Backchannel Norms

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Justin Wolfers

She’s simply not
interested in the
correlation between
my mental health &
a good dose of
Keeping Up with
the Kardashians;
nor the poetry of
Sam Riviere; nor
the ballsports of
many a variety

Justin, a linguist would say,
violates backchannel norms.
He withholds those subtle signs—
mmm-hmm, right, yeah—quick
head-nods—that indicate an
engaged listener, & encourage
the speaker to continue.
He makes eye contact
like a person who has been
told that eye contact is very,
very important

Kafka once wrote,
I tell her, I solve
problems by letting
them devour me.
Yeah, she replies,
but I don’t think
he meant that
as advice

He lives in a hotel now. His monkey
was recently confiscated in Germany

One way to solve
these problems,
she tells me,
is to not write
this poem at all.
I say, Stop making
this about you

He takes Adderall to help him
concentrate, because his sleep
is too restless to make endorphins.
But he hopes to cut it out soon,
and replace it with something more
natural – he’s flying to New York
tomorrow to see the specialist

I’m sorry, I
tell her later,
sorrier than
I can say
in such a
tiny chat box

Today is Justin’s first day off
Adderall. He has the arcade
closed so he can shoot hoops
with the journalist who’s inter-
viewing him for GQ; he has the
cineplex closed so he can
take you to the movies

I’m working
on a poem,
I tell her, that
destabilises
contemporary
verse – but
not much.
I mean, it’s not
doing anything
interesting
with the line,
meter, or voice;
it ignores the
entire history
of the lyric as
well as Charles
Bernstein; it’s
not conceptual,
or if it is does
not realise; it’s
neither intimate
nor alienating
enough, it’s
not concerned
with troubling
that binary,
only itself;
it’s exceedingly
long and boring;
but not quite
elating in it
terribleness.
It simulates
the feeling of
disappointment
without delivering

He plays the journalist a new song
he is working on called ‘Insecurities’;
he asks her if she likes it. She does.
The hook, Oh, oh… oh, oh…
fix all of your insecurities –
rattles round in her head for days

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Daylong

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Adam Stokell

Not even a day without!
It isn’t good,
now black poems pile in every gland.

It isn’t all bad.

This morning I leapt clean from the blocks,
pushing up into lulled woodland.
Low fog was with me like a tailwind.
Even the marsupials seemed groggy,
letting me metres closer than usual
before the bolt.
Losing sight
of shore quickly through drenched bracken whelming
taller than thought; occasional gumshed
clearings to catch breath in, lowlit
with heath, banksias, quadruped acacias,
all busy uploading winter blooms.
Lungs gasped like landed fish.
My calves burnt. But I was busy
beating out a way, a non-way,
fumbling its breadcrumbs childishly back
to half known tracks – but not quickly.
Untold hours away from myself
were gold.

Lagging back to the shack
still brimming with animal fatigue,
I forgot to take lunch seriously –
scoffed! – letting blinkered
thoughts get a zealot look in.

But a scarlet robin bobbed up
just in time to enthral me:
insatiable bird narcissism
craves every drop of crimson, every jet
black pixel the car’s side mirrors
kept dishing up – and then some;
the pull looked worse than heroin.

Then when you consider the sugar-fix
sought daylong by a needling
eastern spinebill … (But you
wouldn’t. What sober person would?)

Everyone was carrying but me.
And hadn’t I already lasted long enough?
And what cost continuing this see-saw without?

A precious deafness had dissolved
with the morning fog; the pistons
more than audible now, insistent
as the blanks always there between stanzas
spent leaving myself and landing on things.

And then the phone rang and I forgot
that to answer a phone is to look at a clock;
and to look at a clock was to know,
mid-June, if I didn’t leave soon
I’d miss my dealer’s daily window.

The addicted mind is a mob:
Chinese whispers at compound interest
gain sociopathic sway. For me,
the forum always screams loudest around 1600.

Who was I,
already one foot out the door,
to deny them more?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

On Not Giving an Account of Oneself

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ann Vickery

for Dann & bindlestiff cyberpunk

I am telling a story without prehistory.
Pocket rockets of pink, the go to temple
of gum blossom. Rays of morning sun
settling on the driver’s side. By way of warning,
I would say I am impressionable.
My inability to assume greater agency
offset by being ‘on board’
with the attention economy. Pieces of intelligence
fall as spring rain, once more unadvertised.
Breathing in damp grass simply
the work of motor neurones. Be still,
be mine, my Dixie flatline.
Road trip vs the more anti-natural commute:
is this shorthand outworn for the human path?
Paddocks disguise a different kind of sprawl, post
the muteness of winter. A Euclidean delisting.
Might I take a wrong turn
at the object of temptation? Mud-spatter
on the high chrome gloss. The tattoo of razor girl
making out with the console cowboy
just visible through the rearview mirror.
If I took a peptide for every disappointment,
would I fail to replicate Love’s focalisation?
The foreign object unlodged, made mobile
in my basic needs bloodstream. How to drive
beyond an escape clause of origins,
of having started out all wrong, a problem
to be ‘found’ somewhere, hand in glove,
with my infantile life. Outsider bespoke:
That was then, this is now.
Listening to bird song. Again.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Prelude

