new poetry blog is up!

It's called 'bruises you can touch' and it's all about my time at Blackstar Coffee as their poet in residence. May you fall head over heels in love with words and welcome poetry into your hearts and minds.

excitement! *throws confetti*

I am delighted to announce that I've been chosen by Australian Poetry to be a poet as part of their Cafe Poet program. In January, I'll begin a six month residency at the luscious Black Star Coffee where in return for all of my caffeine related needs (and they are needs), the lovely people at Black Star will get some kick arse poetry outta me!

I'll be spending between two to three days there each week to get hideously caffeinated write poems and drink my poison passion. At the end of the six months, I'll have amassed a substantial (and publishable) body of work.

I applied for the cafe poet program because I want to engage with my community and experience the cultural diversity that West End is home to. I'm so excited about this opportunity and I'd particularly like the thank Marty who owns Black Star for being so inclusive and passionate about what lies ahead.

In Queensland, there are two of us cafe poets and we're both in West End - West End is where it's at! As my friend and Queensland State Library poet in residence Mandy Beaumont says, 'VIVA LA FUCKIN' POETRY!'

Just a heads up, a Black Star long macchiato is to die for. They have their own roastery and supply coffee to a tonne of places around Brisbane. I've not been getting my coffee here for three years for no good reason ...

Head to http://blackstarcoffee.com.au

comfortable with uncertainty

Comfortable with uncertainty. That's where I'm at. It's where I've always been. After two weeks of aggressive intravenous anti-biotics, I'm feeling healthy and settled - physically, mentally and spiritually. I'm detoxing from the drugs that made my piss smell rank and juicing myself up with green smoothies, vitamins, meditation as opposed to medication, and energising my soul.

I've never used the term 'aggressive' and 'anti-biotics' in the same sentence before, but the drug I was on effectively disabled me. Lethargy, vomiting and diarrahea, farting with follow through, stinking piss, terrifying headaches where I'd be on the floor clutching at my head - sometimes banging my head on doors to try and move the pain from one side of my head to the other. There were a few days where I simply could not move. It was a struggle to get from my bed to the bathroom or to even get off the couch.

Then I remembered.

I used to do this ALL THE TIME. Lung infections have become so foreign to me and I know why I always handled them pre-transplant - I knew no different. I'd grown up with constant chest infections so the pain, the fatigue and the side effects of the anti-biotics had never really troubled me.

I am blessed that I can go from one extreme to the other. I am blessed that lung infections have become an unusual occurrence. I am almost always well with my lungs, so when I lose lung function with an infection, I feel like I've gone five rounds with Ali. My whole body ached - particularly my neck after having a CV line shoved into scar tissue with a scratch of local anaesthetic (that was my choice - I wanted to feel the process. Really fucking stupid, I know but that's how I need to do things). A CV line, or a 'central line' is a catheter placed shoved into a large vein in the neck (in my case, the internal jugular) so fluids like chemotherapy, TPN feeding or anti-biotics can be infused. The line is then stitched in to anchor it and keep it secure.

What are all those dangly bits? They're lumens. You can run several infusions at once with each lumen - ideal if you're sedated in intensive care. At home and going out and about? Not so much. I had a quad lumen, because that's standard for ICU, which is where they insert the lines. Here's a picture of the central line kit -

And here's me injecting my anti-biotic before I was released from the clink went home. Cake walk. After a few days of enforced rest and morphine for the literal pain in the neck, I was allowed went home to do my I.V's like a ninja.

And here I am at home, my neck free of tendrils and comfortable with uncertainty. No rejection, no viruses and big, beautiful clear lungs that feel as big as trees. My body The human body will never cease to frighten, inspire, horrify and excite me.

wishin' and hopin'

I meditate; consider what is happening in my lungs. Are they fighting the infection or are they giving up? Is the infection gathering momentum and readying itself to assault my body, or is it subsiding - fading like the embers of some fire as I'm hoping it will? There are always options and tomorrow I will know what mine are.

