“Technicolour Overtone”

by Ben Riddle

I dream in different colour to anything

I see before me -

In my dreams, your eyes are violent,

ultraviolet-like they can see something;

anything beyond the bloodstained

chalk-outlines crocheted across

the chequered sidewalks speaking

their stories, speaking

truth or abstinence,

speaking a tender rejection to this

casual complicity that we

bleed and beg and proffer to one another.

There are no stains on your teeth,

they refract

rainbow rivers

that remind me of hope.

In my dreams, my mother's wrinkles

become jigsaw scars like she put herself

back together so many times

she forgot to take out the sutures.

Mama kept saving for rainy days;

I think by the time it mattered,

she couldn't hear

the storms outside, or

she thought the raindrops were

the pitter patter of working feet

marching, marching back

to work

sick and tired until

that's all that industry ever was;

or she thought the rain on her face

was just sweat on her brow.

She doesn't look up,

anymore. Me? I try not to look forward.

I keep writing these budgets trying

to work out what I can give up

to get out; it keeps looking like

stop buying books for school, or

sell the last parts of

your body. What else do we have

left? Maybe the last thing

you have to give up

or sell is wanting to get out. Maybe

that's why people stay.

I dream in different colours to anything

I see before me -

The most interesting thing about Ben Riddle is that he is building a little library of all the contemporary poetry he can put his hands on. The voices of poets go still too soon. He is the Director of Perth Underground Press.