‘Give we the hills our equal prayer,
Earth’s breezy hills and heaven’s blue sea;
I ask for nothing further here
But my own heart and liberty.’Emily Brontë
Ask everything more of layout under pressure.
Ask for depths outside and maybe beyond sacred texts.Reconfigure ‘peace accords’ in glyph-take from deficits
filling out coupons and decorations of hope — elopein weather maps and tracking, diagrams and divinations.
Ask jam sessions to reconstitute your faith, to makethe dried stalks — wicks — of long dead orchids
to act as spectrometers in the shade of eucalyptus.Ask more in circulars, gravity-fix of personality,
all those making monsters in snippets of bushland —such machinery sits in sheds, comes out, deletes
a stretch of flooded gums, returns, settled down.Ask further of here, ask to shed skin in quietude.
Think of how friendships can kindle in old gaols —exhibits: chain & ball, inducing of claustrophobia
when that’s a self-parody of the absurd: wallsalready closed in, ticket of leave revoked in
striated light, and even back then gerygones,pardelotes, prelates, roisterous mating song of rufous
whistler. Even then, as if, prayer for askingto reset, play it differently, or fait accompli?
Never. Not in the hills of production, selfsufficiency.Correlate a sea in the eye-drought!
What screech of epiphany dismissed for love?We ask more under cloud where burn comes
fast and shockwave is no application — tooeasy to see the disposition of incongruity
is setting up an image, phytochemical symbolism.Why ask to ask more of core beliefs shed
when stress levels rise? To whom, and why?Knowing more of lore than one should, it edges
under display, but can’t be plumbed, scrutineers.A leisure of worship, a relief of granite and clay,
of laterites fines to spread out as tracks to Londonor Rome or even an island like Singapore. Television
reception is poor, and that’s to be written as pyramid.Here, further, out, nothing. Here asked of, a satellite
photographs as firebreaks glare, veins of geometryleavened: heat signatures of all life, the beetle
we are surprised by (wherefore?), echidna gonenow from dead log ripped open, termite-less
city fallen out: after the event, the spiritual glossary?Travel to define a feather’s curve, it’s readiness
or unwillingness to wet or dry, precise placeof arising. Could be said simple as flight,
with interference from all directions. So,allot this fragment to that erosion,
this banging on about the same old thingto that poisoning. Some of it, honestly — epigene
you can’t see grammatically, can’t add to programme.And a loop in a signature doesn’t guarantee
cross reference, any more than echoing outinto marri flowerings makes ID — tinted snow
over hill bristles south of here, indeed indeed!, sooverwhelming that we’d believe the bunker-busting dozer
parked — snuggled — behind a few of them for overa week now is contrite, pulling its head in,
lying low till (at least) the glorious palaverof opening is over. Then down down down
into copyright and colonial overture of Underworldidiom, a pew a cushion to kneel on, yank out weeds
in the old way (visions of ancient relatives?).Ask more of a subject than an encyclopaedia
can offer you. Ask rubric and antiquity and transmutation,ask gnosis and eitic/n-eitic/heitic/t-heitic & glory barbs
(a thumb is infecting from being scratched pulling caltrop).Sore. Prayers lugged to carry you via — no way to obtain
lift when said and gone? Stirred in dust and residueof manufacturing? Really, ask for more than shoot to kill
take aim at your denial of scorched earth? Your — us other:‘You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, greenie punks?’
says the funny fairground fella, all pukka on Twitter.We mean — commonplace, common prayer in league.
Such power quickfix laugh model stand-up massacre mirror.It’s all in the splurge, the burst of ‘information’. Lamentations
are lamington drives to collate a backlash — the seedbank(genetically modified) of moralising calls out moralists.
Pitchfork realism in tractor loveland, we bow downand take our rolling back of vegetation on the chinwag.
Wagtail does its watching, don’t you worry. No fear!Ask everything more of layout under pressure.
Ask more, ask more of jam sessions ask moreof nature descriptions ask more of annunciations
of erasure, ask more of art therapy and sacred texts.
- 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