Category: Poetry

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This Pebble

I put this cool white pebble in your hand,
when we were together – the last time.
Burnished smooth by the Findhorn river,
made of granite from the Cairngorms.
Its structure like your mind, is a matrix of microscopic crystals – forced together,
by the volcanic force of intellect.
Invisible to the naked eye –
felt by your family.

You always insisted on Peter,
Petros, rock in Greek – how apt.
For a boy captivated by languages,
etched in the stones, of ancient Greece and Rome.
They took you away from your millstone-grit childhood – spent by the black Mersey.
To the glowing, golden, sandstone of Oxford.

This pebble,
is smooth under my fingers,
like piano keys were under yours.
Your music followed us, through the open windows of our house,
out into the garden,
where we played with flints and fossils mined from a motionless Cretaceous seabed,
which – before the common era, was carved,
into the abstraction of a white horse.
We found treasure on long walks in damp beech hangers,
scattered on the dazzling chalk escarpment,
where we stood –
where you told us to stand –
in the eye of that white horse.
And the wind blew my long hair into my mouth.

I washed endless shards of Roman pottery for you with a purple toothbrush.
As I watched you dig for inspiration in the heavy grey clay,
of a Buckinghamshire field.
I was allowed a fragment of the pot,
with a Roman thumb print on it.
I keep it with this pebble.
I was always allowed to keep fragments,
of your intellect.

You see my mind isn’t adamant like yours.
I revelled in the names of the flowers, as we walked the Chilterns – always distracted,
by the transient and the vascular –
dog’s mercury, cuckooflower,
enchanter’s nightshade,
whitebeam and juniper,
eyebright and candytuft
I never looked for the foundation of things,
the rocks, language is built on.
You wanted me to see the patterns in your music, not the pathos.
Unable to follow your stone path,
I wandered off,
on more erratic feet.

Dad, did you know –for your gravestone,
we chose Catullus,
and white granite,
from a quarry near Rome?
Ave, atque vale

A Short Song

I
Our child plays on the beach
and as I sit here
on the edge of the known world
she plays
                    In a pristine shore break.

And the blue
and the green and the blue
and the blue
and the            impossible green

of clear water
washes over her.

II
On other beaches children do not play
they are guillotined down
by sea-green incorruptible
waves
of foreign policy
of poison gas

And the blue smoke
and the green and the blue
and the blue
and the blood red
and the              impossible green

of bitter salt water
of jealous old men
of the colours of history
wash over them.

 

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Map Anatomy

I.

Vovó’s fingers
Are soursop-flesh directories
In the fruit aisle

Mamãe’s wrists
Pave pink guides
To my guava bloodline

My daughter’s unborn fist
Salutes the passionfruit vines
Of my destination

My palms lined with these
Road-maps, roots deep,
Fit perfectly in my pocket.

II.

wrist: riverbed of purple ancestry
heel: cheek of papaya flesh, overripe
palm: cut-glass chalice collects pulp
finger: macaw claw to take off, to land
knuckle: mound of earth to hold seedling
fingernail: machete slices guava rind. swift.

III.

train track
back towards
east tree
sinks roots
beneath ruptures
ocean body

touring terrain
wrinkles gulley
time plain
with seeds
my spirited
fingers aground

destination distances
mão from
boca from
coração blood
maps ripens
past life

The Australian Dream

to love a sunburnt country is to first                rub the land with aloe vera

     recognise that it is burnt                rest it in the shade

    white picket fences                unlock homes

line the jaws of suburbia and gnaw            smelling of seaweed meat

red and raw throat, turn the boats back               from the ocean of glowing gills

one drunk dream we make sure            the exotic tree abroad

                     does not land on our shores                has nothing on our sweet flesh

                    with our backs turned, we              blushed in sugar-lip victory

              sign invasion into settlement                from farm to football field

                           catch hungry man into criminal                 surrendered to living the sunny life

                    kill black kid into statistic                the sporty life, win again

                  slip slop slap your sunscreen                protection from our elders

         smear everything in white              their light is warm

                                 rubbing alcohol until              the burn turns to embrace

                   everyone is blackout drunk              lapping up the salt ocean

                        high on their own             spirit like rainbow

                         snake venom            serpent blood

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Full time employee
but a casual parent
with part time affection
and half-hearted love

that rewards bountiful glistering rain
in thunderous cries.
Cracking fault lines in
Creation’s blind trust and splitting soul into many.

