Going Down With The Ship - poetry by shaun patrick green.: April 2011

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Treading Water

In her desperation she fled so many things

Then into his arms as if to safety

Only to find him hardened to her need

For he was damaged too, maybe more than she

But they stuck at it, butting against each other

Like derelict ships in a poisoned harbour

Barnacles on their hulls dampening ardour

Until the time of scuttling

And he collapsed in her hallway crying

“I feel like I’m losing you,”

When in fact he’d never had her

And moreover had never had himself

So she, detached, watched him drown

Leaving herself to feel this hollowness

Knowing it was right for her to tread water

For she could look down and see him below

Bloated and blue, providing fish food

While she fended off sharks on the prowl

Just A Man

Falling again into her arms

As all men are destined to return

She is infinite compassion

A warmth all her own

And we are pathetic

Simple broken things

Disabled by anger and testosterone

Eternal children unable to enter

She strokes my head and forgives

My words of fear

Stinging rebuke of my hand

Her calmness a lake in the wilderness

With this broad warm heart as its centre

Fold me inside and forgive again

For I am just a man

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Life Explained In Dialogue Boxes

I wake up with a hangover

Press key on computer

Dialogue box: Drink Fluids

I shower and dress slowly

My mind as active as the porridge

In my bowl

Take Vitamin B

Says the screen

Though it will not inure you

To this days horrors

At my desk taking questions

Dialogue box:

Do you really need to be here?

Insert Reply

Jesus I don’t fucking know!

Are you feeling lonely

Yes!

Would you like to

Dialogue box: Speak to a Councilor?

Yes please

What is your first question

What is the meaning of life?

Starting a bit high aren’t we?

Ok, why does the sand crab crawl

Across silent shores

Why does the sturgeon thrust itself

Upon Norwegian shoals

Why do green turtles lay in the same

Place every time every year

Why do dolphins rejoice in the fact that

Whales reappear in the same place

Every rotation as if navigation

Were a function of magnetic polarization?

I look, I google, I search

Yet still I find no dialogue box for this

Has windows let me down?

Or has reality found a way around

This digital interface

Into the real world?

Inheritance.

The doctor made a statement

His degrees on the wall behind him

Backup for the coming bereavement

“You have cancer,” he said

“Oh Really. What type?”

As if the specifics of my death mattered

This tumour was my birthright

My inheritance made flesh

It had been growing inside me since birth

Feeding on the poisonous fume

Of a disintegrating family

Mother bound to domesticity

Father bound to a job he despised

All to raise us boys

Clear in their conscience

They had done the right thing

Only the ‘right’ thing is decided by others

They had no knowledge of this

As they fussed and fought

And battled to stay together

For the children’s sake of course

Internalising so much guilt

It might have driven them mad

Were it not for the fact that

Old age made them weary

Tired of keeping up appearances

Mowing lawns and trimming trees

Tired even of outliving their children.

I Woke Up To Find I Was A Wanker.

Scrubbing my growth and what's left of my hair

I look at these few things and swear

That my next love will be my last

The woman whom I will drag into childless old age

The two of us wired on coffee and inner city chic

So existential we don't even need to create

Because that would just be coarse and rude

I will sport a beard, she thick rimmed glasses

Drink only espressos and avoid lattes

Go to all the gallery openings

And get slanted haircuts and hang out

With the cool young things

Like social vampires feeding

Bleeding these people of their ideas

Necessary - having none of our own

Then the wine hits and no one gives a shit

So we disperse to pubs and bitch

About the sub-standard nature of the show

How the vision wasn't true

How the work was unresolved

Then Fergus will join the fray

Not content with calling everyone a cunt

As he does after his seventh pint

But Twinkle Toes will pull him away

So things die down

Back to an acceptable level of blah

And I will signal to you across a room

With a slight tilt of the head

That this is all bullshit

And its time to go home

To our French Boxer Roxy

To our comfortable self-satisfaction

Perhaps even to bed.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Havana Fortune-Teller.

