formulation

"If any human activity is sacred it is the formulation of thought in clear speech." - attributed to Ezra Pound in Noel Stock's The Life of Ezra Pound.

Below: Ezra Pound by Wyndham Lewis.

coastal (2009)

"too hot to get busy anyway"

unused sky bestowing confidence

we'll take the coastal road

Aussie flags hoisted on roofs, in sandy gardens

'fuck off we're full' sticker
__________________on a ute's rear panel

but let the sunset beach do the tender talking

the brewery will do the rest

the sea:
______yet more fields to be farmed

parasails sweep, flip
______________as tankers ride the horizon


- on the coastal road to Fremantle, WA

development (2009)

impermeable, unstirred, unmoved

these lives that go on regardless

city of satellites

another new suburb on the city fringe

mounds of sand, industrial supplies stand waiting

shopping village has the works for home and garden

"we'll need at least 15 bags of ice"

the hells these cuts of meat came through (you'd weep & refuse to eat)

driving past these oversize words that say nothing, nothing to stop us

"what lifting the ban on uranium mining would do for this state"

news item portraying protesters as terrorist-clown-mutants

this station plays the golden oldies


- Ellenbrook, WA, 1/1/09


Below: 'Au$$ie Living' (click on image to enlarge)

Waterfront (2008)

subdued table

lunch overheated / flavourless

running the risk of being asked to leave -
___shouldn't be eating this food here
___though no sign tells us not to

the bona fide clientele stab their disapproval
___without so much as eye contact

this place swallowed by sun & ice cream kids
___boats knocking against the quay
___playground throbbing with fluro noise

a drink could make things worse

in the car park cars melting /
___wavelets shimmer on windshields


- Hilarys Boat Harbour, Perth, WA

Meeting (2008)

You start to get a feel for what might be expected
at this level. Those around the table who
intimidate you do so only out of habit. Items
raised become a troupe of coins spun on the
tabletop; the key point for debate is the need to
move on to the next. Coughing, shrugs and
cultured laughter make for a routine
performance. In this congregation you no
longer consider yourself well-nurtured; your
assertions falter, drowned by those in smoother
humour. You are once again amazed by how
much you don't know, by your allergic response
to operational matters. You know you wouldn't
want to be left one-on-one with any of those
seated here; conversation is for others.
Continually looking to the clock for lenience,
you plan to sneak away during lunch & not
return to the room for the resumption. Your
hand trembles as you reach for a biscuit.

ways out (2008)

Don't we fear we have already left it too late? Can't bear to watch. It's not so much that the horses are whipped, but that they are used up. Running out of context. Like a good labyrinth-maker, give them ways out. As in, you can't just 'get off' the plane. Perhaps a hallucinogen capable of de-storying. No landing lights. People look well in the dark. Again primitive and unknown. Something underheard. Consider the rights of trees. That the diagram we make of the world is rooted in their architecture. The latest iteration. Despite appearances, we haven't been in this part of the complex before.

The days write themselves (2008)

A roadsign warns against golf buggies.
Listen: is that a shot off the fairway
or a big bloke preparing to spit?
Perhaps both. Grey roos
bound out of sandtraps.
No one is making this up. Really
the days write themselves.
There'll be people over at 5
for champagne & nibbles.
Then the Monday after the 60th bash
we'll fit in 9 holes.
Stocked up so much alcohol
the house begins to sink. And
the parrots don't want us here either.
Not as if they need our help
to be classy. Who owns this plot
of blue & cirrus sky? Flies
routinely circle the heat
of the road. 4x4s rocket past
as we retreat into slim roadside shade.
Grasshoppers broadcast dry static.

- The Vines, WA, 24/12/08

These bastions of quiet achievement (2008)

What can be said here?
Passing a school
& two churches,
a dozen placards
of success.
Truly,
this plot of land was sold
by Candice Wellman. She
looks happy, but
what choice does she have?
Systemic smile.
Space at a premium -
fill it while you can!
All we're asking for is
sedated children,
by which we mean our own
or those seated nearby
(having paid top dollar
for these seats). "Sorry this is
such a one-sided
conversation;
in fact I'm interested
in what you have thought.
I mean on a personal level.
What you think
when you're not thinking,
how you swim as you drown."

