FUGUE - Ishmael

  

    – Mark Lawrence Single 

       (3 July, 1967–12 December, 1999)

       On the Anniversary of His Death

“You cannot turn your back upon a dream,

For phantoms have their reasons when

they come ...”

            

–         Robert Lowell

‘The Ghost’

I

Single shots only; no family

          portrait – your

son; our father; you;

          me –

Russian-doll nest of pictures

undone and disgorged over

          the table.

You and me we played our game

of genealogical Russian-Roulette

– the only empty chamber spun

          to me.

Pictures tell no story –

your blurry photo can tell

          no-one

how you haunted me

long before your death.

II

The homeless get no

midnight phone calls;

no police come knocking

          at the door. My

weekly payphone visit, my

mother’s reassurance I

          lived delivered

news that you did not –

that last night

while I sought

my next fix you found

          your last. With

a prison-doctor’s three-day script

of Tryptanol you spent

your last day

on the Junee–Sydney train

 – breaking your journey

once to have

your stomach pumped.

I didn’t even know you

were out.

Alone. A Cityrail commute

          away. Dead

for want of a postcard.

Your Cabramatta car-park

          overdose interrupted

not for one moment

my Kings Cross oblivion.

Spinning stopped –

the shot hammered home.

III

Our father lives alone now

and me

older now than you.

Your funeral-flyer photo shows

more now

than my own face altered

by Dad’s no-lip smile.

Fear

of becoming

you paid-off at last –

I live

older now than you

not quite clean but

sober.

Lamb to the slaughter –

substitutionary sacrifice

 – black sheep

in a flock of misfits –

The one thing you ever did for me

was

save me.

IV

December’s seasonal reruns

 – Dad’s awkward phone call –

man-in-a-box voice

bald fact spoken into

an emotional vacuum – It’s

your brother’s anniversary –

Like I forgot.

Shut the pictures up again

          in their chocolate-tin;

shove them in the drawer again

till next year –

Russian-dolls glued shut –

always together

ever the same

always apart

an infinite regress.

SANGUINARY MARY

Cumulus Everest looms

      malevolent an instant then

dissipates

chasing dawn across city sky.

Outdoors morning begins

      its intricate monotony of movement;

sclerotic peak-hour veins

      carry empty cells toward

no real heart.

Lay an eternity listening

cockroaches shitting bricks in my head

first drinks at ten

Mary, take me home.

UNDERGROUND (II)

Kerouac and Ginsberg

howling blues in the officer’s club.

Frontline: Interzone; snake-pit; whorehouse.

Youth, fire, fecundity

smothered under squirming

incestuous bourgeois bellies.

Inbred children work the mines

      underground in darkness choke

on gas.

Stoned. Inanimate.

Wanna be a tee-vee star

or chairman of the board.

UNDERGROUND

Refrangible rebellion

coloured in spurious

atavism bleeds down the clock face,

apostate.

                  Aposiopesis

inscribes a frozen conflict

the redoubt secured

                                      unwittingly

by proselytes and poetasters.

ACROSTIC: LOSS

Love’s

Old

Sweet

Song.

"WE NEVER TALK ANYMORE ..."

Again,

she demands

damp hair stuck

in tangles to her

            back and breasts;

mingled sex and sweat

scent

the bedroom steam.

Deep

            warm

laughter

slips into

sighs

enfolding

dancing tongues and

            fingertips.

Raw and aching

flesh rises to the spirit.

Oh, alright –

anything for you.

WASTED SPACE

Been writing in

pocket notebooks.

Poems have been

short

and very thin.

Must start buying bigger notebooks.

COLOSSUS, FALLEN

–       For Lawrence Edward Price, Dad.

You were somebody.

Younger then and slim

hair now cropped and grey

waving chestnut to the collar

of the white Italian suit that

          on race days

replaced your railway-driver’s green.

Wide-eyed I’d watch you walk

          the grandstand—your manor

while faces I knew from television

called your name

waved or shook your hand

waited on your words—

precise choreography of

verbal momentum

timed like a cavalry charge—

pouring from the call-box

herding the horses around the

track

flooding out to fill

a thousand country

pubs and TABs.

Saturdays, delivered

in Sunday clothes

through the turnstile from

Mum’s world to yours

I crossed a crumpled wasteland

of discarded betting-slip dreams

and met you at the bar.

STREET-CORNER FASHION-PLATE

Flip that empty Coke bottle

buddy.

Cigarette perched

jaunty on your lip,

leather collar turned up

to keep in the cool.

One hip jutting,

leaning on a lamp post

checking out the girls.

You’ll be standing there when

      the sky falls.

DOCTORAL THESIS

You’re not really interested either

you’re reading this or worse

       I am

and when it’s over hopefully

we’ll both forget.

There only ever were

four poems one

       about

love one about

       lost love

your father – mother – your youth

one about flowers

trees – hills – dales

and god-damned pretty little birds;

one about

       them all the one

about the poet.

Cave wall hand tracing

       self-portraits in sable or

ear-bandage

dissolved in abstract expressions

filtered through post-modern un-irony

sprayed again at last

       on walls in darkness;

painters over and

       over paint themselves

ever shifting

mood style and form.

Musicians have played

the same four songs

       since

learning to hit

a log with a stick.

All artists are thieves;

if you meet one who isn’t he is

also a liar.

HARVEST

Abating lashing winds and raging

      black misuse

the sun forgives the weeping

      willow.

Flood recedes as

      a disliked rich relation leaves

the Delta

weighed down with gifts

      of fruit and arable soil

the rain will come again.

COÑO (PUSSY SONNET)

–         For Kristy and Kate

             who threw down the gauntlet

                one  Friday evening at the Piccolo Bar.

                                       

                                       

                                       Effective

as phrases à moitié-comprises[1]

poetry to order pushes

nobody’s button.

Too beautiful for this

affected hauteur

provocative and facile

words are impelled by

the gravity between us:

high school French and

phrase-book Spanish

collide and ricochet inadequate.

Thank God

there’s something to be done with

a tongue we all understand ...

---

[1]Fr – “half-understood phrases”.

HAIKU

Caesar falling raised

      the toga over his face.

            None would see his end.

SALOME NEVER REALLY THOUGHT...

Ask me

and for you I’ll burn

the world.

Ask me —

I’ll don the clichés

and outdo Gatsby

for gold-hatted high-

            bouncing love.

                        If you ask

I’ll pull the heavens down

or die trying to lay them

            at your feet —

Desire it and I’d

reach down inside

strangle the poet

dress the corpse as

an accountant.

I’ll be the best friend

the lover or

both; your counsellor

carer; therapist; clown;

your partner; I’ll be

your mirror —

In my

long-gazing appraisals when

you’d know my thoughts —

look — see

yourself reflected then

ask

yourself — who looks back.

Ask

which you you’d be —

ask

what you’d have from me —

and knowing all this

don’t

ask me

to be your heroin.

MONDSCHEIN/MOONLIGHT - For L

It’s easy — watching

languid candle flame

warm the milk-wan

body,

midnight hair cascading,

framing

the face that’s haunted

your dreams —

to tell yourself

God has led you here,

His metaphors and signs

garlanding a poppy chain of

            destiny — that

the

dark eyes searching

your own, so close they

            merge,

will always regard you thus —

that morning will never come,

its cares, its quotidian glare —

and lovers

carved

one from the other

never have to

            part.