Thursday 21 February 2013

A Bird Sized Coffin




The bird was tiny, even to six year old me, it must have been a baby bird. I don’t know how it came to be in our rose garden, lying there with its neck bent the wrong way entirely. Maybe it had fallen out of its nest while its mother was away looking for worms. Or, maybe a cat had found it and had run off with it, and someone must have seen the cat and yelled at it and chased it off, but by then the cat would have already broken the poor thing’s neck. Or, maybe the baby bird’s mother had been killed somehow and it was an orphan and it wandered off and had come to some unknown strife. It was tiny and mostly brown with some blue feathers, still fluffy as only baby bird’s feathers are. I don’t really remember now why I did what I did next, and up until recently I had forgotten that I did it at all.

I took the tiny corpse in my chubby six year old hands, cradling it gently; I took the bird to my dad’s shed in our back yard. He was at work, only my mum was home and she was busy inside so she wouldn’t have noticed me slipping into my dad’s shed, even though it was right opposite the kitchen window. I laid the little body down on my dad’s work bench and opened his tool box. I rustled around in it for a minute, taking various tools out, examining their potential usefulness and replacing them, until I found a small chisel and some pointy nosed pliers. I placed them on the bench next to the bird and then I thought very hard. I was reasoning with myself, even then at six I knew that it was a good idea to weigh my desires against the possible consequences of acquiring the object of my desire. Although I doubt the process would have been quite as eloquent as the words I now use to describe it. Probably it followed the lines of: How hard will it be? Will mum and dad be angry? Well the bird is already dead…

With that process out of the way I steeled myself and took the chisel in my left hand, it had a yellow resin handle, and even though it wasn’t a big chisel it still seemed huge in my six year old hands, and even bigger compared to the tiny bird on the bench. I took the pliers in my other hand, realised that they were a bit stiff from lack of recent usage and too difficult to open and close with just one little hand. So I placed the chisel down and used both hands to pry open the pliers, I angled them against the bird’s head, until the pointy ends rested at either side of the bird’s tiny beak, and I squeezed the pliers shut. I held the pliers tight in my right hand, and once again picked up the chisel with my left. I positioned the chisel at the place where the tiny creature’s beak met its head. I lowered the chisel and pushed down hard on that place.

I realised quickly that the process would be gorier than I had initially expected, and more than once I considered stopping, but I wanted that tiny beak. I think at the time I expected that it would come away simply and cleanly and I would string it onto a necklace or something, I hadn’t taken the time to consider the second part of the process. When I had almost severed the beak from the bird’s head I put the chisel down and took the bird’s limp body in my left hand, while still holding the beak with the pliers in my right. I wiggled the pliers around and pulled gently with my left, the last sinews holding the bird’s beak to its face broke.

I had the beak, and I was disappointed. I found there were pieces of feather and muscle still attached to it; I had neither the finesse nor the tools to clean it as I had hoped. It didn’t look the same as it had on the bird, it had looked marvelous to me, like a little jewel, and that is why I wanted it. But now it was flawed, it was scored with chisel marks and bloodied by the mutilation I had rendered it. It was ruined and I understood then that I had ruined it.

I was only six when this happened. I don’t think I told my parents, in fact I don’t think I told anyone, I was ashamed. I went into the house and washed my hands. My mum called out to me “Bubby, what are you doing?” “Just playing, mum.” I went to my room and found the little wooden box that I kept my doll’s shoes in. It was a little wooden thing with a sliding lid, I didn’t know much about coffins except what I had seen in cartoons; if I had, I would have been able to better appreciate the appropriateness of that box. I tucked it under my jumper, in case my mum saw me with it and asked what it was for, and returned to dad’s shed. I put the tiny mutilated body into the box and nestled its beak next to its face and closed the box. I picked up the shovel, which always lent against the shed wall just inside the door, and went around to the derelict flower bed on the side of the house where no one ever went.

 There was about a metre and a half between the house and the high white wall that separated it from the road beyond. I put down the little coffin, and handled the overly-large shovel with both hands. Afraid of discovery, I dug the shallow grave as quickly as I could. When I was satisfied I lent the shovel against the white wall and knelt in front of the hole I’d dug. I picked up the little coffin and placed it reverently in the grave. I knew that people said things at funerals and prayed for the dead person, and I wanted to do it right. So I said “Dear God, thank you for this bird, it was very pretty, and I am sorry I tried to take its beak.” I covered the grave and replaced the soil. I return the shovel to the shed and cleaned the mess off dad’s bench with a bucket of water and a rag, which I threw in the street bin afterward. I think I left a stain on the bench, but my dad never asked me about it. I went back into the house and washed my hands and my arms all the way up to my shoulders, I changed out of my dirty clothes. I sat on my bed and I cried. And after a while I forgot.


Monday 11 February 2013

The Tumble Poem

 
 
You had to break two of my ribs just to move my heart
But that is what the chest compressions require.
Your mouth on mine then you break my chest to pieces
I was in the hospital for weeks and out of kindness
You came to visit me. You saw the machine and the lines
Plugged into my veins, the red snake on the monitor
Proof of my heart, a broken heart, but it’s close enough
 
A box with sections keeping me sane
A nurse with charts declaring me lame
A doctor with hands pressing my neck
A couple of ribs stealing my breath
 
You gave me a heart attack but I was aware 
There are risks involved with any sport, I’m old
My knees don’t move like they used to and my eyes
Don’t see you no more. A song for you and it’s ruined my voice
It’s ruined my eyes and wasted my choice it’s the most
predictable story told in with the new out with the old.
 
You’re a cowboy without a horse or a gun or a reason
You’ve broken the law with murder,  theft, treason
You’re running now through windless deserts
Telling truths and stealing dreams
You left your horse with me, tethered
to an empty water trough by a tree
In an abandoned town with tumble weed
And whisky instead of water
 
 

 

Friday 8 February 2013

We think sad thoughts


Up high and falling off
                             picking up, standing up, shooting up and gripping hard.
                                                                                                             Really hard

 Release, a purpose and glass
                                          Watching it drop, slowly; fall… and break.
                                                                                                             Shatter

Night time and headlights
                                 A tree, silhouetted, menacing, beckoning.
                                                                                             Collision

Pull the lever and brace
                                  Heads, shoulders, knees and toes
                                                                                    Shatter.

Top floor and flying
                            The city and the moon, the grey and pavement.
                                                                                                 Collision.

Feet Steady and falling
                              Lips, ears, eyes and face. A hand, gripping hard…
                                                                                                        Really hard. 
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