MARTIN BORTZ

Home & Away

Home & Away

Martin Bortz

Melbourne
MMCP Publications
2022
 Somewhere, maybe someday
Maybe somewhere far away
I’ll meet a second little person
And we’ll go out and play.

Jon Brion

Home & Away

Copyright © 2023 Martin Bortz
All rights reserved.
Published by MMCP Publications 2023
Edited by Katia Ariel
Design work by Libby Austen
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
CONTENTS

1 PREFACE
3 4990
4 PORRIDGE
5 FECUND
6 SLEEPLESS
8 TABLE
10 300 ELEPHANTS
12 TO BUILD A HOME
14 OF MOON AND ME
18 B AND C
20 HEIROS GAMOS
23 ELEGY
PREFACE

Each year for her birthday I write my wife a poem. This has happened since
the second year of our relationship and has since become the highlight
of the day – for both of us. For her 40th, I have put together a collection
of poems that I feel most demonstrate our life and journey together.
Collectively, the poems deal with themes of birth and death, play, domestic
life, and the beauty of the natural world.

The poems are stylistically quite different – some (Heiros Gamos or B and
C) have a strong narrative component. Others (300 Elephants or Porridge)
are meant to capture a distinct moment in time. Then there are those
(Fecund or 4990) that are just there to convey my love for her and her
presence in my life.

The collection can loosely be divided into two sections – ‘Home’ and
‘Away’. The first seven poems are about our home together. In a sense, they
are more stationary. On the other hand, the final four poems are structured
around a journey, of being away from our day-to-day lives or being
involved in a quest or adventure. They evoke a sense of separation and then
reunion, or of Michelle and I against the world.

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them, and
I hope they give you some sense of the joy and growth that Michelle has
brought into my life.
December 2022

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4990

Lights like lamps, or fireflies,

like wide whet white,
or suds washed in sand.

Lights like foam,

like the hazed horizon,
like the dripping sun.

Pale hot lights, like sclera,

like rooks and pawns,
like knights inside the pasty moon.

Lights like tees, cotton,

milk and sugar,
vanilla.

Albino lights, like ghostly moose,

or drips of summer snow,
or shaved ice.

Lights like cinders, or embers,

or three pounds sodium in water,
like tapers, wax, wicks.

Lights like ivory,

like C D E F G A B,
lights like major keys.

Lights like globes,

neon or rayon,
lights like LED.

Lights. Like you. They’re just like you.

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PORRIDGE
Warm some? you ask of me in Saturday’s
morning cold and my startled cry like.
Doubt.
That this, this pretty scene could fold and
quake in pallid blue pouring in the.
Panes.
Yet it has, it has you have written me in
linebyline you have written for me a.
Part.
In this matinee, this curtain call this show
tune as I whistle like Dixie in the.
Bed.
And in lightening haze, orange knocking
you enter jamb and toast and.
Porridge
4 5
FECUND
In the orange evening, you with the smoke bush,
the succulent, your face so close
to the draping can.
Your nose poking through the stream
the stones and gravel, up
through your rubber soles,
your toes black and brown and green.
And the wall, of paint, of graffiti,
Of art that moved through pixels, through bricks,
Spatters that wouldn’t stay put.
I dug into your skin
To find how it got there
You didn’t know and told me to leave it.
The rain, the wind, departing,
your bouquet from the ivy, wisteria, the passionfruit
that blossom through spring and hide through winter.
Tadpoles. Nests.
I called but heard just the trees.
SLEEPLESS

i never had the time for darkness. for you it, asking: if i show you inside
waiting in that restless light, which enters my palm, will you still love me? with my
through the brittle and the glass; so much so crumbling thumb, my broken bones and joints?
that I once found comfort weeping in the
foam, cotton pillows and springs. you take my offering and hold it in
your own, and with a humble sigh we slip
i had moved on, i thought, from those nights spent in pale sweat. and lie together in the pouring blue
that rushes through the panes and sills.
yet in my adult dawn the gnomes returned
to jump on the bed and fix my eyes with Like this, we sleep.
tape. i had not invited them to stay Like this, I will sleep.
but they fastened and hitched to the bedposts.

this is how you find me. stuck in the

morning’s fragrant dew, wading in honey
and grime. you had already tried flying to nod,
but (as you would later whisper to me)
they had forgotten to record your name.

with a flourish you push the florid sheets,

wrap them in folds and watery bunches.
you give to me your pallid skin. i am
humbled – not being used to gifts like this.

wanting to meet your kind in kind, i take

my hand, dip it in rose water and give

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TABLE

A truck. And I,
now alone,
I, flushed, at the table,
fetch the notes for the men in the heat.
in gloves and overalls.
Tea spilt. From a shaking cup.
they bring the legs,
sand, bolts, nuts,
joints and screws.

you guide them

while I fuss
in darkened rooms.

wood and white

steel oak and metal,
assemble.

and, like Imhotep,

you watch
piece pile on piece.

And soon, a place for our meals.

the dusty rest;

so we take our tea
at the building site;

we speak of nights, parties,

consolation for things lost
Children. Weddings. Old age.

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300 ELEPHANTS

1, elephant, 2, elephant, 3, elephant. 1, Mississippi, 2, Mississippi, 3, Mississippi, oh, for fuck’s sake.

The way my arm is folded, and the way his head is there. … and now crying, now arching
How his eyes and fingers pace, not crying, not arching,
not yet closing, not yet dropping. but then crying, then arching.

15, e-le-phant, 16, e-le-phant, 17, e-le-phant. 215, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, 216, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, 217, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t,
what do they do with terrible parents?
White noise and a shriek, and his back arched, and mine too – now.
Him pushing, pushing away, and I holding, holding him. Holding. Him. My own cry swelling.
My eyes now dropping, or rolling. Muffled, the sweat of a black interrupted,
Of the heat and grey
60, e-le-ph-ant, 61, e-le-ph-ant, 62, e-le-ph-ant. between my eyes and my cheek, saying: you will not sleep. You did not sleep.

Rocking, rock-a-bye, shhhh, shhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh. 264, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, 265, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, 266, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t.
How did that toy get there, and in my foot.
Shhh – shriek. Shapes, of shoulders and legs,
shadows, shifting slightly in the sliver,
92, e-le-ph-an-t, 93, e-le-ph-an-t, 94, e-le-ph-an-t, and did I and entering, as the sliver widens, behind me, first, and. Then,
just lose count? Maybe I’ll start again from 100 … as I notice you. Then, you, on my side.

My back twisting, straining, and the room You take him with grace and light; as
with the only light radiating from the bathroom a new silence brackets what once was.
distracting and awakening him. Now a yawn and a roll over into your breast,
a tiny hand rubbing the lining of your shirt.
111, e-le-p-h-a-n-t, 112, e-le-p-h-a-n-t, 113, e-le-p-h-a-n-t.
Snore.
Focus: on the hanging mural, the dark tableaux,
the table with the nappies and cream, 298, elephant, 299, elephant, 300, elephant.
the wooden bars.
Elephants are big. I could be bigger.
156, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, 157, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, 158, e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t.
Are elephants wide enough?
Are rivers?

10 11
TO BUILD A HOME
I always thought that
building a house would be hard, that
I wouldn’t have the strength;
high school told me ‘do something else’.
No skills.
Still I bought bricks, a trowel, a silver, wooden-handled thing,
something to soften the clay. I kept working.
* dropped their food and made a righteous mess of things. And, of course,
It got lonely in the field, when
the bricks spoke, the grass played blues,
I took the trowel and gave it wings, wheels and a mirror.
Drove into the sunbeams. Brought help.
Oh we worked. We worked longer than the
smug little crickets,
those lazy things, who hatched plans but then just yelled at us.
We yelled back but our words bounced off
autumn trees, yellow leaves and a dissatisfied mouse,
who scurried away just in time for tea.
And when we asked the frogs
TO TIDY THEIR ROOM
They just smiled. Offered us a pencil.
(Many pencils, we would later recall.)
Snapped. Mostly.
12
Then the rabbits, the rabbits,
With top-hats, football jumpers and tutus.
We said we didn’t mind the clashing colours
but the top-hats were a bit much. Of course
it was as if we had said nothing.
We had. In many ways.
The birds landed with colour,
with laughter on the branch that tussled and tossed and tussocked
with pickety-peckety on the seedly-deedly, and who
expected us to clean it all up.
At night, with the dirty, stalling badgers
sudsy and soapy, and running chasey around stumps.
Cute until we had to chase them with towels
and an ongoing decree to stop, which, of course, they never did.
*
By the time the music stopped we had forgotten about the bricks.
Doesn’t matter, we said, with smirks and smiles.
Lay there, until the grass ate us up and
we were smooshed and trampled by the birds and the rabbits.
13
OF MOON AND ME

You killed me, well Your spy eyes darting

not exactly me, with intent to harm,

but something that was me – and callous smile,

was a part of me, barbed milk teeth,

it was swift and slight. dagger sheathed and then

removed, its thin grey blade
In the stifling night
I wept enters quick, like light
of moon, which now
by the growling river,
a charred heart.
lies pierced itself
The mischievous silver on luscious dune,
of moon came through
of muddy soil,
the darkened trees, bleeding oil,
slithered on me,
black and soot.
spot light, sharp,
cut me quick into shard, Now the damaged, shattered heap,
that was once me,
fractured bone and
splintered love. by your kiss
breaks from death’s sleep,
Yet right above
my broken mess, forgets past harms,
and lives –
tinted by a light caress anew.
of soothing star,
as though from heaven’s palm, For it is through
and by that very act
you stood.

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of loving rage,
of murderous joy,

that you, my love, did destroy

the old dark path

that I did take.

So now I wake

in your sweet arms

releasing me from nights tight grip;

and daylight’s charms

shuffle in to greet us both.

Now in my chest
a closing wound,

and from this hole

the shadowy dune

escapes, and takes

the ever-fading memory,

the shadowed, twisted amity

the cordial disharmony

of moon
and me.

16
B AND C

Meet the dusty desert wind. Gin smells waft and

Tents and shanties in rocky roads bloated
by the earth’s yellow, stony belly.
Me, whittling and waittling with lay-
tent, listless violence. A wagon,
my shelter, spoilt by the splintered rot
and rain. Silent horizon, save the hawks
and hounds, pick-pecking at corpses lying
in gullies and ruts. Then, you, polishing
your Browning, with silver sheen, the hot sun
shines and glints off the barrel and muzzle.
I’m captured, and with a flick, we laugh, drive
to the gas station, shoot the attendant,
take his cash and set off down the highway.
waiver and hover between stale smoke and
fumes. Then bang. Then bang. Then open thrown doors.
Then raging and with vengeance come
the blueboys, their pistols whipped and cocked. Shoot.
Hit. Hot leaden kisses between you, me,
eyes fused and faltering, blinking as the
lights fade and tunnels dim, as the ashen
smoke of dangerous lust dissipates in
the milk Louisiana sky. Nothing.
Then nothing. Then us, lying defiant,
pinkies hooked, in fiery trails of furious red.

Spree
Us, now, in banks and buildings, bulldozing
over tanks to gilded, tethered treasure,
locked behind steal-y bars, barren vaults and
thicknecked guards. No matter. We rush the
baboons that hold the gold in their grisly
paws, show them our pieces, now cower. Ha!
Boom and blast and bodies bubbling blood,
blazing barrels and rubber screeching and
our lanterns lighting the Chevrolet-front.
Me Warren Beatty, you Faye Dunaway,
and the blueboys’ sirens sputter and fop
along Mother Road, which is covered in
glass and creatures dull and ordinary.

