FRAGMENT: Words

What are words?

Although writ in sand, they can’t be

       erased;

when and how uttered they exist

and must be conjured with. But how?

Perception is relative: where

       one speaks a garden

another finds a spider’s nest ...

ANTICIPATION

Reductive

empire of the modern

annexes old

sensations

smart phones

caller ID

a few less moments’

anticipation –

it’s never

who

you wanted it to be.

ESTRANGED

Your name

a sudden-plunging lift

your picture

a punch –

solar-plexus left

hook

your life

apart

your doing

fine

your shadow

where you lay

your absence

your fingernails

broken-off in my heart

I miss you

I hate you

Love me.

NIGHT LIFE

Dance

naked in the firelight

run down to the water’s side

      where

vagrant in sequined night

multi-coloured creatures play.

Diaphanous in hostile day

by night they glow

phantasmic plastic orbs

explode

                flare

fizz

         fade

fall in smoking piles

swept up by the dawn tide.

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.