A Maoist is reading a map
behind us in the kitchenette.
Maybe to marinate China
and tell us where we are
from grocery stores to the cafe
and name one mariachi music
in this new composition I work.
Our tongues are now maple syrup
in the marching seasons
to multicast the kibbutz;
the bigoted man has requested
again the bibliographies
for every speech we have moulded.
From this depth we must call
for plumage? Only yesterday
fifteen thousand neighbours died.
In the thin place between the word and the thing,
at the wall's inside, old wires intertwine
and cockroaches are the hieroglyphs of home.
I take your hand in these last nights and wait
beside the Styx on a green bank that runs to the wood,
in the thin place between the word and the thing.
And we stand all night gazing at the hard water
and cannot see the other side. Still in the ward
the neon obscures the hieroglyphs of home.
We've come this far but are stubborn at the pier
beside the boat's bob and the oars unused
in the thin place between the word and the thing.
And our breaths intertwine on the world's edge
– I've stood inside the Newgrange tomb – like
three coils that are the hieroglyphs of home.
A speck on the near horizon! Charon comes
but not tonight. And my fingers tell you I can't go
past the thin place between the word and the thing,
nor write the way for you, in the hieroglyphs of home.
After 'The Schoolmaster' by Rene Magritte
Crazily it shone – the moment that formed his desire. Somewhere in the largeness of the world, evening was coming to a close but there was still the night to anticipate. Something with which to instrument his life on the unmasked pages of his room. Except for the suitcase he has completely filled with unfinished words, he leaves everything behind – the faces, the endless days piled like knots on top of each other, the clocks, the unfinished distances.
The night seems to have given the hour a strange permission. Inside his mind he lugs along a flickering. A point of fine adjustment, to meld with the voices. A time of mood plantations.
He sits on the suitcase, waits by the side of the road, transfixed by the shadow of a dog on the wall. He knows that the suitcase can only be opened elsewhere, under the gaze of an unquestioning moon. No other documentation will be required.
the hard drive a still hum, a natural pilot light
to goad essentialism, wind bringing things out
into the rampant today of an open room. 'mojo'
skulks away misunderstood. a curtly folded media-release
flutter is your orchestra rustle. i'm lacking a train route
& just filling out the questionnaire / assured /
taking on the stakeholder persona, singing the department
store chorus above our heads: this won't be quoted correctly.
but laundry moments like they were before – the room humid
with cooking cotton, air a fractured cold out any such window.
even finding stashed cigarettes & bristling at the illogic,
how it becomes us. summer dresses in winter;
the first thing in the cupboard.
a zombie stare of near to distant past mottles my voice,
irate voice of future negotiations. i can't decide. people
studied your poster & sticky tape while you hid deaf
against lighting structure, the public sculpture,
publicly keen as waxed apples on the table.
charging $5 for audience development
(invoice me).
& so & so forth.
cluster bomb in the wendys.
the pink t-shirt loop.you remember x talking about the system of
the longer tract (the apparent necessity) you
remember yourself repeating it (the uncertain
truism) & you remember y grasping it
with not too much enthusiasm. you you
you. how silly it all seems, lines from special-k
commercials in the 80's making a mockery
of your chaos-theory, the snickers wrapper
walking off to mate with a tolkien book.the path to that lecture hall looks like touching a little puppy.
let it lick real madly & cutely at you. i can hear the
protective way things wrap you up.
The woman with the styrofoam cup and no teeth
sits all day at the taxi rank and is a local identity
The driver tells me this in his practised monologue
tells me she lost everything in the war
was forced to grow vegetables for soldiers
slave labour, you know –
How she had nothing
but when the Russians came
she lost everything all over again
How do you lose nothing?
I think about asking, but he's still
talking about her sitting there
with her no teeth, her free cup of coffee,
and her swearing, so I can't help but float
to my mother, her new teeth
and my grandmother's face
how I recognise it now
in the shape of my mother
except she must have been
there all along, staring
at me from a remove,
like the vacant blue sky
with its constance of stars or that
woman with her everything
and her nothing
all over again.
