I am afraid
people keep asking me
what are you afraid of?
I tell them
I am just afraid.
They say there must be something?
I tell them
it is nothing in particular.
They shrug
it can't be too serious
if it has no name.

I tell them
it is serious fear,
it should be taken seriously.

Again they ask why
and I tell them
I am just afraid.
They raise their voices
of what?
I shrug my shoulders
I have no idea
but it IS real
they ask what is real? what is IT?
I say the fear is real
they shout
THE FEAR OF WHAT?

I reply
I don't know
I am just afraid
that's all.

Aftermath
Kosovo

The shell houses
one bureaucrat
to assess collateral damage.

For six months
the system's been down -
for three - no paper.

He scratches the desk
with the blunt nub
of his biro.

Apart From Others
Inspired by a painting of the same name by Tarja Ahokas.

Looking away
turning from the crowd.

Separate
in her acceptance.

Others huddle
fear her difference.

But she is looking
beyond this framed reality -

beyond the need to belong.

She is quietly alone
but no longer lonely.

Born too late, gone too soon.
For Liz

Give me a single note
played by the barefoot busker
outside heaven's gates

I can use the key

Then light me a joint and tell me:
take it easy baby.

Brisbane Won

Off the on-ramp
out beyond the lights

the endless crap train
roars under a too-big sky.

Two hundred years -
a few columns preserved
in a fibro town.

Where the girls serve up
in dim kitchens
with ripped vinyl floors -

the fat landlord rubs
his sweaty hands for payday -
his crotch for the same.

Nothing much changes.

Nothing much will
until the bone is aimed
clean at the heart

and we are all
danced into dust.

Chasing The Poet
For ?

The words
are not enough.

You long to kiss,
touch, wonder -

could he bestow
the gift of tongues?

He has given his life
in lines,
his soul in images.

You can keep the pages

but you always

want more.

Childhood Cancer Ward
for Jane

The room is empty
bed stripped
table wiped with disinfectant.

Plugs pulled from sockets
rattle in the tray
wheels squeak on lino

a door swaps closed.
As shining heads
turn to pillows

the walls reflect
the attendant silhouettes
of white-washed mothers.

Around the nurse's station
someone laughs,
recounting their night off
in detail.

Circles
for Peter and Gordon

We all turn
in small circles
drawn by fear
and desire
overlapped
at crucial points
of truth,
honesty and love,
there is enough
to go around
a wider circle.

Within the circle
of family,
blood connected
you turn
in your own circle,
love
connected.

Compromises

We went to find peace
said we'd take our own food

I went for the beach,
you to tour,
we toured some beaches.

We went to find a special place
to be together, I wanted you
you wanted space.

We went to get away from it all
but brought it all with us
in two suitcases.

Cows
For the poor bloody cow

I have given up
all but the most necessary
movement.

For in my blood
I carry the memory
of the abattoir

of my father's death
as he kicked and reared
his huge eye widening -

Some of you can taste
the violence.
It's never quick enough.

But those who trade on my flesh
and measure their lives
in the pounds sold:

At least they know
I am live stock
and offer up thanks -
some respect in memorium.

Dancing for the Boy

Grinning men are hoping
for a glimpse of creamy flesh
but my eye is on the brightest son.

The future is his -
the next fifteen minutes
are mine.

I'll buy my place
with each swaying hip
with each seductive movement -

his eyes are mine
his dark and wanting eyes
belong to me.

When wife and duty bid him
to a staid bed
he will swell with the memory.

I will have the last laugh
as he dies with my dance
on his lips.

Dancing The 60's
For Jay

She dances that
hey hippy hippy
peace brother dance.

Safe in her time warp
locked by bangles and beads
she still believes,

the corny lyrics
the hey baby baby
is singing to her.

In her tippy toe sandals
with Mr Bojangles
shimmy and sway...

The unbelievers
all walk away
only the innocent stay.

First published in Seriously Fishy Poetry Broadsheet.

Distracted Extracted Abstracted
or notes on the fear of flying

Everyone has nightmares
when their teeth are extracted.
For my Mother it was a train
stopping and starting.
For me - a staircase -
spiralling into nausea
the vomit on waking
was blood red.
You never forget that.

And you don't forget
The girl from Ipanema
played poorly by
the three star hotel band
on your first trip abroad.
How her hair curled
on her collar
as they jived all through
the rock and roll set -

you try hard to forget
that you only exist
in reference to something
or someone else -
that you are the same age now
as they were then

but when the plane left for Ibiza
and you flew for the very first time
you watched the wings lift
with what you now call excitement
without once feeling the need
to count five breaths in
two three four
five breaths out:

Documentary

All the marching
armies of the world
in a box.

