Walking Through the Blue Gate

Walking through, in/out: my son a shadow? His mind marks the boundaries, he
sees only mercy. Out of my quiet yard and body – a threat to nothings. Confusion
fails and a clear truth emerges from my thigh…
In my skirts I carry his birthdays, I'm the ring: he's the stone.

I feel like I've eaten last week's donuts. I take on the uncommitted sins of my
unborn children. Storms will come, I'm not there but only passing. I take not a
teaspoon of hell to my lips, but of the waters of heaven I take great draughts.

Feet grow slowly, blisters quickly, in the living room they grow like mushrooms. In
my books I travel, in my mind I live and die the deaths from overhead wires and
hawks. My father instructed me in the abstract, ensured the real was ever strange.

 
*
 

Angels aren't opposites, there's always a human figure to draw on. What are we
burning? There's gold in death, and cold ash, I taste it with you: every embrace the
last.

Like an epic, dozens of my generation go mad and are infected; I feel nothing; I
observe from my post behind her ear, as we go singing through the gate.

This is my fit, frame by frame. I wait, as if a child, for the terrible experience. The
lies and truth combine in the error only I can tell. I choose the orange – it reveals a
murderer's face. If anyone knew if it suited me, what would it mean? I've already
used it, they've already copied me.

Where you're going means Japanese colours, cool denim drinks at the innocent's
club. I see their destinations, crunch on its magic. I sent you on, noone knows
why. I couldn't be the tears that formed you, my heart the subjective pump. That
act changed me, made me the mother I'll always envy.

 
*
 

I dabbed soil on my son's brow, a Russian treatment for ego.

Wilde, Borges, Foucault – a pie I foil and carry. Orphaned by god, I become the
sunlight on the gate ( that I interrupt), the moth asleep (that I wake). Suffering for
belief has many forms (all traps). What have I added to my cv since '75, since 9
o'clock? I drank you like beer, like an alcoholic, like banana milk, like piano music.
I run when not under observation, now I twine like wisteria, an old lilac soul.

It's a lonely moral, a shock to the emptiness of knitting, channel-surfing. I've never
done this before.

 
*
 

Jesus reflects on my glasses – or fire does. Nietzsche's child's the garden's
apostrophe. You'd think I'd nothing in common with love, but I look to it in secret. I
tell the gate of my loneliness, overlaying the morning's music, embarrassing the
peony. It's my fit, my gamble, my fellatio. There's no over, this isn't a cover. If only I
was Kuan-Yin. Inside me are countless reactions. I sear and scrape. Will I wake
up Australian? Will I save anything? Cool any flame? The flowers tremble in their
heresy.
I've been shown the killing example, and go through the motions. I lie to both sides.
Absolve me. I couldn't get a girl so I headed for ecstasy. There's no through.
Suppose it's night. I pretend to normality, I don't shake, or scratch; avoid mystique
and metaphysique. In my leotard invisible against the gate, a red S on my chest
could be a cockscomb. I lack the military touch, the easy recycling of a million
stockings.

 
*
 

“I'm only Kafka,” I say on my way. The light is Keats; I lumber, prosaic. I do
everything, it's everywhere. I pretend to be a dream, I mar the peace of ash.

I fear the failure of the image: sitting with Whitman in olive tree silence. I can't leave
‘the sunlight,' can't go back ‘through the gate'. I risk Vedic sickness – but nothing
more – to draw the red from his skin. “Forget ice,” I say. Forget bodies.

Dream or nightmare? Them becomes em in my excitement. Centuries click over
(what was I reading?). I stop writing, regear my sensitivity. The past's always now
— in the scarlet whatever, in the cabbage damage. Blue stasis gives way.

I'll know the colour when I close my eyes (flickering with illness). Breaking for the
short timber.

 
*
 

My four fingers reach for you, my enigma enters you. We go into the winepress
together: you leave it alone. The worst comes and is still to come. Resignation
fights with expectations. Is fame the hand or cheek? The slow experiment
continues…

We die to become angels. The air and ways reverse. A teacher shames us for our
angst, yet our axes express a violence that rocks. My decadence consists in this: a
hydrangean childhood, brown last century glass. You think I can't stick Marx to
this?

The circumscribed spirit, the interpretive tendency: my German legacy? The Irish
ship played its radical part (convicts aside). The anachronisms of blood and
memory. A faint eroticism my hands can ignore. No parents in sight, no erasers
needed. Automatic sainthood.

