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

Suitably respectful, and
never asking for trouble
or the time of day
I wait at home-station
like a cattle dog
My master, absent in the midst of a promise

My bones wait for flesh
My theatre
for Godot

As factories burn
As droughts become floods
As Apollo is a god sending chariots to the moon

I’m ten years beyond birth already counting ways
to escape the infirmary

The hallway mirror
holds an apparition of silence
And over my shoulder
Is reflected a leafless tree
of seeming indifference

There may be leaves one day
but who can say

I wait
like Didi
for what I mean

For all our conversations
It’s the silences I remember
Quiet times
In rooms together

You attentive to the preparation of a letter
an essay
or considering carefully,
music you're about to play

And me sitting on the sofa
Reading Carver or Whitman
Quietly appreciating your contemplation
Pretending only to be interested in what I'm reading

I do not tell you that your presence completes me
Or
How you feel from across the room

I do not say,
I am grateful for your company


MChallis © 2015

The boy who hangs his story from the bridge.
As if by fairy tale told minutely to a desperate lover.
Her tormented eyes
picturing this broken neck;
his story told in the lingering art of death.  Or

he who faces the train to Ferny Hills
and each commuter who remembers
that day’s monotony as bits of him
slapped against a carriage like
someone throwing wet fish.  Or

the pass-over traffic
grumbling at the fall of tragic demonstration - a
boy not welcomed anywhere except by the earth
that took him in with a kiss of bitumen.  Or

balanced on needle point, a
thousand thousand weights pressing death
into an arm embracing the TV-cable guide and
a torn photograph of Jennifer the mud wrestler.
And all this waste
sending little statistic waves of shock that don't anymore.

Gone to sleep like the boys who left us.
Early sleep. Early rise and forget the
sons who disappear in a magician’s finale.
The cloak of social history that accepts this.
The magic
abracadabra of disturbed unhappy youth.

Drown in the blue sky
the blue sea
the green land
and all the while white waves; of wash,
cloud or smoke arising.
On this rock I am every particle
I can see, and more than I am,
none of this, and separate is
my life a paradox continuum
inexplicably explained as
stable passing impermanence;
if I could drown in the blue sky
I would do it flying.


MChallis © 2015

when the sound of every car door slamming is yours
the ring in every telephone is you
when the whisper in every voice
the cast of every eye
the ball in every park
the call in every sonnet
the face in every smile
the bubble in every brook
is you,
what is left for me to do
but write you down in every word
and read you,
over and over and over


MChallis © 2015

There were painter’s clouds that day;
broiled and tumbled,
moving inner silence across an easel.

Beneath them
a concrete mind mixed and etched
one long brush-stroke;
the tarmac before us.

Excited engines carried us along
and carried by us
an air befriended...

with the convertible top thrown down
your hair streamed behind
olympic colour; a spectrum of extraordinary.

Your head held back a sunrise laugh
and all the wind
belonged to exhilaration.

Ahead of us, the horizon captured another sky,
a mist-green hail filled sea; that ominous litany.

A pallet knife scratched its lightening
and the danger of no potential
that kept us moving on.


MChallis © 2015

Returning to you sylvia in the black week of no moon:
the carapace
the awkwardness
aflame with evidence
the jew-net of Poland
-- your rack of guilt.

to fly at the sun or burn in its shadow
emptying pockets before you leave
you reap an abandoned harvest, but

the acolytes who call and call hear the ringing of rocks;
bells around the necks
of ghosts
lying down in
hallowed halls,  somewhere bellowing

their words
        like yours
punishing  me
punching  me up the middle,
every image jagged remedy
my **** to my heart
jammed with grief,
throat swolen with loss

the case of your broken bits;
crockery splintered
in capsules or
shoeboxes or drawers carefully there,  there

you are lips pressing
cold glass,
to kiss you to drink your warmth
impossible

after death I hear you;
crow sends your messages
but sweet sister that’s not why you call

inimical oven:  cavern and synagogue,
I am undone
discovering buried treasure.

in the breath of trees you are
somehow there,
in the quick-slip of feet across smooth linoleum
my mausaleum agrees with your arrival

but in the hour before dawn
in the silent roaring volume
you never hear of my love for you

we are cold lovers
both agony


MChallis © 2000/2014

when there is nothing left
but the need for sleep
all the body can do
is close the eyes
it will not need
for a time
and find the hollowest
part of a calming memory
to tuck away into
releasing the need
to hold anything
save the desire
for peaceful
slumber

from deepest rest
there can be a return
to the world where
possibility re-awakens
and with morning
the opportunity to
go again
to attempt what had
the night before
been unimaginable
and impossible

