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

Tuesday, August 12, 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

Saturday, August 9, 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

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

Thursday, July 31, 2014

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.

Tuesday, July 15, 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

Monday, July 14, 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

Thursday, July 3, 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