When salt- and bluebush country
gives way to the small yellow constellations of
wattle, the mind enters existence.Then
native pines stand, where rabbits had cleared the undergrowth
and where they themselves were wiped out by an island virus,
echoing plantations. Further, in the sung wind,
subtle bodies are a glimmer, fluid as the invisible river
over broken rock geometry, as extinction.
The sentence, then, is an unrealizable mountain.
From this distance, I’m small and quiet,
being all curled up in this poem and waiting
inside the woman who lies spread-eagled,
silenced by the temperament of generations.
Her husband cradles a book, whose contents
no one remembers, and as he reads
she listens, not to this, but the sharp unfurling of wings
within our dim-lit cave; her muscular breath.
Slow march of words crawling back through centuries,
letters inked into leather scrolls,
a dark wind lifting the fabric of memory
and my mother labouring me up to the world’s fleshy rim
beyond which lie the nameless continents
and my father, who has long since put his book aside.
Billed as the State of the Union Address
to state the state of Bill’s union or
preferably the state of Bill’s non-union
Bill’s State of the Union Address prayed
closed its eyes & thought of Hillary
while looking Saddam Hussein in the lens.
So everyone, but everyone wanted to know
how far the President would have to go
how far the President had already gone.
Had Monica Lewinskied Bill Clinton or
had Bill Clintoned Monica Lewinski?
Instead of going the whole Lewinski
perhaps Monica just Monicaed Bill—
one & the same as Monicaing Clinton.
Bill mightn’t have got any more out of it
if he’d gone the whole Lewinski but
Monica might have got more out of it
if she’d gone the whole Clinton
Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Clinton.
Depends on whether or not she thought of
Monicaing as Lewinskiing with lipstick.
Anyway, who cares, who cared? Everyone
& no-one once the Navy was on its way
the Lewinski aircraft carriers carrying
Lewinski bombers carrying Lewinski bombs
smart or maybe not-so-smart bombs
some dud bombs, dumb bombs, dumbos
depending on whether they thought with
their Lewinskis or with their Monicas.
1
The minarets of Auburn’s mosque
are topped by shining metal cones.
Calm, early afternoon–
Dirk Hartog bangs a nail
through the sky’s pewter dish.
Land the colour of dried sponge,
razor grass–a white flame
sputters in the wind.
2
Fences fall like theatre
props. Mount Druitt expands,
LA obsessed cars
stretched by the tar’s
tightening belt
where in-between houses
hover in heat:
Speer the architect.
3
The carriage judders
the glaze from
a passenger’s eyes;
and Rita thinks of fame,
can almost roll
that kernel beneath her tongue:
a signature song that could shake
any audience to its feet.
4
Instead she scans
newspaper reports
that read as obits:
Delta lady achieved her fame
in duets with Kris.
Under her breath she croons
watching the Nepean’s algal blooms
from the sluggish, half-full train.
5
She knows the audience loves
her casual dress
as much as her songs.
The way she flicks her skirt the way
young arsonists flick a match
to thunderous applause.
when i was getting in the clothes aired on the umbrella wires in the garden
the other eye watched me
through its post/colonial window
curtains
saying in admiration
one must really have such guys for mates
for they are so womanly
when i was backing my car out of the driveway slightly clumsily
my front wheel rolling over the curb
the other eye turned away to the grass being cut beneath
its noisy lawn-mower
thinking to himself:
these people are really no good at such things
so it was the same when i let my garden overrun with flower-dotted grass
for the other eye would simply show contempt
for such heathenish practice
or snort at my sometimes yelling to the boy
ughhhhhhhhhhhh
those bloody cruel animals
the other eye is omnipresent
wherever you go
whatever you do
it keeps its vigil over you
wordlessly
until you see it yourself
in your heart:
an eye white
Paté like dogfood from a tin
stale baguette
white cheese want for ripening
makes me long for the glamour
of my backyard.
This is the story
of Picasso’s painting
‘Woman in an Armchair’.
To exalt Eva’s sexuality
he portrays her,
proudly and tenderly,
but also monstrously,
in terms of her genitals.
Inserted into the voluptuous
violet of the chair
the soft pink architecture
of her beauty beckons us
into the painting.
Her face is a vertical slit.
Her lap is covered by a chemise
draped immodestly
so as to attract
attention.
When it comes to her
beautiful pointed breasts,
so redolent of tribal sculpture–
he nails them to her body
with another set of nipples.
Latin from greek; meter: mother, polis: city.
Something very precise
had sawn her almost in two,
and she lay under the green sheet
like a fish half-gutted,
suspended in the amniotic sea
that pumped and pulsed
and breathed for her.
