The whale that invented me is dying
The rescuers are unable to rescue him
and resign themselves to allow nature its course
and I wonder at that map
its invisible design where
         we follow
                 or are taken

the rocking, lulling eye so small
in the lolling bulk of blubber
too large to thrash, too moored to its own weight
Rolled again and again against the beach
until the flesh is sanded down to pink
         the colour of my flesh
a crowd has gathered at the crashing edge to see
what it is to be an animal
         so close to death

Seven tonnes heroically proportioned
If we had met on the water
if he surfaced and I hovered above the waves
would he have accepted me as his
creation or swallowed me as Zeus swallowed Metis

Now though he is dying and so I will not take my lantern
         and my packed lunch
climb through the balein to the cave of his belly
I will not be reborn through this

I can hold my tongue/ and then

we make so much use of rocks
/ and then who first thought
to break them down into their
elements / when did we start to
think we are stardust

sequence of events/ and then

what can be made from a heart
without a body or vice versa

/ and then / when
I asked you to take my place
you asked if I was here to stay
      I wasn’t
sure if I was forgotten or lost

Time is colourless / and then
I think I once swallowed a day
whole without thinking

/ and then these ways we avoid
fullness here I will make another
void for someone else’s ghost

a window holds a sky
a valley shapes a reservoir
a body is its organs


deep places hold water longer

Once you give something
wings you have to treat it differently
because the bones are hollow-
just the heat coming off your neck up close
might cause an updraft that could send it higher
than the sound of our breathing, past
the fist-shaped clouds and their drizzle
past the pelicans and stars

There was an address written on her palm
that’s been smeared by yours
She can’t remember giving you the keys
You can’t remember locking up the house

Every other word here is the possessive you both lack
each day is its’ consequence

You’re driving through the night with her head
on your thigh
her white hand on your knee
into the pink morning where the world is all
keys and keyholes
where there’s roadhouse coffee and a quiet
place near a dry creek bed to do things
with mouths other than speaking

Billions of eyes have slept through this
With no sleep to wake from
yours can’t see past it
It’s been days since she’s taken the steering wheel
She says movement is her only peace
opening the window

You draw a concentric circle around her
to see what gathers outside
Sweep up your tracks behind you
keep them in the glove box with the maps

At the appearance of heat puddles
ahead in the middle of the road
you sing her bridges of outlined plans
knowing she is calmed
by the weight of your intention

You use fuzzy words
because the clear ones are all being used
back at the supermarket and the primary school
and you know her ears are tired of them

Over and over you look at each other
hardly recognising yourselves in this heat
You stop the car, lean over to kiss her in the centre
of her chest, she untangles her sunburnt legs
from the dashboard and smiles a distance
you can’t turn back from

A billion birds perched in the clouds look down
and are blinded by the glare from the windscreen

Here------>Vasilissa's Doll

and all I recognised
were the results
and the Time

and what I had heard
you say was be discrete
(because this was spoken)

and I thought you were
breaking up very cleverly
(desiring you more for that)

and I told you what I rote
of factored forgiveness
equating difference and
gave you a number
between one
and 5














Oh! and there's probably some you haven't read over here as well -------> Little Glass Pen
and a look at the WA Spring Poetry Festival over here-------->Another Lost Shark

“…don’t let any parts of us be amputated that could be expansive for us”
~Irigaray

Coming back.
A map can be heard in a hive’s song of wings,
to follow, with soft dark feet. I have positioned
my chair about two metres behind the others,
the legs pushed deep into the turf.

Your hair is longer, more gray, your lips thinner.
A less dramatic sideshow. I follow your breath by
the lift and drop of your shoulders, the finger
tracing the podium.