 
*
 

Like riding, like fucking, I point my angelic toe. My psyche's cage opens. My
Catholic substance leads me along a line of despair, the first line I remember.

Into the city of thinking. What once was pseudo is orthodox. The revolution awaits
an eclipse, and then it's cloudy, there's the washing… The roses assemble
(they're prophets). I breathe in moonlight: avoiding nothing, embracing urgency.

Drowning in waterlight, I yell the “Prayer of the Hostile”. Iron clangs, semen burns
on the steps. This is not my beautiful life. I kneel down hard in the church of
anxiety. The comfort of splinters in lukewarm hands.

A subconscious Sunday. George Eliot without a novel. The dirt erupts and my feet
relax. I meet noone. Through the cold early fog, far from god's skin, I bring my
orange tone like snow, like a slow motion pinball. Forgive me – and I'm warm.

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Beat

tap dancing vaudevillians
gypsy wagoned in crop circles
decked out with thumpers
and tweeters and sub-woofers
pumping out the hits of the 70s
snake charming smoke signals through the windows of combi
vans
staging puppet shows for the
community

come here angel dusted
snorting quick lime
blowing trumpets
clowning foolishly
winking at me like a star
playing all that folksy braided gnome music
complicating
my poor cartwheeling
toadstooling brain fungus
the little spores waiting there for the future
like eggs

i try to
concentrate on the
crop dusting,
killing insects,
cut and painting the little sprigs of willow
down by the river popping fuses

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Jelly-drunk by 11pm

The only thing I drank was stout beer.
I drank it compulsively,
I called it my 'milk'.
Now I've had 3 bottles and it feels ok so I'll go for some more.

I ran pell-mell to the bottle-o!
With each leap my leg-ligaments achieved a kind of ecstasy,
a kind of mild pain.
And as I ran, I secrungered sums of saliva in my mouth,
I spat 'the food' onto that street there.

I walked into the bottle-o and I watched an insect bounce
arrhythmically off a light-bulb, like a buzzing moon.
It made me laugh a tad,
I looked at
him; that other guy but he didn't laugh (Plainly: only the jokes
I laugh at are up to the current standards.)
'I prefer coke mixed from
a syrup,' he explained to his girl.

I bought some excellent stout beer made in South Australia,
my favourite kind; 'Southwark',
and as I walked home I saw a vagrant and considered myself
to be the artist coz I looked at that ugly, haggard old man
as if he was a thing of beauty.
(I was filled to the brim, I thought, with no talent.)

At home, I sat at my desk and watched a cockroach for a while.
The cockroach, I imagined
as a solid shell of crystal charcoal.
But then I just squashed it into a tissue didn't I.
Yes, I did.

And the temperature was just perfect.
I was cake-stoned, phone boned,
alive and joined like lego
to a childlike mood
passing
over me like a roar of joy.
My flesh was keen,
I was binge-thinking about the times they guffawed at my jokes,
I was falling in love with new music,
I was contemplating an affair with the Virgin Mary.
See, I'm a fire-soldier;
I like pretending that I'm the king of the room
at parties.
In my head I take on the role of 'king'.
I went to the john didn't I.
I focussed and began lacquering the porcelain with my wis
and then I began drinking again in my room.
I imagined myself drinking the souls of those fermented plants.
I'm taking these vegetable souls with me, I thought.

Drunk and movement on the roof,
a special episode at the dunny.
I piss and concentrate on the glistening circle of light.
By now I've had about 10 standard drinks
and my blood is warm like my skin
in spring
when the thawing sun strikes it
as I leave the shade…

And later I come across all kinds of advice to myself,
desperately scribbled in journals:
'When you drink… when drunk,
you may drink with a drunken, heedless energy.
But when you're sober,
you regret drinking poison
with the energy of the ocean (a flower).'

Now, I'm listening intently to those beats there on the radio
and I feel around for a pen.
I love the leather feel of the pen in my jelly raw fingers,
so I write something, something very serious.

Note for tomorrow:
The rapport I have with drink
seems gentle and friendly for now,

like clag glue.

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Grey Sundays and Unanswered Prayers

Συννεφιασμενη Κυριακη μοιαζειζ με την καρδια μου*

α.

