Scent of Rain
I breathe her scent
deep earthy smell
of sprinkling rain
ozone of her essence
the scent of
freshly washed laundry
exotic fibers of lust
erotic murmur of nature
a silent opaque mist
steaming on naked skin
scent of blue condensation
liquid sunshine of her soul
aphrodisiac aroma
of gentle rain
ozone of the gods
showers stirring
my aroused senses
dancing with me
in simplicity of time
wafting perfume
of last night’s ardor
incense of her soul.
Will Roses Turn Red
how long will children carve the names
of colors in stanzas,
how long,
before the earth becomes a mirror and
all flowers turn black,
before they sip the soil
at teatime,
toasting to the heaven
above everyone they've ever lost,
and they'll be angels on that day,
standing on the dust
of paradise,
and, if we're lucky,
they'll play pretend,
and write rhymes
about roses,
like the petals
could one day last forever,
like their little polygraph heartbeats
don't give them away,
if only we could help them
disconnect,
this innocence would look less like a lie,
would look more like life,
and we'd teach them
to play hopscotch on our graves,
we'd teach them to see that angels
never fall before they leave the ground
and darkness sometimes creeps from above,
so I smoke to learn how
to say goodbye,
let's watch together,
as every cloud becomes lost,
and we'll finally see ourselves painted
by nature,
with petals black
and faces held in the memory
of the fallen.
Lost Meaning
Hate
Repetition made words like hate lose significance.
When freshly painted, you gape at the pallid walls anxious to taint them but as you stroll past the same wall day by day, they become just like the other walls.
Similar, ordinary, standard.
So now you can say cheesecake and hate in the same sentence.
And use the word like at the beginning of a sentence.
Unhand Her
Romantic kisses and stage performances
A dream of greatness and talent as thick as the Forrest
They danced and they sung and the world froze in time
A single moments rhyme to describe the history behind
Who they were and who they no longer are now
One deceased although the dancing stopped long ago
For he blamed her for his problems and everyone else
So when he came to his grave
his own His own blood never felt
A need to arrive or a need to go
too busy making sure he wouldn't be the same man
Unhand her
He said as a boy
Wondering why what was going on
Wasn't like last nights bed time story
Progress
My name is Djarrtjuntjun and I am the last of the people. That makes me the most intelligent person on earth by my reckoning, and indeed there is no-one to dispute it.
I do not count the voices of the spirits of the dead, those ghosts who returned to torment us, bringing strange ways and disease. They have expelled the rest of us into the land of the dead and are wandering in the place of living things. Where can the wisdom be in that?
I challenged one of the spirits and asked him why he acted so. In the end he spoke only stupidities about my white father.
All the people know that the father of Djarrtjunjun is Eucalyptus, deep rooted in the spirit land, where he waits to shade me with his leaves.
The returned spirit wore a black skin, even in the heat of the day. Seeing that he was controlled by a familiar that lived in a log that he placed on his head, I knocked the spirit-keeper off with my club to let him speak freely.
The log was hollow, like the home of snake, but this familiar was adept at hiding and I saw nothing inside.
The story that the returned spirit related was very strange. He took me to a high place to look down up on the land of the people. He asked me to dream it as a rutted field surrounded by stinging metal in which strange plants would grow. In this dream the land was tended by beings who toiled to bring the spirit of the river onto the land.
I answered that this could not be a true dream, for all things were part of the people. If the land were cut by stinging metal the people would feel its pain and suffer and die.
I asked him why the spirits did these things and threatened him with my club. He tried to bind me with a word suggested by his familiar and I became frightened and fled.
Later in their anger the returned spirits imprisoned the river in white stone and struck a great wound in the land, making the blood run metal red until the fish died.
The people were driven from the land by cruel lashes and some were struck down by invisible spears thrown with a voice like thunder. Most simply starved or died from a wasting disease that turned the skin and nose into red blisters, on which the flies feasted greedily.
I would grieve for the land and for the river and the fish but I have no grief left since the fire left the eyes of my beautiful Alinta.
Perhaps it is best that she is no longer here to see the end of this dream.
Now I have returned to the high place and I see the tangled remains of the stinging metal drawing patterns on the red earth in which no thing lives.
For many days I dreamed as hard as I could but I am only one, and even the most intelligent man on earth cannot return things to how they were.
As I lie exhausted, I understand that I have been followed by the snake’s whispered word and it has bound me after all.
A great weariness lies upon my spirit until now I dream only of joining Alinta round the fire in the shade of father Eucalyptus.
