The Trouble With Compassion is a collection tinged by Buddhism, flavoured by the poet's attempt to see herself and others through the lens of loving-kindness. Even the really annoying ones. Even snails. Kirsten's poems cut 21st century Zen with a shot of humour as they hone in on the truth at the heart of our contradictory world.

2. FIRST be kind to YOURSELF…

3. APPLE TREE
when I was young I wore green
and carried a rhubarb umbrella
the sun rubbed my back when I lay down
nose to nose with July lawns
singing the notes on ladybirds
all words came from the apple tree
and I sat upmost in the branches of its mind
so I could listen and still twizzle
the clouds around my finger
at first I had little to say
beyond pointing and calling names
bird! sky! spider!
then I found adjectives
and hung at least three around the neck of everything
nothing was blue that could be azure
or cerulean
eventually I asserted
all leaves were jade spearheads
exactly as if I had recently kept
the armoury at the Celestial Palace
(which indeed I had)
it’s possible the tree disagreed
it’s possible I stopped listening
older and not much taller
I moved to a more taciturn locale
and did you know tarmac sounds
exactly like a Sibyl speaking Klingon?
and concrete is a very difficult dialect to master
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4. 11
naturally, I spoke to men a lot
as I often mistook them for trees
(from my vantage they were mostly trunk)
they never offered the deep rooting
I was after
I could have popped back for a chat,
but when I was young and wore green
bees were as plentiful as raindrops
so I assumed the apple blossom was never alone
then I went home
to find the tree had been executed
in my absence
if only I had held one of its many hands
caressed the joints
that were each choice it made in growing
they tell me it bore beautiful fruit
right to the end

5. THEN, be kind to the people you LOVE…

6. Labyrinth
Knit ten, purl one, knit ten, turn.
You tell me how your mother’s ghost
Sits in you when the needles clack,
Quiet after the housework’s done.
Your father’s ghost stays further back.
Gardening, you feel him most,
Regretting things you never learned.
He could get the best from a rose.
Google says to cut above
A bud, and then to wait a year
Before you move the cuttings on.
Ten days ago, a leaf appeared,
(That acid green you’ve always loved)
On the robust rambler that I chose.
What does it mean, mum, to be strong?
We eat the soup, resist the bread,
Plump for pots of Earl Grey tea.
I press mine darker with a spoon.
Discussing books, we both agree
The whole world lives in Mantel’s head,
But Mosse’s strength is Carcassonne.
Last time here, you were still with Jon.
It hasn’t changed so much, this place.
Recovery can take so long.
You count the years back, thirty-one –
What does it take, then, to be strong?
Companionable, now, we pace,
We look at things, we nod. Move on.
In St Mary’s Newgate C of E
A labyrinth adorns the floor.
Carefully, we walk its folds.
The path is wide enough for one,
Until the space the centre holds –
Holds both of us. That’s what it’s for.
I let you walk ahead of me,
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7. 29
As it turns us turn and turn about,
Shoulders touching at each pinch.
At times it brings us face to face.
But once inside, you cut and run,
You drop the stitch of sacred space.
In my own sweet time I inch
As best I can, my own way out.

8. NEXT, feel kindness for strangers…

9. THE STAR FERRY ROLLS ITS HIPS
Janey plays the fourth floor tiles like mahjong.
In her skyscraper, ballbreaker heels -
Click clack. Clickety clack. Hup! Jump the junkie!
The sweatshops, forty-watt, go sailing by,
Where the needles rub their cricket thighs
Up and down, up and down, all night long
Janey is a U-Boat in the seaways of Hong Kong.
Thock, thock, dock to dock,
The Star Ferry rolls its hips,
Birthing passengers like lotus pips,
Ten thousand things and all of them plastic.
All the men that Janey knows are tankers,
They hit on her and spill their loads,
Check their reflection in her periscope,
Individualities cut off at the neck-tie.
All the boys that Janey wants
Are built on dragon lines.
Like sheaths holding knives,
Their Levis hold their hip-bones,
Check out their triad tatts and mobile phones,
They love her leave her love her leave her love her leave her
love her leave her
Fall for them hard, don’t even charge, blame it on ‘yellow
fever’.
Thock, thock, dock to dock,
The Star Ferry rolls its hips,
Birthing passengers like lotus pips,
Ten thousand things and all of them plastic.
40

10. 41
Forty days and forty nights of Janey,
And she’s said yes to the Devil more times than three,
A sin to sell it, stupidity to give it free,
What’s a girl to do?
When she wakes up it’s the afternoon, and she’s
Shrunk down to the size of a flea
Strung out down the rabbit hole and j-j-jittery
On cheap-speed-jackhammer-construction-jazz
It’s all money no god, all colour no contrast
More is more is more is more is more
From the Peak to the shore, Lantau to Lan Kwai Fong
Gotta get out of Hong Kong.
Thock, thock, dock to dock,
The Star Ferry rolls its hips,
Birthing passengers like lotus pips,
Ten thousand things and all of them plastic.

11. NOW, try to be kind to people you
don’t like…

12. 47
PEST CONTROL
fucking snails / shitting babies
in the weeds again / mummy
it’s a little green one – I seed it /
how many times / do I have
to tell you / I’ve seen / or I
saw? / are you deaf or just /
stupid? / the pathetic dramas
when I snuff them with a pinch /
it’s best / to kill them before
they get too big / untameable /
her hair curls like parsley /
round and round the table
with the hairbrush / screaming /
I made porridge / the right way
like my mum / salt and water /
why won’t she sit still
and take it?

13. FINALLY, imagine feeling kind to
EVERYONE…

14. LOVE IS WAITING TO COME THROUGH YOU
brutal a wolf wind at the supermarket doors it will shove you
a trolley through their automatic parting and in
to the realm of nested baskets buckets brimming bright
bouquets destined for vases or lampposts stacks of flapjacks
black gossip pagodas where turbine girls stride on the
newsprint seas arms bent back white vanes semaphoring
they too are on special offer but to who? love is waiting
to jack-knife your sternum and make you see the young
man twitching without rhythm or symmetry agonizing
over icebergs, Romaines the old man palming his wife’s
elbow like a fresh egg misbuttoned tweed hunched high
in sympathy for her lifelong rocking across a scoliotic spine
the ageing biker trachea shockingly stoppered white
plastic porthole in his wind-burned wattle love is waiting
to escape from you clawing a way out of the shattered
mineshaft joining them under inert gases in closed cup
mushroom faces and the struggle with choices crunchy or
plain shivering in the aisles of flayed shrink-wrapped muscles
seeking comfort in the avenues of varnished apples and
beyond the unmanned tills are singing please please take
please take please please take your change
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