Winter.

Seeing you again,

On a cold day in May,

I felt a sense of loss.

Had I acted rashly,

Not thinking of love enduring

Not counting the cost?

Were those thoughts

That once lifted our spirits

Weaker than the ones

Dragging us down,

Knowing we will age disgracefully

Beset by forgetfulness,

Ill-health and poverty,

The dreams of our youth

Having flown South

For the winter?

As we spoke I knew you felt it too.

We had arrived at the same place,

After choosing different paths,

Where the ghost of what-could-have-been

Leaves deep footprints in snow.

We said our goodbyes,

Promising to keep in touch,

Knowing this was unlikely

As we reminded each other too much

Of life's brevity

And how chances not taken

Slip away as the blood thickens,

As the brain fades,

Forsaking the thrill of possible futures

For the familiarity of distant pasts,

All as empty as air.

Literacy.

  

Do words alarm you?

They shift and change meaning,

Alter spelling,

Almost as if

They are trying to trick you.

Sometimes, you run out of vowels

And realise there’s nothing left

To cry about.

So you go into debt,

Buying consonants,

Spending big on S’s, N’s and L’s,

But your mind is writing cheques

Your tongue can’t cash.

There are just not enough

Shelters for the wordless.

We must give literacy

Back to those in need,

Freeing entire generations

From bondage, from slavery.

Imagine that: to feel the joy

Of language returning

Like a lover

After an argument.

 

© shaun patrick green 2021

I Shouldn’t Worry About The World, But I Do.

Donald Trump sits on my window sill tweeting,

His orange plumage garish in this tropical dawn.

Jo Biden teeters skeletal, colour-blind

To a country split into red and blue.

I shouldn’t worry about America, but I do.

Sure, it is just another empire falling into ruin,

A failed state, by its own definition, but

A third world country in charge of a first world army

Has to be a cause for concern to those

Other world leaders who standby smirking, pointing

And stroking their chins.

But I wonder if the US is also a victim

Of its own success: the spoiled child

Of a marriage between democracy and capitalism

Who ends up murdering its own parents

While they sleep?

 

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping waves dictatorial

Like one of those mechanical golden cats

On a takeaway food shop counter

Where Hong Kong and Taiwan

Are the main items on the menu.

I shouldn’t worry about China, but I do.

With its bellicose rhetoric about sovereignty,

Its militarisation of the South China Sea,

Its Belt and Road Initiative, its economic bullying,

Its silencing of dissent, internment of minorities.

Is this what the future of the world looks like:

A Concentration Camp/Re-Education Facility

Where thinking and speaking freely

Are crimes punishable by death?

Those same world leaders smirking at America

Look to China and hold their breath.

 

All this seems so far away as I water the garden

And watch my daughter pick Hibiscus flowers:

“Daddy, this one is for you.”

I shouldn’t worry about the world, but I do.

It is hers to inherit, and if this inheritance

Turns out to be a broken, dysfunctional nightmare

Then isn’t that our collective failure as parents?

 

 

©shaun patrick green 2020

Toilet Paper Blues (Or, How A Pandemic Taught Me To Stop Worrying And Embrace Scatological Humour)

Remember how toilet paper

Made its comeback

Onto supermarket shelves, slowly,

Carefully, roll by roll,

Bulk pack by bulk pack,

As if it were sniffing the air

For any sign of the panic

That had wiped its predecessors from the shelves?

 

There is nothing sadder or more frightening

Than the sight of empty supermarket aisles

To we who have lost the knowledge

Of how to use our hands

For anything other than texting,

Using a remote control

(which is pretty much the same as texting)

Or peeling price stickers off

Plastic wrapped gifts ordered online.

 

When I was living in Tennant Creek

One year there was one of those

Huge storms that dumped so much rain

It cut off the Stuart Highway and the train.

Supermarket supplies had to be flown in.

I remember my mother complaining,

But I never noticed a lack of toilet paper.

 

Not that I used it.

I just used to shit in the yard,

Wipe my arse with grass, and keep playing,

A trick I had learned from the Aboriginal kids.

These days, shitting in the yard

And wiping your arse with grass is frowned upon.

So after 2 weeks of Corona Virus pandemonium,

With my stock of toilet paper dangerously low,

 

I ventured to the supermarket

And out of sheer luck

Found 2 packets of party serviettes

Pushed up the back of one very lonely shelf.

I took them, leaving my dignity behind,

At the same time appreciating

The grotesque parody of the food-to-mouth cycle.

 

When I got to the checkout,

The girl behind her plexiglass screen

Shook her head and told me

I could only have one packet.

I was indignant.

They had let hoarders waddle out

With trolleys full of toilet paper

And now I was restricted to one packet

Of serviettes?

 

Voices on the TV had tried to soothe us:

There is no problem with supply chains.

I shouted back at the TV, pointing

At the stock footage of yawning empty shelves:

“Then what do you call that?”

Someone was talking shit.

Maybe they needed the serviettes

More than I did? 

 

© shaun patrick green

Broken Country.

I bet he used to ride for miles

Sitting now in the dialysis centre

Watching his blood being changed

Like oil, memories of watering horses

Riding on the head of the muster

Breaking off to reign in a buster

Dust and bindies in his eye

A working stockman

Seeing more of his land

Than a traditional owner ought to

Still the black memories

Of the newborn steer

That vaulted off a cliff

There is no salvation here

Only the work in the hard earth

And the hope it will be a good year.

Tsunami Piano.

Sakamoto bows before a tsunami piano

It stands on a stage,

High water mark stained muddy brown

On the curtain behind

"The water came up to here?"

"Yes," replies the schoolmaster

So many of his students lost

Little fingers and toes

That might have played pianos

Washed away in a toxic flood

Sakamoto sits at the tsunami piano

Tinkers with the keys

Like they are the broken bones

Of a calamitous century

All the school bags and shoes

Of those piano school students

Still waiting in the hall

Parents still waiting for that call

Sifting amongst the rubble

For past and futures consumed

Sakamoto traces the waterline

Seeing where the mud

Must have lifted the piano up
"It's strangely bright,
But also melancholic."
The schoolmaster nods
His pain contained
At a future washed away
Mud and broken homes
Abandoned hope, little sustenance

Sakamoto sits and plays

The first few bars of the theme

From "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence"

(c)shaun patrick green 2020

Shaun Patrick Green's Guide To Good Eating.

Hi there and welcome to my guide

To Good Eating

Firstly, Bats: No!

Say NO to bats!

Bad! Bad! Bad!

Horse: OK, but be careful

You don't want to get

Trampled to death.

Same goes with cows

Tasty - yum yum beef:

But gettin' in there

Can give you grief.

Lamb - oh lamby lamby woo,

I French Trim your cutlets

Because I have nothing

Better to do.

Pork, pork,

I want more on my fork:

Bacon, ham cutlets, fillet

I want it all in my skillet.

Mostly my food is farmed

Because I don't want wild things

Getting harmed.

But farming causes a lot of

Those Green House gases,

So maybe taking animals from the wild

Should feed the masses?

Vote with your feet: Stop farming meat.

Get out into the wild with a crossbow,

If you're hungry.

This might be the future

For feeding our country,
Or you could just go Vegan?
Nah, only jokin'.

© shaun patrick green 2020