New Publisher

 https://ifwgaustralia.com/2021/04/13/new-acquisition-the-christmas-maze-by-danny-fahey/

Sometimes, mother:

 

Mother sometimes
and the fault lies in the formation, cliffs
and troughs spring out of connections formed
in plates rather than seamlessly. Ruptures occur
a face can feel as if it is floundering in sand
breathing in such cases resembles drowning
a hand waving but the signal signals to siblings
run, back out the backdoor, revisit friends
once more, feed yourselves, dress yourselves
for heaven’s sake, save yourselves.

Mother sometimes
what I wish for, which must always remain
separate from what is wished for me,
radiates outwards, silence can be a tool
to suppress hurt, I learnt that lesson
a long time ago; words emitted are not butterflies
free to cavort and land where they desire, words
are barbs hungry to grip and snare – your eyes
have always been twin pools
I hated seeing my reflection within.

Mother sometimes
I catch a certain look that draws upon you
I hear the curtain rings clink
see the light diminish, know your thoughts
have returned to the realm before
in that barefoot paddock where wounds
are formed by circumstances never understood
like having a brother who died
and so took pride of place in a manner
you never could.

Dinosaurs:

 

What goes between
is trapped by pockets
of air, themselves trapped by flakes of snow
that alter under pressure, become ice
a captured story that contains
that day’s actions, a hand
light upon soft skin
around the nape of neck, bare
foot taps another foot’s toes and nails
in time with a current song, bodies push
and weave into spaces that yield
and return, words too
become ensnared, buried
in time, squeezed into tales
barely remembered, then comes
a time in light, an action triggers
the memory, sunshine releases air
after a century
of being compressed, thirty
or more years ago now, laughter, hair
blown by a breeze from a time
before climate
became the talking point
a time
before children walked the earth.

sandstone and shadows:

 

Time erected as if it could
be built forever –
know it as a lie, the finger
etched into the stone a sideshow
nothing will last forever.

Written words sold, sacred contract
as each device lasted
longer than the precursor – a diaspora
of peoples cross the blocks
and girders of progress.

When then did it get turned
on its head – built for mayflies instead?
What finger, what wall,
a new temple made from sand
that tumbled faster than years could build?

Three hours not three decades
a mire of broken goods loll –
plastic islands in the ocean, oil products
for hermit crabs and newly formed rocks
build blocks of decay.

Children focus elsewhere
as hands, turned wrinkled,
how strong they grip the bed – the aged
know how to hold – the young
look elsewhere.

Is it then
the construction of a desert, gods
destined to turn away, the hand withdrawn
a finger no longer exists to write
prophesy upon the wall?

Asking why makes us human:

 

Head not above benchtop
eyes peer up, the struggle to see
in the giant’s lair, a finger
points to the jar, the lid so secure
small hands cannot unwind.

No other creature,
when denied
will ask why?

Stand at the window, watch
the rain that falls upon the garden, gate
and street, imagine footsteps
that head through the gate
and up the street to the corner.

No other creature
when abandoned
will ask why?

Bald head, toothless mouth
the body rejects movement
calcifying with the effect
of too many years in oxygen, weary
eyes ponder the darkness ahead.

No other creature
when faced with the end
will ask why?

Saying hello to magpies:

 

She always does,
when they hop along the street
neighbours popping in for a tea and chat
she listens to them
with a curious wrinkled brow
lips teased by front teeth.

Her skill at listening
heeding the eyes and voice
of magpies and spirits
her time-free patience
makes children
of us all.

When she sees a magpie
it’s my father’s spirit
coming to say hello
to check all is well
to tell a joke as only a magpie
in that warble can tell.

She loved my father,
not for his smile
or the gifts always bestowed
but because in her world of chaos
and horrid voices without relent
he bequeathed calm.

