This week’s Poet’s Corner features two poems by James Hickey, alias musician Heymus, from his book à la carte my heart, which is reviewed today in InDaily Arts & Culture.
The Day the Night Slept
20.7.2013
I wonder how you manage
When you play in high heels.
Seems to defy reality
But you do so well,
And you play so soft.
I wonder are you the same in life.
Your deep eyes weighed down
By eye lashes that fight the day’s end,
Daring it to make you stop.
For just when the night was supposed
To check if we were asleep,
It heard your song and slept a moment,
And in that blink you stole the keys to every lullaby,
And unlocked everyone’s dreams
So they danced in every corner of the world,
And no one knew why they were happy.
The night had no power,
Against your songs in that hour.
The keys for the locks you flung into the sea,
So each dream could never again be shut away,
And now the night is just a moment,
And those dreams are a way of life,
Not stowed away in the dark parts of us,
We will live them until,
We forget how to wake,
And thus sleep,
Dreaming of those we lived,
When we had the chance.
So sing without reserve
In knowledge it will move even the night,
To admit it once dreamed of being,
And in dreaming it was no longer one moment,
But a part of every moment,
That ever was or will be.
And finally dear muse,
May your heavy eyelashes
Grant you rest,
For daylight has arrived at last.
1976
16.8.2013
Do you miss 1976?
When your beard was black
And all your friends were young?
At that Christmas party where you liked Julie
And she liked him,
But it didn’t matter in 1976.
Would you go back to that Christmas in 1976,
Before your friends had families and
You’d take that chance to give her a kiss
Because by next Christmas she’d be married to someone else?
And that picture on the wall would tell the story over and over.
Would you if you could go back to ’76
And tell all those people
To never forget this Christmas?
How much of that night shaped your life?
And where were the limits?
And you do go back to 1976
Every time you look at that picture
And just wait for that night to return
And it does,
And you’re back,
You’re back to that Christmas drinks in 1976.
James Hickey was born and half-raised in country Queensland. He has lived in Adelaide for most of his adult years. Music has been a constant in his life; he played piano from an early age, and picked up guitar a little later. Writing emerged towards the end of high school, with him trying his hand as a song-smith. Poetry has only recently become a separate entity, as such, to song writing. The two poems here are from his new, first poetry book “à la carte my heart”. More about James can be found at www.heymus.com.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.
