resistance

poem for Catherine

I'm female, right?
Well, true.
But I was never having kids.

The atomic clock
tickticktick to midnight
bunkers in our dreams
not you.

One day I said
"why not"
a different ticking.
so we did:

you; my greatest irony.


Merilyn Childs, 30/12/2014

heaven help Sarajevo

there is wind
wild on the mountain,
there are angels flying
there are angels with atlases,
compasses, helmets with lights,
picks, shovels, climbing ropes,
feathers for the night.

there are no angels
but the angels that are there
(peering between the crevices)
have wind in their bloodied hair.

Merilyn Childs, 7/2/1994

Preparing

it feels possible
a sentence; controlled/
verb, noun, participle, colon
acts/dates/lines:
go that way.
then sun falls
burns grass/seers
the smell of charcoal
the smell of charcoal
smeered

Merilyn Childs
29/12/2014

The inside feel of names

for RG

Some names, tag-like:
there by accident, fingers
stained and the echo
of dried leaves blowing.

Some names belong:
they pack bags/
find their owner.

your name found you.
Bringing circles, clusters:
Sometimes curvation
Sometimes rubble
Sometimes chocolate/chilli/vowel
horizons
and journeys to wh/y



Merilyn Childs
11/12/2015

Poem for my son

the Sarajevo mother
her dead son wrapped
in war and the bloody arms
of hunger, 1992

Did you know I wrote about her?
my young poet's voice
feeling into
the crevices of frown/eyes/
the deep keen of mourning
there where she held
onto rubble, falling.

I hear you breathing
the world sucked in/out
no grenades in your pocket
and I forget for long seconds at a time
the Sarajevo mother.

I hear you leaping
the world in your lungs,
sucked in/out
you: my joy.

this is success:
your hair streaming upwards
sun/clouds hunger/tears
your epidermis wings/anchors
your world like paint
you are colours
you are rainbow/
sunshine in water
deep to somewhere/anywhere
paintbrush in your pocket.


Merilyn Childs
Sept 23rd 2014 

On the downing of the MH-17

this skin of me
at edges and depths
carries memory
the betrayal of tragedies
never expected

had i known you
- before that fall to field
amidst smoke and steel
and then your life a passport
in a stranger's hand-
i might have smiled:
offered you tea.
I might have disliked you,
It would not have mattered.

you were someone
unknown
yet here you are
etched, remembered.
look here
always:
always in this skin of me



Merilyn Childs
July 18th 2014