Petrichor.

Without asking it fills you

As thunder rolls around your shoulders

And those first crashing drops

Smack down with force

Water passionately kissing earth

Dirt hissing, aerosolised

Rock yeilding its mineral secrets

For the promise of rain

Air ionised and charged

As if expectation could have its own scent

This living planet exhaling

Its breath in our face

Like the musky sweat of a lover

Gathering us in an embrace

Or the milky tang of a mother

Who tucks us gently into the warm bed

Of yet another wet season storm

© shaun patrick green 2018

These Are The Days.

These are the days

Of terror and silence

When every friend becomes a foe

These are the days

Where infamy shall follow you

Like a black shadow wherever you go

These are the days

That hunt in packs, dog days

Ready to tear flesh from bone

These are the days

When the last of your strength leaves you

And you realise we all die alone

These are the days

Without mercy or compassion

Locking you behind a barbed wire fence

These are the days

Of madness and rage

Where mass murder makes complete sense

These are the days

Of share-holder angst:

You sold your soul for less than its worth

These are the days

Of micro-plastic pollution

The suffocation of planet Earth

These are the days

Where you are defined as sober

When you would rather be drunk as a lord

These are the days

That creep up on you like a spy

And strangle you without a word

These are the days

When nights last forever

Giving all days a bad name

These are the days

Bearing witness to stupidity

Each new day bringing more of the same

These are the days

That thrash you like a red-headed step child

Leaving you trembling in a corner

These are the days

Of gnashing teeth rising from the deep

The shark days dragging you under

These are the days

Which, given half a chance,

Would see you cast into the blackest pitch

These are the days

Of acceleration: they mow you down

And leave you lying in a ditch

These are the days

When you think banning all future days

Sounds like a good idea

Then there are the days

When you strike a seam of hope

And think it possible to live without fear

© shaun patrick green 2018

At Least The Fish Are Happy.

You complain about kids and a stunted life,

Or being worked to the bone

Underpaid for your strife,

The horror of being a teenager

Or being a trophy wife

A footy player who's past his prime,

An actor who can't turn on a dime.

We are all popping Prozac

Like there is no tomorrow

And it calms you down;

There is no such thing as sorrow.

The prescribed dose per day,

Washed down with water'

Then pissed away

Into sewerage treatment

That doesn't filter down

To microns per million,

Then spewed out into the ocean,

Like a waste managers dream.

When the toxicology reports come back

They say: my bad...

Fish and shrimp are being medicated

For conditions they didn't know they had

© shaun patrick green 2018

Pause (for Johann Johannsson).

I have nothing
And yet I will outlive you

Not because I am stronger

Weaker perhaps

But safer

Through the worlds you scored

Because I could never soar

To your heights

Like a god

Though human wrapped in chords

Albeit a genius

With lilting melodies

And abrasive disharmonies

You brought forth the best in us all

Like some servant of a deity

Where art meets artifice

And music is everything

Your passing leaves a gap

A pause

© shaun patrick green 2018

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours.

Her name was Kim and her skin was bad

Like mine, eczema, though worse, somehow

On a girl, as if that rhyme about what

Little girls and boys are made of had failed her:

She was not sugar and spice and all things nice.

We, as a collective of 8 year olds,

Had cast her out as defective, and yet,

I had feelings for her.

I knew what it was like to have that itch.

To draw blood with my fingernails,

To wear those dry patches, lizard skin, scales,

To daub myself with steroid creams

That would sting so much they made me scream

But my complaint was mostly hidden

Hers was on her face

For one so marked

School can be an ugly place

There was one recess when we were playing chasey

And she had cornered me in the boys' toilets

I had always thought she liked me

So amid the shit stained, piss-stinking walls

I uttered those words:

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

She nodded, feverish from the chase

Panting with expectation

So I undid my pants and pulled it out

She immediately screamed and ran

And told everybody in the quadrangle

That I had shown her my thingy

I scrambled out after her, shouting

"No I didn't, no I didn't!"

And because I was the one not visibly disfigured

Because I was a boy, because my family were nice,

Because my lunchbox was always interesting,

Because I was smart, because I wasn't poor,

They all believed me over her.

© Shaun Patrick Green 2018

Hope.

Do I hold you gently

And pretend we can be friendly?

After what we have seen

Neither of us gets off lightly.

