Downhill.

If I were a better friend

with a braver heart

who didn’t.

I would say run, run

Run.

faster than your feet know how

to the place

where the echo of your footsteps should be

with the ruins of that boy

instead of the confines 

of that man.

Ignore.

With your sister peeking
under the door
She said
She said
She'd tell our mothers
if we didn't stop.

Stationary.

It's the colour of veins.
their oily tentacles
dripping through newspaper.
bloodied paper mache
Ever so repulsive.


Surprise found her,
gazing up
at her lovely face.
but she reasoned with herself.
After all,
she might be dead.
That would explain things.


So she fell backwards,
and saved herself from drowning
face down
In her own reflection.
She's still sitting on her feet
wondering
who's looking at who.

Until Now (Hiding Place)

She was nine years old,

and would watch the bats fly low

over her hiding place

their elongated cut-outs

dotting the orange dusk

with cartilage and bone.

The scary bird.

A frame made of rubber over wire

with a face only a mother could love.

she liked the way

they called one another

from their slumber

the calm and gentle shrieking,

the space between her eyes.

Their cries,

became the end of another day

the death of another sun

and she imagined what she must

look like there, pressed as a flower

petals curling at the edges

eyes peering out into the garden path, at passing strangers.

A feral cat.

She had a secret that was hers

and hers alone

A knotted mess of plants and wood

A thousand figure eights of foreign weeds

strangling the natives

knit so tightly,

only beetles found their way

She found a way too

through the gnarled lantana

tiny arms and legs

delicate enough to slip through their thorns.

She crouched

down through the spiky gauntlet,

rubbing her belly on the damp.

A tiny carpet snake.

The branches snatched

their pointy claws, tearing through

the clumps of curls

her little eyes were cunning,

enough to avoid the teeth of Pandanus

its serrated edge, hungry to cut her

like soft bread

Cobwebs tangled in her lashes

was the middle of her nest

An empty crop circle

a hiding place,

just right for one

she breathed in silence.

A feathered mouse.

The withered grass was pressed

into the earth

as if they knew she were coming

and the long curled branch unfurled before her

A natural stranglehold

from unrelenting weeds

It would be her perch for many years

until the sap hardened

and her legs lengthened

and she would lay in it's splinters

crumble into the hole she dug with her toes

and dirty the hem of her dress

(But she didn't know that, yet)

The worker drone.

She set to work at once

smoothing the dirt with the bottom of her shoe

Inside, her bed went unmade.

Here, amongst the leaves

A long-stemmed silver rose

sunbeams pooling in the rim

A metal goblet, carvings against the lip

From the time of Camelot

Raised to the mouths of Kings

Torn from the hands of Knights

Tossed into the treasure of pirates

long-lost and forgotten

she knew it was meant to be hers

the diamond chalice, hidden in the brush.

The phoenix from the ashes.

Fallen, from it's dusty throne

She decided that she

and she alone,

would be it's secret-keeper

and whispered her eternal allegiance

in the blood of bark

by the shadow of a gumtree

she never told a soul.

Until now.

The South-Easterly

The blue of the end is
miraculous in itself
A dusky mural not unlike
the dawn I drew
but I have painted this one
and it's strangely forgiving.
I look too hard and see
the torch flicker
Backlit, flame licking cloth
suspicious in this weather
and find a ubiquitous calm
humouring me.
Close by, birds titter
in clusters
seemingly aware of my need for the obvious
My shoulders sink
While I unpluck the quills
and I breathe
And I reverse the sails
and I think
that I need to stop thinking.
It's a lonely thirst.