MARTIN CHALLIS
at first learning
grief brings the un-returnable message
there is no un-reading
no un-learning
only unbearable immutable fact
in solitude there is no escape
in connection there is no solution
over time the seven stages are traversed
and while there can be no forgetting
with acquiescence
there can be acceptance
and with it
a gentle light of loss
to illuminate
the deepest gratitude
the voice of cynicism
with imperious wisdom
informed by circumstances past
where through defeated expectation, corrupted naivety
perhaps wounded vulnerability has been
disappointed on innumerable occasions
and chanting incessantly
in a cavernous register
“there is no hope – there is no point”
and louder
“there is no hope – there is no point”
and louder still
“there is no hope – there is no point”
would have you adopt this epigram as your own
in the belief
that if you do
the prophecy of self determined hopelessness
will be affirmed and validated
its unspoken fear of course is that you will leave it there
abandoned and alone in the cavern of its own arrogant despair
so here’s an idea
surprise it
take it with you
out of the pit
take it for a bicycle ride on the beach at low tide
hump it in a ruck-sack up a rocky ridge
swim with it in a lake with a sandy bottom and willow banks
invite it to the funniest Robin Williams film you can think of
above all else, let it experience your unconditional positive regard
constantly
continuously
repeatedly
offering counsel
in all the tones and voices
of unrelenting love
I would like to know you
More than I do
You are a gracious presence that in glimpses I have seen influence the mightiest egos acquiesce
Somehow at times I stumble across you yet would know you more as a constant companion
I forget you often and in the throes of reaction and defensiveness catch myself in arrogance or in self righteousness or justification
Which is always followed by regret
How do I know you?
How do I find you in the moments when I am alone and embattled?
How do I find you in that first breath?
Of surrender
as a breath
will happen by itself
as water
will find the way to flow
as gravity
will hold us to the ground
I will love you always
and this will be
as natural
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.
the unequivocal
sentinel
a living metaphor
arising
from the gesture
of simply
letting go
one’s
attachment centre
.
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.
i read:
do not read these words
too late
i read:
wet paint do not touch
too late
I read:
open your heart open your mind stop reading
just in time
MChallis © 2014
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.
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?
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