Poetry — Commended, Paul Prenter
I am very pleased to have been commended in the Poetry section, but I feel very much the amateur in comparison with our winning poets. I wish that I had more time to devote to writing. Perhaps as I grow older I will just concentrate on writing haiku for the pleasures of distilling the essence of a subject.
What I Remember
I tell them, this is all I can remember.
It was my first night out as a woman.
My Tinder date in the front, driving, and her friends in the back, talking.
Whispering behind my back and laughing like crows.
I can’t hear clearly, but their words are scraping me like claws,
dragging me down from my Ecstasy high into paranoia.
I want to scream and scratch their eyes out.
Instead, I bail out and come home, empty home.
I text her: Sorry, no chemistry.
She asks: Are you OK?
I lie: Sure, all good.
Nothing is good.
Four years to transition from Karl to Evie.
Four years of drugs and depression,
Four years of counselling and surgery.
Four years for what?
I check my selfie face again: God I look ill.
At least my bum is OK:
I take a photo of the curves the surgeon has made
and send it off to taunt my trolls.
The walls are closing in like a cemetery vault;
I smell like death and rotting flesh.
I rush out to the balcony: smoke a joint, swallow pills, put my earbuds in.
Over the music, the voices start again, demanding to be heard.
Most people on earth deserve to die!
Kill and maim, kill and maim, kill and maim!
I scream at them to stop,
but they just burrow deeper into my brain like maggots in a corpse,
Repeating and repeating Kill and maim! Kill and maim!
In the kitchen a carving knife promises release.
The voices shriek: Don’t go alone! Don’t go alone!
Start the rise of Hell and live forever!
I slip the knife into my back pocket.
There’s an axe I don’t remember by the door, but it fits my hand like a lover.
We step out to join the dead in the dead of the night.
7- Eleven shines like Lucifer, brightest of the angels.
The detectives come again to my hospital bed.
I tell them I can’t remember more.
They play the CCTV footage twice to watch me react:
Now I remember:
I’m wearing my sexy black shorts and white crop top.
There’s a man in line, and I chat him up.
It could have been different if we had hit it off,
But he’s not paying me any attention.
I’ve just come second to a six dollar pie.
When he turns away, I swing at his head.
It feels good.
A woman in the doorway gets the next chop.
There is no sound except my voices cheering me on.
I leave, and find a place to wait for what comes next.
The CCTV shots make me writhe in pain.
The cops are surprised at my shock.
I don’t have to pretend, but the horror is not what I did.
It’s the way I swing that axe: not like a woman
but like a long haired guy.
I look just like Karl.
Brutal Axe Attack in Enmore 7-Eleven
A transgender woman who attacked two people with an axe at a Sydney 7-Eleven store says a voice told her to ‘kill and main’ and ‘start the rise of hell on earth’…
news.com.au July 19th 2018
It was my first night out as a woman.
My Tinder date in the front, driving, and her friends in the back, talking.
Whispering behind my back and laughing like crows.
I can’t hear clearly, but their words are scraping me like claws,
dragging me down from my Ecstasy high into paranoia.
I want to scream and scratch their eyes out.
Instead, I bail out and come home, empty home.
I text her: Sorry, no chemistry.
She asks: Are you OK?
I lie: Sure, all good.
Nothing is good.
Four years to transition from Karl to Evie.
Four years of drugs and depression,
Four years of counselling and surgery.
Four years for what?
I check my selfie face again: God I look ill.
At least my bum is OK:
I take a photo of the curves the surgeon has made
and send it off to taunt my trolls.
The walls are closing in like a cemetery vault;
I smell like death and rotting flesh.
I rush out to the balcony: smoke a joint, swallow pills, put my earbuds in.
Over the music, the voices start again, demanding to be heard.
Most people on earth deserve to die!
Kill and maim, kill and maim, kill and maim!
I scream at them to stop,
but they just burrow deeper into my brain like maggots in a corpse,
Repeating and repeating Kill and maim! Kill and maim!
In the kitchen a carving knife promises release.
The voices shriek: Don’t go alone! Don’t go alone!
Start the rise of Hell and live forever!
I slip the knife into my back pocket.
There’s an axe I don’t remember by the door, but it fits my hand like a lover.
We step out to join the dead in the dead of the night.
7- Eleven shines like Lucifer, brightest of the angels.
The detectives come again to my hospital bed.
I tell them I can’t remember more.
They play the CCTV footage twice to watch me react:
Now I remember:
I’m wearing my sexy black shorts and white crop top.
There’s a man in line, and I chat him up.
It could have been different if we had hit it off,
But he’s not paying me any attention.
I’ve just come second to a six dollar pie.
When he turns away, I swing at his head.
It feels good.
A woman in the doorway gets the next chop.
There is no sound except my voices cheering me on.
I leave, and find a place to wait for what comes next.
The CCTV shots make me writhe in pain.
The cops are surprised at my shock.
I don’t have to pretend, but the horror is not what I did.
It’s the way I swing that axe: not like a woman
but like a long haired guy.
I look just like Karl.
Brutal Axe Attack in Enmore 7-Eleven
A transgender woman who attacked two people with an axe at a Sydney 7-Eleven store says a voice told her to ‘kill and main’ and ‘start the rise of hell on earth’…
news.com.au July 19th 2018
