She descends the stairway, she has no goodbyes

It’s the only fair way, she’s heard all the lies

Heads for the door, it’s no fun anymore

As an unpaid whore for a lifetime.

Where are the answers, where do you start

To empty your head and protect your heart?

Nowhere to go, who wants to know

A woman alone for a lifetime.

She looks for the daylight that hides from the night

From valleys of duty to mountains of right

No longer fears the sighs and the tears

Of a faithful wife for a lifetime.

She takes as her playground the ends of the earth

The womb of her spirit about to give birth 

To her own mind, one of a kind

A woman she’ll know for a lifetime.

This poem was adapted by Ronnie Taheny for a track called Tell Your Story Walkin’ on her album ‘Valentines Prey’, released in 1996.

If it’s true that Canberra does exist

and is not simply a state of mind,

what are we to make of this monument

to mind over matter?

What can we say of the soul

of this planners’ fantasia

with sheep at the fringes?

Is it necessary and sufficient proof of its heavenly value

that angelic children play on Parliament’s roof

while the enchanted forests are shredded

in the national interest?

Is this God-as-machine all we can reasonably ask and,

if we have created it in our own image,

where did we find such a sideshow alley mirror?

The answers are not apparent

but a suggestion, if I may,

in the interests of perspective.

Take an occasional mythic journey

and observe the underlying sheep

grazing resolutely at the edge of reality

and hear the bleating of the new-born lambs

who are neither content to be silent

in the heart of this land nor

in the back of your mind.

Note: The word ‘goes’ for many years was the popular substitution for ‘says’, as immortalised by the TV comic character of Kylie Mole.

Stop me if you’ve heard this

but there’s this woman, see,

and she walks into this bloke’s life

(bold as brass)

and she marches up to him and goes

“I’ll have a life friendship, thanks”.

And this bloke goes,

“Sorry, only got ships that pass in the night friendships;

fresh out of life”.

So this woman goes,

“Well, I’ll wait ’til you get one in”.

And the bloke goes,

“Nar, don’t stock ’em any more;

they’re always breakin’ down

and they cost too much to repair”.

So the woman goes,

“Well, I’ll make one then.

I’ve got a bit of spare love

and a mattress on the floor

and a corkscrew

and a high boredom threshold”.

And the bloke goes,

“Alright, alright, but there’s a few conditions”.

So she goes, she goes,

she goes

away.

For a family grieving a stillbirth.

If you took out the pain

and held it up to the light,

would it look like

something that belonged to you?

Or would it look like someone else’s fate,

wrongly delivered

by an absent-minded God,

who’d forgotten that you’d taken out love insurance?

Or would it look like your karma,

reflecting from your life mirrors,

clear and unambiguous,

like everything else in your life?

Or would it look like what it is,

there and inescapable,

painful, inexplicable, ambiguous,

and tattooing a face on your heart

that will live forever?

Take out tomorrow

and hold it up to the light;

and make it look like something that belongs to you.

Background: In the 90’s I lived in an inner suburb of Adelaide, where burglaries were rife, and we suffered that intrusion twice.

Our under-things in disarray

they’ve spread our privates wide

and filled our rooms with the sour sobs

the urbanite must abide.

I look for rhyme in what they stole,

the price these objects fetch,

as if they’ll yield a perfect clue,

and fit a formless wretch.

What have we here, what circumstance

has brought them to our nest

to stuff a K-mart pillow slip

with mid-life’s treasure chest?

The underclass in sweet revenge,

retrenched and fighting back?

Or addicts in a frenzied grab

To feed their mother-smack.

All conscience-pricked, I will forgive

their need to take their share

and call for rapid social change

to clear the fettered air.

But deep inside my bowels rage

against the outer grace

and if I find the thieving shits

I’ll smash each mirror face.

Who knows how long this can continue,

this tenure in the future through collective presents.

Whatever the generations bring,

there will be totems of the past

fixed firmly insistent in each of our minds,

arrayed with faces carved in the hard woods

that only family trees produce

and set, sometimes poles apart, in the family grove.

These are some of mine.

 Children growing themselves from new numbers each year,

all named and loved and parented in common for a day

with tear-filled eyes, chocolate-coated faces and grinny cheeks,

each hoisted to embrace and admiration,

all feats applauded and all false pride mocked.

Food, prepared as sanctioned by time,

in unspoken, ordained ritual by the women,

the bearers of all sustaining life.

Men, surrounded by seemingly unobservant boys,

using beer to shorten stretching distances,

quietly competing every hurdle

until a child clings to a leg

and wins.

Lives past, sitting patiently in reserved and sacred chairs,

coming back to life in anecdotes

of bastardry and joy.

Toddlers and crawlers, excited and bewildered,

knee-deep in wrapping paper and parental nostalgia.

Babes at breast, absorbing every nuance

through the pores of their clan skin

and the memories encoded in their mother’s milk.

The married-ins, belonging in their separateness

to this caravan, as hopeful and as helpless

as those that followed a certain star

but at least knowing for whom they bear their gifts.

And, amidst all, the matriarch unfolds a pattern

and, with skills both ancient and subtle,

draws to her strands unknitted,

in case they ever unravel

and pull the fabric apart.

These are my totems, taking firmer shape with each year,

and living beyond any other presents shared.

And they ensure that all our futures

will have at least one day

not alone.