Your coughing,

My snoring

Your constant texting

My constant cursing

Your genius for mess

My almost OCD need

For order and cleanliness

Your love of reality TV

My disdain for oxymorons

Your pride in Hungarian heritage

My indifference to where I come from

Your love of your vocation

My need for music and art

Your skill with needle and thread

Transcending what you call "craft"

Politics makes you yawn

I need to know each minister's name

You roll your eyes at election time

I enjoy the tactics of the game

I never wanted children

You wanted someone to teach

So we fought your cancer

To obtain a daughter

Who is beyond both our reach

You take the mornings

Feuding over being fed

I take the evenings

Bath time, teeth cleaning and bed

You try to teach her concepts

I make her laugh with rhymes

Imagination is about

Making up stupid stuff

Not learning Gray's Anatomy

She's 4 years old

Let her discover

Her own knowledge trajectory

But you disrupt the feedback loop

Of our personal dialectic

Forcing me to focus on what matters

Placating my internal skeptic

I could laugh and spoil her all day

But your head remains cool

You don't want an entitled brat

And remind me that she is in preschool

That children are here to learn

To hopefully make the world a better place

Than the festering toilet we have left them

Our legacy, our disgrace,

And like generations before us

She shall grow to fill our lack,

Plug the gaps in our understanding,

We hope, and bring our planet back.

© Shaun Patrick Green 2018

Tennant Creek Drive -In

Help me somebody

The walls are closing in

And sharks are biting my shins

Because of the Tennant Creek Drive-In

You remember, when we got in for free

Because dad was a Apex Club member

And it was his job to run the projectors

Carbon rods burning white hot

While the town scowled in the dark

We saw such terrible and wonderful things

In the back of our Holden station wagon

Where we were meant to fall asleep

But we didn't

The best and worst of 70's

Exploitation Cinema

Was our dreamscape

While our mum waited for the gig to end

As she had done ever since her 19th year

We saw, while peaking over back seats,

Wild animals ripping people to shreds

People being shot, disemboweled, decapitated,

Blown up, stabbed, invaded by parasites

Maybe a 5 year-old shouldn't be seeing this?

I asked my mum, years later, once my daughter was born

Her advice on raising children.

She said: You pretty much raised yourselves

Did we?

Maybe I should write a how-to book
That takes a long hard look
At how to raise kids free of nightmares
Page one would probably begin:
Don't take your 5 year-old
To the Tennant Creek Drive-In.

© shaun patrick green 2018

ghost nation

dressed in shorts, t-shirt

not at all like a warrior

he stood on the bike path

legs braced, throwing arm

like a coiled spring

grunting, hissing, shuffling forward

ready to release his imaginary spear

whilst diners ate pizza on the grass

stealing furtive glances

or pretending not to see

until he stumbled amongst them

hand no longer gripping his weapon

but held out palm up for alms

where he was once able to hunt

then later came another

wavering between those ordering

those collecting, again

hand held out palm up

being politely told to queue

to exchange money for food

where once all had been shared

he turned away confused

both of them equally

phantom members of a ghost nation

one overwritten by time, out of place

existing out there as trace, echo

like the shadow of wallpaper under paint

a mark left in passing, a secret

a taboo

further down the foreshore

the women sat in circles

singing songs under the mangroves

where their grandmothers used to fish

waiting for their men

hunter gatherers

pizza in hand

to come home

© shaun patrick green 2018

Middle-Class-Straight-White Male for Sale.

This Middle-Class-Straight-White Male

Provides an opportunity for the canny investor

Looking toward the medium to long term,

With excellent potential for high returns.

Situated comfortably within

An inner-urban demographic

And sporting middle-of-the-road taste

In fashion, food and music,

Combined with a sense of manifest destiny,

This Middle-Class-Straight-White Male

Takes full advantage of all the perks

Of entitlement and privilege.

Along with a tasteful exterior renovation,

The interior has been extensively remodelled

To accommodate the views of women,

People of colour, the LBGTQI community

And the poor, with plenty of room left over

For feelings of self-satisfaction and superiority.

Smart use of apathy and indifference throughout

Have created a sense of light and space,

With the use of quality, locally-sourced fittings

Having the added bonus of guilt reduction.

While most sports can be blended seamlessly

Into the living environment, the best of the

Arts are also on show, though always understated,

Such that this Middle-Class-Straight-White Male

Is equally at home watching Friday night footy

Or Game of Thrones, provided the right amount

Of irony and condescension is on hand to keep their

Mass appeal in check.

Despite recent upheavals in the market,

Caused by #metoo and #blacklivesmatter,

This university educated, media-savvy

Middle-Class-Straight-White-Male

Has managed to hold its value

And still represents

A quality investment

For the discerning buying

Looking to make a statement

In these uncertain

Economic times.

© shaun patrick green 2018

Laundry Song.

You had your reasons for leaving,

Mostly to do with preserving what

Was left of your own sanity.

I didn't blame you... no, actually

I did blame you for lacking imagination.

