like a ghost tippaw
then stamp in ‘ope
that some malley might ‘ear
before grand days
of the fishy
plastic consciousness
saw itself ‘come two smelly boots over the wire
print head & me hesitate
forever was now
where most infamous anon malley
ran amok on cloud pages of
‘uffieface
hurry the douche bag up
“… you can’t have art without resistance
in the material.” — William Morris
Ah, don’t feel guilty about
the GM soy in the baby formula—
those activists are arsehats &
breastfeeding zealots & it’s unpiloted
drones dropping in on the reception
we really need to watch out for
& that’s what I like
about you: you’re a mélange
of what Americans do
best: • schools of poetry,
• send in the marines & • new
post-consumer waste products
for xmas. A twitchy rear
guard we can’t help
but admire—it goes on
somewhat and we emulate
somewhat, & they’re printing
money to make it work (&
we’re digging ore) & that’s
what I like it’s what I like
it’s what I like about you. Anyway
I’m not saying anything they
won’t later say themselves
so drop by sometime
with yr RESISTANT MATÉRIEL
t-shirt & yr disrupted pattern
camouflage empire
line marrying dress
by Miu-Miu for that fitting
& fee-free photoshoot
we always said we’d have 😉
(camo? why
not! with two under three & one
on the way. srsly.
Dear Nuala, oh noes,
you’ve left your starting-a-new-life
job in the bait’n’ice for that no-hoping
armed & dangerous escapee
again!? It’ll just lead to headlines:
&
you & that Canadian griefer
& a flirtatious real estate
agent in a getaway, walk
into a bar & you’re dropped
into a sick joke punchline
where the only exit is dead
panning your way out, like
Phil Collins from a third
marriage in a Lear Jet. Dammit
these poems are sticky, whiffy
too—are they off? Words
only get you so far—so sketchnote
this Sunshine (though omit
the radical interiority or whatever
it was Professor Whatsachops popped out
at the symposium q&a #drink)
This is a skill—it should be taught
in school, Nuala ;p kthxbai
top knot (?)
bike trajectory
wires cut the blue
filed somere bunched
up others ride wide
aberrant onescarse
collisions every 30 secs the
electricity fizzes
m ear m dances
the slowest era
under the sun
bump sunny
concrete cracks
thoracic
breathing
apparatus
fishing net
shadows
wet match
blue yellow
red chiasmus
wanted to drag
the mtn bike kids off but
they were too fast
for me finished
before id started
the sun was in m eyes
n i rolled m foot on
a stick everything ends
up on the roof in
the end
n 8 means theres 1 to
go til 9 or thereabouts
fuck this mtn so much depends
on a blue helmet ants and
fruit flies getting lost in my
leg hair a truck reverse
fucking concre
kettle again
they ride
that dent
fadeout
do the
Lemons (or limes) in
a bag and wrapped into a nice
Parsely too big for the post box
with Minty fresh breath
Pumpkin
(5)
apes)
the last of the
fruit jubies, a man cycling in the wrong direction wings
flapping, “tenuous balance”,
overhead ghouls cycle “galah
over there” “i know” “2 galahs”
drink from the ck ghouls
replenish their bidons at the
ck “6 galahs”
m handlebarsre mud folding
into cakes in m hands i
space them on concrete of
drome allowing room for
the rise early sun
freezing knuckle seasons
begun
trail of post anzac
smashed hard rubbish
down the street
dreamt of a ‘chair of hard knocks
style
chair of kids
standing near the drome
singing ‘wonderwall’
asked them to sing quieter
and their leader said no he
had a shaved head the
rooster had plumes it
played with the irish setters it
taped blades to its toes and
fought for money the treeline
fine clouds n surf neon white
back at the monk’s “windmill”
to ‘roll the legs over, open up
the sternum’ … found orange drink bottle
man walks by with French foreign
legion
cap
small dogs w. diamante swastikas
for collars
… the one with the nozzle you grip
w. yo teeth
the sub 29 sec lap
this one at 28.80s
a stealthy dude appears
n pops your lung or uncle
sun eyes clouds theres no
sense of drama in any air
even the breathed bitsre clear
even the breathed bikesre clear
does lenticular mean ‘lentil-shaped’
?
breathe yr way thru a cap
which i would prefer
3000 laps or 3000 words ?
an orange drink bottle to grip
w. m teeth the time
of duration as the front wheel
rolls across the chessboard
6.0 / ? 30 seconds x 10
= 5 minutes
‘those minaretsre new’
are they minarets .. ?
