Words and Illustration

Some One

I miss the cigarette skating
About the corner of his mouth
He was the one I least expected
To offer me flowers

When I was young
And underweight
That was how
My humour was made

I assumed to never need the frames
All the while reviewing the words
Which are now obscure in all that has elapsed

Did you know someone?
Did you know someone?
He was someone to know

So I concede to myself
That having a belief in no one
Is like believing
That mourning will never return

Will the crying ever be done?
There will always be grieving
And he will always be someone

Did you know someone?
Did you know someone?
He was someone to know

Words and Music by Tylea Copyright 2016

Barn Owls

White clouds shuffling
The pointed branches of the snow gums outreaching
Like bony, arthritic fingers
Knuckles hollow and swollen
Kneading at the copper sky

In the grimace of twilight
The thought started like a fire fly
Lighting up the dark
Sticking the glint right to my eyes
Departing whites of my knuckles
I could not see my hands

As the moon rose forlorn
Barn owls howled a darkened warning

Forgiveness
No Forgiveness
Forgiveness

In the twilight a fire lay smouldering
Growling and hissing
Re-birthing and fanning
The smoke rising into black
Mangled hands from broken glass
Shattered cracks through firing ash

As the moon rose forlorn
Barn owls howled a darkened warning

Forgiveness
No Forgiveness
Forgiveness
Forgiveness
No Forgiveness
Forgiveness

The sound of her shoes dragged and pushed the chalky gravel
She heaved around remembrance

As if it was needed

As the moon rose forlorn
Barn owls howled a darkened warning

No Forgiveness

Words by Tylea Copyright 2017

I look back from the gate
A crow steals my breath
I stare at the beauty
For as long as I can take it

This is the day
Meant for goodbyes
Goodbye to our dreams
In the house that we shared
For all

Every wall of tongue and groove
Every corner
Every flower
Every bird
Before every storm
Every song that we have ever been shown
Now flown

This is the day
That we say goodbye
To the ironbark’s wrinkles
And the tallow wood

This is the day
We close the doors

A stranger arrives
With a bouquet of steroid geraniums
Propped up with fluorescent pipe cleaners
These are for our successors
She isn’t yours, just yet

All the notes from the kitchen
The speaking of the floorboards
Are still ours

It is time
To try something new
And leave this open country

All I want is openness, like anyone

A place to write
A place to be
A place surrounded by the swells of honeysuckle gums giving in to the breeze
The sound of the wind
Whipping clean clothes to a “crack”
The hissing and skipping of brown snakes
And echidnas bothered by a casio in the dark.

Today is the day

I hand the keys to a woman
With a country smoker’s smile

I wail in the car to the radio
Along the road back

Until I learn
A terrorist attack is as easy as 1, 2 , 3
When Tony Abbott announces

“All you need is
A knife, an iPhone and a victim”
And this shakes me off the spectrum
“Yes, I am back Brisbane”

Words and illustration Tylea Copyright 2016

Some look astonished
While some may give way
They sink to the sea bed
And leave the lungfish drift away

The light of the world is shrinking in this aquatic holocaust
Faces like fish, in the depths of the ocean
Eyes immersed into white, saturated flesh

Isn’t it quiet?
Isn’t it clear?

A shield from cloudy water
As salt grips at a canvas suit
This eroding process paralleled their story
With no word spoken of any sinking

A heavy, copper helmet
Clamped tight upon the corselet
The sound of the world subsides
Compression frets about his head
As the water-tight seal holds shut

The horse shoe weight presses firmly down on his breast bone
Heaving with remorse
Pulling on the air valve
He signals diver down

Goodbye was just a word
Even though she heard it flow through the ridges of his teeth
She hoped his clamped jaw would press three syllables to mend
And so she pretended he would whisper the three syllables with softness again

Now that it’s quiet
Isn’t it clear?

She’d filled his suit with tears

The old sea she’d been thanking
Was everything,
That he wasn’t

(Words, Illustration and Music by Tylea Copyright 2017/2019)