Truth Beauty

‘…truth beauty…’ – this is the second half. The first is: ‘Beauty is truth.’ So again, or still – Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ – and the rest: ‘that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’1 Thus a poem about truth and beauty, and beauty and truth, knowledge and need, mortality and friendship, the Greeks and us, urns and poetry – among other things.

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Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged , , ,

Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: Cocky Farming

Robert Frost once said about writing poetry, ‘You gotta get dramatic’. Caroline Ross’s poem, ‘Cocky Farming’ dramatically enacts the hardship, fight and struggle that can beset Australian farmers, the worst foes being harsh weather and unsympathetic banks. I enjoyed the way the poet comes at her subject matter from an aerial view, looking down upon the landscape and noticing all that is happening over a wide vista. The tone and shifting perspectives in the poem are mainly what deliver the drama, as does the imagistic acuity. Her selection of details creates a compelling sense of the futile endeavour of trying to make a living when faced with immutable forces. The hardship extends also to birds and plants. A terrific touch in the poem is the vernacular use of the term ‘cockies’, so that the birds mentioned in stanza one seamlessly transfer over into farmers: ‘Cockies fight against/ the sun, the wind, the Banks, all threatening/ to snatch away the living/ clawed and scratched each day// from basalt rock.’ The word ‘cocky’ is also not without a certain irony.

The quintessentially Australian flavour of this poem is a highlight and the contrast with English farms gives added intensity. Towards the end of the poem, the long panning shots give way to a more intimate focus, and the image of the farmer holding a grand-child’s ‘tiny hand’ is moving and poignant. I also enjoyed the way the short and long lines seem to imitate and embody the visual movement of the poem from wide to closer perspectives. The voice is strong, authoritative, convincing. – JB

Cocky Farming


White cockatoos swoop 
down from morning’s unsuspecting dawn 
and land, as if one wing, in the eucalypt.

Dirt’s brown odour floats 
up from caked, cracked earth while what will later 
be a scorching sun 

rises above the roses . 
Mulberry trees extend their hands 
one to the other, seeking 

shade even from the dawn.
In England, farms have sheds snuggled neatly 
to the side of great estate homes. 

Inside these huts, machinery 
is hidden by labourers who sharpen, oil, 
and maintain the country idyll’s 

image guarded by generations’ mute 
agreement; owner, farmer, worker, serf.
Australia’s country life

is less genteel, the homestead’s haunted
by a bleakness born of desperation. 
Cockies fight against 

the sun, the wind, the Banks, all threatening 
to snatch away the living 
clawed and scratched each day 

from basalt rock. Here, machinery 
rusts in yards, vegetable gardens are bordered 
by fences invented from dented cans 

filled up with cement and steel posts 
like prison walls built to keep out goannas. 
Low crawling vines sacrifice 

rockmelons’ babies to shrivel 
in the dawn; decoys they hope will distract predators 
while the mother ship 

hides many more under fat 
green leaves growing close to the ground.
In the end, all of this is just a place 

for the elderly farmer to show 
the grand kids; a place to hold a tiny hand 
and deliver sermons on the way 

of things in this country, a wisdom
bequeathed from his life of holding back the dragons 
of sun and wind and Banks.
Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged ,

Crossing the Real

Each step is                                                   measured
	       in                      potential
thrust rivets                                                  twist and divide		all strain

		                        banks curve away, harshness
of lines			                       ascend from hours                        lung squeeze 

we span                                                                         miles                                   all centred 
	     floats                                    ghosting ferryways                       shift territory

we revise borders                                            steel shanked and pinioned
passage guarantees                                          gale force intrusions		     all sway
is passive.

Function over form                                          we touch
waves		        through openings		                                  slats under car bellies
suspension of held breath					                                                               count all seconds
	      childish fear of			
                                                                                            falling		
we reach other sides                                        then assemble new doors

to restrict access.
Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Crossing in Real Time

How should we perform this act of 
                                                                         - connection - 
			                                                            	                         ?
    	      Belief and bridges:
                                            ( a journey of suspension but the supports )
                                                                                        are a dissipating concave into this dragon
                                                                                        harbour.

Can we cantilever ^ this ^ uprising?
                                           Or perhaps we must breathe — this — spine
                                                                                                     and arch—well into each in—bet—
                                                                                                     wee—n.

We will break no new ground here
                                                              x
                                                               but these letters can fly
                                                                                                           o
                                                                                                                     and even vaults are built with
                                                                                         doors.
Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Samurai

Miyata protects the village

another blood splatters on the pebbledashing
an abrupt and to the cowards
scrolling through his phone optics
publicly
you cannot use this death
in your new advertising campaign
black stool water
chants the voices of the Congo
helicopterred, interred
with cherry blossom
“now peace has come to our land”
because of Miyati’s swordsmanship
as only a dominance of force so complete
that is endangers overflowing
can bring love to these odorous




Miyata encounters the 15 vexations

1. the persistence of the stain after the fact
2. abandoned in the face of an undefined duty
3. loosed footing amongst the chatter.
4. Presently, the earth offers no cloistered respite,
5. no cessation nor no practical form.
6. Try the unrequited love of all landscapes
7. or bismuth subsalicylate.
8. A survey of the variants
9. preoccupied in the popular imagination.
10. Of course, in this instance, for this is the season.
11. Broke out
12. because of what was brought to it,
13. the sheer excess of office supplies
14. another line of work
15. his.




