gentlemenagerie

fore
fathers, they roamed
freely through garages and back yards
mowing lawns, fixing cars, sweating
bald heads shining in the sun
they conquered the great expanse up to the
garden gate
and the white-starched shirts on the clothesline waved
as if they were going somewhere special
somewhere far away
on the frontlines the mirror the paper the morning
news closely shaves off the edges of the real
world stiff upper lips drank coffee
made deals kissed ass,
raising insult, money, questions and kids
in little briefcases stacked with the most
important papers in the world, surely
with always and forever.

Later, dozing in
the fading glory
of a life spent
fighting for
the front porch
they tell of
adventures in xenophobia,
racism and bad taste
we cringe, thinking in twenty years time we wont be
folded neatly like suits and years of well-worn insistent
preventative measures, insurance policies, polish and a bit of grease
oiling the hinges of worn-out beliefs
with conversations running in circles
the epic battles through forgotten eras
the five o’clock traffic
how they met your mother
and bought you a video game for Christmas


I cannot help

Tears are expensive. Eden is for assholes. As
imperfect and unfortunate a replica
of my father’s ape-body, of my mother’s tiny
blue hands and eyes
I am the thing which haunts pappa
lying awake at night dreaming of men
with fingertips like stars -
I, raised high by ma’s certain sacrifices
expectations measured in light years
raised to want for nothing but
the human touch.
We are all growing up now.
mother leaves home
sister gets used to
pappa being alone.
Never the best pal for my dad,
never the destiny ma never had
I cannot help
I am a noxious thing of ice and light
with eyes and nails as sharp as the tar
that caressed my feet on hot afternoons
running with silver green fish in jars
and a dirty white little dog with ears as soft as green green grass
Who the hell were Adam and Eve, I could care less
for manhood marriage small talk
history was for heros
Eden is for assholes. As imperfect and unfortunate a replica
of my father’s ape-body, of my mother’s tiny blue hands and eyes
I cannot help:

It becomes beautiful to me,
my hairy hands and feet,
crawling the polluted and tarred pathways of this planet
Eyes staring straight into the sun.
And in all my time I have met
nobody like me
And in all my time I never could
wipe the smell of my father from my skin
or my mother’s forehead wrinkling me from deep within
I cannot help.
There are stories that seem to begin
Some stories seem to end
We will become rather tall
will break into spontaneous blossoms,
and fall loosely
into the hollows whittled for us
long ago by our parents’ call



underfelting

We’ve cut down the great big frightening blooms
in my parents’ back yard
garden-variety shrubs shrug off
the tall walls order around the house
like jilted schoolmates clawn together
furniture that gagged up the garage for years
awkwardly angles to hold the room
sudden like my father’s hand round my neck:
the neighbours did this
the bougainvillea did that, he confesses,
entangled, hair-faced, the colour of winter
stiff legged stalking his hard-earned turf
in lieu of conversation
stooping to rip at weeds.
“Your mother has carried away all her ghosts.”
She leaves his power tools, cactus collection
orchids and low opinions –
she leaves him stripped by surprise.
bees and ants track the hour
she visited here without makeup
wearing the stomach lining of the house
in pink and orange, the summer’s exhausted gleam
in her own long overdue time.
In the yard
I run through their latin names, urtica dioica, artemisia
millefollum - seeking the large and lifelong dreams
seasonal shapes for the sound of those once homing in here
tall trees, now passing the blame with the pruning shears at breakfast
cities apart, cutting equal portions of poison blooms
in identical seedings stalking to feed me
back to the days before I was born


how far
i.
Beyond the bright
promise of this world
love the unspoken
holding it close
far, far
my hand seems
unbelievably light
when my heart holds
the coldest ocean at midnight
One man standing
plus minus the entire world
like sky on earth
one of these insisting it will go:
two things unweighed
and on this waving bed of rock
the fear of flying, fled
ii.
Here I leave again
fat suitcase on an empty stomach
here, here always
still plunging towards certainty, gently alighting on
thin ice with big hearts flaring
big, bigger than big words
flare, more flare than Kodak moments
Shedding two seconds, I gain
twenty kilos
tight with my knuckleduster and my bag of bones
one leg leaves one moment
molten behind itself
that leg too is older and
in this fog it seems
there were angels here


Revelations

what ails me
what grieves me
bereave me the place where once a person stood
I saw Jesus and
the summer child light up
on every street corner in Seapoint
a legion of mute sentinels extinguished at dawn
calling from invisible phone booths
their farewell into the passing cars
a number not too high and not too low
just a second ago past my window
in the guise of a boy with a beard
standing too steadily on that corner
like the trees who know of too many
boys for sale ago, and the ones
who don’t come back, and how much that cost
Jesus at sixteen with dreadlocks
how many leaves would you trade
to let strangers
touch you in that way
to play saviour to the night
all done up like a wise man
a wild man, a saint searching for saviours
Tomorrow in the day
you will be gone, and what has taken root within you
communing with the dark and silence underground

