That girl

She is full of laughter and a terrible grief
for the gag ripped
from the world's mouth,
for the flesh stripped
from the world's bones.

She keeps missing
the chance to be understood.
Alone she goes
seeking in mirrors
the colours of love.

I saw her wandering
in tawny dusk
with golden skin
and honey-dew eyes
grinning at the butterfly
that blew between
the billboard and the flowering weed.

I swear I saw that girl before
clutching a towel
in a freezing hall,
her hair trussed up
in tattered bands

with naked feet
and a tear-stained dress
scrambling along
the slender ridge,
straining to reach
a plastic spoon.

I swear I saw that girl again
lying in clover
by the olive grove.

I knew her by her whispered song
mimicking the bird call
tone for tone.

Metamorphosis

My feet grow tendrils feeling for the earth.
The chlorophyll seeps into my heel.

My hair flies seeking the wind that fills
the dim interstices of galaxies.

The light in my eyes is infinitely bright
and infinitely cool.

My spine is a ladder of parables,
my skin a single switch.

I stand rapt in the sun's glaze.
Ashes stream from my palms.

My heart is a riddle of frost and flame
the shattered bloom construed.

Heart flowers

Flowers bloom on the roof of my mouth.
Sugary coronets uncoil into the teeming
stitches of time.

My moon-faced clock ticks.
The main-spring gives.

Heart flowers red, o red, redder than
the very pulse of red

beat love
heart blood
beat heart
rose red.

Some thing undone

A low feeling — neglect —
some thing undone,
a bead missing.

In my bag are beads
I picked up in the street,
yin and yang, pearl and jet,
not around my neck.

(I'm washing this lace to death.)

I missed
some word, some prayer ...
a thought, a stitch.

A shabby seam.
A hem worn through.

A low feeling,
some thing undone.

A gleam unstitched.
An eye unlit.

Poem

Words, words, what is a poem?

Ideoglyphs imbibed by the hyaline mind.
A story of ghosts sifted from dream.
A shining song in a hollow bone.

Is it message or is it a maze?
Is it a moment inked in stone?
Is it forever
     or shredded to stuff a crocodile?

The bird calls the unseen sun.
The stars shed their timeless dust.
The wind wheels our weal and woe.

What sets my hair on end?
The stirring of the storm.

What smooths it out again?
The honey in the coomb.

Petals

Petals fall
from the high vase
scattered in the wind's eye.
Recombinant colours
pattern a phantasm
falling, flailing, feigning
blue veins,
red arteries,
yellow pollen
glittering like leaves
torn from old books,
the crowns of fabulous ghosts.
Omni-coloured eye-bytes
have laden me asleep.
The sparkling dust
sings jubilation
in its haul of light.

The years erased

In years
no longer here,
being nothing but
memory, you
lounged in this room
and we chatted
about food we'd eat
and animals we loved
and people who
rubbed us the wrong way.
Lives elapsed.
Now in this
room, you are
invisible, impalpable.
The years erased
your foot-step
on the stair.

Light echoes

I am the echo of light.
A fish glimpsed—gold
above unseen gills.

On silent glass
my quick eye gleams—
in the deep room

I watch—miming
skin breathing
on white bone.

I am double—sum
of seer and seen.

Empty—I
colour dark sense.

The silvered face
draws the drowned
beam.

Freedom is

 
    like getting out of school.
    I run along the footpath
    over the bridge across the creek.


When I was six
   
    my sandals were jelly-bean blue.
    I ran under the culvert
    where the water splashed.


Late home I ran

    in the middle of the night.
    The immeasurable
    hour-glass from outer space
    had landed in the yard.


   
Now

    dust-covered helicopters
    hover above the banks
    like rooks on a chessboard,
    like faceless eyes.


I run

    along the footpath
    across the bridge
    over the creek.

   
My wings' sweep
    wields the wind.