Miyata brings mercy to the crippled

a sound of jug from the jugband
air the sword whistles splits
Miyati is eeling the foolish into bits
donning a cloak of wound cleansing maggots
& with larvae bore electric
chasing screen to throat
a high pitch battle wool
& then weeps
having chopped epileptics
into rope dust
before he even realised
sipping divine caviar he plans to
be less direct & kill illegally
from now on




Miyata clocks in

How hunky he
looks over lunch.
The span
of Mickey’s hands, demarcation
of the hour. Almost over
he joins us, making mega-boss
deals on the Far East. The curt
Miyata, stock drift on an ocean
of aqua battle wool. Bunched in
and alert to the sensation of shrinkage.
Retained in wads
under-arm,
now sledding on through a
mountain range.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

40 Feet

ten minutes having Everything again asleep in the chair
let’s think of this being
at the cough edge of space
in the grand tradition of double acts
you and I Steven
something many would
not even call pornography

& soaked
in wave
after wave of kerb water from a bastard bus
another
miniature emperor arrives at Gatwick

already I am back, looking to see if I regret
my first
poems, that is the nature of anger
new subject matter:
we could become, but they would notice
if there are reading at all
on giants, on grief
on the sad chance of a meeting the second
when you barely have begun the first
there are giants of regret
taking sheep & goat in their hands
mashed bones a dead hippie in a jungle
plane crash minced into one matter
a lost love you know died starving
& without you loveless furious
holding the busham
before slamming a human head
into a brassbarrail & being lucky
it didn’t crack its brain like a giant’s egg
an angry thief made up of hate steals
milks soothes flat finger bones
wood a natures graves for babies Russian
soft in the looking up light, hurting piled

I’ll heal you by thinking about you

counting down the allotted
heartbeats still most of everything
t o g o
the new young Joseph Buys
to wrap in automatic
Tasmanian honey and kitchen roll

when we were better, getting on in
a one legged horse allowed to live
dragging itself across sand
for competition and then the electronic
list of the missing
broke our hearts
now everything’s big, everybody’s mother
is bluer than blue, whiter than white
privileged as a dip in the car thief fame and muscling up
for money
sounds like a good deal to me
when I’ve become wealthy
I’m bound to be calmest
said a Giant, currently fashionable
if the screaming doesn’t end by sunday
we’ll call a doctor, said the elephant
fresh through the ice
sea lined marrow of fish
of misinformation cleared like paraded
grounded I’m welcome
I don’t want to know

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Oil

The roughneck didn’t care who’s oil it was
he just hated the midnight sun. The toolpusher
hated the sea, and the drill went down
regardless, as the ocean never met the sun.

& at this break in the tail oil, the oil
is called back into its drum
the cylinder steel mask of a northern Oni baba
where North embarrasses
its own deployment hundreds of miles below
terror as houses became unaffordable
because of pressured fossiled compressing
a woman in a bed is transferred to a wheelchair

The derrickman on the monkey board
was tripping pipe when he saw a humpback
whale in the water below. The derrickman
whistled mississippi. The humpback sang
his own song, and the drill continued
regardless, as the ocean never met the sun.

the poor are thirsty, feed them, he said to his aides
he was heard overheard saying, not a stupid man,
but his lies never did put a strain on his hearing
he had the strength to laugh to the end as most terrible people do
he laughed loudest when reminiscing the young crowd dispersion,
the horses baking or his pranks.
piercing barrels shaped shipping, or industry pierced
a few days ago I was listening to the gentle tide of the North sea
now, if the black gets in again, I’m leaving

The roustabout has magic in his brain, a synaesthesia
hears ancient forests in the oil on his fingertips
sees sunlight in viscous dark. All of history is present
the continual line is circular, like in the north, where
the ocean never meets the sun.

What is latticed on the common is the fact if the crude being made o
the deadest things compressed, some were animals
wait till the animal is dead before you eat it
make sure your love is awake before you have sex with it
even if the timing o the children
mournful altar architect is sleepless, them sleeping
rolls over upon its partner imagines it’s America
don’t imagine any freedom oer than that
we the Baptists gave to build a sanctuary of moods
(for if they won’t understand)
I’ve experience in museums & can man the desk

the chainhand stood above the moon pool
and cursed the money he couldn’t let go
he thought of his daughter, wished
for energy in the wind, as the ocean
never met the sun.

a long drop it was to see the chain undone
above him, but fall it did & what hard will
were to be discovered knowing now the tricks
poetry of a man with no legs whose only
wy to making were pulling things from
out of the sea, a cough too that lingered
won’t leave, spitting black hank into a
banana peel

bell nipple, big bear, blow out, cold vent
core sample, drill sting, the floorhand
ran these words over his tongue, and felt
metal in his mouth. (Fish: any object
unintentionally dropped into the wellbore)
The floorhand spat into the wellbore.

the bear named for a terror
oil caked put still at the praising lids
not even a hair to wash his hands
when men in swarms part for another’s
entry on an oil rig, son, you know he were
a hard man, a cut too manipulated
a footage of a flighty walking into the snow
as though were a suicide, and not a hood run
searched out for a certaindistance
a jack shell put into the sky to keep the bear back
the dogs get mauled, but not hurt
Svalbard skulltooth, a neck stroke clinch
that killed a boy, but the bear’s still dead nae
better off than the crudebear, oilbjorn
floorved, who wheels himself abound

the floorhand spits fish into the wellbore
the chainhand stands above the moon pool
the roustabout sees sunlight in viscous dark
the derrickman whistles mississippi
and the drill goes down regardless, as the ocean
never meets the sun.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

1000 proverbs

A Canadian pharmacy is never understocked.
A horse cannot join the mounted police.
A flap of skin need not always be sewn.
A stitch in time saves an otter’s pocket.
A clown’s pocket is full of tricks.
Never offer to clean a clown’s shoes.
A clown is like a bubble, one prick and it’s gone.
Never pass wind in a bubble car.
Never wind a car in a bubble.
In a hearse, there are no back seat drivers.
Sometimes medicine tastes bad, but you have to swallow it.
The bitterest pill tastes nice with cider.
No man is River Island.
There is no point shoplifting in Aldi.
Tesco Value is always valued.
We are all as individual as individual fruit pies.
Eating a pie from McDonalds is like going to a butcher’s for a prostitute.
There is nothing more satisfying than a sausage.
Don’t trust a man inviting you to swim in his bath.
Never trust a man who shares his loofah.
Never wash in a public toilet.
You can take a horse to the toilet, but only in Cumbria.
Don’t eat cheese in a hot spring.
As a lady has wiles, so the Swiss have innumerable cheeses.
A Romanian lady need not be feared.
There is always a man in Romania.
There are mountains in the Ukraine.
Never show a chicken a map of Kiev.
To have egg on your face is not nice.
Don’t put all of your eggs in a rucksack.
Don’t put all your eggs in one bastard.
Better an egg today than an egg nog tomorrow.
Better Butlin’s than a Russian prison.
Better a scarf in Skegness than rubber gloves in Minehead.
Better a wrestler in the vale than in Bognor Regis.
Better a bugger in Bognor than a penis in Penistone.
Better buggered in Athens than in Sparta.
Even the Greek gods smash their plates.
Nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan.
There is nothing more dramatic than a chipmunk.
This is madness. Madness? This is Sparta.
Even green fingers do not belong in salad.
A salad a day to world peace beckoning.
French dressing does not make you a musketeer.
Muskets are not just for the mustard.
A musket in public, a blunderbuss in private.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

la dominate

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

All the Birds Between Us

What happens when birds fall?
Do birds always fall?