You called us a "calamity",

Which I thought was a tad hyperbolic,

But then, like all frustrated writers,

You were prone to exaggeration.

Couldn't you see I was broken,

In desperate need of repair?

Perhaps you could and didn't care.

I remember the moment you told me

- tearfully, fearfully, yet nearly happily -

That you were extracting your compass point

From my absurd arc, exacting a revenge

Both devastating and necessary:

We were back from Yarra Park, having taken

Our deranged mutt of a dog for a walk,

Where its behaviour had sparked an argument,

Me screaming I had never wanted a dog,

That it was all about you,

You screaming you had always wanted kids,

That it was all about me.

I stood there shocked, undone.

How had I missed your need to breed?

When had it been spoken of? On some

Hot summer evening when my hearing was split

Between the whir of a fan and the shit on TV?

Where had I misplaced this detail

So definitive of you?

Not that it matters now.

I hang here on our Hills Hoist,

Still moist from all these tears

And the sweat each night rings from me,

Wanting nothing but for you

To come back and unpeg me,

To pat and fold me gently,

To lay me in the laundry basket

Of your love.

© shaun patrick green 2018

Hang Them Out To Dry.

They shouted: "Stop the boats!"

In a shameless grab for votes

And turn away those who are most in need.

"Children thrown overboard," they cried,

As if it's a choice: some lived, some died,

All victims of the people smugglers greed.

When questioned, our politicians

Dismissed humanitarian notions:

"The voting public are not so easily led.

There will always be war and slaughter."

But what about the bodies in the water?

"We'll hang them out to dry", they said.

© shaun patrick green 2018

First Love.

If Time is a war crime then the evidence

Lies not in what it does to our bodies,

But how it slaughters our minds.

Memories pile on top of each other like

Bodies in a pit caked with dirt and lime.

Maybe that is what dementia is:

Simply having seen too much of this?

We search in vain for survivors,

Among them our "first love",

A foothold in the darkness

We strive in vain to climb out of.

Who was this person that made us,

Formed us from rough clay

With a touch, a look, a kiss,

Acts so pure and true

They haunt us until the last

Light of consciousness blinks out?

We imbue them with a power

They could never hold in life,

A might born of the weight of years

And our own need to feel

That all this living was not in vain.

I close my eyes and see her:

Skinny and bright eyed in a short dress,

Us facing each other, chests heaving

After an arduous chase through

A schoolyard full of children running

From whatever was chasing them,

The two of us ending up in the boys toilets,

Her face a luminous dial of excitement,

The thrill of the forbidden visible

In her twitching fingertips as she

Bounced on her toes and searched

For an escape from the kiss she knew

Was coming, my heart thrumming

Inside my chest like an insane drum

As I moved in, my head light as if hit

By a fist of pure need to put my lips

Against her lips and have that thing

That was her: her trembling, her sweat,

The hair on her arms, the dip between

Where her nose ended and her mouth began...

She dodged me and ran,

But that sensation sunk its hot iron

Into the fleshy pulp of my young self

And branded me a romantic, one doomed

To search for this moment again and again,

Until my last breath leaves me cold

And insensate as a stone.

But I will not be alone,

For memory is as vital as oxygen

And I will dig with bare bloody hands

Until I drag my first love from her grave,

So we can once again stand as we did

And know what it means to live.

© shaun patrick green 2018

Where the First Shall Be Last.

Adam and Eve must have thought they were the first,

Drunk on love, gamboling about the garden of Eden

Like two ecstatic children - the first to know passion,

The first to know the terrible cost of paradise lost.

Isaac Newton must have enjoyed this feeling,

That falling apple, apocryphal or not, having stunned

His mind with the gift of an invisible force

Guiding celestial bodies in their dance around the sun.

Amelia Earhart must have savoured this thrill,

Watching the Atlantic slide below like an endless

Rippling conveyor belt pulling her through the sky

Toward a destiny with a ghostly testimony.

Neil Armstrong, too, must have caught that wave,

Like the creator marveling at his creation,

Seeing the whole earth poised in blackness so complete

That stepping off his tiny ship felt like a giant leap.

But who confers upon whom the status of "being first"?

Is it history or our own thirst for originary myths?

We need beginnings. Beginnings need protagonists,

Actions, words, or they remain vague, out of reach,

Like false memories, illusions, fevered dreams.

Is it our attempt to capture a unique subjectivity,

To be a rock in the fast flowing river of time,

Where the first is always and already the last:

The last to see a new world diminished,

The last to look on power with innocence,

The last to seek knowledge without limits,

The last to live in bliss without ignorance?

© shaun patrick green 2018