I hold the darkness this time
before you so that you too can
touch the walls with bare hands.
I tear the papers into pieces
for the moulding in the starch.
You can see a faint candlelight
in the wind in a distance.
That is the memories. The steps
are closer to the ears now
from seventy-two years down.
Can you remember our guest
in this empty house? He is
the only man here in red dungarees,
you cannot reach his face.
I see the first dog he killed
before he creakedly locked
the gate. The fume from his mouth
clouds the room and it is too
late to ask questions, someone
from behind restores our tongues.
lies at the next turn, a sign says,
displayed in a place where ducks
stop traffic and families picnic
by a manufactured lake. It shimmers
through glazed windows to highlight
the outdated design of your current life.
Its illusions are fully furnished,
affirming your sense of entitlement.
It follows you like a smiling estate agent
who claims happiness is going
once, going twice. But it's nothing
of value if your dreams are less
material in form, or if you sleep
in parks with department store catalogues
rolled up as pillows. If you're more
an investor in the mind's architecture
you'll be aware no matter how many rooms
all buildings are hollow inside.
You will have seen the signs
before the developers leave
and the lake is full of weeds and duck shit.
You'll have already heard
the lifestyle you deserve
is always somewhere else.
As the key sticks I can't write, the story
collapses, it drops
to being just a muttering,
a thought, unheld, to be forgotten.
I think I should smoke open my matches, strike – it slides quietly down the side
of the box.
I look away turn to it, check.
The red tips are insight, – waiting.
The next coughs, splutters, lights, Next time I'll take out two, I will now
always – now alway – take out two just to be sure.
The light flickers,
we both flicker,
twitch.
The screen is still. The smoke wafts past.
The screen is still as I take two matches from the box. I look quickly down to
the matches, — both good
I look to the screen, I should smoke/didn't smoke the matches wouldn't
matter/letter hadn't stuck I wouldn't have smoked.
There's a taste, —- — a taste of paint.
The pencil I've picked up tastes of paint-then lead.
I write the missing letter on the surround of the keyboard/touch the key with
the pencil's paint-less tail/letter appears,
sits silently,
patiently.
I can't think what I would have written before the key stuck so I take the letter
off the screen.
The pencil's letter sits alone on the surround, written on matt and neutral plastic.
The key is worn, symbol disappearing, the key ingrained with me.
An eraser won't remove the pencil's letter, it takes just the surface and leaves a
ghost, a ghost of the letter in the mattness of the surround.
I tap the key again.
Just the same, just as patient.
I could start with it.
The ghost in the plastic agrees/worn key tells me right.
The room's light now just stops.
Only the letter sits/glows/waits to start.
The ghost unlit,
Key already knowing.
Clouds Hopkins across the blue page.
Tufts with Oppenheimer mushrooms
and vapour's glyphs are torn and tossed.
A breeze pushes down the Celsius,
gentle on my arm, like breath that stirs
a lash, hardly at all. And Derrida's graffiti
asks: when our eyes touch, is it night
or is it day? Lens to lens.
Lashes to lashes. Sky's shades
draw comfort over meaning's
eye, another thousand works
undetonated still.
Thou art 2 ezy on th i. I do
beseech ye; yes, that that is true is true.
Keep humming the latest toilet cleaner
jingle & follow protocols after
deleting spam. Achtung, ciao,
konnichiwa: I luv yez all.
That fella: she bin gone.
He confabulated facts
about history. One cannot
beowulf a page with thin smears
of poetic emulsion. On the other
side of The Globe, an audience
waited hours to hear the phrase:
At the end of the day it's all good.
To the permanent moral panik
about literacy, I give riposte
and misspell misspell. This program
brought to you by the foundation
for endangered auxiliary verbs.
Domesticate words & consume
with an ironic detachment.
The fragrant molecules floating
in yr milieu. Take one dose
twice daily by blog or fart.
r u @ home with a 2nd langwij?
Can't say nuffink in a 3,000
word SMS essay. There ain't
gonna be no transmogrification
of the quotidian. We apologise
for any inconvenience. Somethings
is happenings. It's the same-same.
