The white bleached corpse of day is fast
- reddened, bloodied -
torn to scarlet shreds of evening
slashed by wild and fiery crimsons.

Light leaching and passing westward
from bridge to bridge
garlands of mist drift up the river

Shadows dart, shelter and linger
blackness creeps and claws
the shades of night

Darkness spills down docks and ditches
fingers through the strands of light
by midnight every dock is still

Moon hangs full, naked and weary
slow stiching silver threads
through tall ships rigging
in the dim and dreary night

A yapping dog disturbs the quiet
more insistent than the stars.


© M.L.Emmett

There walks no Daphnis with his mournful song
Blinded by the vengeful nymph, whose love was unrequited
He does not wander in the hills above this place
Playing his pipe and singing of his sadness
Aphrodite can punish him no more
For he is gone to the quiet land of shadows
Taken by Hermes, herald and messenger
Of the mightiest of gods, to cross the river Styx
His soul guided by his father’s loving hand,
to Hades and the final still of time and season.

In the quartz sculpted gorge, beneath the waterfall
Naiads lithe and languorous once bathed
Alabaster skinned, in the crystal brook
Auburn ringlet tresses were shaken free
When they stepped among the mossy rocks and ferns
Their peachy cheeks flushed vital rose
Their strawberry ******* raised and glistening
Their teasing laughter that once echoed in these dales
Through verdant pastures and the bluebelled wood
Is heard no more, for they have passed into memory.

It is silent now, the Jackals are not howling
The threat of Wolves and Lions gone
This pastoral world of goatherds pining
Is but a world of dust and dreams.

In Winnipeg
they dig the winter graves
in autumn
before the sun sleeps
and the ground freezes.

They guess the number
of holes to dig.
They respect the cold
and the winter dead.

Death prediction
is a fine art
in Winnipeg.  


© M.L.Emmett

~ To *****, on the death of our mutual friend John Keats ~

What steadfast equilibrium
Can border vastness of grief?
Nothing ever becomes as real
Till it be experience.

Life’s fragile day is done for Keats
Imagination his belief
His Monastery, he its Monk
Beauty’s spell, fervent relief.

He died in Rome mourned by so few
Bright star, by none more than you
He hears your tender-taken breath
Ever feels soft fall and swell.

If warm,  wind plucked purest  harp
Words from tranquillity have sprung
Then Nature’s might and awe arouse
World’s sheer grandeur will be sung

Yet will black shadows cross the land
Swarming clouds of  Erinyes
Snatching this poet young and sweet
More mortal than his poetry.

© M.L.Emmett

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Ms. Cho is so, so sorry
for the unintended worry
and the dreadful social uproar
she created
when she rated
her airline’s services as poor.

But any self-respecting South Korean
would understand the shame
when the macadamias came
not in a china dish
for this salty snack delish
was placed calmly on her tray
the cabin crew would say
resplendent in their jackets
“The nuts are served in packets
vacuum-sealed to keep them fresh.”

Hyun-ah proud and haughty
wagged her fingers, called them naughty
and summoned forth the Chief of all the crew
demanding that he tell her if he knew
if the in-flight rules were being followed
or was it in anarchy they wallowed.
He stumbled and he stuttered
swallowed, then muttered
he’d never thought this matter
was the least bit earth shattering.

“Nuts in a bag, are you insane?
You must be taken off this plane”
True to her word the flight turned round.
Until they landed not a sound
was heard within the cabin of that plane.
He was dropped back at JFK
and after some delay
they made their way again heading east.

But arriving eleven minutes late
Ms Cho had definitely sealed her fate
Notwithstanding Daddy’s power
as the airlines CEO
relations turned quite sour
his daughter forced to go
She lost each and every perk
that accompanied her work
her executive pay
all lost – such is the way.

So, finally in sum
Beware of a Cho tantrum
when you see that charming face
remember she’s a nut case
who in shrill and angry voice
made a devastating choice.

Never change an airline schedule
Never let your plane be late
Never waste expensive jet fuel
Or suffer Ms. Cho’s fate

~ Otto Dix Plate 22 ~

Each night I meet myself in nightmares
I am my own enemy fighting in No-man’s land
I am material and real, yet I barely exist
in my imagination.

There is nothing whole and complete
nothing has retained its shape or structure
everything is splintered into surfaces
in my imagination.