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Philip Hammial

Like Snow White in a heat of kink
I’ve lost my most. Glad
handles my mouth. Closed
in a cellar situation, I’ve never had
the satisfaction of cereal. When
I’ve done a pray I walk away. If
they so wished they could drang me
but haven’t yet. If you’ve done your homework
you know that an axe in kind has half a mind
to. And possibly fro but that depends. It’s one
(that one) beyond mistake. So much so that
Shame sends Horn home. Can you recall the issue
of the noise of the skirt he wore? A forced entry
(it says so here) is a commodity that sits ‘twixt betrothal
& the next guy. With him we’ll never know
if it’s dogs or crows. Or a five collar job
in Flute City. Therapeutically loyal,
we’re trading blows. Each numbered
as arousal, with eunuchs in attendance. What
in pink cups they bring us to quaff is the same
as that stuff in black cups. Or so we’re told. Me? –
collared & caned with no safe word I’d urge
some spill. As all mess eventually must
in this is there too much of us?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Clodhopping

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ali Jane Smith

Cut a hole through the ceiling, the insulating batts, tin sheets.
Climb out that way, spacetime jelly-wobbles.

I might revisit the demolished pub, say something else at the rock pool
decline the offer of a garden tour, take my plate out to eat with the others

give water to the thirsty bird, walk past the walk-in wardrobe
never think about the toaster oven or even the kitchenette

decline the second cup of coffee. On the sidetable a box of tissues.
A dry eye, I got lost on the way out, matt corridors

a house in a dream, a trustworthy figure directing me to exit
the warped, exuberant magazines, the yellow daisies with tawny centres

the prohibition, the fat black bear, the fact I’m here
the flattened ear, the greek key patterning the curtains

ice cream container full of leftover barbecued steaks.
The aluminium ladder in the aboveground pool

sinking slowly on one side. I was wearing a bouclé
v-neck jumper, mustard yellow, and I didn’t feel like talking.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Clouds

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Connor Weightman

when we broke i tried to write a poem
commemorating the occasion. i wanted to say
our time was worth remembering, but
rushing forward i braised it in salty voiced sea metaphors
, you, it, me, us , the horrifying bruise of
the colonial history of rottnest (as if it had something
to tell specifically us), world war two utility fighter planes
& yr kinda racist father.

i entered it in a local poem contest
judged by scott-patrick mitchell
. it didn’t even make the commends.

i couldn’t see: we shared in-jokes that would not function
in poems, for example pronouncing the word clouds
like the name klaus, exaggerating the soft end
. i didn’t foresee: three years to follow where we’d lose
all contact, where clouds would still enter suddenly

a ghost / a long-lost letter / a setback / a lapse
/ an impulse / a triggered nerve / synapse / a re-run
of a dumb sitcom

that we’d watched and rewatched
nine or ten seasons of
, dampening down the busy brain space like

stuff / fairy floss / cotton wool / dodgy insulation
schemes / fluffy covers / high thread count / clouds

until parted, framed that one long night where grasping
the significance, i couldn’t stop myself from crying
or doing
what i’d started: being unable to face you or us
, stuck between two bad futures.
i couldn’t have: pencilled in the repetitions, the days
i’d wonder who would break this stretching silence
first until you deleted f.b. or maybe
deleted me & time passed & keeps
passing until wednesday i see
you in the street, do nothing but wave
while you smile big & keep walking
& it isn’t that i’d want you back, or that
i’d do it all again, or that
i can still see laid out
the minute machinery
of how we ever worked
in the first place
, it’s just

soaked loose ends, obscured
& dangling, trigger some things
& i’ve nothing to tell them.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

The Bees

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Chris Armstrong

Do not scroll past this bit
this post is the clincher
you know that girl and I
celebrating 5 years of friendship
this is the place where together
we save the bees. I don’t know why
the bees are endangered, which ones?
So I share the bees, paste it
to my status and that is as good
as building an apiary of anger
in the cracks between the keys
where drones write how pissed off
they are, being forced into this
when technically they invented the hive.

