A poem about heartache and memories by David Tombale: My pillow

Memories and longing can make us into insomniacs some nights and that frustration is what has inspired My pillow.

My pillow

Most nights thoughts of you still keep

me guessing, what patch of light falls

across your face, what doorway is made

dark by the breath of your passing?

Midnight passes like this, with worrying

and tracking the ticking sound of the

hallway clock that is not you, that does

not sound like your heel clicks across

our marble floors or the heavy sigh that

strains your chest with fury or some mad

frustration you shall never voice.

Every evening I wait for sight of you like a

lonely comet streaking across the distant sky,

I’m needing you constantly and you need me

temporarily like a postman or a milkman,

some stranger to void the silence until you

leave him, with only tears to mark your

presence and the hollowed shape of your

body still pressed against my pillow.

A poem about memories and heartache by David Tombale: Everglades

The environments we encounter in our lives can make up the background of our memories and our experiences and a poem like Everglades embodies that idea.

Everglades

The trees cast their shadows over me

and beneath their massive bulk scurry

mice and vole and in their passage I’m

reminded I’m alone, on a lonely pilgrimage

to the single elm hidden in the centre

scarred with a heart and our names and

a history not of its own, a past as full as the

waters of the Everglades, the current stirring

with the passage of a gator, in my mind that

scaly prince stalks the quiet world of my solitude,

creeps across the disarray of feelings that reflect my memories

and when he clamps down on my throat it will

be more than heartache that eats me whole.

A poem about travelling and love by David Tombale: Landscapes

Leaving home is a journey into the unknown and that suspense of learning what lies over the horizon is what Landscapes is all about, that and sharing those discoveries with someone you care about.

Landscapes

The hum of the engine is the only sound that

stretches between us, in the pale glow of moonlight

your face hovers like a passing cloud across this

windscreen as the night owls screech in the distance

and we leave the city behind us, it’s lights flickering

on and off like a little flashlight sending out a

message in morse-code, love me, love me says

this code as the whole expanse of the city lies there

like a map seen from the window of a passing plane,

and somewhere above us it flies crossing oceans and

foreign lands we dream off in between our bites of

filling station pies, and cups of luke warm coffee we

sip as dawn warms our freezing hands pointing west

ever west, beckoning our flagging spirits and laying a

promise like a fragile egg in the nest of the landscapes

we’ve yet to see.

A poem about love and change by David Tombale: Gravity

Love doesn’t just make you blind, it changes the way you see the world around you and that effect is what Gravity tries to describe.

Gravity

There are days when even sunsets are more

beautiful than the string of pearls that rest

against your chest, when the sunlight turns

golden brown and the loud hails of taxi horns

recede into the background of forest sounds,

the call of barn owls and the baying of hunting

hounds,

There are evenings when you toss the unruly

strands of your black hair and I wish to crush them

between my fingers and take the scent of you deep

into my lungs like air that clears this poison that invades

my pores and fills me out until small explosions

blind my eyes,

they tore you from me once when I prayed you’d hear me out,

listen now, there is no gravity to hold me down,

no calls to summon me,

the entire world has ceased to turn and there amidst all that silence

is the heavy thump of our beating hearts.

A poem about youth and ambition by David Tombale: The mowana tree

The mowana tree is about the ambitions we have as children and how our initial drive can stall as we grow up.

The mowana tree

Down below the mowana tree lying

prone and silent among the grass

the shadows spread out from my past,

flickered thoughts and memories

spinning like a top, golden bright yet oddly

sad when measured against my dad,

I have grown to slay no giants nor

travel oceans wide and vast, no instead

I’ve filled my desk with piles of books

and promises, tired lines and maps,

I’ve grown old but sown no oats and

wrote no poems that have filled these

eyes with tears but have no fear

because these doors lay open and all

those poets who came before me

have enshrined a dream of fame and

fortune that has me hooked, and

moving forward no bruised eye or

quickly spoken lie will change my course

or lead me off into the darkness of the bush. 

A poem about contemplation and writing by David Tombale: The days

There are times when you intend on writing and yet nothing worthwhile comes out. Moments like that are what The days describe.

The days

There are days when the words will not

hear me out, when the dried out version

of my remembered youth will not fill

a page or ten, a book or a passage in my

Bible, the words fulfill me but the present

needs me so the clatter of my keyboard may

have to cease, may sit out silent beneath the

shade of a blacked out screen while the

white buzz of sound runs out.

I could not write a line that felt like my beating

heart beating out a memory of a summer’s day,

the heat and flight of birds in June,

there is no music, no hope or fury,

 I place my book bag by my dusty window where

the sun will see it, where the wind will blow

against its glass perhaps to wake the thoughts

that rest inside, the note pads full of scribbling,

the pens half filled with ink.  

A poem about love and heartache by David Tombale: Carry out

Carry out is really about the end of a relationship and how that can affect your thoughts.

Carry out

The streets wind and weave begging me to roam,

daylight calls to me but it’s evening that takes me home,

back to the fiery crackle of the logs upon our hearth,

back to the U-haul van sitting upon our curb

There are enough memories left to bury so I might

not make it out, tonight the rain clouds gather

and tonight these wounds begin to hurt

When you are thought to me, when you are some

distant figment that rests like violets around our deck,

it’s I these songs speak of, it’s I they’ll carry out,

past the foyer, past the window that opens on your

pile of clothes that sit beneath our transistor radio.