If you poison us do we not die?
What will be the revenge of the possums?
Doctrines run deep as the rivers -
You die and you die and you die,
Little possum with your brown, brown eyes,
Pleated toe nails and round wee thumb.
Revenge is riding a flame red tree.
The heated planet will expire under our noses.
While we have our sights on your desperate end,
we won’t even notice how little the water,
how parched the child -
our eyes glued to the wrong horizon.
And when we do turn from you
and your four small feet,
we will discover our own two legs
unable to run, homes
destroyed, laboratories burning.
Easterly
(for N Chomsky May 2010)
Boulders roll round and round
in the blinding surf
banging about like dinner plates
washed up in the sink.
They won’t let him into the West Bank -
further east than middle earth
where everywhere is east and middle
and stars jabber as if confetti.
Defiant in a Time of Plenty
The phoebe has not returned this year.
After seven summers her nesting place remains bare.
On the news a boy aged 14 does not return home,
Has two bullet wounds to his chest,
Is frequent flyer-ed from cell to cell/sleep deprived
Just fourteen summers on land and he weeps.
To defy gravity -
If a boy could draw a phoebe on his cell wall
And sketch his own basket of dreams,
He may wing through prison bars and like the phoebe
After seven summers never return.
It Starts with an E
How I love you
How I love you
You turn your face away
How I love you
You turn away
A girl walks by
You turn to see
She has long brown legs
She has long brown hair
Her green eyes laugh
And still I send out love
It floats around your head
I lie alone
Anything is possible
And here I am
The worst I can be
I cannot feel the breeze
Just monster sounds come out
I am capable of murder
Even though I am a mother
And do not support the war
You creep your fingers up her skirt
I look the other way
You Offer a Counsel of Despair
All she wanted was a glimmer of hope,
instead she was shoved into purgatory,
happy at last to adopt and run -
curtains close on a rotting mattress,
baby left in the dark
and a stranded pock marked sailor,
re-located by the CIA
talking sugar cane and Australia.
Fingers crossed he will inherit Samoa.
Yes the other was gay but he paid his way.
-But the rules dear,
no hats,
no eating aloud.
You left to crawl,
That last mountain pass.
No happy families -
a sleeping puzzle.
Why did she tell the story of the lost condom?
Suffering cruising around in her skull
intensified now by counsel with no heart.
She receives a free ticket with a seat
adjacent to the inferno.