MChallis © 2014

'you only know what you've got when its gone'*
J Mitchell

at first learning
grief brings the un-returnable message
there is no un-reading
no un-learning
only unbearable immutable fact

in solitude there is no escape
in connection there is no solution

over time the seven stages are traversed
and while there can be no forgetting
with acquiescence
there can be acceptance
and with it
the gentle light of loss
to illuminate
the deepest gratitude


MChallis @ 2014

the voice of cynicism
with imperious wisdom
informed by circumstances past
where through defeated expectation, corrupted naivety
perhaps wounded vulnerability has been
disappointed on innumerable occasions

and chanting incessantly
in a cavernous register
"there is no hope - there is no point"
and louder
"there is no hope - there is no point"
and louder still
"there is no hope - there is no point"

would have you adopt this epigram as your own
in the belief
that if you do
the prophecy of self determined hopelessness
will be affirmed and validated

its unspoken fear of course is that you will leave it there
abandoned and alone in the cavern of its own arrogant despair

so here's an idea
surprise it
take it with you
out of the pit
take it for a bicycle ride on the beach at low tide
**** it in a ruck-sack up a rocky ridge
swim with it in a lake with a sandy bottom and willow banks
invite it to the funniest Robin Williams film you can think of
above all else, let it experience your unconditional positive regard

constantly
continuously
repeatedly
offering counsel
in all the tones and voices
of unrelenting love


MChallis @ 2104

I would like to know you
More than I do

You are a gracious presence that in glimpses I have seen influence the mightiest egos to acquiesce

I stumble across you at times yet would know you more as a constant companion

I forget you often and when in the throes of reaction and defensiveness I catch myself in arrogance or in self righteousness or justification

This is followed by regret

How do I know you?
How do I find you in the moments when I am alone and embattled?
How do I find you in that first breath?
Of surrender




MChallis @ 2014

...and going to state...action.

The jade edge of the writing compartment showed luminescent in the venetian-split rays of an afternoon sun.

Pillar Vas-Gurta gestured a heavy mop like hand towards the cigar case.

Take as many as you like, he mouthed. But everything suspicious
caused in me an urgent decline.  You are always too generous Pillar,
I uttered with feigned diplomacy; the dense undertow carrying off the forfeit.

Why are the Arm-ericans not displaying a greater sense of co-operation,
Pillar questioned the telephone in thick Polish, and to me the single nod of a telephone rung off, his reply was as good as a grunt.

As he finished the call; Ah now, come sit young Valentin, if you’ll none of my Cubans come sit and sip Cognac with me at least, spend a moment with an excellent mint.

Untroubled by the American question, Pillar, eyes like hurricanes, hair curled on his forhead with the oil of a whistle, teeth forged, as if by a village blacksmith, patient and keen to devour conversation, was not a man to be declined twice in one afternoon.

Pillar was a man who’s stubble grew as he considered each of his thoughts: and the skewer fed silence that connected fear with steel.

I sense Valentin you are withholding something, are you troubled, rumbled the Polish border, is the Cuban smoke a little too dense for your sensibilities, My friend, my friend you are troubled, so tell me.

Please. I answered for the cognac. And for the writing compartment.
I see it is from Gabriella.  His flash, dense and swift as a school of minnows turning their escape into silver, caught me unaware; the weight in my question.

He loves this woman. Here it is then. Even Pillar is vulnerable.

You do not answer Valentin. No I’m sorry, I mumbled. Something troubles me. Please tell me Pillar, why am I here, why have you called me.

Ah the question that cuts to chase the rabbit. As you say. Or something like that, no. You are here Valentin because I like you. You may think, there is nothing I like, and that also may be true. But the cigar must be smoked to appreciate its fullness.

And it that moment, Pillar reached for the razor in his sleeve. Before he was aware, I had seen the gesture. The heel of my shoe captured his nose. The cognac glass filled slowly; a distortion of colour. Pillar sat motionless at his desk. Draining with the final swill. The jade edge of the writing compartment offering a seal of approval; Gabriella's last kiss.
The cigar case remained open and untouched.

I had taken as many as I'd liked.

...and Cut..