No matter
the likes, the emoticons
will save bees and me and friendship.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

anyone w a treble clef tattoo is bad news

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Harry Reid

when did melbourne get so northcote
in the backyard a greyhound
rolls itself despite
m intentions –

for a while i thought it best
just let it all wash over m like
a half-drunk lifeguard

then i hear gareth tellin m thats
shit & hes right

of course

“u gotta see things a little more history
more poetry or smthng”

when did i get so handsome?
sex in th morning so european
i keep m socks on what a don juan

if yr juanna i guess that makes m
john johnson or mayb keats
“killd off w 1 critique”

u sexy little debrief
in th breathy suburbs i love
a sunburnt neckline

th australian dream realised
a tennis ball on a string in m garage

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

The Pardoner

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Stuart Barnes

with thanks to Dustin Brookshire


On the wall a small plate
of sunshine altered position
bit by bit. He’d’ve had me pick from Gothic headstones.
While he washed I turned the deco doorknob with
military precision. Briefs, wallet, keys.

Though on ice, To the One Who Raped
Me is prostrate with hope. My own mind
is my own church. In the sack
I’m no longer an African cat.
Night terrors give way to dreams.

The fever’s gone
(Zelitrex a Zeppelin,
ring-shouts at subtropical altitude),
the long weekends (smashed
on Yellow Birds,

Horse’s Necks, Elephant Gimlets,
the vapours of
fags/cowboy killers/cigarettes,
Tina’s champagne paws—
enough

to crystallise hair).
I’ve eaten
my fill of sleazy smiles,
colour
handkerchiefs rippling

denim pockets, matchsticks
thrilling skin. Entirely
guilty of subversion
I’ve murmured ‘He loves me, he
loves me lots’ while quilting Grindr’s fakery.

I’ve dreamed of amnesia.
I’ve dreamed of Major Nelson. Here,
I’ve dreamed of seven hours’ revenge, criminal
of zero variety—
a kelson of the creation hooked

into him, into him, into him.
Such sweet thunder—
Amazonian queen, I ration
Brookshire’s chapbook. Away
with the houselights. Douse impossibility.

Candles laugh in the face of the dark.
Post-burial, what’ll I eat,
will I starve. The wattle spills globose light
over Ariel—Ariel, Ariel, Ari, he
who drugged and raped and pardoned me.


Note: a terminal from Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Jailor’, with phrases from Paine’s Age of Reason, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

There’ll Always Be Music

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Gareth Jenkins

On our first date she gets fired for selling me half price drinks.
She throws the beer in her boss’ face and walks.

‘How am I going to pay my rent?
I don’t care anyway he’s lucky I didn’t knife him.’

I remember the knife shining on the counter
the one she used to slice lemons for vodka.

I look out the window at all that London going by.
I’m scared of her and utterly in love.

A year later I visit her in Denmark.
We sit in the piano room overlooking Ward Z.

‘There’ll always be music,’ she tells me
‘Leonard Cohen’
whom she’s translating into Danish
with the writer’s group she’s formed in the asylum.

A single note from her finger against a key.
The grounds are filled with empty aviaries.
The ocean sweeps in towards a black pebbled beach.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Where Fassbinder Hangs His Albatross

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Julie Maclean

Considering Martha (1974), Maria Braun (1979), Lili Marleen (1981), Veronika, Lola, Petra and all.


summary
she posts secrets to an address in another hemisphere fräulein
pins secrets all over her lumberjack shirt
she covers her nakedness with secrets
stuffs secrets into holes her mother made in her bedroom door with a stiletto heel
in a quest to beat her for her lies and lipstick liebe
she longs for her first love, sometimes her third
she injects weed killer and brake fluid into them
she drives into the river and drowns the children kinder
she serves poisoned meatballs to him and him
she loves men jungen yum
she’s filled her lover’s car with water using the garden hose
smiled and beaten a dog ein kleiner hund
she’s murdered her best friend and stuffed her in the wardrobe

subtitles
I don’t know what it is
I have thrown a kitten against a wall and watched it dribble and limp I have
trapped a cat and wear its head as a hat its tail streams down my back
I have stopped eating I can’t stop eating
I stand alone on my bridge of sighs meaows
I want them ALL to die I lie and lie and lie

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

“like a kid eats cake”

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Ray Liversidge

for him every month is you know like cruel
like it is now in april with the sun beating
down on his face in jack kerouac alley &
later when theres like you know no sun theres
city lights & its like wow look at the lights
man & then its like another alley another lane
another whatever (but thats like what he likes
coz its not cool @ home you know) & then
from the second level of vesuvio i see his t-shirt
I EAT PUSSY LIKE A KID EATS CAKE
& i think thats like not cool man &
how mallarmé you know wanted like
removed from the lexicon & as i point
my iphone @ you a voice behind me says
hey you know that aint cool dude & hes
you know more than like right you know

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Wuthering

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Tanya Grae

I am another man’s wife—
a fact that eats me
in small bites, zoned out
as the microwave seconds
count down. I think of him
when my husband feels
the need, wrecks me
where I’ve tucked yourself
in [a contortionist’s feat]
to stare at the assault—
how a lie devours daylight
& years. How long past no
does the hole implode?