You can't have hope without options.

it's raining again

So it's raining. In fact, it's raining down hard, just like it was this time thirteen years ago. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, I wondered if my donor had been in a car crash, then I remembered 'False Transplant Hopes 101' - the heart and lungs are usually squashed on impact and are unviable for transplant. It sounds cruel and harsh, but that is what I had been told. Selfishly, I still used to look forward to public holidays.

The Ekka holiday had just passed, but I was just concentrating on getting through every minute of every day and I was so full of morphine that I didn't even remember Brisbane had an Ekka. It was just 'breathe in, breathe out; breathe in, breathe out.' Physiotherapy had been ceased - something I was grateful for, because of the pain it caused and it was proving to be more harm than good. It would leave me in a state of cyanosis (lack of oxygen), where my oxygen saturations would drop to dangerously low levels. There wasn't a crash cart outside my room for no good reason.

It was a calm ride from the Mater to the Prince Charles, but it was rough. Ambulances have no suspension and it was like we were in a dune buggy on a goat track. I lay back on the gurney; a little sleepy but otherwise awake despite the morphine bolus I'd had before I was taken down to the E.D to where the ambulance was waiting. It was all very calm but exciting, and the E.D nurses - none of who knew me, but had seen me stumble in at 2am in stilettos, skin tight jeans and a fur coat with berry lipstick applied ever so perfectly - were so excited that I was going to get the lungs I'd literally been dying to get. I knew the code on the keypad in the E.D to let myself in, claiming to be 'on call/I've just been called in to attend an emergency. On the ward.'

But not tonight. I hadn't been out for a while and the last time I went out, I had to be carried up a flight of stairs with my oxygen, while my boyfriend at the time sat in a corner and complained about his cold*. Several of my friends wanted to assault him, but I digress.

I believe we crossed the Story Bridge and that's when I could really see the city. I tried to sit up, but couldn't and the ambo asked if there was anything he could do for me. I asked him that we get to the hospital before anyone else did, but that was not to be, as Dad had run several red lights and ironically nearly ended up being an organ donor himself, along with my mother and my sister. People drove from all around the city and across the state to be with me and I felt as though I was taking too much. I had always thought that I'd taken too much, and now this?


'Carly - mate, I've got good news.'

But it's raining and I'm asleep.

'We've got lungs for you, mate.'

What was I taking from this person?

'This is great news.'

Who said this was any kind of wonderful? For all you know, this might have been a really good day to die.

*

And so I sit here, looking at that familiar blanket of rain cast over the city, just as it was thirteen years ago. It's as if the city is covered in gossamer, and as I listen to that powerful drive of rain that's thundering up through the coast, there is a candle in front of me. It will burn all night.

I know that technically, I haven't taken anything - it was an anonymous gift that I knew from the beginning would always be a shared responsibility. I know my donor's family moved away with no forwarding address, but to know that tonight they will be caught in a fishing net, grappling with the why's, how's, and what ifs', then surely I should be taking on their suffering? But I already do that, so maybe compassion and sharing the suffering is not enough. One day, I might be able to forgive myself.


This post is dedicated to Sonya Jackson, a 21 year old C.F'er I did not know, but who passed away tonight only a few months after her double lung transplant. I hope she is flying with Kate somewhere.

* Lachy and I are still very good friends and I happily watched him marry the love of his life in 2008.

interlude

Every so often, life likes to give us reminders. Some are gentle - benign, even - while others can be fierce, cruel, merciless. Last week I was bitch slapped back into remembering that our time is precious and under valued beyond measure. It also reinforced my belief that without my health, I am nothing and as good as dead.

