Wildfires

We’ve all seen forest fires in movies

and on the evening news. Whole states

or provinces seem to catch fire and

burn on and on. Acres and acres going

up, animals scurrying away, people trying

to drive around, get away, and houses and

businesses gone in no time. Witnesses

always talk about the roar of the fire as

it turns the world around them into ash.

Didn’t Prometheus give us fire for this?

So it’s not just sloppy gods fooling with

us – an angry god full of lightning and

sorrow, or some redneck god flicking his

cigarette butt out of his chariot or not

putting out his sacrificial fire. No, now

we get to participate in all this fiery stuff

cigarette butts and campfires, and just

burning off the grass to get our season

going. This is the stuff of legends playing

out all around us. We cause ’em and then

get to put them out – from villain to hero

in a month of wildfires. Breathe in deeply

miles away and you know it’s there, filling

the air, this very real nightmare.


           Change in Climate

What does it mean when the weather

Becomes front page stuff and evening

News shows lead with it? All of a sudden

Politics and the economy and all wars

Take a backseat to what’s happening all

Around us, to us. Local news gives us

The full array of coverage – film of what’s

Happening, rivers raging, streets flooded

Tops of cars barely sticking out of water

Near to us, then there are reporters out

There becoming eye witnesses and then

Interviewing officials and folks flooded

Out of their homes, and of course there’s

The weather people giving us maps and

And statistics, how deep and for how long.

All of it seems unreal, Twilight Zone-ish –

Our familiar world turning upside down.

And we ask, what does it all mean? But

The answer has been with us for a while.

It means we’re not as safe as we thought.

It means there are consequences of our

Actions. We heard global warming and best

We could do was debate along political lines.

We heard about climate change and assumed

That later generations would have to worry.

We never thought it would be front page stuff

Or lead on TV news. We quietly assumed it

Would take care of itself.


           There From Here

“Road closed” and all of a sudden

That old one about not getting

There from here becomes new.

A sign goes up, a rope stretches

Across, sometimes they leave a guy

There to warn us. The TV or radio

Announces it, road or street closed

And advises us to avoid it. It’s hard

To imagine the gap or landslide or

Whatever that makes them close

It. The late news will give us scenes

Of the destruction – a gap where

That culvert washed out or that

Bridge that we crossed so often is

Now gone. A reporter will be there

In the hole or alongside the gap

With rushing water behind them as

They tell us the story of the closing.

The road we knew for so long is no

Longer part of our getting home or

To work. People on either side of

The gap wave to each other, take

Pictures and wonder aloud about

How and when they will get there

From here. We’ll talk bravely about

This after the road crews do their

Thing and fix the way for us, but

Right now the road is closed and

We must find another way to get

Wherever we think we are going.

Either

When you get
to my age,
and you've been
seriously ill a few
times.

Naturally, you
begin wondering
what's next.

Is there anything
afterwards ?

Thinking about it,
it's either the start
of a whole new
adventure.

Or it's endless
sleep.

I can look forward
to either.

Depending on
how I feel. 

Anatomy of a body

I am a devotee to grief.
And I fear, nothing weighs more than my country's shadow.
I section my body into two parts.
Loss;
I hold this home the way loss holds an orphaned child.
Beneath my neck, I have concealed all the places I have ever found comfort.
Darkness;
No one understands what I carry except me.
Who holds a shattered thing and find beauty?
Forgive me, if this poem refuses to sit well in your throat but
since inception, nothing in my country has ever sat well with me.
Still, I try to unrobe myself.
Beyond this picture, I try to grow wings.
I try to fold myself in between happiness.
Because Maa once said " Light needs darkness to shine".

Forbidden Door

It was a large house he brought me to – all marble floors with punkahs on ceilings to cool feet and heads. There was a vineyard between this house and the one next door where my brother-in-law lived and towards the side of the house swinging hammocks had been set up for the extended family to enjoy the cooler evenings when the searing heat abated.

We had been given the upstairs rooms of the big house which had been readied in preparation for a western girl coming to live with an Arabic family. There was a modern bathroom with a flushing toilet which I didn’t initially understand was a real luxury in Sharaban, Diyala. In the corridor between the staircase and the upper floor rooms, pickle jars and fruit preserves at various stages of production lay stacked on the floor. Yom, or the “Duck” as the family called her, ran a busy and productive household. The flat roofed verandah could be used for sleeping under the stars when she was too hot or wanted to remember her youth.

Amina – her real name – Om Yas, Yom, Duck – she answered to them all. Illiterate, she had married her cousin when they were both very early teenagers which is why, I suppose, they looked a bit similar. She had a black ink tattoo on her face which seemed to be some sort of tribal marking and was bilingual. Turkish was her first language but when Iraq has been created the population from the north had been forced to learn Arabic. She knew a lot about a lot of things and it’s no surprise that all seven of her children went on to be engineers, teachers, a farmer and a vet. Not being allowed to go to school didn’t dim her intelligence. When I first appeared at her door she performed some sort of spell with fiery smoke and water before letting me in the house. She might have known about the world and breeding champion horses and a woman’s lot in society, but a lack of education had meant she retained the superstitions of her village, despite living in a town.

Only five of us lived in the house but mealtimes usually catered for between ten to twenty as the other sons would “drop by”, with their families as nobody could cook like the Duck, or so they said. Amina waddled wrapped in her black scarf which covered her hair and shoulders like a mini abaya, sitting down cross-legged on a cushion directing daughters and daughters-in-law to attend to the men and children, lest they should starve. She could get up again with great difficulty doing that downward dog style of pushing herself back into an upright position. The children laughed and played on the periphery of the meal and if they became too audacious one son or another would stand to pick up the boys – always the boys – by their wrists and heels airplane-like for a spin or grab them to throw them upwards towards the ceiling. No child was ever hurt while I was there but it must have come close a few times.

