For Jan*

as
a breath will happen by itself
as
water will find the way to flow
as
gravity will hold us to the ground

I will love you always
and this will be as
natural

I have kissed you in many mouths

I have tasted you
but not found you
you’ve been elsewhere
the curl of your tongue
forming a ribbon in wind

the cut of your hair
tied into shapes
I could make with my hands

your voice
breezes in phrases
I’ve reached for
their possible echo

I have waited to bend you
into my smile, how
my mouth has made its reasons
for wanting the shape
of your name

and the marriage of words
I have learnt
just to speak of you

I have called for you
devoured air for you
devoured my name
and not found you

are you there friend
now or waiting
or passing as a ribbon in wind
curling slowly
to the tip
of my tongue



MChallis © 2014

A fish out of water slaps
for the wet familiar
as first rainbow gasps
for all colour beneath
evergreen eucalypts

and boy becomes hunter.

White flesh in the pan
rainbow now grey;
a dull eye pops in the fat.
The first meal of camp

"We're all about survival"
says the voice from the beard.

In that first howling night the tent holds no echo:
a cocoon of down
muffles the want of a scream
for mother’s goodnight.

Terrain is now is real and not just a geography lesson.

When morning arrives
relief and sunlight slap awake
the face of survival.
Mosquitoes frustrate the zippered gauze, march-flies marshal to march.

Wisps of gum-smoke, the smell of the wild, steam from hot-streams on tussocks, beans in the pannikin, dust in the billy, leaves of tea and gumtree chase the boil.

Longer walk today; boots even more ready for rubbing off skin.

Fourteen miles to the next creek and next water.
Ache in the pack
No rest only winter.
The dingo pads on.
Wild boar root en mass. Wombats rummage the banks.
Wallabies thump up the ridge-line.

"We’ll circle our tent-line and raise tonight’s fire after dark."
Says the beard and walks on.

The hunter
Seeks now no quarry
Dreams the snap of a soft sheet
and mouths words
for the water of home.

By John Pass


A kick or two out
against the playful waves

then roll over, look back
so often I've done this, summers

without number, friends or family
on the shore, a ledge

of rock at Ruby Lake
or Lighthouse Park, trees behind

and above them leaning out
for the open light

and reflected light
and my delight not simply

to be swimming, a float
but in the perspective

of people in a landscape
beautifully proportioned

enclosed in a moment
as though in another room

but present, whole, unencumbered  -
the sky always blue

( beach weather ) the shoreline reaching
around, away, each way

a point, or cliff, or thicket
of willow, quietly emphatic

of the people, their intimate
isolation, approachable

passing a towel or plum
getting comfortable, distant

but undiminished, and I

alone in the water, ambiguously

proud of them, pleased
to swim in and be counted

among them


John Pass

the unequivocal
sentinel
a living metaphor
arising
from the gesture
of simply

letting go

one's
attachment centre

.


MC©2014

Rodney the Tormentor came toward me,
a slick sneer edging the mug of his leering mouth.

He prepared the next barb garnished with a delicate sliver of dry ice.
What was he going to find to ridicule this time?

My hair too long, too short?
The art assignment a pathetic attempt at literature?

My bowling action; a cross between a mental patient and a broken wind-mill?
Knees too bulbous for any normal person?

I thought, not today.

I’ve had this, like this, for almost two years
everyday
each day a new torture, a new laceration of clean practiced words
and me accepting the torment with the dull weariness that comes only from unkind relentless repetition

allowing the beast fresh meat
thinking, hoping one day he’ll stop
surely he’ll tire of the incessant need to ridicule
believing one day the ‘****’ jokes will dry up

but they never do

such is the never-end brutal articulation, the
verbal incision, the cruel words of blunt destructive beauty:

teenage confidence stumbling like a novice boxer
dribbling with fresh bruises

but not today
the animal hunted turns
to find precision and strength in defiance  

it is the time to wound the wounder
and then all
that follows

‘Rodney the Tormenter’  going down       the windless scream of one blow
two years in the forging           one first and final blow
one strike                               one out

a fist gutting                                        and nothing gets back up

the art gallery attendent           the other students on excursion
the teachers,  all as if complicit in retribution, like a magicians audience
look the other way

and Rodney down                       solar-plexus perplexed

the swift shock in defeat
and a new entry in the part of Rodney’s brain that stores
future possible outcomes to hitherto unchecked actions

decades later I can still see his face in that ghastly micro-moment: pain, shock, horror
and most surprisingly


relief.







MChallis © 2005/2014