A Smudge of Black
Give me the hang-head glow from street lamps, tear-drop light that refuses to swallow darkness. Gift me with jaundiced halos from votive candles. Anything but this naked neon shout and shallow fluorescent hum. One flickers, keeps pace with the bleep of monitors and infusion pumps, the hiss and suck of life support. Each bed is an ecosystem of heartache and hope; archipelagos of grief, where too many cling to the flotsam of life on linen pontoons. And it’s here you’ve lain for nights beyond number. Nights long and illegible when the hands on stygian clocks are forever hostaged to false daylight. Not a single window to gaze out upon the constellations, or god’s plan that placed you here. No monthly follow-spot to guide you on the stage. No lampblack hours to give substance to this pain. Permit me outside memory; meaning beyond a tethered soul. Show me life is calibrated in more than beats per minute. Does the flow of nocturnal rhythm matter not beside balanced tides of fluids in and fluids out? Lab reports that chase homeostasis? In this place of perpetual day, one craves the creeping darkness which drips from the x-ray’s edge; a malevolence to outshadow each shining cluster fuck of whiteness on your lungs. I crave crumbs of light against a charcoal sky, long-lost scents of evergreen (without the tang of disinfectant). Is it too much to ask for one small smudge of black with a sifting of stars? Do you remember we found our bearings beneath the rim of a harvest moon? And you couldn’t tell if it was wind romancing the pines, or my contented sigh. Now here you lie, cocooned in artificial light, covid and staph riding each ventilated breath. Your eyelids flutter but never open, and I wonder whether the smallest part of you is sparking in some distant galaxy?
First prize Silver Tree Poetry Competition, 2022
First prize Sutherland Shire Literary Competition, 2021
Nostalgia
The CITY LIMITS sign is pimpled by buckshot
from the barrels of young guns
bored with the usual refusals
every Saturday night.
Houses, with tongues of flaking paint, have lost
the voice of civic pride; picket fence palings
are concertinaed beyond
the redemption
of whitewash & nails.
Hangdog homes give way to unkempt parks
& public buildings.
The Picture Palace boarded up
when VideoEzy rode into town.
Coasting past the courthouse, only open
second Tuesday of the month
(just long enough for a circuit judge
to right each civil wrong),
our car angles nose-to-kerb
in front of the general store.
Three rickety steps
lead from street to porch.
A brace of codgers,
in flannelette & denim,
nod to us as they whittle the hours
with talk of the flood of ’54.
A faded sign in the window spruiks the circus
(complete with elephant & lions)
that passed through town
twelve years ago last week.
Decades of gloom sit heavy
on rolls of checked gingham,
rows of dry-goods barrels,
hand-labelled jars of chutney,
floorboards milled from old-growth forest.
Musty air is spiced with a hint of autumn;
turnips & parsnips
apples & beets
carrots & kerosene.
We each buy a Coke, ask for directions.
Purchase a map – just in case.
We discuss the route that will take us
forward eighty years.
Across the road the bandstand
likely won’t withstand
a decent gust of wind. Tattered pennants
that long-ago gave up
their patriotic colors
flap like lines
of forgotten laundry.
We accelerate past the square
past the verdigris statue
of an obscure explorer
who has long outlasted anyone
that used to know his name.
Second prize Ros Spencer Poetry Prize, 2020
The Taste of Your Breath
In the waiting room there are no clocks.
Time becomes expatriate,
distant as unremembered stars.
There is only the before and after
of your faltering heart.
A TV fixed to the wall flashes scenes
from the evening news:
Mariupol Khartoum Jerusalem.
Seems there are no permanent
similes for peace, just ceasefires
nuclear deterrents
armistice.
And now your heart attacks
without warning.
Helicopter footage brings the latest
traffic report. A 4-car pile-up clogs
the main arterial for miles and miles;
nothing but stagnant corpuscles
of braking lights.
I pray they clear the blockage
without fatality.
Is fatality with you now,
holding your hand whilst I sit here
with only haptic memory?
Does fate call to you
with saltwater words
of encouragement: let go, go
with the flow, drift on the tide
beyond this mortal horizon?
How can this be the end
when the arms that drew you close
are still so full of untold love?
You are hostage to a machine
that breathes for you, a machine
that cares nothing for
the taste of your breath.
You are woodsmoke and patchouli,
petrichor on moonless nights,
whisky sours downed
in basements built for jazz.
Published Poetry d’Amour anthology, 2023