Jane Austen smiles

Part of the seduction of fiction is in identification.


Who wouldn't need to feel pretty downtrodden
to identify with the threatening surroundings
of dark Gothic passages, the screams of a virgin,
separated from her family, at the mercy of society,
running through the drafty corridors of the 18th century,
and everything bleak, bleak, bleak?

She gave us the modern heroine, each good one
since Elizabeth, with all her wizened wit.
Elizabeth, with her good-girl strength and spirit
the inspiration for Bronte's Jane Eyre, a governess,
her passionate independence; educated, autonomous,
in revolt against the lot; id, locked in the attic.

Classic heroines, their lines censored, metaphor straitjacketed,
topsy-turvy corsets tight as Scarlet O'Hara's, but sadly, not so loose.

Later, on the streets of romantic fiction,
fantasy is real women at the centre of story,
still painting satire on the back of deep feeling.

Horse-drawn-slow, or slow, slow -  - quick-quick-slow,
down a winding road of flowers and hedgerow; hay,
soft lace, muslin, frills...watch the pace of rugged landscape,
there's a willful spirit emerge through the ages,
our indomitable, incorrigible, formidable woman
until she's full mettle throttle and a real warm heart.

See her fierce liberation on the pages of every day,
in the leaping of her zeitgeist on the squares,
on the curled lip canvas of walls, her words
are the cinematic graffiti of women's culture,
of fiery clouds calligraphic across blue skies.

(Jane Austen smiles. Another modern heroine writes the next page,
dipping the oceans, sitting in circles, weaving the texture of lives.)


07/08

It's about it,

It’s about the things we cannot write down
until all those people die - or we do,
whispering to stars making libraries in the sky,

all about the things that make us so elusive,
when elusiveness could be elu-civity, or lucidity,
for when we wanted to be as clear as day.

It’s about the glass stanza, somewhere in the middle
which breaks, and turns to such, and such; re loyalty,
stupidity, the inevitability of lines, sides,
Tribes, and many other rhymes.

It’s about illusions, delusions, fantasies, the ramblings
of drunken libraries, open books, doors ajar to moments of moonlight -
stars, stripes, scandals, newspaper articles, and silence.

it’s about peace in the middle of warring factions,
fractions, multiplications, and subtractions;
when a pie is not a pie, and there’s no point at all -

- measuring an expanding radius, or running
around on edge - it’s always about returning to the centre,
putting pen to paper, or tapping on the keyboard to begin.

Esa es vida, mi querida - That's Life, my dear...

Woman at 'Sunny's' pizza shop
chops onion and salami,
cries huge tears running
the colours of Italy
through the flour on her cheeks
"Que passa, mina Linda? Que passa?"
"Oh Querida!" she sighs
kneading the dough with
hands like clamps,
"hhhWhy???" she exclaims,
brushing more flour through her hair
twirling the base high into the bright sky
"Esa es Vida, Senora - es Vida!" say I,
my palms upturned, the pizza flying through eclipse,
the picture of her face before the moon lands,
spinning on her upturned fist..

Snake

Condemned to be a belly on the earth, you slither masterfully around the beehive, away from the beating of bamboo sticks, riding the air in a ripple of desert sand. In the whoop and holler of discovery, lengths of you hypnotize unraveling waves of dancing feet in a strike, a miss and retreat. Later, I wonder of your bite, hidden in tall grass, quiet. You are a toothless face on the fence skirting immunity or else beautifully venomous, contemplating legs, hips; no footsteps, no trace, just movement, and the lick of escaping lips

Fine

Colloquially speaking,
It is just a case of a
'Wayward Spirit'
Which sounds,
When put like that,
Quite charming;
Sparky, don't you
Think? After all,
It's not like you
'Served up your soul'
On a silver platter,
Extending invisible
Grams forward in
A fine spun, porous,
Net-veined manner.
Lets not split hairs.
We are refined; both
Delicate - marked by
Subtlety of discernment
And even though
I cannot often follow
These fine distinctions
Between design
And the undevised,
My soul has always
Wandered wayward
Through transpicuous doors
And home: no silver platter,
Just a fine-tooth comb,
To serve.

Skeletons 1954, Mexico (Frida Kahlo)

He took photos
To capture his favourite child
To frame the world
Or his vision of it.

She Painted
Tin paintings
To collect
And decorate
Her world.

A sun, a moon
And Pyramids;
Grey skyscrapers
For criticism,
Dead babies for freedom.

She was crushed,
Childless
And from her bed
Passion plays
Out with pictures
Of her pets,
Painted, "with no consideration"
Although she cared
About them all.

A jungle is always
In limited colour.
A monkey sits
In her arms,
Unaware of her presence.
She - unaware of his,
Her black hair a solid mass
Individual strands - there, but not seen.

Skeletons leap from the cupboard
Elegantly smiling.






05/06

Grace

There is no mercy, caritas, or thanks
In the everyday moments of a greedy life.
We would have to look for it
On a plate before we eat,
In the flesh of a tender fish,
In a fresh bread of wheat,
And afterwards, in a moment
Captured, well after the blessings given
For the honest way
Or the elegant way
We attempted to floss our teeth

The Golden Egg

At The Golden Egg, a cafe,
where ugly folk eat all day breakfasts,
we sip, smoke, read The Mirror,
The Sun, take notes in reams.

An old couple in bobble hats,
crater moon expressions
face their plates, each other,
over his fried slice and beans.

They slurp with all the time in the world.
I think they must be cold,
no jokes, nothing more to win.
I think it's all over - until she chokes,
dribbles on a bit of gristle
and he wipes the egg yolk from her chin.

I can still smell the Eucalyptus

Apache, the tanned horse we'd found,
had been lost from the grazing garden above the town.
We led him to our home, borrowed brushes...
Neighbourly folk came with herbs in cooking pots,
their kindly tin-wrapped remedies for wounds.
From our purple veranda
we watched him graze in the moonlight
and in the quiet of the noisy night
he must have slipped our gaze,
flicked the bolted gate
and then, again escaped!

From the telegraph poles, the owls hooted
and took flight, so we turned right
to find him on the silvery ribbon road
waiting by the forest of Eucalyptus.
You took his face, spoke his name, scolding
and stroking his nose. "He's well - he wants
company: Patch? Were you waiting for us?"
and taking his mane, you cartwheeled onto his back,

like you should, a sound now, getting faster and lighter
into the darkening tangles and slow soft places
of the fine pine wood.





06
07

harvest

you know as sure as it is
soft and light around my shoulders
and warm as a mango sun
dipping the line dividing you and me
that the fruit of our labour
is a basket upon the sea
so tell me of one thing more magical
than the harvest on the table
this candle this flame
flickering here and there
vulnerable
to a darkness this night
will never swallow whole