australia sonnets

Australia Sonnets



she’s doing history
over in Perth
and doesn’t really mind
being away from home.
she loves to lie
on the white sands
of the city’s beaches. once, on a dare,
she slyly slipped out her left breast
and snorted at those apes,
eyes breaking like sores
as they worked their frustrated paws.
everything about them is so… grey.
it’s sickening they survive
so well - can they do nothing but pullulate?

she thinks of home,
far away over those red sands
drowning her mind.
it’s hard to survive
this country, its history
a mess of sores,
a history of apes.
mouthing learned words like … “pullulate”,
they call themselves blameless, but they lie.
it’s disgusting how they dare
to pick so at this country’s tender breast
with such savage, greasy paws.
they’ve mauled it, left all lifeless, grey,
and chased her all the way to Perth.




clearly Perth
wasn’t far enough. can she dare
make such running home?
how can she survive
this land, its history,
this mass of grey
beating her breast?
the dance of apes
is danced now in her mind.
they…well…pullulate
her spirit’s teeming sores.
it’s enough to give one pause:
does the only chance of peace now lie
under those unspeaking sands?

what does “pullulate”
mean anyway? what is history
but the sweep of shifting sands?
what place is left to dare?
it’s neither Cairns nor Perth.
if she hopes to survive,
she must find a home
for a battered mind,
a lonely, aching breast.
she says her heart is happy as it apes
its cultured lessons, turning grey;
drained as she is from their sores,
what is left but to lie,
her hands becoming paws.