A single white line
measured her equilibrium;
the distance between heartbeats.
A monitor divides the metropolis
into meridians of light,
two lines of pulsating colour
build up around an obstacle;
a telegraph pole,
the wreckage of an ambulance
and the donor’s heart
still vacuum-sealed
and packed in ice
The white line falters
and she succumbs
to the blocked and loaded arteries of her heart
wondering, at the last
if this is what her mother meant
when she said
“I’ll kill you.”
Under the umbrellas of Lygon Street
doing our Renoir ‘Boating Party’ scene
a voice (mine) is saying –
Once in Suva a lovely Fiji girl wrote a message
on the flyleaf of my Lonely Planet guide
to her grandfather, a village chief in Ovalau
that ancient island and in due course I walked
down a track under the volcano cone into
a green clearing, was led to meet Joeli,
sat to a meal with the elders in a long hut
and was asked to bowl the first ball
in the Sunday kirikit match.Which I did.
Then lay drowsing in the palm-fingered shade.
This tale curdles among the coffee cups.
“You made that up.” Indeed I did.
The iron laws of narrative make fictions of us all.
after Dorothea Lange
The road takes your eye.
Dave stands in front of me
on the loose gravel, his gaze locked
on the bitumen, following the curve
past the last tree to the haze of hills
in the distance. His arm is extended,
ready, prepared to make a supplicating arc
whenever a car approaches.There’s no sign
of a car.There haven’t been any cars
for fifteen minutes and the last one
was going in the wrong direction, back
to Arizona, back towards our abandoned car,
back to the old farm, the sweeping furrows
ploughed right up to the verandah by now,
the vegetable garden and chicken coop gone,
replaced by furrows as far as the eye
can see, as far as a tractor, that bright
new toy of the bank, can make them.
It’s hot.The sun is burning Dave’s neck,
burning up through the leather soles
of his lace-up, pointy-toed white shoes –
his favourite shoes–not the sort of
sensible shoes you’d wear on a country road
in the middle of August 1936.At least
I’m resting, sitting on our suitcase,
my girl asleep on my lap, her hot breath
gluing my dress to my skin. My son squats
beside me, feet bare, cap tilted, his hand
under his chin, musing, supporting his father
who is still gazing down the road in search
of a lift. Dave says there’s supposed to be work
around Bakersfield–grapes, more cotton,
oranges, even some regular jobs at the cannery.
He keeps saying it–there’s work in Bakersfield,
as if simply repeating it will make our luck
change. California. The name used to be as sweet
as sherbet on my tongue, but now it’s a parched
growl stuck in my throat. I smile. For my son’s
sake, for Dave’s, I smile. He’s humming
some tune to himself, the girl’s sound asleep,
my boy’s dragging a stick through the dirt,
making another picture. Nothing to do but wait.
And then go on. No point telling them
what I really think, what I know.
Our luck won’t change.
from ‘skim reading’
in the churning waters of the auburn municipal pool a boy is swimming like
chairman mao in cheap goggle. mickey mouse donates his top hat to a rock at
lourdes. awaiting instruction in the art of patient multiplication a moth
prostrates itself at the foot of a fleamarket buddha. lisa simpson spins the
globe on her thumb as she plans her trip up to road to oxiana with robert
byron. from the comforts of their hot air balloon babar and queen celeste wave
to the blue of the ocean and promise to remember its birthday. somewhere
between miami and bognor regis daisy duck is preparing yak butter tea. this is
a story of one eye among many. dust finds its own level.
The sky fractures like a windscreen
the blue Mobil Mart sign keeps the intersection alive.
Somewhere a tram, dance music.
A council worker weaves
out of a pub doorway.
The idea of living here
amongst slabs of 70s red brick
where developers slip you 300 to move out
and walk away from your vegie patch
making plans for concrete, fake grass,
in a landscape of reclaimed mansions
where a man walks the streets reading SON OF ROSEMARY,
others shuffle in pyjamas past traffic jams—
ciggies dangling, eyes glazed, talking to trees,
making milk bar owners nervous.
I meet my neighbours at the clothes line
the small talk falls between us
like pegs in the basket.
Nights glow in passing planes,
the honeycomb light of the Commission Flats
towering above the antennas, chimneys,
a rubber tree concealing a shopping trolley
and our compost bin watched over by cats
who track my movements in this fibro sun room
where I’m often at sea leaning against a door jamb
that’s seen better days, with the changes
sweeping in from the bay
the way a memory leaves you in its wake.
In here is occlusive search for peace.
Limbs find the fairest fall,
Stomach is content, back assumes a line,
Head inclines toward presence.
