Vale

A hole shot through 

his heart and mind,

jungle isle.

The heat of the equator.

A family weeps,

all at sea 

down, under,

a population wails.

This canvas is rent,

the whole picture

now asunder,

riddled with bullet holes.

The bleeding edge

where they lived

waiting for a word,

a freedom.

Peace carried within

a wholehearted life 

of repentance,

reformation.

10 years.

The bureaucrats could not listen.

Paper hearts riddled with holes,
where all the compassion,
mercy and justice 

are bledfallen through.

Men's days meted out 

by cash thin process

and preserved sovereignty.

He paints while he waits,

a bleak picture.

He consoles those around him,

a dignified grief.

Last acts of love.

The crack of the bullet
is not just for those men

but for a system

which fails humanity.

Sometimes

I don't want more than the honest interaction of people.

The constancy of the sound of an ocean.

The presence of loved ones in joy.

I wish for the gentle persistent sense of knowing that I am valued.

But sometimes I want more than this.

Sometimes I don't know what 'more' is.

Sometimes I just want to be entertained. 

Sometimes I just want presence.

Sometimes I would rather the solitary company of myself, 

As opposed to sharing space with the wearer of a hollow mask. 

Sometimes I want to be scared,

I want to know the fences of my comfort zones. 

I don't like having nothing left,

But it's then that I grow. 

Sometimes I want growth more than stasis.

Sometimes I want stillness, not stasis.

I crave the deep knowledge I am loved.

I crave knowing and being fully known by the Author 

It's all there is in the end,

Meaning in and of itself.

(workshopped and written with SdJ - her poems are here: http://skysconversationsinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/)

La Mer

The sea engulfs me,

a foamy embrace that lathers me whole,

brings me to my knees,

tumbles me around,

and I, like glass, am polished and cut so that 

my sharp edges are softened,

my surface is obscured, my clarity is protected.

The sea encloses me with an acoustic embrace,

lulls me to sleep with constancy

and brings me down to the depths of dreams.

I am stilled, while floating on its surface

and being tossed about like driftwood.

I am pacified by the roar and boundless horizon.

I am brought to awe by its life and mother-like-womb,

I am borne alive, aloft, by an unending flow.

The salt assaults my nostrils,

a sharp tang brings my insides to life.

Mist graces the tops of a foamy surface,

a deceptively still flow amongst the tumble of surf.

The danger in the rip and drag current 

can't be immediately seen, but is felt now.

The ocean is demanding in its mood.

Bury me here, amongst the waves,

So that I can be embraced by the continuum
of the incoming life.

Flight

Horizon -
definitive line of indefinite space
shimmers east,
bearing fire that brands our days.

Elevation and barometric rise,
Instrumentation says 'Go',
Assess the stress on the carriage -
balanced, for now.

Soar over patched work
and bounded lines.
Details of disarray
blurred in the resolution.
Gaze on the pastoral scene
below, behind.

Vaporous brume,
my obscure haze
Liftcoefficienthalfdeltavelocitysquaredsurfaceareaofwing.
Don't think.
Just go.

Angry zephyr blasts an
unbuffered fuselage.
Tempest! Hightail.
Exhilarating restlessness
shakes, falls.

My reflective carriage
heatsflexescools.
Fuelled and oiled to
thrust on direction.
Propel westward then,
this finite ember will
dip
to the dissolving
horizon.

Trafficked

Sold with no currency
an exchange in the darkness
of veils, nets, sheets
The veneer of love
is a hollow echo of
a binding promise.
The destination
where I am chained
by my need to provide
for those who depend on
my body to work for them.
The silent majority
who nod, their eyes condemn
what their minds deem ok.
I need. They provide.
An exchange, for their release
to which I am bound.

LIttle Bean

Little bean
bamboozled by
a lot of light in
your eyes.
We are both gazumped
by your poker face.
Were it not for the
grace of your
scheduled sleep
I'd hold my hands
in and cave.

Curl up near my curve
take your sip
when your eyes show a stupor
of soporific proportion
we will rest,
we will sleep.

And yet

I want this. Momentary unknown
lack of control and sweet non definition.

And yet.

I hate it. Momentary unknown
borderline anxiety hyper sensitivity
to the slightest movement
thiswaythatway.

Paralysed (in my head) by thought clouds
streamingscreamingwhywhatnowwhywhatthe

Not knowing,
a surrender of my hands to the sky
and the timing of some master
clockmakergardenerpruner
to make it all mature, complete
grow it Sir, I wait for your tune
to dance

- And yet.

Pendulum

Swinging pendulum -
Here, there
Now, then
Present. Gone.

You, in, out
of the sphere
we inhabit.
Cyclically,
In perfect time.