It's a beebox
buzzing:buzzing

It's a time bomb
ticking:ticking.

It's black and white
cold and bloodless.

It's history bottled.
and nothing like it was

so I am told.

Dreaming Place

These canvas spirits
warm the walls
of the National Gallery.

Will they take me dreaming
so I forget the ticking clock,
the Melbourne rain?

I passed up the chance
to see a European Master -
for eighteen dollars

for this quiet seat for free
in the bright hall
of dreaming.

Early Morning in Hyde Park
Sydney, Australia 1998

Angels taking off their wings
Sleep with otherworldly dreams.
Eros casts his eyes
From our abandoned lives.
Flags billow on a morning breeze
The trumpeters
Their smiling lips reposed
Lay down their horns
Upon the grassy banks.
As the sun shines
The palatial glass
For a sparkling new day.

First Time
For Justine

When your girlfriends
giggling in their drinks
ask what it was like:

you want to lie,
say it was a moment
to be remembered.

You don't want to say
you tapped him
on the shoulder,

to get his attention,
because you were sure
you had missed

a moment of significance.
So you take another sip and tell them
it was great.

Giving Thanks for William

My sister folds her arms
across her chest
and tries to rock the answer free -

She who never drank or smoke
the cancer grew
from conception.

Two years of chemo follow.
We lit candles
in all the high churches.

Now you're a bright
and shining star
of seven in your soccer boots.

Amazing grace
saved your loving face
through the good man's hand

who begged your mother
give me
just one more chance.

I Am Not A Good Feminist

I don't encourage her to leave
when I know
she is miserable
because she has two daughters
no money
and at least he's a good provider.

when I heard
he bashed her up
I made all the right noises
about women's services
but really thought -

it wouldn't happen to me
I'm too strong
I'd give the bastard what for

and partly blamed her
for staying in the first place.

I
am not
a good
feminist.

In Love
For Philip

You would touch her
hold her heart,
but can you touch
the darker part -

beyond the glanced edge,
a place without
flesh and bone.

It is rough with memory,
but not just hers
and not your own.

You give bouquets
with practised lines -

your flowers won't grow
where your words
echo nonsense.

Lapdancer
For Alicia

She is inside
the skin dancing
to your rhythm.

Thrusting hips
caressing nipples
slowly opening thighs.

With only lyrics
to kiss her lips
and notes to soothe her:

Just a job like any other
better than working
in McDonalds for slavewages.

She has learned
the landscape
of the stage

kick, one two
turn, drop bra
spin, remove g string.

the landscape
of your mind
as she turns you on

with private dances
keeping it decent -
no touching.

When the music stops
She'll exit waving
to no-one in particular.

Lost City

We've seen many summers
come and go,
now they repeat
in hot neon and salty jazz.

Riverbanks swarm with lovers
as tourists cheer past
in colourful boats.

Remember when
you dressed my hair with frangipani?

The City of love
is blooming again.

And we long
to breathe it all back
but the brass laments -

you had it all
and let it go

Are we just lost
between the seasons?

Men pull up their cuffs
to check their watches.

Pigeons peck at crumbs
left from the lunchtime crowds.

An old couple lean together
their heads touching

Do they remember jazz and frangipani?

Or are they deaf
from their own sighs -
ahh, I remember a summer:

The park floods with rain.
Our lucid moment gone.
The brass smokes the next line -

its been too long baby
too long.

Lover

Lover you
recreate me

tell me what you find
under my skin

don't hold it in
like your secret.

How many ghosts
are hidden in the folds?

Put on your collar
take up the cross

feel me rise
to the exorcism

of your fingers
your tongue.

You say
I am a flower

opening under
your mouth.

Don't raise
your eyes to mine

they'll burn you
into nowhere country.

Mere Poetry

Cheap cliches on fancy paper
sold for four dollars
to those wanting a quick fix
and they say there is no demand
for poetry.

The most popular
two birds in flight
blue background
fancy font

If you love something, let it go

Bought eagerly
by well meaning friends and relations
or by those wanting
to grease the path out.

How many birds
see their cousins flying free
and choose a two by two cage
with no room to stretch their wings?

Let it go
that bird's not coming back
and you know it
that's why you keep the bars
securely locked.

If you love something, let it go
if it comes back it's yours.

If you had to let it go
it was never yours to begin with.

If it doesn't, it never was?

So buy the bloody card
hang it on the toilet wall
whatever gets you through
what a calm sea blue
glossy alternative
to reality this is.

