TYNESIDE POETS!

TYNESIDE POETS!

Thursday 17 January 2013

Two poems by Laurice Gilbert, National Coordinator of the New Zealand Poetry Society.


Percival Street

We proposed over Marcel’s Peppered Steak.
Me first, you first, one or the other.
From the Dixon Street steps
the lights of Wellington shone
at half-mast for the imminent death
of my current relationship;
the one you invaded,
the one I was ready to betray.
A room that should be storing bric-à-brac;
instead a single bed with evidence
the sheets have never been washed.
A succession of overnight guests.
Crestfallen curtains failing to meet;
a communal duvet past its use-by date
hovers over us long enough to disguise
reunion timidity. A minute, maybe three.
Laughter from surrounding student flats.
A couple in the next room argues and
our six-week separation drifts to nothing.
Night life on The Terrace breathes around us.
Scramble of skin meeting skin, face to face,
stomach to stomach. The scent of sensuality.
And the end of the night.
And the going home for breakfast.

So many breakfasts these thirty years,  
though none with the taste of Percival Street
where unwashed sheets and failing curtains
defied the boundaries we thought we knew.

Laurice Gilbert

Safe at Home

Night, and there is nothing outside my bedroom window
No red corrugated iron shed, by day ringing with the sound of Dad’s tools
No aviary of zebra finches peeping into the kitchen window below
No fairy flowers on the fuchsia, no posies on the hydrangea
No washing line to swing from, kicking the top of  Dad’s birthday kowhai
No swing of thick grey pipes from the council tip, carrying me high enough to reach          
the wash-house roof
No square of lawn piled high with leftover wood, sometimes a princess’s castle,       
sometimes a pirate ship
No outside toilet populated by whirling dervish daddy-long-legses
No hole in the side fence where I slip past the leathery taupata to visit Jeannie, who            
feeds me chocolate cup cakes and Robinson’s lime cordial when Mum is in hospital
No hill where the Governor-General lives surrounded by pine trees; where a Bad     
Thing happened to a lady so we are forbidden to play in the spicy darkness with the       
cushioned floor; where the policemen check up on you if you do
It is night so there is nothing outside my bedroom window. Except, of course, for    
passing spaceships flashing their comforting red and green lights.

Laurice Gilbert