In the blink of an eye
What
metaphysical thing plays
out in that
split
second
between your smile
and being stolen
away
by an umbrella
on the wind
to a life less
lived?
An unprincipled principle?
Irregular regularity?
i do not know; we cannot know…
perhaps
you do,
now
Surface Tension
Dying -
it’s a little like that back there
“Get a tan, man!” – the beastie boys jeer,
white-raged, she’s facing off fear
Out here, the limits are none
her swirling strands of red-yellow-gold, spun
into halos burning bright as the sun,
jewelled auras for silent incantation,
reposed in peaceful contemplation
of fancies, unbound by vituperation
underwater, she is as fish,
swims human stark antithesis,
becomes her Aphrodite wish
———-
Updated for Sideview’s weekend theme of Beauty
ill wind
filicide
closed you in at night,
no space to breath, but
we thought we were
safe, years
on
a sparkling day,
something faceless
on the breeze,
snaring
your shadow,
hermetic fate
sealed
by a pernicious beast, forever
changing the way
we navigate
the world
A History of Fear
it’s
the dark, those monsters
under the bed, first day
at school – bruce m trying to kiss
you in the sandpit
and hell-to-pay for jumping in every puddle on your way home,
men in hearses and dark
glasses – stranger-danger,
not running solo, nor flying, but
an umbrella on the wind – cruel and unusual,
old man on the street corner -
feathered hat, immaculately
polished shoes, threadbare clothes,
a broken headlamp in the rear-view
and unspeakable things,
and then, you know, the death of a parent,
DNA gone awry,
that your actions caused this -
suffering,
not of your own shadow but
rage, betrayals,
the sound
of your own screaming,
depravity of infant
body-bombs,
spectres – Margaret Hassan, the Falling
Man,
Afghani children smashed
into dirt playgrounds,
the death of dreams, sadness
of others,
hearts beating through walls,
and then,
somehow, nothing
much
at
all
…
least of all
death
Dad III
The smell of sawdust
takes me to a time
you’d send me to pick leaves for the silkworms
after your tools turned on you
(usually the ratchet screwdriver)
my young ears safe at the mulberry tree,
brother’s mosquito gang
wheelieing up the laneway
for a smoke and 50cc tune-up
with their favourite neighbourhood oldie,
night-scented gardenia
mixed with varnish,
crickets and
Erroll Garner
illuminating the nightwaves
Unspeakable
Two friends, two lives
one, a garden variety drama,
the other,
a monstrous horror movie
profanity
unfolding slowly
picking off joys one by one
like psychopathic forces of nature
stripping away
what should have been
for one so precious:
limbs like the wind, a planet-sized brain
that crazy infectious laughter
atrophied
by the madness of grief and disbelief
I could no longer watch,
even through my fingers