The world is a better place
for magpies, she says, their song
unique among birds, captures
sunrise and calls down the night
conferring peace in a world
too ready to be tumultuous.

fruit picking:

 

Fathom this, floating oranges, peeled
with fingers and teeth, drift
between words shared
on that backstep, looking out
at the decrepit sheds
full of old toys so lost they spoke
amongst themselves
and to you, that was the shock
even back then, so many things spoke to you
as your father did not, the beer spoke to him
and kept him silent unless rage took hold
then we’d sit on the back step
and share another orange –

even now, old and gray, when I
choose an orange
out of the fruit bowl, my legs automatically
wander me outside
sit me down on the back step, as I pluck
the first hole with two front teeth
as you always did back then
I recall again the sound
of china teacups as they hit
the shocked walls in a song
accepted even as skin and bones
reverberated like cheap plaster.

Shame is a tree:

Shame is a thirsty tree
roots within ribs
winds branches across bones
places leaves between discs
feeds on words
until silence remains
turns hands into fists
furrows flesh, turns a face
into a mountain
with canyons for the secret tears.

Shame grows in the dark
poisonous when shared
murderous when left alone
I have scissors bought at a flea market
snip snip in the late afternoons
treat the tree as a bonsai
and shape it with will, it is smaller now
grows in places set aside
so the rest of me is free
to decide who I should be. 

duck placed under a bucket

Darkness, the slice of a knife
bewildered mind, distant honks
feel the ground underfoot
and metallic dink dink of bill
against nonperishable tin
ponder flight as wings ache
disuse is the hardest excuse
exudes a laziness, no ears
care for stories of imprisonment.

My hard-earned is on certain facts –
two bets;
duck will settle, regain the sense
of being in the egg, wait
until the bucket is lifted
then with a honk and waddle
will hurry off to join the others
and that it is female
in carrying life they must fight
to avoid the buckets placed to curtail.

Absence creates more buckets
than there are ducks in the universe.

a life metaphor

 

 

 

 

the cemetery and all the stone

and marble crucifixes

the angels with eyes

lifted up to the heavens

the slabs of marble and granite

holding bones in eternal hugs

the names and dates and dried up petals

the empty vases and incense holders

the trees for shade

the ashes in rows

the roses for tears and never bestowed kisses

resides in perpetuity

inside our flesh and bones, in the skulls and marrow

of all of us but mostly

in the women who birth us.

Beneath Paris:

 

In the dark city of reflection walls are made

from skulls and other random bones,

create spaces of separateness in the limestone

avenues to wander by the light of carbide

whisper romantic songs into the starless ceiling

hold hands with ghosts who roam the streets

as they try to remember the address upstairs.

It is there voices meet, pretend to be echoes

recount old stories of sunlight and birdsong

with hearts that long to return, seeds that need

warmth for life to burst upon them again, hands

ready to push through rock and soil, two arms

to spread into the joyous stance of ballerinas.

Poets fish the Night’s Oceans:

It is a difficult hunt in waters

filled with the eternally unseen

afterimages of things imagined

sensory echoes of experiences

bittersweet scent of dreams.

 

The water is deep

heavily salted with tears

forces anglers time

and time again back to the surface.

 

The plunge brings a proximity to death

the other side of life’s coin.

 

it risks forgetfulness and idle hours

staring into the currents words leave behind.

 

old friends float

other anglers greet

some hold up catches that can fade

or appear larger in the light.

 

These fish cannot sate

drive the fishers to try again and again

an addiction

to hunt the ripples, the after-taste, the hope.

 

The quest for what cannot be complete

for what cannot ever be brought

truly to the surface whole

but in parts

scales that reflect sunlight

and hold a darkness within.

 

So cold now

and so warm fishing all these years

they stretch out behind

like the drying bones of leviathans

perpetually now at rest

on the edge of night’s tilted shores.

The Carter:

 

Who is this man? Pulls the wagon

wooden wheels, the cart chocked

with femurs and skulls, the remains

removed from the clogged cemeteries

to a new place of rest; even the dead crowd

their silence louder than car horns,

strident as voices can only desire to be.

 

Who is this man? Dressed in white

so that he glows in the subterranean city

working through the days beneath the workers

working through their days; he has no sun

until he returns upstairs to sleep,

instead the gentle hum of carbide, the sound

of wooden wheels across limestone.