a broken jet wing
fills the river-flat
today

What if a bird
fell between us?

let it be swift
old cat
How many birds would it take to spin a cyclone?
Can bird bones blow wind into my lungs?



bone and quill
straighten, lungs
burst, ears
scream, tail
rudders, wings
sweep

I define
flight
arrow
death for one fish

What if I could taste
your breath between us?

salt

Do birds ever get sick of air?
Do all birds like the colour blue?
down, down,
down feather, down
down in flames
flaming down
flamin’ go down
flamingo down
down dance
brolga dance
starling flocks
startlings
murmur
n ations

Are birds’ mouths
too small for us?

that cuckoo will swoop my last bubble
breath


Is the first joint of my little finger a vulture delicacy?
What would if feel like to break a bone with a beak?

up
water streams
air rushes
I accelerate
with my catch
to the sun
and the height and
the flock
all around


Would you claw away
the blood between us

I hear the fish in my gullet

Can beaks be soft?
Would you recognise a smiling bird?

tiny bird
insects at sunset
a Möbius loop


Will you ever wash your side
of the glass between us?

cit︢ sis︢ sic︢ ran nar︣ cis︣ sis︣ tic
chickcihc

What would life sound like from inside an egg?
Would there be more swans if kicked-chicks lived?

mother duck coo Ɵ

water Ơ – tap tap tap Ƹ

mother duck calls from the pond

we launch ҈
into air

into water

wait

are we dabblers or divers?

Will you stand there
till the air is cold between us?

kookaburra’s chest

How many feathers make a bird?
How many feathers do you have?

the balance between the
the rise on the
the dip on the
the warp and weft of the
the scents on the
the sounds of the
the spray of the
the shades of the
the feel of the
the hunger in the
the love of the
and the joy of the

Are there feathers
between us?

what does she see in him?

Are you a bird?
If you could be a new kind of bird, what would you look like?

◊

a◊a

regit◊tiger

htom a◊a moth

htom-regit a◊a tiger-moth

htom-regit wolley a◊a yellow tiger-moth

htom-regit wolley thgirb a◊a bright yellow tiger-moth

htom-regit wolley thgirb◊bright yellow tiger-moth

htom wolley thgirb◊bright yellow moth

regit wolley thgirb◊bright yellow tiger

wolley thgirb◊bright yellow

wolley◊yellow

thgirb◊bright

htom◊moth

a◊a

a◊a

a◊a

How will birds end?

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Scarabs

Ah let’s do new where scarabs click
Resonant dust from hashish headlight
Forever dream thing sweeps through high brocade
And mind is central, serene, lavender mists

With a sucker punch below the graft,
Below a mortar and pestle imprimatur —
Those long licks, those trance flings,
That flash of dry out of the wet;

Remove the quotes and flounce to sun ship
Kingdoms crashing hard with strange assonance,
Ululations distorted by deep rattle, O and
Spoiled silence languishing in its rowdy pleasure.

That’s what left us to our own resources,
To that megaplex of realisation: mode of transport,
Hub of communication, a brutal parrot flying low,
All shadowed in our pastoral no-show.

Pataphysic pill reappears in soft library
Love tongue slips into life time masque
Darby Crash and pals push down Mohawk
Upending trash cans and prepare for (death)(happiness)

And so say all of us, hustled and hoarded,
ridden into the dirt. An echo of track success
grates their nerves and we take a collection
from what’s left — misfire, undertaker, less worthy.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Sonnet8 – “He sits awhile, then off he goes”

Whale-like arthritis companies: the bunny gets it in my whalespace. Titlewow, her beauty works at stalling. Her maladies were reborn in ice cream. Her hair has been scripted in the new hydrogen economy. Listening to his scorpion groove, her beauty resides in a palace of quotes. The most beautiful lines so far in Kessler’s journals: Weimar, August 27, 1903. Thursday. … We drank milk in the inn next to the Belvedere, where Hofmannsthal ate, for the third or fourth time today, raw ham. … Weimar, August 29, 1903. Saturday. Hofmannsthal continues to be sick and eat ham, indeed to eat a disturbingly large amount of ham. What is wrong with me? I laughed til I was wheezing, Anne. John, that is hilarious! Oh god, when beauty rhymes with ham. It’s all upright pianos, halfhouse plans, vortigaunts. Veiness vanishes. Various roadblocks set up by police. Let me sew until my fingers turn Singer pink. My surgeon is planning on removing 800gr. of low rumble at just that point. Obviously this is similar to the garden hose analogy, which is why anti-aging plastic surgery lights up in beautiful blue light. And that, in my humble opinion, is a good old fashioned kettle that won’t waste our time.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

Porch Light

‘How do the angels get to sleep when the Devil leaves the porch light on?’ – Tom Waits


1.

If you consulted your own cipher-mind (if what presents as yours could be
compressed in such a lazy line), would it encircle this whole ball of string theory
or only what lies beneath? Every oceanic floor peak, all those pre-lung
beasts that beckon us back, ever back, while we struggle up here in the
arc of your earth-wing? It is suffocating under your airs, Old Birdman,
we don’t know enough about our own night terrors to ever consider yours.
To claim you frighten the children with your silent staring is like
naming the midnight ocean mysterious, to sing out your secret symbol
through all this typical cataclysm might boil our blood.
Still, see you slip and slide out of heaven into the foam pits of human love:
more, elevated, other. Exotic, no matter how well disguised, for we
blinks of one of your manifold eyes don’t claim to tune into our own timings.
There is a connection octave-plinking through this mystical equation,
yet this is not another symposium examining the intricacies of angels.

