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