FOREWORD
My poetry is multi-faceted. It speaks about my life, my awakening understanding of life itself, my father, my passion for the arts, the joy of the everyday and the people around me.
At times I am a voyeur, like all artists, a disconnected viewer of strangers, particularly those people in trains or cafés. I reflect on voices in the dark, dreams and nightmares, existentialism and the human condition.
My decision to incorporate some of my artworks with my poetry is quite recent because I use a different creative process, a separate, impulsive, abstract part of my psyche to write. My artworks are solid, but my poetry is liquid.
Jennifer Trezise 2015
GRIEVING FOR A CHILDHOOD LOST
unknown places fill my thoughts
but cannot form the shapes,
or meanings sought.
mysteries filled with spilling tears
give definition to my searching here,
with pen and paper in my woman years.
blackest nights and dew wet soil
rise to meet this lonely child
finding solace inside windows small.
grieving for a childhood lost
searching for a father past
two-faced angel aghast.
mystery with a fearful hold
questions formed on lips so marble cold
little girl but nine years old.
darkest fears and dew wet fright
rise to meet this lonely child
running slippered through the wicked night.
CHILDHOOD TOYS
the worn felt mat and plastic tambourine,
old wooden see-saw, painted green,
clothes airer, cubby house did make,
fort, a stump and sword, a stake.
clothes line prop, a mast so fine,
when sheets, like sails were on the line.
mandarines, a feast of orange flesh,
a swing, all wobbly, was the best.
billy cart, to fetch field mushrooms home,
from paddocks where the cows did roam.
two wheeler bike and treehouse high.
outside the house, my life would always fly.
kids in the street, gutters dammed with rock,
we ran the beat, came home at six o’clock.
remnants now and only in my mind,
as time has left all childhood toys behind.
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
favourite stories, often told
become folklore with status bold
and fantasies then lies might be
embellished over, one, two, three.
glimpses of past memories
like shafts of light are sent to tease.
real or just imaginings?
I often wonder at these things.
daylight provides sweet, joyful tears
black nights the threat of darker fears.
how fragile now the mind to play,
what to remember day to day?
allow to creep in recess bare
or fill the gap, no space to scare?
what would philosophers advise?
fill up your life, seems very wise.
uninvited midnight thoughts,
not memories, unconscious wroughts.
at your peril, voices say,
I need to push the dark away.
THE CHOOKYARD
the chookyard was so evil
the goat ate daisies there
and carried out on hessian
he was bloated, dead, to scare.
the ram knocked down the fences,
time, the chookyard shed.
the rooster met his death
between the palings red.
the moon and rain a pathway
scored a scar through there.
the little girl went stumbling
terrified with fear.
a piece of string with door key
’round her neck was worn.
her slippers never saved her
from the rooster’s scorn.
the goat who died from pollen
‘scaped the yard you see
and the little girl, well
she turned into me.
BEYOND THE CHOOKYARD FENCE
the old, gnarled jacaranda
provides memories inate
its branches cascade over
the worn palings of the gate.
above, my childhood treehouse
its floor with grey boards worn
solace from the danger
of the rooster’s scorn.
the little gate an entry
to my refuge, now rejects
with rusty lock and hinges
stiff with decades of neglect.
the weeds and vines entrap me
a barrier inane
why can’t I just get through there
to be safe and held again
in the arms of my loved neighbours
my protectors down the lane
who kept their back door open
through the dark nights and the rain.
THORN
the dark surrounds the well worn track
through bracken, thicket, razorback,
the thorn cuts through and tears the skin
of child tormented from within.
ne’er feels the wounds just surface deep,
more important just to keep
on moving through that pathway bare
to safety from the rooster’s lair.
to eiderdown and crisp white sheets
now oozing blood, heart’s racing beat.
the dark enfolds, her eyelids blink,
and muddy feet on feathers sink.
sneak out again as daylight breaks,
back to the house where mother waits.
only to repeat once more,
when father can’t get through the door.
MEMORY’S WOMB
speaking to a stranger
in a small bare room.
we gaze incessant
words our vehicle,
yet my soul’s tomb.
exploring truths
which only fantasies might be
years of wondering
might only give validity
to childhood mysteries
draped in fear
and buttoned up in garments
made to fashion stories here
in memory’s womb.
WHAT FATE THE ROOSTER MAN?
left wondering, as we always will,
what slayed the bird,
his feathers strewn with blood,
a fall from grace, a blow, a kill.
did his body make a thud?
in the darkness of the night,
the cockerel lost his final round.
was death preceded by a fight?
what was the final awful sound?
dead as only dead can be,
the body swollen, tongue engorged and dry,
yet six more days in lifeless purgatory,
can one presume to ask the question, why?
what preceded his demise?
what did he do or say, to snap the final straw?
what tipped it over, more threats and lies,
the rooster spread recumbent on the floor.
left to lie ’til sunrise,
brought reality to roost,
the chickens in a panic, sanity reduced,
the single act, calamity, on the chook yard floor.
then, with the body carried off,
life was calm once more.
THE ROOSTER
what significance this rooster man?
chest puffed out and red neck bare
was he the victim of the crime?
innocently hanging there
tongue engorged and pointed down
hung to dry on palings worn
symbolic crucifix of man
staring out with eyes of scorn
ruled the chook yard day and night
every perch he called his own
now forced between the nails and posts
he’d found his end, his only home.
Jennifer Trezise ... Artist & Poet 