21st Century Entrapment II

Next door, the baby sirens,
At a deafening tone,
The pain of a well known
Lonely neglect.
It's dinner time.
No-one comes to her aid,
The familiarity ablating concern;
I yearn for someone, somewhere
To jangle the peals of childhood merriment
Before my solemn ears —
(Like I had known only two decades before,
Before I grew old at 24) —
But the parks and playgrounds,
Are empty to my ever-wounded eyes.
Our parents, The Baby Boomers
Tussle for the dregs of jobs, and
in easy parting scream for a divorce,
Yet they then still expect,
An honest smile from Generation X.
Tonight the finance news
Tells us tonight that the precious stocks
Have surrendered to the hard knocks,
Taking a fatal fall today on Wall Street,
The hub of the sinner's world, gone bust.
And apparently some fat cat in the Western world,
Was dished out five star entrée antagonism,
Ordered death, chaos, and devastation for the main-course and being greedy, demanding his fill,
Received some free nuclear fall out for desert.
Last feast, I wonder?
How far can the end be now?
I think it might be time to
Beam down Jesus again,
Please God

Artist

The artist can
Erase history, can
Recreate unsatisfactory images, can even
Rewrite the sequence of life.
The artist can
Give birth to our dreams,
But not just in the studio, the theatre, the library;
The artist can work in
The supermarkets, street corners, bus stops, homeless shelters:
The artist's words, images, scenes, pervade all being;
Messengers of His work are all around, always.
Sometimes artists experiment with different medium,
Until the desired effect is achieved.
Sometimes artists push the boundaries,
Push the limits of human convention.
Sometimes, the artist is dismissed as mad,
Sometimes, those who follow the artist's works
Are condemned as crazy.
Sometimes, whilst perfectly clear to the artist
The meaning or purpose
May not be clear to onlookers, and
Least of all the subjects themselves,
Until the whole masterpiece
Is complete.
The deficiency is not with the Creator
But with the human perception and interpretation.
Sometimes artists are not appreciated
Until long dead.
Perhaps the almighty artist will not be appreciated,
Until our world is long dead, and
Rejection finally discovers eternity.

Bind

I'm a bad mother
When it comes to my money:
I can't find the appropriate sustenance
To encourage it to grow,
But then I can't motion my failure
By letting it go either, and
I'm uncontrollably inconsolable
When it is spent.
It makes no sense to me,
Since I didn't give birth to it,
And I have never developed the bond
Of beloved, long awaited adoption.
No, it's just a burden,
A big mistake.
I should have got myself an abortion
Easy years ago.
This inheritance,
Is made out of
The same material as the balls and chains
Of my ancestors;
We're still in a bind.

Bleeding Hope

For a reluctant victim
Of reality
Bleeding hope is hard;
More difficult than
Climbing a flight of
70 stairs, each of
Child-sized proportions
In a pair of
Size 14 thongs.

Casino

I was born into a world,
That has been much like
One giant, over-bearing casino.
My life has become,
One big gamble:
An addict's world.
I've let every one else
Roll my dice,
Deal my cards,
Spin my wheel,
Push my buttons, and
I wasn't sure how to stop.
You are all quite comfortable with
My perfectly prescribed life, and your
Feeding time at the zoo.
However, I don't belong
To your regrets,
Her dreams,
His desires;
I don't belong
To the intended life of
Any one of you.
Your fantasy of me doesn't even exist.
I promise that —
(Since you all have been so apparently
Hooked on the cause) —
I can even manage
To ruin
My own life,
On my own
My own way.
I'm no longer cheating;
Do I surprise you with
My competency?

