Poetry | Stories | Photography
A friend Convinced you hypnosis is the way to cure smoking, so you take a trip to a practitioner.
Looking at a pocket watch with intricate carvings of flowers and stems, you feel calm relaxation set in.
A voice from far away says, “Don’t be a naughty smoker, Anna”.
“MUM?”
We travelled for so long to find my home. For years you travelled with me this way.
Now, looking from up here, the way is steep, and I am scared.
We are so close. Please help me make it to my home, then say the words I’ve longed to hear: You already know the answer.
The words of Rumi take shape and play a scene with sounds as I sit thinking of the desert, exotic lands, and being another person in another land with another life.
In a far off land different from my own, I am alone, and I walk within your nation, yet I walk apart. The half-hidden faces and the glances show me that I do not belong here.
I have never worn so much cloth around my head, had so much material cover my body, and I have never felt unseen; yet the heat and the clothing cool my skin, and I feel free of fear.
Arabic on the wind and the vision of a mosque so beautiful you know the artists and architects loved their god, yet I’m a hypocrite for I do not believe in anything anymore.
Safely wrapped, a kind man ushered me towards the tea house to have something to drink. The smell of mint, rose water, and orange blossoms put my mind in a philosophical mood.
Surrounded by noise, I feel calm as I cannot understand a word, yet I know I don’t belong here; I am not part of this country. I am a hypocrite hiding behind a cloth I don’t believe I should wear.
Yet, I cannot bring myself to admit that the pull of this place feels like a longing that I have felt since I tried to play that broken instrument that looked like a Qanum many, many years ago.
I sit in the tea house surrounded, yet alone with my thoughts. Then I hear the bombing begin. It is a shock: a booming calamity and a whooshing sound mixed with many other sounds. It is a shock to my ears and my heart, for we do not know of this life in Australia.
Blood mixed with dust, concrete and debris strewn across the streets, bodies broken and mangled, and there, so close to me, the kindly man who ushered me in: bloody and dead. In those cloudy eyes, I once saw courage.
I walk from the tea house to stand and look towards the sky. You have gone from me through some cruel twist of fate, yet I know we will find each other again one day.
I feel like an important person in that instant. It is as if my feelings are the only feelings I can feel exist. Individualism has taught me to think my feelings might change the rivers of time.
The next bomb destroys my daydream, the images and the sounds of Rumi end, and I am sitting at my desk reading about your country: saddened by so many dead.
A bird chirps unknown thoughts from a branch in a tree that I have not seen before today. The air feels thick, with the taste of a storm or rain; I cannot tell for sure how the weather will play out, for I do not live in the clouds.
I stand in a potato sack dress, oblivious to my situation; I do not know how I came to be here, nor do I know the name of this country.
I know nothing, yet I feel the very fabric of my surroundings. The connection with nature, as if words are spoken directly to me and only for me to hear, guides me forward.
Trees remind me of the Tree-Folk and their many stories; the wisdom they share with only a selected few. I feel closer to something as I step across an invisible threshold into the forest.
The weight of some emotional distress lingers on my skin and in my mind; I hold back the welling of my heart and those tears wanting to spill and run free towards the forest floor.
Something is missing from my many layers. It is as though my past, personality, and me, the person standing in a forest, ceases to be what she once was.
I walk to remember. I walk to forget. I walk through the ever-increasing darkening of the forest as rain does not come. Instead, snow begins to fall.
The snow should be cold. The snow should make me feel cold, yet it makes me feel calm.
I stand still, waiting for something to come.
In the forest of forgetting, I walk, and I walk until I remember what it is that I must finish.
Mr No Name sits in his usual spot beside Adelaide Rose Davies. Tonight is quiet, dark, and it smells of half-dead roses from so many fresh graves.
A man who used to have a name is now known as Mr No Name. A man not even worthy of having a first name.
This evening he thinks about the smell of the half-dead roses on the breeze and what he lost. Tired, he lays his head down to sleep with his only friends, the dead in the cemetery.
