BBQ Wallaby

How Stupid of Me

It has taken years,
twenty or more,
to remove my comfort zone
and leave me naked, exposed.

Yet, you do not shy away
from this shabby figure
who I tried to hide,
all that time.

Now I know my comfort
is where you are.
It always had been
and will forever be.

But I could never see it blinded
within my own safe place fabricated
from delusional self-trust and ambiguity.
How stupid of me.

The ONE

It was a lame attempt, really --
to wash the grotty street,
in those dark, early morning hours,
trying to remove, to conceal,
Sydney's insidious coating
of grime and grease and stain.

And it was a lame attempt
that gloomy, howling night,
to write what I did; that effort,
to exorcise the entrenched,
insipid, smothering fear of being
run-over, washed-up and useless.

"What do you want from me?
"When are you going to tell me?
"Is there any real hope for me?
"Can't you see what surrounds me?
"Can't you feel what I feel?
"Where is the reality of your promises?”

I wrote so much more,
that shadowless night.
That night the street cleaner's spray
washed up over my shoes, vainly
trying to cleanse me, to heal
the scourge and pain,
clawing hopelessly,
like a drowning, cornered rat.

No-one will ever see
the crumpled pages,
not a word of what I scrawled,
that night. It was just too dark;
too dark to read, to feel,
too dark to see, to know.
It was way, way too dark, even for me.

It is enough that I penned it at all --
But to allow others into that pain?
That isn't fair to them, to you.
There are none that understand.
No, not one.
Yet, I know I am wrong.

Potpourri Pieces: Fragments of Australian Life...

The Australian Woman’s Weekly, 23 April 1938, Editorial page,

Point of View … WHO’s BOSS?

“Four women at a cultural debate the other day argued at some length the question, “Should a Man be Master in his Own Home?” Nobody really won the debate. No body ever will. When the woman takes the man’s place and dominates everything, the home is likely to fall to pieces. But when you see a man calmly satisfied that he is master in an orderly household, then you can see that everything is properly under control—the subtle control of the intelligent women.”

~~ PP asks, "Did someone really say that?"