Words Make Sailors Of Us All

Once uttered, words

define a short trip between two points.

Dictionaries hold only a fraction,

cannot define ripples that cast us back.

Language moves outside

the flimsy barriers of the here

and now - make us

the flesh and bone singers of history.

Words are not a journal 

of the distance covered, they are 

the wrinkles the shifting landscape

affected upon us.

Displacement is lost in facts,

but a whispered moan,

a faint, modulated call,

a precise pitch,

become vessels upon the ocean.

Meaning flashes faint on distant waves –

draws  the ear, draws the mind,

makes the body thrum,

brings images closer to the stroking oars.

The ship made of flesh

stretched tight over the hollow

that is history; a father’s sad, fading eyes,

a lost lover’s quiet voice calling,

‘Come back, come back, come back to me now.’

REVOLUTIONS:

Full sick I am,

heart like a stamped upon grape,

head lost in the backwaters

where regret dwells like ancient pike

eager to feast.

I have lost the path.

I have sundered the light.

I have become my father

in the eyes of my son!

Full sick I am,

juices dried up,

thoughts - a pack of barking dogs

fighting over my bones.

I have failed the test.

I have embraced the dark.

I hear my father’s voice

as I shout at my son!

Full sick I am,

tired to the core,

shedding tears at night

while my son sleeps -

wanting to embrace him

promising to manage things better

and knowing

it is not easy to untangle knots

woven in me

years before

my son ever saw the light of day.

The Farthest Journey (for Dad )

It is in the sound of the apparatus - like gods,

they surround him, stare into the heart of him

and murmur a decision about him -  that I feel

my disconnect from the prospect of his death.

Every labored breath he takes, I promise 

another act performed as penance, as payment; 

a stalling of The Ferry’s price. My thoughts, 

a cat o' nine tails, I flay my future with.

On his finger resides a clip. He dangles on a line,

or is dangled; a slim chance that he may yet return

to my shore and cease his ramblings about a past 

before I was born and smile again at me, his last boy.

I have not the words of farewell, sacred or profane; I

cannot remember when he last held me, or the feel of his lips,

only his chin, rough as sandpaper, and his watery eyes

that smiled at me whenever I found my way home.

I have wandered far and thought I had left him behind

but now I stand at his hospital bed and realize

he is to take the farthest journey as I stand there

and try to remember every shattered aspect of us.

The Farthest Journey

It is in the sound of the apparatus, like gods,

they surround him, stare into the heart of him

and murmur a decision about him,  that I feel

my disconnect from the prospect of his death.

I offer silent prayers to these unknown machines.

Every labored breath he takes, I promise another act

I will perform as penance, as payment, a stalling

of the ferry’s price, as if my thoughts are a cat of nine tails,

and I flay my future with this fear of being left fatherless.

On his finger resides a clip, as if he is dangling on a line,

or being dangled; a slim chance that he may yet return

to my shore, open his eyes, cease his ramblings

about a past before I was born and smile again at me,

his last boy - this father of mine fights a battle in a white room

and outside the world is grey but between is the deep abyss.

I have not the words of farewell, sacred or profane;

they got lost somewhere in the journey – I

cannot remember when he held me, or the feel of his lips,

only his chin, rough as sandpaper, and his watery eyes

that smiled at me whenever I found my way home.

I have wandered far, thought I had left him behind

and now I stand at his bedside and realize

he is about to take the farthest journey and I stand here

and try to remember every shattered aspect of us.

Geppetto finds the stone

 

Even a lonely man who

has never married, whose

only fragrant memory

ended in Venice,

suffers the need to bury

his loved ones.

Geppetto’s sister drowned

in her lover’s arms,

and while the lover held the body 

and wept in caricature, it was Geppetto

who dug the grave

and buried her bones.

It was while digging,

his tears weakening the soil,

letting the spade slide in

like a lover, that Geppetto found

the stone; a single stone

amidst the grit of earth.

Once a mountain, yet 

too warm to have reached 

such heights, a comet? A tear, perhaps,

from a fierce Goddess, 

shed when the fairest had fallen 

to lowly treachery?

Geppetto reached out his hand

and lifted free the stone,

defyied gravity, disregarded

the strange stares

of his sister’s lover

and her gathered friends.

After he studied the stone

for a moment, while

the crowd murmured and fidgeted,

he plopped it

into his white shirt pocket;

felt the weight of it match his heart.

He kept the stone as company

through evenings and days

as a marker to

his sister’s memory, not knowing

that its proximity to his sadness

instigated change.

Under the weight of his heartbeat,

the stone began to believe

it was a seed

and waited with the patience of rock

for the log

to give it birth.

The aviator ponders the strength of birds.

The sound of regret is the distant hum

of a bomber returning home,

his ears echo with the whistle

of the bomb; Lucifer falling to earth.

Shame is filled in his finger that rested

on the button.The same finger

that released the empty fuel canisters,

falling, like feathers, into oblivion.

Infamy is silver, like the Enola Gay,

polished silver, a mirror to catch all light –

it burns his synapses with memories

of never known children dying in their sleep.

Haunted by the massacre, feet stomp

in his veins; duty soldiers that march

as if his heart still beat; attach themselves

to every blood cell, every corpuscle

and white cell of defense - the inner rivers

of the body putrid with radiation.

His body is a wrinkled flesh-coffin

sunk beneath the  juddering waters

flowing from the Styx – the stench

of death, a misplayed note always heard.

The aviator’s mind is a b flat, a broken string,

a trumpet in the mouth of the babe.

A million emperor moth cacoons, emptied,

crushed, to make a pillow, could not soak up

his unshed tears, even if his tears

could be made into wasps to sting cheeks

endlessly, the rivers he could create

would not suffice. When death comes

they will not need a burial, merely toss

his carcass upon the earth and it shall sink.

