want (2009)

will not be pinned or nailed unless we choose a name in the margin ~ sanctify a saint who can be edgecutter too ~ a rat on rat patrol radar on ~ i’m a business cannot assist i feel so oh no master of none milky tea on my fingers ~ think i’ve found the real stuff needs doing hired a hand but it couldn’t hold ~ the use? ~ slob readerships for mediated ~ taped mouths ~ taped mouths ~ theft can be pretty? they’re your words not mine what’s to write home? ~ don’t interfere with mating plants ~ guns stick to your easily think i’ve figured how to read these secured the bridge flee the inward we shit so much repressed breath ~ pocketed another face for later quit sleep take up night fled the junk party room with its pinked haze ~ you want her nametag though & so many buildings your table not content


As published in Otoliths 14, August 2009. This poem contains words from a raiders guide by Michael Farrell.

Below: Andreas Gursky, '99 Cent'

unfinished liquid (2008)

some swim beyond
reproach the water
robe the dot
orgs wear any
mud hurled sins
of omission hint
your interest more
talented bestiaries the
further back you
dig obscure lexical
artefacts hop out
of freshly printed
books to applause
our eyes snacking
on arcs aerodynamic
or otherwise such
a dull integrity
of suppressed intent
seldom smiling with
our whole body


As published in Counterexample Poetics, June 2009.

Berlin (2008)

The West controlled the U-Bahn. Underground train lines passed under the wall at certain points. Passenger trains from the West would pass through 'ghost stations' in the East, never stopping at these.

*

The communications tower spiking out of Alexanderplatz still casts the old omniscient spell at night, red eyelets flashing over the grey grid below. Socialist system a torn web still dangling from housing blocks, the eastern Ratthaus. In the former GDR, kids were herded into group potty sessions to sow the seeds of collectivism.

*

Chunks of city scattered amongst derelict blocks, may never be de-fragged. Temples falling into disuse. Underground clubs in abandoned vaults and warehouses; strobes spray lightning on sweat, shaved heads, concrete.

*

One dark dividing wall to split the brain of a city. Graffiti coats the surviving segments.

*

The opening of the wall was a bureaucratic slip – a rogue document inserted to sabotage the machinery. Paper jam. At the press conference, without pausing to consider the words or their meaning, the official read out the memo.



Published in Shadowtrain #23, October 2009.

Night of the Living Dead (2008)

(after the 1968 George A Romero film)

Boarding up all windows and doors, using whatever we can find. Breaking up furniture. Lock ourselves inside the house. An excuse to break taboos. The sick little girl turns into a zombie, consumes her dead father’s flesh, then stabs her mother repeatedly with a cement trowel, killing her. The moral to the story: don’t make fun of the dead, especially in a cemetery. They have us outnumbered. Tom & Judy burn to death when a gasoline spillage causes their car to catch fire. Zombies feast on their barbecued flesh. Recall a fast food advertisement, the glowing family trying to out-excite each other across the table. If you’re waiting for the real enemy to show up, damn it, you’ll be waiting all night. If we lock ourselves in the cellar there’ll be no way out. What, you think it’s sexual? The deep, glossy black of blood in black & white films. Reflective liquid. You won’t find a better man than a black man. Trust you to mistake him for a zombie… Disaster in the middle of nowhere; a haunting lack of sirens. There’s always a token naked zombie whenever we see them marauding as a group. Not even thinly veiled. The radio & TV emergency announcements are so, so camp: “Thousands of office and factory workers are being urged to stay at their places of employment, not to make any attempt to get to their homes. ” Shoot on sight. A situation where ‘anything’ can be justified, or where justification is moot. We see a slap across the face on screen; it matters that it’s simulated? She’s hysterical & therefore of no use to us. You have to laugh: it’s a horror flick. The zombies massing to devour the woman, leaning in, stretching their hands through holes in the wall. We know a ghoulish hand when we see one – but how? The zombies are hideously slow, but strong enough to overturn a car. Thankfully they can be fended off with fire. Walking political allegories. The men have an argument about the best options for staying alive until help arrives. You call these survival instincts? An abject failure of the system.


A previous version of this poem was published in Otoliths 14, August 2009.

Night of the Living Dead on IMDb.

the masculine (2008)

poor sad masculinity. spend the whole day jerking off. would opt out if you could. what awaits discovery here? no black gold. what's a man without it? downing a slab of mid-strength. what’re a few uncried tears? while diving in ink. don’t bother looking down there. it's nothing, always nothing. who’s alpha? is this what you have left to offer? even your pen refuses to write. the bastard. what you will resort to. you shop around. in hell's name. for endgames. is speed chess the game for you? they queue for your time. ‘not for sale’ sticker attracts attention. you’d love to crack. somewhere bright & crowded. with family units. michael douglas in falling down. a good career move. tear their smiles off. c’mon you’re far too meek. take it out on an ornament. assault by proxy. hurl down a galaxy of glass.