- Scarborough, WA, 23/12/08

Logical Positivism (2008)

Blind faith’s the only kind? I don’t believe that. Here intuition is the tailwind, though something injures our hearing, electrically high-pitched. The windows were closed; there was the smell of a closed room. What were we waiting for? What weren’t we waiting for? Daylight was promising. Nightlight too, but in a different way. Of course our interests are too close for us to see. What if every morning we could improvise? Unblock the air? Well, now we can. I’ll begin: “taking the usual precautions, they managed to cut her free from the car.” Soon enough we'll have a book. When will you be available?

A Landmark (2008)

Only at the end of our visit
as we left in the brown dawn
did we see the nuclear facility over the town,
a landmark even through fog.

We knew very little at that time;
while visiting the cancer and Alzheimer’s patients,
though glad that conversation never stalled uncomfortably,
we had no inkling of the problem.

My parents had been raised there, but said nothing.
That silence still gets handed on; warnings fail
on what can only be described as a musical level.
Once, at school, we were shown a film of the devastation,

which I understood. It haunted my mouth for years.
Even now, if I see panicked crowds running, I go down,
until some bystander revives me
with language sane in the extreme.

Dan O'Connell, Saturday 13/12/08

On Saturday, after standing in the rain for an hour or so outside the State Library to protest the Australian government's plans to introduce mandatory internet filtering, I headed on down to the Dan O'Connell for the weekly open mic.

As a tribute to Dorothy Porter, I read the Overture from her Carmen sequence (which I posted below). This was originally featured in Driving Too Fast, her book from 1989. Then I read Drive-thru, which I originally wrote for Dorothy's creative writing class at Melbourne Uni in 1998 (Elizabeth Campbell was one of my classmates). I also read Down slow, which I'd been working on during my mentorship with Dorothy in 2007, and which she seemed to take a shine to.

The open mic was as diverse as ever. Several other poets read Dorothy Porter poems. Featured poet Anthea Bartholomeuz was impressive. I'll probably be back again some time in the new year.

Below: Reading Dorothy's poem (photo by Michael Reynolds).

recurring poem #4

Dorothy Porter: 'Overture' from Carmen

Three days of heatwave,
A hot lid of dinning cicadas.
At night only a flock of bats lifts
__and flies across a hot scrap of moon.
Colours flow hot and slow like lava;
__the sea is never cold
__shining like the bluish basking belly
____of a snake.
Even mauve smoky twilight scratches along the skin
__behind the eyes
__like a hot thorn.
A black and white butterfly
__floats past a bright orange weed
____that flutters hungrily
______like a fly-trap.
Around an oozing broken pipe
__midges cluster
____ogling the milky water
______that gives off a green stink.
The road is empty
__but for the bright disturbing green feathers
____of a rainbow lorikeet
______smeared across the hot bitumen.

But. Look now.
There's a white light
______glancing off the water;
a spatter of rain
hisses on the road
and wafts up
__in a dew of dust and petrol;
flecks of parrot piss float
__from a luxuriant blossoming gum;
white cars
__in this fierce light
__hurt the most.
Carmen
__drives with one loose dark hand
Carmen
__drives a white hot car.

Vale Dorothy Porter

Dorothy Porter 1954-2008

Poet, verse novelist, lyricist, trailblazer, music lover, mentor.

