New undergraduates tour
the
psychology clinic
This is the room where the troubled come to be
untroubled
This is the room for the opening of mouths in pain
This is the room for picking lightly at the scab on the
deep wound
This is the room of dignified gibbering
This is the room of the short fuse
This is the room for the vomiting of memory;
for the smearing of consequences, the flinging of blame
This is the room which was once in darkness, with a
velvet curtain
and a wooden grille
This is the room of stripping
of disembowelling
of the scooping out and spreading of glistening innards
This is the room of fear of silence
This is the room of too much truth, and not enough
This is the room of fear, of silence
This is the room of the rushing and botching of
reconstructive
surgery
This is the room for the impersonation of friendship
and the purchase of listening
This is the room of the drinking of too much water
and of jiggling in the low chair and of the dogged
crossing of legs
This is the room for the rewriting of diaries
This is the room of the long clenching
This is the room of rocking without sound
This is the room for the binding of deep wounds with
gauze
bandages
This is the room for the closing of mouths in pain
This is the room where the unhealable come to be
unhealed
I was well contented to have the chance to be at Melinda
Smith's La Mama gig in Melbourne recently, and because of Ken
Smeaton's excellent filming of poets' project, it exists out on
youtube if you care to partake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtYzXrwmRqc&feature=share
Melinda's book Drag Down To Unlock Or Place An
Emergency Call (Pitt Street
Poetry) is one of those books that you really want to read, and then
read again. A true cut and come again book. And the judges of the
Prime Minister's Award agree with me because it won last year's
prize. (And it is a prize that is worth winning.) Melinda is a poet
to watch, and I am already on the qui vive for the next book. What a
wonderful poet she is, and a tip top reader, and a hell of a good
person to kick around town with.
http://pittstreetpoetry.com/melinda-smith/
