“We instinctively reach out to those who work with us on creating meaning.  Those who give voice and form to our search for meaning, and who help us to make our life purposeful, are those we cherish, and to whom we return gift for gift.”  Margaret J. Wheatley – ‘Leadership and the New Science’

“The perfection of your art lies in the difficult region between the heart’s intent and the expression of this intent in gesture.  Practice your forms in peace.  You have done better than you think.”  Tai Chi teaching

For Damian Lacey

Scoop the stream

and drink from the well-spring that is your life’s work

and rise refreshed to continue the journey.

Press the sky,

keeping at bay the thunder that lives in emptiness

and the lightning disguise of the void.

Draw strongly on the bow of the Shaolin Archer

to protect your left/right, yin/yang, husband/father, new/old

and honour each when each is in need.

Search the clouds

for the mirrors beyond

so you will always have a Fool to make you laugh.

Lift the rock

that is your faith and let your eyes follow its path,

lowering them only when the test is over.

Touch the sky and press the earth

to bring heaven meekly to the world

where the earth-inheritors dwell.

Use the eye of the tiger

to show the world you know what lies behind you

each time you choose to pounce.

Grip the swallow’s egg

keeping all that is precious

safe within your mortal shield.

and each day,

Bow to the light that is in you

knowing that it touched me as I passed you

on my zig zag pathway home.

 

For my Mum and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary

Something must have been there

through fifty summers of heat haze,

sunburn itching against bedclothes,

fear feeding off smoke in the nostrils

and eating salads at dusk.

 

Something must have been there

through fifty autumns of leaf mulch,

weak sun fighting the descending cool,

watching the first football sail over the fence

and surrendering to a fire.

 

Something must have been there

through fifty winters of grey wet,

clothes damp-steaming on horses,

darkness enclosing work, to and fro,

and soup-and-toasting Sundays.

 

Something must have been there

through fifty years of spring treachery,

winter’s skeleton dressed in summer clothes,

frost-bitten life triumphing over fading death

and all things seeming possible.

 

Something must have been there,

through fifty years of seasons sweet and bitter,

settling differences through closeness and separation,

learning life is not a line but a circle

and, in the end, you are beginning again.

 

You have the rest of your life

to tell each other what it was,

and is,

starting now.

Memories,

carefully dusted off and swathed,

packed in the boxes

along with the more trivial possessions.

Like the apocryphal cat

they can’t be left behind.

Some you will unpack immediately upon arrival

as handy conversation pieces when old friends call.

Some will remain encased

with only an occasional furtive private inspection

to check for silverfish and mildew.

And some will be ‘forgotten’,

but will only feign death

and, like ancient terracotta soldiers,

will wait in infinite patience

ready to ambush the present.

 

To begin to begin means beginning to end

the lives lived through others,

the boundaries of love,

the self-graven image,

the down-town face,

the magazine body,

the standard-gauge line,

the next logical step,

the leadership of the lost,

the mantle of the Madonna,

the leg-irons of the country,

the glister of the city,

the waiting for Death,

the defining of Life,

the stroking of guilt,

the denial of pride

and, the first journey.

The second journey may begin at

the Stations of the Cross,

the point of no return,

the height of absurdity,

the depths of despair

or the horizon of friendship.

To begin is to print your own poetic licence

and to drive on whatever side of the road

you damn well please.

We are all cut men.

Cut from our mother’s chord,

with its threat to strangle us beyond the womb

or tie us to a cleaner version of ourselves

for sisterly consumption.

Cut from our father’s dream for us,

our failures punished with word and hand,

our mother-love is on the list

of unforgivable treacheries.

 Cut from our partner’s love,

with its evolving, slippery conditions

fashioned in childhood and femolution

and guilting our own evolution, as if wilfully chosen.

 Cut from true fatherhood

by Hollywood fantasia

and the crushing weight on the balls

of our selfish, restless feet.

And cut from each other

by the spun-glass phallusies of prowess

and the trashing of our historical domains

and the fear of being fucked in the arse.

We are all cut men

and our lack of healing will be the death of us.

Remember causes

and affectations of effect on rain-swept city streets

and war-zones now gone five-star?

 

Remember anger

and maintaining rage at symbolic loss

while secretly at home with the familiar futility?

 

Remember sexual honesty

and fucking whoever felt like you

and confining safe sex to heart condoms?