In the heat of the night
When everything is cool    Is when
I miss her
The most

It was raspberry tea
No
Peppermint - I don't know

Lips wet longer when an afternoon
Came after
Noon
And went like clouds before clouds before…

You know
It is interesting to meet some…
Someone you can
You can
  You know
I don't know

We touched, like others
Like all others
Nothing new
Nothing new anymore
You want it so much
To be new
New for old is what they say

What do these old hands hold?
Old …
You want it so much
To hold
It slips
You never did hold on very well
Its like its like

I don't know, you want it so much

I miss her


MChallis © 1995/2014

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

i read:
do not read these words

too late

i read:
wet paint do not touch

too late

I read:
open your heart open your mind stop reading

just in time


MChallis © 2014

for my darling jan*

I woke at 2.30am and left you sighing gently as you slept,
checked the trap but found only droppings on the floor
I set the trap again and hoped the rats would leave –
I would prefer not to **** anything.
The dog mawed and moaned at its fleas
rubbing against the rail on the back verandah,
it settled when I whished it back inside to sit
(my mouth made that wist noise, the one you know the dog will hear but won’t wake the sleeping).

I lay on the red couch in the study and read Ray Carver.
A return to Carver simplifying me. If not by sleep I was
comforted by his weave of innocence and knowledge.
Ray started writing poetry in the year I was born (1957),
I don’t know why I mention this, perhaps I feel him like a kindred
spirit and am warmed by even the slightest connection.

Between the living and the dead are the sleeping. However being at rest
is no excuse for ignorance. Ray is at rest - some 18 years.
His poems like me are alive and breathing.

The magpies begin their morning carol as I return to bed at dawn.
Your breath and skin have waited for me.
When we wake, I tell you,
I am grateful our poem continues.



MChallis © 2010/2014

The smooth force of ****** skin
carresses and moulds me in stone.
I stretch to the contour
groin the hollow
nurtured and naked
for sacrifice.

Grave friend, grey faced
steady eyed friend
shallow edge
great heart
melt with heaviness the torsion
in each of these limbs.

I surrender time to the mother of you,
dry tenderer, assauger of guilt, you
who holds up day, and lets down night,
who bundles and sprawls me
like a rough shouldered parent.

I search for the place of no light in you,
close my eyes to your dreaming
seek out eons you’ve sloughed off
and deeper, how your weight pulls the gravity out of me,

I surrender
and can fall no more into the rocking
rocking lap of you;
mother how can I fold into you
how can I surrender
how can I add my breath to the sigh of you?





MChallis © 2005/2014

Listen son
It’s al ‘right to feel
It’s OK to cry
It’s even acceptable to not be perfect
In everything you try

Failure can be positive
If bent another way
A kind of subtle back-burn before
The fire of success comes your way

Its not the end of everything, but the
Beginning of something new
It’s probably the way you see it
Is the shape that comes to view

A mountain so enormous
Never seeming to be climbed
Until you’ve done some treading
Most likely one foot at a time

Some day you get right up there
You’re laughing with the clouds
And at some stage you lose your grip again
Falling all the way back down

So you pick yourself right up
Spit gravel from your mouth
And head to other climates
I’m recommending south

On the way you meet a few kind souls
Perhaps a little wiser than yourself
Some who might begin to question
The state of your mental health

But don’t despair; it’s all good stuff
The journey, the quest, the sport,
Some days you’ll go a long way
On others you’ll pull up short

Just keep going that’s the main thing,
I’m buggered if I know where, cause’
Eventually south goes north
And every other where

Keep treading, keep smiling,
Don’t forget to breathe
It’s important to enjoy yourself
And keep something up your sleeve

It isn’t easy, this I know,
When some old ****** gives advice
You think he’s a little crazy and
He don’t talk so very nice

You’re probably right, he might be mad,
But the thing about this is,
It’s better to keep asking questions
Than be sitting in a tizz

Complain or question or kick or scratch
The ticket is the train you catch
The one for somewhere, the one that goes
Not sitting at the station and picking at your nose

Get on board
Live a life
Have some fun and
Cause a bit o’ strife, now

I’m sorry I can’t say more than this
But I reckon you know why; it’s
Coz you’ve got a good long life to lead
And I’m about to die.



MChallis @ 1999/2014

In this room at four a.m. where the universe sometimes meets, I cram some thinking time into the stillness that does not occur at any other part of the day. A wall clock scratchily taps its one-tone metronome in a time signature discomforting to noisy thinkers.

My quiet contemplation is possessed with a version of unkindness, arising out of unsteady dreams. In the most recent frame; invading forces stay out of sight to threaten as the unknown enemy. We burn candles for those who plead the safety of our dwelling. But suspicion becomes our ally and neighbours are offered no solace.