There is no test pattern. Please recycle
old questions in new English.
Must we keep asking if culture
iz dumbing downward? Text
or fone now 2 hv yr say.
Falling for you, or at least in front of you,
I measure my length, fathoming myself,
Along the independent variable of time or narrative
I find masturbation necessary but insufficient
Stand on a chair and look at that stain long enough
You will see the Blessed Virgin, they say
But all I see is genitalia, admittedly wrapped
In a pink nightie and dark velvet smock
Go like this, and you'll see its little nose
Sniffing the scent of spikenards
Bertolt Brecht noticed something similar
Now, that's what I call art.
| Country | Number of Deaths | Cause |
| Indonesia | 94081 | living |
| India | 14962 | living |
| Sri Lanka | 29755 | living |
| Thailand | 5046 | living |
| Burma | 56 | living |
| Malaysia | 72 | living |
| Maldives | 82 | living |
| Bangladesh | 2 | living |
| France | 250 | touristing |
| Sweden | 60 | touristing |
| Germany | 34 | touristing |
| UK | 34 | touristing |
| The Philippines | 25 | living |
| Norway | 21 | touristing |
| Italy | 14 | touristing |
| USA | 12 | touristing |
| Japan | 7 | touristing |
| China | 12 | touristing |
Source: www.sina.com.cn
Date sourced: 04/01/2005
you have that white chocolate
guilt, where it
isn't chocolate at all –
but something you've mixed
together from other things
things stolen
kigos from the Edo period
Bruce Lee's arms at 32 fps
crazy dumsaint and
Barthes' kleenex box
– that mercenary ethic
your head like a mixing bowl
and eyes for beaters
until at last
when you
bake
it looks nothing like you
– just ingredients, cold
crowd on the plate.
1.
walk with me along the pathway of analog lovers.
visitors will bring food and gifts
gathered from palaeochannels visible
in the twilight at fifteen-day intervals.
once a mega-lake, the autumn slowly made
inroads into an atypical hesitation waltz
you have investigated for a project
the maintenance engineer thought long overdue.
many of these forms and rhythms
see now
a return of enthusiasm
similar in appearance to a brown pelican
as luminous as several thousands of stars.
do you belong here. turn toward the asteroid belt
directing its colour-coded bodies away from further
cycles of cell division, alone everywhere.
the telescopic view during this time
provides thinning crescents with hope.
when the camera breaks down, smile and reshape.
in case we drift apart, wear your compass
on a checkered sleeve, bicycle helmet, white pillow,
from day to night.
2.
discovered by removing a subset of commercial vessels,
the remains of a viking longhouse
eject cometary material into the twilight.
emptiness yawns: what has gone missing
cannot be deemed to exist
until the ship makes port, kneels and finds citations.
new experiments cloud the request form.
intricately constant,
your gaze sets shortly after the sun.
you calculate departures from the probable,
steering between limerent styles. i follow,
one blind step to each beat.
The cattle grid jolted him back; it was where the green
Tree snake coiled itself like a stowed garden hose around
The railway iron & they refused to cross, the gap of fear
Too great. An Apostlebird greeted his return, its grey fantail
Spread in an elegant bow, its harsh voice he inherited; purely
Environmental. Lousy Jacks his mother called them, as their
Disciples slapped mud huts onto the trunks of black wattle.
He grew in a bedroom the colour of prickly pear & it became
His favourite colour; frog his schoolyard nickname. He learnt
To read news headlines peeling away the frayed linoleum;
Pink with red flowers in his parent's bedroom, as if wrack
Could be countered by austere repetition. The cottage was
Decaying, even the mud wasps had abandoned their homes.
