SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

 

 

My room has white walls
Manacled with drips and catheters,
at night I conclude
I must be a prisoner
facing my last dawn,
the fatal shot up the cannula
What have I done?

I’ve had the temerity to get sick
that’s what.
Something’s wrong
with my gut.
I need ten days of antibiotics
through a vein.

Hour after hour the walls get to me,
screening silent episodes of my life.
I wait and wait for meals,
meds and obs.
Then there’s the TV -
it could be our family’s first.

“Hello childhood,”
it smiles, sparing me no pain,
“Remember me?”

THE CURSE OF UNNECESSARY WORK

 

A fine day in Eden:
it could have been California,
but Eve woke uneasy.
She sought out the snake
with whom she sometimes spoke.
He knew
this was the day to strike.

“You are bored,” he said,
and she immediately agreed.
“I have fruit for you,” he said,
“that will turn you into a god.”
She ate,
and saw that she was naked.

She took the fruit to Adam
and it worked its magic on him.
That evening God came walking,
but Adam and Eve hid.

 Expelled from the garden, they would,
God said, now need to work to eat.
“This was so avoidable:
if you had done as I said
you would still be in Paradise.
Unnecessary work
is now your curse.”

He took his leave.
Outside the gate
Adam caught and killed a lamb,
lit a fire, left the skin
for Eve to make a cloak.

ORDINATION

 

My farewell to you:
the people await your ministry.
You came with a desire to save the world,
to support pilgrims
who walk rough paths of faith,
whose feet, and hearts, are bruised.

Three years of study have changed you.
You leave with less certainty:
concrete images built in youth
have crumbled,
boundary walls
of belief are breeched.
God is less defined,
the agony of philosophers wrestling
with the nature of the universe,
the mystery of consciousness,
questions of the soul -  
suffering –
is now yours as well.

 Are you still believers,
or is the word ‘agnostic’
a better fit?

 This experience is common.
The mystery of what we touch
and taste and study
penetrates and widens every crack.

For that is how Truth operates –
the Spirit, the caress
and embrace of Sophia –
the feminine wisdom of God –
will give you strength.

SONG OF THE STIMULUS PACKAGE

 

What did you do with your stimmy*?

Didn’t waste it, I hope, on the nags.

Did you give it to naughty young Jimmy?

In which case it went up in fags.

 

Thank God for the Covid that shook

the tight fists deep in the coffers

showering dollars that made us all look

like voters grabbing their offers.

 

Am I my brother’s job keeper?

No way – I couldn’t care less:

He’s an unemployed non-job sleeper,

so I’ll grab his allowance for Bess.

 

Nice for once to have enough cash

to buy steak and chips – quite a change.

Won’t splurge on anything rash

‘cept bacon and eggs –  free-range.

 

I s’pose one day it will go

and heave us back in the poo.

But stimmy was quite a good show.

Here’s to it – ‘n Covid ‘n you!

*stimmy is American slang for the stimulus payments made to individuals during Covid.

DIGITAL CODE

 

Our group of elders was eating salad.

I’d dropped tomato on the floor:

slowly, I bent to pick it up.

 

I was lost underwater,

dizzy, not in a forest of kelp,

but of feet and legs.

 

My friend opposite wore open sandals

so I had a close-up of his toes –

mature, damaged goods.

 

What stories were encoded in each,

of hikes, steep climbs, balls kicked,

caresses of a lover?

 

History locked beneath thickened nails,

inside calluses, beside bent bones; his mind

had begun to follow the same trend.

 

One day gene science and IT may let us read

the code of history in each toe.

But would we really wish to know?

WE NEED A POEM TO INSPIRE US

 

in this age of spikey virus.

Seated on this old veranda

poetic thoughts? They tend to wander.

So, we must settle on a theme –

a nasty virucidal scheme.

Ode, pantoum, or toxic sonnet,

something hot under the bonnet?

 

We need some really heavy verse

to shake and shock this evil curse,

to liberate us from its grip

before it gives us all the pip.

 

We need a poem like ivermectin,

so, while you’re busily selectin’

what to put in Christmas stocking,

write a rhyme that’s truly shocking

 

to Omicron, that’s floating free –

deprive it of its liberty.

A poetic mask, N95,

to keep us safe and well, alive.

 

Please use your mouse to good effect,

write a poem that will deflect

the virus’s unpleasant spike,

lines that say how you dislike

 

its attack on every nation,

its tendency for bad mutation.

Do not wait, do not delay:

kill this thing ‘fore Boxing Day!

ONCE UPON A TIME

 

A crowd of witnesses –

confetti of banal pleasantries.

He was visiting

to receive another medal,

gifting its donor

a share in his honour.

 

He smiled, listened –

years of house arrest is good training –

waiting for the ceremony to finish.

 

Mandela was a king of myth,

a magician, he could make wrong right.

But mid-morning

his gait, his deafness,

his sheer oldness, left no doubt

that his sun would soon set.

His Holiness arrived in a motorcade

at Westmead Hospital, bodyguards,

a beneficent smile, sandals,

draped in saffron and red,

clutching abundant silk scarves

as gifts.

 

The staff assembled in hundreds.

‘What can we do’, one member asked,

‘about Indigenous health’?

Silent –  he hesitated and replied,

‘Education!  Education! Education!’

 

‘Should a surgeon operate,’ another wondered,

‘on a person who abused their health,

smoked, ate too much, boozed?’

He paused again then said, ‘I don’t know!

You’ll need to work that out!’

 

He held my hand –

warm, soft-skinned and firm –

back to his car,

I was excited –

like an adolescent lover –

but aware that we would

never meet again.