Alchemy (2007)

(the third of 3 Brett Whiteleys)

... he became his admirers. - W. H. Auden, 'In Memory of W. B. Yeats'


You’ve succumbed. Tall Poppy,
they crave to say you’ve over-stepped.
Don’t go too far. Stay too far. Settle
your petals against the sand; today’s
a hot one on ego beach. Where we
can see, between the flags!
Swim on a rope.
_________How’d you expect us
to eat all this? What,
weren’t you thinking?
What weren’t you thinking?
_____________Too long
in the kitchen, sniffling;
we want to feel your pain
but not forever. Brett,
it seemed someone was missing,
was not listening.
___________Your rockstar
mirrorgazes; hallucinating
momentary masterpieces,
blown away as studio dust
or shot up as lunch.
_____________You
painted our waiting,
expectations in exquisite detail.

We’ve been tailgating you,
true, your faulty tail lights.

This was a painting of ambition,
Icarus flightpath. Ambition is there
on the canvas, waving, screaming,
drowning in world. It writ large.








Alchemy at brettwhiteley.org

Self Portrait After Three Bottles of Wine (2006)

(the second of 3 Brett Whiteleys)

Jesus!
____-Gulf between nothing doing & doing
nothing (about 3 bottles wide).
___________________No quicker learner(!);
this pissed hound of instinct. One of those nights
spent pushing back the urge to score.
You may never be Brett Whiteley,
but he’s with you on the toilet wall,
unframed, torn, trying
to roll himself into something
to be swung at heads.
______________Hello, it’s your glazed self,
calling collect: “Quit moping, losing & go get in
the graph, get in the graph! Suit up... wear specs,
even!” It’s said Melbourne’s more subterranean
than Sydney. And so the coach carps on:
“Learn the ropes; learn to shimmy,
to swim the crawlspace…” But all you've
learnt are these road closure styles,
these rainy days.
_________--How the body lingers
through days & won’t listen to sleep,
like a 5 y.o., his parents parked in front
of late TV, & how, from a secluded step
on the stairs, he bears witness as
familyroom walls, overridden,
operate as light-traps.

_________________[Remember the first
time you stayed up to watch Star Wars?
Daddy, what’s a tractor beam? Otherwise
everything made perfect sense: Force,
darkside, straws of power
flapped at the night. “Luke,
you’ve switched off your targeting computer!”
Finding the vein, slimeball cowboy whooping
it home, the hottest car in the galaxy &
his wookie tough who didn’t like
the early stench of youth –
that overkeen stench.
________________Still makes sense
30 years & 3 bottles later. Vader was always
your favourite figurine, the red retractable
light-sabre in his arm, like an overwound
lipstick. You liked to remove this,
leave a tunnel leading through his hand –
the kind of black passage
where a father's kindness might nest.]

A bottle smashed upon the kitchen, its
neck still intact: a kindred spirit; a poet!
You know that something goes here,
something goes. And maybe all the worlds
are real, just that this one got badly stung
by beauty (a wasp trying to tough its way
out of your t-shirt).
__________Even this pissed, you can
dial, spit “I'm keen, can I get involved?”
at the receiver. Affirmative. You pass out safe
in the knowledge.

Self portrait after three bottles of wine at brettwhiteley.org

Art, Life and The Other Thing (2006)

(the first of 3 Brett Whiteleys)

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light – Dylan Thomas

They don’t know you. Any of you.
Your death, perhaps, but they never
know your brush. Hardly blame them.
(Re-check the time. Art is late.)
_____________________Though
your balcony still stands, like a debt:
sunlit, public. I would drink coffee there, & write,
& later let something summer tunnel me: liquid
lime or lemon, glass jug reefed with ice.
I might smoke, though I quit
years ago.
______Sydney Harbour lies back
getting sucked off by a tall,
professional sun. Glitter harbour,
waves winking like flecks of mica in asphalt;
& consider other flaky metaphors where the
'natural' vies with the manufactured (swarmed
metaphors clip wings, tailspin). Everything is
poised at a silent point in conversation. That word:
poise... propeller it in your fingers like a biro.
The other thing would be sweet. It's
days ablaze like these that the whole ritual of
dessert makes sense, & you think, "Who needs it?",
drown it in double cream. Art & life are fine:
you're happy to camp out in the rubble,
only senile gods for company,
and sure, the sky makes a fine tent,
but... you know. You know it.
__________________Nails lined up,
tapped with the care of a close shave,
driven!, in!, flush!
________Clawed out warped, is art.

Art, Life and The Other Thing at brettwhiteley.org


This poem was commended in judging for the 2007 Overland Judith Wright Prize for New and Emerging Poets.