The bulk of the house was downstairs. A huge kitchen with multiple stoves and freezers was mostly where I was expected to reside. The Duck tried to teach me how to make various favourites in gigantic quantities. The kitchen led to what in the west would have been called the family lounge. And lounging was definitely what happened here, just not on chairs. Harking back to Bedouin days, cushions littered the ground and people grabbed however many they wanted in order to be comfortable on the smooth, white marble while the overhead punkahs whirred, wafting a gentle breeze around our overly hot bodies. The women, of course, fetched and carried dish after dish, drink after drink from the kitchen to the table cloth laid out without ceremony on the floor. Everyone tore off giant flatbread pieces to make edible spoons, scooping up vegetables and meats to eat their fill.

There was a part of the house downstairs that was off limits to me, well I was allowed to clean it when the men were out – lucky me – but it housed a western style toilet and a very formal lounge and dining room. There was a huge marble table with upholstered chairs set off with ornate golden woodwork. There was a collection of plush red velvet and gold throne type chairs to the side of this where presumably, people more important than women and children were brought to. If anyone arrived at the house they would enter by the main door, forbidden to me, and taken to this huge room. If anyone was visiting, the men who normally lounged around being catered to, suddenly became the servers – running through from kitchen to table with gigantic silver platters brimming with delicious food.

I presume that business was conducted there, possibly even bribery and corruption because carrier bags of money would be brought through from a backroom to the dining room and nothing would be brought back in exchange. I was reminded of this when reading about UK royals, being given carrier bags of money, to be used for pet projects. Men from the Middle East still seem to do this.

Amina must have died by now, as she wasn’t fully fit over thirty years ago when I lived in her house. She was one of the women who publicly gave away all her gold to help the Iraqi war effort. I often wonder, if her end was as peaceful as it deserved to be.

In Memory of my Brolgas

Instead of thinking
about poetry today

I am indulging my-
self with a slomo re-

play of the brolgas 
dancing around a

farm dam five kilo-
meters north-east of 

Ridglands. There is 
a quietness in it.



A cold steer

Next time you
watch a truck-
load of cattle
being trans-
ported to the

meatworks, don't
think of them as
living creatures
about to be
put to death but

observe them im-
partially as part
of the food web.
It is so much
more melodic.

 
Déshabillé 

Because of its 
cognitive style &
incandescent light 
every tonne of 
scrap metal 
you clean up 
from a public 
place can work as 

a wardrobe staple 
in the same way 
that a built-in lum-
bar support will 
retool your internal 
guidance system.



conjunction

In the slice of sky more or
less directly above me is

an invisible passenger jet;
yet its engines heard so

clearly that the sound seems
rather to accompany the si-

lent hawk coasting on the
thermals much lower down.

Modest Proposals

Open your heart and embrace reality 
Break your cocoon and hold the baked sun
Don't suck the last point of dream
Don't attack your fate as a doll in a lap
Read and read the philosophy of love
Make a history of your own.

Open your eyes and invent possibility 
Break the icy land and touch existence 
Don't forget that life is a question
Don't spend moment in vain
Enjoy the beauty of struggle
Pick up happiness in simplicity. 

Open your earth with love and hospitality 
Build your heart with humanity 
Open your mind with a mirror of satisfaction 
See the reflection of love and love
kiss the crown of happiness in everywhere 
Paint whatever you like with the colour of life.

***
Under the heels of silence lie the silhouettes of people-leaves. Where do we go grinding buried bones with our huge feet?

Air dancing snowflakes. The stone is snow. The stone is water. We are all dancers.

Fire in the eyes of a butterfly. A bonfire on which prospects burn. The fire on which dinner is cooked.

One day a man left his house for a shop and never came back.

***
Nobody was born killed.
Only the birds grimaced like tangerine skins.

Nobody was born.
New Year's magic frozen in the snows of time.

***
Five birds sit on a branch of one tree
One tree holds five birds

How many trees can the earth support?
How much paper is burned daily?

How many people got burned today?
God's assistant pressed the wrong button again

***
The flying bird is extinguished
The moon is fading in the sky
The candle in my heart melted completely

Morning begins

***
Fear of grass on cold lips
Spring sweetness of first kisses

***
feast for mother
memorial for mom
funeral for mom

who are we burying?
where do we bury?

we bury our childhood under a bush 
at the request of the mother

dead mother in the cloud –
smiling

***
the rebellious spirit in my stomach gurgles and begs for alcohol
dog catching snowflakes with tongue
christmas all year round
easter around the clock

***
we exchange skulls with each other like silence
our hands itch as if after the crucifixion
our genitals itch like a virgin virgin
birds above their heads turn into ticks on paper
the world is squeezing deeper and deeper into a gas mask

***
iron mosquitoes exhaust the body
wooden organs rot
brain cloud exfoliate
a church candle in the chest vomits 
the fire from which the future will be born

*** 
butterflies 
in the stomach 
die silently 
looking at the fire

***
i want the bird to die
then the military pilot will not go astray
then the nuclear warhead will fly where it needs to

shit

***
sky composed in advance gnaws earlobes
Icarus freaks out like an impotent before sex
kisses of air in the weather forecast are not foreseen
and the earth from below is hard as if it is not round at all