There can be only shreds and shards
only textures, hard lines and spaces
where white light can dance free
in my imagination.

Each night I crawl through ruined houses
along dark passages that close me in
dropping to bottomless depths of myself
in my imagination

There are only axons and dendrites in my mind
electric sparking, all atoms in a crystal night
a grasping hand, a gaping eye disconnected
in my imagination.

Each night I try to find myself in nightmares
I am my own enemy fighting in No-man’s land
I am dark energy and matter, yet I barely exist
in my imagination.


© M.L.Emmett

This carpet - a Turkish Smyrna -
is made with Gordian knots,
tied by the fine fingers of a child
tied to a loom
by a thin, pale leg.

Every centimetre - a hundred knots
This carpet - two and a half million knots
all Gordian  
tied tightly
by the fine fingers of a child.

Each thread is dyed
with plants
picked by nomad hands
from shifting lands
Henna oranges and Madder reds
Saffron yellows and Indigo blues
Colours bloom and fade
with the change of seasons.

Patterns are centuries old,
never drawn or sketched,
only sung to the young
by the old blind weavers,
who walk the workshops
and the aisles of looms.

In this shadow world
of soured and fetid air
dreamless children
live threadbare under a black sun.

Wide borders holding everything in place
no figures or stories, just a labyrinth
of abstract shape and colour
drawing you in to the treasure
at the centre of the rug.

And the knowledge of the knots
the Gordion knots
tied by the fine fingers of a child
tied to a loom
by a thin, pale leg.

(On the death of a daughter)

The death I must pronounce upon
For you, parents, the wait was long
Across this land unjustly tried
Your silence only proof you lied.
In pitch darkness, dragged overland
By Dingo jaws and human hand
Guilty and gaoled, she would have read
In her sixth year, were she not dead
Just six weeks, never spoke a word
Now flies the night, free as a bird
Over deserts ochre and red
On Uluru she rests her head
Wakens and plays in sunlight stark
Darts in rock shadows, cool and dark
In Rainbow Spirit surely trust
She lies lightly in sand and dust.

© M.L.Emmett

(for Jill Jones)

Each day is always possible
I fling myself at chances.

My horizon pulses its limitless light
splitting atoms, shattering the white.

Silver birches shiver spotlights
whispering forgotten lines in my ears.

Feathered clouds soar and skim
as I taste the vast blue skin of sky.

I catch the words beneath the waves
each tide of syllables and song.

I’m sand-etched and scratch at
language lost and left on the shore.

I make for the glowing yellow moment  
and live in metaphor.


© M.L.Emmett 2016

In the realm of rumour
wise men suggest
when it is dark enough
you will see the stars

In the fury and the mire of human veins
fragments of dreams and memories
used to spring loose

from my crowded mind
unsettled, darting dreams
shouting slogans in the noisy air.

In the kingdom
of saliva and dust
I have ceased to dream

And soon
I will soon cease
to exist.


© M.L.Emmett

Words

We live in a wired and weird world
where meanings of our words
are paper-thin tissue and torn
tarnished and worn by wear and War.

© M.L.Emmett

~ For Molly ~

There cannot ever be, for me
an emotional peak so high
and beyond all other experience
so much my own, entirely.
A speechless secret, my unsaid words
preserving its wonderful wholeness
the not-telling, keeping it so precious
too precious for me, I fear, to shatter
the silence of its perfection.

The blood bond between us
holds no hidden barriers
in this amniotic floating universe
shock-absorbing all the outer world
nutrient rich, nourishing your growth.
My voice vibrating, rippling
in your sonic breathless bubble.
My body, in all its actions
and motions, marking your time
rolling and turning your shaping.

Your rhythm pressing my organs
punching and kicking, demanding space
Immersed in my body’s womb-core
snuggling safe and deeply nestled
in our sheer and utter intimacy.
I give you all I’ll ever have
my blood, my breath, my everything
beyond all my knowing and imagining
this is a devotion most terrible and sublime.


