Two Poems

I Don’t Know What This Means

I’m sorry, I could not tell you
There were termites
Flourishing within the worn crucifix
Hanged in the gossamer of your hair
—The replacement you guiltily bought in
A cold, cramped Hawaiian gift shop—.

I had the heart,
And I could see your fear,
Biting your lip after saying, “All in”,
But I could see your fear,
That you hadn’t the heart
But a hole to be filled with dirt
Before it claimed another soul.
I knew that there was
A mountain
Atop the hill;

That contentment seemed like a compromise,
A butterfly’s embroidery shuddering through carnival lights;
That anything but lying was craven
On the day I discovered honesty’s expiry date.
It was easy for me to say

—It felt a sin—
That love includes
Confessing ignorance,
That you don’t know if everything will be okay.
I’m not sorry.

Spilled wine, bread now a sloppy sponge;
A bulge in the ceiling;
An ongoing meadow;
A phone rarely shaken
Hearing warmer, longer conversation;
The moon on a clear afternoon,
The speckled blotch, the ice talisman;
The moon frank and discernible;
The sun, the sun obscure;
The moon and sun under lampshades;
Helicopters shredding silence;
A kookaburra floating eyeless in chlorine.

I can only proclaim with confidence:
I don’t know what this means.



Ergo, Nemo

He found me as
A cloud without wisdom,
Weightless yet flightless,

Kissing cake
Or swimming serrated seas
When it came time to materialise

In a bed
Somewhere,
Amoral and mortal,

My body gifting me several shames
That would take lifetimes to process.
He, then an enigmatic angel,

Gave me a home, not a house,
Pronounced my name in a new way,
Made a handsome brute into a handsome mute;

I became fluent in gibberish, communed in Chinese rooms,
Awoke anew, but not afresh.
∴ I was still still.

However, I reared the embers
And built a blaze
In self-immolation,

Adding that essential prefix;
I felt afresh.
Last week, on a fresh morning in early winter,

I received a second omen. “Nemo,
Captain Nemo. That’s what I should call you,”
Said my budding dealer

And muse in my old art of nothingness
—That was the first—.
I had toured my histories:

Strathcona, Gastown, Coal Harbour.
I had smiled at the floating gas station
And entered Stanley Park.

Sauntering along a secluded trail,
The earthen harmonies were conquered by unseen helicopters and car horns.
I ran out and steadied myself on the seawall.

Few people were around. None were within.
The Lions Gate was an extinct animal suspended in a museum.
I calmed down and began tracing the curve of the distant shore up to the mould sky.

The emerald mountains were powdered with snow,
As if the heavier clouds, my estranged kin,
Had nested in them overnight and shaken off their sleep and dead skin at daybreak.

The pallid clouds frayed and unravelled into an omnipresent porridge
And just as soon entangled themselves in new partners,
Rebirthed into ten-second sculptures.

Here, the Holy Trinity was revealed to me:
Protons, neutrons, electrons,
Within them, their own gods.

My skin was again peeling paint;
I was often, if not always,
The ghost writer of my own life.

∴ I was still

____
Brighton Grace lives in Sydney, Australia.