Andrew Burke – Andrew Lansdown

Eleven poems by Andrew Burke

1. Pastoral

2. Sitting Together

3. Sitting Alone

4. Little White Pills

5. Elegy for my Mother

6. Walking to the Meeting

7. The Best Teacher

8. Unintentional Art

9. Linfen Morning

10. Mother Waits for Father Late

11. Notebook: Café Poem

See also biographical and bibliographical information further down this page.

Pastoral

here in the grass
a cricket clicking
you beside me
on the rug
my heart
rubs its back
legs together

© Andrew Burke
from let’s face the music & dance

SITTING TOGETHER

There are prayers
that rise
from our wind chimes

as we sit
together
in veranda shade

smoke rises
from the hills
around us

Alice cannot keep
all her songs
inside her

So she gently hums
not to interrupt
our worrying

© Andrew Burke
from Mother Waits for Father Late

SITTING ALONE

In this
blistering heat
I sit alone

dog’s hot breath
on my barefeet
house silent

only the distant
pool filter hums

seeds are coming
alive in the earth
eggs cracking

all my unwritten
poems are rising
to be born

© Andrew Burke
from Mother Waits for Father Late

Little White Pills

The little white pills
have their names
chiselled in them
like hieroglyphs.

Beside them on
the draining board
lies a watermelon seed,
waiting to surprise the earth

I swallow the pills
and hold the seed:
if I could change my life
I would, I would.

© Andrew Burke
from Mother Waits for Father Late

Elegy for my mother

Hilda Mary Burke 1912-93

Two with sympathy cards today
among our cheery Christmas mail.
My mother died last Tuesday—

a mixed blessing the nurses say.
Mixed? Yes, she had grown so frail.
Two ‘With Sympathy’ cards today—

some must read that list each day.
Death danced across our trail
when Mother died last Tuesday.

At her wake there was much to say
about sport, weather and local ale.
Two “With Sympathy’ cards today—

now the undertaker wants his pay.
Behind a cloud the moon is pale.
My mother died last Tuesday.

A mixed blessing, so they say:
God’s daughter’s death, a nativity tale.
Two ‘With Sympathy’ cards today,
my mother died last Tuesday.

© Andrew Burke
from Under Cover of Lightness

WALKING TO THE MEETING

Walking to the meeting,
sixteen years sober,
I watch my weight.

The hospital street is
quiet as a night ward.
Sandwiched between

Emergency and Morgue
this 12 Step meeting
is as comfortable as

an old tracksuit. I’ve
forgotten how it feels
to be drunk, to

have the shakes
on a Sunday morning.
It takes a newcomer to

shake me up again.
His eyes dart from
ceiling to floor

and don’t see a thing.
He shakes, he sweats,
he thinks we’re all

watching him. He’s
right. He is keeping
us sober if only

he knew it. I talk,
I remember yesterday
and tell my story:

the ism in youth,
alcohol in teenage years,
self-disgust in adulthood …

but I am going
too far, addicted
to my story, the drama

loved more than
drink. I quickly finish
on a local cliché:

‘This is my recovery
room.’ I sit and smile
at the newcomer

but he is staring
at my shoes. And
I remember that, too.

© Andrew Burke
from Under Cover of Lightness

THE BEST TEACHER

The cat fidgets on the parapet
facing the roof next door
testing her nerve against
the chasm between.
Floodlit by morning sun
she stands, and sits, and whips
her tail, and partly sits but
stands again, and – just as
I write her fright – she leaps.
Plonk. All four on roof tiles.
It wasn’t so far. Now
she digs along the gutter,
looking for dead lizards
and such easy prey. A brave heart
on an autumn day. I’ve been
fidgeting for days, getting up
and down, brewing tea, forgetting
tea, opening files, reading
old poems and emails. Now
that I’m here, it wasn’t so far.

