Helen

Helen Mar 2014

Hello*

Can we start again?

My name is

I am...

Helen Mar 2014

picking pieces of lint from my belly button

it's a favourite pastime
of mine

head down
concentrating

mining for fools gold
listening to whispers
of stories untold

just waiting

to have enough
fluff
to weave a tapestry

the story of you
and me, and her, and him
and the children

no one remembers the children

the background music
is irritating
the slack jaw stare
from you
is grating

but I chose to continue
to pick belly lint
because nothing is worth
lifting my head
not words, not actions
not even your guilty flinch

Helen Mar 2014

unseen on the outward unbound, on the leeward side

May I have a slice, please? Plain would be fine...

a plain slice of happiness

no sir, I don't have Cancer or MS,
I'm not not a paraplegic or quadriplegic,
haven't served my country and lost limbs,

I'm nowhere near as heart sore as so many,
my plain pain is just -
plain but powerful
in a plainly powerful way

is it possible that
when I feel
that life has taken a nose dive
when it crashes,
I'd prefer to sink than swim?

is that ok?

hope so.

drown in molasses of every day,
try that an any age,
struggle with every decision made,
wrestle with forces that come
at you from every side of life...
wry smile, wry groan,
there is no explaining,
when you chose one thing over another
it is one that missed out
that,
of course was...

is my heart shattering,
my tiresome immobility,
lessened because it is
unseen on
the outward unbound,
leeward side?

is plain pain somehow
insufficient, lacking in
character?

the delirious mystery
of my thoughts
doesn't need spicing,
oregano or basil,
sympathy cards,
and tsk tsk cluckings....

but the steady erosion of exhaustion
weakens me in ways
that leaves me
asking, hoping,
for just
a plain slice of happiness

how can that cost so much?

just what I needed, pleaded for, wept for in silence

Helen Mar 2014

My Miracle

Wafting through my bedroom window
the softly scented jasmine breeze
cools me upon sweat soaked sheets
making a mockery of my beliefs

Of all the questions that remained unanswered
that I added wings to and watched as they soared
inside my mind I became totally blind
to the most important prayer, the one left ignored

One day I decided to no longer pray
to be denied for so long is to forget
that an absentee landlord will never fix up
a house that is riddled with wormholes of regret

I pondered all my long dead prayers
uttered in vain and remaining untrue
So long ago I gave up my right
to believe that I deserved someone, like you

As you reappear through my bedroom door
with movements of grace that are lyrical
I have to remove myself from long held beliefs
to admit I finally received my miracle

Helen Mar 2014

Indentured to Fear

The cannibals only come to me
in my dreams,
when I’m breathing
another lie,
hiding behind
living seams of another life
I lay awake, while I’m devoured
I’m alive, even as I die

I can’t trust the screaming monkeys
or the elephant that sat on my lungs
or the crows that come to pick at my liver
even though the scarecrow that I erected
between my eyes is just a lonely figure
that waves in the breeze
with all other thoughts
that have drifted
into the eternal,
before they have begun

Be Quiet!

you monkeys
with long noses
what stick their face
into my dreams and
shriek at me
You’re lost in your head,
come back to us
so we can mask
your tortured screams

I’m already there inside this life
but facing a loaded gun
when every picture
that passes my eyes
is bathed in the molten glare
of an oft abused, setting sun

Each fond memory fades
into a living nightmare
I may move with the grace
of someone less catatonic
but you can see the state
of current my demise
in my vacant stare

Helen Mar 2014

10w to make you cringe

Though

you

have

touched

my body

*my soul

remains

unsinged

Helen Mar 2014

Claiming Irish

I can claim it
as Australian
back then
when
it was fashionable
to steal people
from their homes
for trying to feed
their children

****** English curs

riding roughshod
over people herds
sending them
to the 'Colonies'

Oh, Irish I might be
except
that the English
had no problem
dealing the same fate
to their own

No, I don't claim Irish
for that alone
I claim 5th generation
Australian, on a Paternal side
Dad never was one to hide
the fact we were born
of a Bushrangers lot
I never forgot
where my Maiden name
came from

I married an Irishman

I am a Doogan
(spelling changed
when coming to this land)

I don't claim Irish
but am proud to be
a part of a heritage
that lives to be free
That just wants freedom
to have their own day
Not to be oppressed
by a country that has no right
to suckle at its breast

Happy St Patricks Day

:)