© M.L.Emmett 2016

For my brother, Martin

I'm going to sling your memory
over my shoulder
back pack you round the world

slide you on to station platforms
alongside the passing panorama of footsteps
that echo on that slice of cold cement

tuck you into airplane lockers
overhead the sleeping flyers
in that metal coffin in the ice cream clouds

nestle you among bus luggage
beneath the picture windows
and the ribbon racing road

I will unpack you in every village
every town and every city
in every land and nation

on every continent and land mass
crossing the oceans and seas
catching every wave and tide

circling the earth on winds and breezes
following sunsets and solar eclipses
and every cycle of the moon

until I find a place of resting
until I find a place of peace
until I find a place of peace

© M.L.Emmett

(for my brother, Martin)

I have sown the moon in the sky for you
so every night its there for you to see

I have stopped every clock from ticking time away
I have turned the tides back from the shore

I have stopped your world in blue belled Spring
and locked my in the falling leaves of Autumn

So now you can rewind the moments of the world
You can go back, to that one moment of choice

and never find the hose, nor set the engine deadly running
nor send those texts of fond farewells, to friends who looked away

nor write to me with love a comfort letter
for the dreadful loss.

No!
Just you:

the tufted, still blonde cowlick sticking up
the crinkled nose and cheeky smile
those sea blue eyes to drown in
strong brown arms, muscles flexed and toned
wrapped tight around me warm
and alive.


© M.L.Emmett

Hope is the thing with feathers  
That perches in the soul,  
And sings the tune without the words,  
And never stops at all,  
  
And sweetest in the gale is heard;          
And sore must be the storm  
That could abash the little bird  
That kept so many warm.  
  
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,  
And on the strangest sea;        
Yet, never, in extremity,  
It asked a crumb of me.

At Vernal equinox, the Sun crosses
over the plane of the Earth’s equator
and equalises the night and the day.
Then will the Emerald Dragon awaken
from his hibernation beneath the earth.
Rising in the jade forests of Ghizhou,
this yin creature transforms the cold, dead land.
Primal and powerful, he gathers the Qi;
melts the mountain snows to ribbons of fire
igniting the frosty hillsides to growth,
fuses each thing with verdant energy,
revives again the seed, renews the bulb,
sprouting tender shoots juice-rich and sap-full
Shy blossoms set to bloom and burst with fruit
Fresh scented breezes ruffle foliage
maiden ferns shiver with their thrill and ******
Grasses and reeds bedewed and beryline,
murmuring and humming low and dulcet,
dancing and swaying at the river’s edge.
Roots of every tree draw deep from the earth
Magnolia and Frangipani breathe
and pant out fragrant honeyed lusciousness
Spring sparks and quickens, kicks and is alive.

© M.L.Emmett

Dead voices in the head
of a frightened madman

starts humming like electric wires
in wild winter storms.

bursting and cracking like melting ice
in a warm spring thaw

insistent, pollen-drunk bees
buzzing round hot summer hives

grumbling and gathering
swirling eddies of autumn leaves

dancing schizophrenic death
in the breath of city streets.

© M.L.Emmett

Lavinia were you walking in the park?
Arm in arm with that pompous chanticleer
Singing in your sweet ear, a Sonneteer
Tongue-teasing rhymes told by that knave Petrach
Your ice blue eyes bright lit by sudden spark
Even blushes on your soft cheek appear
As if you found his every word sincere
Repeated in his carriage after dark

Master of dark magic hidden in verse
Your velvet rose virtue is your treasure
Lock it away from enticing word
On that vile poet will I set a curse
Venus come down and thwart all his pleasure
E**specially, I beg his days be numbered.

I’m just a lanky lass from Wycheproof
Born on the right side of the tracks
Law degree and a stint at Racing Vic
I’ve risen well above the backroom hacks

I’m revered
and I’m feared
I’m Tony’s confidante
I scream, I shout, I rant
Back benchers quake
Ministers shake
I’m an armoured tank
You know I outrank
any one in Coo-ee
of super-strong me

Chief of Staff to the PM
I’m the ultimate femme
Murdoch grumbled, tried to call me to heel
I’m never humbled, I’m totally real
I am the ‘she’ who must be obeyed
I am the piper who must be paid
I’m the gate-keeper
I’m the scythe-reaper

Tony knows who makes and butters his bread
I keep him happy, I keep him well fed
I am Salome, when I call for a head
a platter it’s given, my enemy dead.

