Poetry: Kate Ludlow

THE WAVE OF RELIEF

The wave of relief that never came
I swam out waving to you,
You only turned away
My hero became the violin string at my throat.
The villain in my darkened stairwell
I was in the back yard my skirt short
Running from the spotlight
It is not pride like confetti this time,
Only pain
Only a blackness I invented, knitted as a garment
An hour before show time.
I looked out of our window your arms
About my shoulders.
I was willing to shut the glass,
Silent in my longing forever
The others too foreign and oozing in their
Experience.
I dreamt of another man, who knew it was you
It was you the whole time
Waiting for that wave of relief.

 

 

 

DAY

I stood as if in silent prayer, stock-still
I wanted no ripple to spoil this perfect
spillage on the day,
A huge man hungry rainbow slick,
A blob on the horizon, a melting film,
A picture of raw, psychedelic heat
It eats at the mountains
The skies jowls sag with the strain
of this daily torment of day
It cannot hold to it much longer,
This eternal bite of colour
Insect like in its movements,
the day shuffled past
100 legs skimming past like grand skirts
Sweeping up the wreckage,
storing it for tomorrow and
the next in tipped over barrels
The day spreads out like magic
Opening as a fan over a shy smile
A desert without sand, marooning over and over
An endless blanket, a cherished, recycled oyster
I stand stock still and raise my head
at its familiar fingers over my body,
I pray flower like and open.

 

 

 

WHEN WE DANCED

Battered at with angels and shadows
I knew enough to know your name
Took 2 years of my life and disappeared
An heiress of words
And yet you meant everything
Drank me for all Ii was worth
A well dried at the back of my throat
So I used bile.
I ate away myself, my pride
This large, swollen shell
No pearl, no pearl, no pearl
No pearl - only stones to throw
And a million plate windows
I see you, there behind the tree
Poking out your tongue and dancing away
Pan like
I see you there, lying on my bed
Angelic with twisted wire
You had me with your cruelty
You had this Helga and spat out the pips
You never from the left,
Never on the left
When we danced I was always the man.

 

DOLL

A flowered box, innocent deadly
I wrap you in tissues
hoping to preserve your age
I cry from your beauty
Tiny crystals hang from your lashes,
they tie me in nooses, stabbed with
your tiny feet and breath
I bought you with blackmail
but I know you are mine
Drinking my brew of mosquitos
and massaged nighttimes, massacred
dream times
Sensitive tentacles wrap themselves
around my heart
Pulling me under into squid time,
into the doll world.

KATE LUDLOW lives in Brisbane, Queensland. She is currently in her final year in her journalism degree at Queensland's University of Technology. Her work has appeared in several university papers, independent newspapers, and a national encyclopedia of young Australian poets. Her influences are D.H Lawrence, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Evelyn Waugh. She can be contacted via E-mail at arl@uq.net.au