Write Me a Letter …

Piercing unaccompanied voice.

A sad-faced man in close-up

in a movie seen on TV, some years 

after it was made. And after I'd learned, 

close up, what ‘Stir Crazy’ could mean.

Send it by mail … And we did.

All the letters eventually burned, 

but I can still quote them … still 

hear your voice in my head. Speaking, 

not singing. Lifting off the page.

Put your arms ’round me,

give my heart ease. Something 

to dream of, if you’d been free.

Roses love sunshine. You wrote me 

poems full of roses: and in one letter

a small pressed flower, called

hearts-ease. A half-joking scrawl

in the margin, ‘Well, I din’t ’ave

no roses.’ Angels in heaven

know I love you.  All my life long,

any time, without warning,

a sweet-sounding folksong – 

plaintive, haunting – in that movie clip, 

or in the voice of Burl Ives, or 

Glenn Campbell, or Johnny Cash … 

or your voice, or mine. Plunging me 

instantly, again, down in the valley,

the valley so low. Where a dead man 

waits in remembrance. (Send it 

in care of the Birmingham Jail.)

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Thirty

It surprised me that my final poem this April would turn out to be this. I guess something still needed expression. The back story is in my memoir Breaking Into Pentridge Prison: Memories of Darkness and Light, published in paperback 2023 and available from Pentridge Prison Inside Out. To be made available on Amazon as an ebook in 2025.

(This video from the movie begins with the end of another song before going into 'Down in the Valley'):

It Gave No Cause

(Elegy for Leonard Cohen)

The end came 

with a fall in the night:

sudden, unexpected, 

peaceful.

Busy growing frail, 

working diligently,

he felt the window 

getting narrower.

His working pace was slow,

polishing for many years.

A new set of tracks

the morning he died:

spiritual wisdom;

dark, self-effacing wit.

( ... after the event,

not to know ... )

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Nine. 

Prompt: to write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist. This is a found poem, in the form of an erasure of the article, 'For Leonard Cohen, the End Came With a Fall in the Night' by Ben Sisario, published in The New York Times, Nov. 16 2016.

Rather than 'find' and string together single words in a sea of erasures, I've used whole phrases from the text – though in a way that sometimes subtly alters fine shades of meaning.

St James Infirmary

 

I don’t recall music at Bill’s funeral. Maybe the boys didn’t think of that. They – only mid-twenties – arranged it all.

I was one year married to Andrew by then, and we’d recently moved interstate. Not only that: in the middle of moving house. (The first was just temporary to get us here.)

 

They delayed the funeral for me. ‘You have to be here.’  

I supposed it would be odd if Andrew came too, and difficult for him. Anyway, someone had to finish our move.

The funeral felt strange. Some people didn’t know we’d ever parted. Others, because they did, didn’t know what to say. Two who never liked me stopped trying to hide it.

I couldn’t exactly play hostess. Not the grieving wife. (Did all my grieving over the divorce. Everyone thought that was my idea. No.)

A huddle of young Vietnamese women looked me over, whispering. Identifying me, I imagined.

I couldn’t guess which was the one he’d tried to brag about. (That didn't work. Someone already told me, and by then I didn’t care.)

Jim Cathcart (best mate) made the speech. Foster-son Robert, a parent himself then, sat beside me and sobbed. My arm stayed around his shoulders for the whole service. 

My youngest, who’d driven me there, latched on to an ex-girlfriend come to pay her respects, and disappeared smartly, taking her to the wake instead.

I stood on my own in the car park as everyone drove away. Hailed an old friend just in time. ‘Room for me?’

Ah yes, there WAS music. 

Much later. Unplanned. 

Dutch was there with his guitar. As he’d always been, throughout my life with Bill. Playing for free at our parties – children’s and grown-ups’. 

Some friends brought their kids this night. Late, when the youngsters were tired and fractious, he sang directly to them. ‘The fox went out on a chilly night …’ They listened with thumbs in their mouths, wide-eyed. 

