love

Summer

her first album

I was back from

Switzerland

calling Melbourne

quite often

listening

catching

the train

on up the coast

on Fridays

randomly

I fell

in a moment

unexpected

but so vintage-sweet

my cardigan

under the bed

where

your handcuffs

held my grief

that weekend

(he died)

and now there’s

a new album

it repeats on

and on and on

her voice

a yearning

for another

happening

do I welcome

love now?

summer’s here

again, again, again

Soundcloud recording of this poem: https://on.soundcloud.com/65nRL

Photo: Claire Doble

do you

do you, do you, do you

love me yet?

do you, do you

have you

fallen

no regrets

fucking on a mattress

on the floor

you had no furniture

at all

for months

lived in your car

do you

have you

succumbed

you hobo?

staying up late

frantic words

words, words,

type, write, text

don’t speak

the words

afraid

of what happens

what?

do you

do you…

suppose

the love

still

spills

out

you love

without

saying it

a frenzy

of avoidance

type, write, text

when

my crazy meets

yours

you’re crazy

I’m

relentless

engulfed

obsessed

tie me

to your bed

play games

with our heads

do you, do you, do you

love me

yet

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

High hopes

I wake to the taste of

stop n grow

bitter, sweet

with nostalgia

heavy, hot air

laden with Christmas tree

and the dreamsnorts swirl

make me

old, young, like

a glitch between

childhood and progeny

the way your eyes light

when you play a song

beered-up footy men

get teared-up to

singing along

my heart

catches

like a fingernail

in tulle

because I know

what’s inside

you

a betraying all-too-human

love

I guess,

the cynics

would sneer

but you’re 10 and it’s clear

I don’t know

how to explain

like a mirror I see

how you ache to be

understood,

to rise high

above

and be great

in a way

that will

never quite

be attained

in your mind

I just hope

one day you know

I believe

you are

every grain of sand

on the beach

Listen to it on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/clairevetica/high-hopes?si=37a6a28f20e24210bc49cee8b7ddcb9b&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Photo: Claire Doble

Nightbird

a nightbird calls outside my window

I am sick, so sick in the dark

it’s 4.24 on the morning of your funeral

life makes no sense, there is only love

you talk to everyone at the party

buy them gifts, exchange views

share laughs, drinks, stories

my only conversation is with you

grab my phone to check messages

that remain forever unread

missed your call, I miss you: indelible

a nightbird’s sick joke you’re dead

Photo: Sierra Narvaeth on Unsplash

Onions & Garlic

would it be weird to say

we were all in love with each other

a little bit?

the best friendships

pan out that way

I don’t know sometimes

the difference

between a kiss and a good conversation

when I remember how

she held me close

and put her lips on mine

and the way she writes

as faithfully as the moon

I can get melancholy

on Sunday afternoons

holding memories

listening to Nick Drake

or Cave

ignoring the kids

cooking onions

with love pulsing through my life

beat, beat, beat

in time

and what about that day

you made aglio e olio?

we were all so careful

with each other

so quiet

our eyes, cautious

your bathroom’s cold green tiles

because we wouldn’t

acknowledge

who’d slept with who

the night before

Photo: mayu ken on Unsplash

A dear friend passed away this week. He made chopping onions and garlic a work of art. He was also someone who read and took time to comment on this blog occasionally; as a fellow writer, he understood how wonderful it is to get that kind of validation! This poem was inspired, in part, by our friendship, as well as referencing various other treasured friends. It reminds me that it’s always worth taking a moment to appreciate the love that beats through your life. RIP JAn, my world is poorer without you but richer for having known you. x

Unfinished

I’m hoarding hairdye

don’t trust the supply chain

waiting to be

renewed again

it’s on the to-do list

but never

gets

done

I think, think, think, think

I can think my way out

of this

I’m wrong

but who’s to say

if the error is me

or the other

one?

I use you like an addict

taste it

all the next day

and unfinished sentences

don’t make

you safe, no

not on this

run

Photo: Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Lost times

windchimes and fingernails

I miss you

do you know?

the pain

of never-enough

and not-the-right-time

a hole

old and bitter

defeat

must be brave

afraid, what sits

on the other side,

lying and lies

lost moments

and cry

over far-away fingernails

and the corner

of your eye

Photo: Claire Doble

Oh my word, GloPoWriMo – global poetry month – starts today! I checked the website yesterday and it’s a miraculous Covid-free zone. WTAF? Awesome. Not sure I’ll manage a daily poem this April but I’ll definitely do a few!

Liquid love

If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door

life flowing cleargreenblue at the bottom of oyster-encrusted steps

clean water, the salt tang, the ripple against stone, how the light strikes

a big sky over a railroad track and the way beer disappears with the sunset

aching sweet, being drunk feels like love

we twist our affections around a glass and tip whiskey in the crevices love has eroded and cut

sluicing the jagged bits, juicing over hurt

the intense blue sky, blue like plastic, a blue dome, a blue tarpaulin from the 80s, blue like sky, a perfect cloudbroken blue over a back lane in Adelaide

ground tinted rust-red from bore water, the world’s blood and corrugated iron in the sun smells like dirt

your eyes like a tannin creek, running smooth and alive with the promise

if I pour myself full of wine from the grapes of the sky, salted from the sea, grown against wire fences in a red-brown earth

if I lie down with you and join our mouths our rivers our waves

will I be granted love

or does it just feel that way

I took the first line of this from Women Who Run With The Wolves by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Photo: Claire Doble

Anima / Animus

what could have been

an invisible line

between our eyes

never enough time

no private spaces

or empty lands

our dance in plain view

never touch hands

in our minds

that curl of yearning,

keening, never knowing

what were we learning?

I’m late today with posting. I wrote it this morning but forgot my notebook and it’s been such a busy day. Argh. This is not good, feel like I’m falling behind already!! The prompt was: to write a poem that resists closure by ending on a question, inviting the reader to continue the process of reading (and, in some ways, writing) the poem even after the poem ends.

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash