Last Century

This poem was inspired by a conversation I was having with Jacquie aka @fumanchucat on Twitter  about bookshops and coffee houses – this one is for you dear friend.

I remember
lane ways with
plain red brick walls,
green glass grids
mounted in footpaths
letting light
into basements.

I remember a cafe,
Chat Noir,
plump brocade chairs,
tables with well turned legs,
potted palms delicately
screening each table,
our eyes meeting
across a bouquet of roses,
as a debonair waiter
brought coffee and cream
and two slices
of Black Forest cake.

I remember
days I could walk
through city streets
without being caught
on CCTV.

Betrayal

Flat grey sky,
morning fresh wind,
at ninety six, she stands
by her husband’s grave,
sighs, to turns to me,
and says impassioned,
“there is space here but I don’t
want to share with him,
too many betrayals
when I young,
I was so stupid,
he had son, not mine
while I was pregnant…
how do I tell my son,
I do not want
to be buried here…
on the other hand,
with our bones
entwined in
a mouldy heap
I can make him
uncomfortable
in his eternal rest.”
She looks at me and grins.

Remains

Lipstick edges
champagne flutes,
pink sauce crusts
a crystal dish,
melted ice lines
an oyster bowl,
time farewelled
and welcomed,
memories washed
and put away,
another year begins…

Poetics-Endings & Beginnings for dVerse

Poetry Picnic Week 20: Fairytales, My First Time, Hope, and New Year’s Resolutions

Dear Leader

Dear Leader
of a people’s democracy,
you are now
on the other side
of the veil.

And you shall be remembered

Yuri Irsenovich Kim,
you sucked the teat
of the Soviet empire
blighting the land
with famine,
following
the steps
of your steel mentor…

You watched
the iron state
crumble,
rust holes
gaping
letting in light
and the freedom
to choose.

Appalled,
you carefully
contained
disagreement
with anti-corrosive
government camps
to block out the light.

No, I shall not forget you,
I pray for the redemption
of broken hearts,
food without fear,
and the right to dissent.

Tripping a bully

We sit side by side,
eye-lights reflecting flames;
you speak of your outrage
at your unjust brother.

I listen to your unstrung words;
I remind you how we laughed
when we tripped up the school bully
so many summers ago…

Years fall away from your face,
in flicker of flames
despair dances an absurd pirouette,
you never could stand bullies.

for Poetry Picnic Week 8: Friends, Relationships and Everyone around

.

Sun dark thoughts

Sun dark thoughts tease my mind
a subtle insistence, an edge
of a memory; the cast of light
feels unbearably familiar
this early spring afternoon.

A blink and I’m there. Arum lilies
tower over my head, in my hands
a box Brownie camera loaded,
I look, try to see the garden
in monochrome.

The grass becomes bamboo,
a ladybug bright red and black,
I see in black and grey,
brightly decorated shoe box,
in a forest with exotic blooms.

Then I recollect a hideous noise,
tingles of fear shiver my veins;
a propeller plane screams overhead.
“it’s only a plane”, I tell myself
and fight the urge to run.

My much older sister
pale and trembling bravely
huddled me close under a table,
home alone, our parents at work;
a propeller plane roared  overhead.

This is a revised version for dVerse 

Open Link Night ~ Week 8

 

Gaps

She trips lightly
leaping gaps
between tectonic plates;
obsidian eyes
glitter uneasily, swimming
in murky streams,
half remembered fragments
sutured into stories;
beginnings, middles, ends
float just beneath surface,
spinning memories
into sticky threads
knotted from mouth to ear,
whispering to her,
‘you have no place in reality’.

 

OpenLinkNight dVerse Poets

A Shoe Scene

He walks unbalanced,
homesick wearing
two different shoes
one brown with a crepe sole,
one black with new Topy
he had glued on himself
put on in an impatient haze
preoccupied by
thoughts of night school,
the necessity to prove
what he already knows
as a refugee migrant
in this young country,
the ground feels uneven
this morning.

Ahead, a secretary
dressed in a peacock coat
wearing a brown pill box hat,
and patent black stilettos
catches her heel in a tramtrack;
it snaps, he rushes to help her,
picks up the heel,
offers assistance
in his very best English;
she brushes him off
hissing into his face
‘bloody new Australians,
bloody refos, go back
wherever you came from’;
she hobbles onto the tram,
he shrugs and walks on
with the heel in his hand.

Note: ‘refo’ is a derogatory term that was used by Anglo and Irish Australian citizens in the 1950s to refer to the Displaced Persons and Stateless that came to Australia after WW2. ‘New Australians’ was the official government term in their Populate or Perish policy. More on this policy may be found here

For dVerse Poetics On your feet

Rim of Oblivion

A memoir slouches
on the rim of oblivion,
its title
was “never forget”.

It was written by
a wife, a mother,
who couldn’t let it go
to live
at the mercy
of its readers.

It gathers dust
untranslated,
sits as data files
multiplying.

It is remembered
by scattered
polyglot descendants
who try to see
through her eyes
what happened
that fateful night
when her daughter
accidentally
opened the door
to the enemy.

Back to One Shot Wednesday

Poppies

This poem appears in Frog Croon, May 2011, Issue 4

Tall poppies gently nodding in the breeze
Drinking deeply of the golden sun rays,
Unfurled with hearts of black they feel at ease
Knowing they bring a nostalgic malaise;
A melancholy knowledge of decay,
A yearning for a time only imagined,
To return to sedimentary clay
To grow in a novel world unimagined;
Where rules of gravity were different,
Where porous bodies intermingle freely
Singing harmonies to bring alignment
Between our world and the Court of Seelie.
Crimson poppies offer their sweet treasure
Needing pollination in full measure.

NaPoWriMo #17