It took one song, the song of grey Sundays and unanswered prayers

a bottle of whiskey and two shots of Koumandaria, sweeter than whiskey

but the deeper diver, a plate of olives and bread

half a packet of Karellia and the mere smell of weed, the loss of half

week’s pay on a poker game with greedy brother-in-laws

the loss of wife’s respect when she searched pockets the next day

and he moved in trance from corner table to the middle of the room, found himself

in the sacred space where every table and chair parted and the smoke couldn’t

penetrate, nor the eyes or mouths of the watchers, he closed his eyes anyway

became awash in music and lyrics, grey Sundays and unanswered prayers

he knew the ritual of Zembekiko, better than a Priest knew the liturgy

hands raised just above head like they were nailed in midair

but those hands were fighting against life, not death, two fingers clicked the

steady rhythm of wave against rock, an arm swung loose like a broken mast

then up erect again, a crazed battle over gravity

to untrained eyes he might have seemed drunk and disorderly, a dance of madness for sailors on a sinking ship, but the stumbles forward were timed precision

each hop, step and whack from hand to foot a chaotic sequence of storytelling,

he is the eldest son, with mortgage-one to father and mortgage-two

to bank, and the wife’s ten years younger, into Beatles and the truth

money is made scaling and slicing frozen fish, the knife often plays funny tricks

pretends to carve into sea flesh but finds human, mostly his, and the doctor

throws him morphine when his stitching back the skin but won’t give him any

extra for those slow nights when the pain’s sunk in and he wakes up to grey Sundays and unanswered prayers…
 
 
β.

Outside the blue sky swamped by the grey, turns temperamental

storming those inside shadows of candle flame, incense smoke

and many heads tinted with years of prayer, bend even lower to receive

the blessed chant Δοζα Πατρι και τω Υιω και τω Αγιω Πνευματι…

in the back pew he sits with others who hover between worship and sin

he’s there as eldest son, as husband, as father, his daughter is now old enough

to cross herself from right to left, he tilts her head to the floor when the Priest

passes by dipping olive branch into goblet of holy water, and flick, flick flicking

showering heads, he wants the water to bless her little soul but he never bends low enough, his eyes get stung by the divine, the hanky is dragged out

to wipe away unwelcome tears, his little girl reaches for hanky too

to dry her wet curls, he puts hanky away, she says Please, he says No, he wants the holy water to stay with her as long as possible, she still has a chance.

 
 
γ.

The girl is nine but could pass as twelve, she thinks more than she talks imagines more than she prays, likes to cross herself from left to right when her Dad’s not looking, if Dad could just once take her with him when he visited the Priest

behind the altar, behind the wall of golden framed Christs, Virgin Marys and Saints, behind the sliding doors that look like Royal Gates, behind the large eye of God that never stops staring at her, there’s the sacred space where men and boys can go and they hold these private talks about… about?… she’s asked Mixali, her cousin to tell her, It’s not your business, he says with the authority of his father, girls are forbidden, another brat, Tony, will tell her what goes on if she gives him her entire stamp book, but the stamps are from Russia and China and Yiayia gave her the old and young Makarios stamps, she can’t, so she’s never told

she waits with the widows, wives and daughters, some wondering more loudly than others, τι κανουν μεξα κει, παιξουν χαρτια? they drinking wine that’s what they do, holy business, it’s holy business, private, sssshhhhh

the men and boys slink out, silent, the Priest remains, chanting from scripture

the girl’s Dad takes her by the hand out of the Church into the bright… the sun has now run away from the clouds, she lets go of her Dad and runs all the way to the car

never stopping to look back.

 
 

δ.

She saw her Dad rise from the table like he was being blessed by invisible hands

they drew him forth to the dance floor, the cigarette lay limp in his mouth, a forgotten friend, he raised his hands and became anointed with bouzouki and song, everybody was watching her Dad, nobody talked, nobody clapped, he was their guardian from the other side, he would dance the battle of life and death for them, he would risk his sanity for theirs, she wanted to help him, to dance the madness away with him, to search for the unsteady feeling and bang it into submission, she got up because the hands wanted to bless her too, she wished she was old enough to smoke so the cigarette could hang from her mouth too, she knew there was feeling before there were steps, and this dance had no human teacher, and she clicked her fingers like wave against rock, her Dad opened his eyes, his face became as stern as it was in Church, she had entered the sacred space, girls are forbidden, ssshhhhh, hide

she swung herself back to the corner but Dad caught her arm in flight, held it to his, placed the hanky in her hand and nodded, she was Allowed In, the hanky flapped in her hand, a strong sail in a crazy wind, and they danced to sorrow and sin.
 
 
 

* The first line from a famous Greek rembetiko song (Tsitsanis, 1943): 'Cloudy Sunday, you look like my heart.'

