No Place Like Home / New Krypton
No Place Like Home
Dead-end crescent moon
follow asphalt rainbow-shape
into the interlude
behind us, gracious garden salivates
emeralds, quartz, lazuli.
Night hangs from windowpanes
draped like gauze
day-time oasis; night-time mirage
the cul-de-sac curves into a crescent.
Day-Time
Lounge-room holds its breath
between the hours, the pencil's scratch
slivers the stillness.
Tucked into the arm
of her browning couch
I draw, and draw.
Wrapped in coral sheets once dragged
from hallway cupboards, by
the choc-chipped hands of cousins.
We would convene
for this house lived generational
and I am not the only son
to have curled into this corner.
Coming up the back steps
family draws its last
spinning, cyclonic.
Softly speaking
he predicts the soundtrack
Time to Say Goodbye
and the sheet folds, a coral reef
anguish
in waves slamming the shoreline
grit in my eyes.
Oasis; we are washed
from one Home, to another.
Mid-Day
Mothers past
away, parallel in abandon
of hand-made homes and children kindred.
Child is wrapped, like meat
set down on table. Seasoned
with fairy breads and tasty dainties
container lined with paper towel
for this godmother has taste
and we won't tell your father.
Soon, school hours:
a status quo spent first at house
And then with Home
the walk a bender 'round the curve
and, for Dad, a rounder robin
of pills to be prescribed.
She does no longer buzz, but beat
to hollow songs, through pipelines.
Water lapping, coughing
into cotton folds, logging joints.
Home musters breath, dusty nostalgic.
Night-Time
Wards learned
slick with sickness, and
suds swirl on the lino'.
Kidneys no longer flush
sudden strokes delivered here.
Memory but a catheter
quick drips, faces blurred
amalgamated.
Slow, toys return to house
from Home
LEGO pieces still wedge in grooves
but cannot rebuild her.
I don't recall
if the sheets were coral, too
but we've convened
as if this is another after-noon
for anything but goodbye.
No need for black, the night dresses us
cackling, we remain
choc-chipped, wet lipped
what kind of word is On-om-at-o-po-ei-a?
Linguistics lie in laughter
And even after twilight, Home
in its final hours
is lively, generational
an impervious local fruit
waxen, bruised and
browning, at the centre.
New Krypton
After Superman: Brainiac
Survivors / spared / on spangled shores / rescued
for the sake of refuge / homeland lost / long lost
for how long / who could say? / stars are shimmers
in domed refractions / to count the days / is to count
their hours / stormed in siege / and cosmic ruin / seismic
rumbles rocked a bottle city loose / return? no chance
former soil / poison now / mere radiance / or tokens
of remote existence / we choose not to understand / alien
and are the stories true? / can a planet detonate by the
stirring of its mantle? / can it peel / at its foundations
and blister out of shape? / or are these people
these "people" / liars? / "refugees" / or Our Real Enemies?
they turn their noses up / at our way of life / for we are all
but welcoming / of strangers from a strange land
families were separated by some kind of invisible wall
familiar likenesses / but whose oneness / can't be caught
in mirrors / still we wield / our magnifiers / storm their
homes /stone their brothers / fathers / young / for what?
to prove their threat / "heat vision"? / one hundred-
thousand voices raised / and just as many quieted
for they / not us / not I / set innocents alight / and
threaten from the skies / promised "truth" and "justice"
are lies / when only foreigners make bombs / right?
It is alien / in principle / that when once miniscule
we send for amnesty with haste / but once enlarged
once rescued , freed / the dome lifts / for fear to it replace.
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