© Andrew Burke
from One Hour Seeds Another

UNINTENTIONAL ART

In sunshine on grey cement
songlines of silver dots
tell a nomadic story criss-
crossing and dotting their way
to their own stringless music

As I back down the drive
my wife in her flowing caftan –
purple against jacaranda blue –
waves her arms between the gates
like Phillip Glass conducting

but the music I hear is Cage-like
a gentle marimba of dandelion heads
playing in the grass centre of our drive
beating and twinging on drive shaft
muffler and axles

At the gate my wife jumps in and says,
‘Now, we mustn’t forget the bank.’ Then
turns to see me fidget: ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m notating our drive, y’know, like
Percy Grainger did with piano rolls.’

© Andrew Burke
from One Hour Seeds Another

LINFEN MORNING

(Linfen, China)

6.30am. The overture to day in Linfen is played with household hammers on commercial building projects. Cicadas sing gently in madrigal phrases. The irregular rhythm of the hammers gradually joins the first honking vehicles of morning, various toots on a full range of flutes. The street vendors put out their vegetables and fruits and squat beside. A few have weighing machines for basic conversion of goods to cash. There seems no hurry here, no anger, no overt competition, no conflict between workers and bosses. The town grows daily, and the shops change hands overnight. One man is gone from the streetscape. He wrote an anti-government message in his shop window and was not there the next day. A new shop has opened there now, selling fashion for young ladies.

By 8am the town is a bustle, going about its business. A pale grey smog hangs in the air which a light morning breeze seems incapable of shifting. Three mature citizens sweep away the remnants of last night’s fireworks with bush-brush brooms.

at night, fireworks.
at dawn, torn red paper shells
dye the gutters pink.

mother waits for father late

Mother sitting at the long kitchen table
bottle and glass and book open but hardly read
waiting for Father who is as always late.

As always late he rolls in—I must have been
asleep upstairs and innocent at nine years—to tell
the bad news he had delayed telling: old lady dead
on Stirling Highway by his car’s thump—
‘She just walked out into the car, she was old,
just stepped off the curb—My bad luck
she chose me.’ He drove to the pub
after police interviews,
to delay the telling of it
but told the boys in the bar well enough.

I was dreaming so who told me? I must have known
early next day before I picked up the phone
to hear a crazy voice say, ‘Murderer! Murderer!
You can buy your way out of it this time
but you’ll get yours, mate, you’ll get yours!’

Weeks later Father lay still in their giant bedroom
drinking crates of Coca-Cola, no way to quench
his thirst: diabetes brought on by shock. Hospital,
tests, new life programme, insulin shots
morning and night. Not too much sun, no boozing,
watch that diet. Impossible. The wittiest man
at The Naval and Military Club, soul of the party
at Freshwater Bay Yacht Club, backbone
of ‘the Killing Pen’ at Steve McHenry’s famous pub,
he could not change his habits overnight. So
comas came on. Mother and I forcing sugar in water
down his throat, one on each side of the bed,
passing the glass across hurriedly as he
rolled, getting it into him
for his life’s sake.

His brothers flew across Australia to his hospital bed
to force him out of their rich company. He signed.
Pride would not let him fight them off or ask
for help. Doomed by guilt, trapped
by alcohol, sick and tired, he went to bed
yet one more time. This night jellbowls of blood came
jumping out, Mother sick herself on the couch,
I called the doctor. Mother and I rode
in the ambulance, sat in cold hospital corridors
frightened of death. Caught a taxi home.
Driver kept Mother downstairs
while I cleaned Father’s blood off their bedroom floor
as best I could. My fourteenth birthday. He died
two weeks later. My sick mind cleaned up
as best it could
. until, wacked on
booze and dope, that night rose again
fifteen years later and drove me
to a cliff’s edge where I aimed at the sky.
My car bogged and I ran
to that doctor’s house, vomited over him
as he opened the door, 5am, startled.

I woke in hospital. White bed, white walls, blue river
through green pine trees out my window, worried
wife and child at home. I stared, wondering who was I,
asked my tidy shrink for LSD, I wanted it all to rise,
to know the sweetness and horror of all my days.
I controlled me on pills and platitudes.