I was top of my game and top of the list
of Helen McCabe’s ‘Women of Power’
I’ve never cowered, brown-nosed or ****-kissed
I stand tall, over midgets I tower
Natural-born killer exudes from my pores
I suffer no fools, I banish the bores
I mark my territory, a ******* dog
Clear dry is my vision, no room for fog
Some say I influence all decisions
I’m an enforcer of rigid divisions
There is only ‘us’ in the battle of wills
Ride on my side, for the endless high thrills
Of course I agree I’ve had an impact
It’s true without me, poor Tony can’t act
But sad to tell you, it’s still more than that
I’m in charge of the ball and even the bat
I know there are some who cannot like me
Though I control the national psyche
So come Malcolm, Julie and sad sack Joe
I will decide when it’s my time to go
No-one can challenge Abbot, my hero
I’ll zap them to ashes, to dust, to zero
I’ll huff and I’ll puff and blow their House down
Forever secure and wearing my crown
So don’t mess with me, you miserable crew
Just you crawl away in case I say, “Boo!”
I’m beautiful fearless, utterly bold
Remember, I serve revenge icy cold.

© M.L.Emmett

He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock’s eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening edges cut
His stiffened fingers. Through the ****
Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
Wet through and shivering he kneels
And digs the slippery coals; like eels
They slide about. His force all spent,
He counts his small accomplishment.
A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
Which still have fire in their souls.
Fire! And in his thought there burns
The topaz fire of votive urns.
He sees it fling from hill to hill,
And still consumed, is burning still.
Higher and higher leaps the flame,
The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
His votive vessels but a pack
Of old discarded shards, his fire
A peddler’s; still to him the pyre
Is incensed, an enduring goal!
He sighs and grubs another coal.

In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.

Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.

From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.

Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.

Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.

Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens


Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.

Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war

Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains

Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.

They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.

But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.


© M.L.Emmett

Shall I compare thee to a Winter’s night ?
Thou art more ugly and more bitter cold:
Soft fogs do wrap the vestiges of light,
And winters lease hath all too long a hold:
Sometimes too cold the hand of hell can feel,  
And rarely is her blackness ever lit;
And every shade and shadow oft conceal,          
By scheme, or nature’s sly force of habit
But thy eternal winter will not pass
Nor find concession in the surgeon’s knife    
Nor can repair or lift your sagging ****
When in infernal lines is etched your life
So long as men can wink and ribs can poke
So long lives this, and you are such a joke.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied.  It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel.

The barbed wire is wound
and catches tight
around the torso.

Razor wire loops limbs
and worries the skin
to stillness.

There is a hot wire passed
through the skull
and down the spine
pulled tight and taut
and electrified.

Pain only lives
roasted in the core
of reality.



© M.L.Emmett

At harbour’s entrance, a mile or more away
beyond high water, hunkered down
the old Quarantine station
on a flat patch of land
etched from the tangles of coastal heath.

The Barrack buildings besieged
by brooding sky and sea
and choking landscape – bush
thickets clambering the steep isthmus
backdrop of granite tor.

Chaotic angled peaks everywhere
indecisive stony sentinels
offering no certainty in the grey cloud
chiffonade of morning.
Slow, lingering clouds
wandering in confused circles
or passing over, casually
bringing squalls and showers.

Washing the pock-picked stone
to glistening newness of a palette
of fresh browns – tan, taupe, fox-brown
chestnut to black murky sludge
as if recently erupted
from earth’s muddy tender skin.

A cluster of cottages
a settlement of sorts with cannon ports
and flagpole and a fenced graveyard
still telling stories of pathos
pity and waste filling this place
with a strange, pressing silence
an atmospheric numbness felt
in dread and gravity.

© M.L.Emmett

Lost in my chiaroscuro world
I cannot be followed
No-one knows my secret language
No-one knows my passwords
or my frames of reference
Everything said, is coded.

In desperate times
speech becomes pure sound
rhythmic and completely foreign
People can make out words
but they have no context

George, Jean, Martin
Arthur, Margaret
Names like rays on a compass
They were my world
of visible magnetic forces
I could no more abandon them
than rearrange the continents.

But you can learn
when the old geography
is too painfully familiar
not to abandon it
But simply invent
a country of your own.

A landscape beyond maps,
compasses and sextant
Beyond a dictionary
of common usage
and invented diction.

You can search
but the unseen
patterns of dreaming
are as easy to find.