He gave a nest to his daughter; the fine creation full of holes.
one in two men like jelly. the hand comes to claim its
prize visavis gough & the new york poets. i freeze in my
bag. the stamp isnt one youd want or even read. cramps flower
unbeknownst. prose though apparently maupassants triumph was also his
downfall. money in
snow. setting off for the presbytery like a winky. i think it
surreal but you a suitcase. his grace stank. the tone like an
unripe pear or pineapple. leather kept you from the grave for years
but today youre here & on your knees for a change. men
are sexier than before or am i just getting out more? forced
seclusion in the north. snow in money. she ran an extension cord
from his vexation to someone with more energy. hallelujah doesnt come with
raisins. have you been to the outback lately? it looks like sydney.
the tea cooled & the coffee awesomed. we were back to back
& the space invaders werent games or gamers but coming to take
our place our cake. its a kind of fish icecream. big in
nonfood circles. googoogoo. marinetti looked to a tableclothless future
something the nazis
couldnt do. it can happen when literacys at that level. the bar
had oscar wildes name on it. the computers lyric plaint brought a
tear. i get out of my bag. its light i can hear
the unbearable rumbling of the sun. worse than santa being dragged
over
needles in his sleep but reindeer willing that wont happen again.
i met andrew xs editor but i didnt meet andrew x. by
the time we got the hypertext working wed run out of blue.
the novel on the cover of the bonnard painting. thats a clock
you dont see every day. hypochondriac phlox. the lettuce freshened in the
structured vermouth. the bullet in my heart voided lostness loneliness. like a
drysdale. like a bark. the years go past in a righteous haze.
the copilots haircut delayed takeoff but the monitors obliged. happy drugbust
baby.
two more harpsichordists quarantined. it may be in quantity that we have
our hope. a squeaky sock gathers the moss. wikipedia nightmare. borrow your
own thermometer. are linebreaks sister to windbreaks? the crowd urged
caution. albeit
briefly. vegetarian aphids dont bode well for roses. & tell me how
im going to breathe with no head? the cereal typed the paper
while he talked shit to the milk. dial f for froot loop.
off ice he wasnt on the same wavelength. theres a bigger niche
than astronauts for poems like these! too disgusted to play chess. the
spacebaa was woaking but a typed a. a storm brewed. there was
little atmosphere in the room. her philosophy wasnt a negation of all
i held dear. his demands included a reading of wordsworth over the
police megaphone. a basketball flattened with disuse. are jane austen &
dr
who in cahoots? i keep meeting guys from the twelfth century. how
do i know theyre genuine? how do they know about bank accounts?
My foot on the wood
and the heat surging through it
seems a bourgeois grandeur
here in the public sauna.
A long way from the hot
bitumen of home.
I am no exile, though
I doubt I belong here
in this, or most poems.
But to be a conduit of beauty,
to be somewhere
between dirt and bird,
song surging through you –
that is a pretty wish.
Even a silent song
playing in one's veins, some-
thing approaching the throb within
Beethoven, would be okay.
The sharpening of a sense
with the perishing of another.
The salt rising to the surface
of the body reminds it
of the short distance
it has crawled from the ocean,
ancient secrets embedded
in the flesh. The body
has endured a short lesson
in how to be here.
But it changed our shapes.
It changed our song.
We did a few drawings.
The money spider crosses a hand.
You shut the door and open up
the secret drawer, so hefty
and loud your knees pop. We're
beginning our descent into barbarism:
sorry, it's conclusive
since the windows filled with milk
and the floor with blood and honey.
Only two to go then one more, then
we begin our evolutionary strategy in earnest.
Look up and smile; the coffee drinks the cup
and fathers eat their leftovers unbidden.
We like these airy breakfasts, anti-gravity service
puts me in the circus-mood
mentioned in the guide. White clowns in the air out
on parole. We must wear our ornamental
blinkers for landing.
Skirts turn Mondrian. Complimentary?
Yes, it's all free–so long as you can say
“pop it in Mum's bag,” she prising
lead shingles off a roof. Our dentist
works as a baggage-monkey now, inciting every
passenger to their teeth. But smile,
this is a road someone lives on–and that's
why we're here on this national holiday:
to celebrate how ducks move and the big
noise they make! enjoining us to attend more closely
to pirate, treasure, flag and farm
equipment plowing us untimely under
the clues, the slopes.
