Ode to the Iris (2004)

For Monica

Pale windblown grass of your eyes
Upon which I would lie,
And embrace the waist of your mind
As in soundless sleep I spy
Waking flower spread divine,
An illumined goldmark in the wine -
All this verdant glow is yours,
Held in glass of love now mine.

the breaking

Door (2003)

I

Tonight the sky plays
a game of worship
and burials.

A door keeps us captive,
safe from the rituals
of starflight and moon.

In this room of crimes
language stoops,
defies, and murders.

Our voices straying loud
beyond the walls,
windows, treefigures.

Despair cries out of me;
I am the one you never
knew, nor guessed.


II

You saw me capable
of broken glass,
bleeding fingers.

The ice, our silence,
was hard - overcrowding
time and movement.

When the door opened
outward, once again
the wind entered us.

I accepted the door then
as my sign of leaving,
my finality, farewell.

And that is to say
we ever so gently
die, and have closed.

hiatus (2003)

your eyes flicker,
(blue) captive butterflies

you have dosed again, tonight, you,
swallowing the bullet, scorching
cerebral cortex, and further -
you are denying yourself access to

fragments (of dream of paper
documents of the sounds you woke
to voices when you were little and
made soft of clay and of...)

we pay our way, enter,
descend via the stairs,

we break circles; halving and
quartering pills like slices of chalk

leaving the night's cold
counterfeit dreams

we are briefly
approaching perfection

Death, I will not touch you (2002)

Dedicated to Bill Wallace, who (inadvertently) inspired this poem.


Death, I will not touch you:
you are yet more flesh
I crave to touch.

You are visionary; you are
looking out from
a dark room.

There is a glint
of light, where
a bullet perforated
the paper wall
of my chamber

(from outside...
all the clamour outside:
the sleepless demanding
to be let in).

I dream
that you
look in
on me.

Business
is slow
in the dead letter office.

And these
cold headstones,
the wind combing grass
in waves;

the sky
a sleeper
never waking.

There is no
customer.

hand (2003)

tell me what
the hand is doing
as it watches
to lift
slide
and touch

and
in sleep
where does it move
locating
open doors
reaching inside

hand can
no longer hold
weight of secrets
damaged hand
tired from argument
scratched by thought

sometimes hand
is the gun
sometimes the bird
startled skyward
by the shot

Haiku (2002)

Far water -------your voice
is heard beneath the silence,
passing through the rocks.


This haiku was 'Highly Commended' by the Consulate-General of Japan, in the City of Perth Library's Haiku Competition for National Poetry Week (September 1-10, 2006).

Coffee haiku (2004)

white browns black, one hit -
eyelids stretch, caffeine drills me
back into the world.

For Kathleen, on her 30th Birthday (2004)

Some see through the lies that bind,
Unstitch the mind to realise
That what you have is yours to find,
Not to hold: and this applies
To the one I see before me here,
A seeking soul who knows no fear
In the face of beauty (this is rare),
Where other souls embrace despair.

She (2004)

She:
a church
vast & quiet,
nearer than
grasped fire


She:
reshapes the surrounding
lights,
flowers
in a flaring now


She:
releases her voices,
speaks free with touch,
no poison secrets
black her passing


She:
her escape from
skin; the heart
of her heart:
the ocean


She:
contains
thought-flight,
outermost glimpse,
dream untravelled


She:
I am one of,
the place where
I awaken, now
inscribed & deciphered

composed: 25/08/2004