Poems from First… Then…poems from planet autism (Ginninderra Press, 2012)
The research and writing of the book First…, Then… was supported by ArtsACT via a New Projects grant in 2011. All the poems from the book can be viewed for free here.
Buy a copy from the publisher here.
I prefer
serious illness to surprises
computers to my brother
reading number plates to Christmas morning
straight lines
submerging my ears in a warm bath to waterslides
deep fat fryers to matchbox cars
torture to haircuts
libraries to birthday parties
standing ankle-deep in ocean
tenpin bowling to climbing trees
looking at things out of the corner of my eye
Sonic the Hedgehog to family time
death to dentist visits
my mother with her glasses off
plastic wheelie bins to petting zoos
not to see my school friends outside of school
cricket statistics to Toy Story
chewing clothes-pegs to talking
rules to freedom
truth to sarcasm
home
to be left alone
Brain weather
Think of hemispheres: Western, Left;
the wind-flows that connect them; the currents of sea; of electricity.
When was it that your frontal lobe
cauterized itself against your will
leaving you endless atomised local storms
with no way to blow them -selves out?
The last words you said before the clouds came
stutter on your small tongue;
settle in like cat-and -dog rain, the syllables
hammering down, fixing one thought with a dozen stabs of lightning.
The miracle is not that it stops, but how afterwards you can be so calm and charming
– and puzzled that the rest of us still drip and shiver from the rain.