With one arm bent stiffly across the chest,
The other rigid by his side,
Legs curled like a foetus kinked at the hip.
Invasion is
One wit joking
That they could make a fortune
Hiring his withered arse out
To horny soldiers four weeks on the peninsula.
And it is everybody laughing.
And it is the dog finding it irresistible –
His dainty shy licking,
His cool wet nose nuzzling the creased leather-flesh,
And him having a go at it
Before anyone could stop him.
(Dragged it three feet before they shoo’d him away.)
It is the dog grinning and bounding and wagging its tail,
Joining in the fun,
Keen for another go
In next to
No time
At all.
I. Cruelty
Gold Tooth –
Who beat us worse than any of them –
Was a market gardener before the war.
He grew tomatoes.
II. Cruelty
Does it give him a hard-on?
Does it stiffen him up?
Does he return to barracks
And toss off under the blankets?
Brother
I’m worried about my brother.
He carries himself too tall.
They beat him more than most of us
Because he forgets to feel humiliated.
Fukuoka winter
No part of a woman is as soft as this –
My tepid penis in the cold morning
Pissing steam out of the ground.
Burial, 1917
Poor Dad.
I imagine a lull –
A sudden peculiar ceasing of the guns –
And the sound of shovels
Going to work in the stillness.
I’ve buried a few myself now.
A shovel plunging into the loam
Sounds like a gasp of surprise.
III. Cruelty
A cruel man will set himself
Above your cowering body,
Position and re-position his stance,
And then swing the stick.
He takes time to find the pain for you.
The white nub of the ankle bone,
The round knuckle of the wrist,
The elegantly curved collar bone.
And your balls of course.
He’ll aim for your balls
And laugh.
How I remember my brother
The whir of cicadas lends a bogus urgency
To the scone-dry heat.
Over the fence and in the house
It’s ennui and lethargy.
We are Cowboys and Indians
War-whooping in the backyard –
Quick draws on the pop guns
And keen on extravagant deaths –
Brave warriors disdaining warm milk,
Determined to camp in the cubby house ’til dawn
But coming at dusk when beckoned from the hot back-step:
C’mon kids. That’ll do.
Come and get your dinner.
I can still hear her
And the squeaky fly-screen slamming at our backs
As they fade into dark interiors.
Note: This poem was published in slightly different form as ‘Backyard Warriors’ in the journal Coppertales.
II. Grudges
Only dogs will forgive without rancour.
Closer to their elemental stuff
They understand the basic impersonality
Of sudden cruelty.
Taking life
I wasn’t looking for him.
It was before my capture.
He stalked into my sights
From behind a banana tree
And I killed him with a single shot.
Was he a deep thinker?
Frugality
Vic Paterson of Drummoyne
Had his arm crushed in a mine collapse
And died of gangrene three weeks later.
A former barrack-mate,
I helped to bury him.
As we lowered his tiny body into the grave
I noticed in his face that something was awry –
They’d taken his false teeth out.
He’d have hated that,
And two days later
The shambling Oklahoman
With a new wide smile.
A beating
Gold Tooth laid into me one day
With a bamboo stick.
I could tell he wasn’t serious
And took the blows
Bent around my knees,
Hands over my soft skull.
One, two, three, four.
I counted them off in my head
And glimpsing his split-toed sandals
Could think of nothing better
Than a man with his
Undies wedged up his arse.
Despair