The mynah bird

                            struts
on the steel sill.

Claws clatter.  Its little bill
knocks the pane.

My clockwork keeps a rhythm,
beware the scare.

How humble this hard row.
Voices shatter

the pigeon clamour.
I've made a nest for them

a crown of twigs in
the enamel litter bin.

Every creature
loves a place to stay.

Wood-borers whittle fistulae
in the ledge where the husks rest.

The wind twists.
My pretty hearth is dry.

I winnow the brittle
endocarp of my pome.

Photos

Lyrebird stage

Dream of a lion

I open a door.
A lion dreams
couchant in the carpet pile.
He rears his haunch.
He shakes his mane.

He's little for a big cat.

Shall I scratch his chin?
Shall I guess his name?
Shall I make a pet of him?

I hesitate. I waver.
I inch my way
backwards through the door.

The lion couchant
resumes dreaming.

Roses unopened

Roses on high stems
have withered unopened.
Heads of every size,
red rose-heads have withered
on high, thorny stems
above the high walls of the garden.

We've arrived
with strings and drums
to sing the histories of roses
withered on thorny stems,
like poems stalled
in withered notebooks.

They wither unopened
among thickets of thorns
that sprawl above walls
piercing the sky.

Bride

Have I neglected you,
in your pink woollen dress,
a pink woollen rose in your hair?

I do not see your blue bouquet.
Your big eyes plead.

What can I give you,
bride in your improvized wedding wear?
A knitted furbelow trims your knee,
a knitted rose pinned in your do.

Why have you wandered
empty-handed from the chapel
wringing your gold-ringed finger?

Younger than I you married in a wink,
no time to hem a wedding veil.
Yes, you said, and your tears brimmed
splashing your short-vamped shoes.

What can I tell you, pink woollen bride?
Your rose unravels in your hair.

I'll knit it in a minute.

There. A flame.
Like love it outburns the world.

In the emptying sky

 

your diamond fire

dissolves like a sugar crystal

into luminous morning.

After the zenith

How sweet
your wide-eyed smile,
your blonde cascade,
your bright flesh bathed in the sea!

How much beauty
stuffed in your little finger,
how elegant your warm scent
wrapped in a white, silk sheet!

There's no one like you.
None as soft, none as simple
as your sweet laughter.

Your dark twin
took you at night among monster to her
world.
(Everything yields to its opposite.)

They made you suffer for your comedy,
the astronomical stakes of your perfected play.
The city singed your deracinated nerves
at 5am unsoothed.

After the zenith you fell
in the cooling summer
into the desolate earth

leaving your smile
in the tender celluloid of the sky
glittering in the hour before dawn.

Broken scissors

Nothing is ever still.
The particles dance.

At night I don't rest. I chase
my bird-shaped scissors.  They fly
flapping their gold-plated rings
into the nook of the corner store.

I stand at the counter enraged,
ashamed.

Someone has wrung
the neck of a bird.
The sad blades
rest in my palm.

Dark and bright

The women lie embracing.
Her dark hair.  Her bright hair.

She says, summer is coming.
The light lifts.  The days are getting longer.

She says, night comes
veiled in my dark hair.

They lie embracing
on the concrete
under the slatted bench.

Flowers spread their petals, their roots
inherit the earth.

Dream of blue-stone

Here we live
among blue-stone lanes
leading between walls
into the shadow city.

Dancers depart the clubs
after dark in their tall shoes,
clattering on the curb.

The watcher in the high window
counts the hours,
boiling a brew on a stove.
The ledge above the range
supports framed portraits.

Etched eyes follow the guests
among the furniture
come from summer into winter
down under the earth
where we whirl widdershins.

Blue figures spattered on white walls
leap and twirl, dive and crawl,
and fade as the stars fade,
exposing spines and skulls.

I call to them as they spin
clockwise into noon,
leaving the gate unlocked,
their voices lingering in the wind.

The water woman

The woman's hanging washing on a line.
Somewhere a child. A dog runs
through a narrow space.

The woman hefts
a sheet from a damp basket.
Where's the child? The dog runs.
Its tongue lolls.

The woman is seen
through a narrow space.
The white sheets draped on the line 
hide the child. The dog runs, 
getting bigger, closer. 
It wags its tail. 

Where will I find you, water woman? 
In the dripping of a tap? 
The weave of a wash-cloth? 
The gutter? The cloud? 

The child counts 
its fingers and toes. The dog runs. 
A sheet dries in the wind.

Marilyn Monroe dreams of Lee Strasberg

What can it mean
to be filled with sawdust?

like an antiquated shop-dummy
from Jean Rhys's Paris
with satin skin, silk hair
and a sawdust heart?

Does it come of anxiety
like being naked in public
(having forgotten one's lines)

to be naked on the inside,
brainless like the strawman
heartless, soulless
wooden as Pinocchio
though clothed in fabulous skin?

Sawdust falls from the circular saw
slicing a forest to dice.
Sawdust heaped on the butcher's floor
soaks up a mess of blood.

The optimistic surgeon wields his knife.
'Be healed!' he cries, seeking a human organ.
Spectators enter the theatre.
He murmurs, 'Hush!'

O don't disappoint him.
Yield him the very nerve-knot
that triggers your beating heart.

Opal

OPAL

Once I had an opal
lost under flowers.
I’d search its iridescence
for my fortune.

Red for danger, pink for love,
gold for summer of sun,
green for growth, blue for truth,
purple a royal road.

Opals and peacocks’ tails
carry bad luck, say some.
Blind eyes that swallow light
shine invisibility on spies.

Colours of oil slicks and  curdled metals
glimmer in the lining of the mind,
stumm as a purse shut tight
on secrets yearning for release.
The latch snapped, its shot silks
disperse light’s entities.

A clot of dew risen from fiery sheen
seeks the still air where it whirls
all colours clear on land, on sea,
orbiting the flower of fortune’s eye.