And you with your stockings ripped and torn
the crown of the witness
platinum blonde upon your head
like the may maiden the christians burnt
or the christians who were made holy
burnt by others
Saint of these latter days
with your cheeks of blood
you too facing the street
blunt and arms dangling by your side
dandelion gushing white and reverent
I don’t recognise you here
guarding the block
You have no curfew. Noone knows
your tiny feet stand guard here tonight
tomorrow in the second aisle by the cashier
heavy with my tinned food and frozen fish
I won’t recognise you,
or wonder how it is you live


what is enough

you worked hard through stone to root
trunking out and boughing over
throaty stem and manifesting vein by vein
later leaves, or maybe bruises like blossoms
flogging yourself foaming with sap
callouses thick as bark, surely the effort
of pushing stem, vein by vein
cells filled with sunlight and slippage
branch by bough, and up the trunk
the budding clear reply, dripping,
sweat was in the branches all along.
leaves were in the branches all along.
you did not earn them
all along they were enough without you
How deep is it, do you think the well
how far down to the inky black of the water
And “well” – why do they call it that?
A creeping-under, seeping, bulking out
the comfort of sleep, the quiet of night
forehead, nose, mouth and chin
where it comes together – the densest in-between
Where does it go, do you think the cold black
Like veins, like rivers gathers serpentine
a tributary to time under soils soaked thick
with the dust of decay, the tender life of soldiers
washed into the loam, the language of fathers and grandfathers
mothers and great-aunts. Deep, deep
they point the way to the well on which one day you will sit
awe-struck Narcissus,
at the nothing down your gaping throat


what you know

Every day you
tell me what you know, now
stay there if you think you know it.
soft and tender in your ear
under perfect turns and footsteps
blowing hard like hope
in one, and out the other
now and now and now long
dusk swings in the windows, dawn
seeps underneath the door. Stay there
with no rub, scratch, bleeding
closely open, fall and stab
each corner clear baptise
the hour carmine
paste it up in ketchup,
claiming poetry and dance,
you know?
and do you know?
but do you - how
forever lacks imagination


the thrill

Thin child like a violin
he played hard but they got in
when you hang the sky will swing
silence brings
other things.
still ill. to still see.
S is for sedative
sit down sychotic
transparent boy hollow and bleak as a drum
when the slam comes
mom will blame dad. dad will blame mum.
wipe out their tongues
big sissie, small sissie
who cut the leash sissie
did you really take your pills?
they ask as if the roof had wings
as if my hand could shove
the love and stars between my teeth
at night.
to be ill. to still be.
I swear I’ll bite
with teeth so sharp and small
I’ll decapitate you all
carve letters that spill.
This is the blood of an amateur but
like book, like bird, like brain
a moth in flight convulses
swills and wills
with or without wings.

to be still. to still be.
paranoid bipolar psychic manic
dark to daylight
sound the surgeon’s salary
into that tiny bony body
spurting scrupellous sad songs
the kind you thought you had outgrown
on spindly legs and happy pills
the journey home
through legion fields
what the disease-monger kills
is the thrill
of being ill


the stranger
who tastes of ash
whose heart will jump so quick
sharp finger on the photo flash
who is so young to be so stung
who has blond hair, a little cap
a doggie thick with flaxen hair
who says he’s seen it all before
and who is barely born
what pictures do you take
at three when tree is tree and
lake is lake. what little life is left
at dusk, and yet you will not rest
to rush along the riverside
where everything is thing
it hides in the small dog
so small, so wild
before you learnt the word for child
or even pictures of the tall
the dog runs crazy through it all
the frenzy sharp tooth on the trigger
it made a small hole in your finger
when both of us were smaller
it is your final caller
who knocks missing two finger tips
I put them on my lips

my dad at dark
my hand is cold
my hand is his
his hand is warm
it holds me close
my shoes are tight
he goes
we go.
I’m still not tame
who do I blame
his hand was worn
my foot was lame
my pictures never were of him
or any other human thing
they never wanted to have names
as accidents can’t come of games
the dog was heavy with its tongue
so I took pictures of his feet
he stood on all that’s incomplete
he broke whatever blocked his way
I would not jump but chose to stay
he stood on it
his foot stood still
the wind was warm. the wind was chill.
or maybe it was just my hands
my chin or cheeks
my ears perhaps
that’s all
that would not move
I stood, a dog in daddy’s way for love