Every day Abba Paul plaited a new basket,
for which there were no markets in the desert,
so he burned them in a bonfire at the end of the year,
and again began his termless labors.
High roller Sisyphus was also an incurable workaholic.
One day Sisyphus met Paul, who was weaving
yet another basket. He asked if he could put his boulder
in Paul's basket. Paul replied that his baskets were not
big enough for boulders. 'Then what are they good for?'
Sisyphus wondered. 'For nothing,' Paul responded.
'They are good for nothing.'
'That's what I work for too!'Sisyphus quipped.
'Then go ahead and put your nothing in my basket,' Paul offered.
'But what should I do with my boulder?'
Sisyphus pressed. 'Why not burn it?' Paul suggested.
'Do boulders burn?' Sisyphus wondered.
'They do when they're in my basket,' Paul replied.
'But you said that my boulder won't fit in your baskets,'
Sisyphus recalled. 'That was before I burned them,'
the monk replied.
'oh no! it hurts!'
Richard Hell
there'll be no billy ocean
until we meet inside the radio
on albany highway
a bee once stung me on the nipple there
it was classically trained
in techniques of surprise / and exited
past a future lover thru the passenger side window
to fizz out on the cut grass
in bee-eye view
of the bicentennial memorial
lake
half a line of wang wei translated
in its mind
this thing extreme
well, this
was something new
and that night or soon
inside the shell of a car
again a soft-focus filter between us
and the drone
of the recently deceased
that might have been engine or radio hum
but when the song came on
memory clicked in
and i forgot where i was
From my father I got
Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Joplin.
I found them shrunk with the cold,
dusted on his writing desk
underneath old newspapers,
bills, blunt pencils, inkless pens,
accounts of unrealised genius
and corpses of cockroaches.
He hid them – stained with coffee,
Western voices
stamped on samizdat cassettes
with Russian lettering and fake covers.
He was too shy to let me know
that once he could make love
to the sounds
of the same music
I do.
Who would think there were times
when my father
wore dancing jeans
underneath the mirrored balls
of Siberian nightclubs,
where tattooed DJs
had to swear loyalty
to the international struggle
of the working class
if they wanted
to keep
their jobs.
My father
with his trimmed beard
and trimmed wings
and sadness
that will suffice for all of us.
When you were my age
You had to write
Whatever they ordered you
If you wanted
to keep
your job.
in the yoga class, breathing Ardha Padmasana,
my rusted shoulders don't florally grace
half lotus
green thumbs agree Dan's brittle lemon tree can't resist
superannuants bracing the Wall Street crisis
and stiff winds
crossed legs unlatch reluctant joints I bend with classmates
downward facing dogs posed hard in fiscal
inertia
sunlight strikes the red hedge, bounces with the late breeze
fresh green backs bailing out American
mortgage debt
Zhai radios from the vastness of space, 'I am proud,
Chairman Hu, people of China, mission
accomplished.'
the smell of new mown grass wafts, the village school bell rings,
a rooster crows far from my rhythmic breaths,
mind scudding
this ordinary life: cobra uncoiling is Kylie;
she meditates on mildew powdering
garden beans
(Inspired by 'A monument to war', sculpture by Kathe Kollwitz, Berlin)
i.
He'd hated her old handbag
and how she carried it.
He'd idle behind,
watching her shoulders
move solidly through public streets
carrying the bag
he'd given her in childhood.
He then learnt to walk in front,
cursing slowness
and memory
and the impossibility of being man and son,
so he chose man
and avoided her gaze,
but at night stayed awake
in ease of darkness
to hear her private singing from the bathroom:
her smooth notes skimming water
to steal under closed doors
then find him, open-eyed and loving.
ii.
One thousand degree fires turned solid bronze to liquid
which, bubbling and thick with resistance,
was emptied into Kollwitz's mould
then clasped shut,
left still,
for airless weeks.
Bronze settled, quietened and cooled
to this:
a grown man
enfolded in his mother's full embrace
his head angled backwards,
smooth neck reflecting the sky,
long legs spilling effortlessly
to the angry earth.
