O Brother Mine.

I.

I don't remember you coming into the world

Preoccupied as I was with filling my nappies

And trying to make my escape

Consciousness of your presence first came

In Tennant Creek when I tried to see

How many elastic bands I could force you to eat

As you bobbed happily in your bouncinette

And would have graduated with fratricide as my major

If our mother hadn't intervened

II.

I think the hugeness of that Northern Territory sky

Did us in - gave us big hopes, romantic ideas

Like climbing White Tank Hill or building

Unassailable fortresses in red dirt

Or feeling keenly the death of our pets

From disease or misadventure

Or trying to understand why the black kids

Smelled like greasy frying pans but could always

Run so fast - away from school and teachers

And the rest of us

III.

The second time I tried to kill you

Was when I watched you fall off that slide

In the playground and break your wrist

It hadn't been anything deliberate on my part

But the screams were piercing and I couldn't help

But be curious and later jealous

As you were flown to Alice Springs, arm in a sling

And once plastered you got to ride a camel

My lesson learnt: those who get hurt get rewarded

IV.

As two kids under five stuck in the outback

With a mother completely out of her element

And a father so in his it was like he had been

There all along - 
We had to become each others life jacket

When I wasn't trying to bump you off I like to think

I was trying to protect you - 
Smaller, cuter and quieter than I

As we grimaced in our fly nets, playing games

Testing the boundaries of that elemental vastness

Which on our own could have swallowed us whole

V.

Back in the city, we exchanged endless horizon

For labyrinthine suburbs through which we pedaled

Like mice on the run, always that feeling of being

Pursued - harder for you, being put up a year

Mixing it with kids taller and tougher, our bulwark

Caton Avenue where we made do with a playground

In a vacant lot behind a friends house

But trouble always found us in the form of

Older boys on BMXs and injuries ensued

Still we gave it back in symbolic ways

Like my throwing a piss-wet thong 
At one of our attackers

The skin on my shin torn open in our escape

VI.

School never was your gig though you had the smarts

Maybe too smart, knowing the minimum you had to do

To get by - for you it was about experience

Perhaps the best teacher of all 
But not the most forgiving

Hanging with the Kent Rd boys and the joys

Of alcohol, dope and the wonders of the female form

You always could pull the chicks, even as a kid

The old ladies used to melt when you smiled

Pinching you plump cheeks, 
Mooing into your cow-brown eyes

Your olive skin a genetic throwback to some

Yorkshire farmer ideal not recognised till later 
And us thinking mum must have had it off 

With the Italian milkman

VII.

You turned into an adult so quickly I was left in shock

Taking a wife, buying a house, having a child

It seemed all happiness was yours except that I

Had spoken my mind and the politics of family

Played out, as it does, and we didn't speak again

For seven years, my part no longer that of brother

But of a spectator who's paid too much 
To sit too far away

This was my third attempt on your life,

Though it was metaphorical and the one I most regret

For time lost can never be regained

Still I'm not about to stop trying, at least not yet

VIII.

Thankfully all my attempts at doing you in

Have failed and I now have only myself to blame

For trying to put forty years of history

Into these few words and the time that remains

Us the offspring of mother and father

Entwined as such as brother and brother

Different hearts but the same blood

Binding us together as if we were one

You are my strong arm, my sixth sense

My good eye, my confidence

My voice of reason, my call to arms

My mirrored truth, my shield from harm

Your strength and honesty stand as the broadest tree

Your smiles and laughter given easy and free

And if you ever feel shaken so that you might fall

Look to us to hold you up steady, straight and tall

Cherish all the moments that have your life defined

And know I love you dearly, O brother mine

© shaun patrick green 2011