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.

underslept, an urban centre (2008)

The governing feeling is
morning, stirred vagaries,
though you are too tired to be
traffic. This part of the
world a kind of
insomnia: a car advertises
‘public speaking for
all’. Try not to overthink
the nondescript, but on this
terrain it could prove hard to
be ruthless. A fool thinks
ruthlessness trumps the best
thing you’ve understood,
and a fool is often dead.
Take this one, filling in a
health questionnaire while
driving, perhaps content,
bouncing on the brake.

gertrude & smith (2008)

for Chet & for Simon

beautiful decay
afternoon, crusty____red
wine hangover not
a poet today what
mode are we in over
the road the bar where
a dead friend used to dj
‘back in the day’____where’d
the day go____?
bright artcovered laneways
aid breathing____should
get out here regularly
sit, eat on the street to
still your beating mind where
signs say enquire within____& yeah, maybe
you should _________begin


Below: corner of Gertrude & Smith streets; photo by acb.

those unheard

"at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason..."
- John Keats (Letter to George & Tom Keats)

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter."
- John Keats, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'

First Seven Sevens (2008)

(first ‘releases’ from a sequence of seven-line poems)


#1

‘There is no enemy.’
Remember how I howled, kicking the wind.
Untranquilised.
In at least two minds.
Magpie leaves a scratch
(As we know, paranoia’s just a heightened state
of awareness) on the forehead


#2

If one composes on the computer
waiting fragments of sky.
Partly cloudy, tending towards the loose.
Change direction just enough
so that you will not hit other people.
How one knows to keep away, into a symbol.
So, this is how to happen…


#3

We can always get more.
For reassurance.
Looking for something selfish,
read the field.
‘People prefer things over people.’
‘Glad I’m not dualistic
like you guys.’


#4

A word often repeated
is ‘interface’.
Conversant with.
Our heads lie before us.
(‘Drown inside’.)
I go hooded.
Meds.


#6

Where I come from, dessert
comes first.
Want to get the goodbye
out of the way, right away.

Adepts
spiritualise the cave’s belly.
Then hunger is a food.


#8

Another has arrived,
is a droid.
Felt him moving through the flat.

Blood dries in the ear.

Look, it’s late (territory)
I take it all back.
The tearful replicant.


#9

Where particles of the moment click in,
constellate,
description is slow.
(Nulls.)
A film, a photograph
were slow to revise it.
How to 'remember with'?

dumbfoundry

I'm now a contributor to the dumbfoundry blog, which provides updates (via links and quotes) on poetry news, poetry magazines & journals, poetry blogs, etc. I've always found it's a great place to visit if you want to keep up to date with strange happenings in the poetry world.

I'm hoping to throw some items on experimental poetics and 'technologies of poetry' into the mix...

Thanks to Ivy Alvarez and the rest of the dumbfoundry team for having me aboard!

Remix exchange

I posted a while back about potentialities for collaboration, and my fixation on the concept of the remix. As a longtime DJ and aficionado of electronic music, I'd like you to humour me on an idea which I'll call the 'remix exchange'. Basically, you take one of my poems and 'remix' it, and I'll do the same to one of yours. Sound like fun?

A remix in this context could entail anything from a gentle tweak/edit, to a fullblown overhaul, where the results bear little or no resemblance to the 'original mix'. Which elements of the original you use, and which new elements you introduce would be entirely up to you. Make it your own. Make it different. Make it danceable... or not.

Remixers can have free reign to choose from any of the poems available on this blog (including the 'found poems', which of course weren't written by me, but are words taken out of their original context and labeled poems). Be warned: you'll come across some scary monsters the further back through the blog archives you go. And I wouldn't necessarily expect the same free reign in return - naturally, you could nominate the poem(s) you're willing to have remixed. As a starting point, maybe you have something that's been gathering dust on your cutting room floor, or some abandoned poem that's left you at a loss? And by the way, of course the right to publish the remix would reside with you (I wouldn't want your name to be associated with something you didn't like).

And, what the hell, let's open this up to artists other than poets too: prose writers, musicians, visual artists, spoken word performers who shudder at the word 'poetry'... Whatever your chosen artistic platform(s), I'd love for us to have a crack at reworking each other's experiments, incorporating the source material as we see fit.