2.

Perhaps some planet put you up to it. You didn’t want so many eyes on your wings:
it’s embarrassing, it’s a job. Hard to refigure you without, yet once in the annals of this
endless processing, perhaps you were writ down as feather-skin, transitional form.
If only we had come down from the birds, we too could be haunted by memory of flight.
We did not fling down from the firmament; we squelched up from watery depths, aquatic
apes. You are a terraform failure. Fire-sword bearing man-birds could have ruled, yet
water monkeys made it through. Your trajectory, defeated, exited earth for heaven.
The fall went up. You did not win. We did not rejoice in the progression.
This murky wet won’t leave us – even now we are swamp and slime. You: air or light or
both, descend on passage-ladders right before our very minds. We grasp hold of the base,
steady it with a sick grin. You can at least go back up the way you came down.
We can never return; we left our gills on the shore and the tide snatched them back.
If we, green with envy or slime, are seeking Return, it is to pond and puddle;
yours is to some flaming red aerial heart of everything.

3.

You cut the fancy-free heart right out of us. In the witching hours, when night dervish
morphs into night mare, you are stilled, silenced, scribbling and scribing, saving it all
up to sing it out later. Some Lizard-God wants to know the electro-magnetic reading of an
attempt at meeting. Circling the throne, later and always reporting, you proclaim the heart
to be still beating – that pink-to-blue mass, alone in the shadow of all horrors,
what can go on between lovers: smashed telephones, shared appliances, night. Watcher,
you are never still, you whisper continuum to these moments even as you raise the knife.
Left to our own devices, we could be the scribes of our own autopsy, the records of
entanglement’s dissection. We could carve up the shared ventricles, the cleft aorta,
discover what was never beating to begin with. We could bathe our empty cavity in a
plenty-more-fish sea, decide what cut out means, what we will do with the
etch-mark-once-heart, what new world our new work will break forth into.
But with you here, light bleeds along the wall, the shuddering is of presence and we
know – clinging and ejecting aside no matter on whose behalf – we are poppets.

4.

You burst forth as a woman. We thought this soft body too moist to house an angel.
Murky spirits aplenty, but pure swords of light? When the Heavenly Grace stabs in,
it will leak out through all those holes. To where will it escape? How will we find it all to
shove it back in again? We saw those frescos, believed them, for they were birthed out of
Holy Father. The Devil with breasts, leaking out everywhere to all sorts:
constantly shadow, probably dark matter and other arcane fears of science.
We suppose you could be our Mother, angel, you are cold and removed, set in marble. Yet
we overlooked you for centuries, you were so far away, and we certainly forgot
you could possibly be true, what with all that loft and strength and absence.
Isn’t absence of the father? If you were allowed to choose,
you might seek woman out because here we seek out our names through pain.
You want your own gender angst, a category other to Holy. We won’t tell,
we will watch you watching us as you reflect sheen on this Leviathan’s back,
drag the frescos towards your breast for spring cleaning, a bath in new light.

5.

Blood. You are out for it, we try to keep it in, at all costs. Blood:
The way to tell if we are here or not is whether we can hear it circling. Or not.
It’s unlovable, really. It is smelly and of metal and is awfully difficult to remove from
cashmere once it all floods out. We are constantly managing it, feeding it, giving it away,
taking it all back. It’s essentially a connector, even magnetic.
We wonder why you want to exchange pulsating white for toffee apple sticky.
We don’t think you would if you really knew what it meant. Blood, Blut or Bloed,
might be our earliest word. It has always been there, unforeseeable just like you.
Blood is the very opposite of you: intermediary, link, vapid passageway.
Blood raises spirits and runs to the sacred places. Blood is in the family. Anything but
pallid, blood of an other contains your revenge. You can never have revenge, Watcher.
Say we don’t know how lucky we are to own it, say what you will. We are bloody-minded,
moving onwards over bones that birthed the whole bloody mess is all we know.
Our red warmth runs cold against all your white. We have always been afraid of this.

6.

As the glory pours in and through, even the Throne of the Most High is merely a tube.
There are innumerable zillions even in our own brains without considering the external
piping we construct to extend the nexus out. To echo the universe, which is one
Giant Conduit sucking us all in, out, round and round, we recreate the cylindrical vessel.
Inside the spaces of subatomic nothings, how many cylinders? We etch on the lining of a brain-tube
while cannulas poison to near-death, while lines to arms and throat and heart ensure life
persists with a tube no longer viable inside where evolution always requires it.
Inserted tubes suck out the pooled blood like pulped prayers. TV is The tube,
we yearn to recall when thrown out of your tunnel of Graceful Light, yet by that time pain,
and not-remembering, are the new profound. The nostril tube floods oxygen,
floats brains so far away that blood-prayers creep in and add up somewhere outside all
tubing: the dark energy inside. Isn’t it enough that you ensure our continuing?
That exploding would have burst all persistence even as we received The Annunciation,
sipping from a chipped teacup while scrawling the word ‘Grigori’ at the top of the page.

7.

So hard to tell if the birds are mating or fighting. The koalas are attempting both,
here in last the pocket protected enough for them to keep at it. We too keep at it:
against, always against. It’s not your fault, messenger, yours is to intone the Great Law.
The Great Law is Always. We are to blame – bifurcate is all we do down here. Small
wonder the axis teeters, unsure of whether to shift or remain safe in stasis. It will break,
this is Occam’s Razor. Now, while our hair falls out (it’s the anaesthetic, it’s the morphine),
you gibber endlessly, something about the Great Glory, what was
before until then. As our wounds pus and blister, we grow tired of this obfuscated babble.
You are doing it deliberately, jiggling these abstractions, these meaning-carrots,
before our puny brains. Say what you mean to say, Watcher, is this all? Here? This
everymorning dying? Last koalas grunting in blind continuing, whip birds and koels
bouncing beckon or warning against the everywhere-everything hills. Clouds so sneaky,
when we turn our backs the sky is something else entirely. Light on new leaf, trembling.
You gibbering on, some non-direction-everywhere, while our best awe is silence.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

