Going Down With The Ship - poetry by shaun patrick green.: April 2012

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Bedtime Story

He watches from the porch

As she rams the BMW

Paid for by her lawyer father

Into his shitty Dihatsu

Screaming: "You fucker!"

Over and over again

While the child hides inside

Asking: "Has mummy gone nuttso again?"

What does he say?

She does her damage and drives away

He inspects the carnage,

Decides its acceptable

And goes inside for a beer

Wishing this headache would end

Knowing that it wont ever

It will grow like a tumour

Sucking the best years from him

But there is always the boy

Can he guarantee his future?

Quarantine him from madness?

He wishes he could sleep forever

But the child calls to him

From his darkened bedroom

"Dad, is Mommy going to be alright?"

"Forget that mad bitch,"

He wants to say but doesn't

Instead lies next to his son

And reads a bedtime story

He wishes to God were true

© shaun patrick green 2012

the naturalist and his daughter

he sees intricate patterns

in the slow pulse of things

the way a spider spins

its complex and deadly web

the way ants blindly detect

and precisely dissect their prey

the way eagles track rabbits

across vast and furrowed ground

how they keenly sight them

and with their talons hunt them down

the way salmon swim upriver in spring

the way bears rise and dance

when the red bellied swallow sings

the way bees navigate by the sun

and upon return to the hive

indicate good nectar crops

by vibrating their dancing map

he tries to communicate all this

to his silent and unseeing daughter

she so tender since her mother gone

he tries to open her eyes

to this vibrant throbbing nature

but all she sees is numbers

geometry, algebra, music and math

patterns invented and unnatural

which he will never grasp

Friday, April 20, 2012

Grandma's Bedroom

Her husband built this house

Sweat of his brow and love for her

Or maybe it was just what one did

Making new life in a new land

Their daughters, one my mother

Born here into not quite home

He was taken by a car

She by much slower means

Is this house a house

Or is it a mausoleum?

I climb the stairs to her room

Banister beneath my hands

Dust like film over everything

Crows cawing outside in trees

Fingertips touching wallpaper

Wood creaking beneath my feet

As if the old man were saying

"You are not worthy..."

Yet I know he loved me

First-born grandchild

I was carried on his shoulders

Meant to be Prime Minister

If he'd lived the disappointment

Would have killed him

The bedroom is small, tidy

Smelling slightly of mothballs

And stale cigarette smoke

The mattress drooping in the middle

Where their bodies would have fallen

After a hard days work,

Collapsing together like continents

He might have stroked her hair

She might have touched his face

And together they dreamed

Locked in sleep's embrace

Jake Claw Hand.

He had a claw, tiny, but I'm sure

Saw it once at the bar when

Drunk he forgot where he was

And gesticulated wildly like a crab

We all saw it, no doubt about it

Only what was a fisherman doing

With a claw where his hand should be?

Asked around town as a stranger

And got the same slacked jawed no-answer

You aint from around here are ya?

No and neither is this freak, I said

But I was wrong, dead crab wrong -

Jake had been a crab-fisher see

And not no ordinary crab-fisher

But a goddam certifiable genius

Cos it was said he could talk to 'em

Not like ordinary people talk to animals

But he could call them into the traps

Only there was a catch

His power came from his promise

Made to the crab king

To marry the crab princess

On forfeit of his right hand

He had reaped the benefits of the sea

And when it came time to wed his

Shell fitted bride he swayed on the jetty

Human matched with Crab not so pretty

So he jumped hoping the sea would intervene

But no, he was spat back to land

Half drowned, half dead

A claw instead of his right hand.

Seeking Sunlight.

As green shoots seek sunlight

I reach for you across our bed

Touching you sustains in me

The most basic of human needs

Allowing me to face the new day

With a sense of purpose that feeds

Into every action and word

Almost as if you were sowing seeds

In the soil of me and tending them

With your crinkle fingers

And forgiving short-sighted love