Almanac Poetry: ‘No Blinds’ – Tommy Mallet

 

No Blinds

 

There were no blinds
in the bedroom window,
not for seven years.

 

No furniture in the lounge,
no carpet.

 

I had no social norms, or discipline
beyond stubbornness;

 

Fuck money,
get by with backbreaking,
dead end jobs
in the bush.

 

Live in any patchwork farmhouse.

 

Drink,
when you have the money,
explore,

 

write.

 

*****

 

The dog got it.

 

4am, midnight,
any weather.
When writing was done,
she was walked.

 

Two hours until work in the bush,
on the chainsaw.

 

Too bad.

 

Write. Walk.

 

*****

 

Shar Pi’s come in two types;
Those that look like
someone fucked a pillow;
and tight-jowlled.

 

Chinese fighting dogs.

 

Hit ‘em up with some coke,
and let ‘em rip!

 

*****

 

Chocolate brown, my
Shar Pi was a rescue dog.
I took the money
to pay –
pure breeds are worth coin,
but its owner was a stunning
dark skinned woman,
who looked like she dated low level
goons,
maybe nightclub security,
and had four kids,
and was hitting on me,

 

before casually saying
the dog, two years old,
in a highly fenced back yard,
had never been let off
its chain.

 

I just took the thing.

 

*****

 

Without blinds,
the weather was always with me.

 

I worked in it,
then, at home, slept with it
and stars,

 

and, on rare occasion, fucked
with it rumbling by.

 

*****

 

I called my Shar Pi
Shar Pi.
I thought that was funny, somehow.

 

“What’s your dog called mate?”

 

“I know what breed it is,
but what’s it called?”

 

Who’s on first…

 

*****

 

The weather was important,
somehow.

 

Even when not in the bush.
Almost everything.

 

Any weather good weather.
The colder, the hotter,
the better.

 

All textures, I thought.

 

Friends rarely understood.

 

*****

 

Pretty women occasionally stayed in that valley,
in that bedroom without
blinds,

 

stunning women,
stunning souls,

 

and blow-throughs, of course.

 

None stayed.

 

“I have a womb.
I’ll want kids one day.
Look at you, no blinds.”

 

I wrote about them all.

 

*****

 

Banksias took up the window’s bottom half.
Nectar birds acting like goldfish,
entertaining, in small ways.

 

Mad insect dances at night;

 

the obsessed,
drawn to perfect, $2.50 bulbs,
liquid suns –
“Let! Me! In!” –
hour after hour, night after night,
desperately pounding at invisible walls,

 

as often as not, consumed by small, delicate tree frogs,
scurrying huntsmen spiders.

 

Released, at last.

 

*****

 

Many, though, would eventually make it in,
through roof holes, cracks,

 

dance around my head,
under my shirt,
fingers,
tangle in my hair,

 

be my halo.

 

I’d write.

 

*****

 

Sometimes, while pouring out of the ute,
drunk,
down from the loneliness
of the ridge pub,
with its one or two barflies,

 

no women for years,

 

I’d just stand in the weather;
breath Milky Ways, wind,
frost,

 

midnight heat.

 

On still nights I’d call random things;

 

“All men are liars!”

 

Just for the company of
drunken valley echoes.

 

For a thousand brief idiots
who seemed to agree
with familiar voices,

 

bouncing back from every tributary,
every gully head.

 

*****

 

One night, wild storms ripping in
off the coast,
squalls throwing sideways rain,
I wrote,
in that room,
at that desk,
trees bending, snapping,

 

framed by it all.

 

Come 3, or 4am,
not one good thing down,
mind and heart, I was cooked.

 

The dog had fallen asleep,
waiting,
on the dusty old floorboards,
at the door.

 

*****

 

The coastal cliffs seemed
as good a place to take her
as any.

 

2kms up the valley,
then, when there,
for no reason,
leaning hard into miserable weather,
we worked our way down
the small track,

 

to a violent, primal cove.

 

*****

 

“Give me something,” I said,
without knowing why.

 

The violence of the storm
had washed countless
phosphorous plankton
into the cove sand.

 

Any agitation made them glow.
The dog and I walked
on comic book pulses of
lime green light.

 

Awkward, thin lines
of lime green ran up and past us;
wind pushing ripples of
rain.

 

I looked out into a darkened sea
of mythology,

 

everything rising, breaking,
reefs being raised,

 

barely able to make out
an impossibly fat,
heavy cloud band
until it was on us.

 

A wall of water coming down.

 

*****

 

There was nowhere to shelter,
but why would we bother?

 

“All weather…” I told the dog,
as the band opened its heart,

 

throwing misery down.

 

*****

 

The rain was so heavy
it agitated all the phosphorous
at once.

 

The kilometer-long beach
glowed lime green,
strong enough
to light up cliffs,
caves,
rolling patches of falling, wind-snapped bush,

 

creating a brief, cold, hissing
wonderland,
beneath us, around us.

 

Green, green,
green heaven.

 

Green victories.

 

*****

 

The dog was two when I got her,
way too late.

 

I couldn’t stop her
killing things.

 

Eventually,
I gave her to a lost city soul,
before the farmers came
with their shotguns.

 

*****

 

About then, a pretty woman blew through,
who didn’t mind no blinds,
and loved open roads.

 

Taking me with her.

 

A horrible human being,
but a lifeline
to a drowning man.
The weather wasn’t enough.
Weather was everywhere.

 

*****

 

As we left,
around the bend that rose
from the valley,
over the cove,

 

The ute passed tourists looking
from clifftops,
on a still day,
at a place
with far more faces than
they could ever dream.

 

 

 

 

 

More poetry from Tommy Mallet can be read Here.

 

 

More poetry from Almanac Poetry can be read HERE

 

 

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