shaped like a floor
or switch
the space of duration
flag-waving
THE LENKO
DOODLE
ART SHOW
press-on tattoo
rack of conviction
?
nozzle grip
lapsed
sprint on the fourth
bike frame squeaking under
velcro arse
sunday drive
shaved edges of lawn
what is
concrete ___ exercise
? I prefer the sound of
cycling to jogging too many
grunts of
exertion Hands made of stickytape
crumbs too big for the sparrows
THE LENKO
DOODLE
ART SHOW
lost his fin
glued it back on
ALASKA
fifty laps
numb nuts
…sometime
legs know
what you did
behind their shades
kids look at
you like they
know or
at least theyre
making a
good guess
ALASKA
TANGENTS
all the
birds knows
about
muffins
n everything
tastes like
blue / gatorade
premix
ALASKA
Alaska
SUBSPEW
think id like to stay
within the subspew
level i think i cracked
fifty seconds
drinking tomato sauce
4 breakfast tastes
like water are these
pedals orre they pastilles
ya cant even begin to sit on it
the longer you look at it
the uglier it gets but
dromes beautys eternal
38 secs to write a poem
bee sits cmon a bird call
sits from its beak like
bee
from clover
carn-nation sweetened condensed
milk
Alaska 9.30am 00.00:42.33
stop
accrue
lemon wedge seat
ripped bike
counting traffic
seasonably affective sneeze
didnt know you as a slagger
er ‘spitter’
only after jogging and only
in st kilda
velodrome
i used to ride to ride m skateboard there
SITTING IN GEAR THE DROME HUMS
MERRI CREEK
POWERBOATS HUM WE TALK A LOT
ABOUT SEX N PATCHING FENCES
A SCHOOLS RINGING A CROW PICKS UP
dreamt I found an old roof
I used to scratch words onto
my brother was there also
I was learning spanish &
had an exam but I didnt
know any words except the
word for write which wasnt
in the exam
its like swimming in the
surf resting on yr towel
n swimming in the surf
plastic pen on
blue painted metal
seventy lap
numbnuts
nick 28,47
dromes a bowl of mist
sock slurpees human dogs
its soupwracked!
claras drome Alaska
claras hemulen
claras golden drome
claras grey drome
claras grey nicolls
claras slazenger
settle cunt horse alaska
truck filled m eyes w grit
dewy con
crete how did the dark
chairs get so white
Eyesre iceballs!
Sleep w the wagtails
fingers thawed toes now frozen
thirty lake cupcake nausea
ocean liner
didn’t embarrass myself
how many times did I
count lap 17
repetition
wagtail distracts
lap count
one big bottle
of SINGHA BEER
please Jetstar to
Bairnsdale
from Lyon service *OPENS TODAY*
children
under twelve
sunday mornings an obsolete
course
spokes counting
overs with coopers caps “Ive
had bad experiences
“Im bad at the velodrome
my pedal caught on the
remember?
Te … bit rough”
lese bikes now
have any breaks!”
ill try and
st lap fast
Tomatoes
Rocket
Zucchini
Watermelons
Cherries (or gr
12 Apricots
recursive
orthogonal
Ref
83343925
down from the waist down
wagtail down 35 penises crossed
HIGH TENSILE
20 crow army
on toast
deflated
soccer ball metaphor
someone’s been nibbling at
my bike seat
(again)
long blue line
long red line _______________________
loop up up loop sustain
___________
well-padded
ices like pieces of fingers
1st suck on ventolin in
a year
feels great like smoking again
sex mushroomsve sprouted
counting layers like laps
lazers?
4 sad slow laps w. bag on
you don’t always want
what you say, or
say what you
do (do you):
Notes of a Warring Class, J.H. Prynne
Lodge the pre-budget ambit claim.
Graphs observe
their models. The steam rises.
The sport of the day’s nadir.
He absconded on theeve of winter
By compass she fled –
founded the people’s
democratic spectator ship.
This is what it was like to have loved.
With tractor squall, not megaphone
you wake butterfly in the morning.
iii. inter
albatross blues
The wedding guest has long since been deported
The herald reported
This was the memory of how
too tropical to avoid gossip they fled the scene:
The posse is rain sloshed from a peak-hour gutter.
No mention of books soaked in official batter.
She stalks the
moose
like an unfamilial warrigal.
Rochelle:
sweeping
for her children.
She wasted no corrugations because they would not,
but thyme pressed and strudels came of it.
On the egg were kanji characters
with no rubber bands and less to suspend..
Take time out to design jam jars:
Kitchen Warfare Essentials for the Carrot Bachelorette.
I implore you to believe
this sincere account of the Lego Association
i. rupt
The Matthews method: melees and prayers,
The method Matthews uses confuses
The madness of Matthews’ method
We sleep in secular pews, dodging the flares.
Born in a field of Bruce Springsteen
you naturally dodge the suicide machine
a nasty date with the dynasty of wisdom
Christine’s white derriere, just declares:
“Your right Don?”
there was no credit for his message to Ezra,
thrown stones further, battled bathed rats and late
hats attuned to the Babylonian Hussein.
But it never came to that.
I am in Los Angeles today,
wearing a frock on the edge of a bowl of ice cream
and a slice of gateaux wondering if Giteau
will play for the sevens at the Commonwealth Games
“Fifteen is calm. Downgrade the film.”
Godot is not perfect but he will… try
Giteau in and away for a… try
The sonic peal in the hotel.
The serious café says: “Metaphysics
are the opiates of the masses.”
And all the Steve Bracks fall into line.
The solitary official translation
drifts towards zero day on a palanquin.
Software and scrupulous accountancy
open the terminus and uncover the deception.
Backyard Lebs ambush invariably at dawn.
This is the inevitable coalescence.
This is what it means to be the CEO of the Schapelle Corby Club,
base jumping from the extremities of the objectives
of your strategic eighteen month plan.
Understand the meaning of the freeways;
the phraseology behaves like a museum after an earthquake
the tumultuous juxtaposition of epochs.
Visas for the correct disambiguations have already been squandered
The socialist system will eventually
replace objective law. Everything is essentially collision.
Good people know this when bad news comes knocking.
Why would you want to live here?
Ceol of Wessex Cutha Cynric
Ceawlin Ceolwulf Cynegils
Cwichelm Cenwalh Centwine
Chifley Cervantes Cruise
Celan Carracella Tchaikovsky
all wanted to make views that stayed pews.
Stacked implants on the veranda
the memory of Freidrich Holderlein
fossilising in a front paddock.
When you run the program all you get is:
Read error 42: Pandora Your Friend – Unable to locate
requested file.
The log file says:
02-BHO: Pandora Your Friend BHO – {00A6FAAF1-0272E-
44cf-8957-5838F569A31D} – C:\liam\Program Files\Explorer\Temporary
Files\AK11849\Pandora Your Friend\runme.dll – Can’t find file
Behind every successful new historian
is an artist who says you forgot to mention my work,
and, boy is it symptomatic!
You want Yogo therefore you are.
Colloquial wisdom settles disputes,
and old scores
are eliminated
in long range knife duels.
“When D’arcy Niland’s novel The Shiralee came out in the mid-fifties, the Australian film industry was in its twenty-five year coma, but such was the book’s popularity that film rights were quickly snapped up by overseas interests and the film version came out barely two years later in 1957. Lead actor in an international cast was Robert Mitchum, then in the heyday of his career. He amazed many of us at home by being the first American actor we’d ever heard get an Australian accent right. It was pure art, of course; an occasional shakiness in vowel quality was magicked away by his relaxed mastery of a dry understated masculine tone. Authentic backgrounds did a lot to offset the staginess of some of the other performers, and forty-odd years later I retain an impression that some of the camera angles were impressively spare and vast. I suspect now, that if I saw the film again I would miss the desolate inner weakness of Macauley, the book’s protagonist, and the book’s real sense of poverty and exhaustion.”
Les Murray in an introduction to D’arcy Niland’s The Shiralee
The taken mile reverts to inch:
That actor, Les, was Peter Finch.
Your biscuit needs you!
Your crumby exterior requires
the shadiest corners of the disco.
At the zoo, fading between bars.
Do prawns spawn?
The aspidistra, the asprin’s sister,
I met them all at your salon:
don’t blame me for hell.
Alain Delon mops his own forehead –
surely this is the crime of the
century!
Go – you fuck like a character
from Cocteau, all gin and tonic
and white underwear.
I know no dentist is innocent;
there’s sugar on the landing
from promiscuous donuts.
What is a landing? Why?
I have a vision of Akubras …
Of pelicans nesting in chapels …
The sty is falling, the pigs are
listening to Dvorak, oh!