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Tramz

Maibee dhai point aor wai hoem flangkt biiy erlen u gauntlet uv lantenz and maibee noebul beests hou greet us winsing and groening yet kwiiyetur dhan rain aar onvoiz: good mauning good kreetcur, wel met! Dhats wot ii wont tou sai wen ii see you ugain and iim steeming, breedhing dragen uv flaimz uv daun wingkz uloen on dhiy erliy wotc wuns maur.

Wun mauning peetur tompsen sed welkum tou wintur, u kiind tiim, kleen tiim, tiim tou riflekt and ubiid in krisp teerbreez fresh frum waistlandz daon saoth; dhen dhu skii bigan tou tern and dhen kaaz kaim aot liik joguz aur pijenz, tiim and plais mistureez ur antholujeez, songz and tailz rilaited on pasij-hum, wooshez ulong roedz leeving hoem.

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Patti Smith Was Right

these cold, known objects
are not very likeable –
aluminium frames
& curved glass with optical tricks –
but I am 'at ease'
at this show,
there are some nice little-grin ideas –
like television
screening outside
on the suburban home's front lawn,
& time-delay verité videos
to amuse the usually uncrackable
hardened gallery-goer

 
*
 

have I flipped ? into a strangely placid
political zone a lack of clutter
and environmental concern –
these things are so simple,
two hours here & I begin to enjoy
Dan Graham
more than Soutine, Braque, Delaunay,
Bourgeois, Basquiat, Sherrie Levine,
Agnes Martin – although
I can not deny my memory
of her beautiful mid-1960's picture –
'Milk River' –
nor her small collection
of pick-up trucks
glinting with polish – all driveable
& parked
outside her desert home.

 
*
 

I spend over an hour watching,
surrendering to
Dan Graham's big 'Rock/God' video
that makes a simple
anthropological connection
between US tribal & religious ritual –
group dancing, shaking, speaking in tongues-
and mosh pits and rock music –
so when Patti Smith sings
Jesus died for somebody's sins
but not mine
I am converted.

 
*
 

Patti Smith was right,
twenty-five years ago,
to say that rock music,
meaning, then, for her, punk-rock,
would replace painting
& sculpture
as representative of untranscended
life itself.

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Catalogue: Life As Tableware

accessorise with simple, elegant shapes
choose muted bones, the subtle variations of sin
harvested from the last century

the alluring sparkle of toenails and teeth
and the reflective qualities of glazed eyes
mix well with hair
shorn from a passive
human animal
to be woven into the fabric of your life

Item:
A bound foot in classic white china
suitable for any occasion: $9.00

A pair of ankles
shaped into aluminium platters
Small $16.95, large $44.95

Wrinkled knees of hand-woven
cotton and fragrant vestier reed. $16.95

The pelvis makes an ideal drinks trolley
or side table. Drak cherry, 54 cm diameter. $129

The torso has a mirrored
black plate to reflect and increase
the drama of the spine. $27.95

The head, a contemporary form in silver-
painted timber. Small, $82, large $125

Ceramic brown cheekbones
work beautifully as a serving platter
or candle plate. $44.95

Existence is funky and retro. Life comes in a dark
cherry-stain timber veneer
with chrome frame. Mortality is made
from top quality stainless steel. Humanity is
smoothly polished aluminium inside,
a charcoal finish outside. $119

Posted in 09: MUSIC | Tagged

Paul Mitchell Interviews Kevin Hart

Do you have, as the pop song goes, the 'music in you'?

I think the music of words is always in me, almost to the exclusion of any other sort of music, and perhaps necessarily so for me. I almost never play music at home – I like to work in silence – and I'm completely uneducated in music.

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Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged ,

Paul Mitchell Interviews Paul Grover

Studio: a Journal of Christians Writing recently turned 20. In its pages it has published the work of a variety of Australian writers, including Les Murray and Kevin Hart. Paul Mitchell spoke to the journal's managing editor, Paul Grover, about the spirit in the journey.

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Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged ,

Michael Farrell Interviews Andrew Zawacki

In April this year, Michael Farrell and US poet Andrew Zawacki travelled to the Queenscliffe Festival of Words, catching a dose of cabin fever on the way –

//0. Do you think Australian poets are a depressed lot?

By and large, the ones I've met, I don't think so. They seem less depressed than others. Australian poets don't romance melancholy the way, say e.g. Slovenian poets do – the weather's too good here to be depressed.