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Lung Rubble

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Molly Conway

I.

angling for a booth we settle for the bar. the bartender hovers in front of us. its date night. he locks eyes with her. can i buy you a drink? she squeezes my hand. i hold onto it. sure, if she gets one too. we laugh into $18 cocktails and get drunk on our invisibility. i push peanut shells in circles not knowing if I’m more embarrassed that he didn’t try to pick me up too, or angry at another entitled straight man.

before all this. i was only three years deep in learning how to keep my queer girl alive. learning how to move. bodies. cities. continents. i tried walking. 900 kilometres across spain before i was ready to breathe at home.


the first time, i ask to kiss her. we are in her sister’s bed. a copy of The Prophet is next to the bedside table light – hard plastic, shaped like rock. i read to her from the section about building houses. the amber walls glow a long night.

in the winter we drive across the country. in a town of desert, a bar of men stare at us as we enter. bodies and volume rise. they boom over us even before they know. we move the car to a ridge twenty kilometres away because it is safer to sleep on the edge of the earth than it is to be near those men and their eyes.

before all this. she asks to come in. it takes her months, but she does. limb by limb. she finds shelter in my peel, pull and thicken. after all the boys and their unwanted hands she finds me cocoon
enough.


II.

it’s me who finally suggests the break. she continues combing lice out of my hair in the bath. let’s just try it. for a few months. if we keep going with this open thing we’re gonna crash and burn anyway. she nods heavy and shows me a nit. we eat scrambled eggs at 12am and wear shower caps to bed. the thought that this could be the last time pulses desperately between our thighs. the shower caps don’t stay on.

after all this. four months and we havent seen each other once. the flow of customers eases again. i reopen tinder. scroll distracted. edit my profile and give up. its easier to hang onto the girl who doesnt want me than to swipe into the bodies that do.


i believe the break is a break. i dont hear her sealing up all the windows and walls. she bricks. i shout. she emails

                              powerhouse woman in you, thank you for opening my world
                              so much wider
eyes                              since being apart ive realised
big.                              even though
jump.                              attracted to women
around.                              if you had to plot me on the spectrum
no.                              i am more attracted to men.
                                                                                          edge.

i run myself a bath and wrack drool thrash. she will apologise for this erasing. but for now i am dripping

               she can’t mean that.            straight world mean that.
                 one and a half years can’t mean that.
               spectrum mean that. spectrum means picking the edge you’re closer to
                     falling off.

               you spend too long away from your queer girl
                     breath and then wonder why you’re clawing
                              at air. cant figure it out, can you?

                                                                 you too-much-not-enough queer girl.

too much. talking trans kids at your niece’s birth. hiding armpit hair in your grandma’s kitchen. “do you have to turn everything into a gender thing?”


not enough. straight-passing babyface femme. blushing while you pay for that strap-on, wearing the hoops your mama gave you for your birthday.

               i confuse queer
               for crumble
                              for bloat
               surface crackle
                              electricity
               dissolve
                              short circuit

rash creeping over opaque mouth
my lungs, crooked trees burning a hot
                  how?
                              it doesnt matter. she left you to ember this down
                              alone. straight-edge be knife-ready each time.
                              this gonna shrink you, huh?

puff puff, nah. its time to slick myself.
               out-sun the billow
                              and pulse that deading away

III.

she agrees to see me.

“are you still in love with me?” she asks, with the confidence of someone speaking from the other side. a boy on a skateboard catches up to a girl on roller blades. they lock hands and glide parallel, past us. i unthroat the electricity in my teeth. “i don’t feel nothing.”

i tell her about the fire dream i keep having: us stacking love hot, then her walking into the dark. when i realise she’s not coming back, all i can do is wait for it to ember down. she squeezes my arm in a that’s-poignant-kinda-way and we keep walking. i feel resentment give way to warmth. on elwood beach a dog arches its back and takes a shit.

she asks about my life now. I list the momentums. “im excited for you.” she looks at me with eyes grounded, already nostalgic. I am still a salt tangle trying to melt into her.

i dont tell her about mornings. how i surface, remember & unhatch dissolving. how i get up anyway. how coffee tries its best to churn a smile. how she is still on speed dial.

instead, we hold hands and walk back to st kilda. i stare at the kids staring at us. let them think we are girlfriend & girlfriend. it’s not a lie, just fucked up chronology.

she drives off. and all i can think about is eating a burger from that vegetarian place down the street. and how my body is humming. it pours. it pours on the drive home. i put the kettle on. spring the back door open and smell jasmine. my birthday. i take my washing off the line, head inside.