We stumbled into Plaza Vieja at midday

Tipsy on white rum and lemonade

Expecting droves of tourists

Finding the old square half empty

So we wound through galleries

Like conquistadors

Though more savvy and photogenic

The fortune-teller saw through us

Not blinded by armour or horses

Her huge smile beckoning us to sit

In Spanish only half understood

She had you picked as definite

Defiant, proud and generous

This whole character assessment

Resting on a card table

That proved not to be weight bearing

As soon as your elbows met the

Balsa perch, it crumbled

Sending your fortune scattering

Cards and flowers falling

Onto ancient cobble stones

We helped the chuckling fortune-teller

Gather her deck and calm was restored

A white necklace of protection given

Token of some African goddess

Capable of warding off evil

Your neck an elegant easel

For the display of Afro-Cuban

Mysticism and possible futures

Tumbling like a tarot pack

Through the crumbling streets of Havana.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Smith Street.

Walking toward Smith Street

Smog smeared horizon blue grey

Passing bottle shops and pizza bars

Gravity tugging me toward her

“Sing for me, baby,” she will say

As I drip in her orange benefaction

Thinking: it never used to be this difficult

There never used to be demands

Now it all needs to be proven, contested

As if love were a performance for others

So I will smoke on her balcony

While she strums guitar and decides

Whether or not I should stay the night

I’m in no mood for a fight

So I leave her to her cats and musty flat

And walk away from Smith Street

Into a night more complicated

For its rare stink of freedom.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The Soundtrack To Our Lives

The song wears thin

Its skin worn by resigning

It’s a tale sung to a drunken audience

By musicians whose talent

Has long since gone to seed

Yet the people feel the need

For familiar words

Crooned in a minor key

As if memories could be show tunes

Confessions overcooked ballads

Dreams prog rock escapades

Truth an unfinished symphony

The soundtrack to our lives

Plays on

And we plot moments with music

Much as we plot stars with dots

A cosmological cacophony

That rings in our heads

And binds time to rhythm and melody

Such that we tap out our wasting away

To the metronome’s click

But what if we could rewrite the score

Do away with bum notes

Ill timed cadences

Obvious codas and more

What if we became composers

Working in concert with master musicians

Directing our ideas into musical themes

Then we would breed new sounds

Outside the limited bounds

Of the electro/post-punk/post-rock

And take stock of history

In all its beneficial warrant

For the songs that stand the test of time

We make for ourselves

Irrespective of talent

Friday, April 22, 2011

Bride of Frankenstein

Even if my lust

Could cut you in two

It would not be enough

You would reform

To haunt me again

A plague among men

Even if my love

Could raise you from the grave

It would make no difference

You would be deformed

A wraith seeking vengeance

As if to live again

Even if my sadness

Could curse you with

Tears of salty brine

I would welcome you

Stepping from the grave

And take your hand in mine

For though you spread plague

And doubt throughout the land

I want you by my side

Even if my longing for you

Sees me take the devils hand

I want you as my bride

beer song

crazy illusion

to think he could outrun this

it being crueler and faster than him

and keener in the killing

yet he continued to give it strength

by nightly imbibing

such that it suck away

the stench of a wasted life

and render an active mind duller

thus better to cope with the day to day

murder of sanity and hope

disguised as political display

still there are moments free of the booze

when he felt the strength to choose

art and commentary

they didn't last for long

the futility of the human project

pouring forth abundant evidence of failure

where the weak are fed by the strong

so he raised another pint of amber

cheers to the millennial malaise

choosing his poison from a bevy of candidates

singing hi away, hi away, here’s to better days

Dancing in your blue dress

We got to the wedding just in time

You dressed in turquoise blue

Same hue as the bridesmaids

Clashing with the green grass of Ripponlea

We shimmied in stealthily

Crowd gathered in as the bride arrived

Tears welling in your trusting eyes

You'd flown 4000 kilometers for this

Yet she wasn’t the bride we knew

Unless the stress of getting married

Had made her put on 10 kilos

And grow a Groucho Marx nose

How to make a subtle retreat?

Edging away we spied security staff

Thinking surely they might know

“Shit! We’re at the wrong wedding!”

“But at the right reception.

It’s here at six. The ceremony is in Ivanhoe.”