Isolated, distant
language fractures
and returns to you
words are breaking the barrier reef
an exile in a shadow land.

The damage grows inside
sensed but unseen
seeping into crevices like moss
and lichen gripping
spreading and creeping
a spiked vine
flaring down to the tongue.


© M.L.Emmett

Each day the light slips
into the murky shadows
of the bedroom-morning-depression

Cars swish by
in the rush hour of work
and school

routines, timetables and teabreaks
weekday working
full of purpose.

On the edge, outside the frame
margin people wait
silenced and destination free

unmapped, unseen
locked tight
in a circle

cruising
their perimeter
only hoping for a break.


© M.L.Emmett

Emily will take her cedar box
of hidden poems
throwing them on a Sou’ Westerly breeze
in a New England Spring —

They will be snatched and fly
daring, dainty flutter byes
across the stretching continent
the Great Plains and New Frontiers —
The Sun — rising in ribbons
Mountains dripping scarlet sunsets
vast Miles of Evening Sparks —
as the Hemispheres come home
to early Night —

they’ll be read by lonely cowboys
drinking whisky, in the sagebrush
Indian braves campfire smoking
Sung in Saloons by husky-voiced dames
can-can dressed and a whole lotta grit
and gumption.

Emily, lightened of her load
unknotted the Skein of Misery —
Universe unstitched —
in this moment of escape
Landscape will listen —
Shadows will hold their breath
until the words are spoken.

Emily’s skipping down the stairs
of that morbid, cold wintered house
with its bare Slants of Light —
rushing out the door
throwing herself on the Open day —

Telling True, but slanted.

Tis pleasure sweet to think of tasting you.
to kiss your honeyed lips a tender treat,
to savour with my tongue your velvet heat,
to suckle deep that nectared heady brew.
Downy peach skin I long to stroke anew,
whipped creamy smooth and chocolate bittersweet.
Your luscious mango juice I ache to eat,
drown in your silky softness I once knew.

Many banquets were eaten in our bed,
each tasty morsel set the craving trap.
Imagine feasting on a love now past.
The apple-of-my-eye that cuts me dead
and tosses me a final candied scrap.
Lovelorn and syrup-sick I needs must fast.

My lover’s eyes no longer navy pool
bleached paler by years of beating sun
His nose over ****** dominion rules
and skin with liver spots is overrun
A dandelion man, confused and tall,
a long thin stem and a puff of white hair
Unsteady gait, joints need an overhaul
the crack and creak of cartilage wear
His views are fixed and often dogmatic
expressed in cold voice with power and force
He never cares to be diplomatic
preferring a more a belligerent course
Yet, he is my love and ever shall be
as long as the tides rush in from the sea.

I want to sleep and take my evening slow
Each night is full of thoughts I need to fear
I learn to let the shadows slowly go

I feel by thinking all we need to know
I listen to the blood pulse in our ear
I want to sleep and take my evening slow

There’s steady breath and warmth in touching you
Curled round your curves I nestle softly there
I learn to let the shadows slowly go

Awake in moonlit silence tell me how
I walk the landing climb the winding stair
I want to sleep and take my evening slow

My head is filled with things I have to do
Let’s go and breathe the jasmine scented air
I’m learning how to make the shadows go

I’m uncertain I can ever hope to know
A way for sleep to rest with death so near
I want to sleep and take my evening slow
I learned to let the shadows slip and go


© M.L. Emmett

Children need to breathe the air of protest
walk together, arm in arm with strangers
wear badges of hope and T-shirts with lifelines

Sing words of wisdom and history
chant choric responses of camaraderie
in a mass movement of human voices.

Understand the justice of causes
and the constant need for change.
The dignity of freedom
and the strength of real choices

Find courage to lead others by honourable action
spreading metaphors of compassion
over roads of pain and tears.

Letting the certainty of liberty
beat with their hearts
as strong as empathy

And may peace be tattooed
on every breath
they ever breathe.

© M.L.Emmett

The jet- black, coal-smeared dawn
of days afterwards
of starless nights
and moon less nights
of deep dark darkness
thick and sticky
pitch and oil
***** days of charred wood
and ash.                              

That scouring whiteness
that etching acid purity
of white heat metal days
The crisp starched sun-scented
wind sail sheet
smoothed flat peace flag days.
That white marble slab cool  
blanched forensic world
of questions and answers.