Ambush
Counting our takings, the coins and the clams,
ripped and ragged notes flicker like flags in

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HEIROS GAMOS

I. Separation I’d like to go home now.

Please – this cave is not like the other …
I didn’t want to go –
… there is a chasm at the end.
from my cave outwards and towards the dawn.
I climb down.
I was warm here. Content.
At the bottom are Jung and Freud, reading the Bardo Thodol by small candle.
My tools felt rusty and peppered with mould, worked through with grief. But
Shadows bouncing.
I knew them and knew what to do with them.
Heiros gamos. They say: ‘Marriage is a psychological relationship’.
I didn’t want to go.
*
*
I was told – ‘You must’. ‘Boy, you must’.
You. My bride. Backlit …
By the whispers of Odysseus and Apollo, of Athena and Dionysus,
… take me from the cave.
of shackling thoughts – maybe not mine – but, regardless, of which I was
Ok. I will go.
inured to follow.
*
So with rust and resistance, soil and soot, my saws and spikes took me forward.
In three acts, I try to dismember the monster, the father, to atone.
‘I must’.
But it keeps at me, with grim smiles and cavernous mouth and a nose that
*
pick-peck, pick-peck, pick-pecks and makes me weep and cringe. And
On the road, I found Dean Moriarty and Sal, and we went to Bakersfield:
then monster:
1. With The Man and The Boy, we moved west and narrowly escaped
You cannot pass.
cannibals at the Donner Party.
I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor
2. In Haight-Ashbury we met Raoul and Dr Gonzo. I took morphine and
The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun!
nearly died.
I’m left to wander. The mission dies.
3. Jonah and I then got sick from blubber and key lime pie in a cheap
Vegas diner.
*
Everything stretched back south again.
New tactic: Steal the elixir.
Change was coming.
I run. I parry. I grab. I weave.
* With my shadow self, my bride, with white and the rewards of risk. And
II. Supreme ordeal with vacant eyes, black eyes, the monster sees me and chases me. It knows
my thievery but I don’t care.
In Polyphemus’ cave I spoke to the walls – longing for my own cave, that had I need it more.
heat and light and a sense of urgency. Back in my cave, I open the elixir, drink it and feel refreshed.
But here it is slow – I am slow in my ruminations. The shadows whisper in
Mandarin and show me my adventures with Dean and Sal, Man and Boy, *
Raoul and Gonzo. Victory.
The band speaks to me and I write things down. Apotheosis.
*
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III. Unification

Having won the great battle, I adorn myself in cloaks and jewellery, in Gods
and Goddesses, with whom I take my place.
I look toward the map and notice nothing.
My bride is missing.
The cave is cold.
The ordeal feels over, and I can see myself again – I am drawn back to the
dawn and to my rusty tools, to plant my discovery and winnings.
I don’t want to – but you were needed on my map.

*
And so. I fight on.
With wardens and faeries, watchmen and temptresses, centaurs and
poltergeist.
I fight on.
It is tiresome. I am tired.
I am worn. I am wan.
*
You return with a sword and with a vision,
with a gold pedigree and a message for the wardens and faeries.
With compasses, mylar sheets, planimeters.
She reconstructs the boundaries and says: Heiros gamos – you’re home.

*
Despite and with my failings, we return, having mastered both Braavos and
Kings Landing.
We are back with the Many-Faced God.
We are no-one.
*
And the cave, with its rocks and its fire and its you.
Is whole once more.

22
ELEGY

Night – Moving swiftly

I ruminate around
about white chrysanthemums. his inverted torch, black wings and sword.
They seem more fragrant than usual – with the COVID
and the cancers and an I whisper, in her ear:
old, frail dog. To sleep, perchance to dream
of lives lived and paths crossed
Mourning – of children and caravans and money
bringing with it of jobs and of study.
nimbostratus cloud,
a black coffee Of all those things that are now blunt but were once so sharp.
and Thanatos at our breakfast table.
Continuing:
While she sleeps I rise, asking him: Remember and rise.
If she goes, where shall I? Remember – the life we had – and rise.
Remember – the life we will live again – and rise.
what could I say how could I say it. Remember – the promises we made – and rise.
what would I do how would I do it. Remember – me – and rise.
and how long would it be until the police entered my heart’s chamber
to arrest me and my blood? *

My hands on the clock. The time was wrong – She rose.

caverns unexplored
homes unfinished Coffee? She asked and then:
and King Henry has not yet found Jerusalem. No. Wait.
Let’s go out for breakfast.
Thanatos shrugged, exclaiming:
shakab, yashen, shenah.
And after … her sleep … went on
and on
and on
and on …

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