Taxi then, mad dash half way across the city

Little chance of success and yet

Our Indian driver held fast to Melways

As a Hindu he believed in consulting scripture

But maps never paint the full picture

So the churches all bummed out

But we made it back for the reception somehow

Sat through speeches and courses

Beer and white wine up to our eyeballs

Until after the bridal waltz

You got to the chance to dance in your blue dress

And dance you did like some possessed goddess

Twirling and spinning and throwing me about

Knowing this was what you had come here for

Without a doubt

To celebrate the betrothal of a good friend

To drink, yes, but to dance

In so doing to set yourself free

From the mundane, from family

From the fear of a life unraveling

And ultimately from me

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Tour De Force

The ceiling is deceiving in this gloom

And the light socket has its eye pocket

Punched out

Not to worry with this army issue torch

We stand Arabs against poles and fire

Have the perimeter secure in no time

Despite the obvious hole in the wall

Through which you can see

All of Baghdad is alight

Shock and awe

They’ve done it in line

Bombed the middle ages back to the stone age

Where women and children are collateral damage

Making me wonder what level of enemy

They thought they were dealing with

What did the intelligence say

Something less than this

Not another fucking Vietnam

But it is

Nothing less than this

Bombs raining down on street markets

Shoppers maimed and innocents dismembered

My knife against my colonel’s throat

His death for my wife and kids

No glory remembered

For we serve the greater good

Despite that concepts inconsistency

We face bombs, hatred and mistrust

In this land of trash and dust

To learn what we must as a nation

That we may have got it wrong

That we may lack humility

The Well

He played violin like a bench saw

Sliced in half his love

Put her pieces aside like fillets

Dug a pit and made her fill it

Took note of what she wore

He rattled about without her

Mopping her blood from cushions

She lurked in the shadows

Growing eyes on potatoes

Her staying would lead to no good

She dug a well as deep as sleep

Climbed down in it to brood

Thought on all his thoughtless crimes

While she decomposed in gentle times

Nourishing the truth she would keep

He placed a lid on the well

Hammered it shut with compassion

Her scratching nails against boarded rails

Testimony to how true love fails

When trust is no longer in fashion

Viñales

Sun glazes the mogotes

Turkey buzzards circling

In still morning air

Catching updrafts from the valley

Where farmers yolk

Their oxen for a days ploughing

We can hear them yelling

To their beasts and each other

Goading the day to its end

Horses stamping

The sun to its setting

A promise of music and rum

And dancing in the town square

Washed and work clothes

Exchanged for Sunday best

Maybe the warm hips

Of a lone siñorita

With a flower in her hair

And rainbows on her dress

Stamping and twirling together

But the siñoritas have long since fled

Leaving only cowboys and old men

To dance with waitresses for tips

Stale beer dry bones

Memories of what has been

Blue Collar

Kill me slowly with fine particles

Poison me with carcinogenic fumes

Make me wash your dishes mop your floors

Lift crates carry cartons deliver goods

Put me in harms way

All for minimum wage

Weekends the only salvage

Fucking and fighting in substandard housing

Paying exorbitant rent

So you can use us to man conveyor belts

Staple frames extrude extract excrete

Barely able to pay bills let alone eat

We wear the uniform you give us

Answer to arsehole managers

And go home to drink ourselves to death

Because the colour of the collar we wear

Determines who shall be slave and master

And when the leash pulls we give

Wishing death or liberty were faster

Inheritance

The doctor made a statement

His degrees on the wall behind him

Backup for the coming bereavement

“You have cancer,” he said

“Oh Really. What type?”

As if the specifics of my death mattered

This tumour was my birthright

My inheritance made flesh

It had been growing inside me since birth

Feeding on the poisonous fume

Of a disintegrating family

Mother bound to domesticity

Father bound to a job he despised

All to raise us boys

Clear in their conscience

They had done the right thing

Only the ‘right’ thing is decided by others

They had no knowledge of this

As they fussed and fought

And battled to stay together

For the children’s sake of course

Internalising so much guilt

It might have driven them mad

Were it not for the fact that

Old age made them weary

Tired of keeping up appearances

Mowing lawns and trimming trees

Tired even of outliving their children

Gone Is The Tongue

Gone is the tongue

That could speak of truth -

Second casualty of war,

For the first is youth.

Gone is the tongue

That could send a warning

For it was cut out and flung

Into the crowd’s cat calling.

Gone is the tongue

That could shout dissent,

For it is split in two

And can only ascent.

Gone is the tongue

That could wag for change

For it hangs limp as a flag

And is smeared in blame.

Gone is the tongue

That could speak of tyranny

For a bullet in the head

Is the legacy of infamy.

Gone is the tongue

That could sing life’s praises

For all songs to be sung

Have since been erased.

Gone is the tongue

That could tell us when to stop,

For we send them off to war

And bring them home to shop.

Gone is the tongue

That could truly speak of love.

For gone is the heart

To fill it full of blood.