Nightpiece #2 (2006)

8pm café closure
aluminium chairs dragged like
teeth on concrete
& stacked

Tram asks do I have tuff nuts
though ‘tuff’... isn't

If you want to be tough
don’t hang in the lightreach
of $2 & souvenir shops
(one is called ‘Australia the Gift’ –
if I wasn’t tough oh-so already
this in itself might see me over the line)

These boys are tough as, they think,
chem dispensers flicking raw deals
(budget lighting) –
but are they mountainbike couriers /
ambulance drivers?
have they ever really had to weave
through anger
at speed?
(Um... yeah, probably.)

Anyone can get supply-chained:
just ask Ouroboros,
giving directions from
the recycling bin, &
the brown old clocktower’s face
has been dealt the same hand –

Boys, show me your pokerface!
whose deal has fallen through?

7Eleven is open yet again
(I fold)

Carfree (2006)

For Bridget

We named her (she was a she)
but her name’s not important now;
none of the forms ask for it

and now that we’re close to selling,
the ad placed

her body
keeping fresh under tarp

realise
it wasn’t a car that was needed after all,
but the momentum
(which, maybe, she embodied)

Figure we won’t miss
dumbing bodiless behind the wheel
driving ego’s other city

and we'll show our support
for free public transport
by walking everywhere

Today for instance
we could walk upriver,
pick a random spot, unpack
easels, handmade wooden birds,
paint the afternoon


Below: Bridget

Partings (2006)

1.

My grandma leaves a cavernous voicemail message, hesitant,
gnawing at silence
like she’s hauled before an expectant room
(we ready ourselves for messages) /
________________________(how we ready ourselves for leaving)
Her antique receiver
clatters, cuts


2.

Amped, jumpy
hopscotching a crowd
Touch-txting
Eyes on timetable

Smote /
_____left to sulk out in the

It’s cold, let’s
Erect a pyramid (or a graph)
Let’s behavioural addictions

Would you mind taking a photo of us?

3.

Felafel Kitchen oranges like a Dutch
home game

Garden salad songs

Once ate here every day
for 3 wks

“When the war broke out, the first
problem was food”
(Our wild oats)

This war's a strange one,
________Sci-Fi /
___blister packs unpierced
but empty inside

In the park
flushed toddler cries herself happy
for a life of random


4.

Yeah it’s yonks
Yay! we’re all trimmed, & eating well, new careers

Gotta go / I'm afraid

Sorry, but
saying goodbye is when
I get sociable

Domestic (2006)

1.

Backs up
What backup(?)
No joy
Brought up on Tetris
We have watered domestics
Just no verifiable drama, just ratcheting tension
Serrated like a row of calm-day flags
On a public building like ours
Hi-tensile webs, these rooms are full
Though always white
No colour for the walls
Something for a weekend (we could grow gold)
Add another project

2.

Not an easy read -
busy; too much for a hangover

Keeping up with personal email
means opening everything once?

The morning wants me to
make an appointment with Jo...

Handwriting all over the /
Um yeah she’s a counselling psych.
Here’s her card if you like

Where’s my reply?

Apartment block wired with arguments
fusing shorter & shorter

You visit the bathroom
to cry behind the exhaust fan

Alc. is a savage fucker /
Prize dilemma

Grate my knuckles with the cheese

3.

Morning birds’ misheard lyrics
Earth coursing with basslines
Some _______ bliss here
(My) little bleak little futile
Run bath of paracetamol
Settings / Control Panel
Set the controls for
____ththe heart of the sun


"Set the controls for the heart of the sun" = Pink Floyd, from 'A Saucerful of Secrets'

MWF '06

The Writers’ Festival =
a queue for coffee

Welcome to fawning, 2006
Many dying great masturbators in the one
Mingling room, begging to join them (one last dance?)
Feted, decorated (nod nod)
Aren’t we all so widescreen ? /
______Hi-def ?

Oh!
One of my friends met Tim Flannery
Without realising it at first
(she has a great laugh)

Another we saw her
9:45am unslept at Flinders St,
About to catch a train to bed
Having ‘picked up’ & landed at
Sofitel (wowee zowee)
No doubt we’re talking one of the greats

Quick plug (2006)

Glitch Bar,
PiO post-gig
drinking red
sells life as
a plagiarist's joke

Intros us to
t-necked
local jazzman,
oversize specs
("I don't play, just
call the shots")

Has night going
on Brunswick St
Thursdays
the souvlaki bar
next to Bar Open
“just head up the stairs
that’s where we’ll be”

Takes a parting pull
on choc brown rolly,
piffs it into glass circle
of the ashtray without
stubbing, its head
glowing amber like
recumbent prophet
burnt by visions

“None of that slow
Miles Davis stuff”
just unruly
stuff to be smalldosed

Tell him we might
see him there
you never know
“we might”

Portrait of Ledong Qui (2006)

Fuelling the party
is a man from Manchuria
with lampshade hat –
in his worker’s bag
a bottle of 60% baijiu
with Chinese characters
partying on the label;
one shareable shot glass;
a fishbowl jar of aniseed beans
soaked grey like fishbowl pebbles;
and a bag of sunflower seeds
which he says are to be eaten
“like a bird” eats, and remaining true
to his word, leaves seedhusks
strewn to mark his perching –
41 amongst late-twentysomethings,
dignified in specs,
wise old man of the East
(he laughs at this!) –
he in turn fuelled by
poetry, philosophy, psych-jazz –
he in turn
turned by great turnings.

He crashes at ours, contributes $2
to the cab, leaves a note marked 9:15am
saying thankyou, and that
the day has greatness to be had.

Note: 'baijiu' = a variety of Chinese white liquor, usually between 40-60% proof, in this case distilled from sorghum.

As published in Mascara #1, April 2007

Cut (2006)

You cut
on the fault.

Your eyes lash.

Fillet.

Green-raw
sected
flowerstem.

I leave pens
in hotspots
and you leave
knives.

The fish
with deep red gills
are the fresh.

For eating, not
selling.

Filler?

No sugar-
coat.

Splicer.

The film, you,
the un-
cut.

sad somehow the girl (2006)

sad somehow the girl
who jogs my block
smile bent out like a coathanger
& wild patches of acne
body rope-taut
life has thinned her early

it’s like i recognise
the way she’s running
away from home
same time every night
recognise scales & mirror
in her eyes, hopeful of change

if there were a way
to cry with her


As published in Clockwise Cat, July 2009.