At parties, whenever Dutch called for requests, Bill would beg, ‘Play St James Infirmary’. Of course I asked, that final night. And he did.

Now Dutch is gone, and Andrew’s gone. Jim Cathcart’s gone. All the children are grown. 

The music lingers on.

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Eight.

Prompt: to write about music at an event.

Linking to Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #176: Slice of Life.  This little slice of death, written in April, is the nearest I can get to (my understanding of ) that literary style – which can also apply to fiction, but this is autobiographical.

Angels are Gender-Fluid

– or maybe gender-neutral. Anyway,

they appear as whichever gender

we need them to be, at any time.

Take Archangel Chamuel here,

in this channelled painting 

by Shavarnia, now on my wall.

This is the angel of pure love.

Gaze into the gentle face,

the wise and tender eyes,

and there you find Mother, 

when you need mother-loving:

that warmth and tenderness.

Look in those eyes again

to see them calm and strong.

Now he’s elder brother,

guardian. The massive wings

deep with softness, firm with strength,

may enfold you as cradle or armour.

‘Gender’ is invisible; there’s no 

specific core detail; only outward signs.

Pure love is not limited.

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Seven.

We were asked to write about a detail in a picture, and to begin with a broad declarative statement. Obviously, my statement is the title. But the particular detail I focus on, I finally declare non-existent.

Exhibition / Labyrinth

 

(inspired by viewing the online collection at Spain’s Reina Sofia Museum) 

Can voice and sculpture now combine as one?

Do line and colour overlap, return,

and show the intimate within the grand?

How many forms derive from this one hand?

When she is quite alone within her mind,

what spread or narrowing, there, will she find? 

He places pieces of the urban sprawl

flat onto paper, adds a tiny scrawl

in one deft corner, and behold, a vine

arises, spreads … becomes both art and wine.

The intimacy of the everyday

expands and magnifies and finds a way

to fill a plaster cavern wall to wall.

A tiny keyhole then reveals a soul.

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Six

We were asked to write a sonnet. I have a fondness for the Clarian sonnet, so that's the particular form I chose. The poem doesn't describe specific items in the Museum so much as reflect on the nature of contemporary abstracts and installations in general.

Harry Belafonte Concert

Melbourne, Australia, 1960 

He did have a voice like honey.

His songs were lilting and new –

here in Australia, we’d never heard 

the quick, light dance of Calypso, 

until he hit the Hit Parade.

We loved that voice, that sound;

we loved his songs, that’s true. 

But that was not the only reason

my Aunty Ev (who I lived with then, 

when I was a uni student) bought tickets.

We weren’t groupies. It was a more

innocent time. (I think it was 

before there were groupies.)

We didn’t aspire to rip his pants off.

We just liked how he looked, in them.

Shy teenager, middle-aged wife,

the two of us out on the town –

age irrelevant, girls together –

we shared that perfect evening

 in the stalls, up close to the stage.

Brown, tall, muscular but lean,

smiling like a burst of Jamaican sun

(that cold August night in Melbourne)

he wore slim black pants and a white shirt 

open in a V to show his chest. We gasped

as the curtain went up and there he was.

He flung his arms up wide in greeting, 

and began. Every song was a caress, 

or else it was shared laughter. Clichés

came true: we were in the palm of his hand.

I don’t mean only us, my aunt and me. 

It was the whole audience! (I didn’t think,

then, to check, but I’d guess mostly women.)

At interval, wide-eyed, we caught our breath;

agreed we’d never seen a handsomer man.

Yes it was also the voice, yes it was also 

the way he sang. The lyrical, husky voice, 

the emotional songs. He made us laugh,

he made us cry. He made us yearn –

and fall, as if forever, in love with love.

With him too, yes, but more than that.

Also with all the people and places 

he sang to us of. Could the night 

get any better? Yes! After the interval

he came on wearing a red shirt. Pow!

NaPoWriMo 29025, Day Twenty-Five:

Today we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that recounts an experience of your own in hearing live music, and tells how it moves you. 

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #181: Music for the Muse.