Kings Cross Trauma

My apologies to the families involved. I have written a poem that responds to the Kings Cross shootings and aftermath because I believe we need to keep the issue of police brutality in the public eye. I hope I don’t upset the people directly affected.

The work is a poem, and as such, I have had to create details – mostly to do with the individuals’ lives/stories beyond the incident. For those who wish to know the facts about the incident, please do a search on ‘Kings Cross Shooting’. My poem most directly responds to the controversial video that is so upsetting to watch, I wouldn’t recommend it. For those people who think they can bear it, the video is here:

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/bloody-ending-to-teen-joyride-in-kings-cross/story-e6frea8c-1226335294511?fb_ref=rec-top&fb_source=home_multiline

Take care. May those who were injured and traumatised come to a place of healing.

Joy Ride

Howling passenger:
blood cradling his head, police fist
cracking his birthdays: how many,
how many years?
Cameras open their mouths.

Legs dragged through the mess as if that
is going to help
anyone sleep.

They’re lost boys.
The man calling for back-up –
a lost boy,
burnt to a stump by middle-age.
There is a son who’ll hear the whole thing
as often as it takes.

He leaves the passenger
still,
a used rag.
He wipes his hand.

Partner monitors signs, watches
something sinking, some thing
with $3 credit left
and a father.

Lenses swell with blood,
say, ‘They can’t do that’.
Say it again:
‘They’re not allowed to do that’.
Nobody’s brother at 4 a.m.
on a Kings Cross street
wants them to do that.

 

No Love Letters

My Lover Teaches me Things I Don’t Want to Know

A professional turns his knife upside down.
But she was no professional – just his wife.

Scissors have legs, and the worst thing
is watching your child leave
in its mother’s arms.

I-Tunes begs production values.
She loses value with each unreturned call.
She has lost her voice and thinks a man
will know where she left it.

Dreams don’t have letters or numbers. Dreams
make your teeth chatter
but I can send you no letter
to calm you.

An open relationship has rules:
no STDs and no love letters. Two ‘no’s
but she has to wonder who’s saying ‘yes’.
Oh, yes.

This is a dream and dreams don’t deal with letters.
‘N-o’ spells a trauma in the waiting room.

This is a dream and dreams don’t call my name.
Your teeth are chattering. Your brain
is a scramble of toxins again and I’d love to
administer water, call ‘triple o’
but this is a dream and has no numbers –
only failed love affairs,
downloaded at lesser quality
while you sleep.

 

How to Honeymoon

How to Honeymoon
for JC

I

Where there’s smoke isn’t necessarily fire.

Calls from an ‘ex’ with a lighter.
A shifting wind. A purifying test.
I only want your best and you mine.

You dismantle the smoke alarm.
I take the frying pan outside.
We meet in a smile.

II

You keep our love afloat
in a wine glass.
Red and yellow petals roll
days and words and lips
over our skin.

On the last day,
I take the glass outside
to throw this beauty to the wind.
You beg a reprieve,
rearrange our goodbye.
You will give love the freedom
to die but you won’t kill it.

Swing Low, Swing Lightly

Swing Low, Swing Lightly

Beach walk:
I carry nothing
but an injury.

I take care around the shrimps
that are minutes away
from being eaten.

Empty hands,
clean feet,
the only thing keeping my soul from flight
is my own unkindness.

A corpse is as heavy
as its unresolved disputes.
A coffin isn’t open
to debate. See that dirt?
Pick up your shovel. Weigh in a little.
Tell your side. But be prepared
to always swing wider for when you’re done,
you’ll lay a wreath to luck
and drive away.

Larrimah Farewell

I haven’t been writing much poetry lately. The year began with a play for the Bombing of Darwin commemorations. That took some time. In the middle of that, Darwin writer Andrew McMillan died. We had a wake and then we had a funeral down at Larrimah (about 500 ks south of Darwin). I wrote this poem for the occasion.

Larrimah used to be ‘the end of the line’ during WWII. Soldiers would travel by train from Darwin and hop off at Larrimah to board a truck for the rest of the journey down south. You might also need to know that Andrew is (doesn’t feel right to say ‘was’) – is a die-hard Pies supporter. Courtesy of Denise Officer, he scored the boot worn by Nick Maxwell in the 2010 Grand Final.

Andrew arrives at the end of the line.

Past Larrimah
for Andrew McMillan

A line drawn in the dust.
The beginning is hard to see.
The end is harder.

Train brakes at Larrimah.
A track has lost its map
and dives underground.

The medals of a father
come to rest on a shelf,
rust in line.

