Back row rebel


It's your birthday today,

you would have been 70 and it feels ridiculous now

to think about all the mad things that we did when we were young,

but hey, I've penned a few words for you,

sprinklings of love, like toppings on a donut,

Lashings of jam on pikelets,

a cool ginger ale at the end of a spring night.

Because my heart leaked on the pages for you,

when you went away,

snatched from us,

one terrible Friday in March 2019,

just before my birthday (which was two Saturdays later).

That month feels ruined now

but still, I have the chaos of colour that was you,

the joyful noise that filled a room from your lips,

memories locked down, inside my heart.

💘💚🍩🍉🐞🐸🐝

I run out of words, trying to capture you,

I wrote a book (of poems)

and dedicated it to you and gave you a whole chapter,

at the back.

'cause while you were a front row diva,

you rarked it up in the back -

a Back Row Rebel.

Lines for Lynn, Poems for Pikelet,

a Shout for the Shaheed that you were.

Now a void in the world,

an unmendable tear in my heart

                                                          💘💚🍩🍉🐞🐸🐝

Our life was lived through letters and road-trips

in cars so illegal it would make a possum's hair curl,

while your mother, "tsk tsk tsk'd"

and we just laughed and laughed and rolled around on your big purple bed together.

Gone baby gone...so you are,

and it will take the rest of my life to process all we had,

all I lost 

and everything I didn't say.

💘💚🍩🍉🐞🐸🐝

Still, wise and peaceful sage that I am

here's another poem about you,

for you,

to poke fun and have a larf, 

have a cry,

while I write another book

with  just maybe...a chapter in the middle,

for the Back Row Rebel that I loved.

                                                   RIP Pikelet 💚♌🌈🌠






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