Homeless and alone, this is the only place he finds peace and quiet to sleep and dream of his painful memories. His memories of a loving wife, two loving daughters, a house full of light, and the day she walked away because he lost his business to a cruel recession.
He dreams about his daughters in colour. Any money he has he spends on his mobile phone to see their faces from time to time.
Sometimes, when he is lucky, he sees his wife holding the arm of that famous person. He sees her, and he falls in love every time.
Laying there, he writes a message to both of his daughters on Messenger. Perhaps they will see it, or they won’t. He writes a forgiveness message of kindness and love to the mother of his children.
There are no pillows anymore, no kisses from his girls, and no feelings of warmth and happiness to mend his broken heart.
He rests his head on Adelaide’s grave, then asks a question he never thought he would ask, “Adelaide, can I please come down there with you? I always feel calm beside you.”
The cemetery remains serene as the night moves along; there is no snoring anymore, for the broken heart stopped beating at 3:15 am. Ten minutes after his girls and the love of his life deleted his messages.
The two of us stood in this place on countless occasions,
as you talked to me about so many unimportant topics.
I listened to your words, not because I cared for them;
I listened to your talk because I knew the hunger
for your flesh and blood would be satisfied soon enough.
The way you looked at, “the big old elegant green one
with unkempt hair like mine” was a woman’s talk to me,
yet it never moved me.
I think of you, and I play your mannerisms, your face,
your voice, your speech; I play them over and over in my
mind so that I will never forget.
The riverside willow of you. The unkempt hair that hung
around your beautiful face, like the weeping willow
branches hang down into the river, is all I have left of you.
I realised too late that your time with me here in this
place was more important than only the hunger, which
is all I knew, for your flesh and your blood.
Your flesh and your blood was my desire for you, yet
your words, your actions, your love, and you,
the unkempt hair you, was the reason for my hunger.
Your heart yearns for the sea.
Sitting in your office, you drift towards the southern saltwater.
Lost in the south sea, you drift unnoticed and unafraid of what may become of you.
You float on the waves, the sun begins to set, and you think of nothing.
The sound of an Oud moves a foreign memory to the fore of your mind as you walk through the streets of a foreign town as a foreigner.
They look at you with different coloured eyes, yet you look at them with the eyes of a person unseasoned in the ways of the world.
The smell of Rose Water, Orange Blossom, and mint tea reminds you of another memory from before you were who you appear to be now.
A market tempts you to buy material possessions you thought you would never own, as something about the items takes you back.
The touch of a warm breeze moves your legs towards a place of Olive and Oleander, as the memory becomes a reality and you know
why you came to this place.
The light begins to take cover under a sea of clouds;
the clouds move closer and grower darker and darker.
I keep the light off in my room, waiting for the rain to
begin, and hoping for the chance to show you a photo.
You are stuck in North Queensland being burnt by the
sun every day; I sit here in the cold, wet winter I love.
The night creeps closer, and the sky becomes darker,
as the rain starts to fall and move down the window.
I take a series of photos, then send my best one to you,
although I think you will say the weather is yucky again.
The night sets in. I imagine you out and about in the
garden, talking to the neighbour or cooking dinner for two.
You stay locked in North Queensland, and I stay locked in
Gippsland, as we wait for the chance to hug and kiss again.
The light is a faded memory on the horizon, as twilight loses
to the night and the absence of moon and stars leaves only
the reflection of someone I should know better in the window.
Words spoken we feared would come
to spill out from old rusty speakers.
We never thought this day would come,
we always knew this day would come;
we did it to ourselves, and we knew it.
Words spoken, hurried tones to loved ones
for they will be the last words from our lips.
We stood and sat as the day moved along;
a last dose of intimacy between the two of us.
The record player sits still waiting for the album,
yet we cannot decide what will be the last song.
We play them all for the rest of the day waiting;
then a song starts to play we both love and
…
..
.
C & K 