my before
i find the courage and go to the place of
my before
breathe deep as i cross industrial
wastelands
as smoky grit envelopes me
blizzards spew trauma in my mouth and eyes
and speeding desperados calling mean
hurl toxic glares in my anxious path
i pass naked seekers gathered at dark
tunnels
gesturing me back in to game the play
ignore lurking leering ghosts who spin at
me in dancing need
i flee from where i dwelt in trap but now
leave near behind
he is sitting in an empty shrine outside a
shut-down city
on his garbage-strewn way
footpath couch beside him
smoking magic and sipping on a warm can of
lust
engrossed in watching a scrawny creature
picking through an overflowing bin
i sit next to him
“i came back to see you” i whisper
he offers me a puff of green as i shake
head in no
“i need to ask you why you never tried to
save me
why it was left to me to escape the nowhere
hole
to see if any strength to run remained
to discover that absent will-power i could
never gather up
to know if i was more than me and the pain
i sucked in daily
i want to know why you didn’t show me what
and who i was”
he stands and paces
bangs his hand on burning prayer graffiti
walls
“stop avoiding true and tell me why” i
shout in crying plead
he ends his racket and slumps to ground
we watch the creature rip apart a wasted
body it’s dragged from the bin
eyes glazed as greedy mouth gulps expired
life
slimy blood of dreams spilling over all
that never flowered
he looks into my face and i sense a sadness
so real
i see someone i have never seen before
“i don’t know why i didn’t give you how and
when you were” he mutters
as the creature skulks away with remains
dribbling fearful trail
i stand and look up to a smiling just
realised sky
and stepping gently away from where i never
began
i say goodbye to my before and fly away
as he fades screaming into nothing now
remains
nomad-halt
shock
we were stopped in a rush from our
travelling way
nomad-halt hit us hard in a month
ripped into our wandering on lifestyles
of where we chose to call home as our next
us thousands who take off to ramble ongoing
never ceasing the let’s head to elsewhere
expats and roamers and dreamers of
different
artists and explorers and outlaws
advantaged or wealthy you must be they all
say
nowhere tribes have heard it spat
frequent
lucky you on your permanent holiday
it’s alright for some they whine bitter
but for many of us our freedom is loaded
with consequence and outcome from amble
poverty often be stuck on tough lonely road
nomads smile at what only we share
when nomad-halt swept our cruising away
as it did for more than is recorded
we returned to our birth towns to wait out
pandemic
reflect on what could follow from here
and for me and i can’t say what others are
thinking
i appreciate my home safety and health
but i’m sad for my brothers and sisters in
countries
where death and sickness is part of their
day
vaccination the roll-out is the news of
this time
and it seems the prediction of a coming new
normal
but we full-time nomads caught by
nomad-halt shock
know our drifting days as they were have
vanished
it’s not that the borders won’t ever be
open
or restriction to take off will be always
its more that the ease to be the nomads we
were
has been changed by what’s been and still
hovers
Stephen House is an award winning Australian
playwright, poet and actor. He’s won two Awgie Awards (Australian Writer’s
Guild) , Adelaide Fringe Award, Rhonda Jancovich Poetry Award for Social
Justice, Goolwa Poetry Cup, Feast Short Story Prize and more. He’s been
shortlisted for Lane Cove Literary Award, Overland’s Fair Australia Fiction
Prize, Patrick White Playwright and Queensland Premier Drama Awards, Greenroom
best actor Award and more. He’s received Australia Council literature
residencies to Ireland and Canada, and an India Asialink. His chapbook “real
and unreal” was published by ICOE Press Australia. He is published often and
performs his work widely.
No comments:
Post a Comment