So, hit me up with a comment or an email if you're up for it...

Oh? (2008)

These trees are too neat! – we left them
where they were. Next, & forgetting 'the
endless text manipulates by fatigue', we
fall awake: city’s tough & blue. Boys on
the tram singing madeup unruly songs of
girls they broke, replete with names. Let
them be collected, like that will happen.
My jetlag was cranky. Bit you in the
ear, no message left. Now check for our
current location. Two rooms of
techno, we fall awake. News enters
through the mouth. The gods are back,
replete with names. Let them be
collected, endless text. We just
left them where they were. The digital
planet – which is that? Here we must
force ourselves to breathe. Oh, we’re
both writers here, soak this up while
raiding 'the commons'. Which planet is
that? Tough & blue? Now I'm confused. I
am not alone. We’re both writers raiding
the commons. Here, a handbook on
optics. Soak this up. These trees are too
neat! Are our bays radioactive? I’m now
confused. Hold down Ctrl when we get
ahead. Consider the difficulty of that
request. Codes for living in were quickly
devised. Neat trees are in our blood.
We must force ourselves to breathe.


Below: street art in East Village, New York City. Photo by Annamarie Tendler.

Found Poem #2 (2006)

(after
John
Giorno)

He
carries
the
long
staff
of
a
Buddhist
monk.
The
rings
on
the
staff
announce
his
presence
as
he
seeks
alms
and
clears
the
path
of
insects
so
that
he
will
not
trample
them.

Note: from plaque accompanying a statuette of a Buddhist monk at the National Gallery of Victoria – International Collection.

Found Poem #1 (2006)

(after
John
Giorno)

The
cool
/
creepy
thing
is
that
Sylvia
Plath
went
to
my
highschool,
had
classes
in
the
same
room
I
do.
When
some
one
I
knew
committed
suicide
the
administration
wanted
to
take
the
plaque
for
Sylvia
Plath
down...
I
was
ready
to
protest,
but
they
decided
not
to.


Note: as posted by grillparzerkarma on Bluelight, 27-11-2005.

For Ted (2008)

(after
John
Giorno)

Good
morning,
Ted
Berrigan
at
my
breakfast
table.
Wildebeest
bobbing
through
milk
&
muesli.
A
tome's
a
tomb,
tone
is
tone.
You
float
the
meaning
of
random,
don't
you?
I
have
always
meant
to
tell
you.
Figure
I
could
tell
you
everything,
hope
I'm
not
too
late.


Below: Ted Berrigan by Alex Katz.

Frame Lines

Some more publication news just to hand: my poem pollen will be published in the January edition of Frame Lines, which refers to itself as 'a non-profit organisation showcasing the best creative work - music, photography, illustration and much [more] from around the world'.

I have a lot of respect for what Sarah Nolan and the rest of the Frame Lines team are doing, and I'm sure you will too if you spend some time perusing the magazine.

Bambikino edition 9

The latest edition of Bambikino has just been released online. The 'physical' mag can also be picked up at Handsome Steve's House of Refreshment, and a few other places around Melbourne.

3 of my poems are featured: Charisma, drowse and chapel st. I love how Charisma has been formatted - some of the text wrapping opens up polysemy in quirky ways. There's also a cool piece by Monique Miller and images by Sudeep Lingamneni.

Thanks go to Cameron Miller for his excellent work on the mag, and to Chris Clarke for the original heads-up.

sonnet (2008)

for Monica

How we will do our usual thing,
Key it into the system of a day.
Children love patterns of any kind
But find it difficult to swim in pairs.
Ruthless, caffeine-blind, we shove
through galleries and museums.

The haunting moment of the song approaches:
The apples swell as they drink sweet water.
"We must renounce these traditions," you say,
"Lest our eyes grow dry with thirst."

I do not hold exits; I give you what I hold.
A poem: clothing pieced from detritus
Of this, most fragile of the perfect worlds.
Held together with a thread of breath.


