Off the Cuff 12: Living in the CBD, Melbourne & Singing in the Baptist Church

APAD 12       prompt: pick a city

Living in the CBD, Melbourne

My colleague lives on the corner
of Little Collins Street and Spencer Street
right across from Southern Cross Station
where all the trains from country towns
terminate, and the racket of metropolitan
trains can shake the teeth from your gums.

Today his lunch included roast pumpkin
from my garden, out there where country
trains are born, and I asked him, "Are you
growing herbs on a balcony where you live?"
"Ah, no," he said. "They'd get covered
in soot. As a matter of fact, I'm asthmatic."

As I chewed my home-grown cucumber
and spicy pumpkin dip on bread sold in
paper bags to enhance its image as healthy,
I pondered the gifts of the city: great views
of public sculptures, parklands pasted over
industrial wastelands, the vertical challenge

of journeying in lifts day in, day out, the risk
of needing a doctor at midnight, the lights
that are never turned off, glass walls that
provide myriad images of self and other
self and others, others, others, and self.
Dying with blackened lungs, for research.


Singing in the Baptist Church

It's been associated with women and seduction
the danger of sirens ringing through centuries of ears.
It's been the best way of being breath-taking
for those of us who, ex-smokers, now
enjoy oxygen in our advanced years.

We ain't no rock
and we are marching
freedom is coming
o La Lay!
That's our repertoire
in the A-Choired Taste
of Gospel, whether or not
we come here to pray.

My daughter's not old
her voice is pure
if anyone's a siren here
it's her and Lauren, sure.
But without them rocks
and miles from a shipping
route,
our energy rises as
our voices dispute
the sinful nature of
singing out loud.
And it's the harmony
of team-voice
that really makes us proud.


NaPoWriMo

Off the Cuff 11: The Last Thing & The Nurse's Last Stand

APAD 11    prompt: "The Last ___________" (fill in the blank)

The Last Thing

The last thing I want to do
is kill you off
but you have
crossed the boundaries I set
two years ago
once too often.

How dare you stand there, unmoving
beautiful, so alive!
while I fume, wanting
to cut you down, dreading the moment.

I have googled you:
read the rave reviews
the rapturous praise.
Too bad, I know the other side -
that relentless will to dominate
destroy, strangle
all possibility of competition.

Have I loved you?
Oh yes. Do I know you?
Yes! And the last thing I want to do
is kill you, but
as I said: once too often you have
broken my rules.
This murder must
happen soon, or
I'll be forever powerless against
your heartlessness,
your cruel fingers
couch grass.


The Nurse's Last Stand

We sat in a yellow and blue room
with a view. She completed
black page after black page
for her only son, soon to turn
twenty-one. Two albums as her
legacy, knowing there was
nothing to be done.

She took the treatments, both
mainstream and alternative,
calmly. Over the black pages
bright with primary colours
and family adventures, she said:
When the pain ... I will take
myself away.

And she did. Lying in
in a tropical apartment with
white sheets and white walls
the blue sea and yellow sands
she let the pain take her
through morphine heaven
to freedom.

NaPoWriMo

Off the Cuff 10: The Hill & a Horror poem

The Hill

Earth movers trim its rim
the conical shape erased.
How long will it take to
move all this soil
to another place?

From the Prison between
my freeway, that ex-hill,
you can't see land at all.
Invisible you - ant
underground, bee
in closed hive, nucleus
in thick-walled cell - you
will emerge and wonder
if the Prison shifted.

Earth movers trim the rim
the ancient volcano is erased.
You will feel strange, ask
yourself what has changed.

People will tell you:
your unease, slight
or deep, is a natural
part of being freed.

NaPoWriMo


APAD 10    prompt: horror

awake, scrambling for breath,
taste the acid thrown back,
swallow, swallow, throat
burning, add a pillow
avoid drowning