Actions cut deep,
apologies fall short
without meaning –
connection

severs.

Reality isn’t enough,
imagined friends and family bring momentary comfort,
the playground signifies a return to freedom, while
home’s bare embrace feels frigid, tastes stale.

Coveted pine and musty plastic
cling to nose and palms, while
aged books, old toy soldiers seal away
raging fires and floods for now.

Watchful eyes cultivate spite,
God’s rebellious child left
abandoned,
unattended.

Is it the absence of a childhood or parental presence
that brings the downfall
of the Employee?
The abhorrent guardian.

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Riba mora plivati tri puta: u moru, ulju, vinu
Fish must swim three times: in sea, oil, wine

Franz Ferdinand died, and the men went to war,
calling women from homes to tend to the groves.
My baba was born to a mother whose hands
were worn as she hung olive wreaths
on the door.

“Fish must swim three times: in sea…”
Girls could not swim in the blue Adriatic
so she waded in secret (in shame) and in fear
of the smear to her name that would render
her used – discarded goods like an
olive bruised.

“Fish must swim three times: in oil…”
A woman’s measure was in what she achieved –
raising babies, gutting fish, chopping wood, planting seeds –
but her hands that could push down the press ‘til it spat
out green liquid gold – could not glide
through the sea.

“Fish must swim three times: in wine…”
By ’44, a mother to three and two years
away as a refugee, in a desert that held no promise
of sea (or oil or wine) save Sundays, when fear
mixed with wine to bless wretched
survivors’ tears.

When baba passed over, we ate fish bathed in oil,
sang Daleko Mi Je and drank water with wine.
We picked virgin olives that danced in the sun
as we scattered her soul in the blue Adriatic –
she could finally swim, and be home.

Le Lacrime di Fico (The Fig’s Tears)

Oh dad! I wish you could hold on for another spin around the sun.

Every July you wonder why we celebrate getting older.
We say ‘Because you can’t see around corners and one day…’
As you approach apogee,
and mark time through others’ grief,
know you taught us well –
to plant garlic in May and pick figs when
milky sap pools on top like creamy tears –
and after the last condolence is uttered,
and the gate is bolted,
we will bite into the fig we saved for you
and our tears will mix with sap
as we taste the sweet, honeyed flesh of your life.

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Black Summer

I.
Before the rain came
we forgot that the grass was
supposed to be green

and the cows all looked
like starving Hollywood starlets
with their ribs exposed.

On the day I hatched
my escape plan, the water
tanks were getting low –

so I took two minute showers
and watched the dust collect
on my bathroom window.

II.
Before the smoke cleared
we forgot that the sky could
be blue. We watched the

cemetery burn
three times, while helicopters dropped water
like bombs on the graves.

I made lemonade
with my bare hands, till my knuckles
were cracked and bloody.

I gave it all to
the firefighters, so I never
made any money.

III.
When the first raindrops
kissed the ground – a great hush fell
upon the crowd.

In February the
mosquitoes all hatched at once
and followed me around

for weeks; biting my
neck like little vampires. The
rain lingered in the

air at dusk, so the
train tracks smelt like petrichor
the day I skipped town.

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The Commuter

Daylight breaks the sky,
tumbling over chimney stacks.
–     Businessmen waking

with black briefcases and
polished shoes. (They wonder if
their hearts are black too.)

Trains thunder by
early morning commuters
with drooping eyelids.

A clock ticks over
a stove top, while the tea kettle screams
“Murder! Murder!”

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