Half a Room Away

Dinosaurs survived
By making themselves smaller
Imagine the love
They could stow in their breasts
Right up till and including
The calamity

In art class the lesson is
The origins of green
I push a brush through yellow
And blue, it's kind of brown to me
But if we could agree
Just to call it green

I want to be the bird
You're painting
Half a room away
Just because
You are painting it
Just because it might be me

Dinosaurs survived
By becoming a story
Cradled in bone
They were ordinary once
Their day-to-day forever
Was a certainty

In art class, the question is
Where does the beauty lie?
In the hand that rocks the canvas, digs the brush
Into the pallet
Or the light that clasps
The thing that caught their eye?

I want to be the bird
You're painting
Half a room away
Just because
You are painting it
Just because
I want to be the creature
You're painting
Half a room away
Just because
You are painting it
Just because it might be me

~ Brendan Bonsack

Something Something Something

A bird is carrying
Strips of river garbage
Flapping from its beak
Up into the trees

A dog called Charlie
Is fighting with Ruby
Tied to a chair
And over there

Their humans
Under headphones
Doing slow a Zumba
Or whatever
To an instructor

A whistle dangle
On a chain
A twisted and unclaimed
Bus stop umbrella

Something are the words to
That headsong
Following you around all day
Like a toothache
Like a heartbreak
Like a sunny with
A chance of rain
No, stormy with the
Chance of a change
Something
Something
Something

Noisy Miners
Chicken salt chips
At the charcoal chicken shop
Out by the hospice

Eightieth birthday
Telling how the nuns
Used to beat her
And lock her under the stairs

A toddler lets loose
A balloon toward the sun
Howls into the future
The injustice, the terror

Placated by an ice cream
Brakes on the stroller
Scolding the brother
An anger of fingers

Something are the words to
That headsong
Following you around all day
Like a toothache
Like a heartbreak
Like a sunny with
A chance of rain
Like the gathering
Of cats in a lane
How they stare at you
As if they're to say
Something
Something
Something

The burnt out sedan
Left withered airbag
In the High Street
With a fresh parking fine
Hey mate, you got a light?
You got a light?
You got a light?
No, I got a song
I gotta headsong
That follows me around

~ Brendan Bonsack

The Way that it Goes

We'll be watching a man extracting a pram from a hatchback in a car park, his plastic bag catching and strewing apples to a certain bruise, and you will say: Who would even want a baby these days?

With the ices melting and the seas waiting to pounce, war-makers, madmen in every ounce of news and mushroom clouds at the edge of our dreaming, the poisons we eat, and dress up as food, the noise and the noise and the petrol fumes and the how hard we have to work for a deadlock door and a simple roof and the how many ways a child could die and how wide would that hole be to carry? Why would anyone want a baby?

And I will say: but just wait till you've held one. They reach out and touch your cheek as if to say: it's alright, I've got you.

~ Brendan Bonsack

The Returning

It was not the abstinence
But the returning
To the objects of the abstinence

Liquor had turned to vinegar
The corner store hamburger
Meaningless sinews

A kiss an intrusion
Your skin recoiling
At the slightest innuendo

You filled the new room
With succulents
You can starve them
And cut them
And still they grow
A flight above Vine
Take off your shoes
Wet the little sunshines
And count them
The come and the go

It was not the abstinence
But the returning
To the objects of the abstinence

The bus stop smoke
Turned to charcoal
And mean stares

A kiss an incision
Extracting the heart
By the tongue
As if you could grow another

You filled the new room
With succulents
You can starve them
And cut them
And still they grow
A flight above Vine
Take off your shoes
Wet the little sunshines
And count them
The come and the go

~ Brendan Bonsack