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ARTS AND CULTURE

Confronting the shadow within

  • 21 August 2012

o Prozac

I'm very nearly free ofyou     Completely

Surgeon's hue & Snowy Owl'sprecision      Allthat's left'sto choose my insurrection

Turn, a fearsome lyrist —Eurydicean smithereens

Or bare my self, a god

— your bodyburns likeSemele

 

Nigredo

... various terms [...] have found their wayinto many a description of the individuationprocess: nigredo, for the dark night of the soul,when an individual confronts the shadow within— Hopcke

I don't love you anymore,I don't think I ever did— Eurythmics

Dark shadow, I don't love youanymore (you're deadly, thesea of Ezekiel; theflame forever roiling thebush; the soil, thorny, hardened;the wind of the beginning),

I don't think I ever did.

 

Mary's songafter Sexton; and Plath

O my God, such a painin the arse!Thirty years torturingvacuous youth:

enlacingblack rah-rahskirts, watered-down tunes.

Clubbing each night, I'd mimic GraceJones, heartscorchingmy ribcage, its sinew.

Like, hey,I was no more an artistthan Yorkshire'shideous sooth

-sayer.Cross my palmwith silver crowns she'd warble.Bless you

wretched children I'd betray.What a laugh,the glory,the assumption. The scoop

lays in Arcadia ...My only hope, my lastingact: I borea blond with baby blues.

I wanted to be famous,I wanted to be a big star.I went to New Yorkand my dream came true.

N. B. eighth verse from Madonna Live — The Virgin Tour, Warner Music Video, 1985

 

Tiger Lily knifes Captain Hook

'Pirate he ironed, boozestrewing its darkness, pirate ...arrr! as I strode the Hotel's unctuousdeck for the first time since the accident.__________________________Where's mywooden leg then, huh; my black and whitestriped corset; my shoulder-clawingmacaw; have I neglected Halloween?

Later, polystyrene at my table,he bobbed to the gobbled clock'stick-tock. If you was a man Idanever, never said nuthin ...______________________If youwere a man you could nevernever sufferthis hideous black leather patch.'

 

Holy Saturday

From a pine's still tip this blackdisconsolate god unlooses quavers.Where's the magpie, wattlebird

and mynah? Milky, honeyed caffeine scalds my palate.Two paddy wagons, two illumined hearsesfill the driveway: on one's tray

slumps an addict, handcuffed, faceless.Spilling up from concrete sheets: nothing like compassion;just the blindness of disciples, bald and shirred.

Stuart Barnes' poetry has been published in Qarrtsiluni, Mascara Literary Review, Overland, The Warwick Review, The Weekend Australian Review and VLAK: Contemporary Poetics & the Arts. His first accepted short story, 'Mother and Son', about his coming out, can be read at Verity La. He lives