The premonition was that I’m asleep,

sleeping sensibly, believing it takes more

violence to wake us than daybreak.

                                                       – ‘The Premonition’, by John Mateer


Monday morning, another black death

                           in custody, the world emerging

                                                                                               from the misty firmament

                                                      her long, sooty howl
                           I step out onto the earth

              and squint beneath the recollections

                                                                      history’s page curling in the flame

                                                              a nation fattening on its own starch
I’m grumbling back to the pit

                                                              in the guts of a car at the lights

              I slide into dream

                                                              (blasting eternity—the ugliest 
                                                                      word—into paragraphic scratches)

                                                      I grow larger than the waves and wipe out

                                              suburbs by the sand

                                                      I sense nothing but I know how to fall
                            I bubble with curses and I freckle

              and wilt under the shining blade

                                                      Country lost in promises of models

                            of melting worlds
                                                              I awake to see a body without flesh

your flags blending into my bones

              as a wet splutter of current arcs

                                                              through my bed’s baked rock 
                                                              you’re telling me, from across the paddocks

                                                                              you’re telling me

              you’re crammed into the coast

              opening your arms and telling me

                                                                      that a memory

is the epoch’s lonely fool