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Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged ,

David Prater Interviews Amanda Kerley

For five glorious, sweltering days each October, Newcastle plays host to one of the biggest youth arts festival in Australia. Under the umbrella of This Is Not Art (or TINA) not one but four festivals are held simultaneously in the steel city. Amanda Kerley directed the National Young Writers Festival in 2000. Carlie Lazar barely survived it –

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Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged ,

What Audience? Which Festival?

Having recently worked as director of the Australian Poetry Festival (Burning Lines, April 2001), Martin Langford offers his contribution to the continuing discussion about how to present poetry to the public.

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Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged

Brook Emery: A Tribute to Bruce Beaver

Bruce Beaver Tribute
Burning Lines Poetry Festival April 2001
Sydney, Australia

A tribute to Bruce Beaver was held as part of Burning Lines: The Australian Poetry Festival, at the Balmain Town Hall. I don't know Bruce well. We've exchanged maybe three or four letters and I've only met him once, but he has been kind and encouraging to me. His Letters to Live Poets is especially important to me and, I believe, to Australian poetry.

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Posted in FEATURES | Tagged

The Launch

Since I am in Australia I have to talk, talk, talk and all I
see is not people but parties, parties, parties.
– Fay Weldon on promotional tour

The real profits went to the
publishers not the authors who
got tired and lost their smiles
and voices and the attending starving poets
were eating pat's and drinking
expensive wines and
became patently aware that their future
lied not in heavenly dark verse
but in devilishly light prose

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

The Reader

Found Poem at Harold Park Hotel

The reader (a visiting American novelist) did not
read he took from the pockets of his suit pieces
of paper and said I did not think it would be
so casual here well unlike Maupassant I no longer
describe things that has been done before
I only give the bones now in other words the dial
logue as I trust my readers imagination they can
fill the gaps themselves and if you ask me why I
write I can only say I don't want to fall asleep
infront of my typewriter (laughter) and if you ask me
whom I admire it is Gogol right here and now his
Dead Souls are still alive today (laughter) for most
other literature present or past I don't care much
in my country people no longer read or never have
read if anything they like to do it is to watch a
writer on television it seems here in Australia
everyone is as Warhol has said famous for five
minutes (applause) you are a very appreciative audien
ce the kind we never have had in the United States

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

from Katikati

hurling the pétanque boule, her thin little arm
sandal coated in mud washed by the hose
late home for lunch — avocado on toast
beneath the magnifying glass, Scottish castle
above the bananas a bridge at Firenze
sharing his handkerchief — bridge on the video
the “lucky dog” silent in its box
watching a butterfly he shields his eyes from the sun
each time she removes her glasses the stem scratches her temple
stampede at the Temple — news report from India
after their busy day, quiet conversation
pleased with the day's work — his coastguard insurance

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged ,

All Together Now

train jerk-sailing
through fairy meadow
woonona bulli thirroul
scraping and scrubbing
mind just clearing the tracks

how it feels again to crash
through slow barriers of minutes
afternoon towns
of the stale, crushed
public family

loud puppytalk
breaking glass in the carriage
ferrying me back to an afterlife
in my childhood room
after two broken marriages
with my mother and the ghost of my father

a gnarly old couple who've stuck together
faces clamped
finish their meat and bread and butter
from brown bags across the aisle
and fall asleep
the sea greysailing by the windows

looks like they've died
in a crumpled heap
parachute collapsed
in her corner of wall
he sitting straight with closed eyes
his open dark oval mouthway
to the dead

small metal scrapings
of CD leaking earphones
frizzled edges of the massive gloss
of sonic movies filling each head
beside other panes of glass
we ride like dolls

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

Three poems

1 Tantra

Drinking evening star
blue green patterns before eyes
no meditation
no god visits to forgive
the sinning soul in quietude

 
 

2 Hanuman

Seven times he moves
round the vermillion god
under the peepal
sprinkles water to escape
the malefic saturn

 
 

3 Tattoo

They watch her bare back
to feel the body through crotch
thank engraving pen –
she loves the etching on skin
to enhance nudity

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

Ferns

suggest green
places for pausing,
like commas curling
damp of earth they say,
this place is as yet
experimenting, , ,
on the edge
of clearings,
like football crowds in
green scarves, ferns watch
whirling picnics wave
their rugs like matadors, it's
the running of the ferns! but
a quick sprint with the esky
fails to halt the unfurling
of the horns, , ,

