kipple

Hi everyone, I’m thrilled to announce that my poem “your mother’s hands” has been published at kipple. It’s a journey of ups and downs to get published, and it is really satisfying when the hard work pays off. Head on over to kipple and check it out…http://kipplepoetry.blogspot.com/2009/06/your-mothers-hands-vanessa-page.html

Rain

Somehow, the words come easier in the rain. Maybe less distractions, maybe the romanticism of it, maybe just that my mind has slowed down just enough to allow me to concentrate. Whatever the answer may be, it has been a productive couple of days.

Film

Today we went along to Dendy at Portside (fantastic place to catch a movie) to see “My Year Without Sex” starring Sascha Horler and Matt Day and an amazing William McInnes gving a cameo in one of the Gold Coast scenes. I’m a big fan of Aussie films and I love seeing the little idiosyncracies and culture references of Oz society up on the big screen. A la The Castle. Scrap the citizenship test I say – just make the Castle compulsory viewing for all. Have a laugh and you’re in!

My Year Without Sex was a gorgeous little film, with great leads and shot all around the neighbourhoods of Altona North and Williamstown – both old stomping grounds of mine. Recommended, people!

Riding

mounted on bicycles

the sting of air

whistles past us clean

tiny licks lifting the edges

of coat fronts, fringes

we coast

fluid in motion

one small shape, and a bigger one

two Impressionist blurs

sleep

Another long and restless night with a little boy who just won’t sleep. I’m wrecked. I’m going to need coffee when I hit the city for work this morning….

Ends and ends

Ends and ends

 

it came down to percentages

the balance of night against day

degrees of displeasure

your couch, my chair; stranger rituals

 

by afternoon, speech comes to an end

washing must be brought in,

the sounds of night have commenced

longing keeps its own counsel

 

today, the smell of the earth was full

as you dug and dug; pitting enthusiasm

against the reality of this new life

pushing the light toward dusk smoke

Birthday week

I love the concept of birthday week. Why just have a single day celebration – stretch it out and savour, I say! I’ve been looking forward to 33 for a long time. I always thought that by 33 I’d know exactly what I was doing and be happy and content. I have mostly fulfilled this ideal. When I had a tarot card reading in jJanuary and pulled the happiness card I felt this was a good omen, and the prophecy has been fulfilling itself since then.

It has been a great start to birthday week. An early morning run, then on our pushbikes and a short ride down to Grub Street at Gaythorne for the best breakfast you will ever find on Brisbane’s northside. Later, dark chocolate and chilli mocha at Coffee and Chocolate at Paddington and now looking forward to dinner with good friends tonight at the Breakfast Creek. Culinary overload, but I love it all…good times.

Running

Went running this morning for the first time in a week. I find myself lost when I don’t get the opportunity to run every day. For a personality like mine which has so much going on internally, running provides the clarity, the space to think and analyse and the ‘time out’ we INTJ (Myers Briggs) types require.

Much as I love to run, it is extremely difficult to rise before 7am on a weekend in Brisbane, in the winter time and make the transition from bedclothes to running clothes. That done however there is such a sense of exhilaration and freedom in pounding the pavements early before too many folks are up and about and listening to music as I run.

My route around the neighbourhood is nice and hilly so I know I’m doing myself some good at the same time. I have my eye on the Jetty to Jetty Fun Run and the Bridge to Brisbane as reasonable short term running goals. So, a few more early mornings in the cold, hoping my lungs can cope with the temperature and that the stinging slap of iced air on my skin won’t be too much of a deterrant. 

The best part is wrapping up with the Courier-Mail and going for a coffee at my local, knowing I’ve started the day on a positive note.

Untitled

I.

 

We render them,

These sequences

We paper them over our

Tiny little cracks

Deftly and silently, they

Seep through our layers

They complete our neat existences

Bring a certain satisfaction, like knife’s

Steady method through fleshy pear

We are high functioning, deliberate, and yet

Time has worn smooth our clever ruses

Our countenance is pale and yellow

Barely disguising this violence

The betrayal of sudden pallour

And we are stunned by the grief

 

II.

 

We stand,

Red inked and stamped

Tentative, picking up threads

Of expired conversations

Of words tied to redundancy

Reborn as slivers of the tiniest half moons

They are impossible, much too delicate

Slipping past us like tadpole flickers

Too far gone, the same as five o’clock

The slow glimmer along the peak hour river

Indifference and the slow flap of white sails

Our own breath is not enough to reach them

Exhalations, jeopardised by the effort

Like you to me, at once flailing and corralled

Circling like a pair of sanguine cats.

 

III.

 

In evening hues

We are less affronted by

This city’s gangrenous reaches

The sentinel has drifted off, and now

There will be no record of this

 Just the wrongfooted shadows of us

Gingerly testing the newness of it all

Navigating the tiny cracks

Smoothing out the deepest creases

Testing untried sequences, new coordinates

Resigned to it, but knowing enough

To leave the remnants to the wind

Clear notes, remembered as fossils

The truth in them, long gone

Captured in erratic shapes

And the chatter of furious pinwheels

Untitled

Not much longer /til the chill turns to fever

The belly lay soft/ nudged by tiny anchors

We are moored in precedents/ this yoke, the only certainty

Black lipped whispers /already instruct us on how

The night is creaking /while we wait for the bolt

Our mouths are tentative/poised at the brim of it

Steam and breath/a potent new force of life

Warm in our sockets/we are flesh and bone

Pleased by symmetry/ smoothing linen in the same way