If you love something
you hold on.
If they want to go
you lock the gate

The text is red
as the tracks scarring
down your cheeks -

You don't want to hurt them
but you can't let them go.
Which is the stronger of these needs?

Missing Pictures
for Nick

The little memories
make us bigger fools.

We disregard pizza and a video
at home each Friday
for thirteen years

to immortalise
eight weeks
in different locations.

Our smiles are fixed
from Sydney to Cairns
and captioned to mark
the beginning and the end.

The moments we chose
say nothing about us.

We hold the missing pictures
in the fractured pages
of our hearts.

Modelling

Don't let the whispers out.

Don't let them
talk to the tears.

Paint that smile.
Flash those teeth -

Don't let them
watch you waver.

Your music now
and the outfit
you wear so well -

designer bullshit.

Moving 2

I never know how
to say goodbye.
Perhaps I don't love myself enough,
Perhaps I need therapy.

But why pay
good money for the truth
when you can lie

alone in the dark
and feel it close over you
like deep water.

No
For the computer

I do not wish to save
the changes made
to document one.

What's another hour
of images?

The darkest
should go back
where they belong.

Time would be
better served
with a shopping list:

A loaf of bread;
some fresh laid eggs;
a thin piece of life.

Not Moving On

You will find your room
just as you left it

aside from a few
unread self help manuals

a mural of scenes
from your childhood.

and a little something
to help you get to sleep.

Nothing Open
For the ex-uncles

When we come in here
there were no restaurants

you wouldn't believe it

no cafes
just pubs and fish and chips.

when we come in here
we were doctors and lawyers and accountants

even they closed before ten o'clock -
nothing open

We couldn't get a job
if your name was Greek -
no interview!

we came from Egypt
we left everything behind

we were Europeans
we thought
we were better than the Arabs

but when we come in here
nothing open

even if your English was good
you were just
a wog.

Obit

So take it,
the measure of my life.
One very average hand span.

A red brick will do it
or an iron roof
with purple bouganvillea

But make it a thorny plant
we all need
our little dramas.

On Reading Beverliey Braune

Rich with ripened fruit
intoxicating as the hottest
sweatiest summer on record
dewy with mornings after
dry as dusty roads
musty as old rooms
filled with other people's antique dressers
frightening as spells
enlightening as steel rimmed
spectacled professors
bright as a mardi gras of clowns
close as a mother's breast
distant as a phone call:

brilliant.

Something Nice

And why should she listen
she lived through it all
the first time.

The wounds were treated
dressed with love for years.

More attention
for the cut child bleeding?

Her pain is too recent.

She shuts her ears -

why don't you write
something nice dear
something which rhymes.

Stages of Man in Primetime

In our suburb
of broken connections
it all gets lost
on the way home
from the McDonalds drivethru
two minutes
before the footy show
when you realise
it's all too
inevitable.

Even the world vision child
with fly encrusted eyes
can't shift your focus
from the brick veneered
partial reality
and cyberspace has you
thrice removed.

We're so bereft of heros
we applaud them -
bald and middle aged.
But there is some grace
in the game itself,
the battle speak.

Gotta grab
your macho on the run
when she eyes your cup
and tells you
you're just not keeping
your end up.

A debt ridden thirty
lucky to survive at thirty five
a diagnosis of ruptured ulcers

you give up smoking
take up jogging

and diet
to give her
a harder surface
to s l i d e
d
o
w
n

Teeth

Curled up,
the rags of ages
wrapped about her knees,
she is stringing beads
with a toothless smile.

You long to turn away
but her sharp eyes
hold your gaze.

Here's a pearler!

She holds up one perfect
shiny tooth.

My lover ran
his tongue around this
years ago when my hair was black

She strings it with the other
milky white molars -

Why should I keep them
when they mock my wrinkles?

Laughs - gnarled fingers
pluck another -

One day you'll know
how little beauty means.

Terra Nullius

Blood memory
No matter how I cut
You just don't bleed for me

A cold shame
Seals my destiny.

Black memory
Borrowed bought and buried
Made a liar of me.

Faithless - White -

The bullet tongue

Steals their history.

The Baby

From the minute
they put it in her arms
she could only think
of what she'd given up
her job at the office
uninterrupted nights
with his father
she didn't feel
what she was supposed to feel
so concluded
she was a bad mother.

From the minute
he attached his mouth
she reached for the bottle
ignored looks from the nurses
she could handle them
and she handled him
with the precision of a night packer.

She pondered ways to minimise
the impact on her life
with daycare and work
it could be a struggle
but worth it

and the most important thing,
he must never know.
He must never see the stone
turning underneath.

So she took it home
with its brave name
felt sorry in degrees,
enough to lay a kiss
on his little head at night
as she gave him the bottle.

