as we walk the ancients shriek feathered song of dinosaurs and in the pond, a rippled grey sky white butterflies' irregular ascent soft handed clouds blindfold the mountains i turn away from information boards extinction: the past's blunt tail a black swan dives and dives dripping from beak's red blade in my wrinkled heart a … Continue reading Sanctuary Walk
songs and carrots and the tiny problems her children whispered such hot condensation in her ear the every day of dinner like crabs scuttling to nip at her heels and shopping lists and the way the laundry door never quite shut and her hatred of umbrellas and how she saw them as lightning conductors and … Continue reading All that she carried…
(i) on the ridges trees in death black arms still flexed for holding up the sky but it falls strung between them whitely broken such soft caressing of their limbs now rain comes the marching of time slick silver arrows (ii) we walk in a valley torn flat trees prostrated by flood the tinny upper … Continue reading Two Years After the Fires
the young man that clown lit match between thumb and forefinger pretending incomprehension as he dances swifter than blown shadows cackling like the dry boughs and the snuff of leaves his eyes caught flames of glee his pupils wick focused that lit match flickering licking fondly redly between thumb and forefinger and crackling in the … Continue reading that clown
after a spring when fashion turned to yellow in ever-dying shades and Earth’s red bones broke through a tearless anorexic world the queen with flair mis-spelled, chose a wardrobe of vibrant, silky scraps ballooning spinnakers of ripping orange and jibs in singing blue out-prisming autumn but smoking to black (a cinematic feat) that was what … Continue reading The Stepmother’s* Wardrobe
This is what I remember: forty degrees and a Halloween glow at 6pm; we took our children up Mt Ainslie to see a city under siege - the sewer brown smoke bloodying the sun. The lake dread gold, Tolkien's Smaug unleashed summer ashes raining Written for dVerse's Monday Quadrille "Ash"
The sun sits in leaky splendour; watermelon juice staining this upholstery this smog brown décor this Faberge sunset this velveteen smoke haze. A cloying choice but here we all sit in our plush living room our shrine of consecrated ignorance and listen to the clock and the crackle roar of our future. Written for Misky's … Continue reading The Place We Live
pour happy thoughts into your breakfast bowl that summer mayn't dry out hope leaving it on footpaths adrift amongst the stepping stone madness of commuter feet try looking for a moment through the spectrum of flowers petal art by vein they have hearts too open to the sun begging for bees and if they wilt … Continue reading They Have Hearts Too
It was said that all things must pass: the big wheels turning, turning over the drought-lands, the down-and-out lands cattle skeletons ploughed in like rotted ships fence-posts - frayed and far-fetched zippers - dragging lines of wind-sawn wire – dun and drear the fierce fires rolling, roiling wanton flames - the lunge and buck, the … Continue reading Things that Pass
Seventeen years ago
a roar engulfed
the singing pines -
countless breaths exhaling
the needle sting of smoke.
They stood in shredded funeral garb
flinging glowing ember flowers
onto us below.
They witnessed our
syncopated falling
and the operatic scream
of twisting steel,
the cymbal crash
of exploding windows.
We knelt prostrate
before the fire
bowed and broken:
an army in black surrender.
Up on the hill, now
between the sleek sheets
of glistening modernity
and long embedded gardens,
I am still here.
The run-away grass
(that feathered doom)
tickles my concrete pad.
The triad tongues
of fire, water & tanin
have left printed shadows
and the jagged prod
of steel beams into nothing
is my toothy skyline.
The house that was.
Out of the Cave 