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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                               #11/thyla11k-lhd AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 11 The Poetry of Liz Hall-Downs Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Liz Hall-Downs and Alice by Kim Downs, 2001. I sometimes i'm I my arthritic heart I she ran I diagnosis I poem for the non-visibly disabled I becoming I 27 years I sometimes i'm sometimes i'm these cockatoos flashing my sulphur crest and screaming sometimes these unripe olives bitter and small amongst silvered leaves sometimes i'm that raven, too much to say and saying too loudly, caw in the naked tree and sometimes i'm currawong, defiant song chasing everyone else away i'd rather be these rocks solid, serene, slow changing or that red-breasted wren, twitching my tail alert, but careful, delighting the new spring i'd rather be that shy wallaby self-protective, scratching my sleekness then bounding away to where green shoots grow alert and silently watching but mostly i'm that old hills hoist skewed and broken and rusting my lines all stretched and sagging useless for holding the washing and thankful for the friend who'll call maintenance in to straighten me out again Published in The Drunken Boat (USA) and Joint News (Australia). My Arthritic Heart I pretty young poets describe trees as 'arthritic' as if they, or trees, would know II 'you're too young to have that' said everyone. after 20 years am I old enough yet? III hammer with drugs the immune raging that hammers me, who needs heroin? IV lazy lazy ought to get a job at parties in the eighties unemployed, for any reason, equalled dole bludger, fair dinkum V life in the slow lane my brilliant career slips down the drain and then there's the pain ... ambition's for winners said the rich doctor little me, 23, didn't know yet i wasn't one VI my long-dead grandfather's walking stick, (etched 1896) steadied my standing made strangers ask what was wrong with my leg as if they had some right to know. one day the stick got stolen from a squat and I would have mourned much more for its loss had it not been a pain-free day had i not walked unaided all the way VII mr ambitious, keen to get into my pants lead me a merry dance spat it out like a curse   you're just   a cripple   with no future living on the goodwill of an invalid pensioner he takes the tram to work in his freshly-ironed shirt   you're just   a cripple   with no future and he's pierre cardin expensive french cologne can't cook, or even pay his way but knows well how to criticise the average dimensions of my thighs   i'm just   a cripple   with no future and so i shift his furniture his lovely clothes his big ego onto the front verandah and change the locks bolt my poor heart take the painkillers and cry in the dark VIII because of where i've been i overdose compassion pour the tea and listen for years and years, with no return, until the day my bandaged hands can't hold and pour anymore and my mind can't bear another knocking at the door. the day i take the nipple from the red slashed mouth of the insatiable is the day the bitching starts and so the phone stops ringing and i stare at television to silence the sadness seeping from my arthritic heart IX they say they are mapping the DNA code and will find that switch that creates overload will learn how to turn it off and on but i can't get excited i've waited so long for my prospects to change for the pain to be gone Published in Four W (Australia) and poetinresidence.com (Australia). she ran tells her she is worthless - bitch, hag, whore - and she shrinks to the size of a pea outwardly eats herself whole fat, shunned in the schoolyard, and cannot speak, is shy and full of pain and grief, full of loss for times now past - when a father loved and a child had room to laugh and play and be flawed. now the steps she paced down his funeral aisle seem to dog each day - the woman's screams, the unsought punishments and imperfections she has one chance only - escape or die, slatternly Cinders, full of food and self-pity. it is no choice. she runs, into the future no parachute or plan just a raw survival instinct leaves everything, even that young man who held and heard the twisted words, the years of beating the poor girl down with the stick of her unloveability. she ran, unhinged into the future, into the jaws of her pain. Published in Four W (Australia) and poetinresidence.com (Australia). diagnosis I at the point of diagnosis it's all too much to take in, so you refuse its clammy entrance, and make plans - to hitchhike across the nullabor while you still can - to go out dancing every night, to emulate flight, to be high on life high on the vibration through the soles of your beating feet that take you where your brain commands, without fuss, no refusals you know that the blood will refuse soon enough, and may wage war on your innocent joints so you refuse its daily attacks - its morning conundrums, its cold night sweats - take raw life in, pure oxygen racing against