Posted in BLOG ARCHIVES |

Swift Venom

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Christine Burrows

clues blurred in the rush
the gush of work
selective myopia

you sent cryptic texts
left palm prints on the mirror
a whiff of wrong

hope’s bright palette
out-coloured everything
the red clot, dread spot

couldn’t stop my daytrips
to a future with bunny rugs
big eyes & first steps

but you were hiding in
the ultrasound machine
coiled in the corner

of the grey screen
then – WHAM!
your taipan fang strike!

the venom was swift
in my defeated blood
you slithered away slowly.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

signature

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Dusk Dundler

working out a week later that all he wanted me
to do was leave all he wanted to do was
make me leave. sneaker meth authority.
bad dancing. lanky white cap rat face.
wanted to spit too. make people move.
whoever does not want to move. me
32 hrs after acid drop. ain’t moving. cost is
appearance but not interested in either. mental
block for back away. initial fear from smokers
balcony of undercover cop accusal comes back
to haunt. badge number to whatever pig hate i yell.
but still ask badge number. continued drinking second night
blind exuberance, intention of this place is a shouldered venom.
after everything i say, must still edge away
so slow plus stall backwards cause don’t want to get spat
on like i just saw rat face and mate do to someone a minute before.
above stairs get gently pushed in doors. favourite day
club insanity. nothing to do with me. did i say
something. chalky castor street malevolence. Westie
screech. was havin so much fun. Na just couldn’t stop well
lost. back dancing. no use in leaving. till he arrives and hauls
me up on dancefloor. hardly hear his expressive bewilderment
of job still to do. staring inevitable outcome. mucus covers return of
blankness like translucent mask. like the sunglasses i am missing, like this long
unimagined intention. pick beanie up from stand in front of speakers and very slowly
wipe it off. he screams you have to leave. no need for reply just as long as he doesn’t
touch me. and he does not want to fight.
sadness of extremity. joyous loss.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Hidden Talents.

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Kerri Shying

sat cold-arsed
at the bus stop
waiting on my job
I see what passes by

shorts with t shirts render men
fatter taller primary school boys
lipless sadness ground
into the skin

just women work here
no assessing trend

I

count up
nose-pickers shine on footsore
dads who proffer up a
juice box no mate see

I wear the short skirt you

chat me hard you
get me off this
cold hard ground

I

say
to my busmate

hey that looks like Plait Lady
and the pedophile

doesn’t that take you back

he did his time

we nod but in our side-eyes no
no no we don’t.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

21 Ideal Dates

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Tahlia Chloe

Ideal date: we do yoga and never touch. After years we turn into separate trees full of regret.

Ideal date: you convince me not to do drugs and I let you touch my hair when no one is around. We never mention it because it is a secret.

Ideal date: in different beds in different parts of the city we are both watching our phones, willing each other’s voices into existence.

Ideal date: we have been friends for nearly 5 years. We name all the different places we dream of going. We meet other people and take them instead.

Ideal date: you call me to let me know you’re seeing someone new. I know it makes you happy so I don’t ask any questions. I lie down.

Ideal date: I want to ask if I can kiss you but I just can’t tell. We wait one thousand years before ever speaking again.

Ideal date: I am a small bird cupped in your hands. You are also a small bird so there isn’t an unfair power dynamic.

Ideal date: we Skype, say things like ‘I never want to let go of your hand’ and kiss the webcam. We imagine our pixel selves as happier than us.

Ideal date: you forgive me after all these years.

Ideal date: you are across the road from me and we make eye contact. I am able to control my breathing.

Ideal date: you tell me about meromictic lakes and melting glaciers. I am nervous and say that you would make a pretty glacier.

Ideal date: I saw someone run over a cat earlier today but I think I’m okay.

Ideal date: for once I am not sitting in the rain trying to convince myself that I am not disappointed. The phone rings when I ask it to.

Ideal date: 12 years on and you are ready to apologise. When we meet up you get distracted by birds. We enjoy being soft around one another.

Ideal date: I say sorry and you don’t say anything. I say sorry again and you let me say it as many times as I like. You know it is important to me. I say sorry for the rest of our lives.

Ideal date: we go to couples therapy and I find out all your childhood traumas.

Ideal date: I am yelling “you are so hard to love” at a wall because it is easier than confronting you. Later, we meet up for Thai food.

Ideal date: you never punched me.

Ideal date: we are one of those middle age couples who feel comfortable publicly smacking each other on the bum at the pub.

Ideal date: for once, what we say aligns perfectly with what we mean.

Ideal date: it is finally the apocalypse we always dreamed of.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

confession 2

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Stu Hatton

it was Wed night in a tryst & what was my nom
de scène? I was either getting ahead of or
tailgating myself, you were dressed in skin
I would be your cowl cowling at all hrs to make
sure. And all I said was, ‘You know we could’ve
collaged the ghost we needed out of merde &
feathers but some Man’s going to tell us what
we can. He’ll say hell he’ll be our major backer
can you believe but to hell, let’s brush
the glass dust from our heels let’s enter the
hatchway let’s lose our page again so well.’