I notice a small moth as it circles a candle avidly craving the feast of light. I think of those who have struggled with a near-death experience. I’m told the dying enter a beautiful light when called to begin passage from this world to the next. Does the small moth feel the same sense of awe as it prepares to feed the candle?

The lifeless screens of television and computer, (sometimes channeling the universe into this quiet room) hold their square black mouths agape, but offer nothing more than mute obedience. The only living pixel in this room is worshipped by the fervent wing of a moth: and is unaware of being a metaphor.

I hear at distance, the first bus for the morning passing by, it is mostly empty of the silent ones it will carry later in the day. I wonder how many of today’s travellers will have been awake at this time, pondering fate and future in the shelter of an urban meditation.

The early hours of the morning, I’m told, are when most passengers depart for the next world as they sip or gasp a last breath.

Slipping by and above me, some adventurous souls are carried by a hot-air balloon: the rushing light and sound of the gas-flame is a jet of life which heats and sustains the commercial moon as it drifts by in close orbit. The balloon then changes metaphor and mimics sunrise.

Perhaps moth and balloon and empty screens are pre-cursors for all that is to come today: all that is furtive, all that is futile, all that pretends omniscience, all that is agape, all that is sufficient for those of us who assume we will live on and on and on. And for those of us who repeat each day secure, content and satisfied: completely taken by all the fuss and noise of living for successfulness.


MChallis 2005/2014

His fixed black eyes,
turned, like a mother's to her sorrows
eight metres down in a hole
dug for concrete.

His workmates call hoarsely from the rim
but only see and hear
his nothingness

- “he was just here a second ago"

His neck is a broken spirit,
fingernails are torn away
he'd flayed against the earth
falling indefinitely for one and half seconds.

The young concreter,
carefuly finishing his glide work
at the edge of the slab
had stepped back to admire
the reflected perfection of the sky.

His mother receives the news before the slab
is no longer a mirror,
she pictures him falling and
thinks of the last time he called,

- “I only spoke to him yesterday"


MChallis © 2005/2014

On the 4th of September some time ago now
I returned to an empty house,
a wall of anger ran through me and around me

It took a week for that wall to crumble,
standing at the cash register at work
anguish surging up from a deep well way down low.

For hours I sobbed and howled
in the office out back of the store
Evelyn the manager came and went
and when she could - just sat and listened.

3 days later my mother and father arrived
for 2 weeks they stayed
their child, the grown man needed care

mother cleaned all the shelves and cupboards
cleaned all the clothes and ironed all the shirts
father tried to find the answers
and in the end - just sat and listened.

After they went home, the house slowly lost their comfort,
shelves and cupboards returned to slight disorder and
one by one ironed shirts were worn, never again to feel the same.

Hanging in its place I left one shirt untouched,
now and again I would open the wardrobe
to feel my mother in the sleeve.

A decade later we are speaking on the phone
about the children
all of them young men now and mostly independent

you talk about wanting to see them more often
and it being hard to arrange, you tell me about your new man
and how things are working out.

In a moment of candour you speak of the past
confessing
it should probably never have happened.


Who would have thought that in the end
it would be me, who just sat and listened.



MChallis @ 2014

Walking down the hill
I thought about the view

Walking up the hill
I thought about the hill




MChallis © 2014

Morning
Soft light
And light sleeping

She sighs and lifts and sighs and falls
Her breath the gentleness of day beginning

I sit and watch her
more lovingly than a child could


MChallis © 2014

Who will lead us when we do not lead ourselves?
Who will know us when we do not know ourselves?
Who will love us when we do not love ourselves?
Who will trust us when we do not trust ourselves?

None.

When we name what gets in our way of leading.
We find the courage to speak what is true.

When we name what gets in our way of knowing.
We find the wisdom to shape our world.

When we name what gets in our way of loving.
We find the heart open to find the heart.

When we name what gets in our way of trusting.
We find the will to move beyond fear.

We find our place of leading
And others know this
And find it
through us


MChallis © 2014

Your power lies within you. Life endowed you eons ago.
Your work today begins with knowing this deeply.
Your power does not lie in the minds of others,
you do not need their approval for what you already posses.
As you practice today keep your attention on giving,
on being generous without the conditionality of it being reciprocated.
In this moment now and in this breath you are free.

