No Pablo Neruda
Essays on life, work and literatureArchive for March, 2010
Pink Parts
Well I suppose he couldn’t see
the pink parts in me
or the long line of a lifted leg
as I recline in bed,
or the spread of hair
or smile that knows when love is there.
I suppose, he couldn’t know,
not knowing me,
where this would go,
and he and I must be resigned
to different points of view
in mind
and take our time,
to find someone
who likes our curves
when clothes undone.
But what I wouldn’t wish a chance
to sit before a half filled glass
and play the game
that adults play
that seems to be a thankless task
but knowing this,
my presence, this
I know would be enough to show
my oh so adult complacency
to beyond flesh
where feelings go.
Limitations
There, where the limitations of my knowledge are,
where my interests subsides
and I strain
against the humble constraints of my brain.
There, I wish for a simpler marker of my worth
of a vertical and lateral
position on earth
that regulates my movements
and expects nothing more
than a shift to a square
three to the right, and four up
from where I was before.
Instead, I feel pressed,
and read late in the night,
My heart squeezes with stress
as I fail to see a small oversight
and when I am faced
by a body of knowledge
which requires, a far, far distant
starting point
I am afraid that I will only
inevitably, be of disappoint.
But I go on, we must you see,
when we are raised by academics
and leave colleges with degrees
we must rise our fist high
clutching paper
and attempt to replicate
the exams we studied so diligently for
and passed without a single mistake.
Life, though, you will be aware,
is no exam,
and yet I feel constantly studied,
and failing, and struck by my limitations,
the limit of all my knowledge and aptitude,
which is marked by the line drawn there.
The things we do at dawn
The things we do to get through the day, the patisseries, the initial conversations we look forward to, and the large cups of coffee are our fingerprints on the world.
My print, so directly different to your own, is a list of blogs, a skim flat white, and the fan blowing on my face. Yours is a glass of water, a half an hour burn at the gym and the satisfying feeling of redness in your cheeks when you arrive at work.
Collectively, the prints make patterns – patterns of character that run in complimentary streams, some of them crossing over to create invisible connections between the person who drinks a tall paper cup full of blended juice and the person who unfolds the Sydney Morning Herald, scanning the front page excitedly for the latest news.
Behind this, there are the children, who wake from their internal alarm and spring to their mother’s bedside going “I am awake! I am here! I’m ready to go.”
Children and fishes wake like this, without the necessity for any medium to ease them into the long day. They are within it simply – without a crutch or a pattern of behaviour – well, for a time. Later there will be television, and tantrums and the way they like to have you plait their hair. One morning, they won’t want to wake up at all, and it will be their mother who stands by their beside, pulling back the curtains and saying “You get out of bed right now!”
All this morning confusion, this morning kerfuffle, this morning poetry. The sun broaches the horizon differently each dawn, as do we of the day.
A Kiss
the lightest of love
your kiss on my face
in the morning, when I rose
the soft yellow light
dust flecked, that drove
against my bare skin,
the slip of your hand,
between my thighs
the sighs
the caving in
the lifting of sheets
up high
the soft dropping down
the small frown
the bit lip
the slip of a tongue
its wet tip
the music
from somewhere
from far off down the hall
the beauty of it all
the unique moments
shared in our bliss
the soft little smile
the last lingering kiss.
A Portrait of the World
She struggles in her black high heels
but never breaks a sweat
as the baby wriggles in her seat
her diaper hot and wet.
Her mother doesn’t look askance
and teeters in her task
she moves her child up the incline
and doesn’t think to ask
for in an hour, or maybe more
she’ll spend the livelong day
working in her corporate shell
to bring home her pay.
And this is corporate architecture
this is our new world
where suits cling to the little frames
of mothers and young girls.
But in the silent elevator
a man ignores a peer
her hair is soft and fluffy
and her stockings smooth and sheer.
While a space slowly emerges
within which he could retreat
he keeps his back turned to her
and his focus on his feet.