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

I am in love with a tall, tall man

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Holly Hunter

A man so tall people whisper behind their Americanos knows more about the meaning of life than we ever could. He was born this height and he will die two centimetres shorter. He buys his clothes sized to fit. He imports ensembles from overseas in two styles: casual and formal. Casual is a polo shirt and light woollen trousers; formal is like the suit that stretches when you skimp on a dry cleaner and hang it wrong. When the tall, tall man’s clothes arrive by post, he folds them in an old-timey satchel cum briefcase and walks direct to the tailor, whose business the tall man keeps afloat. The tall, tall man talks of local matters, of which he is well informed, while the tailor darts about the man’s legs, unpicking hems and magicking inches into the already comical pants. The man is so tall he barely notes the pressure of the tailor’s fingertips or the measuring tape around his ankles. He cannot see any of this, of course. He is too far away. To have a tailor in one’s address book is a matter of life to a tall, tall man.

Now look at him in the café, bending to use the eftpos. In the queue, a millennial’s rolled-up jeans and bare ankles mock the tall man, and everyone is watching. As he types in his PIN to purchase a hunk of loaf with a smear of butter, the tall, tall man is thinking of his cousin arriving from Australia that afternoon, and for whom he must remember to make up a cot.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

The Possible Dream (Buying Jeans Online)

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Melinda Bufton

I don’t know. Does Eileen Myles think this much
about her jeans?
Probably not.
Creating the perfect poetry jeans is not as hard
as you think.
It requires patience, skill,
habitat and armoury.
How to be Parisian seems to be really
How to be Patti Smith, with hair serum.
Step 1: have small breasts.
But collarbones
Step 2 take a tonic out of your bar fridge
and replace all the Evian with spite. It’s chilled, therefore.
Not bitter.
‘She buys very expensive shoes but never polishes them.’
Cool. I’m in.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Confessional

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Anthony Lawrence

In a country town, the doors and poor boxes
of churches left unlocked, I would steal away
in cricketing heat. The Baker sisters –
veiled spinsters in black, were gardening
like keepers of bees and secrets.
Inside the church the sun was a stain of light.
In the sacristy, pewter cups, unwashed linen
and caged ash in thuribles were enough
to make you believe that spiritus mundi
was under house arrest. In the nave
I’d experiment with kneeling. In the chancel
I’d invent biblical names and watch
over proceedings, my tongue an organ stop
my hands casting wide nets of prayer.
Sometimes a door would open and I’d see
a long shadow hesitate before
heavy timber closed like the audible
stages of relief. I’d keep the confessional
for last, as trespass has a ranking scale.
I confessed to crimes imagined and real.
It did me no good, but I loved the vision
I had conjured on the other side –
a priest in cowl and scapular, leaning in
to say Tell me, and tell me straight, have you
and will you again? his mouth betrayed
by a quiver.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Recovery Ode

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Christopher Brown

Talk of the night before –
the moment of mirroring
impasse in the corridor
then abandonment the

Broken thread and wait
It’s news of a two-day
technical misadventure
lifts the spirits
then you ringing me
could I think outside

Months
you place me on a
liquid diet light duties
increment permitting
an official “Visitor”
perhaps a friend

It isn’t mandatory
but in the sequel
I wait and watch
while you

(Common droid your
pretense to humanity
like fame stardom means
only to assimilate)

scatter back to earth
and where’s desire”
what of strategy
a t-shirted subterfuge
inviting revealing
just the letters “…AMO…”

where i wonder what you
mean but can no longer
read and we’re leaving

Now my minders say
(though I’d stay)
and we should do
this more often.

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

homologeo

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Marty Hiatt

otherwise we degenerates just bumble about.

big holes still in my mouth.

i also felt like there were just more weirdos getting around

i cried multiple times

i was so nervous i was almost falling over and could feel my voice shaking and also sort of jagging abruptly

it was exhausting and exhilarating and emotionally extremely overwhelming

we were jetlagged or drunk or extremely tired or extremely nervous the entire time

, saying daft things…

it was exciting to smell them

, even tho i remember i was pretty miserable at the time.

, during which time everythings changed.

i was still woozy and we all drank quite a bit.

im interested in everything

, so its going to be a bit of a situation.

its rushing along faster than we can keep up with,

, which has been a big relief on multiple levels,

there was this kind of perfect storm situation developed in the days following

i guess im just in an open for experimenting phase with everything. (of which more below.)

tho mayb im gonna get a stress ulcer soon. because of my news.

oh im so slow i just realised everything! wow, crazy, awesome

yeah, that light just jizzes our little phone cameras.

its really gentle and mild even if still kind of wild

and also quite gentle things to your mood.

im sort of spacking out but also feeling awesome.

i feel this desire to give you more and better in this letter,

, more like a blurt update.

this made everyone feel pretty damn weird.