I have climbed the steps of
Moravia, they have not stepped
for me.
And if the younger William Butler Yeats
were one of his regular drinking mates,
a few under the belt on Anzac Day
would square this difficult love away,
and Eve would open again her western gates
as in that hot and leaf-veined beer garden
things ill-defined once voiced, would harden
and every mythical hot-to-trot
would find a handy parking spot
outside the bar. In the light of what was spoken
there, over sodden coasters and glasses,
the valley would sing and shake her skirt of short grasses
and brambles. Broad-faced bouncers would fall away –
the angler and poet would at last hold sway
over all the mangled ritual that passes
for a day. But Yeats, he knows, got tired of tricks
and turned from gardens back to the bricks,
which piled upon each other make the world.
And the valley has her type like any other girl –
she likes a man with common sense, who kicks
against the entrophy of ordinary days,
a man you can count on to mean what he says.
Have a drink, she says, with that American, Robert Frost,
I understand his roads and walls; you won’t get lost
with him. And at that point, his mind ablaze
with love and hate like gold and silver apples,
hanging so low that he could no more grapple
with the image of the tree itself,
than with a single volume on his shelf,
he turned away from her, even as the dappled
light that plays across her pale summer breast
came burning back through his every thought.
You, tall Kosciusko,
Smooth as buttocks, I trade
Blows with your arsenal.
Kosciusko, better than Patterson,
Your pockets weigh the world
Down with silver dollars. The
Americas are broad,
Stupid. When is the next operatic
Catastrophe? I do not want to
Write badly of you. I will not write
Badly! Forever yours. The skis
Of my children are cockateels, your
Head coral calcifications. Irrefragable
Bust, I glide your cleavage. I cannot
Write badly of you on holiday. Young
Turks! Young Turks! She cannot be
Your Prelude. Is she a blue hill? I
Molest horses on the vespers. This is
the letter of a mare.
How many blondes must die before the Danish
thriller ends?
The sans serif are here with their removing gear.
Type! Darling, type!
My secretary responds, hoofishly.
Between the kernel and the fruit.
We cough.
The water stretches unto the sea – hand me my
nosering!
Narrative logic asleep on a park bench.
The gardener is here for his paycheck; I think he
is stealing our weeds.
The porridge stirrer knows more than it’s telling,
too.
The llama are butting at the gate, enraged by the
radio playlist.
Your vortices number three, I assay.
And they meet in the person of a Greek sailor.
The sailor publishes his diary.
Gay love isn’t funny any more.
(After Raphael’s ‘The Transfiguration’)
Someone shut the poor boy up! Arms flailing,
Through mouth’s conduit epilepsy’s devils
spewing freely, his eyes rolling east and west…
Via rhetorical swerve of her shoulder
A woman, ‘serpentinata’, reroutes our gaze
Past million-dollar hairdo, perfect profile
To badlands we know and dread. Stop him!
Nine disciples left a whirligig
Of gestures, for heaven’s sake make him stop…
Click the image for a full-size view.
take your shoes off
threat level orange
as one locked up
for his jokes
then ouest over
the sierra nevada
brown and sparse
with first snow
if your fingers are blue
why are zero degrees plural?
the fountain sets
the border freezes
stuck like mud
to the ring-necked duck’s feet
mistletoe or maple
seeds have wings
words here
an echo or record
of what was –
in a phoneline
to juanita
late fall if i can call it that
not that the weather cares
making a mess of main park
know you’re not at home?
at the streetcar stop wear the effects
of the bloor street snowplough’s bow wave
ottawa-coteau-montreal
in a bilingual province
i know half the language
though the written world
in parallel text
seemed somehow sympathetic
emotional distance – is always
in miles and if the island prison
library’s an escape
writing the air letter was
taking my homesickness pills
or you write i wait
but it’s not us just the mail
the more prescient of beginnings
dear j, hope this letter finds you
august earliest
august the first
the morning of
where weeks of
rain makes sunshine
seem an anomaly
blinds glimmer then
phototropic unfurl
to the wall or a torso
banded in shadow
milk settles it yep
perfectly caffeinated
thank you
of the poetry book
MORE THAN 100 000 COPIES SOLD
sit by the fire read
on as each surprise
lifts like newsprints
luminescent flame
from the page
how many months
later now searching
for the memorable
though unmarked
bergotte reference in
in search of lost time
snippets of news
from another room
is even less reliable
though you know
the stories the pope
apologises the rescue
capsule again hauls out
the last of the Chilean
miners and the present
one about a man killed in
friendly fire how friendly
can fire be you ask
the slowness of turtles is as green as lime
and turns the camel orange
their humps are pregnant with new words
turtles oranges and camels
hide sustenance & succulence
under round rinds
Note: “Que conversas con las naranjos” – “that which chats with the oranges”
the sad mind of doves is full of stops
that reap war’s loss
the head of the cote maps the way to extinction
so we may enjoy companions on the way
a dove knows peace only when dead
leopard-wars begin in every spot
the landscape of death is taught so doves
and leopards can find their way home
the swallows left behind are cared for
by householders with lives
swallows write poems in the sky
for their last dusk-time flight
the intensity of the eclipse
reveals the gynoecium
at the centre of our star
burns for ash
and clouds of imagination
~
the number of bees in a day
is equal to the number of seeds
in a sunflower that shines on you
A densely plotted graph of peaceless wool is sewn
across a plane and pinned to dry on tenterhooks.