With any admission to hospital, you're met with unfamiliar faces. But there is one face that can alleviate fear, offering comfort and a soft place to land. They are nurses. Nurses who are underpaid, under resourced, overworked and not loved or respected enough who somehow manage to keep their wits about them. Earlier in the week when I had to have my central line* re-dressed, a nurse stayed for at least an hour after her shift had ended just so she could make me more comfortable - a nurse who was getting married in three days time who would have had a million thoughts coursing through her own jugular in regard to her impending nuptials.

On any given day, a nurse will be a psychologist, hairdresser, teacher, chef, style consultant, relationship counsellor, patient advocate, personal assistant, bodyguard, personal trainer, photographer, personal shopper and mediator.

Last week when I was in ICU to have a central line inserted, a medical practitioner who has clocked up nearly forty years of nursing, plied me with stories about her constantly evolving career, including a stint in several hard arse correctional centres (as an employee, not an offender).

Then there was the gentleman who would bring my meals to my bedside. He was so polite, eloquent and dignified. Each time he brought in a meal, he would say, 'Enjoy your dinner, darling.' I could have said to him that hospital food is gross and substandard, but instead felt grateful thinking about people across the city who wouldn't be fed at all that night, as well as other vulnerable souls who never know where their next meal is coming from. He accorded so much kindness and mindfulness to every word he spoke. These are people you never forget.

*

The reminder is still with me and it has me feeling like I've dodged a hail of bullets; catching them in my hands and throwing them to the ground in defiance. The strains of gratitude are never far away, though there are splintered thoughts of what could have been. But there always are. I hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

It's odd to be in hospital as an inpatient because I am so used to leaving. The stain of memory and its patterns mushroomed. Other reminders surfaced. While there is no need to tell you what they were, it's important to acknowledge that they will stay with me, and that this is a good thing - a gift, even. While I didn't need a reminder, it has happened and it shall pass. It just won't be forgotten or lamented about.


* a central line is a catheter inserted into a large vein in the neck - in my case, the jugular. It is used to administer medication that needs to be delivered intravenously, such as antibiotics or chemotherapy.

haibun

Salt shoots up my nose, ferried by the wind. Blasts of air, not sparing in their rhythm crawl over my skin and I pain for water. Untrammelled waves crush any sand that lays crumbling on the beach. I see the man I was with last night - a half-smoked cigarette cocked in his mouth.

He is still - kind of like he's stranded and doesn't know where to go; not sure about how to stamp one foot in front of the other, or even how to breathe. The cigarette recedes to his lips and he spits it onto the sand. I don't know who he is.

I walk to the bedroom, see the sheets and remember, nodding at the colours that have seeped through to the mattress. Worry abates, curiosity turns my lips upward. The wind shuttles between the terrace door and the kitchen table and I walk to where the kettle clings to the bench, closer to the edge than I would like. I push it back, smell him behind me and drop my head.

Salt on skin
like raw sugar
though not sweet at all.

wisdom

If he is a good man,
a man of faith, honoured and prosperous,
wherever he goes he is welcome.
Like the Himalayas
good men shine from afar.
but bad men move unseen
like arrows in the night - Buddha

do you speak voodoo like I do?

You know who you are ...

more musings

Never let a feather fall.

Help those around me to understand who I can't be.

Claw our way out of this.

Cups of intention, empty and listing.

I read you; your face like a map. I am hopeless at reading maps.

Staking an apogee, if I could give you all that you needed, I would.

You taste so good, my hyoid just imploded.

Higher than an eyrie in the thickest of trees.

Cast away skins like nets.

Stars splatter the heavens like spit on the ground. Astronomical glue.

He asked me what horology was and I knew. I'll never speak of that word again. Makes me feel distal and scattered about that time. About him and my judgment. My lack of muliebrity where I have no control. Such extreme self-love he had and such a pattern I've created and honed. It's like I set myself on fire; a moth to woollen houndstooth. A beetle to the light. I get apoplexic and find that I have no excuses for this to shoot me into some parallel void of hurt. Just my blindness to what is right in front of me. And has been all along.