, risk of everything amounting to nothing, being mere waste product,

but the chaos told me to.

it made the whole thing feel really weird,

im so excited about so much but then when i try to tell ppl im like

, i had my teeth out and then took drugs.

lots of awkward socialising, which slowly became less awkward.

pretty much the whole time i was either jetlagged, or drunk, or extremely underslept.

time goes by and you just realise how miracle ppl are,

and obvs ppl there are so much more external and open,

i told myself i just had to be willing to say wild shit,

but i still have big gaping holes in my gums

everything feels very disrupted. its really exciting, but extremely draining.

i got a full chart thingy off the internet then two different friends read it for me.

today was astrology day, by chance.

, but the adrenaline i guess carried me through.

i was on a high for a while after. we went out dancing twice actually

, which was really a beautiful thing to do.

, swam briefly in the pacific, which i was super glad for,

do you know her drawings?

its been pretty exciting.

just blurting my bleph.

but mainly avoiding everything…

im a bit of a wreck.

i still love you all.

how youre in a live situation, not a scripted one, etc.

, it woke me right up, i want more,

, its been driving me completely nuts,

, really obsessive about things, impatient, flat and pent at once,

, which is actually a new feeling for me,

so that had me laying low for a while.

lazy as opposed to what. the convulsions themselves.

, but with much more distance now.

i wasnt very into it to start with,

whats the point writing if i manage to buy some veggies and cook and sleep and wake and eat and talk with lovely ppl and aimlessly emote……

i felt so overwhelmed with love for all of us there.

im going fairly zany over here, late spring zane

, or just turned outward, quite clearly

and i was super tired after three days and nights of mania and booze,

, buzzing with anticipation (im a fan).

otherwise ive been struggling to read actually. i feel far from everything.

, but things here have been gangbusters intense for a while now. its hard to explain

it feels like a bit of a floaty whirlwind life here.

the sun was going down for ages.

, and then the next week was just insanely exhausting, like extreme, dizzingly extreme, anguishing and joyful and playful and just strung out

i wanted to sleep with everyone.

no worries if not can explore other cosmic possibilities.

, we certainly cant hold the movement back.

i really like you and i like being able to like you

i have an old blog.

, or at least i was muntedly reading it this way and going loony with it.

, while otherwise being very depressed and indifferent to everything.

, and in that state you really shouldnt expect to do anything other than try to not be in that state.

mayb im just projecting everything, but im going mad.

(not to take the wind out of the sails of your going mad)

just rest yesters. painkillers and ice.

and then lazed in the park and talked for ages, about the night before, about queerness and sex and problems and hopes.

i was crying multiple times

and otherwise i feel like weve just been cruising a lot around here.

so much cuddling and back-patting.

, which spread out into a fantastic few nights and days.

sekt, nail polish, black metal, chemicals,

so yeah, no more feeling like im alone and mad,

we all got tanked and went wonky and talked braille barefoot in the dust.

, after a lovely night in the park drinking,

my bro was there too. a lot of our friends painted their faces as dogs

, it was interesting and exciting coz everyone kind of put on their best face as it were.

it was totally heady, mixing with amazing beautiful weird people, so much reflection and info

faces light up for you, to you. enormous presence.

everything seems fine but i also feel really weak.

, but im not really judging myself at the moment, just rolling.

i love everyone, i sit around staring at everyone loving them, enemies of death, nuggets of anti-death even as we are all dying, with their own unique specs

the crosshairs settle by moments on all the players, in rotation. but it is really already too late

, im glad even tho it has been a crazy weird tough time.

, which took a lot out of me, and, well, im still in it,

i was crying multiple times

most of us went quite silly, at least some of us did

, roamed the streets, danced in a tiny little tower

, rather than just holding on for dear life. and you do a shit-tonne of emotional processing,

and i felt overwhelmed with love for my chum every time

i was on the dance floor totally in love with the music,

, risk of everything amounting to nothing, being mere waste product,

grinning from ear to ear and dancing like a total nong

and saying ow when i accidentally hurt myself.

, coz i was super anxious. i dont like losing body parts, no matter how small.

at one point i cd just hear smashing glass but not see anything,

but our session went off pretty well i think.

so great i was howling/whooping after.

was super sensitive to colours, a particular palette (cyan, fuchsia, violet) for days afterward,

also totally lost sense of time at points,

sort of present but provisional, mayb inevitable

, yet still fucking fucking wild.