Note: 'The apples swell as they drink the sweet water' : Pablo Neruda, from Sonnet V in Cien Sonetos de Amor (100 Love Sonnets).

the rules appear

"I also want to say that there are no rules. At least not at first there aren't. If you start with rules, you've really got a tough road. What I think is that you start with materials. You start with matter, not with rules. The rules appear, the limitations appear, and those are your limitations and the limitations of the material."
- Clark Coolidge, from Arrangement

free of the fear of freedom (2008)

one who flows

is a flower

videopoem #3

E.E.Cummings : Pity this busy monster, manunkind

(read by Ed F, video and music produced by Lila Sakura)

Poem text:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
___________________________-A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

radio radio

I'll be performing some poems on radio this Friday (31st of October), sometime between 12:30 and 1:30pm AEST. I'll be making my second appearance on Barry Ponchard's weekly show on 3WBC, which features upbeat jazz and live readings by local writers.

I have a couple of poems in mind, but I'm open to requests!

If you're in Melbourne, set your dial to 94.1FM. Otherwise you can stream the station live at http://www.3wbc.org.au.

For those who miss it, I'll endeavour to record the segment and make it available here, just like last time.

downturn (2008)

another day down
pixel candy holding up your blood

*

delaydelay

*

lottery/obits
clutter the morning

*

afternoon ceded to
pixel candy hunt
(she has thighs pre-glows defenceless)

*

deferdefer

*

music does not enter

*

(occasionally filling notebooks with sludge)

*

go out for medication
to maintain radio silence

*

radio calm

*

music does not enter

*

skin up with unmailed letters
tobacco laced with hair
also to maintain radio silence

*

everything so well-connected:

*

(is singing in the wires)

*

pain shoots up your street into your mouth
holding up your blood

*

all else fails

*

look to bright futures:
cherish armoured children /
tree-like devices

*

inhabit unwatched film /
sit low on the totem

*

looploop

*

mark this unread

others (2008)

cannot contact / be
contacted

(no physical)

KEEP WRITING

no entry / to
conversation

so then speak to me
clear audio

must have recordings
(‘gainst loneliness)

will screen you
(daily matinée)

live vicarious / via
voice of others

Let go (2008)

To be shy & low
is not a way –

do not depend on this
… as a state,

nor hug doorways of the flat
smoking like a trap.

Why intent on shutting down
while the bulk of us still shake it?

& what, this is where you do your
talking – here, in the poem?

But your kindred are out soaring –
boy, you should slip into town!

'Down slow' nominated for 'Best of the Web 2009'

My poem Down slow (song of samsara) has been nominated by Jill Chan, editor of Poetry Sz, for inclusion in the forthcoming anthology Best of the Web 2009, published by DZANC Books.

This poem was one of three poems published in Poetry Sz during 2007/08 to be submitted to the editors for possible inclusion in the anthology.

Conversation with self & others (2008)

Waiting for a response
waiting for a grip on what’s dripping by

& to easily receive
tongues
from anywhere

but you are all
silent as lice.

Data sent
and aiming for
that area
inside
of your lungs.

Thank you for listening.

*

How to travel within
lockdown domesticity:

ingest caffeine
rethink my clothes
to head into town

but town is gone,
is just photos

& then who am I
heading into town –
some ornamental ghost?

In my ignorance I
will measure my cloud-head against you.
Sorry to have to meet like this.

*

Who amongst you
kick the
unthought stuff

&
know how to receive same?

Check your source code,
output settings.

Only this is what I want
to learn; shoot books
in my arm.

Though before we spin despair
in dead syntax
additional purchases may be necessary.

A mind always
celestial is no mind at all –

I found pills and ate them.
I am looking at everything as material

for later

but through material
to reach something
mis-read that

I thought of you, and knew.

The internet is watching.
I have evolved,
am numbered.

Flutter & clap your fear
like the national anthem.

It was good to hear from you;
time to let you go.


