Your naval medals commemorate
twenty years of undetected crime
that’s the salty term
your sun wrecked mates throw ‘round
inked like youngsters.
Caught on the web between your thumb and forefinger
a butterfly
in Hong Kong backyard ink
a coloured Emperor
a sailor’s papillon
seafaring homage to the wing.
In the 70’s it flew for your children
with a father’s magic
barely resting and so hard to catch.
The rest –
the full seascape – began with Keith
as his health sank
you began to court the blue needle
in an effort to feel your own pain
and perhaps
through the barrel
to suck some away from him
You taught your willing flesh Greek
four lines across the heart:
greater love
has no man but this
that one should lay down his life
for his friends
the truth sits warmly beneath your gulf medals
There will be no mistaking you at the morgue
how blue those pictures will be
against porcelain skin
when quiet flesh rests on a bed
of stainless steel, you take a breath
Jesus rises on the cross, chest expanding
nightmare ending
just about where I would place an ECG lead
ancient serpent disappears beneath Greek
burrows into your ribcage
slips between pericardium and chest wall
comes up for air at the fifth rib then,
snaking hipwards
is crudely arrested
by a sword through the head
unnatural iconographic end! – the promise was to crush
swords not preferred ‘til mediaeval rush
of tangled crusade push
and tempered steel
subvert the real
the naked heel of God deemed
insufficient.
surely man’s own implement
could not bring about this promised Word
and yet
every pirate needs a sword.
you told me
gold ring wobbling
on mature cartilage your
earring was commemorative
every sailor who rounds the Cape
has his ear pierced I believed you
then called you a bastard call me
anything you like you said after
twenty full years in the navy I’ve
heard every swearword going
so I asked you to elaborate
and it was true
you h
a
v
e
you have below your navel
an ellipsis of un-inked flesh
from flank to flank
carrying a different
skillful mark where
,
tattoo postponed —-
a doctor reworked your insides
hid art’s Dacron mesh secret
Download a pdf of Backyard Ink
Ramona Kennedy
Ramona returned to Sydney in 2010 after ten years living and working in Asia. So many people told her she ought to write a book that she enrolled at Macquarie University, bought a new computer, and worked to learn everything from scratch. Her writing has been described as ‘beautiful, evocative and disturbing’ by someone who knows about these things. They only said it once, but that was enough. She did not need to eat for several days.
