Month: October 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

A Fish Out

A fish out of water slaps
for the wet familiar
as first rainbow gasps
for all colour beneath
evergreen eucalypts

and boy becomes hunter.

White flesh in the pan
rainbow now grey;
a dull eye pops in the fat.
The first meal of camp

“We’re all about survival”
says the voice from the beard.

In that first howling night the tent holds no echo:
a cocoon of down
muffles the want of a scream
for mother’s goodnight.

Terrain is now is real and not just a geography lesson.

When morning arrives
relief and sunlight slap awake
the face of survival.
Mosquitoes frustrate the zippered gauze, march-flies marshal to march.

Wisps of gum-smoke, the smell of the wild, steam from hot-streams on tussocks, beans in the pannikin, dust in the billy, leaves of tea and gumtree chase the boil.

Longer walk today; boots even more ready for rubbing off skin.

Fourteen miles to the next creek and next water.
Ache in the pack
No rest only winter.
The dingo pads on.
Wild boar root en mass. Wombats rummage the banks.
Wallabies thump up the ridge-line.

“We’ll circle our tent-line and raise tonight’s fire after dark.”
Says the beard and walks on.

The hunter
Seeks now no quarry
Dreams the snap of a soft sheet
and mouths words
for the water of home.

MChallis © 2014

A Fist Gutting

Rodney the Tormentor came toward me,
a slick sneer edging the mug of his leering mouth.

He prepared the next barb garnished with a delicate sliver of dry ice.
What was he going to find to ridicule this time?

My hair too long, too short?
The art assignment a pathetic attempt at literature?

My bowling action; a cross between a mental patient and a broken wind-mill?
Knees too bulbous for any normal person?

I thought, not today.

I’ve had this, like this, for almost two years
everyday
each day a new torture, a new laceration of clean practiced words
and me accepting the torment with the dull weariness that comes only from unkind relentless repetition

allowing the beast fresh meat
thinking, hoping one day he’ll stop
surely he’ll tire of the incessant need to ridicule
believing one day the ‘turd’ jokes will dry up

but they never do

such is the never-end brutal articulation, the
verbal incision, the cruel words of blunt destructive beauty:

teenage confidence stumbling like a novice boxer
dribbling with fresh bruises

but not today
the animal hunted turns
to find precision and strength in defiance

it is the time to wound the wounder
and then all
that follows

‘Rodney the Tormenter’ going down in a windless scream

one blow
two years in the forging

one first and final blow
one strike one out

a fist gutting and nothing gets back up

the art gallery attendant, the other students on excursion
the teachers, all as if complicit in retribution like a magicians audience;
look the other way

and Rodney down solar-plexus perplexed

the swift shock in defeat
and a new entry in the part of Rodney’s brain that stores
future possible outcomes to hitherto unchecked actions

decades later I can still see his face in that ghastly micro-moment: pain, shock, horror
and most surprisingly

 

relief.

 

 

 

MChallis © 2005/2014

When the Sound of Life is Everything

When the sound of life is
everything
before the music begins
before there is time to listen

a child coughs in the next room.
I wake carefully, pressing an ear
to the last beat of a dream,
to find you’re not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

Carriages of wind move past my window
move disturbance above the pool of the turtle
who periscopes to the surface,
expectant, in the least, for a gulp of air.
I swim somewhere beneath my ceiling
somewhere beneath the air I prefer to breathe.

You’re not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

When motherless children sleep in the afternoon
when grey breezes whisper away the sun,
when an avalanche of crow-call murders the dove
perched on my sill, there is nothing and none to tell
and no circumstance worth repeating at a later time.

You’re not here now
and you’re not in the next room.

 

 

MChallis © 1998/2014

Naked on River Rock

The smooth force of virgin skin
carresses and moulds me in stone.
I stretch to the contour
groin the hollow
nurtured and naked
for sacrifice.

Grave friend, grey faced
steady eyed friend
shallow edge
great heart
melt with heaviness the torsion
in each of these limbs.

I surrender time to the mother of you,
dry tenderer, assauger of guilt, you
who holds up day, who lets down night,
who bundles and sprawls me
like a rough shouldered parent.

I search for the place of no light in you,
close my eyes to your dreaming
seek out eons you’ve sloughed off
and deeper, how your weight pulls the gravity out of me,

I surrender
and can fall no more into the rocking
rocking lap of you;
mother how can I fold into you
how can I surrender
how can I add my breath to the sigh of you?

