Month: November 2013

Ordinary love

I have to admit, U2
are not what they were.
They are slower, less able
to stretch and risk.
They have a routine.
They come out wrapped
in layers
of production.

But they will always
be my band. The love
is like the eye light
of a time-marked woman
still
looking
at the grizzled man
with whom she danced
and danced — how long
ago? She
sees
the dancer still spinning
inside him, the same soul
still closing its eyes,
singing its song.

At least, that’s how it is
for me,
my band,

and that’s how I suppose it is
for such a woman,
such a man.

U2’s ‘Ordinary Love’

discrete

Mattie Furphy House June 2012

On the path below the verandah
where I sit, discreet,

discrete occasional clusters,
twos, fives, pass.

A man exercising
an unpleasant dog.
A woman striding
fifteen feet behind him.
She projects her clauses
toward his shoulderblades:
‘As she said, y’can get away with buying cheap shoes,
but then Whammo! it all comes back to bite you in the bum!’

I sit, discreet

A father with a girl, two.
Behind them a mother
with a boy, four, the one person

who notices me. Just
as his eyes touch mine,

the mother lays her fingers
on his small
neck
and says, ‘D’you like my cold hands?’

(First published in Jukebox (Out of the Asylum Writers, Fremantle, 2013))

The face appears

The face appears as if upon a screen.
The image taunts me every night in bed.
The Muse personified, a handsome man
with lips that all the women ache to feed.

‘O will you be my Muse personified
and let me touch your mystery with my pen?’
I warble, when, inside my errant head,
the face appears as if upon a screen.

I gaze in supplication at my phone.
Sweet Sylvia Plath just killed herself instead.
Ms Greer snarls, ‘You’re stronger on your own!’
The image taunts me every night in bed.

His inky eyes are vortices of need.
‘Don’t look!’ I tell the girl inside my brain.
He stares at me from everything I read:
the Muse personified, a handsome man.

Even if I made myself a nun
and gave my nights to contemplating God,
that sucker wouldn’t leave my soul alone.
With lips that all the women ache to feed,
                                   the face appears.

(First published in Jukebox (Out of the Asylum Writers, Fremantle, 2013))

Silent as glass

It
is pool,
is pull,
is still
sky blue.

Cool as a doll,
I’m limbs,
I’m lungs,
I’m lightly mad,
must dance.

Moonsuck moves it.
Swirling, sluicing, slurping,
slapping, fizzing, it headbutts my hips,
sprays a million glinting bits of never,
halts,
ebbs,
is silent as glass.

Tiptoe-bare,
I’m towelled,
curled,
lightly sad,
must sleep.

(First published in Jukebox (Out of the Asylum Writers, Fremantle, 2013))