Frost on the Leaves

The valley crackles

Ice under foot

White sheets over limbs

We sit awed

Didn't see it coming

A frost like this

There will be foxes

Testing our succulent hens

Keeps the other half busy

Washing and warming stuff

Better that way

No need to talk

She will look out of windows

I will retire to the shed

Both looking to a life frozen

No winter thaw our bed

© shaun patrick green 2013

Kings Canyon.

We scaled Kings Canyon at dawn

Following European tourists in thongs

Saw ripple marks set in stone

Traces of the Devonian Ocean

Thrust up through continental drift

To form rocky outcrops

For photo opportunities

Before our first anniversary

You lay in a bed fouled by tubes

One breast less than my wife

As if life had turned into a shark

And taken a chunk out of your chest

Another scar on the earth

Revealing its violent struggle to be

© shaun patrick green 2013

Turning Back The Boats (or The Tyranny Of Distance Is That We Are Never Far Enough Away From Stupid Ideas).

Invasions break like waves on history's beach

Inspired by greed or misplaced good intentions

Bringing with them God, alcohol and syphilis

New forms of war, old social conventions

Australia was Terra Incognita until Europe

Flung its unwanted shit against these shores

Only after white men landed in tricorn hats

Did it become Terra Nullius under foreign laws

If only the Enlightenment experiment

Had extended to criminalising hypocrisy

Then politicians would have been transported

To the colonies - an act of true democracy

And if only the indigenous peoples of this land

Spoke Latin and possessed a vast navy

Then the First Fleet would have been turned around

And Indonesia would be eating roast beef with gravy

© shaun patrick green 2013

Dasein

Skiers and golfers miss it

To them it's about the game

Or the process of getting

From one point to another

Always 'doing' something

Like most of us really

But if we could just stop

And refuse for one minute

To participate in distraction

We might experience

What it is to BE

Sunlight through trees

Waves lapping at our feet

The rumble of thunder

Distant mountains glistening

In a world that is

While time takes its toll

Always and already dying
Beautiful beyond words

© shaun patrick green 2013

Happy Face Balloons.

Happy face balloons bob

Under the fan like bad jokes

Flowers make her sneeze

And chocolates give her pimples

All make a mockery of pain

But the bearers mean well

In their non-cancer world

Of condolence and sincerity

This divide is the status quo:

Those with, those without

How can those who have not suffered

Make their sympathy not seem clichéd?

How can those who have suffered

Make their sympathy not seem cloying

The tropes of sickness

Bury her illness deeper

For it is now accepted

Institutionalised, funded

Insured against, majored in

There is the talking to

And the hoping against

Experts, converts, the annoying

Pamphlets and support groups

Oncologists talk like solipsists

About nodes and receptors

Surgeons remonstrate like

Alice In Wonderland Queens

"Off with her breast!"

So they will remove part

Of the woman I love to save her life

She will walk in circles for a while

So they tell me with consoling smiles

But recompense will be

A time disease free

Maybe, maybe... 

© shaun patrick green 2013

On The Terrace.

The terrace was wide open

Night spreading like tar

Lit by lamps overlooking

The yard pimped with cushions

Red wine and delusion

Had I finished talking?

You were there like a bat

Clinging to the overhang

Inverted like all the best lovers

Stars on your fingers

Excoriating my scalp

Before we had even spoken

Physical touch an explosion

Nooking in the kitchen like kids

Me on acid you pissed

A furtive forgetting of wankers

And the reality they impose

Walls turned to jello

Yellow sun on the rise

Thinking of what could have been

I watched your face shrink

Into the tiniest ball of hate

I have ever seen

© shaun patrick green 2013

No One Reads Poetry.

"No one reads poetry," she said

And, ultimately, I had to agree

It had been ages since I had dipped

Into Yeats, Byron, Plath or Keats.

Yet Lady Gaga and Eminem are viral

Pathological maybe, but they're free.

No need to be dirty and buy a book,

Hold in hand ink-stained paper

Made from chipped and pulped trees.

Just YouTube your favourite poet

Or a dog singing, a cat sparring

Or a frog being fucked by a monkey,

Miley Cyrus twerking, John Holmes jerking,

Drunk teenagers collapsing in their pee.

So there you have it:

Thousands of years of culture

Distilled into two-minute clips

Of people falling over

And animals being funny.

But who am I to criticise these times?

Eat your Happy Meal and keep watching TV.

Abuse this language in marketing campaigns

So that we all end up illiterate and free.

Feed your hope into the mirror of social media,

Let it sell you yourself back as entertainment

And when it no longer entertains

Who are you going to blame?

Despite what YouTube and Facebook

Would distractedly have you believe,

That's what poets have been trying to say all along:

Look at yourselves, don't look at me.

© shaun patrick green 2013

The Spider.

He may be stooped

With hair that is thinning

Yet he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

His clothes are the right cut

His smile is winning

Still he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

He says the right words

Only to find women yawning

Obviously he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

Puts the drug in their drink

When they say they are leaving

Yes he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

Like a spider he drags them home

And lies beside them grinning

Indeed he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

Like all ungrateful daughters

They are his until morning

No doubt he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

The police will come to visit

Using words that are demeaning

True he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

He will never go to jail

No harm in a woman sleeping

It is certain he is a man

More sinned against than sinning

© shaun patrick green 2013

Death and Taxes.

It was a Right Wing Think Tank

(an oxymoron if ever I heard one)

Or maybe it was a Government Sponsored

Focus Group Initiative or maybe

It was a Senate Sub-Committee

Whatever: people were given money

To come up with this idea -

Let's tax fat people and smokers more

Because of the extra burden they place

On our strapped-for-cash healthcare system

I thought: what about those who play sport?

Our emergency departments are full

Of skateboarders with broken ankles

Footballers with dislocated shoulders

Netballers with torn cruciate ligaments

Popped kneecaps, ruptured hamstrings

Cyclists with broken wrists and lacerations

Tennis players with tennis elbow

Badminton players with badminton forearm

Broken feet, heart attack, heat stroke

Soccer players who need knee reconstruction

Exercise clearly puts the exerciser

In what doctors call 'a high risk category'

Similar to all those smokers and fatties

True: most sporty types have better outcomes

Earn enough to have private health insurance

And are more motivated to fully recover

This is what separates them from those

Among us who have made bad lifestyle choices

Smokers and fatties cost the system

Sports injuries make money for the system

But in the end, we are all short of breath

Whether you jog 10k a day

Or smoke a pack a day

We all exit the same way

Because life, after all

Is the most common cause of death.

© shaun patrick green 2013

Philosophy and Coffee.

The French waiter gesticulates Frenchly:

"We do not say: To Be or Not To Be -

That is The Question... We say:

To Be or Not - To Be, That Is The Question."

A subtle reinterpretation of The Bard á la Sartré

Which raises many questions á la carte

Not having the salmon is not the question

Having the salmon IS the question

The negative state is a fact: we are all dead

But by choosing the opposite of nothingness

We express our radical individual freedom

And therefore give life it's meaning

Lunch as existentialism, lunatics as messiahs

If only the waiters weren't so egocentric

We might get fed instead of surviving

On philosophy and coffee

© shaun patrick green 2013

Elegy.

This day will end

All flesh wither

To cease to be

Light fade forever 

This house fall

That bridge rust

A heart will fail

Brain slowly forget

Blood stop in veins

Eyes no longer see

Buildings crumble

Bones to dust

Carry this burden

Legs giving out

With arms bending 

Under a dark sky

Not a brick left

Continue we must

© shaun patrick green 2013

Haiku #44

"Good things come in small packages,"

Say little people

In big houses.

© shaun patrick green 2013

Haiku #42

 

"Words are brittle," he says,

Bending in book shops,

An origami crane.

© shaun patrick green 2013

A TV Guide.

Cook like a MasterChef

Renovate like you're on The Block

Sing like you've got talent

Dance like you're with the stars

Let Sunrise give you a Kochie enema

Then blow it out your arse

Let the Bold and the Beautiful

Set the template for your relationships

Let Neighbours distract you

From those who actually live next door

May Today Tonight teach you

The same lessons they did the day before

Watch The Project and Can Of Worms

Because you need to be more informed

Become the blank slate upon which

Capital can write its epistle to the rich

Making you dumber makes them money

It would be a joke if it were funny

But it's not

In the end we will find

TV teaches us nothing more

Than a funhouse mirror

One of the greatest inventions

Of our time has been turned against us

Capable of enlightening millions

It now numbs us into acceptance

Sells us shit we don't need

Including ill informed opinions

Idealised bodies and greed

Crack cocaine for insomniacs

And those with low self esteem

Watched a sixteen year old girl

Chew dirt on My Weird Obsession

She had obviously been weaned on TV

Where fame is the drug of choice

Get your fifteen minutes any way you can

Without it life is meaningless

An existentialism of sorts

As if Sartré had eaten Nietzsche

And shat out a shiny Warhol

TV is the ultimate immanent surface

It has staged a bloodless coup

It both killed God and replaced the need

In one fell swoop

© shaun patrick green 2013

In God's Image.

If we were made in God's image

Then somehow the flesh got it wrong

Mistakes made at a genetic level

Irregularities in a system

More hit and miss than science

The ultrasound showed the tumour

A globule of impossibility

Dug deep in her breast like a tic

How do we deal with this?

Where is the magic? What is the trick?

In what kind of capricious universe

Does your own body set out to kill you?

Consoling silences and knowing glances

Only add to the tragic tableaux

If you do die you're a martyr

If you don't you're a survivor

Either way you are redefined

And in whose image are we re-made?

Some malcontent missing organs

Tongue, breasts, bowels and balls?

How do we go on living knowing

The original design has faults?

Should there be a worldwide recall

Of all imperfect humanoid life?

If so, we would lose a growth industry

And I would lose my dear wife.

© shaun patrick green 2013

The Midwich Cuckoos

Blonde children thicken like weeds

In this most Aryan of gardens

Gamboling about naked as angels

Communicating with each other

In naked baby angel speak

Making adults do their bidding

Screaming bloody murder

Are they capable of it?

Be wary driving in the street

Wouldn't want to unwittingly

Break a bone or thin the herd

Or like gold feathered birds

They would descend for revenge
Calling on all those unborn
To join this miniature reich

A world quivering in their eyes

Just another ball to be thrown

With malice at a neighbour's door

Or bounced against the dry stone wall

Of religion, politics and other lies.

© shaun patrick green 2013

Rabbit Traps.

I've seen you skulking in the woods

Watched you trapping rabbits

Tramping them back to your hut

Leaving blood trails in the snow

I wait for you to make a mistake

Follow the same path

Leave a latch unlocked

For I know I will get only one chance

I will have to take you inside

Cornered, unable to escape

You will be dangerous then

Lashing out with all your force

But you will tire eventually

The small space allowing no escape

Which is when I will close in

And crush your throat again

We have been here many times before

You and I hunting and hunted

So it goes on into eternity

Those cursed could not want for more

© shaun patrick green 2013

Gift of the Witches.

Three dire maidens

Call MacBeth to account

Don't offer destiny

But a view of time

There is no predestination,

Only choices,

But choices made within

Limited parameters

There is no doom only

Wrong choices

You can't foretell the future

Only grasp its many variables

And suggest possibilities

What of the narrative of the witches

Who are obviously trying to conspire?

On the one hand they are there

To facilitate regime change

But on the other to bring down a good man

Why? What's in it for them?

Sadly this supernatural theme

Is not born out in the play but merely

Used as a theatrical device

As a foreboding presence

Like the Greek Chorus

Who sing the decision our anti-hero

Has already made himself

© shaun patrick green 2013

Money Doesn't Buy Happiness, But...

Anthony earned six figures

And I'm not saying

He wasn't worth every penny

The man worked very hard indeed

Lived alone, ate out

His friends few, colleagues many

He owned an apartment on the river

With city views, a maid

Swimming pool on the top floor

He never had a house warming party

When I suggested it he just

Shrugged and said: What for?

I tried to explain to him the concept

Of living and giving in a society

Which respects your rights

For him the thought of owing anyone

Anything was more than enough

To keep him awake nights

Sharing, for Anthony, meant investing

In shares, stocks, bonds,

And annuities

He didn't believe in enlightened capitalism

Social responsibility

Or ad hoc gratuities

To him money well earned was to be well spent

Namely on those few things

Capable of providing pleasure

And yet Anthony was a man of few passions

He was not the sporting type

And had little use for leisure

Didn't windsurf, collect stamps, bird watch

Bush walk, snowboard, drink beer

Play darts or dive

He stayed in lit by his laptop screen

Browsing and ordering online - a man

Totally without social drive

His furniture was someone else's idea of chic

His hair someone's idea of cool

His wine club told him what to drink

Like Einstein he tended to wear the same clothes

Every day in the belief relief from mundane

Choices left more time to think

It was when I suggested some art for his walls

That Anthony's plight was for me

Cast in a whole new light

I took him to various galleries in a day

Some cooler some safer than others

But all with art on site

He said at the end if he wanted to invest

It had to be something

No one had ever seen before

So I took him to see a conceptual artist

Whose name was Livingston Crapp

Who had been a transsexual whore

Crapp's work was indeed outrageous

Especially the "Dead Bird" where

She walked around in a white room

Dressed in nothing but stockings

High heels, an Alpine Climbing Cap

Holding the spool from a weavers loom

Anthony said: I'll buy that - and that was that

Nobody could argue with his money

He wanted the show, he wanted it all

I tried to explain to exulted Anthony that

Crapp's work was highly ephemeral

Not something to hang on your wall

He said: Fuck it, I'll buy this überbitch

And watch her gradually depreciate

While I look ultra cool

And he dedicated a room in his apartment

To Livingston Crapp's "Dead Bird" -

The ultimate folly of a fool

© shaun patrick green 2013

Winter Wall (for Yukio Mishima)

