No Country For Young Women

I am a gardener.
But not your common variety:
More of a haughty culturalist,
An autocratic arborist,
A green-eyed jailhouse jardinier.

I sow and reap and reap and sow,
And plant gardens in the east;
I dig unnamed watercourses,
And give away all I grow,
Hedged around with conditions.

This is no country for young women:
Begotten, born and back-broken,
Amongst the fields, amongst the seed;
I fence the trees that they may need,
And curse the fruit, the fruit, the fruit.

I am the sole harvester
Of a dim-remembered age;
The lonesome arbiter
Of thyme and sage, because
I am the gardener.

Russell J Turner – November 2009

the buck starts here

i remember the eyes of children
strung out on wires
i remember the thighs of mothers
feeding the fires
i remember the sighs of fathers
gathering the bones of their families in hessian sacks
stumbling through the graveyards of europe
paying passage to the promised land
with their wits and their mouths and their memories
with barely a dollar to rub together
for a cup of cold comfort coffee
because the buck starts here

Russell J Turner – March 2009

Chester Street II (edit)

Standing on a tree stump
Smoking like a giant
Swinging like a dancer
Burning like a drunkard

Tissue paper purple
Cling film for a band aid
A breach of the horizon
Hazardous to aircraft

Watching from a tree stump
Smoking like a titan
Bathing in the thunder
Breathing in the cordite

Bonfires and remembrance
The mundane and the madness
A sickness for the suburbs
A tonic for the troops

Russell J Turner - November 2009