auto-epitaph

I’m gone

And if you can think of me

As always reaching further

Know this

I’ll try and find out

What happens next.

Terry called it

The Collis catastrophic effect

Always taking every experiment

Just one step further

But the outcome

Sometimes worked out right

The best evidence

Of underlying good sense

Breaking surface madness

Is Brian

Whom I recognised, and then just stopped

from slipping through my fingers

And, if going on

To my personal interview

With the silver sickle

Leaves a choice

Can I let go

a final time? You’ll know.

For my cousin

And so my naive cousin, what will you do
when all the bluster of your chosen party
simply doesn't restore your rights
and you find it's the fat cats, not the immigrants
who've taken them all away?

will you then say that, with jobs so scarce
that only men should work
and steal from me, from your wife
and from your daughters what you
now would take out of your neighbours' mouths?

It is after all the classic pattern
for those you are so blindly advocating,
Kitchen, children church their only female role,
is that really the world you really want created
for your own three girls?

And what of your brother
Immigrant himself, on the other side
of the world. Do you believe that he
should be kicked out to leave more room
for native Australians?

Wake up! why do you think the world has fought
to stop the fascists coming here?
Their tinny song of hate is no solution.
They have no answers for this world's
true crises if you pose real questions.

LMC 29 Nov 09

Topiramate blues

Is that all it was,
a migraine tablet’s psycho-active side effect?
Those black dog days
When nothing worked
When all my effort went to finding
Five clear minutes without crying?

1 in 10 they say are like this,
Angry and depressed
It should be on the bloody packet
Never mind buried in the leaflet
I could get angry, but I won’t

For that is also on their list
And now I think
Those days I wouldn’t give in
on trivial points, are them not me,
And I can close this anger down

lmc 30 Oct 2009

Mum - St Pancras

sitting in the longest champagne bar
it's hard to explain
just what I did
among all this Gothic splendour

she looks as if
I built it single-handed
rather than designing
a few electrical interfaces

so when the trains come in
their power works, the signalling,
and the customer information
tells their story

but still it was at the top
of her birthday visits
and we could all walk around
with a certain proprietal pride.

lmc 28 Oct 2009

Mum - My Way

Time spirals, after all the fizz and razzmattazz,
- back to tonight, when Frank sang "My Way",
and I held your hand and cried,
thinking of the next time,
- forward to that day we'll
play it for you, but your hand will have slipped away.
I'll remember you sitting next to me
and, I bet, will hear you singing along.

LMC 24 Oct 09

Mum- St Paul's

To soar beyond our cares
and whisper with you
where my Dad once sat!

my Christmas angel will not
tell the secret of our
journey to the dome

and of the unexpected
grace bestowed
upon your birthday

LMC 24-Oct-2009

Recipe for contentment

to hold my Miyajima bowl
- fit perfectly in my hand -
think only of my father
and his Sayonara memories

forget the bigger bowl of the set
my step-mother kept
not grieve for my father's
signet ring my aunt took when he died

retail therapy has only
limited effect to fill the hurt
- and space at home
is running out -

be glad for all I have
for Brian and all he does
above all, stop this envy
and be satisfied

LMC