For Melissa
I heard your voice in the other room tonight.
Laughing, as always.
Made me smile, even over the music.
I pushed through the bodies, spilling my drink and splashing a few hellos,
But you were already gone.
That’s OK.
It was a great party.
Bryson Thomas
Roland was an artist who recorded albums of absolute silence.
“Turn them up ,”he’d say.
“Drown out all the noise.”
Roland also washed dishes at a small family-focused Italian style restaurant.
Bryson Thomas
Love is a soft blue wall behind the headboard,
Leaf-addled sunlight playing on a thigh,
The cool innocence of fresh-laundered sheets,
A languid Sunday.
Love is a crossword shared,
A soft-poached egg, espresso, sourdough morning,
Bamboo wind-chimes and dragonflies,
Adirondack chairs arm to arm.
Love is a hand on the knee,
Brunette DNA tousled about a finger,
Fresh squeezed, delivered daily,
The lyric to a gentle duet.
Bryson Thomas
The figure lanks from air to floor. A black rug hung for dusting.
A step. A stick. A step. A stick. Its shadow bastes the locked, oaken door.
A sharp rap admonishes the silence within.
The chaos of keys. A scrape of a latch. Hoarse hinges breaking rusted slumber. A desiccated waft of quit-witted souls regain the light.
No mind. There are always more.
The entrance confronts it, black-hole mouth thirsty with eternal gravity.
Stick. Step. Stick. Step. Stick. Step.
The figure is gone. It never was.
Bryson Thomas
They’re bringing back the Thylacine.
Tassie Tiger, if you will.
Extinct since 1936.
Wouldn’t that be brill’!?
Some DNA from Aussie jars,
Some RNA from Sweden,
Mix ’em in a dish – Voila!
First addition in New Eden.
But what if it turns and buggers off,
This focus of affection?
Doesn’t want to play a part
In its resurrection?
Does it even have a den
Once it leaves the lab?
A place to paint and decorate
Beyond the hunter’s nab?
Perhaps the bush will be too hot
Or missing tasty snacks
And all its favourite beaches full
Of tourists on their backs.
Will it be appropriate
To re-present a history?
Or is it better leaving us
A little bit of mystery?
What does it mean to all the earth
To blow its beasts away
Thinking we’ll just bring them back
On another day?
Tigers may not change the lines
That fashion their regalia,
But one wonders if to bring them back
May well be human failure.
Bryson Thomas
Restrain
Refrain
Insult
Explain,
Stumble and
Mumble and
Bruise and
Fumble,
Touch and
Tangle and
Creak and
Jangle,
Embalming
Disarming
Disgusting
Alarming,
Exhausting and
Taxing
Tensing
Relaxing,
Restoring
Exploring
Imploring
Assuring,
Adoring.
Bryson Thomas
Grief is such a timeless, impervious agony.
But we grow around it,
Surrounding it as a pearl embraces a painful intrusion.
Every so often, I find the pearl that holds you,
And I grasp it in my hand.
Then I put it back with the others.
Bryson Thomas
It started with a wink.
But that’s not where it started.
It started with abandonment,
And forced independence,
And bare-knuckled survival,
With a brain-thirst to slake,
With poverty that money can’t buy,
And the delight of square pegs.
It started with the Preschool of self-made amusements,
With the Governess of necessity,
With the Grammar of exclusion,
And the College of subsistence,
And obsidian wit.
It started with standing apart,
And standing out,
And standing the difference,
And standing at all.
It started with beauty,
It started with candour,
Love.
It started before we met.
Bryson Thomas
Jesus Saves is an ad for a bank,
Superman can’t find a phone-booth,
The crazy downbeats
Shouting out in the streets
Are probably talking on BlueTooth.
They can’t send a letter,
Which is probably better, when
IM’s go faster than light,
There’s batteries in cars,
And water on Mars
And coral reefs turning all white.
The songs don’t have notes,
And nobody votes,
The summer is definitely drier,
But they’ll be forgettin’,
All of that frettin’
With a coffee and feet by the fire.
Bryson Thomas
As I tread the forest
Autumn touches the soft pulse
Behind my ear.
Welcome me back sweet lover, she calls,
I’ve missed you
This long year!
She blows closer,
Draws warmth from my skin,
And oh, what a state you’re in!
Let me kiss you with colours.
And without a sound
She brings me to ground,
All tangles and heaves.
And then? She leaves.
Bryson Thomas
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