Catalyst

"What about MY quality of life?"
Rears its ugly head again,
Gnashing teeth at them,
Sheering the rock of stability
From its rendered and now petrified gold band.
(So Dennis's love is not invincible
Now that they know one another better).
That afternoon they beheaded the Queen
(And every other misplaced icon of Australian wealth)
As they anticipated halved assets.
She could only ponder,
Why happiness was the commodity
That cost the most;
You could only be permitted to seek it
In their circles,
When perfectly rich.
So Dennis flashed his license
At every single dinner party,
Whilst she tried to hide her 'L' plates
From the poverty police.
They unanimously frowned down
Upon how her grass is always greener,
Only when it rains.
So Dennis bought a hectare
Of this year's most finest crop:
"Splendid, old chap!"
It withered at some time —
(She couldn't really hazard a guess quite when) —
Under the heat of his laborious frustration;
His excess mechanical dissatisfaction
Boasted prized pearls to the sun —
(Didn't she know it was couture, cognoscente, accomplished
To always want more?).
At the end of the day,
The beads of sweat
Finally fell like acid rain
Down his corrugated brow,
Into his Guinness, keeping time all the while,
As he pursued the ageing to the second,
While she slurped that Scotch recklessly, passionately,
Should it suddenly dry up like their love.
"Nothing like the Drop from the Old Country",
He sighed. Where the grass was purple for all he cared.
The nail in the coffin
Because after all, and of course,
She did this to him.

For Gatsby and Robert Drewe

The drowner
Clambered at
The faults of sentimentality:
Daisy was now but an enigma;
A sketchy outline
Of a somehow different past.
(He just couldn't grasp reality —
But he'd tried some
Hot wax coating
Some Gaussian blur
A little neon glow
Ever so gently around the edges,
Experimented until he'd found the effect
That appealed best
To his forlorn artist's soul...
It was very nice, even if it were unreal.)

In anoxia's dreams
He'd grasped desperately upon
Her long dark lashes,
Flashing their delights:
The shutters to her radiant soul
Lit up like a beaker,
Just for his laborious exploration.
Neurons fired their last shots —
(The call of duty prevailed) —
At his ill-fated memory;
And still he swore, even upon his last breath
That Daisy was his destiny.

Friday

It's late Friday afternoon --
bodies scatter, in chase of the weekend.
I'm not convinced that at this moment
we are 21st century human:
we're driving in frantic ferocity,
scavenging seconds with desperation,
perspiring primal urge in recovery,
of the days of Hunter Gatherer, for
finding fleshy land feet,
snaring some slimy ocean beasts,
cleaning the cave, taming the jungle.
Then Monday comes & freedom retreats;
we're putting on our evolved uniforms,
sophisticated expressions,
stitched up mannerisms, &
the world proceeds to fall apart.
As far as I am concerned, as a species,
we're not evolving,
we're not even static,
we're just decaying.

Hospital

Time becomes anaesthetised and
won't wake up.
Food is something you do
to consume slow time,
Newspaper is something you do
to investigate someone else's spent time,
Midday TV is something you do
to wallow in copious amounts of imaginary time.
All the while,
your next-door neighbour
sleeps noisily in your bed-room.
Your family, whom you live with
become 'visitors',
who lose you to your pallor,
as you blend in, in surrender to
stark white bed linen,
yet the nurses unfortunately
have no trouble
in locating every inch of you.
You lose yourself to a bed number
(your ward becomes your new suburb of residence), and
The battle with jealousy is insurmountable because
the other kind of hospital 'residents'
get to go home at night.

Reality Dawning

Shackled to the excess baggage desk...
(But I should be grateful
to not be attached to the household sink
with offspring galore
winding their grotty mazes
around my feet & beyond my patience?)

Responsibilities sky high,
I'm building a Metropolis
but never a Home,
& the bird poo sticks,
when the heat is turned up;
it's never cool here
in my fancy suit buttoned tight,
to protect my patented boobs —
they own every working hour of me
& my academic gift,
only surpassed by an achievement expectation...

& now the windows,
are so tinted,
that I can't even tell
if the sky is blue today (or always)
or just that tiresome rose-tinted pink.
Has the sun set on my dreams,
or is it just my newfound
reality dawning?

Thunder and Lightening

Sonic boom of bombs unleashed overhead:
The whoosh, whirls and crack.
Fasted of hunt for years,
The fighter jets howl hysterically,
As they spot and circle their prey.
The spittle of anticipation,
Rains down hard,
On flimsy paper dinner plate roofs.
Death will come eventually,
Even if only through sleep deprivation.
Night-dresses billowing with smoking truth;
Ghosts of childhood happiness that once flowed bountifully.
The smouldering sky is alight with the fireworks of end times.

Westerners waking to thunder and lightening —
God must be very angry,
Or perhaps He is just letting us know that
We could have been living someone else's life tonight.
No matter the blanketed comfortable ignorance,
He's letting the blind know,
That they cannot also claim deafness forever.
He's letting the deaf also know,
That they cannot also remain blind forever.