As published in Otoliths 14, August 2009.

Seven Concentrations (2008)

1. Entrance

This should be easy to enter, like a building. Not that all buildings are easy to enter, but the idea that they could (or should?) be. "The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding." Ha.


2. Retreat

Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking, not unlike a holiday which doesn’t include a single digital component. Our thinking became less mushy once we exited the city. For a moment our bodies felt lighter than notions. A tingling of safety. But ads gave chase, behaving as do subatomic particles, which the physicist can only know by inference. They surfaced even in the most private of spaces: the pimples of the tongue, the shield of the retina. There was no longer a question of where – therefore escape had no meaning. There were arguments already and we needed other channels of conversation to erupt.


3. Reading

No amount of reading will ever be ‘enough’. This does not require a diagram.


4. Coding

It wasn’t the effect I wanted; this made me especially happy. Inelegant code. Widely-circulated propaganda: shots of webs supposedly threaded by spiders in various states of intoxication. Two flat whites. Dark promise of an uncharted mineshaft. Or open-source; an open-cut mine.


5. Mythology
Overheard: "... your money where your myth is." The study of contemporary mythology. Where science ends, where we begin... to feel... unspoken? We can only hope.


6. Art

Too many artists (moths) at this 'soirée'. Their code is elegant. Pretty in black, sloganesque. To be one of them, one of theirs. Shaping to be unexpectable.


7. Meditation

We take smoke-roads out of town, until we rise from morning meditation. A doubt: were we meditating this time, or waiting? To think is to stray. Slipped and cut. The mind is overcharged, wades in all the gone and unwritten. But to return to the point… return after return is the practice. Returning to the one point is the practice.


Notes:  "The complexity of philosophy is not in its subject matter, but in our knotted understanding" and "Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking": Ludwig Wittgenstein, as quoted in Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein, Allen Lane, 1973.

An earlier version of this piece was published in otoliths 12.

chapel st (2008)

lemon, water, sun, saliva

day spins into hubcap

drowsed / stun-gun sun

so coloured up, the crave district

"... you fkn loser ..."

overdress & fuzz with desire

rear denim of 2 thin boys-in-love

street smokes, spits

what a postcard

someone's nonna sucks from KFC cup

fume of Marlboro

Natasha is a party

rushed heels

cross against lights phone clammed to ear

our waiter = pretentious wanker

the pointing tongue

coffee versus boredom

An earlier version of this poem was published in bambikino 9, November 2008.

A train, outbound (2007)

It takes minutes to leave the city. But to leave the city, mentally…

There are always nervous questions prior to departure. You must peel these off.

See this industrial district? It has fled nature.

Likewise I sometimes believe writing is an avoidance; you opt for a conversation with yourself. Living very far apart.

The houses have satellite dishes as standard; ears to the wind. Powerline towers, like posts of an enormous fence. These are and are not life-conductors.

Fields in which to expand, cease? As if cities were centres of forgetting. Gazing out the window, I swim the wild grass.


Published in Shadowtrain #23, October 2009.
 
Below: 'Powersource' by Patrice Lynne Young

stock (2008)

tabs on what others are
doing perhaps leaving
you sipping the wake of
their excellence so
time to rethink the tint
of your calling card &
all manoeuvres as
pedestrian evasive
action stalling tactics
you were always a
next time boy your
room off-limits to
the living its abject
stuffiness sock stenches
those unwanted wanted
things your hibernation
hoard & feigning
upheavals to buy more
time to yourself the
retreat into trivia to
dull & dilute this
friendlessness perfected


As published in Thirteen Myna Birds, September 2009.

For Edwin (2008)

"If we continue in our mindful observation there will no longer be a duality between observer and observed."
- Thich Nhat Hanh


We have always been as weightless as this.

Our modest collection of questions.

Holes full of nets; nets full of holes.

No waiting: all things are present.

Eye observes itself.


As published in The Cartier Street Review, February 2009.

ny dream (with bits of Berrigan) (2008)

It's 57am in Ted Berrigan.
Never been to New York but
how hard can it be? OK.
Came to me 'first thing' - words
woke me. I needed a gun
in the dream & knew why.
Now I've no idea but
gladly. I do need peach /
tree / mountain surgery...
"What am I saying?

