“We wish to thank the AER Foundation’s Small Grants Program for its support and commitment to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Australia”
The webbing of my self control Is bursting apart Breaking down the disguise Of my life Unshakeable equanimity Hardheaded pragmatism Now a Mobius Strip of uncertainty An endless comedy of behaviours Provided for the entertainment Of the gods I wait in the wings For the hero to appear to save me But at the worst possible moment I find there is [...]
A child, designing castles on a beach, Digging holes – Sand streaming out behind like a rooster tail, Noisy, excited, breathless, Every game an adrenalin rush of urgency On her beach, each shell is a priceless commodity And reality can be left behind to play in her world Where the only pain a stubbed toe or a skinned knee [...]
Your unruly blonde hair Caresses your face You seem so lonely So unsure of yourself Is the embrace of your hair The only kind of embrace You have ever known? Your eyes tell me more Than your lips ever could They look into forever You’ve seen too much You pretend to play To have fun [...]
I wasn’t always a drunk Once I was a little girl Who wanted love Which she found – in a bottle At first it had been fun There were friends and laughter She felt complete, unbroken for the first time But it stole something I couldn’t afford to lose It took my sanity – for awhile It took over my [...]
The old blue Commodore parked casually on the grass in the back yard. The lackluster patina of corrosion oozing from every rusty pore. Steel viscera exposed for examination of boys who clasp to their chests not spanner and wrench, but that ubiquitous symbol of manhood - the stubby cooler wrapped lovingly around their “Stubby’! They talk And drink Tinkering with [...]
Sitting with you on our verandah Amidst a jungle of ferns, palms And emotions Looking out over the tops of red roofed houses Across to the ocean We sit together on our rough hewn hardwood chairs Talking, laughing And for me Loving beyond all earthly comprehension of the word Easing the lacerating despair I felt for too long As beautiful [...]
‘She had a hard life’ – they whispered The excuse carelessly repeated when nothing else could possibly explain the behaviour of the person who called herself my mother. She thrived on the casual manipulation of her family –me. At six I became responsible for the feelings of she who had many – all negative. To [...]
There are times when the shadow of death Dilutes living It waters everything down making life, Instead of death, Insubstantial and unreal What’s more, the words others use to comfort are, After all, Only words Loneliness and despair are the ghosts That stand by my side in restaurants While I eat And dance with me at parties Instead of friends They sit [...]
I have often wondered What kind of pain Could make a person Choose to give everything away Make friends Feel like strangers Scorch a hundred lives And gain Only Peace
‘Unbearable grief’ Remember those words? God showed me what it felt like? It seems he thought my son Needed to know too So he gave him A disability that allowed him To understand that he wanted To live like everyone else But not enough ability to make it happen Just in case that wasn’t [...]