To a friend who shares coffee
you offer sugar,
                          love,
                                 and a biscuit.

Night trained like a metronome,
is a dark lounge astride your kitchen window.

And a cool beacon,
the fridge-light ******* her briefly with the lick of its wake.

Across smooth tiles
the pleasant stealth of bare-feet,
certain rapture
and seductive inclusion is
love like a biscuit half eaten.

... I think I'm pregnant to you.
I think our hearts have joined.

A poem is worth so much more in the delivery, so
I place my trust in Australia Post
and the efficacy of the clearly marked post code.

I heard that love is intoxication:
so I purchased a bottle of wine grown in South Australia
and hoped to savour just a taste of you.

There’s a chemical released in your brain when
you meet someone you love;
its dying to meet other chemicals.

But I can’t cope with that kind of expectation,
and I’m too young for equanimous adjustment.
It’s too much like needing a sedative after the *** you almost had
when you thought your girlfriend was coming to stay for the night.

Don’t think I’m bemoaning the fact that you’re not coming to stay for the night,
you live on the other side of the continent.
I accept the disparity of our geography.
I accept the arterial nature of the freeway system in human relationship
after all, we’ve all been told where roads lead.

Did you know that if your name was translated in Spanish?
I'd be interpreted as a conquistador with no hope in the tropics.
And did you know that I’ve always wanted to wear a superman suit and
keep nothing out but steady rainfall?
If you think about it, this is a potent philosophy.
  
Mephistopheles considered certain questions and theorems.
He found the intrusion of chaos theory and the disruption to the order of the work ethic unthinkable.
He found the mature and calculated response simple:
he told the ******* to articulate and pontificate elsewhere.
So please don't get any ideas.

This brings me back to my remaining piece of news:
Regardless of the fact that it’s medically impossible
I think I'm pregnant to you.

Please write soon.



MChallis © 2015

What night-bird sings across the river?
What bear of winter whispers
low and deep in the cave of its mouth?
And who is she who moves toward the many mouthed artesian,
invisible to the clouds and stars that live in her reflection?

We stand on our heads;
the world turns its duplicity to meet us as
our imagination ventures beyond the beyond,
before it rushes back to be with she who has not yet released us.
She spins her arms in all directions;
our mother, calling with the night bird says
“here children you’re safe with me”.

We walk the southern bank of the Ballone.
Before the weir we imagine the river
mirror to all the world.
Then the weir-gates reveal her power.
Broken water announces our birth
and friendship;
a turbulent opportunity to bright with stars,
to carefully wake the sleeping bear.

Beside this river
Our future is brought together,
And like her, this unseen strength
Will flow potent, low and deep
and with our mother
nurturing.


MChallis © 2015

To my dead son or daughter
I left you
Let you pass
Kept you out

Frozen
The mark of
the palmist foretelling five children
I climb this hill now with four at my side

Your memory: A shadow on the distant range
where eucalyptus is to its last
the blue mountain

Though I climb and four grow
the wife that was then is now gone
her grief and her echo

Still I sense the soft pad of your call
the tug of your passing
and then almost
the first breath of greeting


MChallis © 2015

take rain from sky
take the way tall men straighten your stance
take the students of dance
see the little ballerina stretch her toes
see her mother warm with the floodlight

take your plea to the judiciary
take your eye to the statue of David
smear on the dust of Somalia
rub raw the frost of Croatia
refresh your aim in the heights of Angola
but do not stop only at this

breathe every impediment
trust every promise of clemency
stumble if you will
fall under cease-fire
take it all

take the watchmaker
bent over time
with fine tools
clasp each second

take the sculptor who
chisels and scalpels for the grandiose

later in your armchair
fold creases in your newspaper with care

be with every nourishment
be with the cloth of your nakedness
make sail for your harbour of origin

remember the milk of your mothe?r
warm or cold or sweet if it is so
appease hunger
with the ambidextrous mouth
of a soldier
fed with death in his jungle

be the bystander, be the bi-partisan,
the *******, the timeless,
the dancer
be it all

breathe each increment
do it now
measure the infinite
the possible


MChallis © 2015

Cedar Creek
a moonlit evening
looking up into sparkling eucalypts

After rain
The moon is reflected
In every droplet
On every leaf,
Simplicity has sent her messengers

With the brush and rustle of an evening breeze
These celestial missives begin to fall

To leave
the moon more eminent



MChallis © 2015

Found a lyric
in an old file in
a folder within a folder
within another
called 'The Field'
and so...

*last train
last station
last hour of light
I look for reason
reason for flight

spoken promise of a
broken dream
in a field of angels
I have seen

the wings my guardian
are a wish fulfilled
to depart the earth
as life distils

I wish to answer
for a neighbour’s crime
speak forgiveness
to a friend of mine

I do not answer
I do not yield
brother sister
on the killing field
your bodies tremble
you seek a name
discover elsewhere
a peace un-named

last train
last station
last hour of light
wait for reason
reason for flight

spoken promise of a
broken dream
in a field of angels
I have seen
the wings my guardian
are a wish fulfilled
to depart the earth
as life distils

last train
last station
last hour of light
I look  for  reason
reason for flight