Only this." City's a cut-up.
Pass the scissors. Stray. It's
raining bots & eggs, but
this isn't that poem so
it was really snowing &
raining car stereos
pushing out hiphop grinding
woofers gorgeous blaq-
skinned it's 2008pm in New
York it's 5am in my bedhead
street surgeons pulling fast ones
that one's got a knife! thank yr
stainproof suit time your
coffee so you're peaking
for the meeting 2:15pm.


Note: "What am I saying? / Only this." - Ted Berrigan, 'Words for Love'. "it was really snowing & raining" - Frank O'Hara, 'POEM (Lana Turner Has Collapsed)'.

As published in Otoliths 9 (May 2008).

repackaging 'evil' (2007)

on the track to the city
a snake says, ‘trust me’,
and what could be
simpler? it’s just an
advertisement, but
clearly everyone
is implicated

/ way the ads burst
volumed at our outer
skin to nudge the inner
what big hoofs more
than a little tampering
with our brittle
___________/ forever
surrounded by cranes
fishing for significance
they hold our dossiers
as if ‘connect’ means my
brand is your brand but
i can’t get no, no no no


Note: "i can’t get no, no no no" - The Rolling Stones, 'Satisfaction'.

As published in Snorkel #9, April 2009.

desist (2007)

(after Stan Brakhage's desistfilm)

the night (is it night?) is
_____-____________-teeth,
_sitting round dumbing stuff
________-we have cool haircuts
_______-if this is the 50s,
_____both sexes thrown in dark room
__________-music loud enough that we can’t

____music through a glass, a fly

_boredom sits
______-reading your shoe
__________________tugging our own hairs

_surface-bound
_-sit round dumbing stuff
__________starting cigarettes
____________stacking a house of books,
__his shortlived match sculptures

_later run out
screaming deaf into treescraped
__ horizons, bracken
__________________-slow our fire
_________descend to
__________________________magnified touch

_at some point back in the room
caught ourselves paused
__-dancing it was kindergarten
______________plus an ashtray

____________________our flesh blur
___________________________strung
__________________________refused that kiss________


As published in Sein und Werden 'cinematique', Spring 2009 (print edition).

Note: A poor quality copy of Stan Brakhage's early work desistfilm can be viewed here. There is sound, but you'll need to turn up the volume. I recommend tracking down a copy of the Criterion DVD By Brakhage: An Anthology in order to approach his films through a medium closer to the one they were intended for (i.e. a cinema).

pollen (2007)

night air aroused
drawling with spring

*

pollen delivering words
as raw silk
through the unseen
caverns of my nose

*

in the middle of the street,
also high on pollen,
deadkids play lazy karate

*

halogen lamp oversees
glossy 'for sale' sign,
spraying its light,
mistakenly conjures
tilts of red from garden roses

*

on a nature strip,
legless ergonomic chair implies
a silent office of Zen


A previous version of this poem was published in Frame Lines issue 7, February 2009.















Below: Scanning electron microscope image of pollen grains from a variety of plants. (This is a public domain image sourced from here.)

Mid-city meditation (2007)

I take off my shoes
so the grass can imprint
abstract designs on my ankles

can't see any other meditators
in Alexandra Gardens

a precious day

sun gushing,
pooling on gemgrass;
river metallic

cars on City Rd
sounding like the ocean
(peaceful cars)

I slow
& stop thinking
for some seconds

then I remember
to take off my sunglasses

& it becomes a lot brighter
behind closed eyes

I notice this,
then revisit the breath

an easy breeze
stroking my face

I revisit the breath,
revisit the breath

until half an hour later
I hatch
from my trance-shell,

look over at my shadow,
my head made of grass

*

8pm that night
I meet Monica on the bridge

we gaze through the sci-fi city,
make new pledges,
smile out...

a 4x4 crushing
a skater's stray deck
jolts us back to the wheel


As published in The Cartier Street Review, February 2009.

faulty (2007)

your speed-reading eyes
stalled by things I don’t have names for:
birds, trees... nature stuff

so we invent names from our lexicon:
banking bird, valium tree

our poems detail
glitches of perception,
are loose & easy,
repel ghosts


An earlier version of this poem was published in otoliths 12.