The air is woven well, a chart of knotted winds
ensnares a bowing gum and rags of oily cloud
are loops of thread from reels pedalled bare.
Precisely angled rain is uniformly stitched
by grim intent with flashy silver needlework.
The weaver takes the trails of the woven strands
and tethers up the skies and finespun atmosphere
to sharpen doubled lines, refine the captured mess.
Beware the ill equation mapped within this frame
of Summer hell the frightened weaver gathers in.
‘Stivale NM boot/ Stoviglie NSFPL dishes’
‘Slip on, tesoro, le tue stoviglie…’
So my over-eagerness mistook ‘stivali’/
Boots, here exotic, for crockery –
Your look more of surprise than mockery –
‘What will this English bungler dream up next?’
You may have thought but never said,
Too gracious by half. Error since corrected
In act as well as word, I wonder at
How malapropism ever got so fortunate:
Washing up has a whole new interest –
Sheathed ankles, knees, thighs get given
A not-so-objective correlative –
Dream kitchen discreetly equipped with
Suddish shifts of memory, latent delight
In each flashing dish, glinting plate.
(Sala Grande, Palazzo Barberini, Rome)
Riding their respective clouds Temperance,
Religion, Piety wax triumphant;
Fury, disarmed, reclines on his own weapons.
Thanks to Minerva, dunce giants get flunked.
Another twist of the neck and see Hercules
Clubbing the harpies of Avarice.
All the above to please a Barberini
And leading to the main event: Bomber bees,
More cardinal virtues scrambled to hand them
A laurel crown as Immortality raises,
For back up, a twelve star diadem.
Now add air-freighted tiara, St Peter’s keys.
Silenus has slipped the gaze of Providence:
The glorious slob, sprawled amidst plush green,
Orders one more drink and, satyr by chance
Made satirist, lushly steals the scene.
His ear lit up like a daffodil
He found four bees in his car
It was a leap year. February rushed
past like a formula one
a twist of tomato
in the alcohol
[after James McAuley’s ‘Pieta’]
A yearly agoance youing camed
Earlyish intoing the lightness
You undied a dayity and nightie
Thenly lived no-oncer to blamity
Oncer onlyness, wither untwo-handed
Your nonfather inner farewelldom.
Toucheding youse Iness cannotted teller
Iness cannotted understandulate
A thingy so darkly and deeper
So physicality a losingness:
One touched, andy that was ally.
Unhe haded of you to keepest
Cleaner woundeds, butter terribleness
Are thoser maded wither Crossly.
Opposite Sydney School of Arts
the wowser slakes his shameful lust
with the debauchees of gin and lime
enchanted by their sirens’ wail.
At length he slopes toward his bed
with dreams of Lilith in his head.
Where are the words of yesteryear?
Whole wardrobes spill old attitudes
and drape them round the gallery wall
where Dobell’s Hell offends their sight.
Engrave an arcane linotype
or kiss a Brueghel where you may,
John Keats is laughing in his grave.
Where are the words of yesteryear?
The meeting in the Adyar Hall
eschews the abject daily pot
the worker poet takes for Muse
in honest naked light of day.
Since flesh is grass and must be wet
let Francis Palgrave’s virgins fret.
Where are the words of yesteryear?
Sober, in cafes he waits,
who paid the price of freedom’s call
and paid the price rounds for sots
who boast their mercantile prowess
and minds unfertilized while he
pursues his solitary art
and finds the words of yesteryear.