The Line

The line simmers instantly
Dog pisses on garbage, waits to cross

Keith in Nellcôte above the abyss

Poetry too is a performance

These swimming thoughts subside

There is no set formula for calling general headquarters

But we’ll get together, don’t forget

How today became unavailable

A crossing of years and fears

A crossing out
A crossing over of poetry into ecstasy
A blanking out

A blanket wishing and receiving

A success

A succession
This follows on from the lines we already had

Densely arrayed articulations of filth
Today became unavailable
With the smell of woollen bodies
It’s just what happened

Could be something new altogether
Or a break in flow in what had started
The line shimmers innocently
Let me know your thoughts

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,

January

(porcelain erasure, after Cynthia Cruz)


A Califormia of snow

Of illness. I throned myself in the white

Noise of its silence and watched the world

Fell away. All the silver flickerings of possibility

Going out like the sound of

Clicking into the distance. It is almost

The end. Anesthesia of medicine and me,

Beneath its warm bell of milk. My

Microscopic: a locked window overlooking the

Sea. An atlas of the disaster: an un-lit hall and

A shift in the waves

Porcelain. Michelle, my little sister, silent

A weed. I took all the things I loved and

Smashed them one by one


Note: An erasure of Cynthia Cruz’s poem ‘January’, from Ruin (Alice James Books, 2006).

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

bailiwick 4 & 5

from bailiwick \ BAY-luh-wik \ , noun

4.

He took his homeward way outside the park and how
to conjure up a picture for instance of a town without
allowance must be made for those who, without
once, presumably, this quadrangle with its smooth lawns
true, what he felt was no more than a longing
but, said his father stopping in front of the drawing
there are many causes for a suicide, and generally the most
notice, for instance, on the back wall above his head
men and women consume one another rapidly in what
his father told him that story his father looked
it swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among
what she thought about those people, about herself, about life
at forty, worn down by the strains and stresses of
this led me to remember what I could
I have never seen anyone die for the ontological
town itself, let us admit, is ugly.


5.

Anyhow, now they had to get out whether
the technician tapped his wrist pointed to his mouth
he stood a good chance of being drafted and even
you’ll die when you hear well you know when
it’s worth thinking about and out in California
all of a sudden he was alive again my friend
picked wrong on that United States Civil War picture
he had more success with him than with himself
the great gleaming sky of Los Angeles as bright as if
obviously he had shown up to holiday-greet a relative resurrection
wind in the bamboo rustled on although dead and in
himself he thought she died as she lived
and then there was another I remember of a girl
beaming Fiddler on the Roof down at me with its psychotronic
meters began to register and the mechanism hummed where am I
into the boom mike Jason said smoothly keep all those


Each poem in this sequence is a collage of a personal library of an anonymous micro-tech worker
on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk site. I only know them by their handles — in this case
AWFOG7VQH39H9 and A1GV0PBEWEEGIL, respectively.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

What Not to Include

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

The Structure of Fiction

The problem was as Sal stood by her friend
He was getting robbed by three older boys
In the first scene state the predicament
Such as there was a calamity
She hoped to help him as the world came apart
Then the story became a wild goose chase.
The first attempt to solve this mystery
Which began or had its birth in failure
Depicted our parents in a puppet show
The trick, the illusion, the play of speech
A story so utterly absorbing
Some unknown urge preceded the telling
And wandered through the body of work.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Section 18

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Goodbye, the Dream

While in spectral communication with some illustrious friends the other night, I felt
bound to inform them that we’d all moved on so far in 2014 this year of anyone’s
lord that their views on this and that (also, the other thing) are no longer relevant.
I’m happy to report that they took the news remarkably well, for passé antediluvians,
each in characteristic fashion.

The following is at transcript of our conversation.

Miroslav Holub

There’s no explosion like a line
with a joke at the end of it.
It’s fun also to dance on temple walls
and feel them tremble, a little.
Or grind fags out
in the forecourts of government offices
as close as you can get
to the NO LITTERING sign.
Paranoia was the go in my day too.
That’s only sensible. Beyond a by-your-leave
or maybe not, it’s always true:
though they lead you gently by the hand,
they are out to get you.



W. B. Yeats

Ascend – we know you must – the winding stair
to the upper room prepared for your arrival.
The view is wonderful.
Horizons have been specially designed
to carry sight beyond
your sleepiest imaginings.

You ask more?
Sometimes a wild swan
swoops over the lake,
or a jackdaw,
caught unaccountably in your room,
flies at you as from a dream
by Bergman. Or a pre-Raphaelite patter
of rain arrives on cue
to dimple the water.

Such stuff belongs on post-cards, now.
No-one wants to carve their name
in the desk you leant on
looking out your
Tennysonian embrasure.
You’ve heard of ‘closure’?
We’ve had a century of it
sandwiched between wars.

You wouldn’t know us.
Our idea of comprehension
would seem a fitful, random
throwing things together
to your eye; our pleasure
a strange, feverish, distractedness
from charm.

We’re more fascinated by ourselves
than you could possibly imagine.
Why not? What we can manage
by a thought Is marvellous. We indicate,
and forests fall.
Our least decorous perceptions,
for all their trade in shadows, self deception,
outright, down home lies,
are more attractive to us than your grand sonorities.



John Berryman

We get it. You’re far out at sea,
can’t swim, and your father
who took you there,
is threatening to leave you.

Several things are possible.
You can dream yourself ashore,
or let go and let the ocean have you.

Famous tantrums follow in either case;
but this, you know, is only buying time.
You still can’t swim,
and water’s implacable as stone.

That come on in, life’s fine! spiel
didn’t fool you for a moment.
You always knew the stuff kills
if you take too little
of it in martinis.

It’s implicit everywhere,
lying low, or towering above a day’s occasions,
full on, hidden, multiform;
potent to freeze to nothing every sense
you ever cared for. And always happy
to renew acquaintance.