Below: Lego interpretation of Escher's Relativity by Andrew Lipson.

recurring poem #3

Federico Garcia Lorca: New York (Office and Denunciation)

To Fernando Vela


Under the multiplications,
a drop of duck's blood;
under the divisions,
a drop of sailor's blood;
under the additions, a river of tender blood.
A river that sings and flows
past bedrooms in the boroughs -
and it's money, cement, or wind
in New York's counterfeit dawn.
I know the mountains exist.
And wisdom's eyeglasses,
too. But I didn't come to see the sky.
I'm here to see the clouded blood,
the blood that sweeps machines over waterfalls
and the soul toward the cobra's tongue.
Every day in New York, they slaughter
four million ducks,
five million hogs,
two thousand pigeons to accommodate the tastes of the dying,
one million cows,
one million lambs,
and two million roosters
that smash the sky to pieces.

It's better to sob while honing a blade
or kill dogs on the delirious hunts
than to resist at dawn
the endless milk trains,
the endless blood trains
and the trains of roses, manacled
by the dealers in perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons,
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood
under the multiplications,
and the terrified bellowing of the cows wrung dry
fills the valley with sorrow
where the Hudson gets drunk on oil.

I denounce everyone
who ignores the other half,
the half that can't be redeemed,
who lift their mountains of cement
where the hearts beat
inside forgotten little animals
and where all of us will fall
in the last feast of pneumatic drills.
I spit in all your faces.
The other half hears me,
devouring, pissing, flying in their purity,
like the supers' children in lobbies
who carry fragile twigs
to the emptied spaces where
the insect antennae are rusting.
This is not hell, but the street.
Not death, but the fruit stand.
There is a world of tamed rivers and distances just beyond our grasp
in the cat's paw smashed by a car,
and I hear the earthworm's song
in the hearts of many girls.
Rust, fermentation, earth tremor.

You yourself are the earth as you drift in office numbers.
What shall I do now? Set the landscapes in order?
Order the loves that soon become photographs,
that soon become pieces of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, no: I denounce it all.
I denounce the conspiracy
of these deserted offices
that radiate no agony,
that erase the forest's plans,
and I offer myself as food for the cows wrung dry
when their bellowing fills the valley
where the Hudson gets drunk on oil.

- Federico Garcia Lorca, 1930, from Poet in New York, translated by Greg Simon & Steven F White.

Below: Federico Garcia Lorca, Self-portrait in New York

stoppages (2008)

A closer look – cycling 'brings us closer to the landscape'. Streak of a roadkilled rainbow lorrikeet. How to get hushed.

*

Sunken face. All craved out. What variety of blues.

*

We don't do truth here. Look busy; act well-briefed. This fails like all double disguises.

*

Continue. Despite. Recoil.

*

A poem irreducible to paraphrase. A retreat, a shelter. Extracting voice from voice.

*

A love of chemical. Bugs me. What is meant by 'once' in 'just this once'.

*

Wake late. In bed you soft like a towel; I play apologist. ‘Define vanilla,’ you said.

*

You binned old photos - friends smiling back at me, bathing in foodscraps. You were blocked, needed to purge unneeded objects. Clearing your throat.

*

A fatal itch. What we seek we already have. Voice that insists, “You’ll be closer when you’ve covered all these.”

*

Hard to get anything done here. Let’s get lost at home. Smear memory across tiles.

NaNoWriMo

Ok, so I signed up for NaNoWriMo. This means I will be writing a novel of at least 50,000 words during November. God help me...

My decision was partly inspired by the previous post on this blog. I expect the novel will dovetail into prose poetry at inopportune moments. So who knows, maybe I'll post some extracts on here? Don't hold me to that, by the way...

If you'd like to monitor my progress or buddy up for the ride, here's my NaNoWriMo profile.

twenty-three hours

“the only problem with being a poet is figuring out what to do with the other twenty-three hours of the day.”

- Max Beerbohm, as quoted in 'Jobs of the Poets' by Michael Gottlieb from Jacket #35.