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Parramatta Girls

I wouldn’t say he was a bad man
But he got so violent
After my mother she fell ill
After her accident
She couldn’t really do much
She looked old beyond her years
And he took to drinking most the time
And scream he was her nurse
His anger was so scary
He’d shout and bang and crash
We’d try then to avoid him
In case we all got bashed
He never touched me sexually
But sometimes seemed to leer
Whenever I got close to him
Close enough to smell the beer
At 14 I had had enough
After his mates were round
Their eyes were just undressing me
And followed me around

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poem by David Keig
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Jerusalem Delivered - Book 06 - part 03

XXIX

This youth was one of those, who late desired
With that vain-glorious boaster to have fought,
But Tancred chosen, he and all retired;
Now when his slackness he awhile admired,
And saw elsewhere employed was his thought,
Nor that to just, though chosen, once he proffered,
He boldly took that fit occasion offered.

XXX

No tiger, panther, spotted leopard,
Runs half so swift, the forests wild among,
As this young champion hasted thitherward,
Where he attending saw the Pagan strong:
Tancredi started with the noise he heard,
As waked from sleep, where he had dreamed long,
'Oh stay,' he cried, 'to me belongs this war!'
But cried too late, Otho was gone too far.

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poem by Torquato Tasso
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Apology For Bad Dreams

I
In the purple light, heavy with redwood, the slopes drop seaward,
Headlong convexities of forest, drawn in together to the steep
ravine. Below, on the sea-cliff,
A lonely clearing; a little field of corn by the streamside; a roof
under spared trees. Then the ocean
Like a great stone someone has cut to a sharp edge and polished
to shining. Beyond it, the fountain
And furnace of incredible light flowing up from the sunk sun.
In the little clearing a woman
Is punishing a horse; she had tied the halter to a sapling at the
edge of the wood, but when the great whip
Clung to the flanks the creature kicked so hard she feared he
would snap the halter; she called from the house
The young man her son; who fetched a chain tie-rope, they
working together
Noosed the small rusty links round the horse's tongue
And tied him by the swollen tongue to the tree.
Seen from this height they are shrunk to insect size.
Out of all human relation. You cannot distinguish

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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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I Keep Returning To This Line In My Childhood

I keep returning to this line in my childhood
I once stood in one dreaded day
every month with my mother
to prove I was loyal and reliable,
waiting for food at what was
back in the late fifties
called the Foodstall.
Though we were not animals.
We were simply poor
at the mercy of the God-wielding charities
and though it’s nowhere near the same degree
as it is of kind, we almost felt
like natives in the hands of the Catholic church.
Mostly separated mothers left in the lurch of love
with two or three whining kids
that were plague rats of measles,
mumps, ringworm, and cold sores,
agitated as electrons wanting to jump orbitals.
Natives, dried-out rummies
with faces like desiccated orange peels,

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poem by Patrick White
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Margaret Of Cortona

Fra Paolo, since they say the end is near,
And you of all men have the gentlest eyes,
Most like our father Francis; since you know
How I have toiled and prayed and scourged and striven,
Mothered the orphan, waked beside the sick,
Gone empty that mine enemy might eat,
Given bread for stones in famine years, and channelled
With vigilant knees the pavement of this cell,
Till I constrained the Christ upon the wall
To bend His thorn-crowned Head in mute forgiveness . . .
Three times He bowed it . . . (but the whole stands writ,
Sealed with the Bishop’s signet, as you know),
Once for each person of the Blessed Three—
A miracle that the whole town attests,
The very babes thrust forward for my blessing,
And either parish plotting for my bones—
Since this you know: sit near and bear with me.

I have lain here, these many empty days
I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys

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poem by Edith Wharton
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Red Shoes

I was born a beggar
With the garbage round my feet
The devil lived in every hole
And every corner of the street
When misery is all there is
You got nothing to lose
So come on and buy me
Come on and buy me
Some red, red, red shoes
Dont tell me what I do is wrong
Dont preach cos you dont know
cos I was left without a chance
Such a long time ago
And anything is better
Than being cut and bruised
So come on and buy me
Some red, red, red shoes
Dont tell me what I do is wrong
Dont preach cos you dont know
cos I was left without a chance

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song performed by Chris Rea
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It Doesnt Matter Anymore

(daryl hall/sandy allen)
Ive been used to seeing the world with the eyes of two
Now youre gone, no more window shopping with you
Guess Ill spend another day walking around
But dont think that Im sorry babe, dont you think that Im down
cause you know it doesnt matter, you know it doesnt matter anymore
And thats what Im here to tell you
You know it doesnt matter, yes it doesnt matter anymore
Ive been used, you might say that Ive been misused
But Im not gonna feel bad for myself even though Ive been bruised, so bruised
Guess Ill spend another day walking around
But dont think that Im sorry babe, dont you think that Im down
cause you know it doesnt matter, you know it doesnt matter anymore
And thats what Im here to tell you
You know it doesnt matter, yes it doesnt matter anymore

song performed by Hall & Oates
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Joking

You said the world was magic
I was wide-eyed and laughing
We were dancing up to the bright side
Forget about your ego
Forget about your pride
And you will never have to compromise
And you were only joking
You were only joking brother
We talked about our mothers
Kissed the wounds of our fathers
I could have been your sister
I would have been your brother
You kissed me like I was a soldier
Headed for a war
I dying man but I dont know what for
And you were only joking
You were only joking brother
You were only joking
(wide-eyed and laughing)
You were only joking brother

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song performed by Indigo Girls
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A New Decade

A new decade
A new decade
The radio plays the sounds we made
The radio plays the sounds we made
And everything seems to feel just right
And everything seems to feel just right
Coming through your lonely mind
Coming through your lonely mind
Well Ive seen things
Well Ive seen things
That scarred and bruised and left me blind
That scarred and bruised and left me blind
So come on, listen along with me
So come on, listen along with me
I think you need a little company
I think you need a little company
And how long will I run for?
Who am I running from?
And how long will I run for?
Who am I running from?

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song performed by Verve
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City Rose

City rose, you don't bloom like the other flowers
the sun coaxes into unclenching their fists, you unfold
like an ocean at night lingering in your dark depths
behind a veil of fish hooks swaying
with the bullwhips of the kelp to the pulse of your tides.
How suburbanly garish you look all trashed out
like the black farce of a substitute for love.
A poet and a prostitute. Doesn't get much more skinless
than that. We're both walking through the world naked
in a blizzard of thorns blunting themselves
against our ice-age hearts in an interglacial warming period.

Dying on the instalment plan to make a living,
there's a glint in your eyes like moonlight on a knife,
and you're armed to the teeth with fingertips and lips
and hourglass hips and here you can have my sword
even before I surrender as you know you can
when you walk into my life like an eclipse of the moon
with mascara running down your cheeks
and ask me if I still love you as I ever did

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poem by Patrick White
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