The aviator moves like a honey eater,

sucks up what nectar he finds, obligated

to sate the needs while the far off mountain top

where he could sit remains as cold and empty

as the love between a leper and a pilot.

That plane: He is that plane. He is Enola Gay,

happiest before the event, saddest

on the return flight.

In some shadowed field the dreams of men

rest, their thoughts spread like B-52 wings,

their words propellers rusted, still – a field

of all that went wrong no matter how high

he aimed. He has no blood, no movement,

no waters, no chance to explode.

His dreams are flooded with people aflame,

like a thousand burning matches;

their spirits the smoke

after the puff of Goddish breath.

His bed is nailed to his chest, - his dreams

and memories, and choice. Yeah he cries

from his ravine, ‘We have choice!’

As water has choice,

the easy paths through limestone and granite,

or as the bird - to risk the fall

and conquer the elements by sacrificing weight.

 There is strength in hollowness.

He wanted to be like William Blake - Edited.

Unexpectedly, the sun breaks past the grey clouds
in Daylesford where he has escaped
for a few days - broke,
hung-over, drugs slowly leaving his system like the last snails
after a night’s rain. Sunlight
and liquid movement create a shimmering effect
across the lake's surface, as if a million jeweled insects
rest before dusk and fan their wings upon the water.

On the return train-trip to Carlton, he jots
in his notebook, the new pen
scratching pleasures, catching
old fleas that fall as words
onto the paper. The train’s jiggly movement along the rails
and the reflection in the dirty glass
bring dislocation, thoughts and memories
jumble, expose themselves haphazardly.

At some point he becomes conscious
of the girl across from him
who watches as he writes. He has noticed her bare
knees, her swan neck and long fingers with unpainted nails
that occasionally tap
the ledge between window and the outside world.

As the fields surrender to duplicated houses
arranged in different angles
to express a non-conformity
that does not exist,
he pretends to read his notes while trying to conjure
a word or two to say. He senses the girl when she bails;
she forsakes the carriage; a faint waft
of her musk scent left behind
and he pauses, words forgotten as his left eyelid
gives a twitch. He feels a fragment of his heart
slip away, a doe disappearing
into the shadowed depths of a hunter’s forest.

Wolf and prey both forever doom him.

He wanted to be like William Blake

The sun breaks past the grey clouds

In Daylesford where he has escaped to

for a few days, broke,

hung-over, drugs slowly leaving like the last snails

after a night’s rain. Beside the lake sunlight
and liquid movement create
a shimmering - a million jewelled insects
fan their wings upon the water.

On the return train-trip, jotting
in his notebook, the new pen

scratching pleasures, catching

old fleas that fall

as words onto the paper. The train’s movement
and the reflection in the dirty glass
bring dislocation. He is conscious

of the girl across from him
who watches as he writes.

As the fields surrender to duplicated houses, he reads

his notes, senses the girl leaving the carriage
and feels a fragment of his heart
slip away, like a doe
into the depth of a hunter’s forest.

Wolf and prey both forever doom him.

Speech with a Dying Friend:

Come Lazarus,  come sit up

and have a chat with me these last minutes;

remember that day we played down the sideway

you were six and I five,

you lifted my blue dress up to my waist

and dropped small stones onto my yellow panties

as you sang, ‘When Johnny comes Marching Home Again.’

My mother caught us and on the way home you hid

on the floor of the car, terrified of meeting your mother.

Come Lazarus, just sit for a time,

sit up and talk some more

about the summers by the ocean;

remember the pier at Rye?

You were fifteen and we dove together, your hand slipped

and touched my breast, we kissed that evening

sitting on the grass between your father’s tent,

and mine,the tea tree's rough bark rubbing urgently

against my skin. The stars shone above 

and your brother, his white teeth sparkling, threw water over us.

Please Lazarus, stand up for me.

I want to hear your voice, I remember when

you would sometimes whisper into the conch of my ear,

your words thrumming into my brain. I remember

the way you screamed and laughed all those summers ago

as our families holidayed at Ocean Grove

and how when I got lost in Spooky Forest, and the light

started to diminish so that shadows confused me further,

you were the one who found me, your voice

called out my name so loudly

I was able to follow it out of the maze.

I know our lives have separated since then

but those nights and days still have their place

and even though our adult minds pretend importance

those memories are as dear to me now

as when they first happened.

Please Lazarus, life has been cruel to me -

two children lost to drugs

and a third in prison

but the memories of you have held me

through some of those dark evenings

and in the back of my mind  like an unsung bell, is always 

an ‘if only and maybe’.

Please Lazarus, my beauty is long gone

and my skin once smooth

now wrinkles like the ocean, I feel everything moving beyond me,

past some point where I will no longer exist,

but you are always in my background,

always a hope, a possibility.

Please Lazarus come back to me.

Hope is like Water

Again I have broken in,

like a tooth ache calling

a tongue,

this house beckons

as I pass it every day

from your house to mine;

it speaks in many voices

this old house

with the sign out front

letting me know

its time is short.

I know about short time.

I understand the way

it sits still,

waiting demolishment;

I can hear its soft final sigh

tinged with regret

as it echoes to the feet

that once ran up and down the stairs.

I enter via a downpipe

every night around twelve,

carrying a bottle of port or some such.

I sit in this silent house and drink.

I feel something in my heart,

like the petals of a magnolia tree,

fall silent

down a deep, deep well

into an emptiness

I had never thought possible.

Sometimes I waken

to the bird calls, quickly leave via the front door

hoping in my absence

you may have telephoned.

I feel hope rising in my chest;

knowing, even as I hurry,

everything is too late.