Ada Cambridge Poetry Award

This poem was highly commended in the recent Ada Cambridge Poetry Award as part of the Williamstown Literary Festival. It's in the anthology, along with the shortlisted and awarded biographical short stories, which you can buy at Hobsons Bay Libraries for $10 each.

Lay you down

For the funeral they calmed your yellow skin with make up

neat hair navy blazer silver buttons shining

I touched your hand   thick and heavy like a slab of fish

couldn’t think of any words to say   was that the day I picked you up?

seems I’ve carried you a long time now

curved shoulders   those vertebrae protruding at the top of my spine

Freud says I look for you in other men

dragging you around like this head bowed   it’s hard to see anything

night time is for resting but this bedroom is cluttered  

too many shoes   lonely earrings   tax receipts swirling in pockets of dust

you slip into my dreams   a puppet staring wide-eyed from a single bed  

unable to move without my help   effort to lift you drenches me in night sweat

once I see you happy   sitting at an outdoor café

wearing the red mohair jumper she knitted   smoking a cigarette

I want to leave you in this place   but don’t know how we got here

silent movie on a far away screen  grey dawn stirs  the image flickers   disappears

After a conversation with Kate

Two thoughts from people who have been through it already, about aging and dying:

Friedrich Nietzsche

"Joy in old age. The thinker or artist whose better self has fled into his works feels an almost malicious joy when he sees his body and spirit slowly broken into and destroyed by time; it is as if he werein a corner, watching a thief at work on his safe, all the while knowing that it is empty and that all his treasures have been rescued."

- Human, all too Human

Walt Whitman:

"All goes onward and outward ... and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier."

- Leaves of Grass

What we want

 

The film is French and so the light

is blue and gold.

He chases after her and we want

him to catch her.

She is on the train and we want

her to forgive him.

He walks the streets at night

and we want him to chase her again.

The wife is up late reading

and we want her to suspect.

He arrives home and we want

him not to be discovered.

What we want is so simple.

We want love.

We want it to fail.

We want it to triumph.

We want to see pain that is not our own

that is our own.

We want them to make us cry so that

when we stop we will feel better.

The light is not as beautiful here

as it is in the French film

but it is enough to see by.



Three good things I saw at Parliament train station on a Sunday afternoon

A woman with a kind voice helped a man who had fallen over and cut his leg. She didn’t know the man.

A man picked up rubbish that wasn’t his and put it in the bin. He didn’t sigh or complain as he did it.

A girl on the train tried to keep the door open for a man who was running to get the train. She didn’t know the man.

Yay for humans!

FilmLife Project Blog Challenge

So the FilmLife Project is a collaborative project in conjunction with Donate Life Week 2012 (19-26 February), that aims to inspire and encourage young people to have conversations that ask and find out their loved ones wishes around organ and tissue donation.

And the FilmLife Project Blog Challenge asks bloggers to answer 3 questions about organ donation. So here I go ...

1. What’s your take on or experience with organ donation, and why did you choose to take part in the FilmLife Blogger Challenge?

I am a registered organ donor. When I think about dying and what I want to happen with my body I can't think of anything better than it being useful to someone who is still alive. That just makes so much sense to me. The same way as you'd give some tomatoes to a friend from your garden, or donate a cot to a family who needs one once you don't need it any more. It makes me feel less anxious about dying and more at peace. As for why I took the challenge, well I think about life and death most days so it's good to have a new outlet :)

2. If you were to donate your organs, which one would you love to donate, and why?

My brain. I know so little about it. If it had a lifetime with another person some of the kinks might get ironed out and a few of the strange, mysterious areas brought slowly into the light.

3. Who in your family would you need to talk to about organ donation, to be sure your loved ones knew your wishes?

My partner knows. I guess I should probably tell my mum and my siblings. And later on, my niece and nephews. Anyone who cares to listen really ...