Down slow (song of samsara) (2007)

Be careful when you sing a song of broken love, a song of Samsara.
Just when you think you are relieving yourself of Samsara,
you might begin romancing it.
When the song sticks,
your broken love is replaced by a new love...
and you're it-
Samsara. ______________________(from Stonepeace)


naked
beneath the drugs
this is what I am

this is my face:

skin torn up
like carpet,
pair of choking eyes


have to get sick
____ to slow down


standing in the quickfire
the lanes of dust
grabbing at particles

my hands
trying to eat clouds

the roads between us
the fish of light
the millions

have to get sick to slow down,
freeze the eyelake over

see the fish of light
frozen swimmers
a library of ice


let's learn to swim down here
while we're dark

bodies solved

our bodies much older
than we, than we think


have to get sick
to glimpse you
_______________ you
not some death girl
forearms awarded
parallel wounds

(you were laying new roads
with the knife)

skin torn up
like carpet,
pair of choking eyes

this is what you are (too)

beneath the drugs
down slow


A previous version of this poem was published in Poetry Sz issue 25, March 2008.

hands / office (2006)

this is Modern Art: / motivational / poster of the pyramids captioned ‘Achievement’ / the sky absent, savagely cropped / (how to measure achievement when the sky is absent?)

*

across the open plan / cool paint-tones emit calm / it’s “too nice a day” / sun nothing but hindrance / wimp blinds / glare-stained monitors / staff listless / doing time behind / panes of heat / call logged re: the aircon / drip workflow / has sprung a lake

*

Bruce, who loves Friday drinks / is not alone / after-work trains become sparsely passengered / & this is (isn’t this?) / who ‘you’ are today / a drowner / “Gabe ‘n’ me are hitting the Deep End after work…” / your looks / your talent / you could be / “… anyone else?”

*

cubicles, ‘pods’ / officespace bouncing / with sweet soda FM / looped playlist / X-Factor? No, I don't / I am an island / correction: a shoal / mousy Support Analyst / acned / phonecall evader / in shooting out the apartment / this morning, toast in hand / neglected to carry enough / defeat music / to see out the day

*

aforementioned Bruce is seasoned / old hand, old hands / wandering / knows where to sit, stand / for best access / the bar, ripe officegirls / sloshed against a washroom wall / No sorry I’m feeling / a little married / tonight

*

dead links on the intranet / What’s the name, the girl from Accounts / the off-tap? / I’ll copy you in / something wicked this way / brushed by tiesilk / Are you hitting on / we’ll put it to the bored / bang on about / the ethics, if you like / “These aren’t the right minutes!” / I smell a / Steering Committee / duty-free cologne / & bulk-price handwash

*

two weeks pass / Bruce gets taken out / to lunch at the brasserie / I forget, what’s the name of that swank-shack on Bourke? / clears his desk upon return / then escorted by security / heaving boxes labeled ‘Fragile’ / out the revolving doors / a chance slap of wind / scattering flock / of white papers / to blot the gutter rain


A slightly different version of this poem was published in [untitled], September 2009.

Below: office 'motivational' poster that inspired this poem.

porn (2006)

i.e. where sex is a form of greeting begins with the basics tits
blowjobs etc you stalk the elusive chase-thrill until chore of
the addict quest to out-gross you underperform no wonder
_________________________________________you
wonder why not bring the drugs in front of the camera the
post-shoot bloods cramps visits to quacks gynos & cashola
cut on desks in shoebox low-rent offices strewn with adult
store novelties stockpiled microwave dinners actress
ephemera industry awards
_________________matter of fact that’s been done
seek & ye shall seek what you want’s a free pass cultivating
mind dirtier than mysterious mid-rock-festival portaloo
discovered by timetravellers allegedly researching lives of
beggars & toms in 17th century london squalor
____________________________oops this was
unplanned uh whatever your day off home alone an
exercise in deletion clear browsing history clear private
data now the afterfade you mindless gutless pointless


As published in Otoliths 14, August 2009.

post-rock (2007)

milk a baby black box recorder weaving through a vista mural in much clusters exposé of the fast wind chimes anecdotal with hard data spectral of course whitewater it’s a soundtrack to the abandoning the good stuff kids go a film does coke thankfully bottles fabric of the desert beginning or end melancholia the source of uncertainty friends of a small eternity so well-suited to employ them scissors inverted in such a wide-eared though bookish it’s surprising it’s taken so long onstage as a longtime fan for this trick of exposure emblematically more attention beautiful greyscale as one might expect tracks of quilted feedback nonetheless manage to breathe like premature a blob of goopy a few insane years people were ant traffic through forced windows out front lush vocal harmonies groove officer and texture middling big-sky arranged into the shape of the obligatory close-ups

As published in Otoliths 9 (May 2008).

Below: a part-coloured map shows noise (red) travelling up buildings; deafening noise of traffic entering Paris appears as deep blue. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6974/full/427480a.html