Coming back to their neck of the woods,
a shout was as good as a wolf and a basket
as full as a boot full of tarnished medallions
and useless keys, pugnacious as costume
on a moonlit patio, swilling prosecco
in the face of a woofer meltdown,
the Pixies Doolittle undermining
their security and ripping through
their smokescreen, they linked arms
and tumbled headfirst into the black
ink of their future depositions, laughing
like whales at their idiotic prospects,
reminiscing over the glory days
of their addictions; some strange
archaic pleasures, white drawings
on the fragile weatherbeaten wall,
hessian curtains with macramé tassels,
vases with cracks sewn together
with lines from the Old Testament
making them crazy: the lord raised up judges,
which delivered them out of the hand
of those that spoiled them, and left
them stranded on the banks of their own
satisfaction. Really, their pleasures
were of the most fleeting kind, so
they faced up and said, ‘damned
if we do, damned if we don’t’,
and didn’t do anything to correct,
construct, console, constrain or
contribute to the future prosperity
of their grand project, though they
played out their ebullient narratives,
and folded up their origami verses,
took to the trombone and piano
with gusto, and uttered a rousing
chorus to all and sundry.
the next day, they were arrested
in their development towards spiritual
affirmation, a transparency attractive
in its embrace of optimism’s anodyne argot
though their youth lay dead as springtime
it was late in the hour of burning reason
and enlightenment overkill, thus panhandled
they stepped out of the limelight
and took up Pascal programming
insisting it was neither an imperative
nor blast from the past, always slinking
into their nesting
procedures to put everything
into structured subranged enumerated records
before they opened the business door
to uncultivated beauteous genius;
for, you see, they knew (or know)
their territory, their competition,
their enemies; experienced
in an exquisite tai chi
they quietly folded backwards
as some roaring ruddy raider
bellowed and screeched wild calumny
at their retro costumes festooned with flurries
of rapid eye movement, privately aghast
at their charismatic choreography
and lush sampling of his aggro compendium;
in their neck of the woods, a shout was as good as
a promise, a promise as good as a fistful of hemp,
a fistful of hemp as good as a hit
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones