An owl in a tree
whose spirit reaches beyond
everything we know

is unjustly shot
down to the summer forest
floor, flanked by flowers.

And so I ask you:
who was the one who shot it?
...

Mama told me we're just playing hide and seek
with men pretending they're police. I love to play
hide and seek. Don't you too?

We are hiding in my neighbour's closet and
I'm giggling. My mama holds her hand over
both our mouths. I and my

mama sit together quietly but I
am hearing grown-ups yell outside. I ask my
Mama why? No reply.

Then I heard a man and mama's face was ice.
He sounded very angry and he asked me where
we are hid. Then I jumped,

yelled at him: peekaboo!

Now it's my story – and others – you read on the news,
hidden by the oversaturated, gold photo
of the front-man; my miserable life made by him

Imagine the feeling she felt to find a wall in
the city. Pretend seeing this blockade: to wake up
and find your sense of self so rudely split
and blood blocked up by barriers of grit
and stone. Immured and trapped. The promenade
has now been pieced apart by guns and guards.
Though even this sensation wasn’t new –
to have her body broken into two –
this construct ripped a rift she could not pass,
with blades of sharp and rusty August grass.
Graffitied cracks through which poor souls have tried          to escape,
but none outrun the trauma of the past.

I could just hang in Dreamworld forever,
Abandon my duties:
Nothing has to matter in this heaven,
Lest we poison it and bring about hell.

My fragile mind rides dreamboats through dreamlakes,
And I pray it doesn’t:
Break,
Dreams are my safe haven which keeps me well.

See, unlike the real world, we can rest here,
Lie our hearts flat in line:
Pulsing,
Like a drowning drone that drains life on high.

And we’re walking on air year after year,
And no-one seems to mind:
Together,
We stand on skies; a silent choir of sighs.

‘Xcept I feel like I’m rising against time,
As in my mood’s rising:
So quickly that,
It feels as if I’m not truly growing.

All I could ever want, now within reach,
A job I love, to keep:
New love, a fam’ly,
All my million dollar desires I reap.

But as the clock counts and calls out seven,
I’m cast away from heaven:
And away from me does all my leaven
Vanish. Oh God, what a brute-full second.

God, just let me go back for a second.