Dance With Me

Dance with me as if

Your mind were on fire

Your feet electrified and wild

As if the moon were tearing you apart

The sun thrashing you

Like a redheaded stepchild

Dance with me as if

Your life depended on it

As if all the night were a drum

Beating you into a frenzy

Of exultant jubilation

Of foot stomping and hip gyration

Dance with me as if

You had nothing to lose

Your fists punching out stars

Your pulse an engine cranking

Piston limbs, your heart a bomb

Your fingers the fuse

Dance with me as if

To move in sync like this

Were the most pure expression

Of an atavistic obsession

With divinity, knowing for a moment

That tremulous fear and elation

Gods must feel for their creations

Dance with me as if

Abandoning all self control

And strapping yourself to a comet

Would fling you body and soul

Into a galaxy of ecstasy

Immersed in a deep and abiding love

Complete and whole

Dance with me, just dance with me

So I can hold you as close as this

Looking into your eyes, smiling

As we sway our way to transcendence

Not just the vertical manifestation

Of a horizontal need but to be here

In this moment, alive and free

© shaun patrick green 2016

Fear of the Dark.

A phone-size screen

Shows her in shades of green

Night vision of our daughter

Crying out in her sleep

Is twenty months too young

To have nightmares?

Is it something we have done:

Raised our voices

In frustration or anger

Dunked her in water

Made her climb stairs

Let her walk on hot sand?

Surely what plays behind her eyes

Is not what wakes me at night -

A world gone mad

Man's savagery to man?

But then children

Are fleshy antennae

Receiving the world on a frequency

Adults cannot understand

So we call it fear of the dark

The impenetrable night

Leaching warmth and light

Hiding monsters and men alike

Projecting onto our progeny

That all too human need to be

Soothed by comforting hands

© shaun patrick green 2016

The City of Shirtless Men.

You don't understand

Said the shirt-wearing man

I am not like them,

Those shirtless men

With their brown chests

And saggy man breasts

Striding down the street

With thongs on their feet

Shorts a nod to modesty

But other than that honestly

I am not like them

Those shirtless men

Heading nowhere purposefully

Without the courtesy

Of covering up

A bouncing gut

They stand and stare

Gesticulating in pairs

Swatting flies

Averting eyes

It'd drive you to drink

If you stopped to think

What the women with their hats on

Feel about men without compassion

Flaunting their dominion

Offering their opinion

On politics or the weather

Leaning together

As if the sun

Had already won

So you see what I am

That I'm not like them

Said the shirt-wearing man

In the city of shirtless men

© shaun patrick green 2016

Addiction and Collusion.

Her past was a shop of horrors

Incest, rape, fear of mirrors

Her arms like pizzas, sliced and pitted

Just out of rehab she read and knitted

He was also a ghoulish pantomime

He'd had a habit and he'd done time

Went stone cold turkey while inside

If he told you he was clean, he lied

They met at the pub beside the jukebox

Both rebounding hard from detox

In the beer garden he lit her cigarette

His hands shaking from the intense effort

She exhaled and said his tattoos looked shit

He'd done them himself, he had to admit

He bought her a pint, they sang to "Sweet Jane"

Velvet Underground version, again and again

She knitted him a beanie to keep his head warm

He bought her a bracelet with a stereo he pawned

They spent afternoons drinking and people watching

He put his hand on her knee but she said no touching

He suggested they shack up and get a cheap flat

She pointed out they were broke so no hope of that

Besides, she said, you'd be very bad for me

He opened his palms and begged to disagree

She said addicts cohabiting never works, never will

Doesn't matter whether its the bottle, needle or pill

She tried to make him understand addiction

How it is an evil, insidious affliction

That they would rationalise their use

While lying about the level of abuse

How they would find ways to steal to feed

Each of their craven and desperate needs

Like two enemies working together

To defeat and destroy each other

He drained his pint and pointed to hers

She nodded sadly and opened her purse

At the bar he ordered two pints and two shots

Musing on what life let him have and have not

© shaun patrick green 2015

Fishing for a Wife.

Another sleepless night spent under

Helicopter stutter of ceiling fans

Cicadas rasping, geckos clucking

Frogs fucking and barking at the dark

Bush turkeys hollering like hooligans

His wife lies silent beside him

Wet hair a seaweed mass on the pillow

Her breathing shallow, stopping to swallow

Eyes staring at the ceiling, unmoving

Stunned after being pulled from the pool again

In a dream he saw her drop

From Nightcliff Jetty like a stone

Her white dress a billowing jellyfish

Keen local anglers casting after her

Their hooks catching arms, breasts, abdomen

This was how he had landed her

Thrashing on the line, his biceps bursting

Until she lay gasping on the deck

He hacked off her tail, threw it to the gulls

And took a proud photo for Channel Ten

A tap dripping downstairs

Keeps unsteady time with the clock

Like a married couple walking hand in hand

He knew feet would grow to replace the tail

Her return to water was just a question of when

© shaun patrick green 2015

Nightcliff Dreaming.

Heaven and stars coalesce

Ancient voices calling him

Among the mangroves

Where his woman waits

For the box of wine

He stalks over bitumen

Gathering for his clan

Spotlights from the mall

Sweeping like prison warnings

Signs on doors: No Shoes - No Service

He enters anyway, coins jangling

Instantly cold, white man death

Get the wine, get out

At the counter hassle

"Can't you read, mate?"

"No shoes, No service."

"Cum on brus, that's bullshit."

"I aint got no shoes brus"

"Then no service, mate"

"Come on, brus, I need this for my old lady"

"Listen, fuck off or I call the police."

His feet back on a hard scarred world

Beyond the bleached blonde

Beach view apartments

Slutted together in the

Sweaty folds of developers' greed

His land no longer his own

Used to be good fishing ground

Now good lonely box ground

For white fellas dreaming

Their lonely white fella dreams

© shaun patrick green 2015

Refugee

Waking again

To another hangover

Asking the question

Knowing the answer

Thieves came

Taking everything

Including my soul

It wasn't insured

Motherfucker

I have nothing

Starting again

Been here before

What would David Bowie say

I'll stay clean tonight

Woh woh

Crack emergency glass

Stash kept for the run

Take off like a leopard

Son of a gun

I pledge allegiance

To nothing and no one

I have failed

What was never begun

I have disappeared

Yet I have never been seen

Take me to your leader

I am white, frightened and mean

© shaun patrick green 2015