You
You skip through this gallery putting out eyes
of priceless Madonnas, Venuses, Helens.
You torch countless volumes of half-felt sonnets,
smash the guitar on which I would strum
my three-chord song of regret.
You bulldoze, trash and obliterate. You
lovely iconoclast, gorgeous barbarian;
you beautiful vandal.
Summer '98
The city open like a teenage heart.
Girls in singlets and
cotton dresses; every boy in love.
The afternoon drifts with ducks and swans,
before bright places on the foreheads of buses;
the mall bruised in orange and shadow.
Sprinklers in flower along North Terrace
and trees a million points of Christmas,
like perfume poured out.
Better than candle-light, to leave
the quiet on all evening.
Just conversation and the clacking of knives;
the windows glossy with darkness,
saucepans in the kitchen
shining like souls.
At this place where our talk ends, you smile.
I find there's nothing I want.
Rhyme
The way your slender-lovely neck
is revealed by your
taken-up hair.
How, when the bliss-cloud
passes over, I lose the
thread of where.
Because of your angel and mine
you wound with such
exquisite care.
Late
The wine sipped-down
to luminous buttons
and the last guests gone.
I snap the lights off, one by one,
leave only candles and a song to burn out.
On the couch you lie:
replete, content,
your beauty flushed and stacked
to tip. And then a kiss
like a latch.
Cats and dogs
These lazy days when cats bake
like loaves in windows
or sprawl on footpaths like accordions.
We lounge in the park
and contemplate what it might mean
to own a boat.
Every possible dog is here, slant-wise
on leads or nosing about
in a hundred rough and scratchy orbits.
Bees are bumping along the hedges.
There's not a care
in the sky.
Anti-valentine
You say to leave roses
for the overcrowded arms of bikies
You pop inflatable hearts and cut the strings
of pink and stodgy cherubs
You shoot down my skywriting plane mid-
cliché
This is not
our day.
Each night
Each night the river of your slow undressing …
I contemplate the fall
of your breasts
and think the words
of the poet:
May her breasts satisfy you always,
if I think at all.
Name
You called me by my name; it was
a name I hadn't heard before.
Aidan Coleman's poems have appeared in the Australian Literary Review, The Weekend Australian, The Age, Southerly, Island, Antipodes, The Warwick Review and Westerly. His first collection, Avenues and Runways (Brandl & Schlesinger) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. In 2011 he will be writing poetry with the support of an Australia Council New Work grant.