MY HOUSE

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Rooted in ideas of home and community, these poems travel across rooftops, gardens, attics, bedrooms and parks

Versailles

Yes beauty and violence

Are two sides of the same plot

But you know I know

How to have a good time, right?

Yes I sleep in the soil

But I’d walk these halls if they were yours

And maybe I do live in

Make believe after all

Yes there are failings of

Man after man after

But you are more than these thoughts

You are the history of the real ones

Who weave magic all

Around these players

Build the vision and

Brush over their bodies at the fall

I think you are Versailles

And I am a tree that shades you

Gently taps on your window

And asks to see myself

In your mirrors and portraits

Walk sturdy on your floors

And soak in the rays

Of your company

I think you are Versailles

And Versailles is the sun

That I grow towards

Branches coalescing

Like bounded hands

To form a bridge

So that I may cross over

And kiss your steady hand

All I’m saying is that

I’d trim my shape for you

Be an ugly garden

If it meant you could flower there too

Because in those twinkling eyes

I see masterpieces you know

Brushstrokes not subjects

Humanities to sow

Gardens of Adonis

The gardens of Adonis were a festive ritual, a botanical re-enactment of premature death. Women of ancient Athens fashioned little gardens in baskets and pots, to leave them wilting in the summer sun.

This preceded the rooftop rites: “open to women from all classes of Athenian society, these were rites of grieving, but also wanton drunkenness, and no doubt other forms of ecstatic behaviour as well”.

come sunrise

under cover

of that brightest star

death comes

e

a

r

l

y

undone!

the rules are

bring seeds, that prettiest flower, burning lavender, myrtle, to mimic the winter sky

or rue or rosemary, with fragrant fever that runs through the air

like melody, that drips life right to the centre of the earth

bring these the most perfect of things

to adorn you

as you

                  walk

                                    up

                  to

join

                  us

                                    here

one by one

our litters will wreathe this rooftop, a mosaic incarnate to speak to the skies,

to sing in un-worldly hues, they’ll call to our eldest, to that truest and elusive sister that lives in the crimson fire and the silence, lonely at the ends of the earth, she’ll dance in sweet company tonight, quenched in the forces and flesh of our best efforts, seized in that scorching absence of shadow, in blistering white she uncoils her hands to take what must always be taken, the most pristine of things, unfastens their humming edges and sucks them dry, undone

today, grief is a rosy stinging haze, it is reverence and riot, and we watch on with patient, blurry eyes as it descends like rapture, blanketing the skies until it is only us and those coldest, most dazzling of companions who draw out the shades of this world and turn them to nothing

nothing

we are

who we are

in the dark

a band of revellers! hollering sweet mercies and charms, the wine will flow like blood shaken rivers heading out to sea, sloshing against the banks of the heart

we’ll sing from the depths of us, the fullest of cups, barefoot in the dust and ash that floats like crumbling stars, we'll dance merrily with death, a ghostly tangle of bodies, in ecstasy of the highest of sorrows

the rest remains...

tomorrow

we return to husbands and windows, children and tables

but it is only here that we know them

the weight of the world rests on the rooftop

our rooftop and our death

The girl in the window in the village in the photo

Photography started here

Upon the cold abbey stone

It’s a birthing ground

Where towns leave like sand in your pocket

I will travel round the world tonight

From the window of this old house

Where crowds line up

To worship brick and mortar

To see themselves in it

You never know what you’ll find

In the cragged edges of a place like this

An eye in an eye at the upper window

A faint smile in your throat

You see I’ve been here so long

My blood is thick like mortar

I’ll shut you out

With eye lashes of white blossom

Not let you in

To walk my corridors

I’ll sing only my people can see me

The crows and the sheep dance along

The dog that sleeps among thistles

Twitches and dreams of the tune

The kitten on the ledge of the bakers

Purrs and coils like the moon

But you have only an imprint

A second out of step

With this world of mine

I pity the alien in you

My house is alive.

Victoria Park

Clouds in a hurry

Withhold their sun

Besides a few whispers

For all and one

I’m sailing high

Or deep underground

Either way I am moving

Free of the bounds

Of this tiresome city

The dirt and the glares

It screams so loud

But the message is bare

What are you saying

I try to understand

The promises you live by

That got out of hand

But try as I might

My vision is clear

I see it all better

From way around here

Head in the clouds

Or deep in the earth

There’s change closing in

A gentle rebirth

It murmurs care

Is the reason we’re here

Your magical being

Is spent on fear

And boredom and pain

At hurtling speed

Faces around me

Don’t know how to breathe

The air we are gifted

The sweetest of things

What joys we are missing

It aches and it stings

And has done forever

Our ancestors know

How ideals glisten

While hope moves slow

But wisdom is never

Lost to the wind

What we will need

Exists within

The world all around us

The roots in the ground

The blood in our body

The ship run aground

Today I am floating

Or tunnelling low

Tomorrow with you

I stand and I grow.

Neighbour

Neighbour don’t speak to me

Don’t look upon what I have

See this hypocrite in hiding

Cut-throat and teary

Curled over the step

Sprayed out on the patio

I deserve it but don’t look at me

Dark spring

running out of gas

for our soda

and slaughter

when will it all

end

this relentless parade

of lobotomised wins

where will we be

once the penny

slips

it’s all ours to

lose

so

inevitably we will

how do you reconcile

good built from bone

we are

your

worst nightmare

you are

our

passing notion

the tragedy of the commons

is that there isn’t one

if knowledge is

power

then

power

is an anxious girl

too tired to get out of bed

today

tomorrow

is spring

the blossom is already

falling like ash upon

her bedroom door