 

 

MChallis © 2005/2014

Living for Successfulness

In this room at four a.m. where the universe sometimes meets, I cram some thinking time into the stillness that does not occur at any other part of the day. A wall clock scratchily taps its one-tone metronome in a time signature discomforting to noisy thinkers.

My quiet contemplation is possessed with a version of unkindness, arising out of unsteady dreams. In the most recent frame; invading forces stay out of sight to threaten as the unknown enemy. We burn candles for those who plead the safety of our dwelling. But suspicion becomes our ally and neighbours are offered no solace.

I notice a small moth as it circles a candle avidly craving the feast of light. I think of those who have struggled with a near-death experience. I’m told the dying enter a beautiful light when called to begin passage from this world to the next. Does the small moth feel the same sense of awe as it prepares to feed the candle?

The lifeless screens of television and computer, (sometimes channeling the universe into this quiet room) hold their square black mouths agape, but offer nothing more than mute obedience. The only living pixel in this room is worshipped by the fervent wing of a moth: and is unaware of being a metaphor.

I hear at distance, the first bus for the morning passing by, it is mostly empty of the silent ones it will carry later in the day. I wonder how many of today’s travellers will have been awake at this time, pondering fate and future in the shelter of an urban meditation.

The early hours of the morning, I’m told, are when most passengers depart for the next world as they sip or gasp a last breath.

Slipping by and above me, some adventurous souls are carried by a hot-air balloon: the rushing light and sound of the gas-flame is a jet of life which heats and sustains the commercial moon as it drifts by in close orbit. The balloon then changes metaphor and mimics sunrise.

Perhaps moth and balloon and empty screens are pre-cursors for all that is to come today: all that is furtive, all that is futile, all that pretends omniscience, all that is agape, all that is sufficient for those of us who assume we will live on and on and on. And for those of us who repeat each day secure, content and satisfied: completely taken by all the fuss and noise of living for successfulness.

MChallis 2005/2014

Milk the Light

My father shouting at me
loud enough to wake my dead grandfather, the
red air is frightening I try not to tremble,
it makes him worse,
he hits me with a strap – but his anger soon passes

Tonight the moon seems old,
if it cries it can cry for me because
my sadness is deeper than tears and
the old man I will one day be will remember this.

My mother, happy in her freedom swims naked in the bathroom
Swims an olympic record from the tap end
to the end where we keep the shampoo.

Beneath the waves she can’t hear the
crashing and shouting from the next room.
The bathroom light is turned out,
the moon fills the bath with its soft-milk.

Sad is my sister crying tears like wet feathers.
Crying for a pain she wants to, but can’t feel. Her tears
are starved birds that never learn to fly.

My sister cries the guilt of an expert,
My mother tends herself with soft lotions,
My father, a helpless bystander to his own rage,
wears spectacles passed down by his father.

Tonight the moon is my quilt
Heart-beats are held and all is muffled
The rage is the sea
My skin milks the light now.

 

 

MChallis © 2014

Many Faces

Fiona

a beach ball floated on the waves
it bobbed and rolled and went along
if i was fishing that day i would have seen it
– there on the beach
and above
a hang glider left the grassy cliff
to swing his feet in time with
sea gulls who never tired of laughing,
he saw their white wings and the crests of the waves beneath him,
they were one and they were many
but there was only one beach ball
floating and bobbing along. laughing
in many colours
at the fish in their sea
and the birds who looked like clouds

Angie

a happy face floats in the air
it has a curling ribbon tied to it
i think it is a balloon
a bright red balloon

Eliza

crystal jar – tight sealed lid
full – full as you can be
bursting sometimes with colourful buttons
of all sizes
they are names, and when you call them
they dance
like fireflies scattering into dark places
they light the world with campfires
we are warm, apprehension runs away when you
sow these buttons and
we’re all well clothed
with garments so richly fastened

Cassim

a feather brushes the nose
of the giant
will he sneeze
or carry the bird?

Kat

Excellent tennis is rare
I think of Wimbledon
the best of the best
the court divided
as are the spectators
they cheer, they sit in silence
they see you serve, they see you lob
they see you backhand a winner
they see the choice of the chosen
and when victorious
you acccept the trophy
and the defeated

Kat – again

ok you’re a bird
then fly
fly above the nets but
don’t stop for trees that
look like antennas
and when you pick through leaves on
the forest floor and
find the king of worms,
eat him slowly
he will feed you forever

Sheridan

The sharp sword cuts sweetly
it leaves a cool incision
knowledge is apprehended and
the red well flows over
fields are rich
strength knocking timbers
builds a house,
we live and eat well,
your house prospers
you are graceful
your love is light
and air is for breathing

 

MChallis © 2014
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