the brain simmering in

the saucepan of the
skull, hands, plunging,

rescuing thoughts from

uncertainty’s pureed soup
it’s not that the violence is

beyond words but that
words are too full – their meanings mean

uncounted other things as well
‘stop’ means there are

screams that have no ceilings
‘tired’ means there are

screams that have no lungs, if
words were able to carry the world

it would … it would …
no.
have a good day, says the shop assistant

glancing at my fumbling hand
did you want some scissors to cut the tag off?
how can a city love you back other than in

their organs? Ballarat is a lakeside heart, a pulse
of ordered wetlands, I ran into my grandfather in

the supermarket carpark! my yoga teacher is

the mayor!
folding your childhood

home into your adult self is

quicker than it looks, I’m
multitudes, sure, but not in a ‘one plus one plus is

two’ kind of way, but in the way my child has

renamed infinity, ‘confinity’
as though we need to stay alongside

the limitless rather than risk entering
anyway, complete thoughts are overrated,

far too articulate to be true
I had an iron transfusion. months later, here we are

let causes be causes and effects be

fleeting lessons, in
Her Majesty’s theatre anniversary concert, a

poet coincidentally sits next to me. proof that

it only takes one poet to make a place poetic
I refuse to join a chorus singing the name of a

dead and murderous namesake so instead I sing loudly

to the sovereign Queens on stage
is subversion subversion if only you know

it’s subversion? this question
cannot absorb one more note, a single drop of

lyric falling from the leaking

stage might spill my brain into
the audience, we can’t contain my constant

confusion + this theatre can’t keep asserting

hegemony     =     clash