time / to get it all done all the things you thought several decades would take reduced to a slim / volume of years reduced to diagnosis / tears II overnight, the tight spring that had just begun uncoiling snapped closed. gone in two words the dreams of years, the plans to set my world aright through hard work and endurance i did not need to consult the medical textbooks still, I looked, vapid hope that things would be better than my nurses' memory had filed away - 'rapid degeneration', 'out-of-control- auto-immune reaction', a very sad song; prognosis: lifelong my own white cells, oh macrophages! turn against me, eat my substance, my joint capsules, choosing a specific site for each feasting, I go to bed and sweat and sweat, nurse my pain and swelling with beer and codeine take the pills, the specialist says, endure the savages of stomach lining the fuzzy nodules of fainting suppress this excess of self-preservation this immunological self-destruction and plaster on a braver face be 'nice' inside this iron maiden take my hopes, abandon them Published in The Drunken Boat (USA). poem for the non-visibly disabled i don't work.                                   i'm lazy you ask. i tell.                                i'm a hypochondriac. details make you uncomfortable.     i'm a bore. i don't want to discuss it.                you were only 'being nice'. i'm not talkative.                            i'm unsociable. this is the diagnosis.                       i should change my diet. i'd like to be healthy.                       it's all psychological. i'm not in a wheelchair.                   there's nothing wrong with me. i can't come to meetings.                i'm not interested. i don't want your advice.                  you're offended. i can't get out of bed.                      i'm attention-seeking. they put needles in my arms.           i'm a junkie. i'm depressed.                                i should have a more positive attitude. i'm lonely.                                       you never visit. i'd like your friendship.                    i'm too demanding. i'd like to go out.                             i'm no fun. i'd like a relationship.                       you take my independence. i'm not a sexual acrobat.                  i'm selfish. i'm in pain.                                      i'm whingeing. Published in Under Her Eyes (Australia), Big Bang (Australia) and Reveille (Australia). becoming continually punished my sin was that of becoming her hitting and hitting and hitting me for not letting her dictate my self to the letter as if what resides within this brain as if this blood typed rare and strange belonged to her to shape or maim years on i still carry the thrum - her hand whipping through air to connect with skin - and am grateful that eyes, spidered with red capillaries and skin, blushing red with the force of her slaps healed fairly quickly, (physically). I learned to hold elbows in close to my belly head bowed and hands clawed like an eagle's talons clawed in the way later illness would emulate leaving me, madam frankenstein to unlearn these things: pain's language, politics of fear, and medical marvels that leave me lying drugged and helpless here. 27 years hard to believe it's been 27 years since you stared at my burgeoning 13-year-old breasts from your hospital bed, marvelling and horrified at the same time, at your child so quickly becoming. then heralding a new world with your ashes scattered over those roses, a world that did not include your blue eyes, filled with love and future. i have wandered, fatherless, these years, and in times of hardship - and there have been many - still recall you with hot bitter tears: the throwing of balls to hands like sieves, your laughter at how i threw 'like a girl', the vision of your speckled skin against white sand, your shy half-smile at a child's bright prattling. but, girl no longer, your leaving was childhood's death knell, and the world since has never be so kind, so loving. father, if you had stayed, what poem would i have been? Published in Small Packages (Australia). About the Poet Liz Hall-Downs Liz Hall-Downs has been reading and performing poetry in public, on TV and radio in Australia and the USA, and publishing in journals, since 1983. She holds a BA from Deakin University (Victoria) with major studies in Professional Writing & Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. Some of Liz Hall Down's publications include: Fit of Passion, (with Kim Downs), (Fit of Passion Collective, 1997), Girl With Green Hair, (Papyrus Publishing, 2000), People of the Wetlands, (Brisbane City Council, 1996), Mountains to Mangroves, and Mountains to Mangroves Haiku Cycle, (Brisbane City Council and Queensland Wildlife Preservation Society, 1999), Blackfellas Whitefellas Wetlands, (with B.R. Dionysius and Samuel Wagan Watson), (Brisbane City Council & Boondall Wetlands Management Committee, 2000).    [Above] Photo of Liz Hall-Downs and Alice by Kim Downs, 2001. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.11 (June, 2006)