 

Remember dope

and discovering the ‘real’ you

and waking each time forgetful of the revelation?

 

Remember music

and believing decibels were antidotes to megatons

and lyrics could shield you from the Press?

 

Remember death

when it belonged to rock stars

and an endless list your mother claimed to have known?

 

Remember revolutions

and the bloody gutters of freedom

because fascism belonged to the right? Right?

 

Remember social action

sitting in smoke-filled rooms with Nescafe activists

and Housing Trust women with no teeth and less hope?

 

Remember children

sneaking past full lives and empty wombs

to be raised in the fearful parentheses of generational skipping?

 

Remember parents

left on some private shelf

in case they portrayed you to anybody that mattered?

 

Remember party politics

and seeing neighbours become politicians

only to fall in clay-footed exhaustion at the barriers?

 

Remember health

when it was something other people ought to have and

you weren’t smoke-free, mineral water in hand and smiling at God?

 

Remember money

and how it was never going to concern you

and then you learnt the golden rule and its defensible limits?

 

And do you remember when the penny dropped

that the personal was the political

and you found out you had to change?

 

And you decided to forget the revolution?

At the Buccaneer Pub, inside the walls of the old town,

drinking with ancients like myself,

pretending to be interested in rugby,

while they pretend to be interested in cricket,

but neither of us fakes their distrust of royals

(though it must be said that the man in the top hat and overalls,

feeding his bar stool-perched water spaniel some crisps and Guinness,

is a little less harsh than his mates;

he would allow them to take their own lives come the revolution).

 

Drifting from a woman behind me comes:

‘I already told you what I want but you didn’t want that!’

I turn to hear her man,

all country-tied up and jacketed with leather elbows,

red of face and spaniel-eyed, shout

‘Two more of the same, thank you, landlord’

and I wonder how long it will take before he notices

she’s been in the Ladies an awful long time

and that the pub has a back door.

 

‘Your round, convict lad,’ smiles Top Hat.

‘Besides, we’re much better entertainment.’

For the late Sue Dixon

Nothing happens by accident;

desire is design, down to Persian rugs

on the bare boards of innocence

and a corner temple

in this turned corner, turned temple,

at which you daily worship

and give thanks for cankers conquered

and those given up.

 

Here are symbols stripped bare,

the peripheral and the weak discarded

on a journey which will ultimately carry no baggage;

a journey to purely selfish ends

so you can return to us for chosen company.

 

Your very madness permeates this space

(for you are mad to do this, you know).

Your rampant, wilful idiocy,

(unleashing forces temporal and spiritual)

mind and senses unchained,

run minor riot here

bouncing off walls, laser-like,

piercing and burning out creeping reason.

 

I don’t know the woman who lives here yet

but one thing is clear.

She’s got kangaroos in her top paddock

and she no longer cares to excuse

their demanding behaviour

or their menacing demeanour.

In fact,

I’ve seen her feeding the little devils.

 

 

For the late Helen Kinnear

The woman I know

would hug cactus

if God told her to

(and she didn’t have to walk too far).

 The woman I know

would blame herself

if God went missing

(as She seems to some days).

 The woman I know

would marry men

on single-minded journeys

(when she believed in destinations).

 The woman I know

would only survive surgery

with Divine intervention

(and an iced coffee transfusion).

The woman I know

would believe in me

on the flimsiest of evidence

(and question my sanity when I returned the compliment).

 The woman I know

would think the world might end

if she wasn’t steering someone straight;

(and she’d be right).

 The woman I know

would think she was clapped out at 50

but then bat on

(because St. Rodney Marsh would).

 For Helen

For the late Barb Fitzgerald

 

Now that you are gone

the cruelty is ended.

You, the speaker of many truths,

are no longer taunted

by a tongue in twisted battle

with a mind no less sharp

and arms no less caring

that could not be raised in love.

 

Now that you are gone,

I’ll have you near me always;

Close to mind and heart,

a constant in my chaos.

But in my selfish grief,

I want you here, and now,

so that I can understand

the true order of things.

 

Now that you are gone,

I will cling to calls in the night

and recall your thoughts

in my struggle for the truth.

But I would rather have the magic

to conjure you at will

so that we could save our worlds together,

even worlds apart.

 

Now that you are gone,

You’ll never wipe away my tears

and laugh rudely with me again,

in this world that travels on.

I must learn to live,

With not one more single hour

when you soothe my soul

and make all things possible, again.