 

Who is this man? Leads the cart of the dead

deeper into the labyrinth as if carrying

the rejected who had no coins for Kharon

and must travel by road instead; he wears a hat

and white smock as if an artist, searches

for the site of his next great masterpiece

the ink the years, the bristles the finality of death.

for my children because I too often forget:

 

In this fix, stuck fast

between the opening my feet dangle into

and the small space my head has found

my chest and back pressed, breath difficult –

 

I may never make sound again and here I wanted to

connect, say some things, explain but stuck fast,

the moment a rock that gives no ground, so many words,

cavern moths flutter into the shadows and are gone.

 

The pressure builds, the thought

is this the last time we’ll ever talk

and I cannot find the sound, so pressed are my ribs

so difficult to expand the lungs.

 

then the rope, the chisel,

the hammer, a chance; I forget words,

let thoughts as bats hang and sleep in the dark

and use my ears to find the path, I listen.

 

That act we so often forget

as we explore

the ears, the canals, the passage

into the underneath.

The boy as an older man to his mother:

Into this then, this space
of sacred rocks placed in balance,
the sunlight to screen thoughts.

I remember when we were young
you held my hand, mother, as I
now hold yours, your eyes then, clear
looking forward to a time of me
never to become a reality,

those rocks that hover
huddle against wind and word
create shelter in thought and deed.

This man I am, distant now
from that time of holding hands,
my children adults now
who plan that hand-holding in their futures
and whatever they will see
standing there with their’s
will match
and will not

the vision you had
and that now sometimes I glimpse echoes of
as you sit, frail, barely present
in this second between dreams.
 

Puhpowee:

 

They make their own wind to send children

out into the world

thrive in the electrical storms

have their own force that pushes them

to emerge ready to be seen every morning

some can bend the mind

form miniature circles and amphitheaters

provide shelter and shade

 

and all the while we think of apples falling

an atom’s dance

and a cat that’s neither here nor there

 

while failing to see powers that create

as they feed on radioactive waste

and dream of one single forest again.

rock formations:

 

Underworld shadows, the movement of a hand

it touched my brow, the fever

smells of ochre and the litany

we will be here forever sung

as rain and wind steal particles of faith

carry them to the water’s edge,

set them adrift a million tiny babes

seeking the lagoon of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

 

When I was young in solemn oath

I did swear the bible and all the words

and fear to be truth-telling, sister, sister

you smiled and knew that lagoon would call to me

as soon as the necessary year’s accumulated

here now I float, touch my hand

and imprint a thousand caverns

sing to ensorcell any daughter’s haven.

 

Inside, in the shadows and rivulets that run

with all the actions done

handprints glow, red patterns discerned

by closing eyelids exposed to bright hope

all the while the caves chew the years

hollow the space to receive the bones

the heart a geologist watching solid steps

become the mists of a new age.

Petiole:

 

fading leaf grips with knowledge

the worst kind of hanging on

can see the future unfold

in deep green dreams

the wind whispers

you’ll come back, you’ll come back

it is always about the return

 

the earth thinks it ends

when the leaf touches down

but at night

as the saucepan catches all stories

stars hold the deeper understanding

eventually darkness will win

Inosculation:

 

First, let us acknowledge

the depth to our lichen and fungi

entwining thoughts that span years – did you

know dear a lichen can create soil from rock?

appropriate for my heart that met yours

made whole at last, I think we forget

across the milky way of years

that your flesh and mine cannot know

where one begins and the other ends

 

Second, as I stand here before your absence

in the ground (pay heed children,

 two die when one goes)

family and friends behind pale

shocked as my right hand holds the soil

any moment the freefall into your new home

I know this is as much about my passing

as yours even though I am the one breathing.

 

Third, if I can find the courage

in that bed we bought thirty years ago

I will roll into the emptiness and hope

in filaments none of us truly understand

to touch and heal us both

spend nights alone with dreams

of the days we spent sharing sunlight synthesizing

events into food, eating in out of body experiences.

 

Fourth, with one heart now, in blood

that flows and that does not,

doing double the work two shall speak

with a single voice and through the spread

into children and their children’s children

see the forest, a single contour of difference

that supports so many who have never met

and yet connect through the underworld

structures only mutual time can erect.

Fossil traces:

 

In the salt wedged between progress

and an echo of a dream giant machines

rest, stilled in the end by a lack

bigger than greed. Where mountains

once stood holes stare up at stars

imagine their peaks returned at last.