It can be a slow thing this love,
but water erodes stone.

Water
erodes
stone.

The Fall Of Kabul

When he rolls in

Her eyes are covered

When he rolls in

She hides the voices in the folds

When he rolls in

She flashes gold between
rows of rotting teeth

when she can dance no more
she'll pull them out for bread.

When he rolls in

to tear the voices from their case
the old men stretch
their wrinkled hands to buy
one final piece of flesh.

When he rolls in

the voices ripped from the case
are trampled on the ground
cheerless ticker-tape.

The True War
For Jane Goldstein Bryson

You must have counted
every crack
in that tenement wall,

spent nights crying
lonely in your bed,
your grief could be heard in Liverpool.

Was it like this when they left?
Widowed and poor
you fought a true war.

In battles with the harsh conditions,
the meagre rations,
you lost your sons and daughters.

Now I remember you in my peace
three generations
from poverty and grief.

There But For:
For my friends in "the boundary"- I miss you .

There but for
the grace of god
I'm not sittin in the lime green bar
at ten o clock
already more
than three sheets to the wind.

My family passes on the genes
for alcoholism and cliches,
there but for the grace of god
I adapted only one of these.

But there are times I feel the little pull
after my second or my third,
times I have succumbed
and downing ten to fifteen
kissed the porcelain in a dream
of what might have been.

I have the gene.

God knows I have the gene.

He knows it when I brush the sleeve
of the salvation army captain
taking my donation.

They Are Coming Again

They are coming again
to parliament house.

She carries the flag

Her brother starts a fire
for the talks.

As she walks
the smoke curls
around her skirts

As she walks
the smoke drifts
through her hair.

As she walks
the smoke dances
through her fingers.

She walks slowly.
They have waited
such a long time already.

They are coming again
to the house built
on their land,

to try to explain
the difference
between theft and fairness

guilt and responsibility

right and wrong.

Truth and Lies

He whispered
into the spaces

listen
to what they are saying -

you are dirty and worthless
and you deserve
everything you're gonna get and more:

She listened to the whispers.

She believed them.

She still believes
only she and he
know the truth about her

that he found her out

and she cannot break
that terrible bond.

Two Travel Poems
for Nick

Lund

There were three levels underground
with the promise of more
gothic chambers.

You said you ran
past the church at night.

In your photograph
it loomed
ghostly as a film set.

You brought back
little slips of history,
brochures for the tourists -

but of all your Swedish memories
I kept this
for my own album.

Mists over Windemere

Three days at the lake
with the promise of more rain.

The B and B is damp,
the landlady pinched English
bemoaning the cost of hot water

As we tiptoe
steaming and dripping
to look from our window

to the lake
as the evening mists
are dipping.

Voyeur
"but it must be unusual to see two guys kissing"
Darlinghurst, New South Wales, 1997.

Will my eyes disturb
the space between you
which opens up
the second you reach Taylor Square?

You call me "straight"
and yes, I would love
to catch a kiss stolen
when you thought no-one was looking.

There is something in this
I can't touch,
but nothing unusual.

Watching The Students

There is something
about the laughter.

The way bare legs
on the fresh grass
speak to each other -

a weightless singing.

I would join in
but I have grown away
from the shading tree -

the soft green
of youth.

What Goes Around

night swallowed
with a ten gallon keg
spewed up
in back alleys
pissed up
against dirty walls
smacked in the head
with a ring turned round
to scar better
banged up
in places that echo
nasty

She turns her
well groomed head

nothing to do with me

Cruises past
in a car that cost more
than he will make in two years
on the hard job.

He sticks up his middle finger.
He hates her bloody guts.

and I don't
blame him.

Wild Flower
Kuranda Rainforest 1996

The flower I tamed
grows wild here

An orange symphony
plays in the trees.

A chorus of birds sing
backing vocals.

Yorick's Wife

Understand -
she bled between his lines.
Her pact with death -
a promise kept.

Hold this page
up to the flame
trace her last breath -

her cave eye sockets
hollow cheeks
the prophecy of skull.

She was fragile
her colour was too high -

But we are all shadows
ghosting candlelight.

"You Say You Wanna Revolution..."
For John Knight

How will we be remembered
for our poor words,
or for the sheer weight of our work.

This is an age of quiet struggle.
There are no revolutions
for the poor poets.

The children sing of love again,
they forget the lies,
like those before them.

Forgotten lies breed weeds in the garden of freedom.

How will we be judged
for our silence
or for our poor struggle.

The children will dance
to their tune.
The children will sing their words,
not ours.

First published in Social Alternatives.