MChallis © 2014

The way each hill runs down
The way tree-lines suspend the turbulence

My father’s arms are in these hills
taking timber from the gully

The crest of his hat starts at the waterfall
his toes peep through lantana

His advice trickles into pools from the hollows;
as his boots peeled open, dry before the fire

Lizards bask like heat-curled nails in the sun,
billy smoke whispers its tale through the canopy

Through the slow step of a century
he has turned one-eyed squinting toward the sun

The scrape of sharpening-stone on an ancient scythe
sets my teeth on edge

The whistle to the bullock team calls me back
but it’s too late, my ears have gathered for another harvest

I'm already removed from his wilderness

MChallis © 2005

sweetly
simple
surrendering
softly
sensuous
simililarly
spontaneo­us
spilling
subtlety
essing
secrets
sharply
shooting
satisfaction


MChallis­ © 2014

My father shouting at me
loud enough to wake my dead grandfather, the
red air is frightening     I try not to tremble,
it makes him worse,
he hits me with a strap -  but his anger soon passes

Tonight the moon seems old,
if it cries it can cry for me because
my sadness is deeper than tears and
the old man I will one day be    will remember this.

--

My mother,  happy in her freedom    swims naked in the bathroom
Swims an olympic record from the tap end
to the end where we keep the shampoo.

Beneath the waves she can't hear the
crashing and shouting from the next room.
The bathroom light is  turned out,
the moon fills the bath with its soft-milk.

--

Sad is my sister crying tears like wet feathers.
Crying for a pain she wants to, but can't feel. Her tears
are starved birds that never learn to fly.

--

My sister cries the guilt of an expert,
My mother tends herself with soft lotions,
My father, a helpless bystander to his own rage,
wears spectacles passed down by his father.

--

Tonight the moon is my quilt
Heart-beats are held and all is muffled
The rage is the sea
My skin milks the light now.




MChallis © 2014
www.martinchallis.com

Fiona

a beach ball floated on the waves
it bobbed and rolled and went along
if i was fishing that day i would have seen it
- there on the beach  
and above
a hang glider left the grassy cliff
to swing his feet in time with
sea gulls who never tired of laughing,
he saw their white wings and the crests of the waves beneath him,
they were one and they were many
but there was only one beach ball
floating and bobbing along.     laughing
in many colours
at the fish in their sea
and the birds who looked like clouds

Angie

a happy face floats in the air
it has a curling ribbon tied to it
i think it is a balloon
a bright red balloon

Eliza

crystal jar - tight sealed lid
full - full as you can be
bursting sometimes with colourful buttons
of all sizes
they are names, and when you call them
they dance
like fireflies scattering into dark places
they light the world with campfires
we are warm,  apprehension runs away when you
sow these buttons  and
we're all well clothed
with garments so richly fastened

Cassim

a feather brushes the nose
of the giant
will he sneeze
or carry the bird?

Kat

excellent tennis is rare
I think of Wimbledon
the best of the best
the court divided
as are the spectators
they cheer, they sit in silence
they see you serve, they see you lob
they see you backhand a winner
they see the choice of the chosen
and when victorious
you acccept the trophy
and the defeated

Kat - again

ok you’re a bird
then fly
fly above the nets but
don’t stop for trees that
look like antennas
and when you pick through leaves on
the forest floor and
find the king of worms,
eat him slowly
he will feed you forever

Sheridan

the sharp sword cuts sweetly
it leaves a cool incision
knowledge is apprehended and
the red well flows over
fields are rich
strength knocking timbers
builds a house,
we live and eat well,
your house prospers
you are graceful
your love is light
and air is for breathing


MChallis © 2014
www.martinchallis.com

Of chapel bells
and after day’s dry summer wind
chimes angelic chorus
hangs in lasting configuration

My father’s rye-grass covered hills
tremble with a breeze keeper’s song
as he gathers up his grief

Mother folds away her weeping
folds away her dreams
until they are still

Mourners will soon move to chapel
to offer compassion
and glances from a distance

My brother
born yesterday, took no breath
from summer’s day

sang no breeze keeper’s song,
felt no dry summer’s wind,
yet heard
the farewell of bells

and dwelt there
harmonic
in tintinnabulation

I am a craftsman. My hands are made of clay.
They're soft and wet and mould silhouette.
The last I made were without shadow,
The next will be more musical.
They will be spin around me -
Chimes in a western wind. Chimes of a different figuring
perhaps to hang in branches, simply as decoration.

If I rest, there will be no forming.
I fear this.
I fear the unmaking and forever sleep.
The chimes will awaken me with their shadow-music.