Wallace Stevens

Don’t start, please. You’ll never make it. Quit now.
Reel out language to world’s end as you will,
you won’t catch the whale.
A so-so sunset throws off idle aperçus
too quick even for your lens speed, friend.
Clod in a field’s corner, fantastic failure
as you knew you would be, from the first.
It’s sad, but true,
in our beginning is our end,
and there’s nothing to do but continue.



William Wordsworth

Billy, you’re a case, you know?
We do, now, and speak of you with a fond smile although
even your best words overflow
the sturdiest crucible.
Oh, but how we wish — it’s not easy to admit —
we could make something near as good
as the mouth you showed
death’s light shining language
and do it with one part your clumsy skill
and as little rage.
And to have flowers falling
on you from high buildings everywhere you go!
That must have been nice, also.



William Blake

You couldn’t have sold William Blake an IPhone.

Dippy William never had the slightest doubt
the tree outside his window’s better
than its image on a screen.

Bill had been
places we’ve only heard about,
from people like him, mostly.

I bet you can’t even copperplate,
can you? Nor can I.
And still we think,
because some television spruiker says so,
our apps will take us god-wards, as we die.



Heinrich von Kleist
The Poetry Scene (present company excepted)

They read
as though scaling the backs
of the porcupines ahead of them,
who are bristling.

A bird in their hand dies, immediate.
When they think of their mothers,
cash registers go ping!
in adjacent emporiums.

When they play golf,
they drive towards the clubhouse
in the hope of braining a competitor,
then form groups to discuss
the mysteries of trajectory.

When they open their mouths to discuss themselves,
dogs groan. Their dogs,
that love them dearly.


Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Lives of the Poets

[An edit from Journals, 1972-1983]


1

A sudden & brief thunderstorm over the house, the harbour.

A day in a car wash near Taylor Square.

Note on Brett Whiteley’s Zen:
all the detail is peripheral:
it was an easy step to bore a hole in the central panel & install a light behind it.

I walk up the road to visit Terry Smith who is talking to a friend whose husband has left
suddenly so I accompany him to the nearby milk bar near the Rowntree and Darling
Street intersection followed by Colin Talbot we run into Mia Pithie who takes us to Robyn
Ravlich’s place and when she proves absent to “The Anchorage” which has been sold.


2

Cabramatta/light
an indescribable
(cerulean might be the word)
blue

Liverpool:
a rush at the kiosk for the Daily Telegraph

Cathy (Scorpio) & Pauline (Sagittarius?)
in the back, cases & cushions, Guide to your Horoscope & Dreams
(Library copy)

wrong turn thru Campbelltown
then back on 31 at Picton

Outskirts of Goulburn / Service station
“might be better to abandon it lady”
(a cracked bearing)

– guy in white ute
“used to work 7 days a week
have 4-5 months holiday
blow it all”

occasional WHIRR of car
yellow
almost silent
MONARO COUNTRY

Two trainee army officers
back from Rugby League to Wagga
“not much fuckin doin this
fuckin weekend”
(Psychology, German/& French: Sydney University)

car horn like a calf’’s cry
lures cows from fields
(son of a farmer)

lift in a small yellow sports (drafty)
Monash Anthropology student w. long beard

golden sunset before Holbrook
half an apple.

Fire glow on a log
smoky car light over the rise

tantalised by Melbourne lights.
Flinders Street 10.15.
Suburbs (the “Malvern house”)

Clayton :
Allan Petersen & dog met in
the dark, Gentle Street.


3

it has an air of deja-vu,
an ease of execution:
it seems like a drawn out product of what precedes it

(thirteen loose pages of jottings)

“a great mulch, a great compost”


4

“I thought of the possibility of the last letter going astray. Let me know if it has &
I’ll give you a breakdown of the New Year trip.”
“I still haven’t written anything and also am on the brink of total bankruptcy which
severely restricts my mobility. In order to overcome this I’ve done & am doing a couple of
odd jobs to supplement the dole which is often late in arriving & somewhat spasmodic. One
job was a class at East Sydney Tech. I raved on poetry for the duration culling examples from
O’Hara, Lew Welch, Jonathan Williams, Tranter, Allen Ginsberg & me (a found poem). I got
the job almost accidentally when I was very stoned at a party the night before.”
“A house in the country may spell death, but at the moment I contemplate
semi-permanent removal from the city with some degree of seriousness.”


5

rocks under the surface
the attempt to distance the actual from the fantasised,
a transmutation

an alchemy renders rocks & stones
into words
(a piece of music entitled
“Quite early one morning”)

(how does an “object”
become notable – why separate a tree
from the air around it)

Sugarloaf Creek poems
like Cold Mountain – a way of giving form
– but how true to its subject?

Han Shan writing on anything
paper, wood, water – only the moment of interest


6

yesterday’s ride through heavy rain
clearing at Armidale
hanging round waiting for a wheel balance
espresso in the Nectar milk bar

a long cloud bank stretched up & down the coast

the Putty road enveloped in deadness,
then Colo, Windsor, Ryde,
the scene at Stuart’s house
some dope in the car,
a French restaurant

& this morning a letter from John Forbes in London


7

Ballarat
on an edge of basalt:
the main street widens at this point

bend straws in the Chinese Cafe
eat in a cold wind
Wendourie
on the divide

Alan Wearne phones with polemical scherzo from Meredithian sequence:
“fuck Diamond
fuck McKuen”

rain heavy, lightning more distant – in the single bed at 28 Eva Street, the window part open.


8

walk with Ken Bolton down Glebe Point Road,
a piece of paper blows towards us
– it’s part of the Surfers’ Paradise reading poster
– the lower part with feet of the surfer
Ken asks: “Will our shit return to us in paperback?”

Fisher Library, 6th floor. stack.
Julie Rose working on her French MA thesis
me reading Unspeakable Visions of The Individual
#4/74
THE BEAT BOOK
on review for Magic Sam #3.

it’s dull & cold
out over Victoria Park mowing lines,
swimming pool half full of dirty water
heavy traffic, City Road & Cleveland Street,
sky a medium grey, clear strip to the northwest.

finish reading M. Conrad Hyers
Zen & the Comic Spirit

Interruption
Denise Hare & Angela Korvisianos in the courtyard cafeteria
someone passes a hash joint
& then I’m reading the last third of
Whitman’s 1855 preface

Home.
finish a loaf of bread
glance through Rolling Stone
drink four cups of English Breakfast Tea
wash the dishes
everyone’s in the kitchen
– I gotta get outa here –
(a place where conversation is like a novel of manners)

From unknown sources: “Symbols, images, rhythmical perfection . . . has never been
considered as of primary importance by the great poets, since refinement of form has
often ended in triviality.”

