mourningflower.pdf

out here just saying shit

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Despite her being gone.

The solar power plastic smiling sunflower flaps its petals in the windowsill.

The glow in the dark stars dappled on pop corn ceiling shine.

The light in the petrol station bathroom stays on.

Just for the off chance she still might come through.

Helplessly hoping for staying or going,

A brief Inquiry into love at the end of the cigarette you’ve been smoking

You snuff it out on the cold soles of your shoe,

Now chard footsteps in fire torn houses remind me of you.

Despite you being gone, you are here in the destruction of it all.

The carnage you leave a subtle reminder

Of the smiling sunflowers, the stars on the ceiling she left behind her.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

I weave the leaves of my own type of evergreen tree.

Listen to Mazzy star sing ‘Flowers in December’,

a dark glow was all that I remember.

It’s those same embers now that hum with cherished heat,

no more ashes come down, just rainfall and sleet.

And just down the street, life begins again.

With the passing of stiff northern breezes the easterly sets in.

On the sunburnt backs of gums, through unlikely cracks, leaves emboss the fractures,

cloak like cilia of the oesophagus,

beautiful consequences of natural disasters.

It is something new now to whirl with winds, and pass with pastures.

Winter here is not covered under blankets of snow.

Well, depending on how far up you go.

But here, three-sixteen above the sea, the only snow you’ll see is on the french tips of mountains,

and in the tears they shed, across the snowy river they spread.

Knowing come summer they'll dry up once again.

No time now to wallow in it, wisps of wattle wait for us and we must follow it.

The flames we once fled meet on the breast of the robin instead.

Hope threads itself around, a blanket stitch in broken ground,

for a winter after this one, for green after a harsh summer's gun.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

I’m trying to commit every detail to memory.

Fold it and seal it in the waves of my brain.

Tuck it away, just enjoy the scenery.

It’s hard because each bend of the ranges feels sewed into me.

The pressure in my heart builds to this place’s syncopated heat.

Every time I leave I feel that sticky drumming beat.

I whisper prose to myself to fill this —suffocating space between.

It has a habit of ignoring me.

My dreams are crept on by vignettes of tomorrows today.

I wrote another poem, it’s still working out what it is I’m trying to say.

If this is just homesickness at what time does the feeling abate

A shuffling unease, a yawning pain

Like gnawing on infection, or lying in wait.

It’s sugar and water when I step off the bus

I’m home for a moment, even though it’s never enough.

Chewing on a gumdrop from the long closed lolly shop, sleeping in a bed with all my childhood stuff.

it’s aged in place, this little town.

It’s changes are trace, there’s still stickers in the store from the 2020 lockdown.

But when I come home there’s new dandelions in street cracks.

The clock moves faster than I can keep up

I’ve left more places than I’ve gotten to love

I try counting one to ten, then I repeat all the places I remember.

I wonder if three-one-two-eight is still an appropriate answer.

Because I’m not there anymore, that’s no longer my home,

I’ve branched to new places, I’ve loved and grown.

I found a place that waited for me in moving strides,

til I was able to catch up, walk side by side.

Then I packed my things, stripped it bare.

Like I never moved in. As if I was never even there.

The ball of yarn I unravelled, I circle back around.

The heart ache grows, but it doesn’t make a sound.

It’s admitting it was never mine

Not a thing to have in the first place

it’s the landscape curling around my outline.

It’s the cold between the word and open space.

It’s forgiving myself for wanting it back.

It’s hating my heart for reminding me what I lack.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Teenage years (Seams; Unraveling)

I can taste that summer's smoke on my tongue.

The thick of the fire.

Oh, and what a time.

When I was still young;

A song unsung,

A sin undone,

A youth un-won.

The shore stripping back,

A girl in the ground.

A woman comes around,

Forgot what she lacks.

And even now,

I’m angry at the ground

For swallowing the girl I know.

The women comes around,

(She doesn’t hear the sound of)

the tide hanging low.

And in that great summer

She swept up my youth,

Blamed it on anger

Called me uncouth.

Yes, I’m still angry

And the smokes coming back.

I’m digging up bodies,

I’m covering my tracks.

I’ll take what I’m owed,

Reap what I sowed

That’s life I suppose.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Teenage years (interlude)

Look back on the misery,

look back on all the rage.

Wind back our history.

New ink, New page.

You quelled a spark,

shattered a fragile heart.

Too long, lost in the dark,

you must've played a part.

But you don't haunt me anymore.

And I will refuse to let you,

be another ghost on my shore.

I'm no longer the me you knew.

In mourning comes,

Remembering.

The strength of my tongue,

in a sweet rendering.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Everlasting Daisies

Watch a flower shrivel

Watch a moon wax and wane

Watch a wood block wittle

Watch water go down the shower drain

Watch autumn turn to summer

Then watch it all start a-new

Watch a friend hit rock-bottom

Then let them help you

Watch the miracle of life

In the eye of a road-kill magpie

Watch the reason for it all

In your grandmother's final goodbye

Watch a green leafy spindle grow

Rejoice in the fruits it bares

And when it comes time for it to go

Don’t fret, don’t shed a tear.

I think,

Everlasting Daisies lie on the box

It's not gonna last forever, it's just not.

It’s beautiful in days it’s spent in the sun

A miracle in the time when there is none.

When it dies, there will be someone

To remember the joy and,

To plant another one.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Revolution under the shade of a Stringy Bark.

You went outside and the wind bit your face.

The scream gathered in your throat, between your lips it spilled.

Cold nips your nose, rage you no longer taste.

They can pluck a flower, but no, not a field.

You watch the flames lap at the nape of the mountain ash gum,

But even in its great suffering, the end of summer beckons to come.

