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 no hero ——Only me
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
Or the imagined pain […]
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
To be a part of the world
But I can see that all the […]
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 life – and 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 the car and their place […]
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 as it is, it’s not […]
‘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 cope
I took walks away from her
With my music
One […]
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 with me in bars,
And walk home […]
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 enough
God thought my son would benefit
From the pain of addiction,
The challenge […]