&

“Kids get your Davy Crockett bed with scenes of Davy Crockett in action on the mattress”


9

I live a primitive life in the city; know people who can wheel & deal, do amazing things
with tax forms. I simply barter my body for money in terms of labour; make forays into the
jungle to buy trinkets & food.

“What strikes me about many of the modern works in the Art Gallery of New South
Wales is that they have never belonged anywhere though the category “art’ relates them
somehow to the Aboriginal and New Guinean artefacts downstairs in some kind of cultural
continuum. Martin Sharp’s collection of fragments from Luna Park has closer & deeper
connections with its surrounding culture than the works of the self-conscious artists.
“The Gallery is a kind of nowhere living-room where grey metal ashtrays sit half lost
in white shaggy carpet around a chromium glass-topped table which never has anything on it.
I look over a balustrade to see five men; one (the impatient one) not in a grey uniform, pacing
back and forward while the others with the aid of a small fork-lift elevate a large Hans Heysen
a certain number of centimetres from the floor.”

A big colour poster of Johnny Rotten under Steve Kelen’s script: “Annette Funicello’s curse
still grips Sydney”.

My poetry – a life watching curtains flutter.


10

Train down early Sunday morning to Coalcliff & a walk down to the beach while Ken & Sal
Brereton put together posters & magazines for the evening. By 2 pm. a lot of people have
arrived – Philip Hammial, Denis Gallagher, ΠO, Nigel Roberts, Phil Roberts & others. We go
to Wollongong and the Al Monte. Phil Roberts delivers a paper called “Death of the poet” then
there’s a break & the Wollongong writers read, Ken & Sal first, then another break followed by
the Sydney contingent. Phil Roberts is interrupted by a Pyrmont anarchist whose child is playing
with a soccer ball. Others read – Denis, ΠO (Mayakovsky & Nelson Algren & “the fuck poems”
shouted from a tabletop), John Tranter performs his “Foucault at the Forest Lodge” pieces. A
band play lounge music while everyone drinks & eats lukewarm lasagne.

I sleep in the pantry & wake early, the sun up over the ocean. A long breakfast turns into a picnic
lunch in the back yard, then in the afternoon we go back into Wollongong to the Art Gallery (two
coloured photos of Micky Allen’s on display) & walk down to the beach – barbed wire &
factories – tankers out on the Pacific.


11

Very quiet, an occasional car sound.
I’ve crossed some kind of meridian:
that bit in Williams’ Descent of Winter where his pants feel “strange upon a strange thigh”.

It’s grey out over the park,

these things come at once:
winter, bad colds, the end of love.

Read Ted Berrigan’s “Sonnet LXXVI” (“It’s my birthday”).

Dinner at Fort Street,

walk home in a break in the weather thinking grandiose thoughts about my poems.


12

Arrive late at Coalcliff, nobody about. Enter through a window and find The Diamond Noodle
with a great picture of Philip Whalen on the back. Ken & Sal arrive half an hour before the train.

Coalcliff again, in time to help Ken re-affix the posts of the front verandah. Ken says he & Sal
have split up. We walk halfway up the mountain round the old track & then cut across a dip
before the final ascending stretch. At dusk we walk back past the cows to the house imagining
bad poems about this.

Strong winds sound like they’ll blow the roof off.

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

machine made out of words

(William Carlos Williams + N +)

so much depends
upon

a red whelp
basin

glazed with ram
wax

beside the white
childminders

upon

a red whim-wham
basque

glazed with ramjet
wealth

beside the white
chimeras

upon

a red whip
bastard

glazed with rank
weasel

beside the white
chimneys

upon

a red whiskey
baste

glazed with ransom
weapon

beside the white
chimps

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

Synaptic Organisation (1998)

1. Unexposed
our final site of integration
trees, the size of which
this idea, previous, rare

aggregated around,
closely associated, at odds with
raise the question, regardless

only random, the other hand
directly, unambiguously
our differences, clear, final

2. Processing
we extend, we open
with no consistent difference
apposed in another plane

we are part of the same cluster
unlabelled, enclosed
we never make contact

we bear away, reconstruct, apparently
terminate with the same neighbours
the similarity is striking

these are our confidence limits
we are not illustrated here, our actual
positions cannot be predicted this way

we are models
we are well numbered
we are generated like these

3. Exposed
most complete to date
devoid of input, relationships
dependent, available

reasons not encountered
a single, ten times more
the range of our probabilities

typical, compact, short
never tested, invalid
we have no definitive description

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged

leik i kno u don’t think they buzy …

leik i kno u don’t think they buzy but like working togehtr irl liek walk enxt to each otehr but liek similar stimul is liek fractalzin or liek hologram lol liek insect eyes heaps ov sections

STUF WE DK HOW 2DO AMIRITE wat

leik uhh fuked

>spk gibberish

liek v gd category 4 exercsies

**performativ board metings – i gues adopting tropes – imagery – proceses – – – frm corps lmao.**

ps cant w8 2 edit this doc lmao….

also liek – – – – – – not neding 2 b 100% in person werk whoel time – fades in and out…

>personals assistants. i mean interns

ALOS LEIK NOTES 4 EACH DOC 4LIEK…… HOW 2 BILD ON IT.
LIEK SCRIPT 4 DEVLOPMENT OV EACH DOC??!?!!??!? so they use difren proceses n go in difren directnsssssssssss
(+liek involv difren ppl? lol)

js had idea ov liek wat if i wer to write a text in a rly linear way like writing full sentences and liek which is ttly rupturing my
process. kewl.

