zoejparsons
Nov 23, 20222 min
Published by Femzine
‘I praise the scoring drought, the flying dust,
the drying creek, the furious animal,
that they oppose us still;
that we are ruined by the thing we kill.’
- Judith Wright, ‘Australia 1970’
‘Like, when I / use the word ‘eternity’, when what I mean to say, is ‘water’.
- Amanda Joy, ‘Almost Pause / Pareidolia’
aqua vitae / aqua mortis
aqua mortis / aqua vitae
They said three rivers
fell from the sky
They called it unprecedented:
but that was a lie
There was a castle that
swam to great heights
& children fell.
I thought of Les Miserables;
of revolution, yes, but more of
people singing;
of castles on clouds
& my tears join the
flood
Streets turned rivers birth
amniotic sacs of screams
and we wonder how to hold
water
in our humble hands,
how to hold
time
when our humble hearts go
tick
tick
tick
to the beat of rain drops
until the rain becomes a
roar. tonare: the word stunned
comes from thunder.
How do the butterflies fare?
when cyan fingers smudge
pastel sky & sea and
lay the earth bare
blues weep
into bloodstreams,
cyanosis:
may suggest a problem
of the lungs or heart.
Delicate wings fray,
no rest from fluttering
no place to stay
water-
logged
wings,
flooded cells,
lyse
sounds too close to
lies
7968.88kg of uranium-
rain graced Maralinga in
its fall
Little Boy we learn about
Little Black Boys Dead
we Don’t
crystal water muddied
eddies churn up / down
muddle and muck
we don’t give a fuck
when mother weeps
Pouring like blood from the
open wound of
boundless plains
to plunder
& her tears join the
flood
Tampa bloodies the
whole ocean & we
toss bottles overboard
(and babies)
hoping words
will reach someone,
somewhere
something...
Turbulent tides
of time
tumble over
tortured souls
trapped under
the surface.
& we cannot
breathe.
What pumps the stream
when there is no heart?
My friend said she thought
the moon would taste like
marshmallows:
musk at dusk.
So much softness
in a world so harsh.
& until strong arms
arrest their pull
waves keep tumbling,
pregnant clouds
keep rumbling,
and we stumble up-
on the shore
Atoms that once were
water - because matter is
never created,
nor is it
destroyed - flow
through streams / stars /
tears / space / oceans:
one
We fight against tides,
amidst ourselves,
but cannot fight fluid-
ity
Walter Lehman (‘’) wrote of
a seal who broke the
glassy surface (ceiling)
to frolic in the shallows.
A blind woman cannot see
confined to the gallows
of her mind, never free.
Men with grubby fingers
grasp at our core,
wretched cattle catch on
barbed wire, their plush
flesh (that never belonged
to us in the first place),
never laid to rest
but !
Don’t be afraid!
Don’t be scared!
It won’t hurt you
...
How to make sense of
down-
upside
worlds?
Mother!
Mother!
Children cry out in
torrents and tongues
wipe cheeks with
trembling fingers
& the tears of the universe join the
flood
quomodo ex aqua creare ignem?
aeternitas.