It all starts to begin again, saplings grow in the devastation they came from.

Under a scorched canopy, a new music starts to thrum.

Cicadas chirp a unifying song,

The giggle of a kookaburra, the squall of a cockatoo.

A chorus stretched wide and long.

You hear it from mountains, the desert and the peninsula too.

It’s so loud you start to sing along, and if you are singing then they might too.

You turn down the street with your new found song, whisper in the ears of the old and the young.

Because it’s us at summer's end, left with the ash of a fire we didn’t begin.

And it’s us, once again, who will see to it that this country will start to mend.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

A bolt-hole back home

When you were a child, you’d run into the entropy of the green.

Back then you felt brave, you would never feel that way again. 

You fought to stay awake through the sunsets, til you were a wiry teen.

By then you’d fallen in love, sunken to the words of Shania Twain.

Months later you’d untangle, and you’d run to the solitude of the field.

You laid on your back, begged a tiger snake to slither on and swallow you whole.

You argued with your mum, keeping that damned heavy heart concealed.

Tucked away glass you had shattered in fear, fleeing to your bolt-hole. 

She wouldn’t mind, it just hurt to let her down. 

You took the early morning bus to the city, you watched the gradient of the land fall and rise.

You watched the simplicity of grain pass you by, you watched a bird soar and then watched it die.

You didn’t feel brave when you stepped off that bus, there was no end to the entropic high rise.

There was no bolt-hole here, just cemeteries and cold places to shrivel up and die.

20-years-old, you fell in love with a girl who’d never known that winter could get that cold.

You thought about Shania Twain, and maybe if this was the person you belonged to.

When the two of you broke things off, you called your mum and you asked if the heart break ever got old.

Something bubbled as you heard the distorted laughs of your mum, the kettle started to brew. 

“Maybe the Twain shall meet.” She answered cryptic as ever,

“Love and grief, baby, love and grief.” She added for good measure. 

When you arrived home in the cold, saw the grass you left grey, but came back to green,

You started to understand what she said, and what it was supposed to mean. 

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Teenage years (seasons)

I spent winter as a road kill daisy

wilted and vibrant in a sea of grey 

in spring i don’t know how to behave 

I stretch out in mosaics of sun 

let my body remember 

the weight of what I’ve become 

I spent summer among the seaweed

wrapped in slimy sickness 

it felt good to be un-

Known. By autumn

I had forgotten too.

Diatribes now directed at a person, 

I no longer recognise.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

Teenage years (first love)

I fell in love with you on a Sunday.

A shimmering dust bitten afternoon,

In your gaze I would lay,

That time had gone too soon.

You left marks marred into my skin—

I trace them now—

Naming where you’d been.

It’s an unspoken vow.

I fell in love with you on a Sunday.

Teetering on a happenstance,

Hoping that maybe some day

I’d share another glance.

I’d follow you everywhere you’d go;

From dawn to dusk,

Hither and throe,

even as she bids your sky a husk.

I fell in love with you on a Sunday.

And you reminded me to breathe.

I’ll never forget it—even today—

How you made me believe.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

The Great Dividing Range

You were swept across the Great Dividing Range. You were younger then, but you never really acted your age.

You’d packed your suitcase full to the brim. You crammed it with your boots ‘n your pencils ‘n that kinda thing.

Once you’d finally made it there, you got turned around. You tried listening to the birds, so you could follow the sound.

When they started to call you looked on your map, but you couldn’t find a place that looked like “quack.”

So there you were, all 4”4’, you were smoking a cigarette so you didn’t look unsure.

You tottled along river beds, dawdled across each rolling hill. You saw each inch of the Eastern Highlands, how it screamed and how it sat still.

You gnawed on the bottom and top of the Darling Basin. Watching the drainage made you think of your childhood and how you were wasting it.

Soon summer bled into winter. The peeling sunburn on your back, saw the top of Kosciusko and it seemed that was that.

You watched through binoculars as the Blue Ranges turned white. You kept turning around to watch, until it went out of sight.

You watched from above as the flora and fauna rejoiced and grieved. When Summer fires met Autumn, when Winter’s snow saw Spring’s reprieve.

By the time you made it to the top, you saw the path unfurl beneath your feet. You must’ve been 15, at the precipice of childhood. And hell, what a feat!

You stood pondering the peaks and troughs, when a man stood behind you, and started to cough.

He patted your back, his skin rough and coarse, when he began speaking his voice like his skin was hoarse.

“How lucky are we,” he began as you looked around where you sat. “To grieve like this, for having loved like that.”

You got the sense you wouldn’t understand the lesson he had learnt. That your skin wouldn’t burn the way his had been burnt.

It didn’t stop your tears from falling then, the weight of the many boots heavy on your feet, as you shared this view, as you shared a single heart beat.

Trotted paths felt ultimately obsolete, what you’d been looking to understand. You found it in the whisper of the gums, the cracks of this scarred land. 

Maybe, growing up was the real beast, when you traveled those formative years south to northeast. It was only in your journey home you’d begun to understand; This world of yours, it was right there, in the palm of your hand.

[like-a-mourning-flower]

untitled 1.

A sky full of loose change,

a picture inscribed with shimmering gold,

a tale passed down, loved by age,

a song sung of an old story, the lovers' ode.

A world built off words,

a library’s organs, stiff and cold.

A tree without its birds,

a destination without a road.

A microcosm of dot-to-dots,

a sacred understanding,

a fear brought to grave plots,

a choice not-with-standing.

A stiff paperback found in the rubble,

a landscape turned to dust and sorrow,

a grief for humanity, in a rumble.

A single sentence; ‘I told you so’.