———————–
>writing *not evn trying*
lol
>writing the same thing difren way thru time space maek-up or waterpark
oi liekh
or potenitaly liek….. noting samenesses and repetitions alrdy existent in time/space/waterpark etc
too yeh cooooooool
filter thru soy latte or coffee filter paper

difren areas ov things we r doing….
hey u kno i had that ryl intese respons to the difrent levels ov chat on th cam whor wesbeit?
?
-_-
lol
soeithgn liek 4 layrs ov someithng (ov evyerhitng)
lmao free layers and pay layers slut layers whore layers lmaooooo
yuh

>draem interpretation tips /dictnry entries
>enact dreamz
performn

oooooooooo
and liek
idk feeding this in2 interpretation

symbolismsmsmsms
‘gtg froot adn veges’
>.high rising intonation and ‘like’ and their places and
>also nietzsche and perhapses.

>like going round taking notes
>liek v accumulative adn ongoing etc >like chatttttttttttttt
>liek dosnt hav a sturctuer

(atm at laest)

but then sturcture ov acivities is liek a active resrch material or resource totaly

idk how liek to define the irl lmao, thats ok.
>i j need to put things frm my head.
>liek start mak map

//
sory i think u don liek bold
leik ik u don’t think they buzy but like working togehtr irl liek walk enxt to each otehr but liek similar stimul is
liek fractalzin or liek hologram lol liek insect eyes heaps ov sections
//

>making lot ov other documents and also
>ading to other documents.
so wol gain liek system or watever…… or liek a moer refined meaning etc that it can b
eeeeerrrrrrmmmmmmm navigated……….

and then also
>reintrepretign notes
liek
>making difren layers ov……. errrrrr
folds
ov raw content or watevr.
raw
um
lok like coconut waetr; prob liek crystals maek uh
crystals r riples or s0enthgn
but liek fuk
>inarticl8 m8

wat is this doc 4?
do u thikn wol use the chat noest mmmmmmmm idk but like they r there. and
ther def some things intentionaly noted in ther etc….. to use l8r.
mmmmm is a p gd source ov notes too.
lot ov everythign

>chate notes

>editing notes
>eg liek making copy ov chapter and then doing watever u want w it so liek keeping experimentation going
and so also mapping out like editing processes etc. lol
or options etc for editing and development.
etc.

>talking

wait does walking around count
and eating food?
i rekn.

and going toilet.
but they r counted thru thngs like notes – – – – usualy

lost chats

naps naaaaaaaaaaaaaps

future like

editing potentialy procese – — – – – – – – – – – – – idk.

lma0

leik also belief in future enfolded in structur ov colaboration
long
lief

>liek sit on floor and loking at printed out notes and
playing

>and liek feeling it out.

:’)

>also medit8
leik can get in buzy reality togethr woooooooooooooooooah yea.
n work
zen

also liek – – –
>doing a event.
that tlly difren format etc. difren requirements.… kewl.
but still writing it.

oh yea and
radio show

writing about fractals up ther^
also

>thnking liek ‘how do (these) thigngs emerge?’ (rhetorical q)
waht things liek products ^^^^^^
rhtorical qt amirite ; )

>o i thikn jsut wriet a titel
also

liek
mayb
liek
ok

it important to
>hav internal docs
because the internalityl is between us
liek
not 1 figure that can store reality inside

um
moderation uh

um
liek
internal docs extrenailzed
bcom imporatn

but like
also final or like
publishable/published like
focusd on th reader

liek
universailziabil or someting further away from “max seems smart lol”

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh -_-

yea
gut

but it like imporatn to
>hav the internal 1s as well/before/aswellas etc

>like writing exercise where u liek…. writing less notesy and less separately and liek narativisng
smth but liek smth idk.

liek toling story…. liek not js random internal notes etc…..
but liek verbal mythologising too.

wow
>verbal mythologising in the mouth
or smth like that lmao

?
>and notes on notes?
liek
>hav compelx text for presentation that is liek
riples ideas theroy and practic

>but doing irl frm liek…. *fresh* sensory material lmao
is difren
produce difren text etc,

liek do excertcist wher u go in2 it knowing or ‘tryign’ to do naraitivis
yea idk wat tho but like….

>engaging w difren formats.
js liek……
>scripting potential further formats or posibilities lmaoooooooooooo yolo
https://twitter.com/bb_googel/status/458153271681507328
is helpig 2 fel les confused
what is?
did i jus delet a word? no \m/
>YEH SCRIPTING parascripting

liek outcome based things as wel….
>difren trajectories that u *werk on * >get werk dun…………
liek twitr and and stuuuuuuuuf.

how do u always know im in here lol did u >figure out push notifs or smthng
lmao

>werk on Gdocs together
>do it all the time
idk what u think going on
mbe it j difren wen u in difren houses lol idk.
no i wish

yeh liek imaginethis the point wher we rrealis we cant’ work in person
and liek rest ov colab copleted in separate hosues 2 subursbs apart
but it is also to do wiv jsut b eing liek both on vomputesr do u even know what the bold is supoed to
sugnify

>yea lol but ruptured the naratve

and liek
also not being distratted by physticalty
js difren vibesz ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
liek
>writ in difrn pleac enfolding difran vidbes?
difren frm each othr or difrfen from being in same space.
also imagine if u liek
both
j became rly superproductiv
and like field
i mean
filed all ur noets at hte end ov each “day”

lmao
lmaooooo
yehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk
that could and could not werk

lol

also
liek

>writing together in doc in a non chatty format lmao \m/
interested to explore
na not tonite lollol
lol
lmao
yeh
um
not posible tonight
lmao its just tru
i’m jstu like greedy
lmao keeps beeing aftr evrthng u say
liek has evolved thru difren contexts
b also idk if it tru
liek som context i gues

fuck that’s the most boring thing ive ever said
o i think
hey tomrow – i rekn – i sugest – lol – liek
>hav anothr edit ov that chapter
>less steam of conciousnes sounding
>less “chatty”?
>less “leik”
to maek it ready to put out
>maek it .pdf
what does the text do
lot ov difertn thinsg
w8 btu we r not tomroe?
mbe not irl?
wow
yeh we can try
um

um
jsut clicking thru tabs
and liek
the holy hela tab said this dog in bold so liek u in her

lol
and u r

slushy panties

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged ,