Tiny Hands

Her tiny hands reach out

Into an unfathomable universe

Bending time like light

I feel I have been holding

Her bottle for hours

Yet 10 minutes has passed

According to the clock

She is 5 months old

But it seems like yesterday

She was plucked from her mother

And held up puppet style

Like a surreal piece

Of street theatre

Is this the function of children?

To gauge our own aging

Or to teach us about mortality?

She holds her own bottle now

In place of my wife’s missing breasts

Crawls toward toys like treats

Laughing, talking, smiling

Time ticks a tock and still

She has such tiny hands

© shaun patrick green 2014

Too much history to hide.

Every fear, every foe, every deed

Every want, every woe, every need

Every mistake, every loss of face

Every missed opportunity, loss of place

Every time he was less than a man

Every time he didn’t do all a man can

Every drink, every tear, every fight

Every angry act, every day, every night

Those about to and all those who have died:

Too much history to hide

This is what I see in my father’s eyes

Staring stunned, far off, plate wide

Like a PTSD affected soldier returned

From the 70 year war of his own life

His once strong hands now trembling

His voice cracked, his gait shambling

He has been hollowed out from the inside

By this all consuming rising tide

A total loss of self in which to abide:

Too much history to hide

Can the same be said for the political divide

In this country bent on social suicide?

Every betrayal of trust, every broken promise

Every hole in the ground, every burden upon us

Every slight of hand, every obfuscation

Every burial of truth, every call to nation

Every media circus, every corporate junket

Every intervention and ignored convention

Every detainee who for freedom tried:

Too much history to hide

The same will happen to me in time

I will stare with my father’s eyes

At every failure, every lessening, every lie

Every moment of weakness, every sleepless night

Every wrong word, every incomplete sentence

Every selfish thought, every time I’m petulant

Every loss of hope, every outburst in fury

Every hangover, every slip, every fall

Every violent impulse inside me and all

The violent impulses used against me

All of these will one day coincide:

Too much history to hide

© shaun patrick green 2014

Snapshot KL.

We saw the rain coming

Brooding over us like a dowager

Little India seemed suddenly small

Under the umbrella of a tropical downpour

Fumes of cardamom and incense

Mingling with Asian insouciance

Amid the architecture of an uneasy truce

We found a back street restaurant

Changed our daughter’s diaper

On a rain soaked toilet seat

Then sat down exhausted, ready to eat

Mutton Rogan Josh, Garlic Naan, Palak Paneer

Waiters loitering, wraith-like, always near

While outside rain reduced all to rubble

Every aspiration this city ever had

Will be eaten away by the climate

For not even Malaysia can sustain

A Western capitalist ideal

In an Eastern tropical garden

Without sacrificing its soul

To a ravenous and unforgiving God

It shows in people’s faces

The look of having lost a fight before it begins

A fight they neither chose nor are interested in

Take KLIA, more shopping centre than airport

A huge festering fungal growth

Where the Roti Chanai is ironic

And buying a beer is like pulling teeth

There is a brutal postmodernity here

Chrome steel and concrete aspirations

Sunk in a mosquito infested swamp

Nevertheless swept and kept religiously clean

Leaving us to ponder the question:

What does a spotless bathroom

With no shelves mean?

© shaun patrick green 2014

Le Bourdil Blanc

The silver leaves of a birch

Flash in the wind like shoals of fish

Horses free of the day’s riders

Graze lazily toward evening

Cows lounge in a nearby field

Shaded by century old trees

Overhead, 30,000 feet up

Jets weave their vaporous web

Le Bourdil Blanc bears witness

Percolating its history at sunset

Footsteps clapping on wood floors

Glasses being filled on the terrace

Dogs nestled under the table

As stories of days in the saddle

Are swapped in varied accents

While Bernadette toils in the kitchen

To spoil us with another splendid dinner

This house holds us at its leisure

Lichen mottling its stairs and walls

Stone, wood and iron all

Indifferent to our laws, wars, nations

Our desires for a life

Lived gently and with more patience

© shaun patrick green 2014

Suckered In

It happens at birth

You pop out gendered

Marketed Pink or Blue

You are already a demographic

And your parents purchasing power

Will determine the extent

To which you can afford

To keep your baby “natural”

You know, free from those chemicals

That we know cause cancer

And the government has you

Hours spent in Centrelink

Registering a baby for

Vaccines, Child Care, the Flu

Taking up the slack

From daytime TV

The Blitzmeister, the Abmeister

The French Wazoo

Just turn it off

Give our kids imagination

They will create a better world

Than this batshit abomination

© shaun patrick green 2014

Life Before Children

My wife sleeps on the couch exhausted

I find nappies and wash again and again

Our baby girl grows, changes, interacts

Despite what her mother went through

The cancer, the infection

Our bundle of joy seems blessed

But what of us?

We have been hiding pain so long

It seeps out like pus

Especially when we drink with friends

Smiling and sporting offspring
Poo Pooing life before children
(Only because it didn't nearly kill them)

Us too aware of the nearness of the edge

Tired of everything

Yet acting excited

As if for the cameras

Click! Click!
If it had come to a choice
Between my wife's life or our daughter's
Would we have had the strength?

Our child is not

A future monarch

Of some Danish fiefdom

Just a consequence of her hope, my lust

Perhaps that will be enough

© shaun patrick green 2014

This Night.

Does this night scare you?

It ought too

Not that it is any different

From any other night

Same fears, same foes

But you are older

Weaker, less resilient

Like an envelope

Unable to contain the letter

It is a long letter

Heartfelt and well written

To a god you don’t believe in

Asking for mercy

You know will not arrive

And the tears you cry

Do they become you?

Or do they paint you the fool?

You the partner, the survivor

There are people in the world

Who don’t have enough to eat

What makes you special

As you cry in the dark?

This night scares everyone

Sinner and saint alike

For tomorrow brings a fresh hell

And each sunrise a new fight

© shaun patrick green 2014

Territorial

Moonlight stains the garden blue

Leaking off leaves like ejaculate

Bats fuck and fight in the foliage

Spraying black shit against the gate

In the distance crackers thwack

Impotent gestures after the fact

Yet the boredom seeps like a gas

Through a suburb in a city waiting

Tides ebb through the mangroves

Mosquitoes hum in the shadows

The smell of barbecued meats

Sound of wine infused chitchat

Daub these sunsets with romanticism

While in Cullen Bay they are debating

The finer points of Arnhem Land painting

Those wearing rugby jerseys and tatts

Mohawks and rat tails are waiting

They peer through cyclone fencing

Sucking back beers at the mud racing

Their question remaining unasked

Clouds gather, there is a rumble in the sky

The weather has turned, we exit the dry

Now the long wait through the build up

Spectral storms, the breaking of the rain

This frontier has a mind of its own

It will be what it will be

Leave it to the people

For this is their home

© shaun patrick green 2014

Undertow.

Backstroking under stars

I forget who you are

We talk family and friends

Cook and drink and talk again

The climate change disaster

A future for our daughter

She so fair and malleable

Her new awareness palpable

Then the TV is turned on

And the common ground is gone

American sitcoms and reality shows

Are the deadly undertow

They gently lull us to sleep

Then drown us in the deep

That abysmal sea of normality

Sponsored by your favourite companies

Selling you pre-packaged dreams

Of who you think you can be

So do we swim across the current

Or let ourselves be dragged

                    Out… to… sea…?

© shaun patrick green 2014

History’s Bitch.

History is the hound sniffing our trail

She is hunting us down and will not fail

Sins of the fathers visited upon sons

No place left to hide, nowhere to run

Bodies in ovens, imprisoning children

Denying the order once we’ve killed them

It will catch us in fields of mass graves

Point out the bloodied hand holding the blade

Poison the water where the healthy drank

Mark the place where the refugees sank

She will dig up the bones of the millions dead

And hang them like baubles above our beds

We will run through rivers to confuse our scent

These rivers are blood, yet she will not relent

In our dreams where we conquer, kill and maim

She will snap at our heels and breathe her name

There is no forgetting in the court of the future

History is our judge, jury and executioner

She is our conscience, that constant itch

She is our master, and we are her bitch

© shaun patrick green 2014

Cunning Right Hand.

Cunning Right Hand.

For there they that carried us away captive

required of us a song;

and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,

Sing us one of the songs of Tzion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand forget her cunning.

                              Book of Psalms

But your right hand never forgot its cunning

Lobbing bombs into UN sanctioned safe zones

You are losing the war you think you are winning

Hamas rockets still threaten your homes

They tunnel beneath your dwellings

Can you tell the fighters from civilians?

How can you tally the bodies of children?

Is this a Jewish blitzkrieg?

(How ironic)

And why do they fight?

For the same thing you did.

Remember the bombing of The King David Hotel?

Zionists are not above using terrorism

To achieve their ends

So why begrudge the Palestinians theirs?

Israel is an idea, a panacea

A placation to a broken, wandering people

Granted by the UN, secured by terrorism

To the disenfranchisement of Palestinians

You have the right to defend your land

But not at the expense of other peoples right

To call that land HOME

Stop all development in disputed territories NOW

Establish an independent Palestinian territory NOW

Trading on European holocaust guilt

Will only get you so far

After that, you’re on your own.

© shaun patrick green 2014

Patience.

She says patience is a virtue

So I wait through the curfew

A wilting plant on her verandah

She says she needs space

Keeping me in my place

I can’t begin to understand her

Pacing like a stray cat

I lurk outside her flat

Waiting for a light to be turned on

But she leaves me guessing

Apologetic and confessing

Like a moth flying toward the sun

© shaun patrick green 2014

Vanishing Woman.

A stain in linen slowly dissolved

A tear washed away in rain

Mote of dust seductively swirling

Line drawn between pleasure and pain

Day transforming into night

A line drawn in the sand

A funky bar built of ice

You keep slipping through my hands

Like waves upon the ocean

I see you here, feel you there

You ebb and flow, stop and go

Then you completely disappear

You become more eternally feminine

Vanishing for longer each day

Yet somehow it perturbs me not

That you may eventually fade away

© shaun patrick green 2014

Budget Balancing Act (or How I Shifted from a Leaner to a Lifter)

Joe Hockey tells us

With great authority

And a certain amount of regret

That apparently some of us “lean”

As opposed to the “lifters”

Now most of us are quite familiar

With the idea of Archimedes' Fulcrum

(at least those of us who were

educated under that sweet system

of state funded schools where science

was taught by people who are passionate

about it and not trying to cosy paying

Students through to a certification

That allows them to be just as dumb

And antisocial at University as they were

At High School and eventually seek

A career in politics because they are

Bored and shit at everything else...)

Back to Archimedes' Fulcrum

The idea that with a big enough

Lever you could lift the world

Provided you had a solid ground

To
Lift
It
From

Thus the conundrum

What holds the world up?

Given the shortage of tortoises

It would seem

To the untrained

And unpolitical eye

That holding the world up

And having a base to press against

Are the poor, disenfranchised, the weak

The homeless, the drug addicted

The disabled, the unemployed

We are your fulcrum

Your balancing act

We know that “Lifting” And “Leaning”

Are the same thing

Given the laws of thermodynamics
But like Galileo

It is against our religion to admit it

© shaun patrick green 2014