(we were all supposed to be saving ourselves for the next night)

and how this is always going to go on and on as well

lots of mouth rinsing

, and buzzing and buzzing and just going at it. and then boozing like mad afterward…

and blood clots and crashing out and sitting around in dead time,

, not reading that much po,

im not all that interested in theory and po at the mo

, just going on silly quests instead

(like being mildly electrocuted)

, rather than just fucking around a bit before getting a job in banking

and still feel a bit mediated by externality or something, which might take the pressure down, and it really came out of nowhere,

, rose to the surface

, it got really overwhelming,

this is a totally new and ludicrous life config setup for me!

are you still flipping out?

yeah that is really intense.

its not that surprising if youre a bit bombed. youve been maxxing for quite a while now no?

funny to just sit around, vaguely working, in the lounge room.

i love living in other ppls rooms.

we should all just circulate.

i love to sleep, but i super love being awake! and hyperventilating.

im kind of crying.

i was turnt turnt turnt turnt turnt turnt

and basically almost had an ulcer from the stress and intensity of everything since then!

then a week later i ended up on a spontaneous binge with some other friends.

i didnt mean to sound annoyed before, i wasnt,

im in a capital mood.

yeah im in a pretty good mood since

i felt good, then bad, then just weird and annoyed.

i think im going ok

and, well, everyones broken,

the city is intense and im feeling nutty

ive mostly been feeling hysterical, as well as feminine and sensual and open and colourful

you all have such great avatars

and i send you lots of love and hugs and well-wishing hope shit is going well there stay marvelous and tough

and yes, pls dont go crazy!

thing is i dont currently have a permanent home,

, at least not for this degenerate reader.

sort of feel like sick in my own skin.

my mind is really getting bent out of shape, getting really wriggly and tinny and wobble-boardy.

mostly unable to compute.

even tho there are fractions of it that are mind-blowing…

and then i just collapse into a crying pile of dirty washing.

one of the positive side-affects!

(, said the drugs.)

the city is super beau at the mo, and, well, so are all our ppl here.

i also saw a tiger-in-a-späti video the other day did you see it before your dream?

i get freaked out by futility.

(like what we chatted about the other night)

i was really really flipping out but now im a little calmer. like trying to function while in shock

its a disaster but everythingll be fine?

sekt wells in my gum holes

all the rest of us were all madly hugging.

and the rest of us just standing there killing ourselves laughing.

and it was fucking nuts.

we band went late to the park where we had strange arguments, got whack stoned all who touched the joint, and some went on the giant neon ride for to upside down and be ill.

i felt like time had become like a water-trampoline force-field floating-pulsing back and forth before and through me

, couldnt finish a sentence.

so intense with like 30-something nutters there all bumbling and thrumming…

(you cant see whats happening only ten ppl away)

i was really manic and great, have also been telling myself to calm down, chill out,

and walked around all night just relaxing and chatting and it was super-dooper.

im a bit of a wreck too, emotionally and all.

everything is actually also totally great!

but it is more the super-exhausting emotional aspect of it for me.

i think im turning into a girl.

as we were all merrily saying goodnight, everyone hugging.

and walked and chatted till long past dawn. it was amazing and awesome, really intense but also really gentle and mild and open,

, but it was almost more fun walking around for hours afterward, just chatting and feeling nice.

im always up for a chat about old po fogeys, polyamory, anxiety, confusion, time, etc.

now im just like wanting warm sensual affection from all and sundry, boys and girls, girl-boys and boy-girls.

, after thered been this intensity building between us for days,

i cracked under the pressure after feeling some sharp gutting stomach acheys,

was buzz-sobbing in the street after the storm (the storm!) outside the vietnamese joint waiting for my take-away while they blasted hideous super happy bop-trance from the kitchen

a lot happened, it was intense. i guess it was a bit of a growing…

, we stayed till long after close and we told off the men who came to tell us off.

we are all drunk on each other, light-headed, stumbling, but also racing, talking too much, bounding along unbounded boundless…

since then ive been in a kind of crisis situation of attractions!

but this meant i got to see the crane man climbing up his tower crane and switching it on and spinning it around and around in the dawn sun.

it was certainly an abrupt extraction

the sun was coming up for ages

, the shifting significance of time (retreating, approaching)

the shifting extravagance of time

what are we doing. goddamn.

i wasnt very into it to start with,

i should prob go fry me some eggs.

ill get you a pic.

happy lunacy

always a pleasure

life here still feels pretty open and weird,

ill show you in the flesh soon.

thanks for the carrot pie

cd you pls tell me what time i was born?

might send you this draft poem ive been working on for the last few days

dont worry im not normally like this im never like this

just felt like making contact with you

its been a super intense time

on the shoulder of weightlessness

things here have been fairly wild here since you left.

otherwise things are just plodding along here.

i hope youre having a good stint in the zany mountains!

happy crazy week at work

we should skype soon.

turns out a bit of bone came off during the procedure. luckily no brain attached.

the other day i read about a benign brain cyst you have?

im out wednesday night and thursday night and saturday and sunday nights.

but im prob home for the next few days recovering…

i guess you just try to get through it and make sure you dont mumble!

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged