It’s the first mistake when the gloom floats in

switching through the channels of late night television

that palindrome of double-ues

it only casts you down, no matter

how bright-lit: and lo!

the ultrasharp reflection of the LCD

what God provides as harvest

‘His’ curious judgment seems most days

more a test, or so you’d like to think.

Something après testament style

having woken in a fugue in a motel room

edging the ocean. Beneath the ruins. End of the end.

The room is filled with humming objects

and despite customary domestic detail

(peach bedspread, aforementioned whitegood

hum)(No minibar, but of course a Bible)

you otherwise can’t quite place it.

It’s not the night itself, that non-illuminated other

more a problem of reference, self-citation

all the miracles of human intervention

from prophets to apostate thumbs

shuttles to the moon, funnel into this

one dumb stroke of a well thumbed newspaper

a feature on package holidays, poolside cocktails

plastic palm trees   because you deserve it   your chance

to eat hearts on the beach.

And the Devil’s Book

what the world will have whether they will or no

is jammed, tunned

¼ History & ¾ CNN

MH370 descends and descends

Nietzsche’s dead & Nozick’s wrong & Nitschke

advertises plastic headbags on a chatshow & Christ

knows the anaesthesia is not going the distance. No matter

the time you spend on mental state theories of well-being

sooner or later you gotta towel off

perch the side of that cracked tub, face the mirror

see. Cos this whole day you’ve stared and stared

like the world’s the sum of your own botched work

and—what?—any surprise

tonight you’re snapped right off your pencil?

emptied? utterly fucked out by it all

having woken as driftnets from News of the World

trawl the high Cs of your cerebellum

and now nothing’s left but bycatch.

So why wouldn’t you pass out to the beach

spend the night raving with some lunatic of a backpacker

a refugee from the 60s dream

embedded with the graffiti

blowing great blunt hits

streetlight dark pavilion gone

looming shadow of civilisation

crumbling beyond the wall saying

I don’t talk about nothin man

I don’t even read the paper

I took my device and dug it down

one foot by one foot six right

n pushed back the sand

man, that’s what I did

and tonight of nights this speaks to you

a wisdom beyond compare.

Swallow your words, bury yourself

drink nothing but sand

and when you’re good and baked

swim out past the breakers

into that pitching black

to float on your back

indeterminate a blob as blobs might be

one chunk of rock adrift between suns

& this is what you’re thinking, yes

launch yourself to the fates

see if water buoys, what weed

sends in thin tentacles up from the deep

and if you’re gifted back to sky, back to air

back to the swell and heave of below and above

if you’re gifted back to the cities, empires, continents,

back to the red lights of Campbell Parade

then ascending the reef and depth

from the terrible mouth of Mariana

the angel trumpet blaring stars

a word will shape that dark

into the hallowed face of love.
Shivering a little as the wind comes up

walking home DNA of helix rounds

in the down-hung bark of eucalypts

sweeping the night trees

footpath’s shifting knuckles

undersole bones of your feet

bare shanks, and all of it utterly foreign and particular

from headland to headland the colour tuned a dream of physics

wild indivisible hues. Meantime you mutter

solemn promises to a future-self: to never

read below the line, toss the brochure, turn out

the lights, the JWs, the relatives,

and never, never watch the credits

they run without end and say nothing you’ll remember

Listen to the morning, you say

Listen to the light

Listen to the only creature talking

pure sense, that magpie

warbling gospels to a strangeness of coming day

and by suchlike landmarks might you navigate

back unto the world.

Crash on the sofa TV/off

newspapers burned/binned

and drifting into unconsciousness

you figure: wallow a little if it takes you

but you didn’t sell the world

and you don’t have to buy it back

although, hazily, you have been online shopping

and waking some morning hence

you will find yourself in a motel room

you recognise but vaguely

filled with humming objects

and through the window The Pacific

will exhale in rolling dumps.