The sunset rusty reddening
pain deadening
leeching of the scarlet wash
crimson and vermilion
ruby berries and rose blush
blood tear letting
letting go.

No lead for gold - no alchemy here
No runes or trickery - no book of spells
No steady path of transformation
Just the heavy hollowed wreath
that black, white and red tricolour
of grief.

© M.L.Emmett

Blackbirds nesting in the Pergola strut,
shaded in a Wisteria bower,
the first year it decided to flower,
untended, ragged spirals left uncut.

Father jet black darting past the window,
sudden flashes of his yellow rimmed eye.
Dowdy brown mother has no need to fly,
snuggled down as her love swoops to and fro.

Plaintive high-pitched cries announce their hatching
Three fledgling wide mouths hungry to be fed
A fortnight growth before learning to fly
one falls to earth is ready for snatching
Screeching alarums in fear and in dread
The jaws of a cat are no place to die

Miss Haversham has shaken
off the cobwebs and the deadly dust.
tore down the tattered curtains
moth-eaten and frayed
She’s flung open the windows
thrown away the detritus of decay
into the path of passing winds
napery tossed down to the garden.
Even the mice have run for cover
as she tears off the raggedy sheds
of stained satin and be-ribboned lace.

She stands naked in the barren room
Estella has prepared a soothing bath
perfumed rich with oils and fragrant attars
to steal the acris stench of unwashed years
coaxing the arid brittle crust away
saving the soft delicate skin beneath
viciousness, sloughed smooth
and vengeful purpose passes.

She is reborn a Botticelli Venus
standing in an open shell
long hair shining and wrapping around
her creamy skin, voluptuous
curvaceous, slippery with life
newborn yet wiser for the years
of reflection, ready to deflect
romantic nonsense and live
free and breathe again.

© M.L.Emmett

The relationship between my family
and the ideal was the same
as a black hole to a star.

We burned out at the centre
yet still we shared
the same dark energy.

Exiles
who could not escape
each other.

We continued to orbit,
even slid by
each other

at regular intervals
avoiding connection
at all cost.


© M.L.Emmett

For my brother, Martin

I'm going to sling your memory
over my shoulder
back pack you round the world

slide you on to station platforms
alongside the passing panorama of footsteps
that echo on that slice of cold cement

tuck you into airplane lockers
overhead the sleeping flyers
in that metal coffin in the ice cream clouds

nestle you among bus luggage
beneath the picture windows
and the ribbon racing road

I will unpack you in every village
every town and every city
in every land and nation

on every continent and land mass
crossing the oceans and seas
catching every wave and tide

circling the earth on winds and breezes
following sunsets and solar eclipses
and every cycle of the moon

until I find a place of resting
until I find a place of peace
until I find a place of peace

© M.L.Emmett

Proud Abyssinian lies still on my lap
Stroking his soft grey fur time starts to slow
To the beat of a Bach adagio                                            
Tamed and relaxed we both drift to a nap.

Beloved, well fed pet, nurtured in his home
Yet wild creature, whose needs must satisfy
To watch prey, to leap, pounce and terrify
Free in garden realm to wander and roam

How can I kindly look upon this beast
that snapped and tore life from a tiny bird ?
The mother shrieking horror at her loss
Father trying to scare Cat from his feast
Their doleful lament the saddest I’ve heard
Careless cat gives the corpse another toss.

It has a new scale of reference
vast, vicious and unforgiving
death for millions will be anonymous
machine gun arbitrary and indiscriminate
shelled and shocked, barraged and buried
no whole corpse to recognise as human
no remains to mourn and grieve
just rich blood and bone for Poppies
growing strong in the Flanders' fields.

Landscape resculpted to barest bone
earth desecrated and destroyed
every old tree and young bush uprooted
tossed like feathers to the blackened sky
debris swirling in the clouds of poison
gas and the putrid stench of burning flesh
in pyres that smoke and stink for days
just fertile ash and dust for Poppies
growing strong in the Flanders' fields.


