December #2

That's Enough Tough

When you break into tears

at Denpasar Airport,

because the pain in your ear

is an octopus-invasion of throb,

you have crossed the line.

Men stare, assessing.

Women don't cry, not here,

not ever.

One man tries to steal your backpack,

for you have given permission

by being vulnerable.

The official you ask for help

wishes to put you out of sight,

for adults don't cry,

and you must expect this sort of thing

as a strong woman travelling.

The airport medical staff

tell you to stop,

because it's not that bad.

No hospital for you.

Get on the plane.

You will be fine.

In the privacy of the aeroplane toilet,

you sag, and flush away all tags attached to you.

With what's left, you cry again,

afraid and alone.

The toughest act of all

is to say “I hurt",

and it's a badge of courage

to ask for help.

— Helen Patrice

November #2

The World They've Created Comes To A Full Stop

The day my daughter saw

that I did not know what might live

inside a basketball,

and my impatient reply

of 'I don't know, maybe fairies'

sealed my fate.

I was no longer her goddess,

and she turned to the outside world

to see who might ascend the throne.

Friends' mothers, her grandmother, teachers

all failing that steep set of steps

sooner or later,

so Britney Spears and the Spice Girls

adorned her bedroom walls,

and she chanted nightly:

'Oops, I did it again'

while my bath water reverberated in time

to their backbeat songs.

I was never again offered the throne or sceptre,

but deity light shone upon me briefly,

when she had her first baby,

and I was the only one
who could rock him to sleep.

— Helen Patrice

October #2

The Past Tells Me I Exist

Those genes I sowed years ago

on hard ground

raised dragons of fire and water

who roar at the world

in ways I never could.

They spliced themselves,

and now here come the results,

helixing down the hallway

to scramble onto my morning bed

and feed me cold toast.

They shiver like cells around me

with toy trucks and jam,

insisting on under-the-blanket tents.

Meditation detaches me from the world,

and these two hot, moist little junior dracos

bring me back to it.

They make me live hard
right down to my mitochondria.

— Helen Patrice

September #2

Create Speak Surrender

Create the space

in the heart

for an incoming love.

Speak the words

that cement it all

in a small diamond ring.

Surrender to the machine

that is wedding and family

and the dress, above all.

Create the space

in the body

for an embryo.

Speak the idea

into silence

and mother's disapproval.

Surrender to the machine

that is pregnancy, baby,

and the pedestal of  motherhood.

Create the space

in the marriage

for two babies, and a breakdown.

Speak the words

that all is ill, broken,

the truth of neglect.

Surrender to the machine

that is divorce, aloneness,

and a sheaf of bills.

Twenty years later,

and the hard work,

the break, the regrowth

is done.

Creation is poetry.

Speaking is unnecessary.

Surrendering is time with grandchildren.

Making love is both easier

and harder,
the second time around.

— Helen Patrice

August #2

Firm Body Upright

for Amanda Watson and Dani Cooper 

She pounds her gravity-bound knees,

with hands still free.

Her wheelchair, black and silver,

gleams solid in the stage light.

Rising behind her, dark dancer,

jerking the movements she cannot express.

Dancer sinews hip lift to shoulder roll,

as the music clanks on.

"My body is a cage".

The seated one is veiled in black,

legs seen and still,

face hidden.

The dancer does all the woman cannot:

not enough for either

to have only six minutes

of shining to others.

Her body is upright in her chair,

as the dancer leaves the stage.

She is firm, still whole and uninvaded
by surgeon or the harder-core drugs.

Her resolve is to keep living
through the pain.

— Helen Patrice

July #2

To Leave, To Love, To Make

To Leave

The heat leeches from my dry skin

as soon as I abandon the hearthside.

The house sleeps behind me,

and in my seven layers I go

into winter's night under new Moon.

Seven shades past black to true dark.

With finger whitened to bone, I cast circle,

shivering inside.

The earth plane drops away.

I am between the worlds.

To Love

To love the world so much

that magic must be done

close to equinox

when the Moon is yet to swell with possibility,

and the world teeters between death and life.

To love the world enough

to hold seven veils of chiffon

and have them fall, one, two, three,

through the chant

for the dropping of illusion,

truth to be revealed,

for honesty and love to show through.

Seven veils for the seven gates

of Inanna.

To love the world so much

that corruption is willed away,

and lies in government

grow thin as chiffon.

A chant, a mantra for each veil,

a gateway into light.

To Make

In the last minutes of the new Moon,

before She begins to birth herself,

with the power of seven elements – 

air, water, fire, earth, metal, spirit, mind – 

I feel in my cupped hands

the idea of how the world could be,

and it sings one united clean song.

I feed in energy, through the top of my head,

down my body, out my hands,

strengthening, enlarging the vision.

I let it go to embrace the world.

The spell is done.

Circle is open, unbroken.
The hearth welcomes me as a pilgrim.

— Helen Patrice

June #2

Falling Headlong: Autism

the years of curious reading
The Small Outsider

for pleasure and titillation;

to thank the gods it's nothing

to do with me,

this withdrawing from the world,

this other place within a person

that translates into rocking and spinning,

creature shrieks in the night – 

they were comforting

because I was safe.

the one word spoken

by Someone Who Knew

confirmed my every secret fear

and we were tossed down

a specific measured rabbit hole

to a desolate dune landscape

of broken grey quarries

and old entombed cities.

the one-way gate
to the greatest mystery.

— Helen Patrice

May #2

Furnace of the Sun

His scream blasts off

from the front garden launch pad,

as sudden as 'Challenger'.

It rises through the atmosphere,

busting its burners against gravity,

to break free of Earth's embrace,

and head for the furnace of the Sun,

where its heat belongs.

The outrage of not being allowed

to run on the road

in brand new winter shoes

that clomp like astronaut boots!

His eyes glitter with tears as bright as stars,

as Granny turns from best friend
to the worst of alien overlords.

— Helen Patrice

April #2

Landscape for Clues

after reading Marge Piercy's 'The Cat's Song'

The cat will not speak her troubles,

but hides with them in the back yard ferns,

her eyes suddenly duller than autumn leaves.

Her white chest fur is dirty,

her backbone a line of mountains,

sharp as the Andes.

The cat does not speak her illness.

Her instinct is to shelter and die.

Her body is a landscape

to be felt for clues.

Medicine drags her back to life,

too slow, much too slow.

The cat sits on the bed,
close to the edge.

— Helen Patrice

(Tilly did come back to full health from pancreatitis. At the time of editing, she is our largest cat, very healthy, very stupid, and her hobby is hallucinating that the fence moves.)

March #2

Learned To Assimilate

I refugee'd out of home to the school yard shore,

escaping solitude,

so I thought,

for a better way of life.

I learned that not everyone saw fairies,

or still had imaginary friends.

Soft ways were for the back yard

amongst the red glowing geraniums.

The asphalt of school met my hands and knees

as laughter held me down.

I hid my knowing,

drew a veil over my seeing eyes,

shut my truthful mouth,

and was led to
the detention centre of education.

— Helen Patrice

February #2

Breaking Point

Baby forces herself upon me,

triangular furred head

in the cup of my hand.

"Pat me pat me pat me," she intimates,

smoothing her neck, back, tail

under my palm.

She strops herself to the knife-sharp moment

it becomes too much.

Slashing tail, and then claws

lead to relaxation, 

all tension gone.

I am the cat,

social until I am not.

I sit at a party,

smiling and chatting,

conversation rippling like fur.

Tension builds until it prickles,

threatening to burst me like a summer plum.

I make my excuses and run

to open land or ocean.

The big sky soothes.

I purr until the next time.

— Helen Patrice

January #2

Paper Currency

The circle is cast,

we are between the worlds

of dark and light.

We hold strips of bark

from a gum tree that gives of itself

in summer.

On the bark,

beige-smooth one side,

dark brown and coconut rough on the other,

we have written those berry bits of ourselves

we wish to purge.

One by one,

we toss them into the fire,

shouting goodbyes

(and good riddance).

The cauldron fire leaps red to orange.

Sparks fly, and are stamped out

on the dry ground.

Mother Gaia, Father Chronos,

take this earth-money to the gods.

With empty branches within us,

we call for the good to come;

spiral from the sky and fill us.

— Helen Patrice