Untrammelled

“Once, twice, three times”
palpable glee in the auctioneer’s voice,
“are we done?”
a pause, even a beat,
you can hear people breathing, shuffling
“going, going …
SOLD to the lady in blue!”

And so a home stripped of intimacy,
styled into an invitation to dream
changes hands …

Your heart is racing,
tears of relief spring into your eyes,
a champagne cork pops,
the intoxicating scent of bubbles
tickle your nose,
a sip of frothy blue
and yellow visions
of playful waves and sand.

Now the house in P_____ St is no more,
the site’s completely cleared,
you wonder why you worked so hard
just before the keys were handed over
to leave no trace behind.

Horizons beckon untrammelled
from a new place
where it’s easy to breath.

 

 

 

For Boris

Your last three days
back legs not working  …  FCE
my soul howled with your bewilderment.

The darkness ended
and a visceral absence
fills your place forevermore.

You have joined my well of souls
swirling in a rainbow
on full moon nights.

I miss your waggy bum
and playing cheek to cheek
our pulsing jugulars exposed.

At night we’d spoon
in mammalian warmth
both softly snoring.

I miss your happy barks
rising up the scales
ringing in my ears.

Our drifting walks live forever
following scents carried on the wind
especially after rain.

I miss you sniffing trees
and me shooting stuff
on my smartphone camera …

We went to puppy school together
many moons ago
to learn to sit and heal …

You’d chase plastic bottles
like a lure and roll
basketballs growling like a bear.

We’d laugh and play
on endless summer days
and read messages on trees.

The moon is full tonight
sweet friend and forty days
not yet passed …

Yet I feel your peace
and if I close my eyes
I can almost hear you breathe.

For Dearest Boris ~ 31/10/2002 – 04/09/2013

Betrayal

Born in 1915, my aunt stands
by her husband’s grave,
we pull some errant dandelions
working in a stoic silence.

Each of us immersed in reveries,
I watch her hands once square and strong
remembering her garden
where petunias bloomed in rows
like nineteenth century soldiers.

 Her heavy breaths take me to her  youth
lost to the screams of war… and then

a displaced peace and an exchange
of bombed out cities
and refugee camps for an alien land.

She sighs, to turns to me
to speak with brittle eyes,
“there is space here for me but
I don’t want to share with him,
he betrayed me when I young,
I was so stupid,
the gossips said he had son, not mine
while I was pregnant… it was true…
I found out later…

How do I tell my son,
I do not want
to be buried here…
to rot forever by his side…
On the other hand,
with my bones on top of his,
laid on his mouldy heap
I can make him uncomfortable
in his eternal rest,
haunting him beyond this grave.
The priest tells me to pray for peace
but I would be a wonderful ghost”
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.

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