breathes through a hole where a question
once was. Now his thought turns inward.

The answer he seeks is a long blue-grey
cold day billboard riding the side of a bus

in the language of a distant land
he's known since he was young.

His grandfather waded through rice fields
of Uonuma, terraced slender green blades

glowing row upon row to the soft rise of mountains
around his farm. He never knelt at his grandfather's table.

Sleep

2010-01-17T16:50:00.000-08:00

As she nears sleep
she likes the way
details rush past
securing only the heart
of the matter.

She likes the way his ribs
curve up into graceful
cathedral arches,
whereas hers sweep down
and around like two k's
face to face - the way
kids draw curtains at windows.

Her fingers fall to patterns
of dreams, tracing the day away
in fantastic landscapes
and broken poems.

She likes the way sleep
lights the colours of her dreams
bright against darkness.

The Search for Meaning

2010-01-17T16:47:00.000-08:00

Some would say - ah -
confessional poetry -
whingeing women droning on -
what could be valid?

But only the individual's
unique experience
of the passage of days
can ever have authenticity.

Authors write, each one,
a celebration of their own endeavour
to overcome the daily challenge -

no longer to forage for food and shelter,
but to find reason, sense, purpose,
for the effort to exist.

Released from ploughing fields,
now we are cast adrift in factories
producing sheepskin rugs for Abu Dhabi,
losing jobs to third world countries
and researching sales trends for energy drinks.

How to tolerate such banal existence?
Where is the dream egg, the idea egg,
to hatch and lend relevance to toil?

To 'think too much'
is to gurgle in a swill of alcohol,
or drift on a malaise of depression.
Self-medicate away the plague of inconsistencies.
The meaningless harp of jingles, catch phrases -
buy this button, hear this band, wear this logo,
these sunglasses, shoes, T.V. Playstation: I, II, III,
extra sensory surround sound, ultra sonic,
mega millennium, uba future,
buy tomorrow today,
have the best first -

the more you buy the more real you will become.
I have stuff, therefore I am.

And when you die, your stuff
will be converted back to cash
and distributed among friends and relatives,
or bull-dozed into landfill.

The memory of your life will dissipate
in empty rooms where psychics
claim to read your image,
lost and vacant, in some future day.

Only your confessions,
spilled out on some internet blog,
a rubbish-dumped hard drive,
or occasional unread poetry journal,
might survive -

ramblings of a madwoman
in a sleepless night.

The Rise Of The Idiots by Dan Ashcroft of Nathan Barley

2010-01-12T23:48:00.000-08:00

Once, the idiots were just the fools gawping in through the windows. Now they've entered the building. You can hear them everywhere. They use the word " cool" . It is their favourite word. The idiot does not think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn't cool. Stuff & shit is cool. The idiots are self-regarding consumer slaves, oblivious to the paradox of their uniform individuality. They sculpt their hair to casual perfection, they wear their waistbands below their balls, they babble into hand-held twit machines about that cool email of the woman being bummed by a wolf. Their cool friend made it. He's an idiot too. Welcome to the age of stupidity. Hail to the rise of the idiots.

Winterseed

2010-01-12T11:43:00.000-08:00

Water slows and thickens,
and eventually glasses over.

Impenetrable - resistant -
forcing a different sort of interaction.

Now it's become a medium
that cannot be entered.

Private, closed off,
its movement is introspective.

Trees, plants, animals,
all follow this meditative tendency,

snuggled beneath a snow-castle fantasy -
the frozen flower of winter's seed.

Turbines

2010-01-10T16:30:00.001-08:00

giant white daisies
spin their petals slowly
to the impulse of wind

power machines in cities
far from the quiet hills
beneath the blood moon

Lunch on the Alps

2010-01-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

My breakfast was so nice this morning
I decided to have it again for lunch,
and some hot buttered toast as well.

I read your email saying how
you’d like to have lunch on the alps
instead of in your office

and I thought, that seems just right
because you are so like the alps covered in snow.
Both smooth and clean with long, shadowed
contours.

Looking so purely white
until the sun sparkles up all those rainbows.

Tuesdays

2010-01-06T13:58:00.001-08:00

Tuesday's child, full of bliss,
tip-toes along a monkey's tail.

Feather-light wings of cloud
mark her trail.

The monkey tricks
with gifts of lillies, the joy of flight.

It's always choice:
step off the fiery hoop and fly,

or endure beneath the sleight
of monkey's paw

Gone

2010-01-02T17:25:00.001-08:00

What is there to write of you
now that you're gone?

That you come to me in dreams
and we sit, face to face,
legs folded together,
cuddled round each other,
and talk like happy children -
words tripping impetuous -

till I waken to that old
twelve hour, sixty minute clock
at my bedside.

The Fire Bees

2010-01-02T16:26:00.001-08:00

A soul raises the smokey fire of stars
like clouds of burning bees
flashed from the energy of thoughts and feelings -
not blue, but golden -
worked privately, beneath the skin.

How we push out our wants and needs -
the unscathed ego,
disatisfied
with being 'in the moment,'
wants, wants - always more,
and plots with cunning, guile, secrecy,
to its own ends. So selfish.
So obsessed with preservation of the self -
however miserable.

Baroque sands sweep and dance
in fingerpatterns, obscure, re draw.
Watchers weep at windows art reveals,
fire bees, burn for realisation of their desires -
tender at the bone.

new year resolution?

2010-01-02T14:56:00.001-08:00

oh god, I don't know ....

resolve to exercise, but then,
where will I fit that in to my schedule?
lose weight ... but that hasn't work for fifty years so what's the use ...
resolve to find a new job that pays better -
hard to do at fifty. No one wants to employ you.

Resolve to be more resolute?

There's always chocolate consolation ...

Harbour Poem

2009-12-30T21:02:00.001-08:00

The horizon is always a run on line,
running along, running away.

The line falls over
when we sail too far -

at which point we depart
from furrowed fields

and swing beneath
watered melon skies,

searching across all the spans
of golden oceans

for a hand to hold
that feels like our own.

The Crab

2009-12-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

He's turned the crab upside down
and left her
pale plates of underbelly exposed -
moon pearls
on the gravel sand.

Beneath mango sky of paradise,
beside cream water,
no one can save her
from the greedy moisture suck of sun.

She's stranded in her 'turtle turn'
beneath raging palm trees
that line the shores like bilious daisies
from an Alice chapter,

beginning to muse on gardens of seagull beaks
and a cool emptiness of shell
when a ruffle of water hoydens her over
and sweeps her back to sea.

Reading the Much Acclaimed -

2009-12-26T15:31:00.000-08:00

Barbara - I'm bored with you already -
your grey-gravel voice
in a heat cloistered room.

I no longer care to hear
of your French roots -
the rain sluiced smiles.

The downpour has cooled
ardent ears
with limp language
sighed in limpid pools.

My skull is awash
in galaxies of starlight.