Photos show a happy man, young wife and son, dressed
Seventies style, fit, smiling, curator
of a writers’ cottage by the ocean, where
the music of Dylan and Zappa mingled with Miles Davis
beyond the sound of colonial banjos.

Eight months later, dressed in white,
daisychains around our necks and in our hair,
we drove at dawn to
an artist’s champagne breakfast in the hills,
giant trees in the yard, minimalist paintings on the walls.
In my mood even eggs-and-bacon looked bohemian
as I drank orange juice, champagne-and-orange,
champagne, then whatever
alcohol I could find… Made my usual Jesus jokes
about turning water into wine, wine into water. Spent
late afternoon attempting to blow up petrol stations across
the escarpment with strips of cloth alight, laughing
uncontrollably at who knows what.

Blackouts returned, fights, lost days of
fear and loathing, my combatant driving … I swung
an axe at my love’s neck, went to lunch Friday
came home Sunday, not knowing where I’d been,
who I’d seen, days of life lost. With me late as usual,
wife gave up waiting, locked our windows and doors.
I slept black nights in a ratty tin shed.

Notebook: Café Poem

Waitress with
. .a happy face
delivers a ‘large Cap’
. .while my head
. .is down as
I write in this pad.
“Are you waiting on
. .anything else?
I look up.
. .“Just inspiration.”
She takes a step
. .back and
shakes it all about.
. .Stops. Shrugs.
“That’s all I’ve got …”

I write her down, inspired

Buy Andrew Burke’s Books

Three of Andrew Burke’s poetry collections can be purchased online — Undercover of Lightness and One Hour Seeds Another from Walleah Press, and Whispering Gallery and New and Selected Poems purchased from Sunline Press. Click on a book cover to buy a book.

Biographical Information

ANDREW BURKE was born in Victoria in 1944, then moved to WA as a toddler. He was educated there, then hitchhiked (in the ’60s) to further his education at factories, etc, in Melbourne and Sydney. After work at radio stations in Perth, he went on to be a Creative Director in advertising agencies, all the time writing stories, plays and poems. In middle-age he went into academia, studying and lecturing in writing and literature. Burke has published thirteen poetry collections, one novel and a smattering of short stories, book reviews and literary criticism..

After five years living in the Riverina area of New South Wales, he returned to Perth in 2017.

For more details, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Burke_(poet)

LITERARY WORKS BY ANDREW BURKE

1975 Let’s face the music & dance
1983 On the tip of my tongue Fremantle, W.A.:Fremantle Arts Centre Press (Shoreline poetry series number 6) ISBN 0-909144-75-3
1992 Mother waits for father late Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, ISBN 1-86368-014-4
- (reprinted in 2010) by Picaro Press, Warners Bay, N.S.W. ISBN 978-1-920957-97-1
1996 Pushing at silence Applecross, W.A.: Folio (Salt), ISBN 0-646-29751-1
2001 Whispering Gallery Cottesloe, W.A.: Sunline Press, ISBN 0-9579515-0-7
2003 Knock on wood : and other poems Warners Bay, N.S.W. : Picara Press, Wagtail (series), 1444-8424; 18
2009 Beyond City Limits International Centre for Landscape and Language, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, W.A. ISBN 978-0-646-52005-6
2011 Qwerty : take my word for it Kalgoorlie, W.A. :Mulla Mulla Press ISBN 978-0-9870771-2-7
2012 Shikibu Shuffle with Phil Hall
2012 Undercover of Lightness North Hobart, Tas.: Walleah Press ISBN 978-1-877010-16-3
2014 One Hour Seeds Another North Hobart, Tas.: Walleah Press

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CONTACT ANDREW BURKE

Andrew Burke is Andrew Lansdown’s friend. You can contact him through Andrew L. Send an email to Andrew L. and he will forward it to Andrew B.