– 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.