© M.L.Emmett

(for my brother, Martin)

I have sown the moon in the sky for you
so every night its there for you to see

I have stopped every clock from ticking time away
I have turned the tides back from the shore

I have stopped your world in blue belled Spring
and locked my in the falling leaves of Autumn

So now you can rewind the moments of the world
You can go back, to that one moment of choice

and never find the hose, nor set the engine deadly running
nor send those texts of fond farewells, to friends who looked away

nor write to me with love a comfort letter
for the dreadful loss.

No!
Just you:

the tufted, still blonde cowlick sticking up
the crinkled nose and cheeky smile
those sea blue eyes to drown in
strong brown arms, muscles flexed and toned
wrapped tight around me warm
and alive.


© M.L.Emmett

The space between the Mallee roots
is where the fire breathes in the grate
it slowly stirs and shifts
and shows it is alive
and full of nothing more
than its smoky-scented heat
and blood-red glowing coals.

© M.L. Emmett

I want to see lady to ladette
set in Baltimore
with Omar teaching drug theft
with the finer points of gun cleaning
calibre selection and event planning
as his curricula.

I want Jimmy and Bunk
teaching the dos and don’ts
of alcohol intoxication
the art of shot and stubbie mix
the singing and drinking anthems
to stir the blood
and the strategic gutter chuck
before the final whisky chaser.

I want those girls out on the corners
playing police bingo
speaking drug lingo
and developing their drug-fuelled irony
of WMB, the Icicle and Pandemic.

I want Clay to teach them elocution
and elongation in the word “Shiiiiiiit”

I want Avon Barnsdale to teach them gangster codes
of respect on Sundays for stoop people
and Sunday crowns
on everybody’s grandmother.

I want Kima to discuss sexuality
and the Other
I want them to talk change and reform
with Cutty, Colvin and Prez.
Daniels will show how love and loyalty
can be made to work in reality.

And I just want
I only want
Stringer
for myself.

© M.L.Emmett

Blood punching hard through every vein
White thunder drums with fists of rain
Lightning’s whip cracks flashing white
Ships heave and seem to leap in light

Sea spins and swirls staccato pace
Engulfing waves rush strong embrace
Blood pounds the human heart with fear
Just spume and brine with no-one near

Cold wind is whining overhead
Its roaring sound could raise the dead
The strafing power of Nature’s might
On this shuddering dark, bleak night.


© M.L.Emmett

In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.

Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.

From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.

Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.

Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.

Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens

Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.

Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war

Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains

Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.

They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.

But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.
© M.L.Emmett

Apparently it’s official
the search for Mr Right
has been abandoned.

After due consideration -
one ***** Cranberry Tonic
two Manhattans -

There’s nothing left to do
but smoke your last cigarette
outside

line up the Tequila shots
with lemon wedges
and salt

and after two hours
of rigorous hip-like-a-**
Beyonce-****-dancing

to loud Techno repe-ti-tive beat
avoiding all football players
and other women dis-respectors

   accept a ride home
with a halfway decent
Mr Right Now.


                       © M.L.Emmett

At the Crematorium
white smoke curls
and coils
and drifts
- a wisp
of your hair.

Blood-red rich roses
thrive in bone rich soil
velvety smooth
and secret-scented
- the inside skin
of your wrists.


          
© M.L.Emmett

She comes each day
to comb the beach
for words beneath the waves.

Tongue crests roll curled
syllables to shore

The salt wind catches
breath and sighs

claws the chords
and clamour of the stones

reckless tide scratches
sentences of sand

splintering into time
particles and meaning

tidal drag snatches
back surface similes

slips back to blue
and thunders timpani

drifts back to reflected light
smooth land and water.

© M.L.Emmett

No grecian urn nor sculpted monument
can live beyond the realms of space and time
But in these lines of skilled form and content
you will live on, the centre of my rhyme.
Ozymandias, mighty king of kings,
colossal statue turned to desert sand
Yet, Shelley’s verse awoke these lifeless things
immortalised this man from antique land.
Both clock and scythe circle with the seasons
We cannot escape Fortune’s deadly wheel
None are free from Nature’s laws and reasons
Yet. in this verse you are divine and real
Your beauty and worth forgotten never
You will live in this poem forever.

The gondola chains ***** *****
with the rising tide
deep throated voices
echo and bounce
down the mist coiling canals
Raspberry golden dust rays
of a slow sunset
split the spaces
of the room

Are you still awake ?
I am,
but I pretend
I could close my eyes
forever now
and die here
with you.

© M.L.Emmett