Poems - Support Material for the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship Application
everything is Dreaming
my hands are asking me to make a basket. i am singing
great holy guardian of sky river
aren’t i lucky that you make a home of me?
what of time that might keep us from spiral?
morph into something still, membranous earth
echo to rattle along collective cortex.
i know the cry, beginning place and drawn into me
symphony manifested from air of mottled bone
carried close to heart pound chest.
perhaps a beating thunder softer likely
undoing tide of intergenerational ripple
enough to remind kin presence.
more not than often we listen to deep calling
and she falters, aching with flame of yesterday
a black silhouette trapped in curtain.
my ancestors are asking me to make a basket. they are saying
daughter, it is impossible to outrun the past
when Country’s jewel lives in spirit ear.
so she learn ‘em up singing
and —
Where were you the first time you felt this longing?
A force to throttle even the mightiest of dreamers.
I know we carry the bones of our love in whispers,
a combined body of hunger wrapped in ribbon
bearing our names like some ancient declaration.
If our limbs could speak they might sing to existence,
the electric current that travels from you to me.
Wavelengths of connection, like lightning sparks
always seem to find a conduit to catch their energy.
I’d always thought of my heart like machine,
some suspended thing held together with string.
But with you, planets orbit around this beating sun
as if bodies are a galaxy of our own making.
Like Eros I sit and wait with my arrows,
a contemplative gesture wrapped in fear and wanting.
It is I who allows mortal yearning to ring out into song.
It is I who would sacrifice myself for love knowing the cost.
We are a symphony of cosmic dissolution, you and I.
Breaths in unison meet us at the forefront of desire,
melt into one another against the backdrop of time.
A multidimensional dream come alive.
In this new form we are anchored to rhythm,
a portal of presence in shadow and shape.
We have arrived beyond the vehicle of waiting,
dipped in aluminium and spinning like kites in the wind.
*Commissioned by Red Room Poetry & The Art Gallery of NSW in response to Louise Bourgeois exhibition
a song you can’t unsing
same colour as ruin
as in take them from home
as in run songline to dust
same colour as ochre
as in deep within marrow
as in tied to umbilical
same colour as ocean
as in expanse to anchor
as in whisper to shore
same colour as silence
as in connective tissue
as in language body
same colour as sacred
as in name only you know
as in calling from bone
as in never going away again
as in never being taken
as in returning
to you
patrilineal
dreamt you were a poem
i kept writing you
if i am alive it means
parts of you are still
dreamt you were an ocean
i kept being afraid of you
if i am alive it means
i am here to reunite
ghosts of lineage past
what would it mean for them
to taste freedom?
shackles look different
but i know yours because
they became mine
we both had pain to run from
you just got away first
i am choosing to run towards
instead
create a new legacy
one you might’ve wanted
to inherit
to give to us
you were second last
of your brothers
to die
but the first
to put up a fight
dreamt you were a story
i’ll keep writing you
*Published on Blue Bottle Journal
for david
meandering from school
the white 90s corolla in
the driveway tells me
dad’s come back for a bit
somehow he always made a
worn out commission house
feel like a real home
2 bucks to spend at Airds shop
half an hour to pick a video
finger buns from the bakery
only after you’ve eaten tea
sitting at the kitchen table
ciggie smoke billowing
he’s telling me bout the
screws at silverwater again
lino floor peeling at corner
roaches meet their maker
beneath a worn out old boot
taking the dogs out
driving through Dharawal
in bush bound silence
sun melt darkness melt dew
wrinkled hands pointing out
footprints from wallaby
goanna tracks
whistle into distance
c’mon you mutts time to go ‘ome
off to get smokes
5 bucks to spend at Go-Lo
on some cheap crap
drive home singing
smoke on the water
watch the sun set
over Campbelltown
now he exists in memory
visits me in dream
sometimes he laughs
cracks in face start to shine
he has always glowed to me
still does
*Shortlisted for the 2nd Born Writer’s Award 2023