1.
The patriarchy is like Satan, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Sure, there’s some kind of cause and effect involved, but the figure itself is bought into being by those wanting to explain more subtle and complex phenomena, but are happy to settle for an easy answer with a face on it.
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“You think,” [Jacques] persisted, “That my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.”
“Why are they – shameful?”
“Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
“I asked him, ‘Why?”
“That you must ask yourself,” he told me, “And perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room,
P. 49
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I act nonchalant and brush off people’s demonstrations of care and concern, but the truth is, I fear hospital like your dog fears the vet.
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The Goddess stirs within the temple deep
Candles flicker on the sun-burnished gong
Waked by the rasping of her naked feet
I observe the enigma of the throne
With their robes and candles, their cymbals and bells
Priests conform to scripture, and its motions
Down through the dark universe of her smell
I track along instinct and devotion
Attendant and vigilant to her needs
Obedient to her hands and what they hold
Faithful to her heart and what she loves
My beating heart and her unsandalled feet
The separate, susurrant, resonant poles
That span these sun-warmed, midnight temple stones.
There’s a friend of mine, a very successful artist, who I admire very much. I met him twenty years ago when we were working together in a dirty nightclub in South Melbourne; he was collecting glasses and I was bouncing. We both aspired to art, and he hit critical pay-dirt much earlier than I (who am I fooling – I still haven’t got there).
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Caveat:
This has been written to disturb you.
Invitation:
Summon your personal incarnation of this figure into your mind’s eye and look through it like a lens while you’re reading this.
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The tyres shrieking their demand for traction
Where the road crests the brow of the mountain
Afternoon is a golden smelter in
The crucible of the speedometer
The ceramic squeal of heated rotors
As brakes negotiate with the motor
Stark black warnings screaming from yellow signs
Driven by rhythm of white centre line
A hare, erect and startled, stands roadside
Headlights fulminate in its amber eyes
One figure riveted as sentinel
To the flipside of the other’s vigil
Iron grey dusk rears up, pure reverie
As the turbo howls like a Valkyrie
…Because every bloke should write a poem about his car.
2.
I wonder if I’ve become a kind of Max Cady figure for her. Perhaps I am representative of old misdeeds and have turned up, winking and flashing like a bad penny.
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“I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am creating him out of my own inadequacies. You must always remember that.”
– James Salter,
A Sport and a Pastime.
It is worth mentioning that I found myself awake this morning, on my day off, at 4:11am. For this, I blame Y-.
For whatever reason, good or bad, I decided last night to stalk her on Instagram.
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I promise not to flinch to hate
I will embrace this gift of pain
I will not hide your sovereign light
Beneath this abject cloak of shame
I promise not to run and hide
Concealed in darkness of another
Nor pull your faults across my eyes
I’ll keep my word to stand and suffer
Night folds me in blackened wings
And paints a landscape sinister
Your beating heart, it echoes still
Through the tangle of my viscera
That rhythm scores these absent days
On the sunless side of always
And for those who prefer their sonnets in the traditional pentameter…
I promise that I’ll not flinch into hate
I will fully embrace this gift of pain
I will not turn and hide your sovereign light
Underneath this abject cloak of shame
I promise I’ll not run away and hide
Or curl up in darkness of another
I will not pull your faults across my eyes
I’ll keep my word that I’ll stand and suffer
As night enfolds me in its blackened wings
And paints a landscape chill and sinister
The beating of your heart, it echoes still
Through darkling tangle of my viscera
Its rhythm scores these silent, stagnant days
Encamped on the sunless side of always
Theme Park at its Darkest 