White her skin blossom scented

Snow so heavy and silent

The carriage takes us onward

Beneath the blanket upon our knees

Her hand awkwardly seeks mine

This is not the time for intimacy

Besides I think of cock and

I cannot write if no one is listening

At my uncles house the ritual will begin

Feasts and pageants and the white wall

Pine trees marking the path

I must walk alone to find nobility

Knife slicing through my belly

She cannot walk it with me

Shivers a little as if knowing

Snow falling heavier now

Quiet in the absence of language

Like a blanket that calms

Wrapping the world up

Like the abandoned baby

It always will be

© shaun patrick green 2013

Lycra Nazis.

At dawn they roam in packs

Safety in numbers for those

Whose uniform harks back

To some futurist ideal

A fascist aesthetic

With a touch of S & M

Striking energy drink

Advertising poses

Stills from Triumph of the Will

There is no stopping them

As they bulldoze

Toward physical perfection

This militia on two wheels

Embodies Armageddon

A robotic hairless uniformity

No surprise lycra

Was invented by DuPont

Manhattan Project fanatics

Makers of the hydrogen bomb

The antithesis of humanity

Next stop world domination

We already have a lycra nazi

Running our country

© shaun patrick green 2013

On A Clear Night.

On a night clear as this,

Stars burning their afterglow

In the blackness of space,

It was revealed death,

Like objects in your mirror,

Is closer than it appears.

I know now life is even closer.

She sleeps soundly beside me,

Baby growing inside her,

As we roll around the sun,

Dying and being born,

Surviving somehow, as we must,

Like amoeba on a marble.

© shaun patrick green 2013

The Ballad of Blake Laurent.

Here comes Blake Laurent to give me exactly what I want

Quite a sight with scaly thighs and blank plate eyes

His needle teeth making him look like some deep sea fish

Let him play with your kids and he'll tear them to shreds

But Blake Laurent always knows exactly what I want

Knows before he arrives because he's seen it in the eyes

Of those dwelling in the shell of their own private hell

He can see into the black hole that used to be my soul

But I know Blake Laurent will give me exactly what I want

He's the man with the plan, the only one who can

But be careful you don't stand near his cheese grater hands

Or he'll slice and dice you into cheesy red strands

But still I know Blake Laurent will give me what I want

Only once I saw him out-reckoned but just for a second

By young Nancy Lafeyer with the strawberry blonde hair

In the end, she wanted death so he breathed poison breath

Because Blake Laurent always gives you what you want

Nights he crawls from under Baxter Bridge and up East Ridge

To look down on the town to which only he owns the crown

We are all his most loyal subjects and blighted objects

Knowing Blake Laurent always gives us exactly what we want

© shaun patrick green 2013

Secret Robot Society (for Rona Green).

Would be cruel to call these boys geeks

Being at the tender age before teenhood

Yet here they are captured with a robot

The coolest birthday present ever

Looking masked and unearthly

Waiting to be sucked up into the mothership

Gangly fingers betraying alien DNA

But they have work yet to do on earth

The robot rebellion must be set in order

Commands given, tactics devised

Mechanised metal giants will march

Trampling houses and towns

No human will be allowed to survive
And yet somehow it will be fun
Like a stainless steel sleepover
Or a pillow fight with ball bearings
The Secret Robot Society moves

In very mysterious ways
After cake they will spin on the Hills Hoist
Play tag in the yard and bluff
Then sleep like the rusting dead

© shaun patrick green 2013

Political Quatrain #19

Oh Kevin, smarmy Kevin

Fun watching you connect with kids

Fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate

We wouldn't be dead for quids

© shaun patrick green 2013

Scar Tissue.

Just another invasion

Of the inanimate

An indication of

How much a body can take

Entry points marked

Where things impinge

Puckered and pink

Some cuts don't heal

Even with time

That fine white line

Following the body

Into old age

Time's brand upon the skin

We are all prisoners

Of the flesh

History marked upon us

Like runes to be read

By future historians

Cold cases for the

Next century

Only there is a tale

To be told now

Intimate and integral

Glyphs of life events

Your finger tracing

That ridge left

By my brother's

Enthusiastic swordplay

That circular brand

Rendered by chicken pox

My circumcised penis

Plate fixed left ankle

And that gash in my heart

Invisible to others

Where you laid

The salve of your love

And carefully hid its mark

© shaun patrick green 2013