No son will wear this gold,
pin it to cloth.
But a tale breeds beyond
its last full-stop.

The boot of a captain kicks past
the final siren.

It is a Collingwood campaign. But we’re all
muscles marching to death
and souls waiting to be found.

Here death lies
with the boots, medals and muscles spent
on a book or a railway line. But McMillan
walks off the ground,
sheds his guernsey.
We’re all souls waiting to be found
at the end of the line.

Cyclone Watching at Christmas

As this Poet-in-Residence year draws to a close, I am preparing for a repeat of Cyclone Tracy. It’s an eerie feeling. All plans to pick up the prawns and buy last-minute gifts are on hold. I’m now picking up the shovel and refreshing my moat and drainage systems instead.

My Australian Poetry gig has, sadly, come to an end, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Australian Poetry and The Pratt Foundation. I’ve had an enlightening and nourishing year, and I hope I have contributed to the community in some way. In 2012, I’ll keep posting new poetry on this blog. However, it won’t be in any official capacity.

For the final post of the year, I wanted to draw the focus back to the Territory again. I decided to feature the work of Sue Jean Stanton, a Kungarakan-Gurindji writer and academic. Sue is a poet, a sharp political commentator and a great laugh. You can find her work in This country anytime anywhere (IAD Press/NT Writers’ Centre, 2010) and elsewhere via the web.

Sue’s poem, Wet Season Rain (previously published in This country anytime anywhere), celebrates my favourite time of the year – the Wet Season. I’m particularly happy to feature this poem because we’ve just endured a shocking Build-Up in the Top End – a ridiculously hot November and December, and I’m a person who normally loves warm weather. So, anyhow, enjoy the Wet Season Rain, and thanks for visiting my blog this year. I hope to see you back here in 2012 after Cyclone Grant has passed …

Take care,
Sandra
x

Wet Season Rain

Smell it.
Wafting on the hot and cool breeze.
Hear it.
Rat-a-tatting its machine gun fire on tin roofs.
Feel it.
Firing its bullets all around.
Taste it.
Streaming down the face, mingling with sweat as it runs from
hot eyes to dry mouth.
See it.
Hop-scotching across the powdery red dust.
Watch it.
Hurrying the green ants – they run; down the leafy mango trees,
along the wire fence.
Black clouds.
Ten-pin rolling across the once parched sky.
Lightning streaks.
Zig-zagging down and across in erratic irregular strikes.
Water.
Cascading down.
Waterfalls from heaven.
Mist spraying, puddles forming.
It stops.
It’s hot.
Steam, screaming from the earth.
It’s over.
It’s ended too soon.

© Sue Jean Stanton

Sue Jean Stanton

Obama, Darwin and The Pigeon Lady

Well, we had our big Obama moment in Darwin the other day. Political opinions and inconveniences aside, the whole town was excited, and even the cynical would have to admit this. I wandered around the CBD the day before he came, and noticed some details that I thought would catch Obama’s eye.

Contributing to the city’s rich cultural tapestry are the homeless and/or itinerant. In the poem below, I mention the LongGrassers – so-named for living in the Long Grass. The main character of the poem, however, is The Pigeon Lady. After I wrote this poem, I did a bit of Googling on her so I could flesh out her character in this introduction. I discovered there’s an appreciation page for her on Facebook. The appreciation page is full of rumours and, in the end, I decided to just  leave her as a bit of a mystery. There was one story that was interesting, though. She allegedly told someone that her pigeons spy on the government – a little detail that fascinated me given the poem’s themes.

Co-Starring Obama

The Pigeon Lady waits on the corner
with her cages and the media.

A chopper presses the air
for news from home.

A crocodile salivates
over rolled up sleeves.

The chopper can’t choose
which gifts to take back, ticks off lists.

The Pigeon Lady wonders
if home is excess baggage.

A LongGrasser wishes people
would have a good night, misses people.

Someone has pissed on the Milkwood. Someone
arms another lot of sons and pays with flowers.

A patrol boat cuts through the rain.
Handshakes, signed papers, the wake.

Waves curl like the lips of the drowned dead.
Petals, mother’s hush, the crushing weight.

Treading water, the chopper calls
for someone to change the track.

A cage. A plane
that apes the sky.

The wide, blue eyes
of your mistress.

Home carries you.
Or do you carry home?

The chopper sweats on a telegram:
Where have you got to now, my son?
Where are you?

A chopper doesn’t have answers.
A bodyguard has no lips. A sniper
can only do his best.
But the floor of the cage is a mess.