Co-centric
as sand circles,
which fall through,
you draw around me
for the moment
then you...gone.

It doesn't stop,
This swing
right to left of centre
Never still.

You sway,
my stationary bearing
like Greenwich marking
on hold,
the meridian show
spin of my world.
Again.

Slow second,
plumb line of exactitude.

Do I long to be free,
Until we -

Stop.

Wrap

Cloths of gauze

the footfalls of many before

show us the way

we are travelling

mapped unknown

the locusts were here, for a time.

Cloths of silk

a swathe of transparency

i will follow you into

the tent, we are

knowingly mapped,

no others are here.

Wood and brick
concrete binds the 

travellers, lovers, as dwellers
of houses which
shelter their vulnerabilities
We stay there, for a time.

Air and fire
the vapour of intangibles
bind dreams of those
who clothe each other
with themselves,
We are here, for a time.

Skins

Who are you when you strip away your house,
like a layer of paint all faded and peeling,
no longer fitting for the skin you're wearing?

Who are you when you take off that smile,
or does the the anti-smudge lipstick gloss
colour define the season you're in?

We layer ourselves with the fabric that conceals
and reveals not too much but it steals our
selves like the swish of insubstantial impressions.

but the inner voice says no. not enough.
the outer voice says maybe. it's enough.
We ask, have we fooled, enough?

PMT blues

I am tired. So. Please.
Don't brief me on your emotions
which slide, slither, dither, shake, or
make the earth quake.
I'm a wall, a brick - mortar trench
filled with shell casings of war.
Scale me, then cry me a river, baby.

Like a bomb that's wired to the teeth, 
press the red button, do it. 
Go on - activate 
that electric cold rage will 
traverse a thin metallic course,
streaking, like a naked man on the oval
while all look, cheer and jeer.
See here? No - there! 
Really, wow, that tiny...oh...Well.

Please.
Don't talk about fragility and ego,
it all bends and breaks by contrary word, 
It's a no-go. I won't go,
unmapped, without compass 
or magnifying glass.
I won't go near things that ensue
a closed lip sound of discontent, 
followed by the radio static of 
'intentional silences'...
healing 'breaks of solitude'...
champagne and pamper packages.

That fence must be pretty spiky,
to be sitting so jumpy!
(Like a bean on crystalmeth.)
Icy paranoid thought
like machine-gun fire,
scattered meandering, 
nothingmorethanbuttheworldof
hey, don't scare, don't fear, 
just draw near, 
watch me here, 
watching you be weird,
over the smallest thing
which is scarcely the reality
that you think it be.

Anyhoo...You compensate.
Draw yourself up, stand tall, erect.
Don't think. Take a pill, 
send me a bill.
We all fake it sometimes.
Then we sit on our laurels
feeling cheated, 
like we didn't play honesty 
for long enough.
But...don't brief me about it, 
I.am.tired.

Quantum

Clothed in
an ocean of sky
pinpoints of light
pierce this garment
rendering it invisible.
What am I
but a vessel
to hang things by?
Packet-pocket moving
through space-time
affecting those who pass -
there are few -
(who?)
see an abyss
and still say
"It's fine."
Life is clarified
as sublime.
A lens lets light
polarise views
the few
(who?)
look through
still say
"It's fine."
Life is rarified,
sublime.

Legacy

My father's eyes capture life
in wide angles, depths of field,
measured light.

In sharp focus.

Beauty and complexity
distilled in elegant composition.

In the closeup of unwavering love
I am supported,
his joyful uncompromising vision
of who I am, what I can be.

My father's eyes.

His gift to me.

Sides of a Line.

Schrödinger’s Cat breathes its death;
a silent word in the chasm
where Past and Present 
stop short of colliding.
They hover over the divergence,
no space to fit either together or apart.
Incongruence is willfully blinding.


Dismiss the remains of a presence
which once carved out canyons,
it has fallen underworld,
and sojourns there.
Redress the topography of 
a lexical desert, once verdant,
now hollow to the ear.


But silence protects both
Vulnerability and Indifference.
They hover over the divergence,
incongruent in togetherness,
nonexistent apart.
They speak as the sides of a line.

Words I

The words that don't hit-the-ground-running are oft,
like transluscent ideas floating featherlikesoft,
lacking substance in their glide aloft,
ethereally luminous in their promise.
Sometimes words are like tornadoes whip-bound,
to twistyturn and suckupall that is rooted in ground,
highthrown flight and chaos in their sound,
savage, severe, tempestuous.
There are words in the darkness of a room closed to air,
of old things to preserve, to be uttered with care,
delicacy, proprietary, politeness reigns here,
lightly touched truths too light for an ear.