*
Squalls and storm clouds move inside me.
I hear thunder. Some say
they see change coming.
I see constant weather. There
is purpose in their forecast,
no in-decision and in a precise moment
the exact snap of thin ice.

*
I awaken before a bridge - reaching far across a rocky canyon.
Going to the edge and leaning over I see
the darkness of endless sleep. I hope to hear
water song and the expanse of rain-dreaming.
I wait at the bridge for a traveller like me to pass -
I will ask him to describe his journey and
The way ahead which I have not yet seen.

Weather’s coming up soon lad, talk is, three days,
no catch for a week then*

Connors’ folk slough to the Arms
in the shape of four or five,
a tawny pint floats the hour,
and by seven the place is alive.

My father now by the edge of the groyne
is a gaze half mast at the sea,
as he sails himself to the brink of an isle
and turns a yard-arm to the lee.

He sets on his oars the cataclysm of waves
he casts the wind at his hair,
swears salt is the sword in the taste of this life
and not what falls with a tear.

He'll treble a note in harmonica muse
and rustily **** a bone pipe,
spit saliva colder than frost on the grease
and never complain of the gripe.

Running the wind or roaring the cape
or rounding the sound of the wire
his name is the take of all seafarer kin;
the hearth, my heart and the fire.

My father the salt, the seafaring man
a wave in the seas as they glide
now found to the ocean,
a son to the sea
the son to the father; my guide.

wet gutter stone
submerged in the rill
blackheavy and round
and the weight beneath me:
a smooth cold killer of light

night is a forest
wet banquet of noise
small epiphany’s happening at street lights
and wild-life electric

far off are the radios
the occasional violence
hits the melancholy,
hangs with urban drifters
patches up a night sky

night is a forest, a jungle of audible character
damp activity
light and shape struggle to hold meaning,
as momentary glimpses
glistening with hope
capture an uncertain semaphore

Night’s armaments
tethered by a lone street light
wait as a patient carnivore
watchful and certain

A cigarette glows
in one man’s mouth
as others blow fog, puff into their hands
and shuffle - shipping out tonight

Arguing up the hill
a truck in the middle distance
comes to take them to the rally point

Whistling in this town
will be left to young fresh faced boys
when they think on their fathers,
the soldiers

Tenements in formation stare unblinking
each window an eye transfixed
******* bins, curbside, seem to anticipate
instruction or disturbance

A gathering mist pads the rooftops
as the townsmen heave aboard,
with one last glance - slightly checked
each man searches for the loved ones
who are
        silent,
        asleep
        or at prayer

She hides
In the edges of shade

She smiles
At an umber moon

She lives
Near the well at the bottom of my garden

I never see her

In the evening
I leave flowers for her

Some mornings
I see where she has kissed them

A vista
spiels with neon
Non-essential conversation repeating
Humanity hovers at the entrance
In this shopping centre every need seems urgent
Mouths pause their chatter
To sip at coffee or chow down burger
Gestures are reinforced with nail polish,
jewellery on many fingers
and small change passing across counter tops

In here the weather is neither warm nor cool
and everything seems designed to stimulate my mediocrity

Reflection in the shop-front is on sale at bargain price
but today I cannot afford to buy on impulse

I turn away to blend
With colourful  blah


MChallis © 2009 (reworked 2014)

Reach toward her
the little one
there in your hurts and fears
Look toward her, not away

You take your soldier to war
guardian at the perimeter
with the rationale of defence
yet she is bereft

Look toward him
the little one
tucked underneath the carapace
hidden from your tender heart

You are discourteous in attack
blind to empathy
righteous in argument and in thesis
yet none are healed or reassured

Look inward soldier
to the little one
his fear has become your fear

Look inward soldier
to the little one
her fear has become your fear

The child within is not yet comforted




MChallis © 2014

In the dim light of the forest's heart
That is my own heart*. John Pass


Looking back
Long into many memories
Are seeds and tender shoots
Upon my awakening

Looking sidelong
Into many happenings
Are flowers and reaching branches
Upon my flourishing

Looking headlong
Into many eventualities
Are husks and drying leaves
Upon my returning

Looking forward
Long into many possibilities
Are seeds and tender shoots
Upon awakening


MChallis @ 2014

In human history
For the centuries
that can be remembered
Perhaps the most destructive force
That has lived among us
Is the human mind
That does not observe itself
Is human thought
That is unaware


MChallis @ 2014