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

The RSPCA Postcard

At last. A whole day to myself.
Just as I pull out my chair, though
I see them there, shorn on my desk-
two sheep burst like bladders
across a floor too bloody to be
known by time & place but now & here.
IT MAKES YOU WONDER WHY THEY
CALL IT THE LIVE SHEEP TRADE.
I don't vomit, just feel like vomiting.
Those soft-boiled eggs for breakfast.
I cover the sheep with a sheet of A4
but find I can't not look at them.
When I do, I only half-see mutton
in a skein of gristle & red gravy.
It's worse than seeing or not seeing.
I fold the sheep in a manila folder &
go for a brisk walk around the block.
Cats. Two dogs, one dog-owner. No sheep.
Rounding myself up for home, I know
I'm not re-entering an abattoir
despite washing my hands in the
COLD tap's water, the HOT tap's blood.
I unfold the sheep from their folder &
impale them in red on the white wall
directly in fromt of me. Slow blood
glugs, oozes & then drips dripping.
I sit in my chair trying not to stare
at the redbacks & the red centipedes.
I want the animals to die as quickly
as this animal would want to. If
they go down in a quick fix, though
there'd be no live sheep trade &
with no live sheep trade, more farmers
would have to leave the land &
more sons of farmers have to die by
coronial enquiry. Still, if the sheep
are not to live but die by slow drip
does it matter whether or not they die
in Riyadh or at Gepps Cross? Anyway
so that two carcases can slump & stiffen
across the proverbially large desk of the
Federal Minister for the Living & the Dead
the RSPCA trusts me with a 45 cent stamp.
Not for long but for too long, I think
about soaking off the 45 cents. In blood.
Before I manage to post the postcard
the phone rings. Baa-aa-aa, baa-aa-aa.

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

Behind Enemy Lines

1

he walks past once
twice
again
& again

now he hovers
clenched fists
sweat pouring
ears pricked
mouth agape

his eyes bulging
staring into every house
every window
his head darting back & forth
like a clown at the show

he walks up the driveway
shoots out
walks down the street
looks around
then back there

this time he goes straight for them
one over his shoulder
one under his arm
& takes off
like a vulture with its prey

he makes it home
panicking about that bloke
he spotted too late
watering the lawn

he burns the passport
the tickets
anything with a name on it
so he can't be

 
 

2

usually it's sloppy service
& looks of revulsion

but the new clothes
with the funny names
change all that

looking like one of them
acting like one of them
feeling like one of them

he likes to brush shoulders
with the sportscasters
newscasters
footballers
politicians

'pitiful' pitman buying milk
anne wills browsing
george donikian getting a haircut
amanda vanstone
standing aside for him
in the aisle

but there's always the fear
of being tapped on the shoulder

where'd you get that jacket?
or the shoes
or the shirt
or the jeans

 
 

3

he says
the risk is worth it

he like unley

but he knows
unley
doesn't like him.

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

simultaneous / soon

burn through cliches / a pack a day
smoker / soon your smile will burn
like paper / curl & disintegrate
simultaneous / soon
you'll become thin
as a whisper / cough up a cast
iron lung / soon you'll have
nothing / to lose sleep over / become
nicotine / inhale a chain
of signifiers / desire comes
with cautionary tales / when the
man wrote / I can't get no satisfaction /what
did he expect.

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

The Garden of Earthly Delights

They grow cities on these flowers,
she told me.

I have seen faces emerge
from the arms knotted behind a man's back.
Sleepers;
wings sprouted from the web of fingers.

Dragon wings and a pterodactyl foetus.

It's all there
she said.
The dorsal fungus
and inverted smile.
That nascent web.
The whirlpool.

They grew the family on these,
she said.
That swell,
that family of lies,
that war.

They grew that family of seven,
she said.
That five,
that three:
muddle, fuddle, thistler and brothel –
no thistler, three brothels.
That family three,
she said.
That family tree three thee fee fine for fume.
That smell.

She sniffed.
They grow cities on these flowers.
She arched her back
and split.

Pollen puffed away
on the sea of grass.

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged

Maitland Bay

You hardly moved
lying like a sea slug
in sepia,
dreaming of sky fluorescence.
As if reading braille
you ran your fingers
over tiny shells,
a trail of ornamental bones
on bleached sand.

Hours later the moon rose,
full breasted,
white Godiva,
flaunting it
for the green tipped
crowd,
for bleeding eucalypts
& saffron-sprinkled
lichens.

At dusk we left the
gossamer bay.
Your body heaving,
breathless from exertion
wanting to break
the shackles
wanting to enter
the spirit
of all these forms.

Posted in 08: FESTIVAL | Tagged