Words lose their grammar, logic disbands,
Features change outline and fade;
Memory’s meanings come apart,
Actions their purpose, practice its perfection,
Conditions are put behind
And here trust is given to unempirical evidence.
Fragments form figments, longings gravures,
Loves landscapes.The unknown of the known discloses,
Quits its tethering events, the jury out forever.
Inside here cannot be brought back to light
Yet merges unaccountable calls into colours,
Conversation in languages that never evolved.
Hemmed by the furbished home in your infant suburb
You are closer to its mood than is remembered,
Seeing faces in unfamiliar places.
Womb without casing, not death but a drug
That slows deep and you can know yourself
Dying of tortures unheard of, only then
You disrobe the germane erotic.
The future rears in a torrential typology
That defies the constringent analysis
Of the exegete in the woken street.
thunder in the border lounge
the carpet runs for cover
the apricot armrest wears
its amputation like an official
decoration, say the order of
australia, the bathroom
of the failed statistic steams
like a fragrant wonton
where are the rusks, here’s
the superglue to give
the toffee apple its
orthodontal gloss; the bow
of the world touches its
seven toes trying to find
direction, now that
the haystack monarchs
are sniffing at their
pyrex futures the proof
lies in the oven
for David Quinlivan and the Wingello Rural Fire Brigade
caught in the fire near Johnstones Creek on New Years Day
Turn this house inside out
braced and joisted by a man with a builder’s smile
he hummed as he worked and hoisted tiomber and tile
turn this house upside down
he’s dead now and he built ir
likewise tree stumps out in the forest
I could tell you which man, which tree, which forest
he built it and he left it in our good hands
red lights hover over the oval
men are working
unloading the injured, lifting the injured, loading th einjured
men are loading and unloading in a documentary come to our town
I am decoding red lights that hover
the poet whispers in my good ear
Are uo waiting for a UFO?
That’s a helicopter, man!
this is my helicopter come to het me
this is my town, this is my safe house
the trees in my garden step in close to nuzzle me
stupid member of their unnumbered, numberless cabal
they put me down on the ground, give me their breath
uising me using them
the back door bangs
they lift their heads
I need you so bad!
they’ve melted into background
become scenery with a whisper
they’ve gone but not for good
the creative writing student
puppyfat and fringe
needs to use the outdoor dunny
I was trying to impress you. I’m sorry.
Now you’ll never know the end to this story.
I’m sorry. I’m not going to tell you.
imagine you pour a stream of
sugar solution into a beaker
of water, or pee into a bathtub
you see the twining translucent trails
as each solution curls around the
other, prior to their coalescence?
these are schlieren lines
my biochem hons supervisor,
the one who gave me to work with
radioactive compounds so old
they had no hope of giving me
cancer, let alone decent results,
taught me this much. I don’t quite
forgive him the dodgy materials
or for telling me in detail of his wife’s
travails with cystitis, over a cup of tea
and a plain biscuit at 11, the old
laboratory ritual, with the autoclave
busily hissing steam and the smell
of dilute ethanol drifting from ranked test
tubes in gradated hues of pink but I grant
that he gave me that unique pleasure
of having at last a word for
the thing I could never name
… I once asked a deaf magician the famed question: if a tree falls in the forest, will it always make a noise? He wrung his hands wretchedly, then signed “yeah; but what’s a man to do?” Earlier, he’d pulled me from his velvet hat, lipreading the gasps of a gathered crowd …
… if I was going to burn a hole into the night my inventory would include starlight, & a magnifying glass. Once the hole was made big enough, I’d scaffold it so as to hold it in place. Imagine that. Then I’d crawl in. What would I find there–the cure for madness? An undiscovered number. Simplicity. Perhaps the perfect shade of blue? Who knows. But I do know I wouldn’t take too many people in, because they’d just fuck it up. I’d take you, though.That’s for sure. I’d take you.
Pillar after pillar towers my name.
Not all of these could express the life I feel
flash through me.
My ideas span the earth
but now tours litter at my feet
folding their waxy guides.
Here, I watch life fall apart in front of me
as we hurtle towards death.
I hope you’ll last
but every monument freezes.
My Anatolian agent writes to complain
of my negative review.
Words cut me to the bone,
I wear what I wore to your wedding
but then the day glittered in sunlight.
Tomorrow I’m reading out loud
in services to hedonism.
I write my plaque on the spongey world
and hail the puny days.
In love
I’ll usually effect a threshold.
Usually a stream.
And there we splash and banter.
The threshold is my flattened-out organs
without a summit.
Or sometimes I dig holes
and think that I’m clever.
It’s a method of frustration
and deferral.
Although when I’m in love
like I am with you.
I’m a citrus orange
plunged chest first
on to a stainless steel juicer.
