At Auskick

At Auskick.
Its:
Down!
Up!
Down!
On the ground!
…and up doggy!

Mac, the kid I hit in the head with the first footy I kicked in forty years, is being instructed by the coach. Lets go! Mac! Lets go! After the ball hit inattentive Mac he ran to his mother flung himself and clung like the creature in Patricia Piccinini’s The Embrace. Nearby coach told me not to worry. Don’t worry we do it all the time. But I did worry it was a hard direct kick. The kind of kick I had taught myself in games of street footy when wiry boys tried to scare me off by kicking hard. Any tips from my father were casual. I was never going to make the team, never win fairest and best, never play in a premiership side, never be man enough to join the boys’ club.

Mac’s father arrives. He uses man strength to try to detach the child’s limpet grip from the comfort breast. In this tug of war he is loosing. He bares his teeth, snarls and growls. Mother raises her arms, surrenders. He peels the child away. His voice machine gun fire, an axe, an ancient sword recites

The Manifesto.

No sooking.
It is not the way.
Son now clings to him.
It is a shock he didn’t see…
What did I tell you?
To the boy
the weeping boy,
Keep Your Eye On The Ball!
Stop!
Listen!
This is how you do it.
When hurt you cry for a bit.
Then say OK.
It hurts but it is over now.
You get on with it.
This is how you be a man.

Message to the Boys
Beat your wife.
Drown your kids.
Kill the cat.
Kick the dog in the soft warm guts.
But don’t cry.

Above us the sun
is veiled in cirrus
but not enough
to stop the sting.
It burns.
Sun burns.
Men don’t cry.
Silent trees crowd in.
A woman crochets in purple.
Complains to herself.
Boys’ voices are still.
Half time oranges.

bucks flat
crow continues the story
men make business with ellipsoids
trees strain forward

distant

i eat stars
my eyes full
of cold
white
dead light

walk without glasses

banana skin
mummified mammal
spine curved
lungs caved in

stump in a lawn
dead cat’s
last crawl

distant workman
with ladder
first alien
invasion fleet

just married
helium balloon
the moon
falls
slumps
shrunk

drive home

woodlands mid winter
low moon, a bent gold coin - breaks
among black branches.

i am my mother

 i am my mother
on hands knees

i use my  body
as machine

smooth polish
into wood

jarrah gleams
blood stain red

narcissus searches
for reflection

Boulder Pioneer Cemetery

 

 

 

 

 

She is gone like a flower cut down in full bloom
From the sunshine of the earth to the shade of the tomb
But death cannot break the chain of our love
Or steal the fond hope we shall meet her above

untitled

warm day cools
crow calls stop when darkness falls
fire unlit wood uncut

Ripple

silent escape from pond central
onto cave floor sand
spreads to embed rock surfaces
folds through foothills
runs through desert dunes
solidifies in glass
grows in petals
leaves of potted plants
arrives on boot soles
invades kitchens
freezes in ice cream
waves through raspberries
and marble cake
steels into sliced vegetables
knits into patterns
embroiders edges of tea cloths
luxuriates in lace
follows icing fork tines
out into raked paddocks
gathers on winds
surfaces in half ripe wheat
flies through cirrus skies
and ripples across salt lakes.