The sun throbs behind my lobes. I am too far for
your words, just outside their reach, I imagine
skeins, some transparent consonants, stretching
towards me,

divest of their meaning, I could touch them, just
the sensation of an S whistled through the abacus
of your teeth, resting on my fingertips. I spread
my hands upwards

on my knees to catch it, the mathematics of
your sound. Later in bed, when you ask me what
I thought, I touch your lips, lean forward to push
my tongue into your mouth.
Into the swarm.

but so still
the dust has settled on the surface
insects         are breeding here in a quiet
murmur        stories of entire small lives
step forward from the silence         and form
as sounds         in the shadows shapes
of whiskered fish
move slowly in
water       deep as
a storm

**PLEASE VISIT HERE ALSO~~~ Amnesty Org~ Aung San Suu Kyi**



Dear All,
I have been very quiet lately as life has thrown some interesting lessons my way.. however while I have been looking the other way my words have been found their way to be havened in a most perfect manner by beautiful editor and publisher Amanda Oaks of Verve Bath Press.
For your own copy of the hundred (hand made and printed with LOVE) to have and to hold, please follow these links...

Verve Bath Press
&
Verve Bath at Etsy

The second will also link you to Amanda's blog which always leaves me smiling widely!
Enjoy!
with love
A.Joy
x

A little bit of me over here with some awesome sandgroper poets~

Another Lost Shark










Sorry I've been virtually nonexistent online of late, I've been off learning lessons.. lots and lots of great big lessons..

love
Amanda
x

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Guided By Poets, Western Australia

The empty page

From here
dense lines clump
to show the weight
of something

Constellate
around a cleft
Contract like night to
a slamming flyscreen

His passport is buried
wrapped in plastic
under the house

Exhibiting
a fist-shaped ball
of black dust
he calls silence

he told me
he was going
to compile a list of organs
you can live without

he told me
with his nerve
ends extended invisibly

unable to contain
what flows through them

Ripped pictures
marking the spaces
he might come home to

he touches his eyes
names them sight
swears
to bear witness

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“for someone in love with words,
it amazes me how fast you can move
to be free of them” ~James

Having been accused
in the past of lying,
she is mute.
Now, she repeats
certain movements all day,
etching each moment into
the musculature of her
body as proof.

He admires her form.
He writes to her of it, in angular words.
She places the softly crumpled sheets
of paper over her body
and strikes a match.

In each moment she still feels
the hundreds of fingertips
which have explored her histories,
only to become them.

He asks her questions
of corruption
and tenderness.
There are no answers.

He will come to understand
dissolution as she traces
each vertebrae of his spine
with her tongue.

With each calm stroke
warmly welcomed,
she smiles and gifts him
the strength to leave her.







There's a new one or two over here also:

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In the mangroves, we avoid the shade, black with swarming sandflies. I know I should tell you. I should say, I know I would tell you. But the sun is going down and the tide is coming fast and invisible as fear. To swallow the partings. The shadows are growing longer and we have to walk further into the water to avoid the bites that will itch for days. Your back is a map of black flies hitching a ride. I follow the wake left by your strong legs. I am strong too, but smaller, the sea has a hold on more of me so I try to use my cupped hands like paddles. I have that curiosity, you know, what happens if I let go? Give way to the pull, go with the flow. I mean, you hear stories. Behind the island is a whirlpool, the old man told me last night. He told it better than I remember it. You turn to smile and that knowing is closer than the shadows. My toes feel the sharp roots in the mud, more tiny cuts to keep clean. There is a deep waterhole, more an undersea landhole here, somewhere, we fished it yesterday until the turtles snapping the lines won, competition, not a battle and I cried to think of the hooks in their stomachs. Then you said “sshh, there’s enough salt water here”. The Bardi woman came with a spear and caught one real quick and we shared her family’s meal. My mind is there now with the turtles and the fish we didn’t eat. We need to hurry. Creature and creature relocate now, at dusk. Some will eat each other. Soon it will come down to a choice between the bites and currents that will sweep us out fast to sea. Discomfort will win.

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acquisitive counterpoint
                                      murmurs
through his hair
                    around his ear
                                      across
his chest

jump cut       flux


she followed her            instincts
as if manacled
                    to innocence and daring
with light coming out of her eyes
                    and fingertips
singing at the mouth
                     unlearned mother tongue
augur the unmapped
                     projection in every word

becoming-
an idea bound
with ropes splitting
their closure

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we are in it
each mouthful
holds

one bite
one gleaming
dollop

I heard you speak
of thirst
of milk of

the insides
of your wrists

coiled loosely
to the threads
undulant

I look up
we are in it

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describing you
to myself

i pour hot

in silence
an ampoule

cooled glass

a moment
before desire

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