Waiting for a pure form
of domestic violence
to turn delicious.
Because I was not marked
Because I had neither fame
nor beauty nor inquisitiveness.
Because I did not ask.
Because I used my hands.
Because I ate potatoes in dirty jackets
fished from the rocks.
Because I used a pail at night.
Because when Betty C. explained
to Betty D. the nature of the problem
I did not understand.
Because I had no silver.
Because I was like my mother before me
and kept to myself mostly.
Because humanity used the footpath.
Because my backbone started to rot.
Because I finished my term on earth
and had no knowledge of either
fear nor care, no morning knowledge,
no knowledge of evening,
and those who came before
and those following after
had no more knowledge of me
than I had of them
When you are seven years old,
lying in the back of a station wagon
while your parents play night tennis;
when the knowledge that you are going
to die one day comes through
the rallies, players’ voices,
and songs from a dashboard radio
left on like an audible night light;
you listen hard to the faultless
workings of your life: your heartbeat
mufled under a blanket; your breath,
painting cone-shaped plumes on the glass.
You trade sleep for the ache
of a nameless concept, and feel
the margins of your days begin to close.
You are not prepared for this.
You leave the car and look beyond
the capped, swinging court lights,
blurred by an attendant rain of moths
and flying ants, and you search
the sky for meaning. Linking stars
and smears of low, transparent cloud,
you find a wound in the side
of an overripe fig; a lizard,
its position on a stone betrayed
only when it blinks. But then
a tennis ball clears the fence,
a player laughs, and your parents return,
smelling of sweat and cigarettes.
When they ask why you’re up so late;
what you’re doing outside the car;
you’ve not the words for what you know.
On the way home, you lie down
and stare at the backs of their heads,
which are dark, then silver
in the lights of an overtaking lorry.
Your father turns the radio off.
Your mother turns to look at him.
They do not speak. You touch yourself
under the blanket, carefully,
and forget about death for awhile.
When the backs of their heads
flare again, you promise yourself
you’ll remember that moment;
and you do, thirtytwo years later,
sitting up in bed, when your wife’s face
is lit by a car pulling into the drive.
In the dark again, you sense her
glance at you. The glance returned,
you ask if she remembers
how old she was, or what she was doing
when her first thoughts of death arrived.
When she doesn’t answer, you say
Star, fig, lizard, and wait for the lights
of another car to print
the shadows of your heads on the wall
He cracks his pain like stalks of wheat
sits at the kitchen table feathering
seeds from husks brittle as cicada shells
dulled gold in the gaslight which threads
a sound the colour of gunmetal through
the quiet eye of evening. Slowly pours the harvest
back into himself, rises and a heaviness
rolls against his lungs and he breathes
a silver whistling of grain shifting over
the clear membrane of his life. One night
checking the traps he finds a possum
forearm snapped, flesh and fur already
crisping back like peel opening to the white
pith. It goes for him as he removes the bar.
He can do nothing for it. Resets the trap.
Rolls a cigarette, smoke rills vanishing
like flickers of a movement, dark wing, clawed foot,
along the skirting boards. Nothing you might name.
On a day when the colour rings like the bite
of a swung axe, bird shadows
the scudding chips, the sun blades him
like a sapling cracked with the first blow. Toppled
he lies gazing into an ambiguous candour
of blue and mutters – Blow over. Blow over me.
He finds the contained patience of seeds –
if he waits long enough, threads of denim
will unwind to roots fringed with hair, confidently
entering the friable earth, toes and fingers
curl like ranunculus bulbs, hips and backbone
splay off as rusted strips of metal, scythe blade
curved beneath the winnowing jaws of diligent
insects. Hoarded grain sinks like skimmed
stones beneath a brindled mask of dam water
At traffic lights
is where I notice a man
waiting in the outside lane
for the same light to turn green.
Sitting with a stiff shirt,
licking upwards on his moustache,
gold at his wrist and
his rear vision angled on his hair.
He is watching and clutching
the blond pedestrian that passes infront,
but when she’s gone around the corner
his mind is a wad of bills again.
At traffic lights
on the road to the same town
is a man that makes the world
so heavy to turn.
I got a rock
then I got another
and I got that other
from the corner of a cave
That other that I got
was of another colour
and another –
it was from another corner of the cave
There was another
from the corner of another cave
and another of the other colour
from another cave
Then I got another rock
from the other corner
but this corner –
it was not the corner of the other cave
And another from another corner
of another colour
of the same colour
as the corner of the other cave
There was another from a corner
of another corner colour
coloured as another corner of another cave
And another in the colour of another coloured corner
was another corner of another other corner cave
And another that I other colour of another other corner
corner of another other coloured corner cave