In the oceans, in the sand the imprints

of packages discarded for the worth inside.

 

Across the flatlines of the globe

bones sing the dirges, future minds

struggle to put the bones into a semblance

of sense out of the mass of loss, beneath land

in caverns stacked cylinders hold a poison

a thousand, thousand years in the unmaking.

 

Shadows of cities rest now

in the reclaimed forests, steel girders

twist into new stories for fur and feather

hold eggs and young safely above.

 

Buried in time, deep in the ancestral mind

memories float unheard, untold, sacred.

 

Who will release the casket’s dirt now?

Blue Aura:

 

In the underneath

where the only light is in a dream.

In the drift of potash.

In the land of what is and what has been taken.

In the age of recollections

I remember the promises made –

they are the flash of blue

showing what has passed

and cannot be seen;

what once had touched

and where it had been.

 

The flare of colour

the only signal of life

in the decay of body and mind.

Roadkill:

I found a word today

crushed into disuse

its brittle white letters exposed

its smallest heartsound stilled.

 

The word I think – it is hard to be precise

with words found in forms

no longer used after they have fallen

by the roadside – was groovy.

 

That carried me back to pretending

when I was twelve with Patrick

that I was a Rockstar with long hair

singing Daydream Believer.

 

It took me forward from that

to my brother who continues to use grouse

another word threatened,

in the spoken context at least –

 

I presume, though do not know,

the flying variety still exists

out there in the whole wide world

alive unless it has been recently shot.

 

Time forces us to wear words out,

hits them with the force of a generation’s desire

to change words spoken

create new avenues for sound to parade along.

 

When I was really young

I was threatened

to have the tip of my tongue

snipped –

 

my mother even went so far as to display the scissors

that would perform the slicing deed –

I had uttered the word bloody

now I say fuck as frequently as the. 

Sounds of the week

Sunday is the sound

of lawnmowers mowing lawns

 

Monday is the sound

of doors hurriedly opening

 

Tuesday has no sound

unless it snores

 

Wednesday takes a deep breath

lets loose a chant

 

Thursday mutters miserably

under the weight of chores

 

Friday roars

Saturday sings frantically happy lyrics

 

Sunday is the sound

of lawnmowers mowing lawns.

A spiteful sceptical poem without punctuation lest punctuation is just another cause

 

 

imagine the spread of forests that could still stand

imagine the branches that may have waved

the leaves that could have unfurled

in a wind that wandered without a hurry

to get wherever it is the wind goes

 

and the lead left

in the ground unground

unsharpened unspoken

 

if we let loose the reins of pretence

that protests change the world

we have created that horse has bolted

runs now of its own accord

little heeds our words songs or signs

 

instead truth to tell we need to surrender

our power our money or desire

stop the purchase across counters

littered with the blood of women

the bones of slaves the ears

teeth and smiles of native children

to make shirts and shoes

lest catwalks grow sad and unused

 

after all this time

the rich have more wealth

the powerful more power

regardless of all the words

that coddle

and let us pretend anything has changed

Planned obsolescence:

 

I

From the beginning it is planned

that end

the futility to pretend

the refrigerator will last into the next decade

the television will beam pictures out

until the sun eventually switches off

the act of drying hair with the hairdryer

brings the little puff of smoke ever closer.

 

Intelligent design by factories

who know the side to butter their bread

is not the long-lasting strength of year

into new year,

rather they harbour the bright and shiny exit

once the designated warranty is buried

under dust and receipts in the drawer

beside a sadly degrading computer.

 

II

Father is dead now

these past thirty years

my brothers and I have grey beards,

there is the slightest shake in the fingers

of my sister’s hand that once held mine

as she walked me across the street,

mother forgets I called yesterday

and  I have grown

past that little boy of six with children

she cannot remember

and a wife she forgets each phone call

that she has met.

 

III

old Nelson is gone

his heart beat until the pain

was too much to bear

his blind eyes through his ears

followed my movements about the house

he only rose

to find the food bowl and sometimes

if luck chose my side

to ask to piss outside.

 

I miss the sound of his feet

plucking sound down the corridor

the feel of his small head

resting on my lap;

 

I have a picture of him

painted by my friend, it shocks me to think

Kevin has been gone 5 years.